Beer of the Bass

The pickups in cheaper instruments can be pretty good now, since they're often copying the original designs more closely than they used to. I have a £99 Axl guitar which came with "EMG designed" alnico single coils. Out of curiosity I put in a pair of Seymour Duncans, which have the same DC resistance (I'd guess the same gauge and number of windings) though the Duncans have weaker Alnico II magnets, flatwork rather than a moulded bobbin, and are scatterwound. The difference between them is really quite subtle, with the Duncans being a bit mellower and less peaky in the upper mids but still quite open sounding. Comparing recordings made before and after, nothing about the cheaper pickups sounds obviously worse, they just have a slightly different character.

On the width thing - I had a Carlsbro 100 watt PA which was 50cm wide - the same as a Super 12. Plenty loud for my needs too - I never had to turn it up to the point where it started to sound dirty at a gig, although my band may be less loud than some as our guitarists both use 1x12" valve combos.

It's finished and working. It does absolutely nail the Soft Machine fuzz bass thing! It's got that real sandpapery edge that the Muff lacks. I find I prefer the mid-notched setting on bass - it's centred high enough at 1K that there are still some mids going on below that. The normal setting is very midrangey and focussed, though with a little less low end than the notched setting. It'll be fun trying it with the band. We've got a gig tonight, but I should probably try it at a rehearsal first...

I just had a look at the eBay listing, and it looks like you've got a valve rectifier in there, so that's one less thing to change. A push-pull EL84 amp could be good for 15-18 watts depending on the amp design and the output transformer, but I think domestic audio stuff like this didn't run them as hard as instrument amps tend to. With speaker impedances, the usual rule of thumb is that you'll get the most output and least stress to the output transformer using the same impedance speaker as it was designed for, but if you're going to risk a mismatch, a lower impedance speaker is less likely to cause damage than one with higher impedance.

Personally, I'd be tempted to rebuild the chassis into something resembling a classic guitar amp. With an EF86, 12AX7 and a pair of EL84s, you could probably base it on the 60's Vox AC15 normal channel. I've got an old Fidelity reel to reel I'm planning something similar with, though mine is a smaller single ended amp so it'll end up resembling an AC4. If you don't fancy a full rebuild, you should at least replace the electrolytic capacitors to keep it reliable and safe. Also, what kind of rectifier does it have? If you're lucky, it'll have a valve rectifier, but some of these old tape decks use Selenium rectifiers which have a limited life and give out bad smelling fumes when they go - I'd change that if you have one.

I think there's a theme developing here. I don't know all of the names mentioned here, but the ones I do are captivating performers with or without a looper.

I don't think it's restricted to bassists. I can only think of one or two musicians of any sort (Thomas Truax is one) who do anything inspiring using a looper - most of the time they're a bit of a gimmick and the novelty wears off quickly for me.

I always used to stay higher up the neck when I had an OC2 - not so much because of the tracking but because that was the sound I was after and my small combo at the time couldn't handle going lower. I loved it on fretless or EUB, but could never bond with it on a fretted bass for some reason.

Since a couple of guitar amps have snuck in, I thought I'd stick up a couple of pictures of my home built job. It's based on a Fender Princeton Reverb - it does about 15 watts with a pair of 6v6s, and is in a birch ply cabinet which I tried to make as light as possible. My lead dress isn't up to the standards of the really good stuff like Hiwatt yet, but it works just fine.

Surprisingly, it may have been Hofner, as they were offering active circuitry in basses from the mid-late 60s. [url="http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/factfiles/active/electronics.html"]http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/factfiles/active/electronics.html[/url] The guys who founded Alembic were also early adopters of active circuitry, but I guess they don't come under "mass produced".

I've seen pictures of an adapted child trailer on Talkbass, so I guess it could work, but I'd want to use a cheap robust bass. I never cycle on the road with a couple of drinks in me, just the same as driving.

For me the big problem is lugging them up tenement stairs. My 2x12" is lighter, goes through doors more easily and has the right proportions for the boot of a Fiesta! If I lived on the ground floor and played places that had parking, I'd be happy with a good 4x10".

I would say the guys who do setups and minor repairs only (sometimes attached to guitar shops) are guitar techs, not luthiers.

Searching around this forum and a couple of others, I'm going with the idea that it was the Shaftesbury Duo Fuzz, which AFAIK is another incarnation of the Shin-Ei FY6 and Univox Super Fuzz. I googled Hugh Hopper and Shaftesbury together and came up with this interview where the man himself confirms it: [url="http://www.myspace.com/thesofts68/blog/233186822"]http://www.myspace.com/thesofts68/blog/233186822[/url] So I'm going to build a Super Fuzz clone and see if it gets me there. I'm using the PCB from Poodle's Pedal Parts and adding a blend circuit. If all goes well, I'll post some pictures in the DIY pedals thread.

I've found a later interview where he mentions the Shaftesbury Duo Fuzz as a treasured old thing of his, but no indication of whether or not that was the Soft Machine fuzz. The plot thickens...

