RhysP

I use a passive tone control more than a lot of people seem to, I find them very useful.

Active EQs I tend to leave set at their centre detents.

Ideally I like a bass where you can switch the EQ in & out, and that also has a passive tone control that you can use alongside the active EQ, which is exactly what the Bacchus bass I recently bought on here has.

4 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Have to say my comment about tuner muting the bass and providing silence was a tongue in cheek comment with @RhysP . It wasn't meant to be take so seriously. 

Using my tuner and muting had a definite change in my sound. ....... from noise to silence ......... just a bit o'fun. 😂

 

On the plus side its now less than 5 weeks till 

Dave

Just goes to prove that even a silly joke can cause disagreement on Basschat... 🙄

Excellent amps, totally bomb-proof.

Steve Harris was using these the first time I saw Iron Maiden (a LONG time ago, Paul Di'anno was still with them).

Oh Hell yes.

...though some of the Fender custom colours do look nice with a rosewood board... 🙄  😂

12 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

I def agree with those sentiments, I’m sure there are very few who see a bassist using one fretboard material and think “I wish they were using the other type”. My realisation is more to the actual playing experience, similar to (although I’m not in the same league of course) Eric Clapton as mentioned above by @Ricky RioliI just enjoy the feel of a maple neck when playing more. 

Funnily enough the one exception I would make is that a Precision HAS to have a maple fingerboard, rosewood just looks wrong on a Precision to me. 

1 minute ago, dmccombe7 said:

I took the battery out the pedal. That helped create more ambience around the silence. The playing kinda suffered tho. 

Dave

Did your playing suffer because you had to use both hands to take the battery out of the pedal?

36 minutes ago, Ricky Rioli said:

 

Alternatively: when some people discover that there are subtleties that they are unaware of, they prefer to ascribe the reported distinctions to some kind of delusion on the part of those able to perceive them than entertain the possibility that they are relatively insensitive.

 

Both sides think they're right, and it's really not important, so why bother insulting those who disagree with you? 

I'm not insulting anyone, Just thinking out loud. I've certainly done the obsessing over rosewood/maple/whatever things I mentioned in my post when I was younger. 

I was pretty certain I could tell the difference too. What changed was I realised that it was completely unimportant to me, and nobody else gave a damn either. 😂

5 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

My tuner has a definite sound change when i put it in line to the amp. It mutes the sound when tuning 

Sorry just couldn't resist the obvious plus its almost  time so i'm happy.

Dave

But does it mute the sound differently to, say, turning the volume off on your amp or bass?

I find the point in the signal chain at which the sound is muted has a massive effect on the type of silence produced.

11 minutes ago, ezbass said:

OK, this is video is by a guitar player and features some widdling (damn fine widdling though IMO), but you can skip past those. Chris Buck here addresses some of the very points raised in the last few pages. However, he doesn’t rant or get bent out of shape pushing his own agenda (or someone else’s), he just calmly makes a solid point that if you think something makes a difference (including breakfast cereal) and helps you perform better, it’s all good.

 

 

 

Cardiff Castle!

3 minutes ago, ezbass said:

What’s going on @neepheid @Reggaebass @RhysP? Proper measured, tongue in cheek, friendly interaction? Where are the bared teeth, shouting and machetes at dawn? Shame on you    

Sorry, I'll try harder next time. 😂

4 minutes ago, neepheid said:

I've had a little think about it and I have to come to the conclusion that the reason I don't notice differences in fretboard material is (relative) incompetence.

 

Don't get me wrong, I play to a reasonable standard, but I'm lazy and I only play when I've got a reason to - a gig, a rehearsal, learning new songs. When I'm playing, I have to concentrate in the foreground of my brain that bit more than someone who plays more often than me, so I don't have spare capacity to take in the tactile scenery as I move around the fretboard.

 

Unlike bass (an activity I partake in at most a few times a week for about the last 13 years) I've been driving for at least 28 years and have done it almost daily in that time so as a consequence I think I've become quite good at it in that natural way that good/enviable players make it seem when they're playing - things like what gear to be in, keeping the car in the direction it should be going have become background tasks so I can have spare capacity to appreciate how the car is driving, how different vehicles feel etc.

 

Sorry for derailing the thread with this waffle. Back to the boards!

