Beer of the Bass

[quote name='mickster' timestamp='1370532520' post='2102324'] I expected this world to be much more full of creative slacker types who get really really passionate about which is the best Fall album or whether Soft Machine actually got better after Hugh Hopper was replaced by Ken Bebbington etc. [/quote] The Hugh Hopper/Robert Wyatt era of Soft Machine is clearly the best IMO, though the first album with Kevin Ayers is not without its charms. Have I missed the point of this thread or what?

You too? Jen and the Gents have popped up a couple of times in the background of scenes. I think Jen punted a CD at somebody. We were paid the princely sum of five pounds for the privilege! I haven't watched it since 1997, so I'm taking the rest of the bands word for it.

I'm just back from a nice outdoor gig with Jen and the Gents at the Meadow Festival in Edinburgh. Despite showers, it went really well, a few folk danced and lots bought CDs to take home. Supplied backline was a surprisingly good sounding TC BC500 2x10" combo, and my only real gripe was an excessively loud and trebly guitar in the monitors. I'm not used to stages with some room to move around - I kept striding up and down just so I felt like I was using the space a bit...

As an aside, does anyone have an idea how much the output of a typical valve amp is reduced when running into an impedance mismatch? I've been looking into the subject in relation to my guitar amp, and found plenty of sources saying that the amp may not achieve it's rated power, but no actual measurements of how large an effect this is. Although I appreciate it will vary between amps, and with different speaker impedance curves...

[quote name='iiipopes' timestamp='1369939603' post='2094789'] Finally, use 12-gauge strings. 10's and 11's are too flimsy to hold a good balance of tension to keep it in tune. As for me, too high maintenance, too little use. I don't have whammys on my guitars. No, I don't own a Strat, either. [/quote] I wouldn't say that 12 gauge strings are essential with a Bigsby, although they may help. Mine is stable enough with 11-49 or 10-52 sets that I don't consider it a problem. I have friends with non-trem guitars who have to tune between songs more often than I do.

Has the top on that bass been replaced? The f-holes look quite crudely done and it's unusual to have purfling on the back and not the top - I wonder if someone has replaced a damaged top with a fairly rough looking bit of plywood? As said above, I suspect it would cost more to have it sorted by a luthier than the end result would be worth, but a DIYer might get it going well enough to play, so don't skip it!

Those Adeson pickups do look the part. If you went for the solid topped version, I suspect no-one but the most diehard Vox collector would notice any difference in appearance.

Just to go back to the earlier digression, the double bass tailpieces with variable or compensated length aren't about adjusting either the pitch of the playing part of the string or it's compliance. The afterlengths behind the tailpiece on a double bass vibrate a surprising amount when playing, and their tuning affects the sound of the bass, especially with the bow. On my own double bass, I had a terrible wolf-tone on one note, which was almost entirely tamed when I added a small weight on the A string afterlength, tuning it so that the afterlength resonated at the pitch of the dodgy note when bowed. I don't pretend to understand these interactions in great depth, but I'd guess that this acted to absorb some energy at that frequency to even out the response of the bass.

[quote name='Kev' timestamp='1369854038' post='2093605'] If you remember how cheap these were when they were sold new, you probably wouldn't be surprised at all! [/quote] This is true, I remember seeing them in Victor Morris in Glasgow in the 90s. I was thinking more of the price they fetch nowadays!

Rickenbacker toasters are six pole pickups originally intended for guitar, and they sound very good indeed, so it's quite possible that the right guitar pickup could do a fine job. It looks like your mounting screws are further apart than on a single coil guitar pickup, so you might need some ingenuity to mount guitar pickups in there without also making a new pickguard.

If you're coming from another branch of electronics, looking at magnetic guitar pickups may require an adjustment in outlook as there is no single ideal to aim for. A full set of electronic, magnetic and physical measurements of the pickup could certainly give you a good idea of how high the output might be, where the resonant peak is when connected to a given impedence, whether any treble frequencies are lost to eddy currents and whether the sensing window is wide enough to cause cancellation of the higher harmonics of the string. This would put you in a good position to predict the various characteristics of the sound, or to understand why different pickups sound the way they do, but "good" or "bad" are solely in the head of the listener. There are a great many cheaply made and haphazardly designed pickups which have become highly sought after for their particular unique sound, like Danelectro lipsticks or Teisco gold foils, so the distinction between "Good Branded" or "Cheap Crappy" is not always a useful one.

The one thing I always do when amp sharing is to put a bit of tape across the top with "NO DRINKS ON THE AMP, THANKS" written in big black marker pen.

The trouble is, quite a few aspects of pickup construction which can affect the sound can't be measured just by looking at the resistance and inductance of the coil. I have two sets of strat pickups which sound quite different but have the same DC resistance and (as far as I can tell without a micrometer) likely have the same gauge wire and approximate number of windings. The two sets sound quite different. Why? One set is scatter-wound on weaker alnico II magnets and constructed using flatwork so the inner windings are closer to the magnets, the other set is regularly wound, with alnico V magnets and a plastic bobbin which leaves a gap between the magnets and coil. The former (expensive) set is mellower sounding than the latter (cheap) set and has a different character to the highs, but to be quite honest, the cheap ones don't sound worse, just a bit different. The differences in coil winding pattern and magnetic structure would certainly be measurable with the right equipment, and there's quite a bit of discussion of this over at the ampage pickup makers forum if this is a topic that interests you.

I repaired a green Russian Muff for a friend which had more than one bad solder joint, so it's definitely a weak spot on these. Actually I was surprised how shonky the insides looked for something which is considered such a holy grail of fuzz! It did sound good though...

