itu

Y: "You should have a single cut as they are in fashion at the moment."

NE: "This is SO heavy, should it be lighter? You know, Sadowsky makes these carvings, so..."

Y: "Now, we took off the headstock and carved it a bit. It isn't that heavy anymore. Now go and (4) play it at the gig."

1) Check if the saddle part lies against the bridge plate i.e. not the height screws.

2) If any single screw is totally loose, the rattle may happen.

3) If the bridge parts are in a big angle (one of those two screws is far lower), the saddle may rock.

4) You should play every note from the neck to find out, if all bridge parts are at the right height.

5) Sometimes (pretty seldom) the rattle comes from the string between your finger and (top) saddle. Put some cloth under the strings in the first position while testing.

If the reason is a loosen screw, you should put a little bit of nail lacquer to the screw thread. Remember to measure the saddle heights first to restore the setup.

Excuse me, are you talking about bridge or saddle near the tuners? The name of the instrument would help, too.

If I translated your issue by changing these words, I think you should tune your instrument so, that the tuning post has the string going from top to bottom. See the second picture: https://www.studybass.com/gear/bass-strings/how-to-change-bass-guitar-strings/2

See also that picture, where the string end goes inside the tuning post. Just cut the excess of the string by bending it back and forth a few times. Optional cutters need to be very tough (there is a text: piano wire or piano string) https://www.bahco.com/en/p/chrome-plated-end-cutting-pliers-piano-wire/ed-28-3e-01-5b-2c-b7-54-32-2e-c0-48-d4-16-ee-2a/

Try this: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/334013-order-of-effects/ 

My recommendation is the longest possible scale and roundwounds. As stainless steel strings are more like that "smile-type-eq", nickel has more midrange and seems to be the thing for many fretless players.

First of all: the light. If you have the chance to take your pictures outside, do it. Find a shade, where the light is diffuse: no shadows, very even light. Some may say that the light is dull but it is far easier to take pictures in this "dull" light than in direct sunshine.

If needed, put something behind, like a brick wall or a cloth of wanted colour (or plain grey concrete or whatever you happen to prefer). You can take the pictures against the wall or the bass may sleep on the ground, you just have to find a good place up high to take the pics.

Third point is to have the camera attached or you may put it against something, so that there will be no shaking at all while taking the pics.

Usually I would say that use the middle area of the aperture, like 8. This way the instrument will be sharp and the aperture is not too small or big. At 22 picture will have all near and far details sharp and at 1.4 you get very, very shallow sharp area in the picture. Both ends have their issues, but you should try them some time.

Get closer. Try to fill the frame with the stuff you want to see in the pictures. Cutting the excess makes the photo smaller in detail. If your camera is a pocket model or a phone (yack!), you need every pixel available.

Last but not least: take several/many/lots of pictures. As the "film" is so cheap nowadays, it is always better to take few extra than lack a few. Taking more pictures gives you more good pictures, too.

If you believe that the speaker cone size determines the frequency response, I would simply say that you are in a wrong path. The box around the element has crucial effect on the response, efficiency, lowest possible reproducible frequency, and what else? What did I forget?

It is the system, that can produce the sound, not the element by itself, especially at that low end. Well, there is the dipole but let's not dive into that now.

Mr Thiele and Mr Small used quite some time to understand the behaviour of a speaker - so the system that consists of the speaker element, the box, the cross over, the damping material etc. Their groundbreaking work is worth reading, if you want to understand something about the mechanisms that make the speaker systems scream.

9 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

This ain't FRFR:

Certainly not. This looks like a big dipper, as expected. If I have time, I will cut out the areas, where -3 to +3 dB, or rather -6 to +6 dB is happening. Someone who is not into acoustics may then understand, why I am so hesitant to accept this FRFR rubbish.

I do have to say that there are lots of good sounding cabinets with character out there, but it would be funny to call them flat response or even full range cabs. A bass with those coil-magnet pickups is not a full range instrument, so there is no need to have a full range cabinet, either.

So is it a Greenboy, then?

Now I have seen the same F-word with the same picture - three times in a row! Could you please consider quoting the original post without the picture? Anyone? I just don't get this copy - paste - copy - paste - copy - paste - copy - paste - copy - paste -thing. Of course, now the posts together contain the headline: Basses on the settee. So sorry, and thank you.

https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/337063-fbass-vf4/

Another take...

1 hour ago, Marcoelwray said:

In most cases a lost of brightness on a passive bass (except strings and tralalalala) is due to potentiometer value. IMHO.

You are on a right track: if you increase the pot value, the load to the pickup is smaller and the sound is brighter. You can try a 10 kohm pot and then a 500 kohm and listen to the difference. You can leave all pots out (and at the same time the load to the pickup) and hear some more highs. The tone can be done by a true bypass switch, a trimmer and a capacitor (like in a PRS guitar).

SP put a tough one!

Neutral cabs are a rare breed among bass/PA systems. The reason for this is the efficiency. If you lower efficiency you get wider/even response and vice versa. Hifi stuff has efficiency in the area of 0.01 - 0.1 % (this equals that 100 W of power creates 0.01 to 0.1 watts of sound). PA and bass systems may have efficiency up to 1 - 2 %. This is quite some more loudness than with Hifi systems. The price paid is the funny looking response.

Do you still believe that a wide & flat response is possible within reasonably small PA/bass systems?

