Beer of the Bass

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.

Before I had a photobucket account, I would often delete the pictures from my older sale threads, as basschat only allows a limited space for images. When I reached the upload limit, I couldn't post more without deleting some. I have also removed prices from old sale threads, but only where I felt that I had priced the items low, because I didn't want to disadvantage other sellers in future by skewing the market downwards. It might be annoying to some, but our posts are ours to edit so it's the sellers call whether or not they do this.

I was looking at V15s a couple of years ago when I was in search of an amp (as I saw one going cheap), but ended up building myself something instead. I always wondered if they might sound more Vox-ish if the negative feedback was reduced or removed, which would be a very simple mod that could even be made adjustable.

[quote name='Fionn' timestamp='1360283366' post='1968215'] Don't get me wrong. As a composer and player, I think the man was truly brilliant, but lets face it ... he had a penchant for the smelly stuff. Aye, a prolific purveyor of the stilton-esque, was Joseph. The times and technology cant be blamed for this. Herbie, for example, was sounding infinately classier in those days. [/quote] Not sure about that - although I like a lot of HH's 70s output, I can't suppress my cringe the moment he turned to the vocoder! Curiously, I don't find Jan Hammer's Minimoog with the Mahavisnu Orchestra cheesy, but perhaps that's because he went for a fairly simple lead sound and focussed on playing that one sound expressively. I wonder if our reaction to sounds like these are age related? I was born in 1981, so grew up hearing the pop of the time. For years I had a strong aversion to any sound I considered to be overly 80s and it's only in the last couple of years that I've been able to go back and check out the music of that era without an involuntary shudder.

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1360261257' post='1967718'] 'Go ask Alice, I think she'll know.' [/quote] Alice Coltrane? I suppose she might!

I love this era of Coltrane, and I will put my headphones on and have a listen later on. Unfortunately, I feel disinclined to discuss it due to the massive p*ssing contest which appears to be going on. Can we start this thread again please? This kind of pointless argument puts me off sharing and discussing music. This cannot be a good thing.

The OP could always go for a full-on 70's style mod, namely cream Dimarzios, mini toggle switches and a brass nut. Given that loads of players did this kind of thing to them back in the day, that would feel strangely authentic!

I'm not really convinced by that as a "double bass" sound. Yes, it has a touch of acoustic sounding woodiness to the attack, but it doesn't get close to the complexity and growl of a good double bass IMO. It somehow ends up being whinier yet plunkier (at the same time!) than I would look for on double bass. It's still an interesting instrument that the right musician could do something good with though.

I have the tuner and the quality seems OK. It seems to be closely copied from the Boss TU-2. It doesn't affect the sound noticeably and it tunes well, even on the B-string. The casing seems to be about on a par with the Boss for solidity and a lot better than the plastic Behringer pedals. Of course, none of this helps you figure out what the others in the range sound like, but I'd be confident enough to gig with them if I liked the sound.

Putting the graphs in the manual seems either brave or foolhardy, as it looks like the 400 watt output only occurs at close to 10% THD. Many power amp manufacturers quote their output at 1% or even 0.5% THD, and had Ashdown done this the rating would be rather lower. And then the specs page on the website calls it "640 watts RMS". Having said that, I don't struggle for volume with an amp rated at 140 watts, so the Ashdown could still be a perfectly viable gigging amp.

I guess tastes vary, because other than the scribbly finish I would cheerfully play one of those. The natural maple one on the website looks great IMO.

It's possible that the 35 year old valves in mine were a bit tired, as I've experienced other 2x EL34 valve amps getting a fair bit louder.

I had one for a while. They've got a transistor preamp, fairly neutral EQ (i.e no mid-scoop) and valve power stage, plus the front panel lights up very stylishly. They're pleasant enough sounding, though they're actually rated at 40 watts, with a low-gain preamp, so mine wasn't particularly aggressive sounding or very loud. One of these could be a nice thing to have around, though I wouldn't want one as my sole gigging amp. They look relatively hassly to service as they're PCB built and quite a cramped layout, but not impossible to work on.

In fairness to Carlsbro, the older valve amps are good - up there with some of the more sought-after brands of that time, but I agree about the Stingray.

[quote name='Spoombung' timestamp='1359582644' post='1957168'] Basschatters: if you go to another Basschatter's gig stand up and introduce yourself. Or wear a red carnation at least. [/quote] I must admit, I'm guilty of having seen other Basschatter's bands and just standing quietly in the audience. Mind you, I play in a band with another Basschatter, and we almost never mention Basschat, as though it were Fight Club or something! Possibly out of a fear that the rest of the band would giggle at us...

Antique Electronic Supply in the US have a load of Peavey parts, but by the time they've shipped from the states it won't be all that cheap; [url="http://www.tubesandmore.com/products/potentiometers_0?sort=recommended&page=0&filters=Brand%3DPeavey"]http://www.tubesandm...=Brand%3DPeavey[/url] I replaced a volume pot on a friend's Peavey practice amp (can't remember the model) and the 16mm pots from bitsbox fitted the holes on the PCB well enough, though I don't know if yours uses the same pots. The one I used was one of these; [url="http://www.bitsbox.co.uk/resistors/potentiometers.html#16pot"]http://www.bitsbox.c...ters.html#16pot[/url] The original Peavey knob didn't fit on them, but if you're going for cheap and functional, that may not be an issue.

Do the bigger pickup companies like Seymour Duncan do custom spacing? Since Shuker builds to order, I'd guess the customer specifically asked for these particular pickups and this was the way to make them fit. I'm sure the various options will have been discussed with the customer. I get the impression that luthiers often end up compromising from an "ideal" design philosophy in order to accomodate customer requests and this is likely to be what has happened here.

I suspect the neck pickup in the bass in the OP has been slanted to match up the polepieces with the string spacing. Since the bass has a Musicman style bridge pickup and a Fender style neck pickup, and Fender five strings use a wider string spacing, it's going to look a bit odd with exposed poles unless the neck pickup is slanted. Ideally you would have pickups made in the correct spacing, but custom parts are out of the reach of many smaller makers. I have put together a bass myself using Fender style pickups with MM spacing, and chose to slant the pickups. In my case I felt it went well with the lines of the body and I haven't noticed any unevenness across the strings. [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/137533-swamp-ash-5-string/page__view__findpost__p__1336777"]http://basschat.co.u...ost__p__1336777[/url]

The OC-2 works nicely with bass, but as it's monophonic, it needs clean playing to track well. It's quite limited, but cops the slightly synthy sounding Tony Levin/Pino Palladino thing perfectly, as I think that's what they both used. I haven't used the OC-3 - it looks more versatile but the OC-2 is the archetype.

An OC-2 would be a great choice for the empty spot IMO, visually and sonically. OK, it's not the Bass series, but it's 80s Boss and a bit of a classic. I must pick up another one myself some time!

Do you mean the extra plug on your daisy-chain cable? You should be able to leave that unconnected - I would just roll it up and tape it down to the board. The plugs on a daisy-chain cable are in parallel with one another rather than in series, so having one fewer device to power won't cause any problems. It's not like removing one bulb from a string of fairy lights.

It looks appealing, but I'm kind of surprised they've gone for a full-on MS20 recreation rather than taking the approach of the newer Moogs, i.e making a more modern instrument but with an analogue signal path and some key features of the old ones. Mini keys are going to put off a few players too. The price puts it in close competition with things like the Moog Minitaur and the Arturia Minibrute, which could be a tough choice. Having said that, I used to love playing around with my mate's knackered MS10 and the Korg filter has its own flavour, plus the signal processing could be a lot of fun on this one.