Beer of the Bass

Is that a really, really bad attempt at an epoxied fretless fingerboard where they've got carried away and epoxied on the bolt-on neck too, with big globs of extra epoxy dribbled about all over the bass? I would hesitate even to use it in a wood stove - those epoxy fumes are nasty!

It's kind of a cool time capsule; it's obviously spent most of the 80's in anarcho-punk bands, strings and all.

I very much doubt that your Markbass uses 600 watts of power when running at low volume or idling. That energy has to go somewhere, so if it was using 600 watts of power and only putting out 10 watts to the speaker when playing at low volume, it would have to be dissipating the other 590 watts as heat. Unless it gets very, very hot indeed I don't think that could be the case.

I think that would be the right orientation, as on a standard P90/Humbucker magnet the poles are the two long edges.

I had a valve amp where the bottom end felt a little too loose at volume, and I had good results with reducing the value of the cathode bypass caps in the preamp just enough to roll off some of the sub-100Hz stuff, which tightened it right up. If you wanted to get fancy you could even put a switch in.

[quote name='owen' timestamp='1444075075' post='2880148'] I spent a good 10 minutes wondering why the bassist was not in shot. He is making a sublime noise with his left hand. [/quote] His left hand bass is great, it has a really nice feel to it. I can't help but feel that his chord voicings on the Rhodes are a little on the sparse side though, which I guess is inevitable with only one hand free.

I bought a Squier P-bass neck from Dunc. He let me know what was going on with delivery and the packaging was very thorough. It turns out to be a nice neck too, so I'm more than happy with that.

The Boss RE20 does sound very good in the demos - I'll have to go and try one out. I had a Roland RE201 a few years ago which I really, really regret selling, and it seems like the RE20 captures a fair bit of that sound.

That's a very impressive finish job on the sides! The bridge looks very close to the original too. I've got to ask, how does it sound?

The Wampler does sound good in the demos, though would be a touch more than I was hoping to spend. Some of the Catalinbread pedals look great too. I think GuitarGuitar in Edinburgh have quite a few of those in stock, so I should really pop round and try some things. It's interesting, most of the BBD analogue delays I've heard are too dark sounding for what I have in mind, so digital of some sort would appear to be the way. A tape echo can be quite bright, just not in a clean sounding way. Adjusting to a pedal might be tricky, as I've got into the habit of putting the Melos on top of my amp and turning round to tweak the knobs regularly. That's a bit harder to do with something on the floor! I might have to look at using some sort of loop switching pedal with it so that I can still do that.

I feel like the OP may be overstating the case. I agree that bad cables can really muddy up your sound, particularly with a passive bass, but the entry level to acceptable sounding cables is pretty low IMO. I'd avoid the cheapest generic cables (both for sound and reliability) but the inexpensive Klotz Kik cables sound absolutely fine to my ears and the one I bought in about 1996 still works.

For several years now I've been using a Melos tape echo on guitar. When it's working well it sounds great, but it's a little too touchy to be an entirely dependable proposition live. I use it for several different sounds, a short slapback, a longer more atmospheric echo and dubby sounding things where I strike a chord and then crank it into feedback. The latter has become a bit of a signature sound in the band I play in, so it's a pain in the bum if I turn up for a gig and find that the Melos isn't behaving that day. I've spent a surprising amount of time fiddling with it and figuring out how to load fresh tape into the cartridges, so that at this point I'm convinced that it's as dependable as it can ever be. So after resisting this for ages, I'm starting to look around for alternatives. It needs to be a not-entirely-clean repeat, ideally with some sort of modulation to simulate the tape wow and flutter, and it needs to do good dubby feedback noises when the repeats are cranked up. Is there much out there that does this without spending a fortune?

Someone nicked the middle four for their four-string, obviously!

[quote name='Coilte' timestamp='1443859767' post='2878165'] There was a thread over on "Talkbass" about whether Wilton used (or did not..) a pick. In the end someone emailed one of Wilton's close associates, and the answer came back that he [u]never[/u] used a pick. See post # 40 here: [url="http://www.talkbass.com/threads/wilton-felder-tone.1012078/page-2"]http://www.talkbass.....1012078/page-2[/url] [/quote] That's interesting, as I was also sure I was hearing a pick. I guess he could have got a similar sound with a little fingernail contact, or very hard calluses.

He was great outside of the funky thing too, just a supremely musical guy all around, and I really like his sound and approach on this. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Wsdkll5-s"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Wsdkll5-s[/url]

I appreciate that this could be a tall order for what is a fairly generic looking pickup, but I have this unidentified pickup in a parts bass and I'm wondering if anyone can guess at where it might have come from. It was a parts-drawer special from another Basschatter a few years ago, and he couldn't remember what it was either. It has fibre flatwork, grey and white plastic coated lead wires and unbevelled alnico magnets. The coils are wrapped with black cloth tape and there are no written markings anywhere on it. It looks to be a few years old and the tops of the poles are slightly polished from finger contact. It measures 10.1K when wired into the bass (so probably a touch higher when disconnected). It sounds very much like a typical vintage style P-bass pickup. Any ideas?