Probably not, but they have become rare and old enough to represent them as the holy Grail of basses, be it true or not. As my experience with Fenders is somewhat dull (the specifications I am after are not represented by any Fender), I have done some research of my own and found other brands and instruments, newer or older, that serve me far better. This is just my very own opinion and personal choice. Someone might say: No problem, please move forward.

On 22/02/2014 at 19:23, hamfist said:

That Artec preamp will not work with active pickups, it is designed for passive pickups and, unfortunately, with passive and active pickups and preamps you cannot mix and match.

May I ask, why not? Usually buffered outputs are lo-Z and inputs are FET-based very hi-Z. This is match made in heaven. Even passive pick ups have relatively low impedance compared to FET-inputs, so I can not see problems here, either.

Unbuffered piezos may face inputs that have too low impedance and there you can hear how the low end vanishes.

https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/335845-fbass-alain-caron-ac5-fretless/

There is one pre-loved five string fretless, there...

Please do not even think about the change of the fretboard. There are so many lined already available - you just do not look at the fretboard while playing, only side dots. And looking at the 'board while playing is nearly impossible from ergonomics point of view.

Sir Elwray: your lined fretless project looks extremely good with different coloured lines (à la Carl Thompson) but an unlined black needs to stay black.

An idea I got while working in a local broadcasting company was to use colours. That is why my cables are red, blue, yellow, pink... it is easier to watch your step.

As they are tied together in the resin, I just happen to consider them as a complete system, not separable parts. My understanding is that EMG's (passive) coil has very few rounds of copper round it compared to a passive pick up.

Actually the lo-Z coil might work well with the amp but the buffer amplifies the low level signal quite a lot. A low impedance output is really easy to match with any input. Here the level is the main issue.

I have built an accelerator based bass pick up some 20 years ago. I would consider it active, too. Its frequency response starts from DC so far too low. I had to design an adjustable HPF to it to make it useful.

EMGs have built in buffers in the low impedance pick ups, so I would consider them as active. High impedance passives are a different animal. But this is semantics.

I wrote about this few days ago but I try to give you another way of understanding the issue.

In your case I would use passive pickups for two reasons: you want active (preamp) and passive mode. This is not possible with true active pick ups like EMG.

So make a choice of your passive pickups, be it whatever (bartolini, Seymour Duncan, you name it). Then consider the preamp offering (from tone control, like Glockenklang to fully active front end like East). This has a lot to do with how the sound behaves. Let me clarify this.

1) "Active bass" may mean that your bass has a passive vol&pan or vol&vol (for a two pick up bass). On top of that you may have that "active" part that actually is just an active tone control. This way the active tone control can be bypassed with a simple switch and your "active" becomes passive. These passive controls (pots, that is) affect the sound by varying impedance load to the pickups. This changes especially the top end of the frequency response, so a volume acts like a tone, too.

2) Truly active bass has active buffers for both pick ups. This is the first step to a fully active front end, i.e. a mixer. This way the controls affect only that part of the setting that they are meant to be, so volume only affects volume. (My understanding is that this East has a passive mode, too.)

So to simplify this, you may buy an active mixer (and I think East is like one) or you can rely on simple switchable active tone control, depending on your need. This may also help you to understand the price difference on those two solutions: a fully functional Artec active tone control costs £20 and an East £200.

***

A food for thought: if you compare a tiny battery operated preamp to a studio console, you may get an idea of what is behind your sound. If you spare at the instrument end, you just can not fix it in the bass amp or studio mixer. A cheapo tone control (and EVERY SINGLE carbon track pot) can be left out if your usage is in the studio and the first thing you connect your instrument is a £200 000 mixer. Believe me or not - you can check the Anthony Jackson's Fodera that has a mic and the Neutrik. That's it.

13 minutes ago, ped said:

Indeed - however the Arpege semi-parametric extra control knob alters the frequency of the boost/cut knob. It was also available with a ROM preamp without the removable pre-amp cartridges you mention for the Passion bass. Instead it had a 12 position switch http://www.vigierguitars.net/bcatalog/bfcv4.htm

But Sir, the semiparametric has a frequency knob on both preamps, Arpege and Passion. Passion only has volume, treble and the frequency knob, but Arpege has one more, so is it a bass or pan? This probably relates to different year models/versions. I just have two versions of Series II from 1988 and 1989. Their difference is that the frequency knob works CW and CCW.

Few less known but very reasonable options are Swedish TKS and British Barefaced. A black horse in this professional crowd could be an Italian Alusonic.

Sir, a copy of that pdf to me, please! Nice pair of dark ladies, by the way. (can almost hear Cher singing that song in the background)

I would like to add, that Passion and Arpege were available with three preamps (and few versions of them) during series II time, at least:

- ROM module preamp (Passion): volume and several presets with a rotating switch. Recognizable from two dots (the preamp attachment to the top) between pot hats. Few modules available.

- semiparametric: the most common unit. Arpege has one more pot (bass, I think).

- Nautilus (Arpege): the very rare and strange preamp with memory and display among others. Has approx. 251 pots and switches, or so.

Quite some data can be found from the net, but these are the basics.

Competitive price for such a rare beauty. Incredible playability, very functional preamp, neck is better than nearly anything else on the market. The new owner will love her.

Somebody might say that this is subjective, as I do have two series II Passions. And because of this, I am not the one to acquire her right now.