Beer of the Bass

On 20/01/2024 at 20:05, neilp said:

Was that Ken Smith by any chance?? Ken knows everything, to the point of telling me that my beautiful and gorgeous sounding 19th century German blockless bass was utterly valueless and needed complete restoration, blocks fitted, new neck, overstand adjustment, conversion to shorter mensure and D neck, and even then it would be barely worth matchwood. This is a bass thats been appraised at £12-15K

 

For what it's worth, my bass has a string length just under 110cm, and an Eb neck. I bought it because of the way it felt and sounded, without even thinking about string length. The only slight issue for me is the higher string tension, which is mostly solved by using Kaplan Lights. Play what you enjoy and don't worry about what self-appointed Gurus say!

He does appear to know his stuff and have a lot of experience with fine basses and serious players, but I always get the feeling his opinions are heavily coloured by how his particular shop runs. So "this bass has no value" mostly means he wouldn't be able to turn a profit on it with his business model and clientele.

But any Talkbass posts of his would have to be a few years old, I think he was a little much for them too.

23 hours ago, jrixn1 said:

 

I really like my Micromark 801 with upright bass.  I play with a 10- to 30-piece swing band/orchestra, and it will be fine at a jam session like you describe.  You can really crank it if necessary and it remains sounding good.

I've been seeing a few people say similar things about the 801, and it does look a handy size. If I end up doing more jazz volume double bass gigs I'd definitely want to try one. My GK MB200 and homebuilt 1x10" does fine for those, but an absolutely tiny combo seems appealing!

17 hours ago, Maude said:

The optimum amount of shankspan to achieve the perfect equilibrium of balance and image is governed by the scale of your bass, ie a 34" scale bass equals a 34" shankspan. 

 

 

 

I'd be struggling with my double bass at about 41 1/2 inches!

This is all so much more sophisticated than the pickup winding setup I cobbled together a few years ago. I can't find the pictures, but it was a little hobby drill lashed to a plank with cable ties, a speed controller board off ebay, hand fed wire and a couple of chunks of wine cork over a dowel on the side of the plank to set the limits of the wire travel. I'm still using a couple of the pickups I did, on my fretless bass and a electric guitar, so I guess it got me there!

Ah, makes sense, I guess the standardised bass as a catalogue item wouldn't really have existed until the German "shop basses" came in. Which would be, what, late 19th century maybe?

Just a quick post a few weeks on - I'm still liking these strings. They feel closer to Spirocore weich than mittel, but I don't feel they lose volume compared to the mittels on my bass. I've had them out for a local free improv night and an afternoon gypsy jazz set so far - the latter probably not the ideal setting for new, growly steel strings, but they did ok.

Even after the initial settling and playing in, they're a bright, articulate string. They have a quick, crisp quality to the attack that seems fairly unique - possibly a step further in that direction than Spirocores. My bass leans towards being quite dark sounding so this is a good combination for me, though they might be too much if you wanted to warm up a bright sounding bass. I feel like I can coax a fair bit of volume and fullness from them without cranking up the string height, and they have a clarity that makes it easy to hear the pitches. With the flexible feel it is possible to overplay them pizz, but it's getting plenty loud at that point and they don't really need to be pushed that way to get the sound out.

I'm getting used to them with the bow too - if you're used to bowing Spiros then these are quite friendly, though the quickness and pitch clarity keep me on my toes. My bass has a wolf tone around the A (at the octave on the A string, or other positions of the same note), I had to use a brass weight with the Spiro mittels but the Prestoflex set don't set it off so badly.

I bought Laurie's Baggs Gigpro preamp. It was simple and quick, and it does the job nicely.

White vinegar does soften PVA type glues more effectively than water alone, I tried it in a guitar repair. Though that was more at the stage of encouraging the joint to let go in the first place than cleaning up the residue, which still needed to be scraped.

Is there some international variation in the bass sizes conventionally used by orchestras? I'm sure I've seen more discussion of large older basses having their shoulders cut down and scale length reduced from the US than from the UK and Europe. That might be a factor in why Talkbass gives a different impression.

I haven't really played many basses larger than my current old flatback, which I guess would be classed as 3/4. It's bigger than the other old flatback I owned before, also considered 3/4.

Though I've noticed that with some modern student basses like the Stentors, their 3/4 tends towards the smaller end of the range, so If I were looking at those I might be inclined to investigate the 4/4.

36 minutes ago, sandy_r said:

 

thanks for the further detail

 

have any of your experiences of Realist problems included distortion/noise as in Mikey's example clips - or have they been the symptoms you mentioned:- intermittent, low or no output?

 

that's a cool idea to DIY  a Realist type pickup!  i guess the small piezo elements are produced for specialist technical applications in equipment where money is no object  😞  i was looking recently for backup sources for the electret condensor mics as used in my bridge pickup and found that they seem readily available - a DIY electret pickup would definitely be on the cards! (i was able to make a DIY preamp for my electrets)

 

i wonder if you'd be able to adapt the piezo strip that you can buy for under-saddle pickup replacement?  might several work as a DIY Realist type pickup, if connected together and each trimmed to short length?

(i've also seen thin piezo 'cable' available that supposedly you can cut to length)

 

apologies,  Mikey - starting to go OT !

