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TrevorR
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Everything posted by TrevorR
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Fantastic! Ordered and supposed to be arriving tomorrow! Let’s see, but “Yay!” all the same!
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Oooooh, Yes,I forgot Yes... Close to the Edge is my Yes album tho Going For The One is close behind!
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No such thing as uncool or guilty pleasure - if it’s a pleasure then there’s no guilt That makes them all the more worth listing
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I have a few beyond “Greatest Hits” and “Best Ofs...” Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak Thin Lizzy - Johnny The Fox ELO - Out of the Blue Horslips - The Tain Horslips - The Book Of Invasions Gordon Giltrap - Fear Of the Dark Vivaldi - The Four Seasons - I Musici featuring Pina Carmirell William Boughton, English String Orchestra – Orchestral Favourites (for The St Paul’s Suite by Holst and The Capriole Suite by Warlock and some other great tunes) Elgar - Cello Concerto/Enigma Variations - LSO, Yehudi Menuhin, Julian Lloyd Webber Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of War of the Worlds
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What famous musicians death most shocked you
TrevorR replied to dmccombe7's topic in General Discussion
Phil Lynott for me. Met him once when, as a kid, I was hanging around post gig waiting for my dad to pick me up. I was watching the crew break up the gear and he wandered out on stage, spotted me in the deserted hall and invited me up on stage. We sat for twenty minutes on the drum riser chatting until dad arrived. Lovely guy. Gary Moore was a shock too (tho not such a pleasant chap according to people I know who worked with him). And Kirsty McColl, so tragic. -
The bridge was just outside Washington if I recall ans was notorious for bouncing up and down - it was nicknamed "Galloping Gertie" by the building crews that constructed it. The rotational twisting started at some point in the morning a few hours before the final failure so I guess that the newsreel crews rushed down with their cameras to see what would happen. Or at the least get some newsreel footage of Galloping Gertie being even more wobbly than usual... I've loved that footage since I was a lad and I think it was used by Professor Eric Laithwaite in his fantastic "An Engineer Through The Looking Glass" Royal Institution Christmas Lecture which had a whole lecture focused on waves and vibrations (and in a later episode demonstrated magnetic levitation!!!). Post Google... 1974, apparently... https://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/watch/1974/the-engineer-through-the-looking-glass
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Absolutely agree. However, personally I would add two additional bullets... but those differences in harmonic content will still be noticeable to the human ear meaning that while it still sounds fundamentally like a bass guitar the design, materials, hardware and construction will all contribute to appreciable differences in the nuance of that harmonic content. the non uniform nature of wood as a material and the inability to ensure that other factors are identical (esp in terms of construction and assembly) mean that the differences may not be entirely predicable on the basis of a predetermined prejudice (e.g. mahogany is always mellow, maple is always bright, x wood sounds warmer than y wood), expensive wood sounds good while cheap wood/other materials sound bad.
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PS the videos were offered to suggest that resonance effects should not be dismissed as minuscule and negligible (as they often are), not that those examples operate in the same way as the colouration Of a vibrating string’s frequency mix.
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@Al Krow that’s the nub, isn’t it. Musical instruments are complex systems so EVERYTHING has some effect the question is how much. You hear such daft opinion spouted as fact in the tonewood debate. Like “negligible vibration gets transferred from the strings through the bridge into the body because of its mass” yet you can tune a bass by resting your ear against the body and you can turn your wardrobe door into a speaker by touching it with your bass’ headstock. Personally, I err on the side of the body resonance/filter interactions being a noticeable part of the rich complex waveform in the strings. “But it’s too small an influence, how could anyone ever perceive it?” I hear the mob cry... Well, we perceive some pretty small tolerances every day... a few parts per million of a volatile organic compound with our noses. Difference of a few hz to get just the right colour. A bass where the string height is 1/1000 of an inch the wrong way or where the string spacing varies by half a mm becomes “unplayable”. I can reliably tell you when the pressure of the tyres on my bike falls below 55-60 psi by the way it feels when I’m riding it. The different waveform between an oboe and a cor anglais. Why not the different waveform between two basses with similar hardware and build and body woods of wildly different densities?
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The much bigger effect would be the effect of the body vibrations on the overtones created in the strings affecting the timbre subtleties in the waveforms picked up by the pickups (whether or not you believe that those differences are audible). As a science geek of decades long-standing this has fascinated me for ages. People tend to underestimate the strength of sympathetic vibrations and resonances. The videos of randomly started pendulums and metronomes synchronising themselves through sympathetic vibration are hypnotic to watch... The vibrations from each metronome through the table force the synchronisation. But my favourite example is the Tacoma narrows bridge video. Wind whistling across the wires and the deck of a suspension bridge was just right to hit a frequency which resonated. That amplified the vibration in the substructure which fed back into the bridge amplifying it even further... and so on... because the bridge designers never thought to build damping into the bridge this ran out of control until it tore the bridge apart. Just through the wind blowing across it (it was only about 20 or 30mph, not a gale’ blowing across the bridge). I love this video... esp the 1940s histrionic newsreel voiceover
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Erm... and/or because of the difference in mass between the two necks both of which are factors of the structure and density of the necks. Which since wood is not a homogeneous material means that it probably WAS a factor if the material used. I recall interviewing Paul from Wal Basses where he said that while you can make broad generalisations about the tone derived from different wood species they can only ever by broad generalisations because of the organic nature of wood and the way the weight and density of wood varies... specifically he said in the context of the presumption that American Walnut is the best wood for fretless basses... "Yes, in general, but to counter the theory we’ve had some great sounding hard faced (like wenge) fretless basses through here – more aggressive sounding though. Also, you mustn’t forget that the density and grain structure can vary even from one end of a single board to the other. There can be a lot of variables even on two basses with exactly the same spec."
