nekomatic

12 hours ago, Jo.gwillim said:

I've found the easiest thing is to just weigh the bass from time to time. As the battery charge gets used up it gets lighter. 

This is literally true though! The change in mass is given by the m in E = mc², where E is the electrical energy. 
 

You must have some amazing kitchen scales, however. 

Members of the Hallé playing works by Steve Reich, joined for one of them by Jonny Greenwood on bass. Superb music, which you don’t get to hear performed so often. 
 

The bass part wasn’t technically difficult, but God forbid you lost your place 😁

On 23/06/2025 at 17:03, Pea Turgh said:

I also failed to take in to account the rivets holding the transformer to the chassis, so I’ll just have to make a fresh case.  No biggy, it’s all learning.  

1. Find an alternative use for the incorrect one
2. Insist it was meant to be that all along
3. Don't ask me why my printer stand is coated in Tuff Cab

So having decided that I'd like to set myself the challenge of having a go at fretless, and wanting to try before I bought, I looked at what was around on the cheap end of the market and my local music shop (I say shop, I suspect it's more the owner's retirement hobby and gear museum/hangout, with incidental music teaching space attached) had this, so I dropped in and had a look.

Internet research suggests it was made in the Samick factory in 1994/5 and will have originally been fretted. The defret job looked good to my non-expert eye, the body and neck felt comfortable, it wasn't too heavy, it sounded OK unplugged - considering it had flats of unknown provenance on - and made a good range of tones plugged in to the shop Trace combo. The action wasn't exactly low and I noticed the G string bridge saddle was as low as it could get, but I figured a bit of setup attention could probably sort that. Oh and a previous owner had decided to replace the output jack with an XLR. Anyway though, I decided I liked it, so two hundred quid plus trade-in of a Marshall MB15 I no longer need and it came home with me.

Closer inspection and plugging in at home and the imperfections started to look a lot more imperfect. I realised the intonation was badly out and the bridge saddles didn't have enough adjustment (away from the neck) to get it anywhere near right without reaching the string end wraps. And there was a huge amount of interference pickup, which only almost went away when I turned the tone control fully clockwise, which corresponded to maximum treble cut (??). Inspecting the cavity again, the wiring I'd thought looked passable in the shop now turned out to be a right dog's dinner. I started to feel I'd got a dud on my hands. Maybe I should have gone with the safe-but-boring Squier Vintage Modified 4-string that guy in Ashton with the leather sofa had on Gumtree…

But then I took delivery of a set of lightly used Elixir stainless roundwounds courtesy of cdog, and went through the setup as I swapped them on, and everything started to make a bit more sense. Intonation came right in a more sensible place and I had to raise the G saddle a little to cure a rattle on the top end of the fretboard, which left the action still a bit higher than I'd like but definitely playable, and the rounds are easier (or at least more like what I'm used to) than the flats. And I've ordered the parts to screen and rewire the electrics and return it to a normal jack socket. So I'm a happy bunny after all. And I do think it looks rather smart in the black.

I reckon the fretboard may have lifted a little bit at the top end, so once I've played it a bit more I may get an expert opinion on whether a bit of work would improve the action, but I'll leave that for a while as I'm planning to stick to the fretted until my next jazz jam in a couple of weeks, then play only the fretless and see how quickly I can get used to it. My own intonation is currently at the 'surprisingly good, but still terrible' level so some practice will be required.

1 hour ago, Togomi said:

I tested in American Elite Precision and connected 10,61V, disconnected 11.65V (5.80+5.85). I had to change this bass to pasive last Saturday.

 

So, it's not a good idea to test batteries connected to active previous?

 

I wanted to test them regularly without openning the tap. 

Is it not possible like in this video with a TRS jack?

As the video says, there may be things like reverse polarity protection diodes that cause a difference between the voltage you measure from a stereo plug and the actual open-circuit voltage of the battery. The lower the current that your preamp needs to operate, the greater the voltage error might be. Also by the time your battery gets below 7 volts or so it is essentially dead so even a very small current may cause its voltage to drop significantly. 
 

At the end of the day though it doesn’t really matter whether what you measure is exactly the actual battery voltage, only that you figure out what voltage measured at the jack corresponds to ‘dead battery’ versus ‘not dead yet battery’, which you have to do by trial and error because it will depend on your preamp circuit anyway, then compare your measurement with that threshold. 

