Beer of the Bass

Ah, the mini-Vong must be new since I last looked at the site. I find the full sized version really useful, particularly with my double bass.

The silks, surface texture and ball ends look like Ernie Ball flatwounds, not the newer cobalt ones but the older style.

I think the Ampegs would be workable on double bass, though they're going to tend towards being warm rather than hi-fi sounding. Certainly I've found that my PF-50T sounds surprisingly good on my double bass, and has less of that hyped growly sound than my GK, provided that you don't do crazy things with the EQ and keep away from the ultra hi and ultra lo buttons. I think the PF-500 is designed around a similar voicing, but I'm less familiar with the SVT 450.

I have a 50t, and while I find the DI outputs very useful live or for quick demo recordings where the band are all in one room, for recording at home I like the sound much better with a mic on the cabinet even at very low volume. The speaker turns out to be a big part of what I think of as amp flavour when recording, and I'm not sure using a DI'd amp with no cab would be a satisfactory substitute for me. You've got a nice valve amp already, so there's definitely an argument for sticking with that!

I'd certainly never have a go at him for making and playing them, but I would politely suggest that maybe he's not really ready to be offering his building skills as a service just yet. Could also be fraught if he's too young to enter into a contract with prospective customers, too.

Is that a five string bridge with four saddles on? Mr Philips would be proud of this innovation!

I've never snapped a pick, but I do wear the edges a fair bit, especially when I was in a band doing a lot of rhythm guitar. Nylon wears in a raggedy way, so I like the Dunlop Tortex or Ultex as they wear smoothly. The Gibson and Fender celluloid ones also wear smoothly for me, but a lot faster.

Do you tend to favour the neck pickup on a Jazz? I feel like the bridge pickup sound on a jazz is pretty distinctive whether fretted or fretless, but the neck pickup definitely overlaps in territory with a Precision, and the high end/scooped mids of both pickups together stands out more on a fretted bass.

I think my old German flatback bass has done some time strapped on a roof rack in an unpadded canvas bag. I can't think of any other explanation for the pattern of deep scratches on the back!

That's a cool sound, but isn't that about the cheapest bolt-on neck Les Paul copy you could buy at the time?

I don't know much about them, but I have a vague recollection of the ones used by Rory Gallagher and his band being called Stramp, not Tramp.

Yeah, I think they probably should make it clearer on the listing. Double bassists would bid silly money for NOS sets of Lycon or Golden Spiral strings, but old Picato tapes aren't a particularly sought-after thing AFAIK, especially when there are plenty of good tapewounds being made today.

If they've been stored in dry conditions they're likely to be fine, but 40+ years is definitely a little outside of normal stock rotation practices!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372808795050 These are described as "new" with no disclaimers, but that packaging doesn't look like anything made while I've been playing, and I'm 40 next year! The packet art is kind of charming in a kitschy way, but I wonder if there's much demand for NOS strings?

Does it run clean like that? Most amps that use a master volume would be getting pretty dirty with every preamp control maxed.

Maybe just people expecting more than even a very good single 8" will do?

Are those multiple Fender 400PS heads racked up in the older picture? That must have been a pretty crazy setup for the time!

I'd also say it is for me, in the bands I play in, although I do run into bands playing in the same venues who'd probably want more power. I've usually got one guitarist on stage with a style that's not too heavy, plus brass, and my bass sound has a lot of midbass in it, not pushing the deep lows. In that setting it sits nicely with the level of the acoustic drums and guitar backline, and beyond that we'd need decent PA anyway. But if you brought in multiple guitarists doing the chunky modern rock thing, a scooped bass sound and a drummer using double pedals, the PF50T wouldn't be my choice.

For wah I'd say Michael Henderson on Miles Davis' On the Corner. I thought this was some sort of envelope filter at first, but apparently it's a wah with very good foot technique! For envelope filter, Parliament's Chocolate City is a big favourite, and I think it's because of this that I won't even consider filter pedals without a reverse sweep mode. Thinking about it further, I really can't come up with a favourite example of synth pedals on bass. There are keyboard synth or sequenced basslines that I love, but I feel like synth pedals are mostly a convenient means for a bass guitarist to imitate those live.

Impressively neat work with the tolexing there! I've done a couple of guitar combos, and there's certainly a knack to doing it well. I suspect that Ampeg never put in that level of attention to detail over the check pattern.

If you're making a big box that looks like an amp, and then putting an amp inside the box, are you really going ampless?

Yep, it looks like the Carbon would fit the bill. The Audio Technica AT95E mentioned in the linked thread falls into a similar price bracket too, so I'll do some searching around for opinions on those two.

I'd definitely be looking sub £100, both in terms of what I can sensibly spend at the moment, and what I'd be willing to put into this old turntable. So I could certainly look into some of the suggestions here.

I'm presuming that the cartridge is the original; I can't see any markings on it, but the styli that fit are labelled as a replacement for the Pioneer PN10/11/14/15/20 cartridges.