Beer of the Bass

I might manage some sound samples in the week.

As of this morning, it's done and sounds excellent! I've tried it on both bass and guitar. On bass it goes from just slightly hairy to a much more aggressive overdriven amp sound. With the tone control up it's very much in the early Entwhistle mode. On guitar it gets well into crunchy rock territory but stops short of metal, which is not my thing anyway. It has plenty of mids, which is great for thickening up my tele-style guitar. Compared to my previous overdrive pedals (a Tube Sound Overdrive/Red Llama clone and a Tubescreamer), there is much less ugly intermodulation when playing chords and a complete absence of fizz even with the tone control up. I could quite happily leave this on most of the time. The wiring is a little more rats-nesty then I would have liked, but I'm not getting any hum so I guess all is well. I think if I build something like this again, I'll spend more time planning the layout and give myself a bit more space to work in. Also, in a premature senior moment, I have wired up the bypass switch without grounding the input to the valve, which is causing some oscillation in bypass mode when the gain control is right up. This should be easily corrected by rewiring the switch though. If anyone is wondering about the lettering, the small ones are white letraset transfers with some clear acrylic paint to seal them and my name is in adhesive vinyl letters from an eBay supplier, the kind you would use on a van. Compared to the schematic above, I have changed the resistor in the heater supply to a 22 ohm 3 watt to get the filament voltage correct, otherwise it is as per the schematic. Here are a couple of pictures;

My brother has a thoroughly beaten up Electric Mistress of about the same vintage which I repaired for him by replacing a dead internal transformer. IIRC there are some fairly standard small transformers with the same mounting holes and similar size to the ones EH used, which would be a drop-in replacement if you can find one with the right secondary voltage. Although you would still have to do something with the non-standard mains connector. I realise this approach is probably anathema to collectors, but personally it's what I would do to anything I plan to gig with.

I keep mine in a small unheated box room off the living room, with a digital hydrometer next to it to keep an eye on the humidity. I also put a couple of takeaway containers full of water on top of the radiator in the living room to stop the air getting too dry . The worst damage I've had so far was a couple of sections of seam on the back popping during the ridiculous winter we had a couple of years ago, and that's a cheap repair. I've heard some horror stories of Dampit type humidifiers dripping water inside the bass and causing damage, so I avoid them.

I've found that this sort of hum (the sort that stops when you touch the strings) diminishes greatly or disappears completely when the control and pickup cavities are shielded with copper foil. Presumably this is because the pickups and wiring are being shielded from my big antenna of a body.

I got a bit busy through August, but I've dug this out in the last few days and finished wiring it. I checked the voltages today, and I need to tweak the power supply a little as the heater voltage is running too high at +/- 7.4v when it should be +/- 6.3v . All other voltages are about as expected, so hopefully I'll have it sorted at the weekend.

D'Addario tapewounds are quite bright for tapes, and would certainly have the right feel. I'm not sure how they compare to Trubass, but they're a touch brighter than Chromes. Alternatively TI Jazz flats are pretty articulate in a midrangey way and have that soft, flexible feel to them. I really enjoyed TIs on the last fretless I owned.

A GK MB200 with a Euphonic Audio Wizzy 10 cab does the job for me in many of the pubs I play (usually without DI), and the head and cab together fit in a padded cajon bag which I can catch buses with. The Wizzy 10 probably doesn't get as loud as some of the high-end 1x12" cabs, but it has enough oomph to work well with my band in the smaller rooms. Whether or not you would have the same experience really depends on how Rock your band is, how loud the guitarists are etc. Although given the current prices of the EA stuff, you could probably find a good 1x12" at a similar price that'd give you a touch more volume.

I love the fuzz bass on the Monks "Black Monk Time". I've no idea whether it's a fuzz pedal or a blown speaker, or perhaps both. This song is a minute and a half of almost completely inane 60s pop, but the intensity of the performance, plus the fuzz bass and banjo make it fantastic! [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_8wuZm08vo&feature=relmfu"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_8wuZm08vo&feature=relmfu[/url]

He might struggle a bit with the tweeter in a bass 4x10. Amp distortion really needs the high-end rolloff of a typical guitar speaker not to sound terrible, unless he's running an already cab-simulated sound into it.

I removed the logo on an OLP neck, and it left a shadow in the finish but not in the wood. The finish had yellowed slightly with light exposure over time, leaving a pale outline where the logo had been. I had to take the headstock face down to bare wood to eliminate all traces of it.

