itu

My alusonic 2 x 12" weighs 18 kg / 40 lbs, so I think a lightweight bass cab should be under 20 kg / 44 lbs. Then it can be carried with one hand. Trace Elliot 1818X was 51 kg / 112 lbs...

Not automatically. There are manufacturers who put bigger body to a 5- or 6-string bass. I find this a bit annoying, as the bigger usually means clumsiness and more weight. But your luthier is your friend: you can ask for a smaller body, if you like. Just like Rhonda Smith did.

Carbon fibre necks are a set of layers. Curbow had lots of laminates, looked like plywood. That pretty new Australian luthier seems to build his necks the same way. If that plywood is good for boats and aeroplanes, why not basses?

Someone said that his instrument will sustain longer than his clothes are in fashion. Loved that. If we go back to 1950's, Mr. Paul told that his g-word would sustain for ages. For the same reason many instuments were built heavy, because heavy equals long sustain, doesn't it Mr. Sadowsky? As long as the instrument is well built (tightened screws, reasonably good materials and parts), and the strings are functional, I see the instrument has reasonably long sustain. I do can enhance it with a compressor. Some audio technician said that Stan The Man wanted "something like three compressors" after his Alembic for the ultimate sustain. The instruments he plays should be the best there are. After all his technical team has long experience compared to most of us. ADSR or reverberation (60 dB) can be different in different instruments, but I don't remember anyone measuring it. Without decent measuring environment and results the discussion is mostly at the level of "I think". Bolt-on and neck-through are slightly different constructions but neither is ultimate. Only different in the building phase. It is the same with parts like bridges, or materials. Yes they are different, but the final mixture is the product which we should evaluate against other products - in an independent laboratory. Not by ourselves, where biased opinions mean far more than physical facts.

This looks really nice, big and... complicated... Has the signal found its way out, yet?

I had few pedals lying around, so I put together one more small pedalboard. Signal chain: Subdecay Proteus - IE Divaricator + Spruce Effects' Old Growth Fuzz in the X-over band (+400 Hz) - Schalltechnik Vong (adjustable HPF & LPF) - Hypergravity mini. The set works very well with my fretted 5-string. I do not think that the X-over frequency is too high. 400 Hz is actually quite low if you consider the harmonics. open G-string, practical approximation: 100 Hz first harmonic, 200 Hz (12th fret G) second harmonic, 400 Hz (24th fret G)

I have put together +15 basses. Parts have been everything from rubbish found from garbage to Status necks. Learn to be creative. You can take a project or two for trials: pickup placement, neck angle... Music shops may have parts like tuners and bridges or even pickups that have been forgotten to some dark corner and cost only a little. I hate the P pickup just because it looks so ugly. I use humbuckers. If I find a four wire pickup, I will put a series/parallel switch. I do not like pots so much, so one of my basses has no controls at all. Paint is a pain for me, oil is better, colour comes from the wood. It is your instrument, find your own design.

USB 5 V / from 100 mA / 0.5 W, USB-C, up to 20 V / 5 A / 100 W. Power regulation level depends on the manufacturer. A functional USB charger (or cable) does not have to be approved according to the standards.

This sounds so much like music. It's like: Now I understand a little bit more, how little I understand about music.

If you buy a set that costs £20k, the £5 power cable is not an option. It is the same with RCA, or speaker wires. Everytime when a seller or buyer starts to use e(so)teric terms, run! Do a search: "cable cooker". Enjoy!

The honourable Mr. Green and his forces can also tint the neck, and satin finish is possible... I like the no-dots-in-the-front, which is one more option in the list. In the order phase I was thinking about the price a bit, but I received something special from the team. And lady Dawn personally called me to tell, that the neck was ready to be sent. Although there were extra options, the neck came earlier than expected. Talk about customer experience... Most of all I love the stability of the neck. It is there no matter what weather. The truss rod does exist, but there is no need to touch it at all.

The headphones may get benefit from different amps. I had a transistor based set first, but now I use a tiny tube headphone amp, and it is the thing. I think it is called Nobsound or similar. Ridiculously cheap, very functional with Stax. Is the Kenwood's type "Cooking chef", like my friend named one unit he had? There was something wrong with the tape transport.

