Beer of the Bass

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1454506949' post='2970319'] One thought has just occurred to me, is a fretless any different? [/quote] Yes, they still happen on fretless basses in much the same way, sometimes spot-on a specific note and sometimes in between. I think a lot of basses which are presumed to have no dead spots actually have one which falls in between two pitches and only affects the fretted notes to a minimal extent - these are easier to notice on a fretless.

I might make it along to that - I keep meaning to come to the Click Clack Club nights.

In the couple of public sector jobs I've worked there has been a definite sense of the ladder having been pulled up in recent years. People who'd been there a while had had various study and professional development opportunities supported by the employer, which were no longer an option, and none of the older guard had stayed at the bottom rung of the pay scale for long, while people starting when I did tended to stay at that level for years.

[quote name='JoeEvans' timestamp='1454398390' post='2969250'] What will take the place of us gigging is other, younger bands gigging, playing music that we don't like and wearing trousers that irritate us. It's one of the miracles of human civilisation that even though you would think that there were only limited variations possible in trouser design, each subsequent generation nevertheless invents a type of trouser that the previous generation finds irritating. [/quote] Intergenerational trouser discrepancies are definitely a thing. Even wearing bootcuts when playing for an audience of skinny jeaned undergrads has gotten me some funny looks...

I've seen similar issues with a whole range of cabs, from meticulously designed and extensively braced lightweight cabs to a 30kg Peavey which nearly vibrated an 18kg valve head off the top of it mid-gig. In all cases a bit of extra friction from replacing the amp feet or using a mat has sorted it. Are there really cabs out there which are immune from this, as I'm not sure I've encountered them yet?

I realised when doing the second baffle that some of my trouble with the fly-cutter was down to me not using it correctly, rather than any problem with the tool. It uses two blades, one with the flat side outwards and the other facing inwards. Initially I had the inner blade badly adjusted, just a little too far from the line cut by the outer blade. If the inner blade is too far from the outer one, the waste doesn't chip out as easily and the drill has to work much harder. After adjusting it so that the inner blade was closer to the outer one it cut much more easily and didn't need nearly as much torque from the drill. So I guess that's a thing to watch out for with these.

I like the lounging dogs and squeaky toy in the background!

I've been bashing on with these, as I'm determined to have at least one up and running for a gig in a fortnight's time. Today I cut out holes in the baffles for the speaker and ports. I used one of these cheapy fly-cutting tools for the port holes. It made nice neat holes, but it's not a tool I could say I enjoyed using. It came with blunt blades which I had to sharpen and was a bit scary in use. It's generally advised to use them on a pillar drill at low speed but the pillar drill in the workshop doesn't have a low enough speed setting, so I used it in a handheld electric drill. This seemed to be quite taxing on the drill, which got a bit hotter than it ought to so I took a break for it to cool down before doing the second cab. I cut out the holes for the drivers with a jigsaw, which is probably the wrong way to do it! I stayed slightly shy of the line so that I could finish it up more precisely with a rasp until the drivers fit snugly. There was still a little more to come off when I took this photo but hey, it looks a bit like a cab already! Although I was talking about making the baffles removable, I might just glue them in. It seems like it would make the cab a touch more rigid and in some ways it would be simpler than faffing about with woodscrews and gasket tape. It might make lining the cab a little more tricky, but as long as I fit the lining before the ports are glued in place I should be OK.

Only three monitors though. You'll have to cancel!

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1454145938' post='2966837'] If you get a custom relic bass made like a Limelight, does the builder take your playing style into account when they do the relic'ing? After all if you bought a J-style bass with wear around the bridge pickup, but you play mostly with the neck pickup as your anchor it would fairly ridiculous to any when looking closely. [/quote] I guess it would be no different to playing an older bass which has been worn by another player. I have several older instruments which are worn differently than they would have been if I'd owned them from new, like an acoustic guitar with marks from aggressive strumming when that's not my style. I don't think that makes me look ridiculous.

I regard it as a win if a pub gig supplies any monitors at all. I've done a few that have just a 300 watt mixer amp and a couple of little speakers on stands, and you have to dig it all out of the cellar or storeroom before you can set up! We've made it work in those places, but they're not my favourite gigs.

[quote name='Yawn_Blah' timestamp='1454130940' post='2966764'] does it make sense to use a DI between the pre and rumble's return? [/quote] If you plug the preamp output into an active DI and use the XLR output via an XLR-jack cable, that may work. It would at least allow you to identify whether this is an impedance issue.

I saw a local band recently where the bassist kept failing to mute the B-string when he wasn't playing it, and the resulting low rumble was just enough to subtly mess up the whole sound of the band. That's never been a problem for me, but clearly it's one more thing to think about with a five.

Allowing for the different scale, that's not far from the modelled response. I'm aware that the output of these is limited lower down, but I've had other cabs which behave similarly and I'm pretty sure they'll work for me. If my needs change somewhere down the line there are quite a few other drivers which would work in these boxes too - not least the Beyma used in the design diary thread, though with any luck I'll be quite happy with the Betas.

