EMG456

Chris was and always will be the man.

Unique and hugely influential/ inspirational.

I think when the Custom model replaced the Pro Bass, the headstock was reduced in size and was missing the two extra walnut stringers,

Some folks (including me) actually prefer the look of the originsl headstock and at first certainly, you could order your Wal Custom with the older style "paddle" headstock. I know of at least two, a matching pair of fretted/ fretless that were ordered that way.

Ed

I like the Ziricote.

Matching headstock, you say?

Never seen a Wal with one of them before. (Other than painted, that is)

Interesting.

OK - slight delay.

My music room had been dismantled recently to have the Velux windows replaced so nothing was wired up!

This was recorded straight into a channel of my old Mackie CR1604 desk. No DI box. No EQ. No compression. (you can tell that as I clip the computer's input every time I hit the low E!)

Fed straight into Cubase and again no further processing so this is literally just the sound of the bass itself and my scrappy playing.

First, neck pickup, then bridge pickup, then both together. Tone controls wide open and volumes full on.

Cheers

Ed

[url="https://soundcloud.com/eddie-mcglone/aria-jazz-bass"]https://soundcloud.com/eddie-mcglone/aria-jazz-bass[/url]

[quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1416475402' post='2610505']
Great looking bass, good job mate.

Cheeky question: any sound clips?
[/quote]

Not cheeky at all - will do some tonight!

Ed

Here we go then, scratchplate mounted- all done and it has turned out brilliantly!

[sup][/sup]

The ebony board with the clay dots looks and feels old and fantastic.

[sup][/sup]

It's a slab board like the early Fenders

[sup][/sup]

[sup][/sup]

Managed to keep the battle scars under the new finish so it's obviously an old bass in appearance.

[sup][/sup]

[sup][/sup]

It sounds great - the pickups are fat and warm and provide all the sounds you might expect. The ash body makes it quite heavy but it's comfy on a strap, relatively noise free and is a fitting tribute to my old P-bass.

So there you have it - '77 Aria Precise Bass JB-600. New ebony fingerboard, clay dots, '70's style frets, Gotoh reverse wind tuners, stack pot controls.

Back in active service again!

Cheers
Ed

Well, it's been a long time - sometimes life just gets in the way of everything and I seem to have had virtually no time for Basschat but definitely time for an update.

Jimmy Moon finished the neck at the very end of May and I picked up the newly rejoined neck and body at the start of June.

The neck is of course very nice indeed - exactly what I was looking for so it was a quick scramble to get the pickups on and see what it sounded like.

I really didn't like the protruding pole pieces so I decided to see if the poles were a simple push fit in the bobbins. I don't recommend you try this on valuable old pickups but I figured that I was not going to get the use out of the pickups as they stood so... I took one of the pickups and supported it on a couple of bits of softwood, leaving a small gap under one of the pole pieces. I then took a pair of pliers, closed, and placed the side of the jaws on the top of the pole piece and pressed down... hard. The pole piece moved down through the bobbin! Repeat the process for all 16 pole pieces over the two pickups and I now have two vintage looking pickups with virtually flush pole pieces so they really look the part. I was hoping they still worked as it was possible that the windings could have been broken internally by my antics.

Anyway, installed [url="http://basschat.co.uk/user/7835-kiogon/"]Kiogon's[/url] shielding kit and pre- wired control plate including the brass strip bridge earth and wired the pickups.

They both worked but were out of phase with each other. The bass had sounded a bit odd when I got it at first before I took it all to bits but it was kind of difficult to put your finger on things when you're playing a bass with three dead strings, no nut and an oversized fingerboard!

Checked the wiring and the pickups were wired correctly so reversed the phase of one and hey presto- everything working as it should - the two pickups are actually out of phase if you wire them up according to how they should look!

So here's the bass at that stage - still to put the scratch plate on - was waiting for some slot head pickguard screws to be delivered - all to keep the the vibe of my old p-bass that this project was based on.



And the pickups after the pole pieces had been lowered...



Next post - the finished bass!

[quote name='glefty' timestamp='1403095560' post='2479684']
There were quite a few factory fretless 4s n 5s in spirits n original steinys n they all had zero frets. Had my '92 Steiny XL2A defretted (filed down actually)15 yrs ago, action is so stupid low you'd swear the strings were in the fingerboard n plays like butta!
[/quote]

I can't comment on the Spirit basses but USA made graphite necked models only had zero frets if they were fretted basses. All factory fretless basses had no zero fret- the end of the fingerboard is ramped and the strings lie tight against it.

Cheers

Ed

Gig in the wee folk club in Edinburgh on Sunday evening started with three punters, went up to seven and finished with the original 3 again!!

