JPJ

My experience is that most piezo type pickups benefit from a preamp designed to cope with the high impedence. Once you have a good preamp, any bass amp or as some have suggested powered PA speaker will work fine. Again, from my experience (mostly EUB) smaller speakers seem to work best with double bass, and my own ‘go to’ gig amp is the little TC Electronics BG250 208 combo which you’ll often see pop up on here for around £150 second hand. I use the EBS Stanley Clarke preamp pedal because on most gigs I am doubling either db/EUB with fretless or fretted electric bass.

Our gig for our acoustic trio was in a pub made out of three separate but connected rooms arranged in an L shape, where we play in the corner of the L. I’d spent the afternoon uploading a new profile to my DriveRack for just the two EV ZLX15 tops (no subs required), and I also built a completely new scene file in the X-Air XR18 for the trio rather than using a cutdown scene from the now defunct electric band. Result was a back-to-basics cleaner sound without the layering of previous tweaks and adjustments. Overall, I was very happy with the FOH sound, and this was also both my first gig using an acoustic upright double bass, and my first playing without any form of backline. Relying on the FOH sound for monitoring my bass playing was in hindsight a mistake, and for future trio gigs I will use my in-ears for personal monitoring.

Just to close out on this thread, following the purchase of Lilly, we played our first gig together on Saturday night up in deepest darkest Northumberland. As I was bringing the PA, I left my amp at home so this was a gig of two firsts, first full gig on acoustic double bass, and first gig without any form of backline. Relying solely on the FOH for monitoring was possibly a leap too far, so I will be using my IEM’s for the next outing, but other than that it was a massively pleasing experience and Lilly received a lot of compliments from the crowd comprising of friends of the band, locals, and others who had travelled to see us.

Thanks Nick, By experimentation, I think the fault lies right where the cable disappears in to the rubbery gunk, so I think its probably a right off

Does anyone know of someone who repairs Piezo double bass pickups? My Underwood has developed a fault in the wiring on the bass side element just where the cable enters the piezo element and it causes the pickup to cut out completely so I’m sure it’s some kind of short.

Does anyone know of someone who repairs Piezo double bass pickups? My Underwood has developed a fault in the wiring on the bass side element just where the cable enters the piezo element and it causes the pickup to cut out completely so I’m sure it’s some kind of short.

A gig of two firsts for me, first gig on a proper acoustic double bass, and first gig without any form of backline. Our female fronted acoustic trio played up in the wilds of Wanney at the Queens Head in Glanton Northumberland. It’s a strange place to play, the pub is essentially three inter-connected rooms laid out in an L shape and you play in the corner of the L to effectively two separate rooms. We had an enthusiastic crowd made up of locals and friends of the band, some of who had brought their instruments with them (12 string guitar, 6 string guitars, cajon, and even a cello) so things got a little ‘off piste’ at times with the various guest spots. Playing without backline was ‘interesting’ and next time I will definitely use my in-ears as I was struggling to really hear the E string and as a result I have a lovely pair of blisters on my plucking fingers. For the gear sluts, here is the obligatory ‘office’ photo 😎

Yes, but check pickup dimensions before you buy, not all pickups (especially J bass pickups) are the same size.

Thanks for this, I’ve been playing Simple Man for over 14 years with our Southern Rock tribute. Ed King’s bass lines on both Simple Man and Freebird use similar licks, although I have been accused of over playing on Simple Man when playing the original bass line 🤷‍♂️

My self assembly PJ five string has the stack pot arrangement from KiOgon and it’s very versatile. That said, my Fender Tony Franklin fretless PJ has conventional volume and tone and a three-way switch which works equally well but I suspect that the P & the J pickups are very well matched. Those Tonerider pickups are excellent, but be careful as some of their P pickups are very ‘hot’ and will easily overpower the J.

So having spent some money on a Gewa Prestige gig bag (money well spent, this thing looks fit for the road with plenty of padding and pockets galore), last night Lilly and I took part in an acoustic rehearsal. She sat so lovely along side two acoustic guitars, looking forward to gigging her next weekend (hopefully our singers laryngitis will have cleared before then 🤞).

Found this on the GSS site - input sensitivity 10kohm?

Are you driving the Sumo hard enough? Given that the output of any amplifier is governed by the ‘strength’ of the input signal, it sounds like you might need to turn the VT1 up a bit to give the Sumo something more to amplify?