WinterMute

Seems everyone round here is on their second or third ACG so I thought I'd give Alan a chance to make me the fretless bass to replace the 20th Anniversary SR5 I can't bloody find! We've agreed to a Krell 5 with his ART black Maple Burl front and back, a swamp ash core and a mahogany central block lifted straight from the 20th Anni design. it'a going to have an acrylic infused Lava Bubinga fretboard with a wenge/paduak/maple neck and padauk accents. Alans building to a 17mm spacing rather than his usual 18mm, which I find a bit of a stretch. Coming from 16.5mm on the Warwick Thumb 5 to 17.5mm on my SR5s and Bongo was enough. I'm having twin RFB pups, ceramic in the bridge position and alnico in the neck, but both will be bridge orientated, like the odd Wal 2 series and the older Thumb designs. a 3 position switch for each pup will give great versatility, I'm going with the DFM 4k filter pre-amp. Not brave enough to have an unlined board these days, but that's fine with me. Now I just have to wait a year to see what he comes up with.... Here are the woods we've chosen:

You're not the first with such hearty praise, I'm really excited to see what he's going to do with the woods we've chosen the the Krell design.

I'm just arranging my ACG build with Alan, not a milestone, I just can't find a fretless 20th Anni SR5 for love nor money... My best mate bought me my stealthy Bongo 5 for my 50th, the magnificent old sod.

Particularly then it comes to pies, it seems...

There is much truth in this post.

I think there's no doubt that a very well constructed instrument will show off the tone in pups and pre's better than a slab of plywood and some razor wire... It's also true to say that if I pick up the bass of doom or Geddy's Jazz, I won't sound anything like Pastorius or Geddy Lee, tone resides in the combination of the player and the bass, and the bass is the sum of it's parts, some are better than that sum, and some are worse.

So, I'm think of getting Alan at ACG to build me a 5 string fretless as I can't find a 20th Anni SR5 fretless for love nor money, this naturally led me into a bit of research about woods and construction and I've been reading a lot about this over the past week. It seems to me that a number of things are true: Solid bodied instruments are less (or not at all) susceptible to variations in tone depending on what they're made of. Rigidity is key and acoustic instrument make better use of the tonal variations in woods as they are intrinsically weaker and so less rigid, which seems to allow the wood to resonate with the chambering/hollow bodies. Most of the "tone" in an electric instrument comes from the pups, the pre-amp, the amp/effects and player. Rigid is an excellent word. All that said, my 20th Anni SR5 fretted doesn't sound like any other SR5 I've played, and this may be due to the use of a mahogany "tone block" that the pups and neck connect to, or it may just be the Alnico pup and the new pre EB put in the thing. Could also be magic, I don't know. I've asked Alan a few questions, he seems to know what he's doing.

Geddy Lee's solo album My Favourite Headache...

Most engineers I've known work in mono and stereo all the way through the mix process, some more than others, John Leckie does a lot of stuff in mono for instance. I switch between the two modes as and when required, it's a tool or technique to solve specific problems just like EQ or compression, but the idea of staying in mono for most of the mix process doesn't appeal. As you say each to their own.

The only issue I've found with referencing mixes in mono is that you can overdo the separation in the EQ a little bit and end up with your instruments not meshing together and blending to form the overall mix. Frequency masking is a problem, but EQ isn't the only way to deal with it, panning works well, which you can't do in a mono mix obvs..! I prefer mixes to be dense and integrated, and I'll sacrifice a bit of separation to get that integration if I have to particularly in the low mid area. Some good advice though, and great delivery.

Journey at the NEC a couple of years back, supported by Foreigner who were surprisingly decent and Styx, who were definitely present. Left after 3 songs of the journey set, sound was abysmal, Schonn wouldn't stop bloody widdling even between songs and they completely ignored the poor Phillapino guy they'd drafted in after Perry fell to pieces. To be fair, he was working his derrière off to make it work, but they just looked like the wished Perry was still with them. Extremely poor, went home. Left Karnivool's roundhouse gig about halfway through cos the sound was so bad and I fell asleep in the balcony. Left Alter Bridge's Albert Hall gig about half-way through too, the engineer couldn't reconcile a full orchestra with a rock band and victorian acoustic, couldn't hear anything until the solo number with the orchestra and Kennedy, by then I was bored. Generally it's bad sound that does it for me.

Most of it's been rescued from No. 2 boys collection as he gets into building the bigger stuff, although the Lunar Lander was for me...! He's just started the Technic Porche 911, we did the Lambo and the Land Rover last year, both really fun builds.

Al Murray, when not pulling dodgy pints, is a very decent drummer, his band The Fat Cops don't do much for me but they can play and he's a great bloke, I used to run his shows at the Cosmic Comedy club in the old Greyhound pub.

props...

No, it was a smaller venue than Bingley, saw Fleetwood Mac there on the Tusk tour, it was something like West Brom town hall or the like, they were headlining. Saw Budgie at the Odeon supporting Blizzard of Ozz, that was a gig.

Saw Angel Witch in Brum somewhere, wasn't the Odeon, probably 1980, briefly dated Raven's Gallagher brothers sister Elaine at college and ended up playing in a band with Jackie Bodimead late of Girlschool for a while in the early 90's.... Tenuous connection city, Arizona.

As mentioned before in this tread: Geddy Lee: Moving Pictures/Permanent Waves era Jaco with Joni Mitchell, particularly Hejira but also his live work on Shadows and Light. Also: Karnivool Roquefort, love that aggression.

Ain't that the truth. Find a take you like most of, edit the rest to fit, move on.

Engineers tend to listen for different things, producers are more aligned with musicians and performance, the best engineers will pick up timing inconsistencies etc. as a matter of course, but are really listening for tone, clipping, any technical issues that might affect the recording. If you've got someone doing both jobs stuff gets missed and needs fixing later usually. All these things are academic if the clock wins however.

This is why good engineer/producers will always be useful. Although, as other have noted, sometimes "good enough" isn't. However I'm a firm believer in not sacrificing the good on the alter of the perfect.

Do what everybody else does, fix it in post... I've recorded some serious bassists over the years, and not a single one has ever said, "I want the whole performance, warts and all" and many have said "you can tidy that up in the edit, right?" Unless you're Dave Grohl deliberately tracking to 2" tape for stinky poos n giggles, all recordings will be edited. Get it as close as you can paying more attention to tone, groove and character, then fix the fluffs later. I remember spending hours punching in bass lines, sometimes phrase by phrase, on a 2" 24 track, how is protools different? Having said that, nailing a one-taker is still a thing of wonder.

Could be almost anything connected to your system, could be coming top the earth to. Get your system set up so you can see it happening and then start turning stuff off unit by unit (might want to mute your speakers.) start with instruments/amps then go through till you've just got the MBP and the interface turned on, that should tell you where it's coming from. It doesn't look regular so it could be a dry joint in a cable.