Once the setup is dialled in, mine is pretty stable. I have a modified three saddle telecaster bridge with notches at the back for the strings to pass over, and apply a little bit of lubricant at the saddles when I change strings (I'm currently using woodwind cork grease, just because I had some handy). When used for vibrato, it's spot-on but as mentioned above, you need to tweak the arm to get it to settle again after a dive bomb. I really enjoy the bigsby - at home I like to crank up the tremolo and reverb on my amp, hit a minor chord with some bigsby wobble and pretend I'm soundtracking a David Lynch film!

Just in case you're inclined towards a bit of DIY, Mr Deck has published the schematic for the series 2 HPF pre. He unambiguously states he's happy for people to use the schematic to build their own. Its a simple but elegant design, and I reckon anyone who builds their own stomp boxes could knock one up easily enough. I intend to build one for myself some time. The link to the schematics is here; [url="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxocGZ0ZWNobGxjfGd4OjQyNGJhOWE3YzdjMDY0ODg"]https://docs.google....OWE3YzdjMDY0ODg[/url]

I'm entertained that even Musicman's official distributor keep misspelling Stingray as "Stringray"!

Is that video some kind of joke I'm not getting?

Another wee rant under the header of gig etiquette; Dear Other Band, yes, I know changover times are limited, but I could pack my gear a lot faster if you hadn't just dumped all your sh*t on top of it two seconds after my last note rang out. And our singer/guitarist could get off much quicker if the "promoter" didn't stand in the middle of her cables and pedals to call the raffle. Grrrr! This happened to us this evening, and we were not impressed.

[quote name='arthurhenry' timestamp='1369561874' post='2090380'] Then there's the person who, despite the availability of a house rig, or one provided by a player who's more than happy to share, insists on using their own rig, as they absolutely must have their "sound" for the half hour set to four people. Sound engineers love them. [/quote] Sure, there's a happy medium to be found in there somewhere. If there's either a house rig or decent communication and organisation between bands, it's often practical to share at this type of gig. But if I'm not certain what I'm going to find when I get to a gig, I'll bring a small rig which I can set up in less time than the drummer setting up his cymbals and the guitarist plugging in his pedals. I do insist on using my own amp for guitar though, as I use the tremolo and reverb on the amp a lot and it barely takes a minute to stick a combo on the stage and move the mic over.

I used to think I was daft worrying about other people using my gear, but then I played a gig a few weeks ago, a four-band fundraiser sort of thing where the promoter told us one of the bands was "bringing the bass amp". The only problem with this was that they were an acoustic outfit, the bassist had a nice little AI contra combo, and two of the other bands were loud rock bands. The amp was run in constant fart mode and kept cutting out entirely. On this type of gig, I bring my own small rig along even where the promoter tells me another band is bringing one. The needs of different bands vary widely, and you can't expect someone in a folk band to be lugging something that will satisfy a rocker, or a metaller to supply something that will work for double bass etc. I will share gear by prior arrangement, but in practice I only do this on gigs where we know who the other bands are and we've spoken to them about it. Those tend to be better gigs than the sort with hopeless promoters and a random selection of the first three bands who said yes!

[quote name='Musky' timestamp='1369339362' post='2088148'] The continued sale of decades old 'fakers has arguably almost zero impact on the finances RIC, and certainly less of a direct impact than the secondhand sale of genuine Ricks. It remains to be seen how this policy will affect the current demand for Ricks. [/quote] In my case, having a decades old 'faker as my first bass guitar has left me with a fondness for the look, sound, feel and general design of Ric basses which will probably result in me owning one at some point. Admittedly this will not be be at any time in the next couple of years, as my finances aren't up to it, but I fully expect I will pick up a nice mapleglo Ric somewhere down the line. If Ibanez hadn't been able to make their Ric copies, I would probably have never considered this style of bass as an option. I'm sure I'm not the only one with a similar story.

Intriguing reading, but (slightly OT) I wish I hadn't picked up on the references to Roy Estrada in the linked thread and googled him to see what he's up to nowadays. I always enjoyed his playing on the Mothers, Beefheart and Little Feat stuff, so knowing about his later child sex offences is offputting to say the least. I know the records themselves haven't changed, but it still creeps me out a little... On the thread itself, it's great to see Scott Thunes chiming in, and there's a lot of insightful stuff about what goes on in the music business.

The "harder hitting" sound of the Peavey might be to do with EQ. The Hartke has the classic Fender style tone stack, which has a substantial mid-scoop with everything set at noon. This can be a good sound, but it's worth trying it with the midrange on 10 and the bass and treble dialled back well below halfway. This may bring back the midrange punch you seem to be be missing.

I don't [i]need[/i] to change my guitar - it's a cheap AXL which with some setup tweaks does a decent job and has a bit of character about it. (It's this one here: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/207429-cheap-looking-things-which-actually-turned-out-to-be-alright/page__view__findpost__p__2075359"]http://basschat.co.u...ost__p__2075359[/url]) But every now and again I fancy something a bit more classic looking, and I'm never sure how much I like the neck finish on the AXL. I was passing by my local music shop this morning and checked out a Squier VM Jazzmaster - I like the looks and it meets my requirements of having a long scale length, single coils and a vibrato tailpiece. I tried the Jaguar too, but didn't get on with the short scale. The quality and finish seem great for the money, it sounds sparkly, spanky and lively and the vibrato works well. The shop setup wasn't perfect, but they never are. The bridge seems like the only obvious shortcoming, as it has a tendency for the saddle springs to rattle and the saddles can move when played hard. As I say, I could carry on playing the AXL, but I think the Jazzmaster would make me smile. Does anyone have any thoughts to persuade or dissuade me?