Kiwi

Ooh, don't stand on formality. Goodness knows I'm isolated enough here as it is.

Let me know if you make it over. I'll be the one dressed like Elvis...in stormtrooper armour

I'm going to see Flight of the Conchords on the 26th of June. Not expecting to see many BCer's...

site has crashed.

I held the cat over strings on my bass once and it made a similar noise.

Can't help unfortunately. But I have a few of my instruments microchipped. Yes, in an identical way to pets. That way if (god forbid) I have anything stolen I'll at least be able to remove all doubt that its mine.

I'm scared Scott. I'm scared that deconstructing the groove will be like statistical analysis of humour. Any advice?

I've always wondered what happened to the graphite necked Ritter with a soft velvety fabric covering that was advertised on here many many years ago. Would have been a bargain compared to prices now.

The pot locations match, the pickups match. There's an additional bit of scratch plate and clearly its routed for another pickup. Why look further?

Looks like a heavily modified Fender Precision Elite II to me.

Starting to regret not registering basschap.co.uk...

[quote name='Prosebass' timestamp='1339929156' post='1696308'] Saw him last night at the Manchester Deaf Institute, superb. [/quote] I have an image in my head of Black and Gold but with no sound...lol

I emailed Mr Agnew about the possibility of a super champ inspired combo. This was his reply: [i]"Not as of yet ! I was hoping to start doing something along those lines but it going to be well over 12months before we can look at it more seriously...[/i] [i]...check back again sometime later next year when I hope to be putting out a rivera era' fender oriented type amp... "[/i]

My Shuker Headless 6 runs into an Axon AX100 pitch to MIDI convertor which drives a Roland JV1080.

An I-lok is just a USB drive. I have one for proTools. The right files still need to be on it. You can use an I-lok to store files for more than one piece of software though, which can be handy.

So this is the site? [url="http://cagnewguitars.com/Contact.html"]http://cagnewguitars.com/Contact.html[/url] [quote name='Bassnut62' timestamp='1339761929' post='1693878'] PS. fine set of interests you have there, old fruit! tally ho, up the empire, wot, wot!![/quote] Up Pompei also. Haw haw haw.

[quote name='LawrenceH' timestamp='1339757236' post='1693772'] And I'd be changing the overall tension as well as damping by how I held the neck and body. [/quote] If you were putting more tension on the neck and changing the tension of the string you would be changing the pitch. If you weren't changing the string tension but just helping the instrument become stiffer, then you could expect more sustain. I doubt you could change the dampening characteristics of the materials however because you're not changing how the string contacts the instrument at fret/nut and saddle. [quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1339756509' post='1693755'] I know that there are differences between species BUT I a m also sure they don't say theres a bit of oak lets build from it. would I be correct in saying that it is checked it is suitable first? But we are not talking about structural properties but the properties involved in influencing tone or timbre . How vibrations transmit through it. I would say that even a small change would have a big affect if the wood was a major influence of tone. [/quote] Oak instruments have been made in the past. They didn't catch on. Fodera use ash in their necks now, as well as their bodies and I believe MTD do as well. Wood grain and structure may or may not have an influence but I suggest it's moot unless someone can tie those differences into what is heard/felt. As I said earlier, its possible for two pieces of wood from different species to have similar characteristics.

OK so there's a lack of clarity here. Pitch is a property of the tension of the string. Increase the tension and increase the pitch. But when you play a note, the string doesn't just emit vibrations at one frequency. It emits them at a whole range of frequencies, its just that some are louder than others. Play a harmonic and you'll hear just the higher frequencies of an open string without hearing the main note (sometimes called the fundamental). Those harmonics have a mathematical relationship to the fundamental. But they won't have the same volume as the fundamental, which is why you will hear the fundamental frequencies more when you play the note normally. The stiffness of wood dampens the volume of other harmonics that you hear. But the way it dampens varies depending on how stiff the wood is and how the wood vibrates along with the string. Play a through necked solid graphite bass with a phenolic fingerboard and hifi pickups. You'll hear pretty much everything because the bass as a structure isn't vibrating much. Some might describe the sound as clattery and brittle because a lot of harmonic content is making its way through to your ears. You might also miss additional warmth if you're used to the sound of wooden instruments. A soft wooden fingerboard would dampen some high frequencies. Higher frequencies tend to be more directional and easier to dampen. The higher frequencies also tend to come directly from the points where the fretted string contacts the instrument i.e. fret and bridge saddle. Because both fret and string saddles offer points of contact you could probably achieve a similar effect to a wooden fingerboard by mounting the string saddles on a piece of fingerboard material as well. ErnieBall latched on to this with the mahogany 'toneblocks' in their 25th anniversary stingrays.

[quote name='LawrenceH' timestamp='1339756219' post='1693749'] That's the same thing, just approached from the other direction surely? The stiffness in the structure is critical for the tuning of the string, if the wood vibrated substantially at low frequency you'd have too much interaction and pitch would wobble all over the place depending on how hard you held the neck! It would sound all weird and intermodulation-distortiony [/quote] It wouldn't wobble. You're describing phase cancellation which only happens where there are two or more sources of vibration. The tuning of the string is a property of tension, not dampening.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1339755939' post='1693743'] The lack of stiffness in the structure (and other resonant properties causing damping etc) is what effects the vibration of the string. [/quote] Yes. It affects the sustain and frequency response.

The bass, simply as a structure, will vibrate if it isn't 100% stiff. Build a bass out of granite. A granite bass guitar might be 95% stiff. It'll vibrate still but not to a degree that it will impact on the sound that can be heard. It would be a pretty efficient structure. A granite mountain might be 99.999999999% efficient. It will still vibrate but not to a measurable degree. Conversely, build a bass out of stiff foam rubber. It'll make a sound but a very dead sound with no sustain. Which is attractive? It's subjective. But just because a material is structurally efficient doesn't mean it will sound attractive. Dampening is pretty important. Rob Green knows this. He's gone from MDF cores in his Stealth I instruments to epoxy foam in his Stealth II instruments because the epoxy foam has more attractive dampening properties. Not a piece of wood in sight. But damn fine sounding instruments all the same.