LITTLEWING

Any recommendations for a decent not crazy expensive tuner? I like to get intonation as spot on as I can and am still using my Boss TU-88 but fancied a strobe so I bought the headstock Peterson HDC to see what I was missing. Huge mistake, it was all over the place. Keeping the bass in a playing position sitting down if I leaned forward it went backwards and leaning back it went forwards. Then it kept telling me I was sharp so I started moving saddles back and it was an absolute nightmare. Strobe tuners DO NOT work on headstocks. Sent it back within exchange period. I’ve heard the plug in type Polytune is rather good so see what users on here say.

Funny you should say that. I was there with a pal a couple of months ago who was after a high end acoustic and it actually did feel like a music equipment exhibition which someone forgot to advertise.

Blimey, it’s closing down apparently. Can’t see a final day at the moment although the other 12 stores will still be open. I imagine there will be bargains to be had. Need to keep an eye and ear out. The online purchase dragon strikes again I guess.

I acquired an older 300 watt combo and not knowing its history just wanted a quick MOT so I can rely on it. I removed the head from the cab, sent it by courier and Dave Green turned it around within a day changing the control pots and deemed it all okay to fight another day. Charged me £9.20 and £10 shipping plus vat, came out at an amazing £23.04. In this day and age of utter wangers out there, it is so refreshing to have an absolute smiley encounter with an amazing company. Thanks again DG and Ashdown.. 5 stars!!

Sorted. Got one for less than £14 from Black Dog on eBay. Okay, it’s got the four corner screws rather that the usual five along the rear but it’s deffo done the job and to me it’s slightly comfier to play being overall 3mm wider finger spacing too.

Now here’s a new subject that I’ve actually had experience of. I’ve just seen an advert for a neck plate that gives all sorts of improvements like sustain and general liveliness. Now for my 10 pence worth - my Frankenstein P bass had a dull A (fifth fret) on the E string. Tried a few weight things on the headstock to no avail except losing a little tone on other strings. Next thing I removed the neck plate and refitted The screws with cup washers. The dead note improved considerably and there is a definite overall livelier voice going on. When you think about it, a lot of top end basses don’t have plates, they have recessed screws and ferrules and you always hear positive reviews about those. I’m assuming it was a cheap quick production process by Leo back in the day to chuck an easily removable big plate and screws for future maintenance etc.

Every bridge seems to be 57mm (19mm string spacing). A Frankenstein jazz I’m using has a 57mm and the strings don’t line up properly between the neck pickup pairs of poles. We all know the E and G have always been a flawed design on a flat jazz pickup resulting in them being a tad louder anyway, but apart from fitting threaded saddles like a vintage model, does anybody do a BBOT with 60mm spacing (20mm string spacing) E to G which will get near as dammit for aesthetic reasons and possibly more even string volume as the E and G are sitting above single poles which always seems to give a string a bit of unwanted volume and unnecessary ’grit’. I’d dearly love to fit a pair of pups with raised A and D poles to help the problem but nobody does sensibly priced units either. Does nobody care about Jazzes??

Every room at every gig is different and it’s always fun (NOT!) EQ-ing for 15 mins or more. What’s everyone’s ’start from scratch’ strategy? I personally put everything on flat and turn the bass knob nearly all the way down and get the best tone with my bass with small adjustments of mids and trebles and then adjust bass and stage volume accordingly during a couple of complete band soundchecks. I seem to find too much bass ruins everything and simply swamps everything with boomy mush.

I’m totally flabbergasted that nobody has suggested ensuring the string has been settled over the saddle properly (the witness point). Tune the E up to pitch and intonation and press the string down hard next to the saddle on the pickguard side so that it creates a slight angle. This sets a string up so that it rings properly. This should ALWAYS be done when fitting strings new or old.

Acquired a few bits and bobs and have created a 4 string Precision with a Squier Standard loaded body and an Aria Legend neck. Fitted new strings, aftermarket tuners as the old ones had tarnished and got the action at 6/64ths across the board at 17th, credit card relief, strings pressed over the saddles to attain a sharp witness point and pups set slightly lower to keep things clean. The only niggle is playing an A on 5th fret E string it doesn’t ring as prominently and dies off fairly quickly. (I’m not even going into the well known octave B, C etc on the D string)! I’ve tried different reliefs and saddle heights with no results. I know all about sympathetic resonances with necks etc and have tried adding a weight (small C clamp) to all areas on the headstock with no fantastic results apart from totally losing octave A (7th fret D string) and F 1st fret E. The only small positive gain was attaching small adhesive car wheel weights to the E tuning ear which leads me to think that cheap tuners don’t retain resonances as much as a ‘heavier’ quality tuner. Anybody gone any further in this field with positive results? Is it simply a quality neck thing along with quality components scenario?

I acquired a Stagg 40 watt combo just for indoor use and to chuck in the car to take to quiet rehearsals when recently a switch to swap two pre amp channels suddenly stopped switching and stayed stuck on one channel only. Long story short, removed push switch, tested fine, replaced on pcb. On refitting the pcb to the chassis I left most of the fascia knob fixings loose just to check if all was working. Not only did the push switch now work intermittently, annoyingly there were a few hums and buzzes going on. In a moment of thinking about binning the damn thing I refitted every washer and nut down tight to every knob and suddenly everything went quiet and it all worked 100% including the dodgy push switch. Thinking about it all afterwards, all the control knob fixings were quite loose on removal which was evidently not making a perfect circuit for everything on the metal fascia. The moral of this is, if your amp is playing around unexpectedly, it’s worth whipping your knobs off and tightening your nuts up before calling an amp tech. Every day’s a school day!

Okay, FWIW I put a multimeter set on 2M ohms on the wiper and outside terminals in situ and both tone pots are A500k.

FWIW, I purchased one on eBay from guitar anatomy and everything is absolutely perfect.

I’ve recently acquired an early (1991 stamped in the neck pocket) Musicman Sterling Stingray single pup passive four string with one volume and two tones (in full humbucker mode) and one of the tone pots is crackly despite spraying with cleaner. I want to replace it but both the backs are obscured with solder etc and can make out ALPHA on one but no value. The volume is a B500k so does anyone know if the two tones are 500’s or 250’s? I’ve searched online but can’t find a VTT diagram anywhere.

Mate of mine gave me and old sturdy Marshall tube framed combo stand with the angle close to the floor which I tried out with my old trusty Ashdown 1 x15 300 watt with two rear ports for the hell of it at a gig and was blown away by how damn huge the sound was after a little EQ-ing. Rather than the sound blasting past my legs it now seems to disperse much bigger and fills my stage space up amazingly nicely along with tons more clarity pointing up to my ears. I’m actually enjoying the huge sound rather than everything disappearing past my feet. People go on about pads and floor contact etc but it’s a whole new sonic world for my old lugs right now. I really don’t know why somebody doesn’t make a decent floor level heavy duty jobby.