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Can't confirm but rosewood with maple fret marker inserts was the standard fretless option for Pro Series Basses according to the old Pro brochure... -
No worries, I can reassure you that they're very real indeed and they sound great! I characterise them as being a bit more of an old-school, 70s rock vibe compared to the Custom Series. The filters are really interesting. The boost/cut that they give is one of those strange things where, when you play them solo'd you have a tendency to think "Oh dear, that's a bit much." However, in the context of a band mix what you actually think is , "Ooooooh, that's soooooo cool!!!!! Growl, cut-though, clarity! Niiiiiiiice!" Never played a fretless one (don't go there- my fretless playing is SOOOOOOO bad) but with my fretted Pro IIE I tended to use them to set some different core tones... so in the context of the covers/wedding band I used to play in... neck pickup solo, no filter for classic pop (rounded but defined - say covering Maggie May, The Animals or rock and roll); bridge pickup solo, no filter (bite and bark - covering You Really Got Me or 20th Century Boy); both, no filter (big round sound with body but never woolly - Motown, A Town Called Malice, acid jazz, big ballads); both but with one of other of the filters (big round defined sound but with a really nice growl and bite - rocky versions of songs like Johnny Be Goode, She's Electric, Get It On, Lady Marmalade, Play That Funky Music, China Grove and Long Train Runnin'). However, I can really see how the above would translate into a wealth of fretless styles - whether the big neck or both pickups tone for Pino-style stuff, bridge pickup for Jaco and Percy definition and burp. And then using the filters to add more bark, burp and bite. http://walbasshistory.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9226.html Hi res version of the original promo booklet here http://walbasshistory.blogspot.com/2013/02/1970s-brochure-for-pro-series-basses.html
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Yes, she’s a beaut and in amazing condition. The serial is 4 lower than my Pro IIE and mine is a Sept 1979 build date (verified by Pete at Wal) so Aug/September 79 is a likely date. Love my Pro - they have their quirks but are still the second most amazing sounding and playing instruments (first most amazing being the Custom Series Wals, of course🤣) . Someones going to be an exceedingly happy bunny when they snap this one up. PS @fretless , you do realise that 6 or 12 months down the line you’re going to wake up one morning, sit bolt upright in bed and scream, “Aaaarrrggghhh!!!! The one that got away!!!!!” 😉
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Call me a conspiracy theorist but funny that should happen a couple of days after getting a few knocks on the door from Martyn Lewis’ website...! Hmmmmm... 😒
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My cancelled order was the start of February too.
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Wow! What a bargain!
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Email sent via Martyn Lewis’s Resolver website. Let’s see what happens...
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Also prominent in this well known track...
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Me too... but Amazon reckon I can still buy it... for £55!
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Nope, rosewood with maple fret marker inlays was pretty much the standard fretless design for a Pro bass. Back in the 70s no one was all poncy about fretless fbs must be ebony and all that...
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Excellente! Fabulous basses!
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PS yes, two piece solid ash body. Maple, hornbeam and mukulungu neck laminates. Rosewood fingerboard with carbon fibre stiffeners.
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Well she’s a beut. It say she was built something like August or September 1979. My Pro IIE is PB1291 and it’s dated to September. First question is whether the bass is passive or active - both use the same scratchplate so the you’ll need to look under the battery cover and see. The switches have different functions for each. Going through the controls... toggle switch is pick up selector. The top row of knobs going neck to bridge (strings) are Master Vol, Neck Vol and Bridge Vol. each Volume knob has its own tone knob directly below. The little switches have different functions on passive and active variations. Passive: Pro II - two pickups, series/parallel switching under each pickup Active: Pro IIE - two pickups, active tone circuit, pick attack switch in middle, low-mid boost switch for neck pickup, upper-mid boost/bass cut switch for bridge pickup under the pickup surrounds The pick attach adds a small peak in the upper middle range to sort of simulate a pick sound when playing fingerstyle - I think of it as an extra cut through switch in busy mixes. On is towards the neck on the sliders. One thing - The shafts on the knobs can become a bit brittle over time (they are removable and attach into the pots with little plastic tines). Wal replaced mine with fixed shaft pots about 10 years ago. Price wise I’ve seen Pro 2s going for 2k and 2Es going for a bit over 2.5k. Wonderful basses, I love playing mine. If you can, grab it! More info here... http://walbasshistory.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9226.html
