Beer of the Bass

A lot of players seem to use the 1,2,4 Simandl fingering lower down, but change to one finger per semitone further up the neck where the span fits the hand better. Given that you're playing a half size bass, you might make that change at a lower position than most, but it's still going to be worth using 1,2,4 in the lower couple of positions for better intonation and less fatigue. Mind you, I use Simandl type fingering at the low end of my bass guitar too.

I'd agree, that sounds like a valve gone microphonic.

A four string P-bass neck will handle 5 strings if you're happy with narrow spacing; see the bottom of this guy's web page. [url="http://www.3dentourage.com/425/425.htm"]http://www.3dentourage.com/425/425.htm[/url] I'd do it with a replacement neck though, and I wonder how the A-string would sound going over both pickup halves.

One other thing worth a look; a lot of old valve amps have unused taps on the output transformer, so there might even be a 7.5ohm tap which could just be wired up to a socket. It might be worth either you or a tech checking it out to see if this is the case here.

[quote name='Amazoman' timestamp='1325204640' post='1481050'] The gain control does have an effect on the hum BB but not as much as the master knob. What does this signify? [/quote] Figuring out which controls affect the noise is a simple way to identify which stage of the amp the noise might be coming from. If turning down a volume or gain control can silence the noise, it's reasonable to guess that the noise is happening at an earlier stage in the circuit. But the interaction between the gain and master volume controls suggests that there might be noise from more than one stage. Swapping preamp valves is about as far as you can safely go to diagnose a problem like this if you're not familiar with working on amps - if that doesn't help, it's a tech job. Chances are, if it's not a preamp valve, it'll be something small like a bad capacitor, or a ground connection needing re-soldering, so it probably won't be an expensive repair. I think there are some other AD200 users on here - they could confirm whether some hum is normal, but I expect they're normally quieter than you describe, as most healthy amps are.

Hum in valve amps is often caused by capacitors in the power supply going leaky, this is less likely with a newer amp, though not impossible. If the treble control is quietening the hum, then most of the noise is coming from an earlier stage in the circuit. Does the gain control affect the hum too? You could try swapping a new ECC83 into both ECC83 positions in turn and see if one reduces the hum - it'd be cheaper than replacing both. Valve amps can be very low in noise, but it depends on the design and layout, so some are better than others. It's worth talking to the tech who replaced the power valves. If he had it up and running through a speaker and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, then it's probably the nature of the beast, although he may have just done a quick job using a dummy load.

I saw this linked from Talkbass - a luthier in France is working on a Bisonic based pickup. There are some design drawings in his gallery. They're a bit slimmer than the Darkstars, as the poles adjust by being threaded into a baseplate - no extra adjusting screws. [url="http://www.daguetguitars.com/index.php"]http://www.daguetguitars.com/index.php[/url]

My favourite Mclaughlin stuff is from before Mahavishnu; Extrapolation, all of the Miles Davis records, Carla Bley's Escalator Over the Hill and the Lifetime albums. The earlier material sounds like a jazz guitarist cranked up and letting rip, and I find it somehow more exciting than the premeditated loudness of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I like the weird jaggedness of his sound, the mad skittery runs and the out of tune bends on the early stuff! Does that make any sense, or is it just me?

I find the later stuff with vocals pretty offputting, but enjoy the older lineup on Birds of Fire and Inner Mounting Flame. All of the Mahavishnu albums are of their time, but Visions of the Emerald Beyond has dated especially badly in my opinion.

From my experience of them, Picato are firmly at the thumpy end of things, though not bad if that's what you want. They're actually too dark and thuddy for me - I much prefer D'Addario Chromes, or Ernie Balls, which I suspect may be Chromes in a different packet.

From what I can recall (I don't have mine anymore), the laminated steel core sits between the two magnets, rather than passing through the coil. Personally, I wouldn't bother with the adjustable poles - they're necessary on the Darkstar as the overall height is not adjustable, but fixed poles plus overall height adjustment works fine for the vast majority of bass pickups. Good luck getting something together - a design like this is probably not the easiest way to get started in pickup making, as there are few manufactured parts available, but that's not to say it would be impossible

If Hammon's website is still up, there was a picture of the individual parts laid out. Basically, the centre of the pickup is made of a number of thin layers of steel stacked up. The laminations are parallel to the face of the pickup and each layer has four holes for the polepieces to pass through. I think it's much like the material transformer cores are made from. So still a bit more going on than most pickups...

