Vibrating G String

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1281026' date='Jun 24 2011, 06:25 AM']I don't want to take on luthiers. They know better than anybody on the planet the properties of wood....[/quote] And the years of working with loud power tools has fine tuned their ears to subtleties that can raise their prices substantially. Most luthiers don't even know the real names of the woods they use. Try pointing at one of their guitars and asking is that acer rubrum or acer saccharinum and of the 2 which has the most symmetrical dimensional stability. Then ask if it's good for metal.

[quote name='paul h' post='1280934' date='Jun 24 2011, 05:17 AM']Seriously though folks, this raises some serious issues that need to be seriously addressed. Seriously. I think we should all club together and get the problem sorted. I'm serious. Vibrating G String, you take musicians. Ou7shined you take custom luthiers. I will take the large guitar manufacturers. Can someone else take please pickup manufacturers? Right, if we start emailing everyone now we should be able to tell everyone they are wrong within a year or so. I suggest the subject line "You are 100% WRONG". That should grab their attention. VGS: I suggest starting with Marcus Miller. I once saw an interview with him where he claimed he preferred maple fingerboards because they were brighter. What an IDIOT! MILLER! You are 100% WRONG! O7: Luthiers. Take your pick. They all seem to have opinions about wood. They are all WRONG! Maybe send them some links to plywood suppliers to help them out? That would be cool. Whoever takes pickup manufacturers...GOOD LUCK is all I can say. Those bastards are always going on about how ceramic and alnico magnets sound different. It makes me sick. GO GO GO! We've only got 24 hours to save the etc. etc. [/quote]Wow, now that this has been characterized to a ridiculous extreme it seems I have to argue the contrary. Brilliant, if not a bit cliche and reaching. But I'm sure it was fun

[quote name='charic' post='1280908' date='Jun 24 2011, 04:58 AM']Define "better" ?[/quote] In this context it usually means favorite.

[quote name='4000' post='1280900' date='Jun 24 2011, 04:55 AM']Whilst you can't hear age, you can hear difference. Obviously "better" (to the ears of the listener) may or may not correspond with "older" but it's quite feasible an older instrument (and this also potentially applies to newer ones of course), all other things being equal, may have a sound you prefer and that isn't imagined.[/quote] I think for the statement old sounds better to be true you would have to more than just hear a difference and you'd have to be able to quantify that difference in some way that could be used to define other instruments. You can hear differences between 2 vintage instruments but couldn't attribute your favorite to the sound of the age of the instrument.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1280876' date='Jun 24 2011, 04:46 AM']Here's some data for you... You are 100% wrong. It wasn't an assumption, it was a proposal posed as a question - hence my sentence starting with "I wonder if.....".[/quote] This statement. "todays wire will be 99.9999% perfect." Not a lot of people here using the whole sentence

[quote name='paul h' post='1280873' date='Jun 24 2011, 04:46 AM']I'm going to make up my own definitions for words to make me sound better too.[/quote] You didn't get it?

Yours acting up too?

[quote name='Beedster' post='1280775' date='Jun 24 2011, 03:47 AM']You're on fire this morning dude [/quote] Piles acting up

[quote name='Clarky' post='1280769' date='Jun 24 2011, 03:43 AM']You are a cynical person aren't you[/quote] If you mean often right, yes I just heard something I like that loosely paraphrased was, cynical is a name for those with insight that is not shared by those using the term.

[quote name='Clarky' post='1280740' date='Jun 24 2011, 03:33 AM']That said the sound engineer on our last recording session just raved about the sound of my bass so maybe I got lucky?[/quote] I get that with any bass. Sound engineers will rave about tone when they don't want to spend time on your tone. It's the only way to get us to leave them alone.

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='1280733' date='Jun 24 2011, 03:29 AM']It would be interesting to know if it sounded like that in '61, wouldn't it?[/quote] The old if aging made it sound better how could it have sounded better back then conundrum. And if it didn't sound better back then why do all the great old recordings have that better vintage sound? Could Leo build a guitar so awesome even he couldn't play it?

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='1280728' date='Jun 24 2011, 03:26 AM']I've been after a Jazz for years and the '79 model I recently bought is a winner. It just sounds so much better than modern ones.[/quote] I remember when the '79's were the crappy modern ones. It's just a matter of time until someone posts about how vintage their 2008 sounds compared to the new crap It's happened to the 60's, 70's and 80's so far. I wonder if in the future [i]better[/i] will have a tangible definition? Till then it will just have to be like [i]cool[/i].

[quote name='henry norton' post='1280563' date='Jun 24 2011, 01:39 AM']Maybe the bass has just 'that' sound because you've had it years, you're used to it, you like it and consequently any other bass will always fall short in comparison.[/quote] Like your mom, you could replace her with another perfectly fine mom or even a better one but it just won't be the same.

