Jean-Luc Pickguard

[quote name='Marvin' post='709071' date='Jan 11 2010, 05:15 PM']I've always sought a deep warm mellow tone, may be slightly dub. Over Christmas this has changed radically. I've started playing near the bridge and developing a sharp attacking and with more treble tone. (a result of getting an fx box). So virtually overnight my whole sound has changed a lot. And I like it. It's probably the tone I've been looking for for ages and not realised that I was looking in the wrong place.[/quote] I went the other direction. Used to use my J-retro equipped Jazz with a very modern cutting sound, then went to a passive mustang.

[quote name='elom' post='713266' date='Jan 14 2010, 11:49 PM']Sometimes if I'm feeling wild I may look up from the fretboard. Only for a few seconds though, the rush can make you quite dizzy.[/quote] I tried that once - never again!

I would expect that if you get anything at all for your money, you'll get a cheap nasty copy worth about £100. If you're lucky it'll look a bit like the one in the pic if you squint from 100yards away. Even that website is a knockoff. Also I wouldn't trust anyone that uses the comic sans font on anything.

I have one of these somewhere - it used to be on my precision. If they are still the same as the 80s ones, there are a couple of holes under the saddles where the original screws go into the original holes and then new holes need to be drilled for the other holes. Or is the the other way round? Whichever way it is you'll need to drill into the bass. Its an easy job, but if you get it done in a shop make sure their repairs are done by a luthier who knows what he's doing rather than a shop assistant who once got a book about setups out of the library.

What amp & fx do you use? To get distortion you'll need some kind of pedal/fx or an amp that does some kind of grit. and what you use for that will have a much greater bearing on the sound. The subtleties of different pickups could be lost if you add a lot of distortion. I like the badassII on my jazzbass, but some people swear there's no difference in the tone. Dunno really, but I like the look of them and how they're rock solid. How about fitting a series/parallel switch to get more of a precision-type tone from the pickups? This will be like the S1 switch Fender put on the US jazzes a few years ago, but its a lot cheaper to just wire in DPDT switch. That might do more to make it sound chunky than swapping out the pickups.

pencils should work on bass just as well as they do on guitar

Its probably alright for widdly solo w@nkery, but in my experience it does nothing to help the sound in a 'normal' band setting - it just makes it sound muddy.

[quote name='ardi100' post='710538' date='Jan 12 2010, 08:34 PM']Thanks, I was thinking if the feedback came from mids I could isolate the frequencey and shut it down. I might have to have a play with one and see.[/quote] I don't think it would cut the frequency precisely enough without taking out a lot of the tone you probably need more of a notch filter. I could be wrong though. However I can report though that I used my ADI21 as a DI box for the first time tonight at a jam night to plug my ABG into the PA & it performed well. No other bassists (& hardly any other musicians) turned up so I was playing for most of the evening. I wasn't troubled by feedbackat all, but not because of the ADI21, but I was using a feedback buster - rubber disc thing that plugs into the soundhole - if only they made f-hole shaped ones as well for DBs...

Come on, this is obviously a StSanders version.

Mines a stentor student 1950 (thats the model number not the date!) Its a good solid bass for the money. A set of Thomastic spircore strings improved the tone a lot as the stock strings weren't up to much.

The tone also comes from your fingers. I've tried using cadburys chocolate fingers & birds eye fish fingers, but found that my original ones sound best in an A/B comparison.

I used to use one with my dean pace EUB. I threw it in with the pace when I sold it, but missed it so much I bought another one. I mostly use it to get a much classier acoustic guitar sound out of my stratacoustic than I would otherwise. I will probably be using it to DI my ABG into the PA at a jam night tomorrow - not sure how that'll go. I'd imagine that the sweepable mid wouldn't be much use for taming feedback, but its so cheap it has to worth a punt - if it doesn't help with the feedback I'm sure you'll get your money's worth of eq. The [url="http://www.dv247.com/studio-equipment/behringer-shark-dsp110-multi-function-signal-processor--13084"]behringer shark[/url] might be worth a look for a dedicated auto feedback buster.

[quote name='MacDaddy' post='708746' date='Jan 11 2010, 12:57 PM']Re. Adam's bass playing, how many times have we seen threads and posts bemoaning bass pyrotechnics and technical virtuosity, and stating a preference for solid playing and songs? Here we have a bass player who does that, he does the perfect job for the band he is in and the songs he plays.[/quote] But is it the same people moaning?

Its about £20 secondhand - I can't see any downside. I have one - it sounds good and you can get some nice valvey grit in your sound. Becasue of the band I'm in I use the brown acoustic version ADI21 a lot more which I also have which is very useful with with acoustic & upright basses as well as making my stratacoustic sound a lot classier than it deserves. If you look after it it isnt going to fall apart (despite what some would have you believer)

That kind of sunburst would probably look good over ash where you could see the grain.

If Adam was asked to design a car I wonder if he'd come up with this:

Find some other musicians to play with.

Nice. I like musicmasters, although I've sold the pink one and the lilac one belongs to my daughter. [attachment=39680:musicmasters.jpg]

It looks like a load of sith

[quote name='teej' post='705728' date='Jan 8 2010, 04:55 PM']...and of course those two guys with the phenomenal output between them: Trad and Anon. [/quote] They wrote some great songs and they never saw a penny of royalties for any of 'em.

Flatwound strings should take away some a lot of the nasty zingyness.

For anyone within reach of Croydon, there's an open mic / jam at the [url="http://ovaltavern.co.uk"]Oval tavern[/url] every 2nd & 4th Tuesday of the month.