Beer of the Bass

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.

[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!