EliasMooseblaster

Indeed, it is not what I wanted! See, I had the two non-Earths the other way round initially, and I got no sound from the P-pickup, though the two Js worked independently. Could have been a stray filament shorting one of the terminals of course (my soldering is not the tidiest!) so I'll try swapping them back again.

Indeed I have - I personally like Jazz basses (and Thunderbirds) best with the front pickup on full, and the back wound off to about 8ish - or basically just below where the output drops off and the tone gets really scooped. This was the main motivation for having individual volume controls. I've played around a bit with the combinations available where all 3 are active at once - it certainly creates some interesting sounds! But I can mainly see myself using only one or two out of the three at any given time, so I might consider a switch once I've got them working properly.

Perhaps against my better judgement, I decided to overhaul my old Frankenbass and give it not one, but two more pickups. Trouble is, the wiring's been driving me mad. I've attached a diagram but I appreciate it's a bit of a sod to follow. Current situation is that I can blend all three pickups, up to a point: the volume control on the P-pickup (V1) seems to be acting like a master volume control. Obviously I'd prefer to have the option to solo each of them, and have combinations that don't involve the P being on full volume. Previously, I had the wires reversed on V1 (hot to middle terminal, output from left-hand) - then I had no sound from the P-pickup, but the two Jazz pickups worked perfectly well together. Should I reverse the wires on the other two volume pots, or was it a bad idea to daisy-chain the Earth wire across all the pot cases? Or have I got this all hopelessly wrong?

[quote name='steantval' timestamp='1492781417' post='3283199'] Usually go for a pee before I start playing... [/quote] I saw the first part of this sentence and began to worry where it was leading!

I've owned both. When I started with an unlined RB Corvette, I became quite confident below the 12th fret, but my intonation definitely became quite dodgy further up. The following year, I traded it in for a (lined) Fender Jazz, and was quite surprised by how much the lines didn't help! They certainly gave me some reassurance as to where the notes were supposed to be, but if anything they emphasised how much a subtle nudge or roll of the fingertip could throw off my intonation at the top of the neck. Last summer, I part-ex'ed the Jazz to pay for the unlined Tony Franklin I'd been dreaming of. The dusty end is now a bit more of a tightrope without the visual guide, but if it forces me to train my ears rather than my eyes, that surely can't be a bad thing. Plus that blank ebony board does look lovely!

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1492119580' post='3278177'] Gong had some good titles for songs, 'Squeezing sponges over policemen's heads' is one I can remember without looking anything up! [/quote] Taken from the same LP as "Fohat digs holes in space" and "Wet cheese delirium," if I remember rightly!

Interesting choice of scale length! I've often wondered whether a longer scale (32 or 34") would have improved on my Hagstrom (30"), but then wondered if it was more likely to have issues with intonation on the octave strings. So I will be very interested to see how a 28" pans out - really looking forward to seeing how this one turns out!

[quote name='barneyg42' timestamp='1491663521' post='3274650'] Dawn was supposed to contact me to say they're out of stock! So it happens all over really! Not many other choices really! [/quote] Is it just me, or is it invariably "Dawn" who was supposed to call me when somebody's warehouse has run out of those particular strings/that DVD/that beer? Always been very content with Stringbusters' service myself. But then I've never had to press them for anything urgent, and my usual order is for half a tonne of assorted Rotosounds, so I'm not exactly pushing them into the dustier corners of their stockroom.

I'd long suspected I was a minority in this respect...

I've only seen this once: when I opened the box of a Fender '62 RI pickup, to install in my Precision copy, I found it had a piece of copper mounted on the back. At the time, I assumed this was to help with earthing. Admittedly, I've not opened up all my basses to check, but I've changed a fair few pickups in my time and I've never seen it done anywhere else. I'd dismissed it as a bit of a curiosity until I saw this article: https://www.fender.com/articles/how-to/asked-answered-the-difference-between-strat-and-tele-bridge-pickups?tag=electric which claims that the "ashtray" around the bridge pickup of a Telecaster affects the tone. Unfortunately, my own Tele is a variant on the classic design and has no such ashtray for me to test this hypothesis. On the other hand, I have found that the '62 RI pickup has made my Precision a lot more growly - though I'd always this was down to how it was wound. From a physics point of view, I can see how the magnet might well interact with the metal around it - but then by the same logic, people would surely start to favour chrome or plastic pickup covers for tonal reasons...anyone care to stick their oar into this one?

Perhaps I should have read the whole thread before voting. But yes, I support this initiative to keep it going - I would like to get more involved in things like the Composition Competitions, but more often than not I don't have the time, so the Noodle Bar was a good backup option for me.

A couple from Pink Floyd: [i]Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk[/i] [i]Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict[/i] Shame those two aren't particularly good songs, though [i]Careful with that Axe, Eugene[/i] is quite excellent.

It looks like a first draft of a Dead Can Dance album cover. Just strange enough to be quite charming, in the same way that I've been quite taking with some of the more peculiar Wishbass designs, in spite of my normal preference for "classic" Fender- and Gibson-style designs.

As others have mentioned, it does depend a great deal on the sound you want, and the kind of music you're playing. Just to throw my hat in the ring, I have played rock gigs with a 30W valve amp (Ashdown LB30) into a 1x15. It did the job remarkably well until our guitarist upgraded to a Blackstar amp!

[quote name='No. 8 Wire' timestamp='1490886766' post='3268827'] Could this be achieved with a PJ bass, but wiring the the P pickup in parallel (or having a series/parallel switch). Would that give the P pickup more of a J flavour, especially when combined with the bridge pickup?? [/quote] Hang on...does this mean that PJ basses are typically wired in series? This would explain a few things and possibly lead to me kicking myself...