[quote name='redstriper' post='1280406' date='Jun 23 2011, 04:33 PM']the replacement body is solid maple[/quote] This simply isn't vintage Fender by any definition. The tone may be awesome but unless it's coming all from the decal it's not vintage I've had a few solid maple bodied basses and I loved them.

[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' post='1280402' date='Jun 23 2011, 04:29 PM']If you have the means, it'd be interesting to do a blind test. Record the same bass part over the same minimalistic backing track (changing nothing but the bass volume so that it's equal on all the versions) and see which people think is which (and which people prefer). [/quote] Talk Bass has numerous threads doing this, the usual pattern is no one can get it right until the answer is revealed and then all the [i]experts[/i] chime in about how they new that. One of the more famous ones people couldn't tell the difference between a jazz neck pickup and a pbass.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1280287' date='Jun 23 2011, 02:35 PM']I wonder if it's the inconsistencies in the wire used for the windings that could be the biggest factor - todays wire will be 99.9999% perfect.[/quote] That's just an assumption. Have you seen any data based on measuring? Almost all if not all vintage explanations are simply conjecture with some anecdotal evidence in the best cases.

[quote name='redstriper' post='1279997' date='Jun 23 2011, 10:53 AM']Is it all in the mind, or do the old ones sound better and if so - why?[/quote] It's all in the mind, unless you have faith it isn't. But if you go by what people can hear and not how they feel when they are playing something then the difference is undetectable. No one can tell vintage by listening alone. It can't be the wood because you hear the vintage tone even with a new body and fingerboard. It's called psychoacoustic phenomena and is well documented as a science. No one can hear age in a controlled test. Many claim they can but no one can do it. The color of the room you are in will influence your perception of sound, your expectations of an instrument and your resulting filtering of what you select to hear or not will have a major influence on how something sounds to you.

[quote name='daz' post='1084089' date='Jan 10 2011, 05:09 AM']unless he always bought the same white P bass ?maybe he did.[/quote] In an article he once said he gets about 6 months out of a bass and then just dumps it and gets a new one. He also used to sell his ass for heroin money. I'm not sure I'd want to play one of his old basses.

[quote name='4 candles' post='1280214' date='Jun 23 2011, 01:42 PM']why does every slap bass soloist man or woman one want too sound like marcus miller!!![/quote] She's not trying to sound like Marcus. They're both doing Larry. POW!

[quote name='largo' post='1279595' date='Jun 23 2011, 05:25 AM']First things first, I hope everyone realised my last post was a wind up ![/quote]I missed it It's funny now. [quote]Although, it's not much different to a lot of the stuff I've read on here about why various products are better than others. Could it simply be that the bass has been photgraphed with the strings loosened, so aren't sitting straight against the board and have therefore been pulled on to the pickups as well?[/quote]I thought of that as maybe a way to make the action look low and going too far. Or some other less deceptive reason I haven't thought of.

[quote name='Mark Latimour' post='1279312' date='Jun 22 2011, 10:46 PM']I doubt they even really care. Haters will hate. I suspect they are just posting to rile up the feeble minded! [/quote] It worked

[quote name='Beedster' post='1278346' date='Jun 22 2011, 03:40 AM']Don't spend several grand, buy a decent '62RI (especially if you can get an early 80's Fullerton which are pretty much as good at the pre-CBS instruments without the price tag)[/quote] I would even say much better than a pre.

[quote name='risingson' post='1279164' date='Jun 22 2011, 02:35 PM']I don't think 'better' is right, different certainly. Tal seems to get a lot of criticism, I can never figure out why.[/quote] I think it's because she gets put on a pedestal for being a women and her rack (I could mean effects rack). Which causes others to attack her for being put there for non playing reasons. Both totally unfair things to do. She is not judged by the same standards a male player would be judged by. I think she's a great player with some Pino like sensibilities.

[quote name='risingson' post='1279065' date='Jun 22 2011, 01:21 PM']I will always love her playing with Prince though, particularly stuff like this [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vITKFi2W_o"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vITKFi2W_o[/url][/quote] That's the sh..! I love Prince playing that cheap guitar too.

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='1279050' date='Jun 22 2011, 01:07 PM']Here's Rhonda Smith - Prince's bass player, along with many other credits to her name - performing a bass solo with Jeff Beck's band. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAynG1MsHkY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAynG1MsHkY[/url][/quote] POW! I Gotcha. Caught you with your funk down. Some great GCS licks in there. I saw this tour and remember a different solo. I'd have to agree it feels cliche and oriented to a rock audience.