I was listening to Soft Machine's second album the other day, and really enjoying the Fuzz sounds. It's got a more abrasive, raspier edge than I can get with a Big Muff, and it's not so mid-scooped. Does anyone know what he might have been using? We're talking late '60s England, so I guess there weren't that many choices around. Since the schematics for most things are available nowadays, I'd like to build myself a copy of whatever it was!

Erm, I suspect this thread may not stick around long either at this rate!

[quote name='heminder' timestamp='1363903041' post='2019373'] So much for free speech. I was taking an interest in Music Man basses after watching the factory tour. Not any more! [/quote] Yep! The fret slots being marginally deeper than the tang doesn't bother me (it's a pretty standard way to do things), but idea of a company who do all in their power to prevent free discussion of their wares really puts me off. Way to go, EBMM...

I've never found plastic cased pedals to be a problem either. I have an Ibanez TS-5 tubescreamer which was a 12th birthday present - I'm 32 now. I've used it on and off quite a lot in that time. It needed the power jack connections re-soldering a while ago, and I'm about to replace the switch, but neither of those things are related to the plastic case. The case itself is fine! Looking at the plastic Behringers, the build quality looks similar, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of them lasted about as well.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1363877213' post='2018779'] I found it sad to read from teenagers who have no money talking dismissively about their "crap Squier" (that they saved up for, or their parents bought them), just to fit in with the group... It's even sadder that some might feel... I don't know, embarrased even about using a Squier and a Behringer. That is sad. [/quote] Agreed, especially as a lot of the cheap stuff is quite good at the moment and no-one should feel inferior for using it. In my "guitar" band I gig with a £99 Axl, which was great for the money - solid body, alnico pickups, tuners that work and a nice feeling neck. I've compared it with a friends US Standard Strat side by side through the same amp, and while the two guitars have a different character from one another there's absolutely nothing about the sound of the Axl that shows it up as the cheap one. Sure, the fit and finish are better on the Fender, but the £99 guitar does the job. Being happy playing less revered brands is a matter of having confidence in your own judgement, so I can sort of understand why many want to make safe choices (i.e. trusted brands like Fender) when starting out.

I've seen and used a few bits of Behringer kit which have given good, dependable service, especially the rackmount gear and some of the mixers. The mixers tend to develop problems after a few years of heavy use, but then so does most other gear in the same settings (I've seen just as many Mackies, Yamahas etc. with dead channels). The DIs seem to do an OK job too, but I've been a bit underwhelmed by the Behringer combos I've plugged in to so far.

Each wire on the Hiwatt is cut to exactly the right length, bent at right-angles in precise locations and neatly tied together. The wires in the Selmer are left longer than they need to be and left to lay any old way, which makes the assembly much quicker. The Selmer approach still works and works well in most cases. I feel I should add, nice work, Baxter. A lot of these old amps have been subjected to all sorts of abuse over the years, so it's nice to see them being kept running. The Selmer I used to own had suffered at the hands of a mobile disco, and had "DISCO" and "MIKE" scratched into the front panel above the two channels! When I got it, they were generally regarded as nasty old tat, quite unfairly IMO.

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1363807111' post='2018030'] The Selmer looks like it requires more skill than the Hiwatt. [/quote] I've built a couple of valve amps, but I consider myself still a novice in such things. The Selmer looks much closer to the standard of lead dress I can achieve! Getting things as neat as the Hiwatt requires meticulous planning and more time spent in its assembly. The Selmers are still nice solid, serviceable amps though - it's just that Hiwatt and the like were real premium stuff.

[quote name='Dom in Somerset' timestamp='1363760494' post='2017047'] "PASSIVE CIRCUITS ARE ALL ABOUT WHAT IS TAKEN AWAY FOLKS." - but do crappy pots take something away? Think of a hose pipe, think of a leaky or twisted pipe. [/quote] They would have to be crappy to the point of being faulty, which is unusual even in the cheap ones. Since they're just a variable resistance, you can check 'em with a multimeter. Turn the knobs to zero and measure the resistance between the two outside contacts of the pot- this should be reasonably close to the value printed on the pot. Then turn the knob fully clockwise and measure from the centre (wiper) contact to the one at the clockwise end of the track - this should be very close to zero ohms. If this is the case, the pot is working as it should and will not sound different to another pot of the same value IME. As long as they work and they're not an inappropriately low value (<250K), I don't think the pots are the problem. It's possible you have a bad solder joint adding some resistance where there shouldn't be any, or that these pickups are just voiced differently to the ones you used in the prototype.

I do wonder how useful a test the plank bass above was, as it's looking at "cheap versus expensive" rather than any innate property of the wood. The density and stiffness of the bit of scrap and the alder might be fairly close to one another. If I really wanted to test whether the wood used for a solid body contributed to the tone, I would use pieces of wood which had wildly different properties - say one very soft and light wood (like poplar) and one bit of something hard and dense (like something in the rosewood family), swapping the same neck and pickups between the two. If nobody could hear a difference between those, threads like this could be put to bed.