BigRedX

What I was trying to imply was that as soon as you fit the required magnetic pickup to an acoustic guitar from using an Ebow PoV it is has become no different to an electric guitar.

And he's solved it by adding a magnetic pickup to his acoustic guitar and then fitting strings that are affected by magnets.

I assume then that Happy Jack intends to use the same strings for both fretless and fretted playing? Also that you are going to put some sort of over-all string retainer behind the nut to mimic the break angle produced by the Lull angled headstock so as to try and keep string compliance consistent between necks?

@Linus27 Do you also play guitar? If so even if you can't make the Ebow work with the bass, you'll have hours of fun with it on the guitar. BTW it's a non-starter for acoustic instruments since the Ebow requires the interaction with the magnetic field produced by the pickup the generate the bowing effect. I'd have a good look at the Michael Manring video (#3) and see if you think you can invest the required time and practice to make it work on the bass guitar (I couldn't, but then I also play the guitar where it works brilliantly with almost zero investment in practice time). And as you will see from the video it will help considerably if you have a bass with an extended fingerboard that you can rest the Ebow against whilst still being close enough to the magnetic field of the pickup for it to activate and produce the bowing effect.

I suppose because it's so effortless on the guitar (give any guitar player an Ebow and they'll be getting great sounds out of it within seconds), I've never bothered to invest the time required to make it work on an instrument that has not been designed for. All those videos you've posted show just how awkward it is to use on the bass - except for the one that has two Ebows joined together which is able to rest on the strings between those being bowed. Hammering on the get the note started does work, but being able to fade notes in and control the volume of the bowing by moving the Ebow along the string closer to the pickup requires more dexterity thanthe videos show (again something that is trivial to do on the guitar) Also IME much of the difference between having frets and not having frets will be lost once you add a bit of distortion and delay to the sound (which you will almost definitely want to do). To the OP. By all means have a go and see how you get on. Then lend your Ebow to your guitarist and see how quickly they are able to achieve the same thing (and a lot more besides) using it with a guitar.

I've used the Ebow lots on the guitar but I have never been able to get it work reliably on the bass. There are three things that you need to consider. Firstly the conventional way of "holding" the Ebow is to rest it on the strings either side of the one being bowed. There are handy grooves in the base of the Ebow to allow this. On nearly all basses the strings are too far apart, sometimes to the point where the Ebow will completely fit between the adjacent strings, and even if it doesn't it will never reliably rest on them. This means that you need to hold the Ebow a lot tighter and position it far more precisely it order to hold it in the correct place so that it bows the string and does not touch it which will stop the bowing. Any unwanted movement will either reduce the volume of the bowing effect or kill it dead. Secondly the energy required to bow the strings on a bass tends to be greater than the device is capable of, especially if you want the Ebow itself to initiate the string vibration. I've only been able to get the Ebow to bow bass strings if I have first started them vibrating by "hammering-on", which limits what you can do and the kinds of attack available to the notes. Finally IME on the guitar the Ebow always works best in conjunction with the neck pickup, where the full range of bowing effects are available and you can easily use the Ebow to directly drive the pickup for more extreme sounds. Most bass guitar "neck" pickups are closer to the bridge as a proportion of the string length than on a guitar which lessens the effectiveness. It's obvious from the videos out there that the Ebow can be made to work with a bass. However IME it takes a lot more practice, so don't expect the instant gratification that nearly all guitarists get when using one! Also most of the ones I have seen on the bass are using it in registers that are available easily and more reliably on the guitar.

IIRC Spalt is actually American. He might be based in Europe at the moment though.

IME it is very much dictated to what you are used to. My problem with Fender-style bases is very much compounded by the fact that I'd spent over 25 years playing significantly different designs before I got my first F-shaped bass, and found that I simply couldn't get on with it at all.

It might be short scale, but the bridge position will mean that it won't be much shorter than a typical 34" scale bass.

Thanks! The Man Who Hides From Love is released today on Bandcamp, and will be available on all the other download and streaming services from Monday 13th December.

The micro-tilt mechanism on 70s Fenders only makes the problem of the lack of precision in routing the neck pocket even worse. In theory it's a neat idea. In practice the engineering and quality control standards of the time were simply incapable of making it work. The problem was two-fold. Firstly there was a "striking plate" on the heal of the neck that the micro-tilt screw acted against. This needed to be set perfectly flush to the heal otherwise the screw would be pushing the neck at an angle rather than straight up. Secondly there was problem of the router templates wearing out resulting in over-size neck pockets. Each of these issues on their own would not normally be a problem. However combine the two (and they always were combined) meant that the micro-tilt would also push the neck sideways in the oversized neck pocket, which in extreme cases would mean that the highest or lowest string on the instrument would no longer be over the finger board at the top of the neck.

Isn't that how lots of people write? I don't have the verbal skills to write any decent lyrics, so my "words" remain as random syllables until whichever singer I am working with turns them into something that make more sense, but from a musical PoV you have described exactly how most of what I write takes shape. However, I expect that my writing process takes a good bit longer than McCartney's (days rather than minutes/hours). BTW I don't have a car so your face is safe.

