NickA

Not sure mine have that or if I'd be able to tell. Feels like "a neck" to me. The 5-string gives me rsi tho.

Don't they just. My current set of spiros were from basschat...Unbeatable and a bargain. But swapping them out between jazz and classical gigs got too much bother.

No kidding. One school of thought is that spiros "can't be bowed". They can but are hard to get going and sound quite harsh. it's not your technique! Switching to Eva Pirazzi s has been a revelation. Still much louder bowed than pizz tho.

I have one of each and quite agree. The fretted one is a 5 and has the best b string of any bass I've tried but it's not "special" the way the 4-string fretless is ( also quite hard to play as it's a big heavy body, the neck is chunky and the neck joint chunkier). NB: there is no "calibration" of the Wal electronics.they make the exact thing they've made since the 80s and a "service" involves swapping out a couple of capacitors. When I took my whole bass in, Paul plugged it into the massive Hellborg, played a few notes while twiddling the knobs and declared "that's all working then"...

Cheaper than a grille? Masks the harshness of the little driver? Or just somewhere to park your bike.

The stingray has a near overlap with a Wal. We did a head to head between an old fretless ray and my Wal MK1 at the last em bass bash. Pretty similar if we turned the Wal to bridge pickup. So Wals can do stingray but stingrays can only do some Wal. There was also a fretted Wal pro2e there, which was different again. Ps: I was in the Wal workshop a few years back; their test amp is a massive Hellborg one. The connection runs deep. Jonas still posts on the Wal Facebook page now and then too.

I guess if you stick it to your thumb instead of to the bass.

Between phrases, verses, songs?

But which exact Wal positions? I'll bet Paul Herman uses a jig and/or veneer calipers...but the older ones are not very "exact".

Bit limiting of where you put your thumb / pluck the strings, isn't it. Never used a thumb rest myself, but isn't something longer and more parallel to the strings more useable?

Indeed some of that sounds like unprocessed MK2 played rather hard.

Any old flexible 2-core cable will do. 6A or 13A 2-core mains flex for instance. But if you want to go posh try belden5000 10gauge which is about £15 for 2m. http://www.bluejeanscable.co.uk/store/speaker/index.htm Or ...buy a 20m speakon to speakon cable for under £20: https://www.simplysoundandlighting.co.uk/products/roar-speaker-speakon-to-speakon-cable-20m and use your connectors to make it into two shorter ones.

Chancellor and Lee's sound are almost entirely due to their effects chains surely. My Wals sound nothing like theirs... though I can "do" Jones and Jaco on the fretless one (easy mwah and harmonics) Bit of a mystery why rush &tool fans pay top dollar for Wals; tho as they only want red and black Wals ( rush) or maple faced mk2s (tool) , we can sumise that they're not buying them for the sound. Hopefully the passing of the peak prices will get people actually playing them again .... though there's a lot more competition these days and the under 35s are still ( inexplicably ) obsessed with fenders. ...and never mind the price of Wals, the most expensive bass at the gallery is a beat up precision.

Peaked I reckon. Price goes silly high, collectors and speculators sell, market floods, price plummets. Bloke on Facebook is selling two he ordered before the order book closed, meticulously modelled on basses that bloke from rush played for a bit. I'm guessing they've never been played. "Price on application". People will pay £10k for something that will soon be worth £15k, but not £15k for something that might soon be worth £10k. All for the good if it stops the speculation and people can buy them to play them again. There are loads out there at the moment with unrealistic prices .. especially the slab ash bodied, passive, single pick up ones being sold for the price of ( and incorrectly described as ) MK1s by the gallery. Those basses were cheap models sold in the 80s for £250 when the active, twin pickup "custom" was £750. Two / three years ago they sold for £2k max. No wonder they haven't sold. NB: no cache in owning one ...except with other bass players over 50 years of age. I'm out playing mine very week or so and mostly get "Love the sound of your bass. What is it? ".

Should definitely have done that with my old trace rig. Sold it for £150 😞

Super cheap!!! But not actually very nice. Back in the day I had a go with one of these, but the gp12smx equipped 1x15" was so much more the real trace deal and only twice the price! I guess it was trace's attempt at a cheaper line of kit.

I was advised to use regular Eva's rather than weichs on my 4/4 bass on the basis I would use them for Arco as well as pizz. I don't know the reasoning behind that advice, but with the bridge cranked up they do sound great and I don't find the tension too high. But I do drop the adjustable bridge down for jazz, part for a muzzier tone, part for an easier time for my left hand. The lower tension Eva's are better for both pizz and Arco than the helicore hybrids I had before. The bass does sound a bit better for pizz ( louder, more sustain) with full strength spiros on, but not enough to make it worth swapping around for jazz gigs. Evidently there's more to a good tone and ease of playing than just string tension. Go Eva's, you won't regret it!