 

I dabbled with DIY piezo pickups a few years ago using piezo film elements. They sounded surprisingly good under the bridge foot, but making something neat looking and physically robust enough to last was the tricky part that I never quite cracked.

Re the Pianet chat, I own a Pianet N and have previously owned a T. The N has some Wurly-esque properties, but with a kind of mushy feel in the bass and an interesting plucky snap up high. The T is a lot mellower, somewhat Rhodes-like but with a narrower dynamic range and different overtones.

If I had to guess what the patch used in the video above is modelling, I'd guess at an early model Rhodes, like the silver top, pre Mark I era. Hard to tell once it's been tweaked a little and gone through the signal chain though.

We used my N on a couple of tracks on my band's last record.

I got into large triangle picks because they're popular with mandolin players, but found I preferred that shape for everything. With the larger surface area I find I can use a more relaxed grip, and having three interchangeable corners reduces fiddling about when changing between fingers and pick. I don't use the same gauge and type across everything though - I like the 0.88mm Ultex triangles on bass guitar and thicker Wegen and Hawk triangle picks on acoustic guitar and mandolin family instruments.

I've tried both playing guitar through a full bass rig, and playing guitar heads through cabs intended for bass. I feel like it can work if you're either going for a clean, warm jazz tone, or conversely if you're stacking up a lot of gain and EQing heavily. It's the stuff in between where I've struggled to get something I like. A tweeterless modern bass cab will be warm but a little polite feeling (lacking the cone breakup of classic guitar drivers) and tweeters just sound odd with electric guitar IMO.

Roto flats are really quite stiff feeling and TI are soft verging on floppy. That may help with making an educated guess.

I have no idea why, but the one I get most in Scotland is folk asking if there's a body in the bag. And the tired old "That's a big guitar!"

9 hours ago, Paddy Morris said:

Excellent review marred only slightly by no picture of the slumbering pooch.

I can show you what happens if he wakes up during my practice time! It's a good thing I'm on steel strings and not tasty gut...

I must admit, I've never done more than clean the more overt crust off the actual tuning button part of mine - I left the gears, worms and baseplate alone. I think I just used a little metal polish on a soft cloth for that. Looks like a nice bass, from those tuners.

OK, got them on and had a little play. The bass is an old solid wood 3/4 flatback likely from Saxony, and I'd just taken off an 8 year old set of 4/4 Spirocore Mittels that were getting too dark and thumpy for my tastes.

Pre-installation impressions; The packaging is very simple and barebones, just the paper envelopes in an open faced cardboard sleeve, not much info on the package. Uninstalled the strings feel very flexible, which must say something about the core design. The ivory and blue silks are a little more subtle than my familiar Spiro reds, and the ball ends are slightly smaller. They look and feel like a quality string, I really can't fault the construction and polishing.

On the bass, the pitch stabilises quickly, and the tension feels a hair lower than the 4/4 Spiro Mittels, but not by much. I'd place the feel between those and 3/4 Spiro Weichs. The pizz tone is also instantly familiar, lots of growl and sustain, good volume. To my ears (and on my bass) they have a touch less midrange push compared to the spiros but a nice crisp, clear quality in the high end - the thumb position pizz tone is great with these. I think I might want the string height just a tiny bit higher than I had it with the Spiro Mitts, so I'll probably try that in the coming days. Definitely not a rootsy, gut-like sound, they're more geared to a modern jazz pizz tone. Which is absolutely my goal, but it should give you an idea of the kind of player they're for.

I only had a quick play with the bow since that invariably wakes up the dog! They're quite a bright arco sound, quick to respond, but quite friendly to get a clean tone on. Probably not your first choice for an orchestral section, but fine for a jazzer using the bow for practice, or for some of my free improv uses.

I'll see how they go over time, but if they last like Spirocores I could be pretty happy with these.

It does look quite nice for the money, and with the Sung-il parts and alnico pickups it should be good to go without upgrades. "American ash" without specifying swamp ash usually means some weight, though.

Still, it'd be high on my list for emergency credit card purchases to keep me gigging if something happened to my main 5 string.

I have a double bass that's as good as I'm likely to be able to afford, and homemade 5 string fretted and 4 string fretless basses. I still have wood and parts stashed away to build a different (5 string Ric flavoured) electric bass, but that's not a pressing need.

They should be arriving tomorrow, according to the DPD email. Though getting them installed depends on hitting the moment that the puppy is napping and not looking for too much attention, so it may be a day or two!

I had a Wizzy 10, it was nice but not magic compared to other 1x10" cabs. I found it a little peaky in the upper mids, which is great for hearing yourself clearly but unflattering with some pickups and some amp voicings. I actually preferred the sound of a very simple, low-tech 1x10" I built with a humble Faital 10FE200 driver.

I think the VL cabs with the proper HF drivers were quite a different design approach though.

Well, I suppose I'll find out, I've gone ahead and ordered a set!

Has anyone here used Presto Prestoflex strings? They're a steel string supposedly based on the old Lycon strings, according to a Talkbass thread a few years ago. From the samples on Herve Jeanne's String Matrix site and the few user posts about them I've seen, they're somewhat in the ballpark of Spirocores but with a slightly different midrange and attack, and I have a hunch that might work for me.

My current set of Spirocores (4/4 Mittel) have been on since 2015 and are losing some pitch clarity and sustain. The safe option would of course be more of the same, but I'm curious!