Beer of the Bass

Aww, I liked the green!

I came pretty close to putting a bit of slap on one song of the album my band recorded recently, but chickened out and used a growly fingerstyle near the bridge instead. Though I'm flatwounds + small valve amp and no tweeters, so it would have been more of a 70s Chuck Rainey slap sound!

There are places where slap is just right, but in the music I enjoy most they're quite infrequent. The funk styles that I feel most strongly are largely fingerstyle. So I guess I just think of it as a strong flavour that some people badly overuse; sometimes nothing else will do, but more often I hear people cramming it in where it didn't need to be.

I tend to think loosely Fendery or Gibsony, and Fendery guitars are definitely where I'm most at home. Though I did really enjoy the 335 copy I had around for a couple of years and used on about half of the last NUF album. So I think PRS maybe confuse me by not being firmly in either camp, though they seem like really comfortable and versatile guitars! Like most things I'd probably need to spend a little time with one for it to click.

That's pretty! I'm not always sure I'm into the PRS aesthetic, but the purple and maple works.

I wonder if that Eminence article might be primarily aimed at guitarists, where the speakers have stiffer paper surrounds that might "break in" more noticeably than the coated fabrics used on bass and PA drivers.

If your existing bridge has no problems, any decent luthier should be able to fit adjusters to it. Most prefer to fit the bridge before installing adjusters rather than using a bridge with them pre-installed anyway.

I also don't get as much playing time in as I did a few years ago, and setting my bridge a little lower does really help me get back into it. With adjusters, it can always go back up as you get back on track, if that's the sound and feel you want. I feel that having it a little lower (currently at 5-8mm with Spiro Mittels) is an acceptable trade off for me; the absolute volume I can get is not as loud as with it higher, but being able to still play comfortably with reasonable facility for multiple sets rather than wearing myself out in the first half hour more than makes up for it IMO.

My green mongrel Jazzmaster thing says Telecaster on the (non Tele shaped) headstock, if that counts!

These are the two I play. The electric is a parts guitar; Guitarbuild Jazzmaster body, Fender MIM Tele Deluxe neck, Duncan Jazz model bridge humbucker and a neck single coil I wound myself. It gets plugged into either of two amps I built. One is based on a Fender Princeton Reverb, the other is Marshall flavoured with added reverb. The acoustic is a Kalamazoo KG-21 from 1936. These were a lower priced Gibson brand made alongside the proper Gibsons in Kalamazoo.

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.