Beer of the Bass

I'd be happy to hear him doing a more double bass focused set! I wonder if he's travelling with his double bass, or using a bass-du-jour? The logistics of flying double basses can be expensive and a lot of even top-flight bassists use hired instruments on tour, but then Clarke's playing style probably has quite exacting setup needs.

I've had some guitar strings from Amazon that were extremely low quality and I suspect they may not have been the brand on the box. Returning them for a refund was easy enough, but I'm starting to feel like it's a bit of a gamble and that I should probably stick to an actual music shop.

It's a funny one, using deps for gigs when a member is unavailable; I've seen times it's worked well and everyone has been comfortable about it, but if anything about the band relationship isn't healthy, it can really bring that out.

11 hours ago, fleabag said:

I'm about to install a pair of KA Claymore soapbars,  and the bass will just be Vol Vol Tone, as per a Jazz bass.

 

But JB wiring uses each centre lug on the Vol pots for hot wires from pickups.  See .jpg

 

The KA wiring, ( 2nd pic ) as downloaded from KA, uses the outside lug , and they only show one pot, not two, which i need.  I'm soldering KA pup black and white together and taping off, as per their diagram, for series only.  See .jpg

 

It seems to me that i should run the hot and grounds  ( Red = hot,  Green+Bare = ground ) as per the Jazz B wiring and ignore the KA diagram.

 

But i'd like to check, as wiring is not one of my very few talents.  Last pic is my actual pickup, with wires twisted together as per the KA wiring, but somehow seems wrong

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The way of wiring a volume control shown in the second diagram is fine for single pickup instruments or when you're using a selector switch, but if you use it with two pickups and no selector switch, it will mute the whole output when one volume control is turned down. The Jazz bass diagram (with the pickup hot to the pot wiper) avoids this.

Yeah, they're aiming to do a slightly different job. The Thumpinator is intended to take out the literal subsonic content below the fundamental frequency of the notes. But double bass piezo pickups also put out more low end in the audible bass range than the bass does acoustically, and a more gently sloping HPF set higher is a useful tool to control that.

1 hour ago, Beedster said:

 

The hours I've spent getting the string wrapped around the peg correctly to avoid that doesn't bare thinking about, installing DB strings really is one of my least favourite tasks  

This is one of the things I like about Spirocores - I can stick a set on, then not have to think about doing it again for years! I guess it's fortunate that they're the sound I want, too.

Probably D'addario Helicore Pizzicato, going by this chart. Not sure if heavy or light.

https://gollihurmusic.com/string-identification-chart/

I haven't used them myself, but they should be decent strings. If you like how they play and sound it might be worth replacing just the E, since they're a known quality string and not some random cheap set.

It's a rare occurrence with a steel cored string! And I'm presuming they will be steel strings, to work with the magnetic pickup. The best idea might be to identify what the existing strings were, which people can usually do from the silk colours and ball and type, and it would be easier to offer advice with that comparison point

Headstock shapes might cause some difficulty - alternative shapes can be hard to sell as there's a perception that a Fender style instrument with a different headstock shape signals "cheap". I think Warmoth have some form of licensing arrangement to use the Fender headstock, and smaller luthiers might slip under the radar (also those from countries where trade protections are harder to enforce), but otherwise your options would be to try and get people to accept an alternative shape, or await the cease & desist letter.

On 06/04/2023 at 13:21, JapanAxe said:

I had the Ampeg PF-50T and there are some ceramic resistors inside to form a dummy load, plus a ventilation grille. I wouldn’t like to play it hard that way though.

Yep, the ratings of the resistors used add up to 45 watts, which feels a little marginal given the claimed 50 watt output!

I used to do the gig hat thing, and I might still pull one out if I'm dressing up a little for a wedding or whatever, but at some point I decided I wasn't really feeling it any more. I went through a succession of quite silly hats in my 20s (pointy felt wizard hat, a cod medieval velvet thing, one of the Davy crockett raccoon tail jobs) and later went to a few different colour and material trilby shaped hats to tone it down a little.

3 hours ago, casapete said:

Great info, thanks. I wasn’t thinking of asking anything like those prices, was hoping for around £350/£400,

so hopefully will sell. 

If it's all in good health (which is easier to tell seeing it in person), I'd think it would go quite quickly for that, and be either a good first bass or sturdy gigging bass for someone.

Beech necks are often a German or Central European thing, it looks like a mid 20th century fairly basic European plywood bass. These can be solid working basses if the condition and setup is OK. The way the top is a little lower on the inside of the bass side f-hole is something I'd want to check. While some basses do settle a little and remain stable, I'd want to be sure that the bass bar was still fully attached. Perhaps try and look inside with an inspection mirror, and tap on the top up and down the length of it to see if there's any loose "clack" sound rather than a solid sounding knock.

The pickup is a bit of a historical curiosity, it looks like the old Polytone that a lot of players used in the 60s before newer designs came along.

It's an open back cabinet too, which are risky for bass use. And closing the back would cut off the ventilation around the valves, which will almost certainly cause you heat problems.

