Baloney Balderdash

Well, that was my whole point with that reply, it was a response to your comment, hence why I quoted it. The first part of the sentence being: Sure (meaning yes), if... [as you said + elaborating] The second part of the sentence being: But if (my perspective)... [elaborating] + then: [my point] Just elaborating on what you said, really, as in explaining why you would set the HPF one or the other way, which you didn't really, and then presenting the opposite perspective as well.

My "amp-less"/FRFR setup:

So question is, do you have an always on magic tone sauce enhancer pedal in your setup, and if so what is it and what does it do? Mine is my EHX Black Finger, tube driven optical compressor, that is the first thing in my signal chain right after the bass (or that is I got a pedal acting exclusively as buffer just before it, since the input impedance of the Black Finger is something like 150kOhm ridiculously low, and some of my high end is cut off my signal if I don't), though with just a very subtle compression dialed in, and predominantly used as a tube preamp stage, with the tubes (2 x EHX 12AX7EH), which are operating at proper high 300V plate voltage, driven to just on the verge of their breakup point. What it does is relatively subtle, but it changes my tone from great to amazing, adding an unique warmth and harmonically rich depth to my signal, and just a touch of subtle tube grit when digging in. Here it is, to the far left, together with the rest of my temporary setup, as I am in the process of completely rearranging my "amp-less" pedal setup, so here is just the core of my always on "clean" tone setup, and the core of my high gain distortion setup: (and yes, it is dirty as hell, but I've owned it for nearly 20 years, it has been all kind of places and have been stomped on with shoes on, and beyond vacuum cleaning it has never been cleaned, also the photo enhancement edit does make it look much worse than it really is, just pretend it is 100% pure magic mojo tone sauce)

That's an amazing looking bass too!

Sure, if he plans to exclusively use the HPF as a means to filter out sub frequencies for the sake of getting max volume possible out of his amp while protecting his speakers and preventing them from farting out, but if he additionally wants to use it more as an EQ effect to tighten up his low end and make it more punchy (for this you need to set the HPF cutoff point closer to the lowest fundamentals your bass produces), then it might very well affect how the Mutron reacts and the resulting effect on its output.

If you like that way your compressor/limiter reacts to your low end and the resulting effect, then sure, but most people wouldn't as it will affect the rest of the overall tone of your bass in those cases, most would say negatively. Also please read my edited in addition to my original response to you.

Towards the very end of the chain, right before an eventual DI, though if you use a compressor that sits towards the end of your chain then before that. So with the signal chain you are listing there, right before your compressor. As you write in your response above this, some pedals works best with the full signal of your bass, but also some effect pedals will produce more low end, hence why the HPF should be after those.

Show us your cheap budget #1 main bass and tell us a bit about it. Here comes mine. A just 28.6" scale length Ibanez GSRM20 neck + GSRM20B body Mikro Bass, that I named "Dud Bottomfeeder". I have it strung with Elixir Nanoweb coated hex core nickel roundwound guitar strings of the gauges .068 - .052 - .038 - .028, which gives a very close to perfectly balanced tension across the strings, in tenor bass, A# standard, tuning (that is as 1 half step above the 4 upper strings of a 6 string bass in regular B standard tuning). Obviously it is not good for filling out a traditional bass role in this tuning, but I feel that this is the tuning where it really shines, and it is great for solo/melodic work, as well as it can be used for chords, making it very suited to be treated like sort of hybrid between a guitar and a bass in terms on what and how you play on it (left fretting hand wise that is, right hand I mainly use traditional 2 finger, index + middle finger, bas plucking technique, however, rather the striking or pulling the strings, I more so stroke the strings, in a slightly inwards slapping motion, with the outmost tip on my fingers/nails, sometimes combined with 1 or 3 finger plucking technique, flamenco guitar style, index and/or middle, finger flicking technique, traditional classical acoustic guitar finger picking technique, as well as double thumbing. Rarely use picks, which though I don't either do when playing guitar, but when I do I prefer a .60mm Dunlop Tortex or a 3.1mm Wedgie Soft rubber pick, depending). . I have had it strung up with regular bass strings and tuned to regular 4 string E standard tuning before though, and used it as my main bass in couple of projects, in a band context, and honestly it sounded great for that too. I have pulled out both the stock pickups, but just replaced its reverse P pickup, for an EMG Geezer Butler P, wired directly to the output jack socket, with the stock jack socket also having been pulled out and replaced for a front mounted regular jack socket. You wouldn't think it was anything special playing it acoustically, it doesn't sound bad, but I suppose kind of boring and dry with no exceptional resonance going on or anything, but combined with the EMG Geezer Butler P, which is vintage voiced, but with an extraordinary articulate and well defined dynamically responsiveness and clarity to it, it just sounds absolutely amazing amplified, and for some reason it react exceptionally well to having it's tone manipulated by outboard effects, which makes it perfect for the "amp-less" setup that I prefer using. It got a very no bullshit immediate quality to its tone that I love, but not in the dry or boring sense, rather in the sense of having a very clear and harmonically balanced tone, but at the same time with a certain depth and complexity, and still having a nice snap and punch, to it. It just seems that whenever I try any other bass I always relatively quickly come back to this one, like the other basses color the tone too much already at the output of the basses themself, but with this one it is really hard to make it sound bloated and overprocessed, always retain this immediate clarity to its tone, where some other basses already sound bloated and overprocessed right from the start coming straight from their output jack socket. And then it is just an absolute joy to play. Anyway, enough with the babble here it is, Dud Bottomfeeder (though the knob closest to the neck is red now): I do ponder on, and likely will at some point, installing the J pickup from the P/J EMG Geezer Butler set where the current P pickup is from, wired to a separate jack output socket, for parallel active off-board mixing of the two pickups, via a Boss LS-2 or similar, as well as installing single mono rail bridge pieces, milled from solid brass, and in the same instance reduce the string spacing from the current standard 19mm to 17mm.