I also think a lot of it has to do with people wanting to find technical reasons for liking something, and if they make a change with their gear they have to justify it someway that sounds a bit deeper than "I like the way that looks".

Saying that you bought something because you thought it looked nice is OK if you're shopping for curtains, but not basses & guitars. 🙂

I played Zon basses for years (long term members on here may remember my lovely pair of Zon Legacy fretted & fretless basses) & if I'm honest when I was playing them I wasn't even really aware of the difference in feel between the carbon fibre necks on them & the wooden necks on my other basses.

Just now, Reggaebass said:

Well yes, but no difference to the sound, if you know what I mean 🙂

I wasn't being entirely serious... 

44 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

No doubt 😁, but I couldn’t hear any difference 

You must have been able to hear that you were more in tune, surely..?  🙂

On 19/11/2021 at 09:23, neepheid said:

Am I abnormal that I've played rosewood, maple, ebony and pao ferro boards and found not one jot of difference between them all beyond the aesthetic?

 

Am I incompetent?

Am I fortunate?

 

Edit: forgot laurel.

I'm exactly the same.

For many years I preferred the look of maple boards, now I tend to prefer rosewood & ebony.

Based on my 40+ years of experience playing bass & guitar I'd say that the type of frets used has a far bigger impact on the feel/playability of an instrument than the fingerboard material. 

3 minutes ago, JapanAxe said:

Very sharp!

Naturally. It could quite easily have fallen flat though...

1 minute ago, JapanAxe said:

Tuner pedal for silent tuning (and changing over basses if necessary).

 

Put a fork in me, I’m done.

A tuning fork?

29 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

Strat maple fingerboards are coated so it’s not the wood being smooth. 
And on modern instruments the frets are too tall for the string to make any contact with the board at all.

 

If bending is hard work, polish the frets not the wood.

This.

Also, Clapton & Gilmour have done plenty of bending on rosewood fingerboards.

Gilmour's "Another Brick in the Wall pt.2" solo was recorded on a Les Paul with P90s, and I've seen him bending notes on a Gretsch DuoJet just as easily as he does on a Strat.

24 minutes ago, SumOne said:

If someone really didn't care about having any audience to their art then I don't expect they would record and release music or perform it to an audience (perhaps they'd record it so they alone could listen to it). My point is that just about everyone that creates art does care a bit about what the audience thinks of it and it must inform their art to a certain extent. 

I have many hours of recorded music that nobody will ever hear. 

It wasn't created with the intention of anyone ever hearing it.

The process of creating & recording my own music gives me great pleasure, something I never got from gigging or working with other musicians.

3 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Its the tone i'm not keen on. It sounds more like someone using Moog playing bass notes.

This is the basic issue I have with them too. Never had problems getting them to track, I just think they sound terrible. 

They sound bloody awful on all the classic tracks that get wheeled out to show how great they are IMO. Sledgehammer, that Paul Young/Pino thing - I think they all sound terrible. 

I have five Moogs & believe me they all sound a million times better than a bass through an octaver.  🙂

32 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

Yes. It's a fine art to play one as well.

 

 

Sounds like stinky poo & he's incredibly irritating.

2 hours ago, Supernaut said:

 

 

If this is meant to change my mind then it's failed miserably. 😂

36 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

Can you remember how much it was 🙂

There was no price on it, and even though they begrudging let me have a fondle of it for a few minutes they just said "You can't afford it" when I asked how much it was.

Big wodge of foam in the pickup cavity. It won't damage the wiring.

19 hours ago, mr4stringz said:

Not got a shot ‘in the wild’, but here’s mine.

 

Doing a bass/drums noisy two-piece thing currently. Very happy with this setup for it, and the first time I’ve gone down the rack route.

 

Crown XLS 1502 Power amp and

Hilbish Design Beta Preamp (doubt there are many in the UK. I got very lucky finding this I think given the high shipping and import fees).

 

Using both channels, each going to separate cabs. Channel 1 dirty bass (from the drive on the preamp), Channel 2 routed through an octave up, dirtbox and other stuff. 

 

The photo doesn’t do the preamp justice either, it’s a lovely black sparkle finish

 

Sounds gloriously massive.

 

 

Is that a Sunn Beta clone? Recognise the layout from when I had a Sunn Beta combo in the early 80s.