A combination of the World Cup and a Sunday afternoon/ evening with nice weather (unusual to say the least for us) meant that most stayed at home.

Was a great gig though, the few who attended really enjoyed it, we got paid and are asked back in August so all in all, well worth doing it.

Cheers

Ed

I suspect that most bass rigs these days are designed with the assumption that there will be reinforcement available from a pa system.

Back in the 70's I used an Acoustic 371 rig. The cabinet was a folded horn with one 18" driver which faced the back of the cab. Almost any room I played, I could have a comfortable volume onstage whilst at the back of the room, the bass was nailing them to the wall! The cab was a long-throw design which was meant to project the sound outwards and it really worked, meaning that I rarely needed any help from the PA. It also lead to many "discussions" with sound men who had no way of taming the bass out front. And therein lies the problem with your proposed solution of a speaker whose output you can't actually hear.

So I would suggest, get a sound that you are happy with on stage. This will make you play better and enjoy your performances more. Let the front of house sound take care of itself. Most of the audience won't care or notice and the sound man will do as he thinks fit.

In my experience of going to see gigs, only about 1 in 30 or so sound men seem to be able to get even a vaguely acceptable bass sound audible to the audience so I gave up worrying about that side of things long ago!

Make yourself happy, you will make the band happy, the music happy and the crowd happy!

God I'm feeling good today!

Cheers

Ed

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1401701912' post='2465893']
For those not in the know, Norton Merlin Bass:


[/quote]

I'm obviously not in the know but I like that!

Looks like slidey pickups too?

Off to find out more!

He did a stunning voice and piano version of No Love Dying on BBC Breakfast last year.

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H3wAYrr_Ew"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H3wAYrr_Ew[/url]

Truly a thing of great beauty. Well worth the wait.

Ed

I only discovered Bobby Vega after joining this forum and for that Basschat, I will be eternally grateful.

He is a phenomenally brilliant player!

Late to the party here but I'm fairly astonished at the number of you who have not come across this problem before - it's an inbuilt "feature" of the Fender design and knowing how well Leo planned for production, I would guess that he left the lower edge of the neck pocket open on purpose so that issues of neck alignment could be easily adjusted and at little to no cost.

When I used to work in musical instrument retail, I've done literally hundreds of these - Strats, Teles, Precisions, Jazzes and all the copies too and for a quick fix I've also done the "over the knee" trick without loosening strings, neck screws or anything!

Remember that due to the length of the neck, a tiny change in the angle will move the nut across by a significant amount, thus throwing the string alignment off. Because of the radius of the fingerboard, this will also have been contributing to the buzzing E.

These movements *can* happen in transit but it's more likely that the bass was simply not assembled with huge attention to detail at the factory. And I say factory deliberately - the sheer volume of production of Fender Custom Shop instruments makes it clear to me that the FCS is very unlikely to resemble the carefully marketed image of a handful of careful and attentive master luthiers painstakingly creating exemplars of the guitar maker's craft. These are mass produced instruments to the Fender blueprint.

Or am I just an old cynic?

Anyway, glad it's sorted - looks like a nice bass.

Cheers

Ed

[quote name='jgmh315' timestamp='1400430655' post='2453751']
Funnily enough, I decided to learn Highway Star today. Great music.
[/quote]

My first real band played several DP tunes including Highway Star - great stuff!

Iain Paice was/ is one of the funkiest drummers in rock and no one could make a Hammond scream like the late, great Jon Lord. Both terrific in Paice Ashton & Lord as well.

Cheers

Ed

To keep the vibe that I want for this bass, it needs a tort scratchplate on.

one of the members here was selling a couple of different ones a while back and so I bought them on spec thinking that I would just sell one on. Needless to say however, being an Aria, neither of the plates fitted properly. So I decided to have one made.

I spoke to Howard [url="http://basschat.co.uk/user/4905-the-bass-doc/"]The Bass Doc[/url] on here and he said he had a nice piece of vintage style tort he could use for a plate. Now there was just the matter of getting a template that fitted the bass without my having to send the body away to him.

I'm not great with a craft knife but at one time I had about ten years involved with computer aided design so I'm reasonably handy on the PC so I decided to take a pencil rubbing of the front face of the body and scan it on my flatbed scanner. I could then tidy it up and print it out at exact size and make any adjustments to the image file. This way I could give Howard a number of copies of the template for him to work with.

It took two or three iterations moving certain screwhole centres a little before I was happy that the template was correct.

Here is the finished body with the new control plate and one of my printed templates during that process - mmm, of course on a 70s style ash Jazz body, a white plate would look good but I'm sticking to my guns just now!!



And here's the type of image that I sent Howard as a template for the plate.



