Stub Mandrel

Bring 'em all back, I say!

Those who avoid budget basses may be interested to note that the J74 he's chosen has an RRP of £329...

Wait until you get asked for Old Town Road 🙂

My compressor keeps it simple... too simple?

Indeed - I sent a question via his website yesterday: He included the bit from the programme:

I always fanciedthat my Hohner B2 made a passable stab at a Chris Squire sound.

Do you have a link? His sound on 'Beastie' is exactly the one I want to have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhZMmyLqHHM Incidentally this is probably the bass before the Riverhead Unicorn in the show us your headless bass thread, anyone know what it is? Looks different from a standard Jazz.

Just an observation for the hopelessly lost... While distortion and signal processing pedals often sound good with one or more setting 'dialled', the typical compressor pedal is usually designed to give a usable general purpose result with all the knobs set at 12 o'clock so this makes an obvious place to start.

Why not? https://www.waterstones.com/book/geddy-lees-big-beautiful-book-of-bass/geddy-lee/9780062747839 " Your local Waterstones may have stock of this item. Please check by using Click & Collect " (Available from Picadilly and Cambridge at the least).

It seem (but I can't be sure) they went straight in with a clear amber lacquer, then a reddy-brown one, then blacc for a standard tobacco sunburst. Where it's flaked it's left the wood clean as a whistle. There are a couple of spots (the first to go) where I glued the chips (big ones) back on, hopefully I just used white PVA. Happy with it as it is for the moment, but the rate seems to have sped up (the bit by the lower horn only 'burst open' this month) perhaps by me keeping it indoors. Here's a recent pic, but even more unseen chipping around the edges). An alternative would be to stabilise it (white PVA under where it's lifting?) then sand the edges smooth. That would be more or less reversible. The going rate for one in good condition is about £300 and TBH I'm more interested in playing it than using it as an investment.

A Warlock! Don't see many people fessing up to having one of those on here 🙂

Which is incredibly difficult because its so sparse and there's no accent on the percussion! So easy to slip a beat ahead, and I HATE counting.

Hmm, that's pretty much me when I have all my effects switched out. But I think the question wasn't about incidental compression but about deliberately introducing it; there's a big difference between the compression inherent in the system and controllable compression you add on purpose. A bit like saying don't use filters on your camera, as without them it won't replicate colours perfectly anyway. If you have, for example, a valve amp driven hard, then you might decide there's no benefit. For me with a solid state combo that only lights the light in Can't Stop it makes a very noticeable difference to add compression. My old Laney head has a cheap IC in it (NE571) that I always assumed was wired up just as a 2:1 range compressor. Having compared the datasheet and the schematic it's not conventional as the reference voltage is derived from the power amp output, a bit hard to decide exactly what is happening but I think it combines range compression and limiting (by increasing the compression as the power amp output rises). They only use half the IC. If anyone can figure it out from the attached.... ProBassPreamp.pdf NE570 compander.pdf

I've found some prices £175 - £300 is a pretty broad range. Is it worth paying more? Alternatively there are some unfinished Zebrano bodies on eBay for abut £45. They could look the dog's with a few coats of Danish oil.

Could be poly, I suppose I could set fire to chip and see if it burns gently or goes whoosh. Stripping wouldn't be hard, I suspect I could chip most of it off with a scalpel which is what I've done with sticky-up bits because I don't want them getting stuck under a fingernail.

My mid-70s Maya fretless has a weird problem. I stored it in an unheated garage for many years but instead of 'checking' the nitro finish is flaking off in chunks. It's OK at the moment, although the 'holes' are a bit hard-edged, but light relic has become a medium, one and if it carries on it could end up in the Rory Gallagher territory. Wouldn't be so bad but under the sunburst it's a 'blockboard' body. One option is a refin, I love the checked vintage cream/ivory finish on my brother's '62 SG junior, but it was done before he got it (to hide where a Bigsby had been fitted and removed). Can anyone suggest what this might cost? I realise this isn't a super valuable bass so I'm not worried about recreating the authentic finish.

AKA 'Kelly Enema' 🙂 It's a stained fingerboard, not sure what type of wood, it's just worn through the surface. Think it's due for its first fret dress...

First time round I did about ten years and was never happy that we any of the bands I was in ever relied on more than a random mate or partner to feed back on whether or not we 'sounded OK'. Even with minimal PA and pub gigs I'm aware that some bands have rich, full sounds without blowing the windows out and others sound either muddy or thin as a rake. I'm determined that we have someone who will not only be honest about how we sound but also be able to offer advice on how to sound better. I'm no longer confident that each band member (including myself) can choose the most appropriate settings for themselves.

Nice one 🙂 I've scavenged all the black keys off a piano. Cut in half and bevelled/polished on the cut end that's, err... lots of posh 'tug bars'.

The legendary Riverhead Unicorn, a bass so good it had a song named after it.

Not many other sketches still come up in conversation forty plus years later! Almost there with the parrot sketch...

Drool. is that a Jupiter? I had one of these in mind:

Before we go out, one guitarist has a mate who's a sound engineer and we are going to ask him to help us get our basic sound dialled.

That means the bottom E would be two tones ABOVE a standard cello's low C, the A one tone above the G, the D being the same on both and the G being a tone below the A. These are pretty small differences, I would have imagined the tension difference would be no greater than between some different types/gauges of standard strings?

One of the perils of relying on badly mangled sound on YouTube 🙂