I guess there’s always also the old chestnut that the old music we’re still listening to now is the stuff that was good, and the stuff from back then that was terrible has been justly forgotten. 

Bought a set of strings - they turned up promptly, and were the advertised strings! Can’t really ask for more than that. 

Bought a strap, it was despatched quickly, packed suitably, and as described - one happy customer. 

8 hours ago, HeadlessBassist said:

Had someone else changed the colour? 

It was a Saturday night - I guess that makes it all right?

Hello from the diagonally opposite edge of the Peak District!

3 hours ago, prowla said:

(Squier)

Just seen in a Facebook post by the guitarist Phil Robson that Dill Katz has passed away. He was a regular name on the jazz scene in London in the ‘90s having played bass in Nucleus and Barbara Thompson’s Paraphernalia among others, as well as producing many recordings and co-founding the Premises studios in Hackney. RIP. 

On 11/06/2025 at 06:27, Cornwall Steve said:

Rigby Music in Stockport are advertising a red BB424X for £350 if anyone is interested

I live in Stockport and was completely unaware of Rigby Music, so thanks for the tip-off! 

I have contemplated nicking one of the Aldi ones and figuring out how to drive it to make a display for some sort of project, but am both too honest and too lazy. 

On 12/06/2025 at 13:30, Lfalex v1.1 said:

 

French,  too by the looks. They love an eSEL. Britain has been much slower to adopt them. 

Aldi use what look like little e-paper displays, so the display doesn’t even need a battery - they must have some sort of programmer to plug it into then it just sits there showing what it was programmed to forever, or until reprogrammed. If you multiply the number of Aldi stores by a few hundred labels per store, they probably got a fairly good price per unit on them, and no longer have to pay for paper labels and printing. 

It’s possible the power bank output voltage will drop if it can’t maintain its specified power output, and I guess no-one without good knowledge of the amp design can 100% guarantee that it can’t be harmed by low input voltage, but it seems unlikely to me. 

I believe standard (i.e. deceptive) practice for the specs of power banks is that they tell you the mAh rating of the internal Li-ion cell, not the output. So it may actually be 20 Ah from the 3.7 volt cell, which would be about 75 watt-hours, which after boosting up to 20 volts gives you three and a half amp hours or thereabouts. 
 

If everything else performs as specified then I guess it should work, but not for as long as you might have wanted. 

Thanks for the replies so far. I had to go and check to see whether my fretted bass even has side dots, so I guess I don’t look at them very often!

I’ve recently started using Instagram, ‘read-only’, in order to follow some bands or musicians, because it’s so much easier there than on the tar pit that is Facebook (and let’s not mention Twitter). I don’t mind at all if they post some non-music stuff as long as it doesn’t drown out the music and gig info that I mainly want to see. 

Anyway @SteveXFR, has your daughter made the decision yet and which way did it go, and how’s she getting on with it?

3 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Bear in mind student loan payments only kick in once you earn a reasonably decent salary.

That used to be true, but between wages rising and the student loan repayment threshold not rising it’s now only just above the full-time national minimum wage. It’s become a graduate tax in all but name. 

A brief experience at the NW Bass Bash has persuaded me that it would be fun to pick up a fretless to muck about on, so I’m thinking of picking up a cheapish one and there’s a possible candidate in my local music shop. 
 

Apart from the things you’d check before buying a secondhand fretted bass, is there anything specific I should look out for? I’m pretty sure this one has been defretted, so are there particular signs of a good or bad defret job?

5 hours ago, bass_dinger said:

The Rack Strips mentioned by @nekomatic looks like a useful addition too - no need to worry about threads on the wood failing then.

OK, if the units are both fairly light and you don’t plan to hump the assembly around to gigs and stuff then screws into a batten are probably fine. I’d still take your measurements off the actual setup though.

I would proceed as follows:

1. obtain the brackets a.k.a. ‘rack strip’

2. bolt the units to the rack strip

3. measure the resulting assembly

4. design and build the sleeve to match your measurements. 
 

It doesn’t sound like those two units should need lots of ventilation, compared to a power amp, say, but the advice above about ventilation is good. 

22 hours ago, Beedster said:

 

Thanks, not doubting your word but I'd be interesting in understanding why?

As @itu says, the impedance of each cab is highly dependent on frequency so both the distribution of power and the total output of both cabs will vary in  ways that are hard to predict. For example at one cab’s resonance frequency it will have a high impedance, so the other cab will output hardly anything at that frequency.