Note that this is not the final version - there's still an extra screwhole in this one which had been used for a thumbrest on the bass when I got it and the cut out for truss adjustment is what's routed out on the body. The final plate will just have the little crescent Fender used to put on their plates. This means the plate will have to come off for truss adjustment but that's not a lot of bother on a Jazz and it's much easier than it was on my old Fender P or my Tokai P/J where the neck actually has to be loosened or removed before the truss can be adjusted!

If anybody would like a copy of the template, PM me and I'll send you a pdf but remember, it's only for an Aria Jazz from the late 70s.

I can't show you the finished effect because the body has now gone over to Jimmy Moon so that the geometry can all be checked as the new fingerboard is fitted and the neck remounted but here is the lovely scratchplate Howard made.



Progress will now halt until I get the bass back from Jimmy which is targeted to be sometime this month. He's very busy and knows that I'm not short of a bass or two so I won't be holding my breath!

Cheers

Ed

[quote name='Conan' timestamp='1400148471' post='2451145']


Sorry, but I don't agree.

I've tried a LOT of different brands and gauges in the last few years, and my experiences show that gauge DOES make a difference to volume and tone. So does brand and type of metal mind... but even when changing from, say, DR hibeams in 40-100 to the same string in 50-110 I noticed a discernable increase in both volume and tone.
[/quote]

Volume... probably. Tone... eh? An "increase" in tone? What do you mean by that? Brighter, duller, more mids?

In my opinion, you choose strings for tone and feel- volume is what you have an amp for.

Also I don't buy into the popular "heavier strings give a fuller tone" theory. A different tone, perhaps and a different feel definitely but I find heavier strings to sound •less• dynamic than lighter strings.

How light you can go is determined by how well you can modulate your touch- I settled long ago on gauges of around 40- 100 for a four string and have not seen any reason to change since.

Cheers

Ed

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1400020163' post='2450049']



Well, the EMGs may be growing on me! I had a rehearsal tonight and it was pretty loose, lots of time to mess about, and mess about I did. As the initial zing of the strings starts to fade, the resulting sound is much more to my liking. Not as Jazzy, but... it's a good sound. And I love how silent they are... Hmmm. Will I convert in the end?
[/quote]

Yep- that's you now- slippery slope!

[quote name='Conan' timestamp='1400053838' post='2450157']
If you decide you don't like the EMGs after all, I'll buy them from you!

My old Geddy Lee had EMGs in it and I loved its tone. My new(er) one has the original Fender US vintages in and I'm not so keen on the sound...

Fickle buggers ain't we?
[/quote]

I think there's an EMG J set in the for sale section just now.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' timestamp='1399991008' post='2449643']


I'd love a MIDI Wal and would be happy to sand the top off if necessary.

It's just a matter of taste isn't it, there's no point getting all worked up about it.
[/quote]

Haha, good man- I actually did LOL there!

[quote name='CamdenRob' timestamp='1399985400' post='2449584']


Your sounds a bit further down the line than mine... mine currently looks like this....



Only a year to go!


*Edit* I'm also not a postman....
[/quote]

Looking good Rob!

Yeah, mine came trundling out of High Wycombe in '92 or '93 - I've forgotten when exactly!

[quote name='thisnameistaken' timestamp='1399984079' post='2449565']


I don't know why you're getting so angry about a hypothetical bass you might not even order.

For the record I really like Wals.
[/quote]

Not wishing to second guess the gent in question but it just might have been a reaction to your own diatribe above re "classic '80s cliche nouveau riche types" and "fat ex- postman lottery winners"??

I don't think you'd like my Wal probably... it's got a quilt maple top, five strings, gold hardware and midi. Oops!

Cheers

Ed

[quote name='Cameronj279' timestamp='1399980629' post='2449515'] Really not understanding the resentment towards people owning expensive instruments. I figure if someone can afford something and they want it then why not. [/quote]

There is indeed quite a lot of that on this forum.

I don't know where it comes from but it's similar to the sort of inverted snobbery shown in many threads like "no one needs anything other than a Fender Precision" or "why would a bass player even *go* above the 12th fret?!".

There seem to be a lot of chips on a lot of shoulders here.

Cheers

Ed

Nice bass.

Personally (what else?!) I like EMGs on a Jazz. Actually, I like EMGs on most anything -they're excellent pickiups - articulate, clear, full range and noise free. I once had one of the early AVRI Jazzes from the Fullerton era and I only managed two gigs with it before the electronics were replaced by an EMG setup. It was the noise and buzzing which got to me. I suspect that if you're used to it, it's less of an issue but it still bugs me.

So I vote for keeping the EMGs.

That means you could sell me your DiMarzios for my Aria rescue project here - [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/234069-1977-aria-rescue/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/234069-1977-aria-rescue/[/url]

Enjoy the new bass!

Cheers

Ed