[quote name='crompers' timestamp='1490777190' post='3267800'] Can you get a good mids growl with the QPs? considering changing pickups myself [/quote] Go for the Fender '62 if you want mids - lots of bark and growl in those. Or try an SPB-2 if you'd prefer go with a Seymour Duncan.

[quote name='ba55i5t' timestamp='1490702457' post='3267157'] I played fretless back in high school for the jazz band. Took it to a classic rock gig and got chastised for "bad intonation", even though it was a lined fretless. [/quote] You sure it wasn't the lead guitarist trying to shift the blame for his off-key string bends?

[quote name='christhammer666' timestamp='1490097122' post='3262100'] be interesting to see how this pans out. Am meant to be playing there in august [/quote] As I feel it is my Basschat Civic Duty to report back: approach with caution. Not long after I started this thread, the guy replied. He said yes, there had been a problem - "engineer blew the desk", apparently - but they'd got it sorted now. Maybe it was the fact he'd only bothered to scribble a one-line email to assuage my concerns, but something about this didn't sit right with me. As such, we went for a contingency plan. Load-in was 5.30 on Saturday, so I went straight to the venue while the others went to the studio to collect our gear. I basically had them on standby while I sniffed around for the slightest hint of problems with the PA. I got down there to find the guy who runs the venue, and a sound engineer, disconnecting their mixing desk, and suddenly I was helping somebody from a hire company lug another desk down the stairs. While the chap from the hire company tried to patch his desk into their system, I took the venue's guy to one side and quietly reminded him that we had a PA system that we could bring if he thought there might still be a problem. "Oh yeah, that might be handy actually..." I'd told him this on Monday. Only now, at two hours' notice, did he decide that us bringing our own PA might be a good idea. When the hired desk inevitably failed to talk to their system, we set up our speakers either side of the stage, and the sound engineer did a sterling job crouching down on the side of the stage by our PA amp, making sure the vocals were audible. The guy running the venue, on the other hand, went upstairs for a jazz cigarette and spent the rest of the evening baked off his t*ts. Kept telling me, "it's all rock'n'roll, innit mate?" as if this might encourage me to crack a smile. So: no malice, as far as I can see. Just utterly inept.

[quote name='Twincam' timestamp='1490533291' post='3265728'] After investigating it seems like the bass amp is pretty much the guitar 10w version with a few minor changes. So I did the led mod the same as the guitar version and it stopped the amp clipping as early. Then I hooked it up to an old cab the amp has a good amount of bass and character. I wonder if I can find some better 5 inch drivers to replace the originals that are pathetic [/quote] Sounds like it might be worth foregoing the built in speakers altogether and looking for a "living room size" cab on the marketplace - I picked up a decent little 1x10 on here a while ago which gives me a home practice option for my Little Bastard. Seems a real shame to think they'd paired a decent amp with such a lousy pair of speakers - talk about shooting oneself in the foot!

Clearly I've been mistaken - I assumed that Twincam was talking about one of the guitar amps, but I was oblivious to the bass amp that Meddle describes above! I'm with you there: why put two pokey 5" drivers in when you'd probably do better to use a decent 10"? Particularly as I don't imagine Vox go to the same lengths as Phil Jones when it comes to designing and voicing the cab...

The above is tomorrow. Tickets are still available. Very much looking forward to it.

Have they changed the design of these recently, then? I used to own a Vox Pathfinder 15, which was a single speaker - can't have been bigger than an 8", maybe 10 at a push - but it was an alarmingly powerful amp given the size of the whole thing. I gigged it a couple of times and never felt like I was struggling for headroom.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1490020546' post='3261487'] The guy we`ve always dealt with is Rulie, and he`s a really decent bloke. The management there are also nice, I can`t remember the land-ladies name but she`s been there for long time and is very nice to deal with too. This sounds like some sort of campaign to me, especially as everything has miraculously gone now. [/quote] Allow me to thicken the plot some: Rulie has not worked there since the end of last year. It's not clear whether he left or was given the push, but I've been dealing with someone completely different for this one. Thinking about it, this opens up a fourth possibility, that it's just some people over-reacting to what some might call teething problems while the new guys get to grips with the place...

I don't wish to spread malicious gossip, or discredit a venue unduly, but a turn of events over the weekend has got me a little perturbed. Just wondering if anybody else here is liaising with, or connected to, the current crew running the music at the Hope and Anchor, in Islington? The story so far: towards the end of last week, various threads popped up around a few Facebook groups to the effect that a couple of sound engineers had been parachuted in by the venue and subsequently ripped off, and the PA system was in a pretty dire state. This alarmed me, as my band is playing there very soon (sorry, it's hard to add context without making this all sound like a plug...). On Saturday, I emailed the guy at the venue to ask what was going on, and whether we should bring our own PA to be on the safe side. I was content to wait for a reply, but this morning I had a gander online and these threads had all disappeared. This makes me think: i. was it just some people trying to smear the venue's name? ii. did the venue bully the posters into taking the threads down? iii. have they kissed and made up, and the original posters deleted their threads out of good will? Basically just wondering if the dense network of BC has any inside info that might put my mind at rest. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's number iii, and that I'll get a response shortly to say that all the gear is fine/has been fixed.)

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1489589941' post='3258213'] The silly thing is, they went a long way towards sorting that issue in the 70s with 3-piece maple necks with a volute at the headstock, and nobody liked them because they weren't exactly like the old ones. Guitarists[s]Musicians[/s] can be a fickle bunch... [/quote]