thisnameistaken

Is this Ehrlund GAS, Clarky? It might be an idea to hang on to your Full Circle for a while, no?

Fenders are your safest bet, although Bilbo makes a good case for Wal and they have been highly valued since I first started lusting after them in the early '90s. I've always liked Warwicks but thankfully I found my current bass at a very low price so I wouldn't be too concerned about its value should I decide to re-sell it. Although it's been with me for nearly 10 years now I doubt I will ever re-sell it.

[quote name='hiram.k.hackenbacker' timestamp='1346999968' post='1795735']It should be about how it plays anyway, not what it looks like.[/quote] I think very few consumers would agree with you, and re-selling the thing would be difficult. I'm surprised anyone's still making these hideous 'singlecut' bass guitars to be honest. They all look awful. Like they've got a tumour.

[quote name='marvin spangles' timestamp='1347009524' post='1795863'] I'm with Zero9 . Spiro Weichs great for jazz and bow pretty good too. You might want to put a mittle E on the bottom[/quote] This is what I've got on my main bass - Spiro weichs with a mittel E. I keep meaning to replace the G with an Evah weich though, I think the spiro G sounds a bit thin.

I've left the Realist on my bass for now. Daf mentioned that he sometimes likes to mix a piezo and the mic, and I'm not removing my piezo until I've tried this mic on a few gigs at least! My tailpiece is a bit busy now though. The G string has the Realist jack attached to it, the D and A have the Ehrlund preamp zip-tied through their holes with some foam to insulate/damp it, and the E side has a bow quiver tied to it. It makes me a bit uncomfortable having all these things attached to my bass but either it doesn't have a massively detrimental effect on the sound or I'm too much of a savage to notice...

[quote name='alex_1_2_3' timestamp='1346951975' post='1795303']Innovation honey's might be good, but I have a feeling they might be slightly higher tension than I would like. How would you say they compare in tension to other strings?[/quote] They feel pretty light actually. Comparable to spiro weichs in tension and with a similar pizz sound, but they feel a little more flexible. I've had evah weichs on my bass before (and really liked them, but I had them on the wrong bass I think) and the Honeys are a bit easier.

Innovation Honey would be my suggestion. Not too expensive either. I think they do have a synthetic core but I've had no tuning problems with them.

Just gave it a try and looping the wire definitely reduces the microphonic properties of it. From the mic to the loop it's still very sensitive, but the looped wire and the length after that leading to the preamp were much less so. The loops are resting against the tailpiece and not generating any noise.

I would give him another £800 and ask him to finish the headstock.

I brought the cable/jack stuff up with Daf and he told me that if you coil the wire it no longer picks up vibrations from the coil onward. I have coiled mine but I haven't actually tested it since (I had to break for dinner!). I'll give it a go today and report back. I decided I wanted a male jack on mine because I attached the preamp to the back of my tailpiece, so the mic can stay plugged in all the time. The preamp is only powered when something is plugged into its output. With the preamp mounted on the bass though the wire is way longer than it needs to be. I could get away with just a foot of wire, maybe less. I think it's about three or four feet long. It's very thin though so easy to coil up without getting bulky.

Still fiddling! I've found that the adhesive putty makes a big difference too. With blobs placed all the way out at the corners you get a lot of bass, and with them further inside you get mids instead, and less volume. So I think the optimum thing to do is to make sure you use very little putty right in the corners each time you attach it, to make sure with each change of position you really are comparing apples with apples. Looks like it's going to be somewhere between the F hole and the E-side bridge foot on my bass, about an inch or so south of the bridge, but I've spent the last hour just experimenting with putty amounts and placement...

Yarr. Did some more fiddling. There's a bunch of good placements for it but I guess the trick is going to be choosing the one that will work best live. Nearer the bridge feet seems to bring out more treble (as does fitting it with more putty / a bigger gap to the table), towards the G side gives more 500hz - 1khz midrange, out past the E and below the F-hole gives a ton of bass. It all sounds like my bass, just a matter of finding the right balance.

