Kiwi

welcome aboard matey

Well if it was me, I'd go for a chambered mahogany body and a 5 piece laminated maple (3x) and mahogany (2x) with graphite reinforcing and a super thick compound radiussed ebony fingerboard. For pickups I think humbuckers with parallel wired coils with coil switching to allow single coil use, to allow for Wal and Jazz bass sounds, and a preamp with sweepable mid control. But if the bass sounds right then why not keep it passive? The mahogany will give lots of midrange growl with enough maple to keep the neck from being too seasonally temperamental. The ebony fingerboard will provide some brightness to the top end without it sounding too bright. The fingerboard needs to be thick enough again to reduce the flex so that once the fingerboard has been radiussed and flattened under simulated string tension, it will play with super low action given your choice of strings.

[quote name='Boney' post='472811' date='Apr 26 2009, 06:04 PM']Sex or age unimportant. But we would prefer a human.[/quote] *sucks teeth* could be tricky...

Yeah but Kemp would beat him in a fight.

[quote name='OldGit' post='471944' date='Apr 24 2009, 11:41 PM']There certainly were hardly any Alembics in the UK in the 70's but was that the first active basses?[/quote] [quote name='deaver' post='471953' date='Apr 25 2009, 12:17 AM']First 'active from the ground up' according to the book.[/quote] The Burns TR2 bass was made in 1963 which was manufactured with a preamp onboard. Goes without saying that the Alembic was much more sophisticated though.

Have you used a wide variety of passive instruments through the amp? I was wondering whether they might have microphonic pickups if your gain levels are set too high.

[quote name='7string' post='472360' date='Apr 25 2009, 08:06 PM']I'm surprised you're so relaxed about all this. I would have been throwing the toys out of the pram by now. [/quote] I've thought about it but I don't think it would motivate him that much. Jon's not in the game to make money, I think. He's in it to earn a living but to enjoy what he does. If he was in it for the money, he could have become a furniture maker instead and earned loads more. I'm meeting up with Chris Celinder next week when he stops off in London and he's in pretty much that same position (although his operation was larger than Jon's at one point). Being essentially a one person operation, whatever time Jon spends talking on the phone or to people who drop in unannounced, chasing suppliers or doing the accounts, the less time there is to spend on the luthiery. Rob helps but doesn't get involved in any of the tricky custom stuff, so a long wait is inevitable for the custom work. Plus the more I harrass him about my stuff, the less time he has to spend on other people's instruments and there have been some like MacDaddy who have been waiting longer than me. At least I've managed to play my instrument! In project management there's always a trade off between time vs cost vs quality. You can have two at the expense of one, basically. Jon's definitely about quality and value for money so its inevitable that things are going to take longer if he has to figure out new ways of doing stuff without charging by the hour for his time. I think it might be like this for most one person operations that are successful regardless of how much they charge.

Eubassix used to own one. Might be worth dropping him a PM maybe?

I think he's playing a MkII in the Wossy clip FWIW live Aid: Friday's show: I'm surprised anyone could tell what the Wal sounded like in the Live Aid clip, it was submerged under so much chorus.

[quote name='steve-soar' post='472279' date='Apr 25 2009, 05:14 PM']Hi Steve, is there any news about the bass?[/quote] Yes! As a matter of fact I've been pestering Jon on a weekly basis about it. Turns out that there was a defective coil in the neck pickup, according to Andy at Wizard. He's fixed it and suggests that the bass will probably sound a whole lot fatter. Jon doesn't have a clue how it ended up like that because the coils are set in epoxy. So I will have to go up there and play the bass to see what kind of improvement the repaired coil delivers. The neck was relatively straight forward to narrow down. Jon managed to do it without taking the stainless steel frets out which was good otherwise there would have been a whole load of extra faff involved. I asked for the neck to be refinished in satin which Jon was happy to do because, again, it means less faff with finishing. I don't know whether he's routed an extra battery cavity yet but the new Shuker 3 band sweep eq is unlikely to be ready. So Jon is going to put connectors on the end of the pickup wires so I can install the pre myself in NZ. I'm half tempted to install the U-retro out of the Spector in there out of curiosity, too. He's also managed to find some smaller knobs and they're going on as well now the controls have been swapped about. The only thing I haven't asked after are the Newtone custom, exposed core strings...but the bass is almost ready to collect. Jon just needs to spray the strat body he's had for the last 12 months and I'll be able to collect quite a few bits from him. [quote name='steve-soar' post='472279' date='Apr 25 2009, 05:14 PM']BTW, I'd love the Mesa amp for the Stereo in the cellar but I've got nowt to sell to spring the cash. It would sound cool with my DB680, oh for Gods sake, take it off sale, it's doing my head in. [/quote] LOL The Mesa is the ultimate. G'warrrrn, you know you want it.

[quote name='chris_b' post='471692' date='Apr 24 2009, 04:49 PM']Somebody switch the lights on in the design dept, so they can see what they're doing!!![/quote] +1 and their copywriter as well. [i]"Controls: Passive preamp: 500kohm volume and 250kohm tone - .047µF tone capacitor; Active preamp: 4-band EQ – 25kohm volume, treble, high-mid, low-mid, bass"[/i] What is a "passive preamp"?

Maybe in Germany they're all chasing Status basses still and don't recognise Wal's as readily? Lovely score Oliver, I really don't know how you manage to track them down.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='471580' date='Apr 24 2009, 03:01 PM']3. StingRay 4. Rickenbacker 5. Alembic? Alex[/quote] I'd broadly agree with that in terms of use by bands. Alembics would probably trump Ricks in the studio given how popular they are in Nashville though.

[quote name='urb' post='470909' date='Apr 23 2009, 04:31 PM']Nice audio version here: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcNDp8JoJFM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcNDp8JoJFM[/url] Really tacky early 90s fusion video - I am a HUGE Alain Caron fan but this is a bit dated - though he does SLAP the entire head perfectly[/quote] I like how close he's come to emulating an arpeggiator line. Thats something I'd be quite interested in developing myself but maybe not with slap.

There's bound to be a fairly strong demand for that bit of kit. The provenance aside, those B15's have been used on so many other recordings too.

I agree, I recently heard the original on some digital channel and the bass lines just leapt out for their off-beat quirkyness. How fitting is that? Its not the sort of bassline I'd be inclined to play myself but they were great to listen to.

any sound samples?