Beer of the Bass

The Thunderbird shape looks surprisingly natural with fanned frets, more so than some of their other models IMO. I like the way the bridge and upper frets end up in line with the slant of the body.

[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1457350946' post='2997543'] Seven posts and nobody has yet referred to it as a Dingray, so allow me. [/quote] Maybe they should have done a Sterl-Ding instead!

It's been a bit quiet on the gig and jamming front while the drummer moves house, so other than playing at whisper volume in my living room they've only been out once so far. They should see a bit more action in April and May. I've still got to try one with the double bass too.

Narrow string spacing, lines that flow and are echoed between parts of the instrument (body/pickguard/headstock) single coils, simple passive wiring, bridges without any protruding bits for comfortable palm muting, pickguards or control plates, thin natural finishes on understated woods. Bold solid colours can be good too, if it suits the overall aesthetic. Metal parts should be nickel or chrome.

Since the ECC83 is a dual triode, if they used a cathodyne phase inverter (which uses one triode) in the CTM15 the other triode could be part of the preamp. Though to have tone controls and enough gain to overdrive the preamp would require more stages than that. If the master volume is after that one triode in the preamp, they may have arranged the gain staging so that any preamp overdrive is coming from the valve, but it would still be more honest to describe it as a hybrid preamp.

[quote name='bassace' timestamp='1457623779' post='3000308'] Depends how high you value your bass. One of my basses is a ply 'outdoor' bass and I do most things on it. The Martin and Bryant go to a luthier for everything. Have you any other luthier close to you? If you really feel you want to do the work could you not take off a couple of mm on the bridge face the 'gap' side, so flatness is not quite so critical. I'd suggest carefully marking a 2mm line and presenting it to a belt sander if you have one. [/quote] I couldn't remove material from the gap/foot side on these particular adjusters, as the shafts are fixed into the feet with the threaded part protruding. The wheels thread onto the shafts and the upper part of the bridge sits on the wheels, with a clearance hole for the shaft. I have access to a small belt sander, and if I finish it off with the long flat sanding block I use for levelling frets that should keep both legs flat and in the same plane. I think I'm going to give it a go...

[quote name='Jebo1' timestamp='1457648497' post='3000717'] Where are you based? [/quote] I'm in Edinburgh.

[quote name='IanA' timestamp='1457635486' post='3000525'] Do they still used that special snow effect foam in BF cabs? [/quote] Was there ever more than one report of this happening? Because to keep harping on about an issue that cropped up with one cab and was apparently resolved with a change of material seven years ago seems a bit ridiculous.

It doesn't look like anything commercially produced - I'd say it's a handmade one-off. As to age and quality it would very hard to say without seeing it close up.

When I got my current bass back in 2008 I had a new bridge with ebony adjusters fitted by a local luthier. Since I was playing unamplified a lot at the time and was into the whole "digging in" business, my default height was on the high side and the bridge doesn't go particularly low. I'm trying to play a bit more subtly now and get into thumb position a little more, so I'd like to take the string height at the end of the fingerboard about 1mm lower than the current lowest setting. My fingerboard is in good shape (it was replaced at the same time as the bridge), so I'm sure the bass should be able to handle a lower setup. This would be a quick job for a luthier, but the local guy has retired and the guy I've used for repairs more recently is a 100-mile round trip. It looks like something I could do myself if I'm careful about it. It seems that most people approach this by taking down the slots in the top of the bridge to the desired height, then re-shaping the crown so that the slots aren't excessively deep. On my bridge, it looks like it might be simpler to take about 2mm or so off the bridge legs above the adjuster, where the bridge rests on the wheels. It looks like if I mark it out carefully and take care to keep the surfaces flat, this shouldn't be too hard. Is there anything glaringly wrong with this approach?

The shape and colour remind me of the old plastic Maccaferri guitars - probably not something they were going for.

[quote name='andydye' timestamp='1457606176' post='3000016'] Here ya go...lovely bit of Walnut [/quote] The endpin looks great, very nicely made. If that were my bass I would get rid of that solid wire tailpiece hanger sharpish though - they're prone to breaking (which is terrifying!) and people often say that the bass opens up with a flexible braided cord.

In that price range your best bet may be to find a 70s British valve amp; Carlsbro, Selmer, Sound City and quite a few more. If it hasn't already been serviced and re-capped, you should budget a bit extra for that.

I'm sure the loudest things I've heard have been sound systems rather than bands. The old-school reggae systems generally aren't that bad as the mids and highs are almost an afterthought, but some of the ones that play dubstep at assorted hippy fests are way more than I can stand!

It would look great in some sort of 60s style garage/psych band.

I have one, mine is the black rubbery single-element one. It sounds fine to me - not the most faithful reproduction of the acoustic sound, but still a good solid, balanced sound you can work with. Whether you need a preamp depends on your amp - check the manual to find out the input impedance. If it's 1M ohms or higher you're good to go, but few piezos sound their best with anything below 1M ohm.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1457265128' post='2996798'] We have an unspoken rule that no-one drinks until after the gig. If you rehearse sober then drink before a gig there's a good chance you're going to have some kind of problem, either with hearing or with memory loss! Everyone has to be on the same page. [/quote] I've known a few bands who get around this inconsistency by drinking at reheasals too!

[quote name='Passinwind' timestamp='1457337399' post='2997386'] Here's how they did it in my guitar amp: http://ampwares.com/schematics/fender_30.pdf As I said, balancing it would just be a matter of adding a line level 1:1 output transformer. I have one in a separate box, comes in handy for all sorts of things. [/quote] That's very similar to the method used in the tubetown link above, though one uses 47K/5K for the divider and the other uses 100K/10K. I'm not sure what the purpose of the capacitor in parallel with the pot on the first example is - it looks like it could bleed some highs to ground, but I haven't tried calculating the corner frequency.

There was a thread on Talkbass where somebody upgraded the drivers in the HB 2x10", with pictures of the inside of the cab. It looks like a decently made box, in proper plywood rather than MDF or particle board. At that price I'd be inclined to go secondhand though, as you won't lose much if you sell it on later.

It seems very likely that they're Rotosounds of some sort, so why not drop them an email?

Didn't Rotosound change to red, white and blue ball ends a year or two ago?

I'm also not an amp tech, but I do build and tinker with valve amps as a hobby. A simple check of earth continuity between the chassis, input jack and mains plug is the first thing I do before plugging in anything I've worked on or picked up secondhand.

I used long scale Ernie Ball flats on a medium scale bass for several years without any trouble. I think it's less of an issue than people make it out to be.

It would be nice if I could still hear the Upsetters' Return of Django without being reminded of Her Majesties Revenue & Customs!

Does yours have the valve sticking out of the back like the one on the website? I'm surprised he did that - mounting something made of glass on the outside of a pedal meant to go on the floor seems like an odd decision!