Ajoten

Struggling to find the sort of teacher I want in the immediate vicinity. Seeing as improving (drastically!) on fretless is one of my goals, I wondered if having lessons with a DB person would work re intonation and practice "management" if they could ignore the bowing element of orchestral playing.

Any thoughts or experience thereof?

My Ibanez SR5 has 45mm nut and 16.5mm spacing at bridge. Love it.

Played a Fender P5 48mm / 19mm. Hard work.

Played a Sandberg 5er thing 43 / 18, felt nice but now not sure if I imagined it. I expected string spacing at bridge to be deciding factor, and 1mm have little effect.

I'm trying to suss how wide the fretboard is c. 12th fret to compare, although that doesn't take into consideration other factors like neck profile or whether tiny dimension differences affect playability a lot.

Any accepted wisdom on this?

Tried some La Bella low tension flats. Exactly what I wanted, the flat feel but with an unnoticeable change in tension. And obviously no liztruss rod tweaks required.

I like flats - and tapes - for the smooth feel rather than specific tone tbh.

Got to dismantle my P bass to tweak rod, and can't face doing it just for experimenting.

Sooo many threads knocking about with people trying to order flat brands in order of tension, but I did read a wise thought that there's a difference re tension required to tune a string vs how tough to play, as it were. 

So my question is what flatwound strings would you put on a brand new reasonably set up bass with basic Fender 45-105 so that NO truss rod adjustment is required? Or preferably saddle height.

Going round in internet shopping circles here.

I don't play sitting much, but also simply hadn't noticed the potential danger till now.

Current:

Hagstrom Viking experiment:

17 minutes ago, Boodang said:

Maybe bodyless is a good idea as it'll stop you doing it!

Which is precisely why I'm asking actually 🙃 . Have a sitting gig and need to avoid sharp wrist angle... but also can't be holding arm out without resting somewhere or it'll put a static load on shoulder etc.

Options to try:

1. Explorer style to rest arm higher (pics of Entwistle suggests could work)

2. 335 style semi with large body for same reason (have tried this, it deffo helps)

3. Steinberger. Which might work, or elbow might drop even lower and be worse!

4. Try and play with wtvr on left leg, classical guitary, but gig gonna be stressful and don't want new techniques to occupy headspace too. Also not as fun as buying new bass.

So that's 3 potential forum threads haha. I'm starting with #3.

(Steinies of the proper bodyless type)

When you play sat down (fingers not pick) where do you rest your forearm? Or do get enough support just from thumb anchoring on string/pickup?

Aargh! Waiting for the chancellor here to be in a better mood so I can give serious consideration to this...

Hmm. So you think a setup is all it'll take to stop this slapping against frets (attached vid... first half is my normal, 2nd me playing near bridge for less string movement, where it's ok ish

)? Handy if so!

Not sure how a set up will help. This isn't a rattle due to neck relief. This is me hitting the strings quite hard arguably more down than up.

No coz I assumed getting strings further away from fingerboard was the solution. As well as tougher strings meaning they'd move about less.

Found myself having a bit of a sound crisis here.

Put some tapewounds on my Ibanez 5 string, which I really like to play, for general feel to the touch as well as the low tension contributing to a nice low action.

However clocked at rehearsal that that means they don't half clatter against the top frets. I've always had a little of this with rounds, but never particularly noticed other than thinking it was a bit Steve Harris. Anyway sounded really grim. More bad techniqueman blaming tools perhaps, but I put some Roto Jazz on, known for high tension, no truss rod tweak, and lo! it stops it happening.

But not as lovely and easy to play, especially when the joy of SRs for me was gliding about etc.

Of course NOW I'm thinking well, if I have to fight a bit, should reconsider swapping for more appropriate bass (and avoid heroics) as it might be less disappointing. Or just try and improve to get a bit more control. I can't actually work out how much of this is to justify looking at shiny new things to buy rather than a real problem 🙃

I walked away from Denmark Street with a 1305 despite having a budget of x2 the price because it was the best 5 string bass in the street. Superb.

Damn. Soz for missing it.

On 13/09/2021 at 11:53, Newfoundfreedom said:

Where's the point in this?

I think it's brilliant. It makes me think of (cool) Charvel So-Cal Strats, conceptually, https://www.charvel.com/gear/shape/so-cal/style-1/pro-mod-so-cal-style-1-hh-fr/2966031599. I'd be all over it if I was in the market for an active bass. Sadly I'm not.

That's kinda my point. Manifestly there's a HUGE market for fewer options. Millions of people go for (Fender and Squier) Precisions, possibly above all other options. Perhaps it's just too strong a brand to compete with.

Starfires are NICE. And I hold my hands up, didn't know those Sandbergs came with just the volume/tone controls. I like the look of them a lot. (Coil split means too many options for me 🙂)

But I'd still argue that (long scale!) mass market brands don't embrace the concept, and that that's strange. For example I don't understand why there's not a 1 pickup Ibz Talman or Yam BB competing with Fender Players etc.

Sandberg is active I believe.

No single pickup BB that I can see, PJ only.

SUBs are active.

OLP no longer available.

I can't find any, apart from the Les Paul JR DC. Add the J at the bridge and options open up... although in my case I want as few knobs as possible coz ain't got bwain for EQ and tweaking. 

I'm not opposed to P-basses in the slightest, am just sure I'm missing something. Especially given the not-broken-don't-fix-it ubiquity of Precisions. It's almost like noone dare compete.

AAARGH. If only I'd paid attention at school and got a decent job that paid money (and hadn't got married) blah blah blah.

5 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

My 5 string has the same spacing at neck and bridge as my 4 string… just one extra string obv

Fender I think was 19mm vs my v comfy Ibanez 16.5 at the bridge

Would prefer a P bass myself but don't get on with string spacing on a 5er, and therefore have to take unfathomable active eq on the chin  :-) 

Well... for me, I don't think I've EVER heard a recording where bass was too much, by anyone. Please recommend examples! 

You are right though re learning from it. And I think working 100% with the kit, and not try "melodic flourishes" (wtvr) will be better. Also I've just bought a beautiful fretless, and the lower that is in the mix the better 🙃

(Thing is of course, it all worked together nicely till guitar and vox went into the studio and recorded dozens of unexpected overdubs, thus diluting a lot of what I'd done and rendering it a bit daft tbh.)

Thanks everyone, I very much appreciate your thoughts. Much better to get bass players' opinions on this matter, I don't trust guitarists...