Beer of the Bass

[quote name='ukulelelab' timestamp='1428841004' post='2745036'] My 3 valve amps (WEM ER30, Hiwatt DR103 and DR201) [/quote] Owned by Family? I might have some albums with that amp on it.

I do a little bit of playing in "acoustic" type settings, in which I either play double bass (often unamped) or bass guitar through my GK MB200 / Wizzy 10 setup. Since the space is often limited and I'm typically running the amp barely-on, I've been musing over whether I could use something even smaller for these sessions. It would be used for bringing up bass guitar to a level where it can work with acoustic guitar and light percussion, or adding a tiny bit of reinforcement and monitoring to the double bass in drummerless settings. I'm not looking for something to hang with full drums and electric guitar here, more the sort of setting where a small practice amp would suffice. On a whim, I've picked up a couple of lightly used Faital 6FE100 drivers to experiment with which were going cheaply on eBay. The specs of those are here: [url="http://www.faitalpro.com/products/files/6FE100/8/6FE100_datasheet_8.pdf"]http://www.faitalpro...datasheet_8.pdf[/url] These have respectable X-max, (so a pair could have similar displacement to many 10"s), 100 watts thermal handling but fairly low efficiency at 91dB. Modelling them in WinISD, I found that putting a single driver in 9-10 litres tuned to 50Hz gave me low end response which is probably OK for this application (-3dB at around 70Hz, with a mid-bass bump of less than 2dB). Maximum SPL is 106dB at 80Hz, rising to about 110dB above that. I'm going to do this in salvaged/scrap plywood first to try the concept without spending too much. At the moment I'm not sure whether I'll get a useful amount of output with one driver in 10 litres, or whether I should use both from the start. I suspect one of the biggest challenges will be fitting a large enough port in the box to avoid chuffing. I may also try them sealed, which gives a higher roll-off but a smoother response with no bump while conveniently side-stepping the port size issue. I'd be curious to see whether anyone thinks this idea has legs or if it looks like an exercise in futility!

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1428877810' post='2745647'] That's what I get - people who are usually off their faces, so I don't believe a word of it. I just smile and nod, smile and nod... [/quote] We had a fairly well-lubricated guy with this kind of chat at a gig a while back, he was telling us we should come back to his place as he owned a brewery and had loads of beer in his garage. We politely declined, as I had a load of gear to take home and we suspected the stuff about the brewery and the beer might be a load of bollocks. The next day he sent a friend request on Facebook, and it turned out it was all true...

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1428315014' post='2740057'] Well now I've got it into my head to get one of these... 100W (loud enough) 22kg (light enough - for an all-valve amp) and £275 (cheap enough). Yes I know it's ostensibly a guitar amp, but that doesn't bother me... and it'll have Thomann's 3-year warranty... [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/bugera_1960_infinium.htm"]http://www.thomann.d...60_infinium.htm[/url] [/quote] These seem to have a bit of a following on Talkbass as a bass amp. It's pretty much a Marshall Superbass rip-off, so if that's the sound you're after it'll be fine. The hugeness of the box is offputting though - it's 69cm wide, so might look silly on some cabs.

I wonder if it's [i]the[/i] Dave Holland? I don't know if he plays much bass guitar nowadays, but I suppose he might keep one or two around.

I do like the look of these walnut models, the new 4003SW looks good as well. I was a bit disappointed when I saw a 4003W and the matching guitar in a local music shop, as there were some finishing details on both I thought were a little sloppy for an instrument of that price, but I'm guessing you found a good one.

When you say "air hole" do you mean the ports in the speaker enclosure? If so, it could be a wirewound inductor from the crossover, used to split the high frequencies to the tweeter.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1428188807' post='2739036'] You might have something there! My dalliance with 5-string basses depressed the crap out of me. The 'B' is just too different to the other strings... not necessarily in tension (or whatever you want to call it) but I found I had to address it differently, in a way I didn't like. It seemed temperamental somehow and demanded special treatment, which I ultimately resented. A 5-string bass isn't just a 4-string with an extra string - it's a completely different instrument in my opinion. One I don't like. YMMV obviously. The only advantage (for me) was the fact that you don't have to move around the fretboard so much. But I don't think having those few lower notes is worth the extra learning curve, the extra weight and the extra expense. I found it a relief to get back to four strings, frankly. And another thing, the usual songs cited as great examples of 5-stringery leave me completely cold! There, I've said it. Thhpp!! [/quote] For a little while last year you were very enthusiastic indeed about switching to 5-string. I think you may even have said that you could see yourself playing five strings exclusively in the future. I get that that may have been a brief honeymoon period, but surely you can see where the rest of us are coming from!

[quote name='King Tut' timestamp='1428224161' post='2739184'] Would this be why none of the class D stuff I've tried ever seems to have that indefineable goodness I can get from my old Trace AH250£ [/quote] Not really, this is referring to the effect of passing audio through transformers like the output transformer of a valve amp. Transformer-coupled stages are often touted as a feature on studio gear too. The Trace uses a transformer based power supply, but does not have any in the signal path AFAIK.

I think keeping their workshop in New York might be a part of the pricing. It can't be the cheapest place to run a manufacturing business!

From painful experience, if the guitarist is playing a D chord and I accidentally hit a low C sharp, I can definitely hear the discord!