Can you tell us much about the preamp, even just which valves it uses and what controls it has? Depending on the circuit it might be necessary to add an extra active stage to the preamp to lower the output impedance. A good tech would be able to do this with a high voltage FET if the power supply and chassis space can't support another valve, similar to the circuits often used to drive effects loops.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1453992004' post='2965084'] ha ha yes... portable is the name of the game... the recent game of musical chairs has only come about by a need to reduce bulk further... I used to have lots of storage space, then I had lots more... and now I have very little, and the situation is unlikely to change until much later in the year, so I am taking the opportunity to find ways to reduce bulk in general. So far so good, it led me to discover the TKS S112 cabs and I love them. They don't have a huge sound or anything but... there's just something about them that I really really like. I have to ask Tommy what speakers he puts in those. [/quote] If you get curious enough you could always pop off the connector plate at the back and stick your phone camera in the hole (with the flash turned on) . I think it's likely to be the Eminence Beta 12, as TKS have said they use Eminence and it's a 250 watt rated ceramic driver, with specs that very closely resemble TKS's published specs when you model it in that size box. But I may be off the mark with that one! [quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1453992004' post='2965084'] How are yours coming along? [/quote] A bit slower than I anticipated at first, the boxes are assembled but I still need to do the baffles, round off the corners and paint them. I'll probably get a bit of a move on next week, as I'd like to use them for a gig in a fortnight. There's a thread in the Build Diaries section. If they do turn out to perform similarly to the S112s, you're welcome to try them stacked up with yours with the series/parallel cable.

I was going to say Ampeg SVT (or the cheeky Bugera clone) but I guess you want something a bit more portable!

I did a bit more; the bracing is now glued in. In hindsight this would have been much easier if I had done it before gluing the backs on - I'll know this next time! It took quite a bit of sketching on paper to make sure that the bracing, ports, speaker and handle bolts don't occupy the same spots, but I managed to fit it all in there. The bracing has easily been the most faff-y part of the build so far, so I could see the appeal of using a heavier plywood and less bracing if you want an easier build. Next up will be fitting the flanges to attach the baffle, and preparing the baffles. I've also picked up my paint, grille cloth and hardware. They will be Tuff Cab Turbo Blue, with this grille cloth; [url="http://www.tube-town.net/ttstore/Tolex-Grillcloth/Grillcloth/Grillcloth-Tube-Town-Silver-Line::6592.html?language=en&MODsid=rlemtoaog15ncl5uki2n8l9hr7"]http://www.tube-town...ncl5uki2n8l9hr7[/url] I went with this supplier because I needed some amp parts from them at the same time, so it was convenient to only have to pay one lot of shipping. In the flesh the silver stripes are quite sparkly, but it the rest it is black rather than the grey of Fender grille cloth. I think it'll look quite classy with the blue finish and chrome corners.

It's a funny one, there are certain posters who get my back up on some subjects, and sometimes make me question why I'm here, yet often those same posters turn out to be quite insightful on other topics. You may or may not know who you are!

Looking good so far! I haven't seen that style of mould construction before - are you working from a particular method or is it something you've come up with? I have accumulated wood and bits for a mandolin build, but not quite got around to getting started on it yet, so I will be going through some of these same processes.

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1453659871' post='2961509'] Hardly sounds worth worrying about then. [/quote] Indeed. If what we call a dead spot is the effect of neck resonance on the tone and sustain of notes in a certain range on the instrument, I'd say that it's just a part of the sound of the bass guitar as we know it. Just as an example, James Jamerson had a very noticeable dead spot on his bass which you don't even need isolated tracks to hear, and that's one of the archetypal sounds you can make with a Fender bass. Admittedly, his heavy flatwounds and foam mutes make it stick out even more - they can be moved around or lessened somewhat by changing strings, hardware or setup. [quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1453659871' post='2961509'] Not as entertaining as 'Well, [i]all [/i]Fenders [i]always[/i] have dead spots'. [/quote] I guess my point is that it doesn't make sense to assess instruments in terms of a binary "does this bass have a dead spot, Yes/No?" approach. It would make more sense to ask "Is the dead spot on this bass in a place that bothers me?". Often they can be minimised to the point where they are not noticed in use, but that doesn't mean that they're not there at all - the neck will still have a resonant frequency which can only be moved around or damped to a limited extent without substantially redesigning the instrument.

Literally every bass guitar I have ever spent time playing has had a dead spot to some extent - where one or two notes, usually on the G string between C and Eb, have slightly lesser sustain than the surrounding notes. That has included a couple of neck-through instruments too, one 32" scale and a couple with graphite neck reinforcements, USA and Japanese made instruments and a couple I built myself. If you're lucky, the pitch of the resonance falls in between two notes so that the effect is less strong - these are much easier to live with. If you're unlucky, it falls spot-on one of the notes. Listening carefully to the effected notes, it sounds like the fundamental dies away quickly leaving the harmonics above that ringing. I do think that they can be more noticeable with flatwounds, and neck relief also seems to have an effect. So I find the "Well, [i]my[/i] Fenders never have dead spots" response of some posters entertaining. I don't think I have unusually sensitive ears and nor have I had exceptionally bad basses, so the issue must be that we don't all identify or define "dead spots" in the same way.

I did a little more this afternoon. First I had a look at the joints that I'd glued up last time and went round with a block plane levelling up anything that was not quite flush. I'm quite happy with how neatly the joints have come out and I don't think I'll have any issues with air leaks from them. The screw holes will be filled and levelled later. Then I cut the offcuts into 40mm wide strips for the bracing. I am cadging Phil Starr's bracing approach from the 1x12" design diary, as I thought this would save me the trial and error of trying to work out my own bracing scheme. Cheers for that, Phil!

Similarly, I was asked to turn down my 15 watt 1x10" guitar combo in a 900-capacity rock-oriented venue (Studio 24 in Edinburgh), when I'd had the volume turned up to about 4 on the dial. I'm not sure what they do when people use the house backline 4x12" rig. There's a little basement venue I've played a few times which has a 50 watt 1x12" combo as the house bass amp, and I've been asked to turn that down too! You can get away with surprisingly little amp in situations with full PA, though less so when the PA is vocal-only or monitoring is inadequate.

I don't know, TBH. That's why it would be interesting! I do wonder how big a factor expectation bias is though.