I put a set of these on my five string yesterday (mine are the ETB92-5 set). They're interesting strings - notably brighter and crisper in the attack than a typical flatwound, but without the metallic zing of rounds. I was concerned they might feel floppy, but they don't feel unusual at all. You often see tapewounds described as being dark, thumpy and "upright-like", but these are punchy, clear and articulate. They certainly have enough highs for rock-ish pick playing and even a bit of slap, and they do the palm muted tic-tac thing very well. Played fingerstyle, they're somewhere between flats and rounds - quite old-school sounding but they'll still get growly when played harder. If I'm going to criticise anything about them, it would be that the B-string is thuddier than the rest of the set, especially further up the neck. It's far from unusable, but the transition from the B to the E string is quite noticable. Despite this, if you use the B-string sparingly as I do, or you're playing four string, they're well worth checking out. It's hard to say at this point how they'll sound when they've been played in more, but other reviews suggest that the sound doesn't change dramatically from new. EDIT; Several gigs and a couple of rehearsals in, they're still sounding much like they did a fortnight ago. However, the thuddy B string was driving me nuts, so I've replaced it with a DR Black Beauty .120 gauge, keeping the tapewounds on the other four. It's a shame the B doesn't have a bit more life to it, as the top four strings are great.

I experimented with insulating the poles with some tape, and while it reduces the noise, there's still a little hum when my fingers are on top of the poles, so I think grounding them will be my best option. Copper foil is in the post, but the gaffa tape on top of the poles should get me through tonights gig.

It's an unusual one. I've never seen a plywood double bass in mahogany veneer - they're usually maple, sometimes with spruce veneer on the front. That should at least make it easier to identify if anyone else has seen another like it.

Grounding the polepieces shouldn't be too hard, as the poles stick out of the bottom of the pickup. I'll have to stick masking tape over the top of the poles for tomorrow's gig though, as I haven't got any conductive backed copper in the house at the minute and I play right over the bridge pickup on a couple of songs. I notice Herbie Flowers has tape over his pickups in some photos, which makes me think it must be a common problem with tapes. The strings sound good though, so I think it'll be worth the extra faff.

I've just stuck some nylon tapewounds on my bass, and they've brought to light a grounding issue which was probably already there, but I never noticed it with ordinary strings. The bass has single coil alnico J pickups, the bridge is grounded and the cavities thoroughly screened with copper foil, all of which is grounded too. The problem is, if I touch the polepieces on either pickup when playing (easily done with my playing style), it hums. It's not as loud a hum as if I was touching the live side of a jack, but it's still enough to be irritating. If I don't touch the polepieces, there is no issue with hum, whether I'm touching the bridge or not. As these are typical fender-ish pickups, the polepieces aren't connected to anything, and I've verified this with a multimeter. I've also checked that the strings are grounding OK at the ball ends. I'm presuming that due to the non-conductive surface of the strings I'm not grounded when I play, and I'm acting as an antenna when I touch the polepieces. Rather than coming up with some Heath-Robinson contraption to ground my body, I suspect I'd be better off either grounding the polepieces by running copper tape across the backs of the pickups or covering the poles with something to insulate them (nail varnish?). Any thoughts on which to go for?

Woohoo, I've got 'em! First impressions are quite favourable. The sound seems like a nice hybrid between flats and worn-in rounds. The attack is crisper than flats, but the sustain is shorter than rounds. I can get plenty of clank and growl but not zing, if that makes any sense, and they'll still do the thumpy thing if played fingerstyle with the right touch. It'll be interesting to see how much they change with playing. They feel softer than my 45 gauge Ernie Ball flats did, but not outrageously floppy - perhaps similar to 40 gauge rounds in terms of perceived tension. They also look very cool against a maple board. They have brought to light an odd grounding problem with my bass, but I'll bring that up in the Repairs and Tech section.

I had one for a couple of years. It was a fun little grab-and-go bass for jamming with and great for getting around by bike or public transport. I didn't struggle too much with the intonation (in the lower range at least), but the limited dynamics did bother me a bit. The silicone strings require a light right-hand touch and just go "ping" if you play too hard. I felt like there wasn't much dynamic range between barely tickling it and overplaying it. It's fair to say that bandmate acceptance was an issue, too.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1347974160' post='1807429'] Depends on what danish oil, some is wipe on varnish, some is tung oil based, the latter smells of stale nuts once the solvent smell goes. [/quote] Mine must have been the former variety. Came out fine on the body and neck, looked just plain wrong on the rosewood fingerboard...

+1 to the small scraper suggestion. When I built my first bass, I went over the fingerboard with Danish Oil (which is actually a drying finish rather than a true oil), and it came out looking much like your pictures. It was easy to remove with a single edged razor blade used as a scraper, then buffing with steel wool.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1347731959' post='1804459'] The tech21 stuff avoids directly saying what they are modelling for the most part. [/quote] For some reason Zoom seems happy to name makes and models directly, or at least they do on my H4N. I wonder if they're a bit further out of the reach of US trademark laws, being a Japanese company? I find the Line-6 cryptic naming thing irritating when I'm trying to figure out which model does what in a rehearsal room, though I'm sure anyone who owns one will take the time to figure it out a bit more thoroughly.

[quote name='Spoombung' timestamp='1347802441' post='1805143'] Just don't use them under any circumstances. They are unspeakably appalling things. [/quote] Hey, don't say that! I've got a set in the post. No doubt I'll find out for myself whether I agree...

I've had at least one bass where the dead spot was much more audible with flats than with rounds, unfortunately.