WinterMute

No, he's right, Warwicks shipped with a particularly aromatic wax that left the bass smelling very distinctive.

Production sounds dated, yes, but the songs? Some of those early metal albums were just godly, even if they sound a bit weedy by comparison with modern recordings. Take a listen to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours on a good system, or Dire Straits first 2 albums, properly brilliant production and recording. I think the more original an artist is the slower they date, Jeff Buckley's Grace is timeless.

I had an 87 Thumb 5 with the single-piece Schaller style bridge, it was a monster, balanced, powerful, beautiful to play, not a hint of neck dive, they changed the body shape and the headstock design quite a bit over the years, the curved body went slabby and the woods changed. I'd still say that was worth a look at though.

I don't think songs date, per se, I think production techniques date massively, to the point that you can nail a production down by a snare drum sample sometimes. Songs get endlessly covered, some poorly, some extremely well, but music can be adapted into almost any other style, and so can be presented in a "modern" idiom fairly easily. There are some timeless productions, Sgt. Pepper, some of Joni's work, particularly Shadows and Light, Kate Bush's Hounds of Love and Sensual World era, some of the iconic metal bands best work maybe. I'm sure there are timeless jazz recordings too, but I don't listen to much Jazz. B*tch*s Brew sounds like it was recorded yesterday.

Like the triple dots, not many designs carry the width of the 6 string neck well, for instance I've always though 6 string Thumbs look odd, but Alan's body designs seem to scale up and down really well. That's going to be a proper looker.

I love watching Alan's work progressing, regardless of wether it's my bass or not, he does some cracking basses.

Latest from Alan today, Neck ready for mounting.

I've been struggling with the sub 120hz content in my studio for a while, the problem is that the room is too small and the nodes interact dramatically in that band. In order to combat that I've bass trapped all the corners and put absorption liberally at the ER points. The room sounds pretty good above 120hz, a little HF tweaking but otherwise reasonably even, but the LF drops off a cliff at 120hz and the software room equalisation can only do so much, basically the Amphion One18's just don't carry the weight in such a heavily trapped room. I'm going to lose a couple of the bass traps on the front wall to see if I can't open ehLF up a little at the listening position. So, enter Amphion's FlexBase25, a single pillar stereo bass management system that controls the amount of LF in the main speakers and adds 1400w of seamless bass amp and speakers. Essentially it turns a pair of very capable near-field speakers into full-range 3 way monitors with bass management. It's going in tomorrow, I'll let you now how well it does.

For sure, but that's how impedance works in the different states.

Depends if you go series or parallel of course, in series it's 16 ohms, in parallel 4 ohms.

Fingers for me, haven't used a pick for decades, I find the control and articulation I get offsets the extra attack from a pick, and I get plenty of attack from the way I play in any case.

Mine was MIJ I think, it's long gone as I went back to 5 string. Lovely bass though.

They use different IR's if I remember rightly, the Stomp shares the models with the whole Helix range and has more in common with them architecturally and sound-wise, the Go is a it like the old Pod XTs. The Go will be easier to use live, but a decent MIDI pedal and you're sorted. I replaced a Pod XT Pro rack with my Stomp, it's a much better sounding unit.

Overall, probably the Jazz in that context, but the Ray will cut in a mix much better.

My Geddy Lee Jazz needed occasional tweaking seasonally, but none of the MM SR5's or the Bongo ever seem to move. My wenge/bubinga Thumb got set up once a decade...

That fellow had the air of someone who has had to do that exact thing with that exact woman many, many times...

I picked up a bass for the first time in 1980, I'd done a bit of singing in school bands but my mate Steve Wilson (no, on that Steve Wilson) said he could teach me to play bass and we could start a band, then he played me Permanent Waves, and I wanted to be Geddy Lee... His playing changed the way I thought about music and bass, so that was a big influence on my life generally. Playing in bands led to engineering and producing, which led to lecturing about engineering and producing which led to designing and building studios for people to engineer and produce, and that's where I am today, whilst I imagine I'd have got there without Rush, the way I play and the attitude to music as a driving force for a professional life definitely comes from that hour is Steve's house listening to Spirit of Radio and Freewill... There are others too, Zeppelin's grandeur, Pink Floyd's lyrical and thematic pretensions, Tony Levin's invention, Leonard Cohen's humour, but Rush has been an enduring presence in my life and for the better.

"Certainly"? Thass fighting' talk around these here parts... I always thought they looked like they'd been left on a radiator. Fugly is as fugly does I guess, isn't it great they we don't all like the same thing, and that that thing isn't a standard Precision.

yes, looking forward to playing with it, unusually for me I'm having 2 pickups, neck is ceramic and bridge is alnico, both pushed right back like my old Thumb or some of the Wals, should be a bit of a tone monster.

I can't find a fretless 20th Anni anywhere, they only made 30 I believe. I'm having Alan at ACG make me a fretless with the mahogany core and swamp ash body in the hope it'll have some of the same characteristics as the 20th Anni TBH it'll be an awesome bass even if it doesn't, his stuff is so good.

I've got one of those too, 20th Anniversary, best SR5 ever made IMO.

I bought a Warwick Thumb 5 string in 1987 after playing a fretless one in Wapping Bass Centre that was a custom order for Jack Bruce, I bought a fretted one fully intending to get a fretless as well as soon as I had the funds, I never did and didn't play fretless for a long time. I don't regret the Thumb, it was a fantastic bass for 20 years before I moved it on, but I should have bought the fretless as well, dammit.

I've got it's evil twin, the matt stealth 5 string, never seen a white Bongo before, that's a proper looker.

The Effects return cuts out the pre-amp and injects your signal directly into the power amp with the master volume in circuit, which is fine if you want to use the Helix as the entire tone shaping system, not the Ampeg pre-amp. If you want to use the Ampeg sound, run into the input on the front, engage the 15db pad and set the output level of the Helix to about 70%, then use the gain controls to set the tone in the Ampeg. If the clip light comes on with little gain in the Ampeg, back the Helix off to say 50% and make the gain up in the Ampeg preamp, EQ your sound to suit, and turn up the master volume till you can't hear the drummer.

All the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order...