Well the Ehrlund and preamp arrived this morning (cheers Daf!) and after nipping out to Boyes' for supplies I've now mounted the preamp behind my tailpiece and have had my first crack at mounting the pickup. I fitted it, then recorded to Pro Tools and listened back to the results. Apparently trial and error pays off with this thing, and my first attempt at positioning it gave me a lot of treble detail but not enough bass, but I'm impressed already at its mic-like quality. Definitely sounds nothing like a piezo. Bit excited. Of course feedback prevention will be the most important factor, but I won't be able to comment on that until I get a chance to gig it.

[quote name='Hector' timestamp='1346757975' post='1792677'] Don't leave your bass when it needs you the most.[/quote] Another 'awww' from me.

[quote name='lowdowner' timestamp='1346703464' post='1792225']So, for those of you for whom this isn't anything special, how long did it take you to become 'at one' with your instrument and just play the feel?[/quote] What you're talking about is muscle memory - when you've played something so many times it becomes almost automatic. That's not really a matter of musicianship, more a matter of diligence. Unless it's a particularly difficult piece for you, and you've had to concentrate on improving your technique to play it. In which case, well done! Always remember though, the mark of a musician is to play what is required, not what you are capable of.

[quote name='dincz' timestamp='1346690277' post='1791982'] Frequency, Q and cut/boost controls on a multi-band parametric give enormous control over tone but they aren't something I'd want to be fiddling with during a gig. [/quote] Don't ever gig a double bass.

[quote name='SteveK' timestamp='1346684356' post='1791893'] the bass has a specific and important role [/quote] Sure bass guitar in rock music is often just a thickening effect underneath the guitars, but that's just rock music. There's other music.

Unfortunately I don't have any gigs on DB in the diary at the moment - the guy I've been regularly gigging with has just had his first baby so things have gone a bit quiet. I had resolved to stop saying no to gigs quite so often but I'd got so sick of my amplified sound I turned a couple of people down. Hope the pickup changes that.

Oh right. Yeah we once got a sound guy who told us drummers weren't supposed to sing, and moaned about it all the way through our soundcheck. Sometimes you just get a dickhead don't you.

Totally O/T but I was watching Match of the Day 2 last night and it struck me how much you look like Dion Dublin!

If you're a big fan of Ibanez necks you will find even the slimmer Warwick necks feel very unusual to you. They are typically a bit deeper in the hand but they don't feel 'fat' because they're not as broad and rounded as, say, a P-bass or Stingray neck. That said, they're not as skinny and V-like as a Jazz neck either. Also the woods give them quite a different feel to most basses, especially if you have one with a bare wenge neck. The open grain can feel quite odd when you're used to maple. I like wenge a lot for a neck though: My hands sweat a lot but they don't get either sticky or slick as a result. Maybe the grain wicks the sweat away for me I don't know.

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1346678959' post='1791818'] Well, some engineers have been quite close-minded, and big headed. One even attempted to take a dry DI once!! [/quote] I always send FoH a pre-EQ DI. That way they at least have a baseline that they can work from and - if they do their job properly - I should be able to do what I do with my bass's controls and my pedals without ruining their mix. I consider the EQ on the amp to be for backline monitoring only. Although having said that, on double bass it's totally the opposite - most FoH guys don't know what to do with one (although they'd never let on...), and so I have to do my very best to get a sound that will work out front and then send them a post-EQ signal.

Yeah I've been following that one. There's also a [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f4/ehrlund-contact-pu-mike-621077/"]massive thread[/url] that started in 2010 that I read about 20 pages of before I decided it was worth a punt, which I would recommend people read if they're trying to decide. Plenty of experiences documented there, and not just a whitewash of opinion.

There are plenty of legitimate bass sounds, and quite a variety of different roles the bass can take too, so it makes sense to change things around to suit. I think it would be quite ridiculous to suggest that players should only have one sound. Sure there are guys who are/were famous for one sound, but all that means to the guys who come after them is there's one extra sound they might have to cop themselves.

The only time I've seen a tribute act was towards the end of a get together with old friends when we'd decided to go round the pubs in Wakefield for old times' sake. We finished the night in a soul-destroying club on Westgate where we saw a Tina Turner impersonator. Never again! I think the only distinction I'd make between tribute 'bands' and singers with backing tapes is that at least with the singers, there is only one person who looks like they've got so drunk they have lost the rest of their stag party.