Beer of the Bass

Quite a few DI boxes can pad down from a speaker level signal - obviously you still need a speaker connected as the DI box presents very little load to the amp. I've done it with my old BSS, and the results can be quite good. The "thru" socket on a DI is usually just paralleled with the input jack, so the signal to the speaker is not attenuated. If he really has fitted flying leads ending in a jack plug to both the amp and speaker, that does seem like a daft way to achieve this though...

It's useful to at least know roughly where "flat" is on an amp or preamp, if only so you don't accidentally apply two lots of mid scoop and then wonder why your sound doesn't cut through. (Or too much low end boost, etc).

In the band I'm with at present, the first two bass players before me were both pick players, and while I have used one at times, fingers are "home" to me. When playing the bands older songs, I've tried it with a pick and never been quite happy with the feel I get. I feel like I can own those lines better with a percussive finger style even if it doesn't entirely replicate the sound when they recorded them.

I like the clipless version of the NS micro tuner, it mounts on one of the tuner screws on the back of the headstock. It's attached all the time, no separate items to misplace on dark stages, and I like the convenience of that. It wouldn't be good for someone with a few different basses in rotation, but I have one electric bass that comes out to gigs so it's perfect for me.

Hmm, if it wasn't for everything going on I'd have considered making an order from them some time shortly after Christmas, as I've been getting quite into harmonica lately and fancy a little selection of keyed diatonic harps. Maybe I'll look at the UK shops instead, like Eagle Music...

I'm not too familiar with this model, but a third, smaller transformer is likely to be a power supply choke. They're not strictly transformers as they have only a single winding, and they act as part of the power supply filtering. Some amps use a resistor in the same spot, but a resistor drops a little voltage and the series resistance can cause the voltage to sag under load, so a choke is generally considered an upgrade.

I've never used one. Apart from anything else it's quite common to use a house amp at a rehearsal room, venue, festival etc, so I don't want to be too heavily reliant on a feature that's not on all amps and implemented differently between amps that have it.

If both cabs are the same impedance but one has two drivers and the other four, the drivers in the 27 cab will be working harder than in the 47. That's not necessarily a problem, but I'd put the 27 on top to increase your chances of hearing it if it does start to complain.

Bronze would strings would have very low output on an electric bass, as only the core is of a magnetically active material. While there are magnetic soundhole pickups for acoustic guitars, they have to be specially designed to compensate for the difference in output between the plain and bronze wound strings.

I've tried electric guitar through a few different bass setups, and it can work but with the guitar straight into the amp it tends towards a warm clean sound that isn't so interesting by itself. Cabs with tweeters are unflattering to electric guitar if you use any sort of dirt, too. I could imagine the valve Ampegs and less modern cab designs working well if you're using pedals for dirt and you want extra bottom end and some more versatile EQ capabilities compared to typical guitar rigs though.

I wonder if one of those novelty golf club covers would fit over the end? There are some ridiculous ones available...

For someone who likes to make out that his voice is being silenced, I'm seeing an awful lot of his every utterance in every major newspaper and music publication...

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...