I use a Mobilesheets Pro, which keeps a list of songs I have played so far. It is easy to wipe that data, but I keep it to find those played songs quickly. I have few thousand scores in the tab at the moment. The SW has made the tab's pen really useful, because I can write to the scores: tempos, anything.

Atlansia made single pickups, but they haven't been available in ages. bartolini made J-pickups with quadcoils in the past, but I haven't seen them since late 90's or so.

My friend has fixed few HMV 78 rpm players and plays the records in a local bar. The sound is fab, and I like many of the recordings of the time: singers are very good and the level of the bands is pretty high. No overdubs, just studiolive. Wonderful stuff. Most of my equipment is from 80's and 90's except the CD and the speakers. Many people here love names: Nakamichi 582Z, Technics SL-1210MK2, Panasonic SV-3700, Kenwood KT-6040, Pioneer A-656 & DT-570, Sony SCD-XB770, and Gradient 1.5. Another, smaller set is in the garage, but there I have only Stax headphones and some valve stuff to drive them.

I have studied acoustics in a university and music in music schools. Perception is also one interesting area, psychological point of view another. A local violinist is a son of a concert pianist. While she was pregnant, she played a lot, naturally. Is it any wonder the kid, the violin player has a perfect pitch? Learning since -9 months of age? Do you see this ability has anything to do with the surroundings? I think the perfect pitch has been there since the birth. Another thing is to use it. My friend's aunt has perfect pitch, but she's not musically talented. What a contradiction.

Nearly whichever with a built-in X-over instead of a bland blend. I want my lowest bass to be plain bass. Higher end can be aff... effected. Especially the family of OD/fuzz/dist units. Most of the current ones sound funny instead of fuzzy.

I know, this happened five years ago, and I am on the same side of the topic... Blend is usually the first pot in the signal chain after the pickups in an active or a passive bass. Most of the basses have a hi-Z ("passive") mixing. There are only few exceptions, like Audere, EMG and John East. How do you see the difference with a mixer stage compared to the passive mixing? I put a Noll MixPot to my Modulus Graphite Quantum SPi and the active blend turned the sound different. I liked the result of the modification. Tone (treble & bass) was handled by bartolini, but it was - as most "activities" are - the only battery powered part of the circuitry. I think that the active mixing has not been talked so much. But it is a detail that serves our purpose in finding better sounds from our instruments.

Boney M had many ear cracking songs, Paul Simon's Diamonds on the soles of her shoes sounds always strange.

Artec is super cheap, but has only one channel and band. The written specs differ from actual. Yes, I have measured it. An age-old tce parametric pedal has two bands. Do not mix with Sustain+ that is semiparametric. Pricey, pretty rare. WMD Utility https://wmdevices.com/products/utility-parametric-eq lacks LPF, but has three bands. tce 1140 and 2240 are rack mounted but definitely effective units. Rane PEQ 55 has bands and knobs...

I am very aware of the theory and temperaments as well as scales. At the risk of being picky, we try to utilise mathematically correct tempered scale, but there aren't too many instruments that actually use it per se. The base is there, but the usage is not. The exactly tempered acoustic piano sounds ridiculously bad, and many stringed instruments are everything but tempered. I am sure you know Pythagorean comma et al. and you get my point. As a bassist my instrument is tuned slightly low. Not many cents, but still. My tuner (Peterson SAM) has this option.

@stewblack, could you please send few photos of the circuitry?

Actually not literally, but you are right because it is quite complicated source. It generates high voltages (up to hundreds of volts), but the internal impedance is so high (mega or even gigaohms), that the output is weak without decent buffering. The reason for this is that while the impedance is very high, a low impedance input (low compared to the piezo) would reduce and limit the frequency response. This is the reason the plain piezo tends to sound so thin. When the piezo output is buffered, any amp can handle the output and the sound becomes usable.

My Glockenklang Duo (2 x 10") is very good, but weighs a ton. Usually I take my alusonic (2 x 12") to gigs just because it is lighter. I use the Glockenklang Soul amp.

I am sorry, that my expression was unclear. I mean here that any passive component in the signal chain will affect the pickup response. It is not a question of quality or brand, it is the nature of the component. Changing a pot to another does not help. But if your preamp is a true active mixer (John East, Audere...), the blend or vol do not affect the signal and the pickup response.