One of the bits that makes them particularly complex and expensive to make is the polepiece adjustment mechanism, which doesn't really affect the sound AFAIK. Otherwise they're arranged like a guitar P90, except with a laminated steel core through which the polepieces pass. I wouldn't be surprised if someone started making a functional equivalent without necessarily copying the adjuster mechanism and cosmetics. They wouldn't have any problem shifting them if they did, especially if they were sized to fit in existing soapbar routes.

While we're on the topic of five string flats, has anyone tried the Rotosounds on a five string? I'm thinking of going back to flats, and I like strings at the clankier end of flatwounds, so it's those or the Chromes.

The neck through ones are not bad - I think they were made in Korea. A friend of mine had a very similar bass which I think came from the same factory, and I remember quite liking it. I wouldn't pay a huge amount though...

I think it was just a distributors badge, attached to various grades of Japanese, and possibly Korean copies. I've seen a couple that were not bad, and some atrocious ones. Sorry, that's probably not much help!

Can that price be right? They'll be struggling to keep up with demand if so.

The E on mine seemed to improve in the first couple of weeks. I'm not sure if the sound changes as the core stretches out, or if I adjusted my technique without noticing.

Preamp valves can last a very long time. I'm playing a 1969 amp with original Brimar ECC83s which are in good health, but the power amp valves were long gone. Regarding warming it up, it will take 20-30 seconds or so for the valves to reach their operating temperature, but you'll hear that, as they don't pass any signal when cold. Other than not chucking it around while it's still hot, there really isn't much to worry about.

I changed from Spiro Mittels to the Honeys. The Honeys feel quite a bit lower in tension, but it is hard to judge as they are also thicker. They are much less floppy than most dedicated slap strings though. They are definitely less tiring than the Spiros when digging in.

If it's rosewood, there's no real need to redo the ebonising after the surface has been dressed, I'd say. I've seen a couple of basses with bare rosewood fingerboards which have held up fine for many years, and one of those was an old Kay wearing roundwound gut strings which would be quite hard on the fingerboard.

What sort of date would people say the whole mastering "loudness war" kicked in? Yesterday we had music TV channels on for an hour or so, and the difference in mastering style between newer stuff and 90s or older stuff was striking. All of the recent stuff was constantly loud and shiny and in-your-face in quite a wearing way. I view added harmonic distortion on bass as a separate issue from that, as I hear lightly driven bass sounds going back much further than the last couple of years, on records which have a lot of dynamic range. Most 70s prog is an example! I realise that a "natural sounding" recording is pretty much an impossibility and not particularly desirable anyway. Frank Zappa pointed out in an interview that since multitrack recording and close-micing came in, all recordings are an illusion, as there is no one place in the room you could put your head to hear the combination of sounds that end up on the recording.

Be warned that most grille cloth is quite open meshed and you will probably still see the yellow cone. Look at the old Fender cabs where you can see the metal dust caps through the grille. The stretchy hi-fi style cloth is a bit less transparent (I can't see the white cones on my old Wharfedales), but also much less protective than the stiffer stuff.

What's the consensus on commenting on prices you've been offered in your own "wanted" thread? I've just done this, where someone offered me something for more than the new price, and I'm wondering whether I should have passed comment or not. This was from someone with no feedback who uses too many exclamation marks, both things which make me slightly uneasy!

I've used my Clarus for electric bass. The basic sound is good, but the EQ is not great for electric bass IMO as there is not much "voicing" built in and the mid control is not centred in quite the right place for my needs . I'd imagine it would work well with an active bass where you've sorted out your EQ on the way in. I like to run an OLC flipster (FET preamp voiced to sound a bit like an Ampeg fliptop) in front of mine when playing electric. The HPF is useful if you're trying to squeeze the maximum level out of a small cab. I should probably keep quiet about this (as it's not a bad product), but I wasn't crazy about the DHA DI-EQ I had. The EQ didn't seem to work in nearly the way I expected and it was quite hard to get really musical results.