I am not particular fond of choruses either, but I love the right flanger pedal dialed in to deliver a subtle flanging effect to sort of sound like a more exotic more shimmering and ethereal kind of chorus, and a lush phaser with a deep quacking swirl, or even better such a phaser mixed in parallel with such a flanger, for a mystical oriental sort of vibe, perfect for playing riffs in harmonic minor, phrygian dominant/phrygian minor (also known as the Spanish Flamenco scale) and the double harmonic scale (also known as the Byzantine scale) and that sort of exotic oriental vibe. Tremolo can be beautiful too for slow melodic parts.

I suppose it might admittedly be kind of an odd reason for commenting on such an old reply, but couldn't stand the temptation for saying that by far most basses and guitars are made entirely from what is categorize as hardwood.

I suppose the obvious answer would be that the copper tape at the nut somehow makes better contact with the strings than my fingers against the strings, would definitely perfectly explain this phenomena, however the strings at that point are still their full thickness and fully coated, and there is no possible way the copper tape could cut the strings, if anything the copper tape cause less friction than the bare nut, heck I couldn't even cut my fingers on that copper tape if I did an effort to do so. Then again I suppose the strings would press harder against the copper tape in the nut slots than my fingers do against the strings under normal circumstances, so I'd say it is still a quite plausible, and probably most likely, explanation. Guess I just never gave the fact that the strings are actually fully coated much thought myself, and that pressure might change the degree of conductivity/quality of the connection, since there is still definitely some conductivity/connection happening even at low pressure, as some noise reduction is actually happening just by touching the strings lightly. Certainly a more scientifically plausible explanation than it being shielding tape and just living up to it's name.

You never got further than the headline did you? Nothing to do with my actual question whatsoever. But I guess thanks for at least taking a guess on a possible help. I suppose I can try to condense the main essence of this mystery and my question a bit more, though I am not sure whether the reader would understand the nature of the mystery fully then: The noise almost entirely disappear when touching the bridge directly, but there is less noise reduction happening when just touching strings, but not the bridge, at any point, however when touching the nut (lets just say it's a metal nut for ease of understanding the phenomena) and nothing else, which only connection to ground could possible be through the strings, again the noise almost entirely disappear, just like when touching the bridge directly. What could the explanation for that possibly be? Might also be worth mentioning that the strings in question are coated Elixir Nanoweb nickel roundwounds.

First I like to point out that I am not really seeking to solve an issue here, but rather curious about solving a strange mystery. So I got an EMG Geezer Butler P pickups installed, which is shielded internally, and with the ground of the pickup wired running as a braided shield all along the insulated hot wire, so to start with the noise picked up/generated by this pickup in minimal, and not really an issue at any point, however at the moment I am rearranging my usual pedal board completely, so I use a temporary simplified pedal setup that run off a daisy chain, rather than the isolated power supply of installed on my pedal board, which does cause slightly more noise than usual. Now to the mystery, as you would expect the noise gets less when touching any metal parts of the bass, thanks to the bridge ground wire, however while the noise almost entirely disappear when touching the bridge directly it is reduced notable less when touching across the strings, regardless if this happens above the body, above the pickups, above the fretboard, or above behind the nut, ever so slightly more when combining two of these positions by using both hands, but now for the really strange part, I recently installed some copper shielding tape on in the nut slots (a thin piece the width and approximate length of the nut, going across it, and then by the strings pressed down wrapped closely to the sides and bottom of the four slots), to compensate for the thinner strings I have installed to accommodate the tenor bass tuning I currently use this bass in, and when I touch the tape on the nut it removes just as much noise as when I touch the bridge directly, that is the noise almost entirely disappearing. What on Earth (pun fully intended) could the reason for this be? I mean I guess it is to expected that the ground connection might be more effective when touching the bridge, to which the ground wire of the electronics of the bass is connected, directly, than just touching the strings, especially cause since these specific strings are coated Elixir Nanoweb ones, but why then does the ground connection seem to be just as effective when touching the shielding tape applied to the nut, but not when touching the strings just in front or behind the nut (I mean the ground connection of the copper tape has to come from the strings, which again got it from the bridge)?

