Beer of the Bass

Oh, the effects forum has reminded me of another - envelope filters with no reverse/downward sweep setting. Why would you want that? I get tired of the upwards quacky sound pretty fast, but the downwards "bowwwp!" like Bootsy on Chocolate City (or indeed, like the Grange Hill theme) is great fun and my sole reason for having one.

I always thought it strange that the Moog original didn't include a downward/reverse option on the envelope follower, and the Behringer looks like it repeats that. What's the point if you can't get that "bowwwp!" sound? I don't think I ever use my envelope filter in the normal upwards setting, the quack irritates me quickly. This might just be my personal weird preoccupation...

A choon, even

This is reminding me of the music teacher who took our high school big band. He'd go off on these diatribes about swing and how if you had to ask, you did not got it, like some parody of a 50s jazz cat. Perhaps not the most effective way to educate.

I was enjoying gigging with my PF50T at the weekend. The PA was a small setup that we used for vocals and flute only, so I had it into the zone where it was just starting to get hairy on the louder sections, always a satisfying place to be.

I was surprised how many of the earlier Alembic users were on flatwounds, it tends not to be what I think of those basses as doing

I've had comments on both my envelope filter and my fuzz. I use them unsubtly but quite sparingly - the envelope filter is in a downwards "bowww" setting on specific sections of two songs, and the fuzz is a Univox Superfuzz clone which is never on for a full song, just when a part really needs to stick out.

I picked one up a couple of weeks ago. I have a terrible habit of just not practicing electric bass at all between rehearsals and gigs, and I thought a handy headphone amp device might help me break that, as well as fulfilling some guitar functions. It is working for that, it's a handy little thing and I like that it charges off the ubiquitous USB C cables that are already around my living room. Though I must say I'm not really blown away with the actual sound possibilities of it so far. The amp models mostly sound somewhat like you'd expect, it's quite functional, but I haven't really dialled in something that makes me smile yet. Totally clean or strongly driven it works OK, but getting an amp model into where it's just very subtly breaking up and squashing at the top of my dynamics is quite hard to nail.

Between that and the "Who Sell Out" cover, one has to wonder if that was someone in the band's thing. No judgment from me, just entertained...

Tweeters on electric bass. I like the funny non linear cone breakup stuff in the higher frequencies of a paper cone that people take a great deal of effort to engineer out. And they sound horrendous with fuzz unless you're running some serious filtering, and if there's a proper crossover then the cab usually sounds plain dull with the tweeter level turned down, compared to just hearing the main driver run full-range.

I'm enjoying the poster name/content congruence going on here!

One we used to use in Glasgow had some power extension cords with PAT test fail stickers on them, in daily use. I suppose at least they'd had the tests done.

Are bands getting louder? I'm not sure that assertion is supported by real world experiences. More and more bands and musicians are going for quiet stages, modelling rigs or smaller amps, electronic drums etc. Big gear that used to be a gigging staple like 8x10" or 2x15" bass cabs and guitar 4x12"s go for pocket money prices because very few still have a use for them, and there's a whole market for gear that imitates the cranked amps that used to be normal.

Sounds good to me, how are you liking them? I feel like there's some more midrange presence compared to the previous video with the black nylons, the attack is nice and the pitch is clearer.

This is entirely conjecture, but with the melodic approach and dexterity around the instrument that La Faro was going for, I suspect that if he hadn't been sadly lost so early he might have been an enthusiastic convert to light gauge flexible steels like Spiro lights or Lycons through the 60s. You can kind of hear that he's pushing beyond the older type of gut sound, I feel.

There have been a few different versions of Ampeg's active midrange EQ in different models over the years. They all use a multi-tapped inductor in a similar way, but they've used several different valves to do it.

I think typical earlier 20th century gut sets wouldn't have been all that low tension compared to modern specialist rockabilly slap sets - they were usually silver plated copper wound on the lower two strings, and with the higher action that was common, I'd say they wouldn't be easier on the left hand than my Spirocore mediums and lower setup. I think you mentioned elsewhere you were playing a "bumped" Rotosound nylon set? Unbumped, those might be similar in feel to traditional gut sets, but it would be fair to say you're working with an ultra low tension setup compared to most, which will probably give you more leeway in how you use the left hand. As a fan of higher tension steels myself, I feel like we don't use them out of some masochistic sense of what's "proper" or even to gatekeep out the noobs by making things unnecessarily hard, but simply because that's the sound I found inspiring and they're the most direct route to getting that out of the instrument.

