itu

Music tends to combine aesthetics to sound. I think it is very human. And by the way: as facts are and stay facts, we have these forums where can discuss endlessly about taste. More basses, please!

Yes, the paper is good, I remember reading it some years ago. A bass has pretty small amount of string behind the saddle and the bridge. If the string slips a lot and some extra length is coming to play, the string will be out of tune while vibrating. I do not see that the paper gives many tools to discussion on electric bass. If the overlaps would be long, like over 1/4 of the playing string length (over 20 cm or 8"), and the brake angles would be very minute, the tuning and feel could change substantially while playing. During my years playing bass I have heard bigger changes in tune only with very light string sets (30 - 90, double ball end!) and really hard playing. Yes, some change in tuning is there, but I can not see (or hear) that it is that big. If the perceived feel of the same string in two different basses is soft or hard in a blind ABX test, I would love to read such research. Another bass should be with double ball end strings to reduce the overall length to minimum. Perceived feel and psychoacoustics play probably far bigger role here. If it feels good, it is good. Usually this type of stuff is next to impossible to measure, as the details have a lot to do with habits, experience (like muscle memory), and sensations that can not be measured with any measuring machines. It is as hard as to simplify some song or sound to one number. "Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune is 8 and Free Bird is 8 and So what is 8." Say what? This is probably the reason why people try to describe many sensations with unscientific and fuzzy words that can be interpreted in many ways: "The taste is round and fruity", so what it actually is?

How is through body stringing affecting string behaviour after it crosses the bridge? How is tuner layout affecting string behaviour after it crosses the saddle, or the finger that presses it to the fretboard? How do you see double ball end strings different compared to our usual suspects?

Two things that have not been mentioned here are the strap and the string between the finger and the saddle (yes, that end of it). Take the strap away, is the rattle still there? Put a rubber band over the strings and play those rattling notes. When the string wears, it may start to hit the frets on the wrong side of the fretting finger.

One thing that might help is to read some notes from the people behind the mixing board. You could get lots of hints from Sound-on-Sound pages, where seasoned people tell about bass and how to eq it. Their search has been powerful with terms like "mixing", "bass", and alike. It is easier to try some known frequencies and how they affect your personal sound. Then it is recommended to do a personal investigation through the frequency spectrum. Remember: you can add and boost some freq, or damp the others. Boost sounds good because the volume was raised, but is the sound something you really were after, if the loudnesses are even? www.soundonsound.com

Yes. No. The pickup always sees some impedance in the circuitry. If not anything else, then the amp input. These pots, V & T, represent impedance to the ground just by being there. As they are in parallel from the pickup point of view, 2 x 250 k means a maximum of 125 k impedance to the ground (there is an analogy with speakers here). When the pots are bigger, the combined impedance is also bigger. You can do trials with 10 k and 1 M pots. Go ahead! The circuitry with the cap (tone) is affecting the higher end of the frequency spectrum, while the vol takes everything towards ground. As the impedances (read: pots) are not infinite, some of the signal is always bled to the ground. No load pots, not a bad idea at all.

Jens Ritter has that kool looking white fretless. There is a green Alembic Essence in Reverb that looked nice and compact. The best Jazz ever has been a seafoam green (?) Pensa-Suhr. A dark brown unlined fretless Wal, was really fab. Atlansia may be a bit 80's, but different altogether. Steinberger, why not, industrial type. I like Overwater Original / C. Affirma is looking good. Oh so many basses, so little time.

Sir S. Mandrel, take a look at the videos, please. Especially the latter.

A very tiny detail: the inserts are upside down. Use a bolt with a nut or a coupling nut for the installation. (A spacer may help screwing the insert to level.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yBvEtmmCUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIhEqoKE8Dc

If you hear the eq that is set flat, it is of low quality. tce 1140 (sorry, that's mine, not the 1144) is dead quiet when flat, but if turned to extremes, anything can be noisy. Do not forget that the signal source is also one part of the equation. If the preamp (and any preamp, that is) is inside the bass, the power consumption has to be so small, that it may already affect the sound quality. (Alembics are an exception with their external PSUs. Their usage of that power hungry NE5534 is certainly one part of their sound.) An outboard unit with 230 V power line and lots of amperes is not limited the same way as the tiny unit with single 9 V battery problems. A tube preamp like an Alembic F-1X inside the bass? Overkill. And definitely does not work with that single battery. Of course you can leave all adjustments of the bass out and put that outboard unit straight after your bass. I bet you get better quality than with a small Sadowsky (and a tiny battery), but also different. We need to think about the practical side, too. If your work is in studio, the built-in bass preamp (or those terrible carbon pots) is the worst quality element in the signal path. But it is very feasible for the gigging bassist that has to change the sound on the run - and some noise in the circuitry does not mean a thing in live situation.

Here you go:

My Passions have semi-parametric preamps which work very well. Parametric is a powerful tool if you get accustomed to it. I have a parametric pedal (simple Artec, works well, too), and a tce 1144, which is a classic. In a boomy place parametric is far better than basic two or three band eq, but the usage is slightly more complicated to understand than a 2/3-band unit. I downright love parametric, but took a bit of time to get the most out of it.

If they just take an ordinary ply and slice it to two... will get my coat. The machinery seems to be big and the speed too. Sure they are able to fine tune the process. Still three layers is fine stuff.

Plywood, one video about manufacturing:

400+ 4 x 10" The house was shaking.

Coca-Cola has phosphoric acid in it. It has been used with gunsmiths for ages. Let the bridge be in the coke for 24 hours and if the result is not good enough, repeat. Maybe a shorter trial first to some smaller part...

A quick look and I would say it is a Steinberger. Ibanez has started to produce nearly a look-a-like. There are some older and a bit similar looking instruments popping up every now and then.

Anything from The Cure... oh dear, where was my coat?

A secondary battery (i.e. rechargeable) lifetime is around 500 - 1000 charging cycles depending on the usage and chemistry. Then it has lost around 20 % of its capacity. Active usage may result even greater loss in performance. I would change the current one now and write the replacement date to the battery. A visible reminder.

I have put some 16 prototypes together from ready parts, mostly. They are far behind from my fretless 4, that a local young luthier built to me. We were drawing the shape for one month, and when he found out what I was after, he made it real. His ability to read my thoughts was the key to a succesfully designed instrument for me. And definitely one very hard task. She is one bass I will never part. And she signs like a dream. Can be seen in my pictures. Keep going. You are making great progress all the time and the next may already be your key to success.

bartolini has or has had these multi coil versions during years. Study their offer.

A bag type Li-Ion battery. Evilbay or Mouser may have something similar in their storage. Remember that size matters (LxWxH), because you have to fit it in there. Thickness is important, as the battery gets slightly bigger when charged. If there is space, you can put even bigger cell instead of this one. By the way, how many times have you charged this old one? Over 500 times?

When I first read the starting post, I was thinking this guy knows G. Lee, but no. Still, a Rick and those Taurus pedals make me see this famous trio. I do not understand how he could play bass pedals and guitar and sing at the same time.

In Bass Player there was a story of Jonas Hellborg holding a Schack 10-string. If the bass was just a really wide headless, Hellborg's face looked like he was totally amazed. I do not know whether he ever played that spade in public. A friend (?) of mine sent me a picture of an instrument that had a backside of a woman's body carved to the backside. Grouse...

I think Mingus could be counted in.