It's hard to say how it'll play along the length of the fingerboard as that varies with the amount of relief, but that does sound a bit higher than I'd go with Spiro Mittels as a mostly pizz player. Yours seems like it may be set up with arco playing in mind too, with the middle strings higher.

I'm away down at 5mm G to 8mm E currently - I played it 2 or 3mm higher for a long time, but a lot of players I enjoy have similar setups and it works fine for me.

5 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

Didn't the Danelectro bass he tried to use for the solo on "My Generation" come fitted with round wound strings? Which is why Entwistle wanted to used it on the solo and why he eventually got Rotosound to produce round wounds commercially.

Roundwounds are the older string technology - Thomastik introduced flat windings in violin family strings earlier in the 20th century, and Labella claim to have introduced them in guitar strings in the 40s. At the time the Fender bass hit the market flatwound guitar strings were usually presented as the deluxe option. So presumably Fender specified flatwound construction for their new electric bass and that set the standard. The roundwound bass strings that existed prior to Rotosound were likely specified for low cost above all else and not great quality, which makes sense for Danelectro.

4 hours ago, spyder said:

I believe it was your order. 🤠

It's a pity it didn't work out the way I wanted. I'm still on the look out for a gigable 50w bass combo. 

There is an Ampeg PF50 near me for sale but I doubt it will stand up to regular gigging without some kind of case / rack that will add more weight and size. The Fender ticks all the boxes except sound.

 

My PF-50T goes in a Stagg soft case that's intended for a double kick pedal, which I added an extra liner of 1/2" upholstery foam to. I don't throw it around like a flightcase, though it doesn't feel too fragile.

Or I think they're meant to fit in some of the fliptop Ampeg cabs too, which would give you almost a combo.

39 minutes ago, Beedster said:

Ampeg PF-50 is a glorious amp but can still sound crap through a poor cab. Look at the shape of that ACB-50 box, are any other manufacturers putting bass drivers into boxes that shape at present? And Talkbass liking Fender is no great surprise, a bit of brand patriotism mixed with some cognitive dissonance goes a long way towards some biased reviews, they'll start pooping up for sale on TB with the usual excuses soon "Hey the wife has a strict one-in/one-out rule" etc  

It does look like a small box for a 15", especially considering the cutout for the amp section. That can be designed around, but usually at the expense of efficiency, which would be a hard tradeoff to make with 50 watts. And I suppose it's possible that what they say in the video about the midrange emphasis actually translates as "you'll need to run a DI for the lows"!

People on Talkbass seem to be liking the sound from theirs, but then it can be hard to tell how much is that honeymoon effect when someone just got a new thing, especially an expensive one.

I'm still very much enjoying my Ampeg PF-50T, used live with my band, so I feel like a modern 50 watt valve bass amp isn't necessarily a bad concept. If there's something up with your speaker (or a cab that's meant to be sealed isn't), you may not be hearing it to its potential right now.

9 minutes ago, JoeEvans said:

Looking at the chart it appears that you can use 4/4 strings on a 3/4 bass and get a slightly lower tension - is that right?

Yes, this is quite commonly done with Spirocores. I read somewhere that most US dealers were only stocking the 4/4 sets for many years, so a lot of players weren't even aware of the diffent sets available. I'm using a 4/4 Mittel set on a 3/4 bass, and those are my favourite so far. There's a small amount of the full string thickness around the peg at the scroll end, which is less than ideal, but Spirocores are robust enough that this doesn't seem to affect them negatively.

I've had 3/4 Mittels, 3/4 Weichs and 4/4 Mittels on the same bass over about 15 years, but never mixed them. On my bass the Weichs weren't obviously quieter under most playing conditions, though the absolute ceiling of volume I could get out of them came a little earlier. The attack was a little less immediate with the Weichs too, making for a slightly more airy pizz character. A lot of people do use a Mittel E with a Weich set, or even a Stark E with a Mittel set, so the heavier E seems to work for them.

The closest ready made product I'm aware of is this http://walopus.com/product/pickguard-wrap

Though I haven't looked through their whole product range to see if there's one resembling tortoiseshell pickguards. Though once it's shipped over here the cost may not be far off getting a custom pickguard cut locally.

The last hired rehearsal studio I went into had similarly weird settings left on the head, but fortunately it was an ancient Peavey Century that would only have delivered maybe 100 watts, so no damage done.

We've mostly been rehearsing with our own gear in a space the trombone player has, I stash a cab there and bring my own head, and it's so much nicer to use familiar stuff.

I've been surprised how much a second identical cab adds to perceived volume and audibility - reading about it the dB change is one thing, but there's no substitute for hearing it. Even with valve amps where the power from the amp should be the same into a correctly matched load, it's still generally bigger sounding.

I had one of those J-Tones. Mine broke (after several years use, so I'm not faulting it for that). Out of curiosity I dissected it to see how it was made, and it's actually quite different inside from the Bass Max in terms of the type of element used. It does have the sort of thick, solid sound that people associate with the Bass Max, but I wouldn't necessarily view it as a version of the same thing.