[quote name='Spoombung' timestamp='1428158588' post='2738626'] Again, I'd advise any young bass player: [b]stick to 4 strings[/b]. Set up a nice full sound and go [b]up[/b] the octaves and play melodies and contrast that with lower notes from the E upwards. Leave the 5 stringers somewhere in the murk of their own B strings. [/quote] All of that is still available on a five string! Myself, I try to be sparing with the lower notes, but I enjoy the alternative timbre of the B string for certain things (with flatwounds it sounds a little like the E on a short-scale) and it does make some fingerings a little easier. I don't enjoy hearing players who overuse the lowest notes, but to blame that on them playing 5-string is akin to having a go at your keyboard player because they showed up with a 76 note keyboard instead of a 61. Regarding memorable lines below low-E, how about Roy Estrada on Captain Beefheart's [i]I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby? [/i]It's dark and murky, but it works for that reason. Or Michael Henderson on some of the 70s electric Miles Davis material? Of course, both of those were on detuned four-string, but I'd suggest someone like Les Claypool for having some distinctive and memorable lines with low notes in them. He's not my cup of tea, but Primus undoubtedly had some prominent and melodic basslines.

You definitely shouldn't be able to see daylight between the neck and fingerboard, that joint needs to be solid! The neck loses a lot of stiffness without the fingerboard firmly attached, which may account for some of your setup issues.

I'm not an expert on this, but I suspect you might be looking at the port velocity at a higher power than you're likely to use. I've just opened up WinISD and modelled the 3015 in 75 litres, tuned to 50Hz. Below about 42Hz, the maximum power is limited by the Xmax of the driver rather than the thermal handling. At 35Hz it can handle around 107 watts before exceeding Xmax, so you'd be farting out the driver long before you heard any port chuffing.

[quote name='Annoying Twit' timestamp='1428071856' post='2737781'] I think I read somewhere that someone was filling in holes using matchsticks and wood glue! (I'm not sure if this is the best method). [/quote] I like those bamboo chopsticks from takeaways for plugging holes, with wood glue. They're big enough to fill most holes and easy to whittle down to fit. But on this one I'd want to check that the bridge still covered the old holes when correctly positioned, as it will be ugly looking otherwise.

[quote name='Annoying Twit' timestamp='1428051851' post='2737410'] I must admit that I can't see what's wrong with the bridge. I assume that others know how to make a photobucket image display in full resolution and can see some flaw on the bridge. (If I right click on the image or paste its address into the browser I go back to photo bucket. If I zoom in on the page showing the picture of the bass's body, I get blur city and can't clearly see what is wrong with the bridge. What is wrong with it? It looks as if you have a very nice action dialled in there. [/quote] The bridge is fine, it's the angle it's mounted at that's not right! I'd have filled and re-drilled the holes if it were mine.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1427608089' post='2732203'] I hope this isn't a situation where the OP is the only band member that sees [i]"red flags" [/i]all over this and the other member are all wearing rose tinted glasses. [/quote] That's a situation that's all too familiar to me, and was a major factor in why I left one of my bands last year!

[quote name='Bobthedog' timestamp='1427958918' post='2736208'] Found the offending article: [url="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recordingmag.com%2Fresources%2FresourceDetail%2F134.html&ei=SOwcVb-mOs7aasyVgeAJ&usg=AFQjCNH8QCeluoHS81jBrbtS3RPE0LLajg&bvm=bv.89744112,d.d2s"]Taming the 5-String Bass : Recording Magazine[/url] [/quote] Hmm, that's a rather idiosyncratic view. I suspect he's trying to confirm his own prejudices as much as anything else. I'm not convinced of the need for the fundamental to be reproduced on the lower notes unless you're working in some of the more extreme genres of electronic music (in which case you won't be using bass guitar anyway). I do wonder, if only the most esoteric of studio monitors do anything useful in the 31Hz range, surely it makes more sense to highpass above that than to focus obsessively on dynamics processing down there. How many listeners will have equipment that will even let them hear what he's done? And while the B-string has it's own timbre and envelope as distinct from playing the same notes on the E string, why not trust the performer to use that sensitively rather than treating it as a fault to be corrected?

The Standback is excellent with most guitar combos, but not great with most bass gear due to the deeper cabinets. The proportions just aren't right for it. It supports your cab at a set angle, and it will only work if your cab wants to fall backwards at this angle, not if it wants to fall forwards.

Well, I like it! It's not priced outrageously either. I would cheerfully play that, but then I did use an oil can guitar for a while...

There are some in that recent exodus who I'm going to miss hearing from, and their leaving wasn't something I could have seen coming. I know that some of the more strongly opinionated or abrasive members were never going to stay on one forum for long, but some of the recent disappearances weren't really that sort of poster.

Since these aren't stock TKS cabs, would you be able to reveal what the drivers in each cab were? For no particular reason other than curiosity...

This is a baffling one. I genuinely have no idea what's going on here! [url="http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mystery-Vintage-Fender-Jazz-Bass-Guitar-Perhaps-some-Modifications-/161641217286?pt=Guitar&hash=item25a2913d06&clk_rvr_id=799435532097&afsrc=1&rmvSB=true"]http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mystery-Vintage-Fender-Jazz-Bass-Guitar-Perhaps-some-Modifications-/161641217286?pt=Guitar&hash=item25a2913d06&clk_rvr_id=799435532097&afsrc=1&rmvSB=true[/url]

[quote name='6v6' timestamp='1426713191' post='2721271'] DIY cabs are a lot of fun, but as others have already said, it's not a route to a cheap cab by any means. I documented my 1x12 build here [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/200152-1x12-diy-cab-build"]http://basschat.co.u...2-diy-cab-build[/url] - I didn't add the costs up accurately but it was definitely more than £100, probably over £150 when you add up all the little items and postage etc which soon adds up. Also good quality ply is surprisingly expensive. It's also an extremely slow way to get a cab unless you've got a lot of spare time and/or are a pro-woodworker (mine took months of scarce spare time, but I did get delayed by family stuff for a while). All that said, I will probably build another one over the summer [/quote] That's still a little cheaper than the cheapest new 1x12" bass cabs I can find, and almost certainly uses a better driver. So I guess that's good value!