New bridge = £200 to £300 fitted. Decent new strings £230. 'taint cheap this doublebassin'. You may get 2nd hand strings from these pages. Fitting your own bridge is not "that" hard but it's labourious ( lots of sanding feet) and there's a risk of dropping your sound post while doing it. A cheap bridge blank is £50, £120 with adjusters. Or £140 for one with "self levelling feet" ( not brill sound wise but easier to fit). There's usually a reason why a cheap double bass is cheap! Bit like buying a cheap Porsche and finding it needs new tyres ( and brakes ).

Don't think it's neo magnets. Pjb do neo (neo-powr) and ferrite (piranha) drivers allowing a direct comparison and it's the ferrite ones that sound brighter. Fashion maybe? If you have a full range, flat response HiFi cab you can always take some frequencies away. If you have a "dull thud" vintage cab it's harder to put stuff back? Can you not get the sound you want by tweaking eq ...and still save your back on physical weight?. Or do the "vintage" cabs "add" something (like the distortion and octaving you can get out a valve amp)?

1. Adjustable bridge .. definitely. I have mine high for max sensitivity when playing classical, keep it high for strength training and drop it right down for maximum mwah and minimum effort when playing jazz. 2. I'm in my 60s and it's gotten easier with practice (and decent setup) 3. the ONLY thing that touches the back of the bass's neck is your thumb! Squeezing your whole hand round it will make for hard work, not strengthen the right muscles and make changing position near impossible. One other thing is .. don't put too much spike out. If the neck is high above your shoulder then the blood runs from the important muscles and you lose strength; It doesn't look very cool but having the bass quite low generally makes it easier to play. Nut no higher than ear level so you're not reaching up above your head in half position This guy has it about right, but many classical bassists go lower.

My one of those actually had a full tapered shim ... I took it off and replaced it with a bit of sanded down lolly stick. I may have knocked a few £k off it's value, but it plays better and Andyjrr checked it out at a bass bash and declared it just fine. So yeh. For all people swoon about Wals, Wal & Pete knocked them out apace back in the day and they're usually a bit wonky.... still great basses tho. One day I'll get a new, and correctly angled, full shim fitted.

The shadow and Underwood slot-in piezos have the piezo bit encased in some plasticky stuff in a metal channel. Pretty robust. Use a file instead, if you have one the right thickness..or get a bit of wood the same thickness as the piezo.

Wrap the pickup in a bit of sand paper and grind it back and forth in the gap till the sides are parallel and the piezo is a loose fit. Then pack the gap with shims of veneer, I guess sax reed will do nicely..good idea, that will give a hard bright sound, cork ( mid way) or bicycle inner tube rubber if you wanted a softer sound. Generally, squeezing a piezo into too tight a gap will result in a hard clacky sound and more chance of feedback. A partial tight fit will buzz & rattle too. I upgraded from the shadow to a realist sound clamp and use it tightened lightly onto inner tube rubber...then again, I'm after a soft "Eddy Gomez" sort of sound, which the op likely isn't.

Suprisingly, different replay things accentuate different sounds and what sounds good through a HiFi may not sound so good through a bass amp - so I did both! So laptop into a PJB bighead running as a D2A converter into the big stereo (naim amp and neat motive 1 speakers, which a perhaps a bit too good at bass). from left to right C5 = boomy. C4 = much clearer and revealing a bit of distortion, bit bass light. C3 = like c4 only bassier. c2= nice dry uncoloured sound "hifi". c1 = middy, a bit brash. C2 is my fave. => the 15" is probably C5?, 1x 12" = C4, 2x12" = C3, 2x10 = C2, 1x10" =C1. Definitely guess work and personal bias, plus I admit to compromised hearing after 50+ years of orchestral and electric bass playing. Doing it again using the same D2A and a PJB flightcase combo. C5 that boominess sounds like room resonance now. C3 also has a tad of that - my own room may be reacting (the bass combo faces a different way to the HiFi). C1 is improved by the bass specific nature of the bass combo, but still the thinest sounding. It's a very personal thing tho isn't it? I share house band duties with another bass player who hates high frequencies in his sound, uses almost all neck pickup on his jazz bass and rolls off the tone on his amp. I'm always looking for a bit of zing and my Wal chucks out "gritty" mid band frequencies, especially when biased towards the bridge pickup. My double bass also needs a bit of a mid boost as the fundamentals are near sub-audible. He wants to be Ralph Armstrong, I want to be Hadrien Feraud!! And that has been an excellent bit of Saturday morning coffee time geekery 🙂 🙂

I've not listened yet ...but won't it depend on what we listen through 🙂 I guess headphone is best ..though I have two pairs which sound quite different. Then HiFi ( mine goes down to 25Hz ). Laptop speakers = not a hope. The PJB rig does bass frequencies really well, but will surely add colour of it's own ..not to mention room acoustics.