Kiwi

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.

String vibrates because its part of a stiff structure. The structure can be made of any material. The degree of stiffness influences how much sustain there is. All materials have a resonance. This resonance can be at a frequency that coincides with the vibrations of a string or not. It depends on the harmonics in the resonance and the harmonics in the string at the frequency it vibrates at. If the resonance is at a frequency which is lower than the lowest frequency of the vibrating string, then this results in a more consistent sound and no deadspots. The two mix in unpredictable ways sometimes. The more uniform the structural material is, the more predictable and consistent the resonance characteristics will be. Graphite composite is a very consistent material. The results are fairly consistent if the same construction techniques are used. This is what Alembic and (I guess) Status aim for. Whether their instruments sound attractive is a matter of taste (and in some cases signal chain). Where wood is concerned, it is very inconsistent. When supporting a vibrating string, the resonance characteristics of wood will vary according to density, weight and mass. These properties will vary not only between wood from trees of different species but also between locations on the same tree. For example, wood nearer the root will typically be denser than wood further up. It is possible, in principle, to find wood from different species and different locations in a tree that have similar properties also. So a piece of alder can have similar characteristics to a piece of mahogany. The main value that a CUSTOM luthier will bring to a bass building project is their ability to predict the resonant characteristics of a piece (or pieces) of wood BEFORE they build the instrument and understand what that means, in terms of tone, to the customer. Imagine how many instruments it would take, for example, for someone to understand the full spectrum of character that...say, maple necks and alder bodies have. I'd suggest it would probably take about a hundred to a hundred and fifty instruments to become confident. Assuming those instruments were all built the same way and with the same woods. With luthiers who provide custom instruments of whatever wood configurations the customer requests it gets really complicated. How many instruments would it take for them to predict the tonal characteristics of all the different woods selected, in various applications as neck lams, wings, tops, fingerboards, etc.? Thousands? There's a lot to be said for setting limits. Wal did this with their mahogany bodied instruments and sycamore/hickory necks. They ended up with a very consistent product. ErnieBall/Musicman, Alembic, Celinder, Tobias and Ken Smith have too. Bass making is like cooking. You can add yeast, water and flour together consistently and get a relatively consistent but boring product...bread. Add the same ingredients but use wholemeal flour...or brown sugar...or brewers yeast to replace one ingredient. How much difference does that make? These are like woods. What if other flavouring ingredients were used, like onion, herbs or seeds? These are like electronics, pickups or strings. The important thing is to find someone who makes something consistently first, and secondly something that sounds attractive. So much of what I've tried has been inconsistent between instruments. I believe predictability is the most important quality for a bass guitar. Otherwise, go into a music shop and try something. If you like it, buy it. Don't expect any other instrument ever made in the history of creation to sound as good. You pays your money and you takes your choice but none of us are there to fund a luthiers' training.

Nice looking set up there - love how its colour coordinated too