Sometimes you need and flats and sometimes you need round wounds. It's a bit like sometimes you need to play with a pick and sometimes you need to use you fingers. Having said that in the context of a band mix, you'll get the same sound with slightly old round wounds and attenuating the treble. Having used both, these days I'd only bother with flats if I preferred the feel (which I don't).

Precision certainly doesn't relate to how the instrument was made.

It's the versatility and reliability of sound that keeps me using programmable multi-effects. Before that I had a load of pedals and a 10U rack of studio units in order to the same thing. Individual pedals are fine if each pedal does exactly the same job every time it's used, but the amount of distortion, or kind of echo, or amount of chorus changes with each song, so without a programmable multi-effects unit I'm either going to have to have a separate pedal for every different setting, or be mucking about with my board between songs. And as others have said the ability to have one device that covers all the different bands/genres that you play is invaluable. Currently the two bands I play with each have a separate patch for each song (often with 4 snapshots per song), and the modules I have in each patch are very different for the two bands. Even if I found myself in a band that only required a single consistent sound on all the songs, I'd still be using the multi-effects with that one great sound ready programmed up. For a previous band I had one basic setting that I mostly used with a second slightly brighter version for some songs, and a version of each with a bit more drive to fill out the sound for when the guitarist was playing single note melodies. Finally I just like the reliability of sound. I know when I hit a the footswitch to call up a patch it will have exactly what I want with no fuss!

I take it Rick doesn't ask Sting why his new album was so badly mastered with over-compression and clipping in places?

Over the last few years I went from having almost 50 guitars and basses plus a load of synthesisers and samplers to just 9, plus whatever plug-in instruments came free with Logic. That's still 3 more guitar and basses than I need and the extras - an ancient acoustic guitar, a Tokai Firebird copy thats in bits and a Squier Bass VI will be sold just as soon as I can get around to listing them. I've kept two 5-string basses for one band, two Bass VIs for the other, and two guitars for writing, recording and just in case I find myself playing guitar full time in a band again. The best thing about having lots of instruments at the same time was it made it far easier when it came to choosing what to keep and what to sell as I was able to directly compare them all and make hard decisions about what to get rid off.

If you mean Bennerley Viaduct from the "Not Noticing" video, then unless he made the video very soon after ours the answer will be no, since last year a temporary deck was constructed across it as part of the long term plan to turn it into a permanent footpath/cycleway. Besides I'm sure it would been in the news if Sting had made a video there. We couldn't avoid on-lookers even by filming at 5 in the morning just after the sunrise!

The idea that a song can be defined as a series of simple chord changes is a relatively new concept that only really found popularity with the rise of Rock 'n' Roll in the 50s. If you look at any of the classic songs from earlier in the century the "rhythm guitar" part would by massively complicated, with a chord change on every beat (if nor more often) rather than every bar or two.

For a long time a "song" was simply the lyrics and the tune they were sung to. It's only with the advent of those new-fangled "beat groups" that the contribution of the instruments has been considered even remotely important.

If I was going for a long scale set for a bass tuned E-E I'd be looking at getting Newtone to make me a 34" version of the Axion Bass VI strings. The gauges are .024 .034 .044 .056 .080 .100 which IMO is a good balance and gives a bit of additional weight to the higher strings, which can have a tendency to sound like bad jazz guitar with some of the more "conventional" sets.

Thanks for the info. Someone has missed a trick, unless the actual PRS registrations are simply credited to "Ian Anderson".

A very nice humorous story (and probably has made a good interview at some point) except: 1. It's not true. On the record label it's credited to both Ian Anderson and Gerald Bostock. 2. Unless he was very stupid/lazy Ian Anderson would have registered "Gerald Bostock" as a pseudonym with the PRS thereby getting his full share of the performance royalties. Even for a relative songwriting non-entity like myself it is simple to do. I'm registered with the PRS under my full name (which was required when I joined in the early 80s) my usual abbreviated name (which most of the songs I have written are credited to) and my Terrortones stage name (which all Dïck Venom & The Terrortones songs are credited to). Each name has its own unique CAE number, but royalties for all three names get paid to me.

Since the mid 1980s, all the bands that I have been in have shared the songwriting credits equally between the band members at the time of writing the song. The only exceptions to this were: 1. Towards the end of The Terrortones when we are going through numerous guitarists and drummers (and essentially the songs were being written entirely by Mr Venom and myself), we insisted that PRS membership was a requirement for receiving a songwriting credit. Not every new member took up this offer although by my estimation all would have made back their £100 PRS joining fee by now. 2. A band I was in during the 90s where our original singer (and lyricist) quit just before we released our debut single. The rest of the band bought out her songwriting contributions. We had a proper legal contract drawn up stating that she relinquished any claim to any of the songs we had written while she was in the band and any money that was made from those songs. We paid her a fairly substantial amount of money for this. As it happened her replacement re-wrote most of the lyrics, and ultimately the band didn't make a massive amount of money from performance royalties (although over the past 25 years we probably all earned our "investment" back), but at the time we decided it was best to play it safe.