Beer of the Bass

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.

[quote name='molan' timestamp='1361924157' post='1993298'] Everything I've read about these suggests they could just be the 'perfect' amp for me! A god friend has a Monique pre & I'm really excited to get a chance to try it out [/quote] They do look rather nice, don't they? If you get the chance to try your friends one out, I'd be interested to hear how the voicing compares to your B15. The Jule is way out of my budget, but as I'm currently working on a DIY preamp based on the B15, I'm curious about their design approach. It looks like they may have a true Baxandall EQ rather than the James EQ of the B15.

From my memories of reading Bassist, the name Fran Pettifer is ringing a bell. I know they missed his name out of the article, but did they print it as a correction in the next issue? I could be imagining it, but if someone has a stack of the issues they could check.

IIRC there was a Behringer copy of the Boss Slow Gear. If you can live with Behringer build quality (plastic enclosures), that might be an option.

The EHX microsynth does this, among all the other stuff. It's what the attack delay slider does. It's probably overkill if you just need a pedal for that though!

Is a lower than nominal impedance at 3kHz likely to cause much of a problem in a bass guitar application? I get that too-low impedance will cause a higher current draw which could stress the output devices or trigger overcurrent protection in an amp, but surely the bulk of the output will always be in the low hundreds of Hz with a bass guitar signal, making the impedance higher up less critical? (Note; I'm not claiming any particular authority in questioning this - just speculation from an interested amateur and correction or clarification is quite welcome!)

It doesn't really say much about the relative quality of the guitars, since they were mostly trying to feel details like the size of the frets, neck profile, and even sniffing to see if it smelled like a nitro finish. I wonder how they would have done in a listening test?

My band host a monthly night in a local venue, which is booked and promoted by our drummer, no "promoters" involved. We bring our own backline for this and will happily let the other bands use it, but we go into it knowing what sort of bands we are booking and we've always been in communication with them before the gig. This is the sort of situation where gear sharing works well. I'll usually have a quick chat with whoever is using my kit to check they're aware of how to use it, and because we know who the other bands are we've usually weeded out the egotists and arseholes already. I take a picture of my EQ settings with my phone and put a bit of tape across the top of the amps saying "No Drinks Please!". I've honestly not had a problem at these gigs - it's the other sort where promoters with zero communication skills fling four disparate bands into a room where I've been less happy. For the latter sort of gig, the promoters should really be hiring in backline or using venues that provide house amps.

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1360601418' post='1973122'] Have stopped reading the thread but the coachloads visiting Paul's house evidences the fact that they are overrated. No-one is worthy of that nonsense. [/quote] I agree with this. Appreciating their music, its influence and cultural significance is not overrating them. Venerating their former dwellings and possesions as though they were some kind of holy relic probably is. Although I did once play in a band with an accordionist who insisted we take a detour of several miles on the way to a gig so that he could visit the statue of Sir Jimmy Shand in Auchtermuchty! We humoured him, but really?

I wired mine like this with a push-pull pot, but you could also substitute a DPDT mini toggle for the switch: [url="http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=jass_bass_sp"]http://www.seymourdu...ic=jass_bass_sp[/url] In series mode there is just one volume control for both pickups, plus the master tone. In parallel it's a normal Jazz with independent volumes.

It's really noticeable when pickups are out of phase - usually two pickups in parallel and in phase will thin out and scoop the mids a little, but out of phase is a whole lot quieter with almost no low end. The simplest way to tell is to reverse the two wires from one pickup; one way round will be much louder and better sounding and this is when they are in phase. Pairs of Jazz pickups usually have opposite magnetic polarity and one coil reverse wired so that they will cancel hum but still have the output in phase. This works in both series and parallel. Regarding using series wiring on with Jazz pickups, I had a switch on mine to put the pickups in series and I found I never used it. Some people say the sound resembles a Precision, but to me it was just a bit thicker and sort of indistinct sounding, but still with the character of a Jazz bass in the highs.

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1360512005' post='1971475'] Interesting - to me anyway - a few weeks ago there was a badly refinned 60's bass highlighted on the Ebay thread that eventually went for not much. The general consensus was that it was a one-off hand made job that looked unstable, piece of cr*p, whatever. At around the same time I saw a major name player in a 60's promo pic holding a bass that appeared to be identical to it. Someone on Ebay either got a bargain, .......... or a "one-off hand made job that looked unstable, piece of cr*p" [/quote] That's an interesting one. If it's the bass I'm thinking of, I was one of the people who thought it looked home-made. We all get things wrong from time to time!

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1360507923' post='1971367'] The Guardian's music "expert" (their word not mine) was quoted in The Independant as saying that history proves that Kraftwerk were more influential in music than The Beatles. Even I snorted in derision. [/quote] While that might be a bit of a stretch, it's true that there has been a lot of sequenced electronic music in the charts for a long time now, and Kraftwerk were one of the first acts to do that in a pop context. I'd say the man from the Guardian was intentionally taking a devils advocate/provoking debate sort of position, which I guess is his job as a music journalist.