Yep, I'm still quite content with my PF50T. We have a guitarist using a Fender Blues Junior and also two vocal mics, trombone and flute onstage, so we're never pushing stage volume that much that it's a limitation. It's even done a couple of small halls without PA reinforcement, through my two 1x12 cabs. It did take me a little while getting my approach to the EQ figured out again when I changed from flats to rounds a while back, but that's a me problem.

I had one, bought in about '93 but I suspect it had been in the shop a year or two. Decent neck, plywood body but none the worse for that, and the pickups sounded fine but were a little microphonic - I could hear my leather strap ends creaking on the buttons through the amp.

My most egregious example of Mr Holland mangling a song as a guest was when he did "Doorbell" with the White Stripes, on a Wurlitzer electric piano. What it really needs is simple chords, hit insistently right on the beat, but he did some sort of lazy, sloppy behind-the-beat boogie thing that just turned it to mush.

Amplified blues harmonica can really grate when overdone. Part of the problem is that many insist on cranking bigger amps than most guitarists use in those settings (often a 4x10" Fender Bassman derivative), the other thing is overblows. Overblows have some sort of prestige status as the advanced technique that a good player must have, so once players have mastered them they'll shoehorn them in wherever they can. But what overblows do is get you a harsh toned, usually slightly out of tune note that's outside of the key you're playing in, so absolutely excruciating if overused.

It's an interesting area - the Krivo magnetic pickups manage to be a little clearer and more "acoustic" sounding than older designs, presumably using some of the same tricks that modern acoustic guitar soundhole pickups do (controlled microphonics, lower inductance, neo magnets). But no commercial magnetic pickup for bass has cracked the bow response issue yet - because the string vibration is dampened in one plane when bowing (up/down relative to the pickup position), you get unpredictable volume and weird barky attack when bowing with most magnetic pickups. There are a couple of cello systems that place polepieces in between the strings so that they sense the movement in that lateral plane more, but I haven't seen that tried on bass.

Here we go, it's had a number of changes over the years, it started out fretted, with a rickenbacker copy bridge and just the one pickup, then it's had a Dimarzio Model One, a Hammon Darkstar, then my homebuilt single coil under the mudbucker cover, and the toaster added.

I've had one most of the time since I was a teenager in the 90s, it comes out relatively seldom these days but I enjoy it when it does. It's on two tracks of the album my band is working on, but live it's easier to just play one bass, and sometimes it gets brought out for free improv stuff if I fancy electric bass that day - the extra expressiveness and variation over my fretted bass makes it fun to work with for that. My current fretless is an odd beast, it's the bass I built in my parent's utility room when I was 18 and defretted much later. It's shaped like a pointier Jazz with a funny angular paddle headstock, and a walnut body a full 2" thick that weighs an absurd amount. The pickups are a ceramic single coil under a mudbucker cover that I wound myself in something close to Rickenbacker bridge position and a Kent Armstrong toaster added later right up by the neck. The bridge is currently a brass Hipshot ric replacement. But with those pickup positions and the hefty body, it's surprisingly good as a fretless.

I can't see any obvious structural red flags (neck repairs, neck/bridge geometry, cracks, sunken top etc), and even the bridge looks like it's probably OK. It looks like a solid top, I'd agree that the back is probably laminated. It's a non-ebony fingerboard, which you might be happy with for some styles of playing, but having mine replaced was a big improvement. It's interesting, that style of tuners often indicates an older bass, but it's clearly dated and the sprayed lacquer finish is very much a mid-later 20th century factory bass feature too. I guess Hungary must have stuck with the hatpeg tuners for longer than Germany did. I'd absolutely buy it for £275, but you could very easily throw a few hundred more at it to get it well set up with good strings. Of course, if you're feeling handy/brave and keep an eye out for decent used strings you could have it up and running for less.