Misdee

Thanks, that is is good to know.

I am hankering for a Stingray Special, but I seem to remember some talk of it being difficult to set the new design bridges for a low action. If I were to purchase one of these basses I would need to get the action pretty low ( about 11/2 mm on the E to 1mm on the G, give or take a tiny bit) for my taste. Would a typical Stingray Special accommodate these specs? If any existing owners out there have any input I would be very grateful. Normally I wouldn't be particularly concerned as I know how to shim a neck, but EBMM basses are usually shimmed at the factory with a piece of plastic as a matter of routine, if I understand correctly. Replacing the existing shim with a thicker one, or adding a second additional shim wouldn't really be ideal on a £2000+ bass.

Larry Klein is a phenomenal player, and in my estimation Wild Things Run Fast is right up there with Joni's best work. Echoing what others have said, I would take all rankings with a pinch of salt, but Shadows And Light was my first real introduction to Jaco, and I was stunned and smitten. Hejira is wonderful, as is Blue, both very different but I love them primarily for the songs rather than any of the playing .

I share your love of BB's, and the 20 series are wickedly good. They come up for sale on on Basschat fairly frequently, so watch the Basses For Sale ads and I am sure you will find a likely candidate. Otherwise, your best chance of finding a good condition used example is to buy one from a seller in Japan. This one was for sale recently, and it doesn't seem to be sold as of a couple of months ago. Maybe you could PM Darryl and see if the bass is still available:

Brian bought a set of strings from me and was a perfect gent to deal with. Good communication, prompt payment, everything a seller could ask for. Thoroughly recommended.

One of the chaps at Overwater once told me that the design of their Jazz Bass pickups/preamp combination had been inspired/influenced by Celinder active Jazz Basses and his pickup/preamp combination . We are going back about twenty years, but I seem to remember they told me had some electronics boffin help them come up their own version.

I remember seeing a custom Overwater active Jazz Bass with factory-fitted DiMarzio Ultra Jazz pickups . They would be likely to give you much more bark than the Bartolinis. The Barts tend towards a more hifi sound and can be a bit too polished and "polite" sounding for some tastes. It sounds like you want bit of Fender-style grit and growl. There are loads of pickups on the market offering that , Fender Custom Shop 60's Jazz and Fender 74 Jazz being two prime examples I particularly like . A more guttural ( Fender, DiMarzio, Aero ect ) sounding pickup married to the Overwater preamp might give you more of the overall tone you crave from the finished bass.

On a pedantic note , all singers have strong, or at least identifiable, accents, in the same way that all speakers have accents. Received Pronunciation is an accent . The anomaly is that when we talk about strong accents what we usually mean is strong regional accent, but accents are by no means necessarily regional. Fake mid-Atlantic Rock and Roll is also an accent in itself, despite the fact it exists only in the world of rock. All singers are offering you a rendition of their accent, be it Sophie Ellis- Bextor and her over-emphasised diction, or John Martyn with his inebriated drawl. Can't beat a bit of Jon Anderson, though. Cosmic lyrics with a thick Lancashire accent:

Do they have music in Devon? I don't really know, but the do have cream teas . Far more important. Aren't Muse from Devon? They've done alright for themselves. And Joss Stone.

I would say that a shorter scale length can give a different timbre to an instrument. The scale has a big influence on the kind of harmonic overtones a string produces when plucked/ picked/ thumped. Those overtones play a big part in defining the overall tone.

I prefer the BDDI to the VT, but you can't really go far wrong with either. I've got the BDDI V2, and I really enjoy it, but the original version is equally great.. The BDDI is largely based on an Ampeg ,anyway . To me it always sounds reminiscent of an SVT with the" Deep "switch turned on, with a bit of GK 800RB thrown in for good measure. .

These look like fantastic basses. I thought about buying one myself , but when the demos started appearing on youtube it struck me how much they sounded like a regular Stingray. If I was blindfolded I would not be able to hear any difference between these basses and the full-sized version.Nothing wrong with that, but ideally I would prefer something a bit more discernibly different.

Neil Murray ? Fantastic bass player. If you listen to his playing on the classic Whitesnake records it soon becomes clear he is a cut above most rock bassists in terms of his playing ability and overall musicality. He has got proper jazz-rock fusion level chops. Even though a lot of the 'Snake songs are blues- based and fairly standard fare, NM 's playing is always fresh, inventive and agile .And tasty. Would have been nice to hear him play in some other musical genres as well as rock.

You putting sustain into the bass is not the same thing as the bass having natural sustain . If it had sustain you wouldn't need to put sustain into it with whatever technique. You could, by the same token, add sustain with a compressor, but that would not change the fundamental sound of whatever bass. And, for the reasons I have already stated, taking the frets out of a bass will most likely diminish the sustain of fretted notes. Your perception may differ from that, but such judgements are highly subjective. Steel frets are likely to enable a note to resonate longer in a more linear fashion than when the note is trapped between wood and finger. That's a big part of the sound of a fretless . Yes there are various things you can do to compensate on a fretless - vibrato, compression, coated fingerboard et al- but all things being equal in general terms, a fretted example should sustain more. But we've already decided that sustain isn't that important anyway. My fretless has an acrylic-coated board, but I haven't really noticed a profound increase in sustain over non-coated fingerboards, it has to be said. , I am equally confident that bridges can a very significant influence on the sound of a bass, some bridges and some basses more than others. I could give my own anecdotal evidence, but it would be a lengthy process . I have had more basses than I can count over the last 40 years or so. I used to hate the BBOT but I have come to learn its' value in terms of the classic Fender tone. It's a shame it isn't just a little bit more ergonomic and mechanically stable. That's all I am saying, really🙂.

I can't comment on your Wal, having no knowledge or experience of that particular instrument. I am genuinely intrigued to know how would you would know categorically that the lack of sustain wasn't caused by the absence of frets? I am well familiar with Wal fretless basses (oh, how I wish I had bought one thirty -odd years ago🙁! )and I know how the typically perform. At the risk of sounding facetious( but really meaning to be so), fretless basses sound different because they don't have frets, and one contributory factor to that difference in sound is the change in the attack and decay of note ie the sustain. 🙂

If I am learning a song as an exercise at home I'll learn it note for note exact. When I used to play in a band doing covers I would quite happily play my version of the bass part on the record, depending on the arrangement ect.

Well, according to you your fretless Wal didn't. Some fretless basses will sustain more than others. I think it's fair to say that fretless basses sustain differently to fretted basses. That is a pretty safe assertion.

The fact that the Wal didn't have frets probably explains the lack of sustain . A string anchored between the bridge and fingerboard and finger is likely to be more muted than a string anchored between a metal fret and metal bridge . It's a big part of what makes a fretless sound like it does. And yes, the obsession with sustain is a very dated preoccupation. It's so 1980's.

The fact that the Wal didn't have frets probably explains the lack of sustain . A string anchored between the bridge and fingerboard and finger is likely to be more muted than a string anchored between a metal fret and metal bridge . It's a big part of what makes a fretless sound like it does.

Well I would contend that whether you were aware of it or not, the bridge was often a significant factor in the overall sound of the bass. Every note you play is anchored to the bridge. A wooden bridge with wooden saddles sounds different to a BBOT.