If I had the money to spend right now, though I don't, especially not because I am likely going to pay an additional import fee for having them send to Denmark where I live, I would have bought the Mosky Spring Reverb (I know it doesn't sound all that much like an actual spring reverb, but I really liked what I've heard non the less on the demons I've watched featuring it), and 4 mode RAT and Klon clones (I know their regular Klon clone gets a lot of praises, and won several blind tests against original Klon pedals, and I own their Black Rat rat clone, which I am really happy with, even if it doesn't sound quite like the original it works really well with bass).

Ok, so what about this strong argument against the use of tonewood: If tonewood really is so great how come the bridge isn't build out of wood too?

I did actually think that Cortex didn't sound quite right, but then decided that Thomann would probably know best. Guess I should have known better, after all the specs listed for several of their basses are either outdated or straight out wrong. Thanks for correcting me though. For the sake of documentation: https://www.thomann.de/dk/elixir_12302_baritone_nanoweb.htm

Who's Loss is This - Menfolk On which I play the bass (out of 2 basses) with the brighter tone.

Well, can't help you. For me when the first note has been identified I pretty much think in intervals and patterns going forward, meaning that as long as it's standard tuning (all fourth tuning), and tuned up or down a whole step, I have no issues in terms of orienting myself on the fretboard. I did play in a band for years where I was using a drop D tuning, and admittedly I sometimes found myself reminding my self that the low D should be played two frets ahead to get the same note/interval, but most of the time it eventually became kind of second nature when playing with that band, and no issue really going back to regular E standard tuning. I also had my short scale classical nylon string acoustic guitar tuned to D standard tuning for years, and at the moment my main instrument of choice, a just 28.6" scale Ibanez Mikro Bass, is tuned in tenor bass, A standard, tuning (that is like the 4 upper strings of a 6 string bass tuned in regular B standard tuning). Personally though I would probably tune my bass up to E standard tuning, if I was you. But hey, honestly I can't see the big issue in keeping it in D standard tuning either, the 2 extra notes in the bottom range might still come to use, even if the guitar(s) are tuned to regular E standard tuning.

Stop it, will you!

Yeah, but not what we are discussing, I was commenting on your reply in specific, hence why I quoted it, not even the topic of the overall discussion in this thread. But never mind, seems I missed a detail, where you actually specify those other factors as affecting the string vibrations, just like I stated. Sorry, my bad. Please refer to the edit my previous reply. But frankly you could just have pointed out that that was what you said, instead of this silly deroute argument...

I don't see you mentioning these factors, in the reply of yours that we are discussing here: Edit!: Oh, damn, sorry, seems like I didn't read your reply properly, my bad. *doh*

Yes, but it is not ONE of the factors, it is THE factor! Please refer to it in the context of your own full reply (and then my full reply). All the other factors you mention have an influence on the tone only because they influence on how the strings vibrate.

Which P Bass? James Jamerson's or Jean-Jacques Burnel's? But to be serious for a moment and actually answer your question without being snarky: Because it got a P pickup placed in the traditional P Bass position. However that does not mean that it sounds exactly like any given P Bass made out of any given type or piece wood, I will almost guarantee that it in fact doesn't, or that the specific construction and specific material used doesn't actually affect the tone to some, greater or lesser, degree, depending. Please distinguish between general and specific here. That a zebra got 4 legs and a horse also got 4 legs doesn't prove that it is in fact the one and same animal. Neither would someone not being able to tell the difference between two individual horses (something someone actually working with horses likely would be able to tell), even if the two horses in question were actually of the same race and objectively, from a general perspective, did share a lot of the exact same visual traits. Again faulty logic.

No it doesn't. Faulty logic! This though might very well be true. No. Not on an electric guitar and bass with a magnetic pickup. However it is basic physics that the resonance caused by the specific construction and materials used of any given electric guitar or bass will actually affect the vibrations of the strings.

Thank you. I need to have my old computer set up again though, where all my music production related software is on (can't be assed to install all that, especially not the buttload of individual VST's I got on it, on my new computer again), as well as I need to buy a dedicated screen for it and a new audio interface (cause my current one is pretty crappy and has developed issues), so I will have a dedicated music production computer/setup. And as I am not in the best financial, or mental for that matter, situation it might take a while before I can even start to get the first recordings down. Hopefully somewhere before next year though. I already have some working titled and a preliminary track list in mind (which though might very well change, as I might come up with new material, or scrap some of the current ones): Dreamscape Mystery [short instrumental] 3rd Eye of Hypnos Daze of Our Life A Dorian Odyssey [long instrumental] Monolith Meadow Spacing Out In Orbit Out of Space [short instrumental] Doctor You (we die only once...) Crystal Meth Overdrive Utopian Mist [long instrumental]