Beer of the Bass

If you're doing "acoustic" gigs without a kit drummer, a good 10" is easily enough. I regularly use a 1x10" with drum kit in pubs, though in a bigger room or with louder electric guitarists I'd want more. The GK does look good value though, and if it's lighter than the Ashdown there's no real downside for portability.

I like the D'Addario set I have on at the moment except for the B-string. It produced a wooly thud which was not much like the other four. Though your sig suggests you're playing 4-strings so this is probably not an issue for you.

I play guitar in this band, and our old bassist has had to leave for work reasons. We are a political seven-piece band based in Edinburgh called New Urban Frontier. We need a bassist willing to gig, jam, experiment and have fun. Our style is an ever-changing mix of punk, ska, hip-hop, soul, reggae, dub and afrobeat among many others We have gigged furiously all over Edinburgh. In the last few years we have played at, among others, The Forest Cafe, The Roxy Art House, Summerhall, The Bongo Club, Henry's Cellar Bar, Teviot Underground, The Jazz Bar, Tepooka, The Voodoo Rooms and Eden Festival. There are always exciting gigs on the horizon, so if you're interested get in touch as soon as possible through here and we'll arrange a jam to see if sparks fly. We have some recordings available on [url="http://newurbanfrontier.bandcamp.com/album/climbing-the-walls-of-babylon-ep"]http://newurbanfront...s-of-babylon-ep[/url] I'd point out that these are older recordings and since then, we have added some new material and changed guitarist. I'd say we've got tighter too! We have some more up to date recordings that we are in the process of mixing, coming soon.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1363224998' post='2010227'] Also note that they have not have any issues regarding payment yet. It's all second hand... [/quote] While I'd usually agree with this, I recall there was a chap running a venue in Edinburgh a few years ago who would regularly fail to pay his staff, tradesmen and bands on the basis that Edinburgh had enough of each of them passing through he could stiff 'em all once and it didn't matter if they never came back. A bandmate of mine took him to court over some carpentry work and used to be quite evangelical about warning people not to play or work for him, but they all would anyway. Once.

I've settled on having two sets of Spiro Mittels, rotating them after a year or so and soaking them in alcohol when I rotate them. Hopefully this'll keep me going for a few years without having to buy new ones. Yes, I'm a skinflint...

I read (in Melvyn Hiscocks book) that Wal would refuse to use figured maple in their necks, saving them for the body facings as they felt the risk of warpage was too great in a neck. So there is definitely some support for this way of thinking, even if many figured necks turn out absolutely fine.

[quote name='The Dark Lord' timestamp='1362982781' post='2006943'] I thought the scenario of 81 guitars hanging up on a washing line amongst a team of tokie chugging Rastafarians, all sitting in front of a big log fire in Edinburgh, while blowing the smoke away from the back of the headstocks was a great image. I'm sure that happens all the time up there. [/quote] If it does, then they've never invited me to their parties! More's the pity...

I don't think we could have had any sort of "great discussion" with him. He only seems to have one topic, and his debating technique consists of praising those who agree with him and insulting anyone else. What insight could we gain from that?

I've never tried one, but I have a friend with one of those Shadow pickups. He gets a reasonable sound and plays on some fairly large stages at festivals etc. Because it has the little preamp attached, it should work well with a wide range of amps too. The preamp does look a bit flimsy though...

I'd add to that list the Upton Revolution Solo pickup - another workable bridge wing pickup. If your amp has an input impedance of 1 Megaohm or greater (check the manual), some of the piezo pickups may sound fine without a preamp, so you may want to try that and see how you fare first.

And it's FANTASTASTIC, apparently! Much better than merely FANTASTIC...

It'd be a shame if that got pulled. I know it probably does infringe their perceived trademarks (how much that means outside the US I don't know), but there's no way anyone could mistake that for a Rickenbacker.

I remember being told to avoid any bit of gear with "Professional" written on it, as it almost certainly wouldn't be. I think the "Custom Handmade" decal on the SX is about the same! It is a bit of a naff decal, which could get on your nerves if you like everything else about the bass.

I'm only 30 seconds in to listening to the first track on your soundcloud, but I like this a lot. I think I'll be downloading this one...

I agree with the above suggestion! If it's really because you don't like the SX logo, why not leave the headstock blank or come up with something more individual? But then I'm not much of a one for displaying brand names, as I even pick them off my jeans...

Good stuff - should be a fun festival band!

I enjoyed that! Nice grunty P-bass sound, the guitars have come out meaty rather than fizzy and for some reason the arrangement reminds me slightly of Beefheart's Clear Spot, which is a good thing.

The Big Muff has inherently mid-scooped EQ and I think the Terror Bass does also (though I've not seen the schematic). I wonder if the combination of the two is leaving a big hole in your sound? There is a simple mod to lessen the mid-scoop on a Big Muff by changing capacitors in the tone stack, which might be worth looking into before you change anything else.

One thing to mention about the Chromes is that they're quite stiff feeling and high in tension. If you're coming from 45-105 gauge rounds, it might be worth trying the 40-100 Chromes. I've had one bass where the truss rod didn't have enough adjustment to bring the neck straight with the 45 gauge Chromes. Also, as Silddx says, tapewounds can also be worth a shot if you like flats. I'm using D'Addario tapes at the moment - they sound like a flatwound but with a slightly different, crisper attack and they feel great.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1362522745' post='2000903'] Thanks, really enjoyed that, great sound on 'Look Around', was that the flats? I guessed a Jazz, then I saw the pic of you (presumably) and the bass, what is that? [/quote] Cheers! Look Around was my five string with flats on, and both pickups on full. My bass home built - I had a thread on it in the build diaries section here. It's not exactly a jazz, but since it's got Jazz pickups and wiring, ash body, bolt-on neck etc, it does the same job.

I've used flats a lot with my current band Jen and the Gents. There's a link below if you fancy a listen - a couple of the earlier recorded tracks are rounds, but most were with Ernie Ball flatwounds. I'm actually on D'Addario tapewounds now, for a slightly different variation on the flat theme. My favourite sounds seem to come from using flats with a tweeterless cab but with the treble boosted on the amp, so there's a bit of grunty/growly sounding articulation around 2kHz or so but no sizzly metallic stuff above that. I can't quite get the same thing with rounds, somehow!

It'd be very cool if your experiment was documented with audio files. You could perhaps coat a cheap piezo disc in epoxy to stop it from shorting and attach it to your plank...

[quote name='flyfisher' timestamp='1362346898' post='1998816'] I'm sure we're all familiar with the pitch change of the human voice after taking a lungful of helium. Helium is lower density than air so the vocal chords are able to vibrate more freely and thus faster, giving a higher pitch to the voice. Wouldn't the same principle apply to a bass string underwater? Except that the density change is vastly more than the change from air to helium so the effect would be to slow the vibration so much that the frequency would become subsonic and thus inaudible. [/quote] I've heard it said by a few people that helium changes the timbre of your voice rather than the actual pitch. So all of those higher harmonics which would usually be damped are suddenly audible, making the voice sound much different although the pitch hasn't changed. A quick google would seem to support that - the clearest explanation I could find was here; [url="http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/speechmodel.html"]http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/speechmodel.html[/url]

Rory's acoustics certainly look nice. I've not met the guy myself, but my brother (another luthier) knows him and rates his work. I'll be interested to see how the bass turns out.

I've dealt with this in the past by putting bigger feet on the head. You can get massive ones from suppliers like Blue Aran.