Beer of the Bass

She seems to have had quite a fascinating life too. I've just been reading her Wikipedia entry. I hope Ceriatone don't get a cease & desist from her estate!

If their delivery charges aren't too bad, doing the BassBags rental for a few months could be a plan, while you keep an eye out for a good used bass and hope the travel restrictions are able to ease up a bit. Then when you come to try out any other double basses, you have the one you've already been playing as a baseline to compare against.

True, there's a distinct lack of murders and fleeing to Mexico in Osborn's biographies, which makes me think it may not have been him!

Do we count bassists singing about themselves?

That's also what I've found with the ones I've used at a local rehearsal studio complex. They've been like that in both the black and silver grill versions (VR and CL lines, I think?), and with a variety of heads including an SVT CL. I can get a sound that I enjoy, but it involves backing off the bass EQ on the amp further than I'm used to and boosting upper mids. That's in moderately sized rooms, so all I can think is that perhaps it all makes sense on a big hall or festival stage.

I have a PF50T, which seems fairly typically "Ampeg" in voicing, but obviously a small amp. I've run it into Ampeg 8x10 cabs a couple of times, and while it's a solid, classic sound, I think I like the voicing of my pair of DIY ported 1x12"s better. I'd probably need four of the 12"s to get the efficiency on a level playing field, but there's a thick, dark quality to the 8x10"s that has me reaching for the amp EQ. I've never had the chance to use an original B15n, but I do wonder if, out of the classic Ampeg rigs, that might be the one that's most up my street.

I know doubling my speakers at the same amp output (valve amp with multiple taps) makes more difference to the perceived "bigness" of the sound than I had anticipated from written explanations of it. So I'd concur with Phil's post above.

I dunno, I've known a fair few gearhead bassists IRL, and I've never seen someone get genuinely heated over the topic of bass amp preferences in an in-person chat the way you see on forums.

I had one of the Hammon versions of the Bisonic pickup on a bass. It was nice enough but I never did comprehend what the magic thing is that people hear in them that can't be got from anything else.

Whizzer cones are quite unflattering to overdrive tones even if everything is working correctly and you're playing at low volume. I certainly found that with the EA Wizzy 10 I had.

I'd say an 11 year old set of nylon core strings is probably past it, I'm afraid. If you like the pizz sound of Spirocores, it's hard to be happy with much else (in my opinion), and I feel like they're not so bad to bow once you get used to them. On my bass the Weich/Light gauge were a little mellower and easier to control under the bow than the Mittel/Mediums.

True enough - while I don't doubt that it can work and sound good, there are things there that I wouldn't do on a DIY build even as a hobby builder. The open construction with the hot power valve bases right where fingers access the front panel, power valve socket wiring right next to low-level preamp circuitry where it could cause stability issues...

Bill Kelday in Fintry would be worth talking to, he's the last guy I went to when I needed a minor repair. I don't know if they still have the same resident luthier, but I wasn't so impressed with Stringers when I had some work done by them. I explained that I would usually have the string height at the end of the fingerboard at roughly 7-10mm, and he looked disparaging and proclaimed "that's cello setup". I'm sure he's a competent luthier, just not very receptive to modern (i.e in the last 50 years) pizzicato bass setup.

Hard to read the panel in the thumbnail, but it looks like the model name starts with B, and no midrange controls that the larger amps had. So likely a B25 which are somewhere around 50 watts.

I still haven't used the silent recording function on my Ampeg PF50T, to be honest. I'm aware it's there, but I've mostly used the DI for live situations or rehearsal room demos where I want the speaker anyway.

I haven't seen the schematic for the Supergroup, but the "Power Simulator" units were simple slave power amps so that's likely to be an output post-preamp. Most passive DI boxes with a speaker setting attenuate the signal voltage with a simple resistor divider before the transformer, so whether it's suitable for your output level is more about how much attenuation it's designed for than the transformer spec. I'd say there would be no harm in trying it when playing at a relatively low volume, but if it starts to sound bad or give you too hot a DI signal as you turn it up then you'd want to try a different DI. Also, when using a speaker level DI, I'd always prefer to run it from the second speaker jack on the amp, provided they're wired in parallel as most are. That way the connection from amp to speaker isn't running through the extra set of jacks and PCB tracks in the DI box. If you're going for a dirty bass sound, the speaker adds a lot and a mic may be better, but for a little colouration on a mostly clean sound the DI may be quite useful.

The guitar cabs with the Celestions make a big selling point of it and have "Vintage" in the name as they use Vintage 30s, but there are also cheaper models which use more generic speakers. I feel that if the descriptions and model names of the bass cabs don't make a big deal of using branded drivers, they almost certainly aren't using them.

That's true, Phil, and I bet the 1x15" with a little revision to the porting and a nice neo 15" like a Faital or Eminence could be equally good value.

I feel like tele bridge pickups are one of those things that can be kind of obnoxious playing by yourself at home, but often exactly right in a band context. A lot of my favourite instrument sounds have this property...

Thinking about it, haven't there been a few cases where manufacturers have used a proprietary power module, run into reliability issues and discontinued support of them after a short while? That would make me lean slightly towards amps using ICEpower or modules from other large, established makers just because they're likely to be more of a known quantity and have continued parts availability.

As much as I'm enjoying the valve amp and coloured speakers approach for bass guitar (OK, it's not very logical but it's fun and fits the vibe of my band), I would think seriously about something like this for double bass amplification if I had the gigs to justify it.

If you're going used, I'd rather go for a steel core string like the Spiros too, as they tend to stand up to being taken on and off better. Some synthetic strings don't take well to that.

Bootsy has always been pretty good at getting his complex fx chain to work with the music! Sometimes by having synth bass in the mix too, but it works...

This will depend on income etc, but in any situation where a 100 watt valve amp was loud enough I'd prefer that to a 300 watt version because it will be so much less expensive when it's time for new power valves.