Beer of the Bass

I've not seen a schematic for the sound city, but on my old Carlsbro valve head, I changed the value of the bright cap (a capacitor across the master volume) to give me a bit more clarity, as the cab I use rolls off the highs quite low down. If everything else is healthy, it might be worth a shot, as it's about the single cheapest change you can make. It wouldn't make any difference if you're running the volume control most of the way up though.

I'd agree, for any kind of jazz, other than old swing or trad jazz, try Spirocores first. The Weich (soft) gauge will be easier on the hands, Mittel (medium) are a bit stiffer. Even if you decide further down the line that you want to try something else, you'll have a good reference point to go from, since pretty much every jazz bassist is familiar with them.

He comes across as being a lot more reasonable in that written interview than in the video in the first post. I wonder if he'd had a bad day with his students shortly before that? I like the comments about jazz and funk artists though. Though I love a lot of Jazz, and a lot of Funk, there are a fair few examples of Jazz-Funk which leave me cold!

Although Euphonic Audio make some good sounding cabs using what they consider to be a transmission line design. Whether they truly are a transmission line or just an alternative type of port, they are effective cabs.

Picato are cheap and generally OK too. Their stainless steel rounds feel and sound a lot like rotosound, only cheaper. I did get one duff string in a pack, but the shop were happy to replace that.

I've done this, so it's definitely acheivable. Mine was fender style silver cloth. Getting it reasonably tight wasn't too hard, mine is not absolutely perfect but is as good as many old fenders I've seen. I used a staple gun, started by securing the grille at the centre of the top and bottom sides, then did the centre of the left and right sides. I then worked outwards to the corners, using plenty of staples and stretching it tight as I went. Another pair of hands can help, as can a girlfriend who dabbles in upholstering! It also helps if you can use a synthetic cloth which will shrink and tighten when heated with a hot hairdryer.

I think what happened with McCoy Tyner was a major cock up on the part of the producers. If they had any familiarity at all with his performances (i.e. done their homework), they'd have known he wouldn't fit in to their 4-minute slot and structured the program accordingly. And if you dislike Jools Holland at the moment, try reading his autobiography and you'll like him even less!

How smooth are they compared to other flats like Chromes? I used to use Rotosound flats on my fretless when I started playing back in the 90's, I went through a couple of sets and they were always pretty rough looking and feeling. Just wondering if they've improved their manufacturing since then.

Scary stuff! Had I been aware of that, I wouldn't have been buying from Boston, but I was about 14 and all that stuff wasn't even on my radar...

Yeah, Mev's is still going - they're down near the Queen's hall now. I remember Boston's - I bought my first bass amp (a Selmer T&B 50) there in about 1993-4 ish, and seriously considered a bizzare Hayman from them as my first bass well. I think it's a phone shop now...

I passed Mev Taylor's in Edinburgh today, and they had [url="http://www.mevtaylors.co.uk/amplifiers_voxcmi.htm"]this[/url] in the window, which looks cool. I think the head and cab are tagged at £250. Weren't CMI a Marshall relative? I don't need another valve amp, but it could be interesting to somebody here...

[quote name='Soloshchenko' post='1194236' date='Apr 10 2011, 02:17 AM']cheers. What did you attach the red and white to on yours then?[/quote] First I connected the bare and red wires together and connected them to earth via the pot casing and used the white as the signal lead (i.e. going to the switch on your bass). This was out of phase with my other pickup, so what worked for me was bare & white going to earth (pot casing) and the red as the signal lead. You'll hear it if the pickups are out of phase, as the two pickup sound will be thin and very quiet. So some trial and error may be necessary to get the red and white wires the right way round, but the bare wire will always be earthed to the pot casing.

On my KA toaster, the bare wire was the casing ground, and the red and white were the two ends of the coil. I mention this as mine was out of phase with my other pickup when wired as per the diagram, and I had to switch the red and white around to get the phase right.

Cool, it sounds like they'll do the job. I was a bit concerned from the "warmer, fuller" etc. in the blurb that they might be overly dark sounding, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

On my home built bass I have a single coil Kent Armstrong toaster pickup up by the end of the neck. It's a 24th fret neck though, so the centre of the pickup is about 18cm from the bridge saddles. It has slightly deeper bottom end than a typical Jazz neck pickup, but has plenty of highs and articulation. If you click on the Jen & the Gents link in my sig, you can hear it on "Disappear" and "Can't look back". I reckon as long as you have a sufficiently clear sounding pickup, it won't sound muddy.

Would you say they were brighter or mellower than the stock highway 1 pickups? I had a H1 jazz for a while, so it could be a useful reference point.

I'm thinking about using a pair of [url="http://www.wdmusic.co.uk/product/SPLIT_TUBE_JAZZ_PU_CHROME_REAR_JBLR-1"]these[/url] for a bass I'm putting together, and I'm wondering if anyone here has any experience with them? They're great visually, but the description of how they sound is a bit on the vague side. They'd be going in a 5 string, but with narrow 16mm string spacing, so the fact they don't have individual polepieces is a bonus.

A Kent Armstrong toaster might not be far off that size. It's nominally a guitar pickup, but so are the Rickenbacker toasters. I have one in my bass and it sounds really good. It's a single coil with a fairly high output. WD music have them - [url="http://www.wdmusic.co.uk/product/Replacement_%22Toaster%22_Pickup_Front_SRK1F"]Kent Armstrong Toaster[/url]

"Bumped" strings would be lower tension than solos at standard pitch, since they're tuned a fourth below the pitch they were intended for, while the solos are only detuned by a whole tone. I've not tried it, but would you really get much acoustic volume from steels at such low tension?

Thomastik Dominants worked fine with a Kent Armstrong mag pickup for me, and those have a synthetic core with steel windings, so it's probably hard to predict without trying them. As chrkelly said though, its a costly experiment...

I think a piezo into a proper high impedence output can can produce a fundamental that is much stronger (in proportion to the harmonics) than the bass actually projects acoustically. Also, the response from a bridge piezo can go down right into sub-sonic frequencies if left unchecked. If I have the HPF on my amp turned off and depress a string with my right hand (without plucking it), I can actually see the cone move! So I reckon a bit of low end roll-off on a piezo signal actually gets you closer to what you'd hear acoustically. Though this is just my guess at why HPFs help - I'm not an engineer or anything!

I love his sound on the first solo record, Black Market and that early Pat Metheny one ( which I forget the name of). It's a great expressive, focussed sound which just works. Something happens to his tone on later things like the Word of Mouth band which I quite heartily dislike though. I'm kind of ambivalent about Black Market too - I've listened to it a lot, but it just gets a bit too smooth for my tastes when compared with older Weather Report. Not just Jaco, but Shorter and Zawinul too. It's still good, just not what does it for me.

Gilles bought my Dave Hall DI EQ, and I'd cheerfully deal with him again!