At the very least the bridge, body wood, truss rod access (bare hole with no lining) and headstock logo scream "Fake!". I've used the Report button, not that that ever does anything...

It's interesting seeing the comments about fit and finish, as my MB200 was one of the earlier batches of US-labelled ones and the front panel is slightly wonky. It wasn't enough for me to want to send it back, but the casting is slightly out of square at one corner. For the price, size and sound of the thing I'm not too bothered about it, but I thought it should at least be acknowledged. People do tend to comment on the background hiss with these amps too. I think a lot of that is down to the EQ voicing and the lack of a master volume control. The amp is closest to flat with the treble control at 10 o'clock, so at 12 o'clock it is already substantially boosting the highs. If you take almost any amp, run the master volume on full (equivalent to how the MB200 is laid out) and boost the treble you will hear some hiss. And it's quieter than my Acoustic Image Clarus was, anyway! I would much rather have a master volume control than that daft contour switch though. I try and avoid uncritically raving about pieces of kit, but despite those couple of flaws this thing is useful, good value and I like the sound of it. The perceived volume seems about in line with what I'd expect of a 200 watt solid state amp and it behaves gracefully when pushed close to its limit.

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1443612721' post='2876184'] I agree that their is slightly less tension but not so much that it affects the playability of the bass. If anything I'd say it improves playability. [/quote] I think it might just be down to my playing style - years of trying to project on double bass make it hard for me to lighten up my touch enough on bass guitar. If I try tapes again it may have to be some of the 0.065" gauge LaBellas or Rotos. I like the tapes in general though, they seem to have a bit of flatwound character and still have enough brightness without sounding at all metallic.

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1443611105' post='2876148'] So Jazz, Blues, Pop, Funk, Big Band and Latin not a wide enough selection, then? [/quote] It might or might not be up your street, and I don't know what the scene is like in your area, but folkies of various sorts love a double bass. Perhaps there could be some gigs to be had there?

Do you find them floppy? I had a set of 0.50" gauge D'Addario tapewounds for a while and liked the sound but found that the tension was just a bit too low for my playing style, and the Status tapes are an even smaller gauge.

[quote name='gelfin' timestamp='1443523440' post='2875451'] Hunt around for one of these s/h [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Novation-Bass-Station-Synth-/291576196920?hash=item43e34baf38"]http://www.ebay.co.u...=item43e34baf38[/url] I use one in the same way you mentioned. All sounds built in. [/quote] These are great wee things, but if Gaf wanted piano or strings a monophonic analogue synth is not going to deliver those. Although the Novation Xiosynth from a few years later might fit the bill (still no piano sounds, but it's at least polyphonic).

I've wound a few guitar pickups and one bass pickup, though nothing of the Wal multi-coil sort. I got my magnets from Cermag [url="http://www.cermag.co.uk/"]http://www.cermag.co.uk/[/url] and my wire from Brocott's [url="http://www.brocott.co.uk/"]http://www.brocott.co.uk/[/url] . I've used vulcanised fibreboard which came in small quantities from eBay sellers, but you could improvise with other materials too. I used tufnol sheet on one, because I had a scrap piece lying around. I didn't count windings; since I've only done single coils (rather than matched coils for humbuckers) I've just wound until the bobbin looks full and then checked the resistance. For bridge/neck pairs I just would the bridge a bit fuller than the neck. My winding setup was fairly haphazard, I just strapped a small hobby drill to a piece of wood and wired it up to a little speed controller PCB which came from eBay. I had a bit of dowel with sections of cork on it to guide the wire and set the horizontal travel, and tensioning was done by hand.

[quote name='Passinwind' timestamp='1443040804' post='2871822'] That happens mostly with poorly designed tube socket mounting schemes or not so robust circuit boards, IHMO. Thermal expansion/contraction of tube socket pins can cause solder joint fractures in some cases as well. Many many pieces of gear work flawlessly for decades with board mounted sockets though. [/quote] I was thinking more of jack and power sockets, but those are valid points regarding valve sockets.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1443034697' post='2871743'] Good points although why would sockets being soldered to the PCB make them more unreliable? [/quote] It seems to be quite common that the PCB around board mounted sockets flexes slightly in use and after a few years the tracks fracture and crack. I'm not even any sort of professional repair guy, but I can think of at least three bits of kit I've repaired where this was the fault, so I presume it's a regular point of failure.