Cernael

A slight kind of suggestion; Why not keep the neck p'up, but modify it so it doesn't sense the strings, and just acts as a hum-cancelling dummy? *thinks* Would removing the magnet(s) from it have that effect? If your bridge p'up is hum-cancelling in and of itself, just ignore me, naturally.

Hmm. For picking in general, I favour having the instrument higher, so the forearm is somewhat closer to being parallel to the strings. This means you can use a wrist-rotating movement to pick, rather than moving the whole forearm up and down - the wrist is both faster and more accurate (some tech TV show I saw years ago reported a suggestion to replace the steering wheel in cars with a joystick-like device, on the grounds that the wrist is where we generally have the highest amount of control). For bass fingerpicking, OTOH, I'd like to have the strings where my hand falls naturally with a fully extended arm...hard to reconcile the two, I know. For slapping, OTTH (on the third hand...no, I don't have three hands, but still), again, I use that wrist movement, and like the strings higher to reach different strings with the slaps & pops...then again, I'm not a very good slapper in general. Guess what I'm trying to say is, those burns seem to signify an inefficient picking technique, and I suggest you look into adjusting it. (I should probably make a tie-in with the OP here, but I can't really remember that one, so...)

Sure you can, but why would you want it like that? It seems just...baffling, to have it set up to enforce a different approach to the fretlines depending on where on the neck you're playing.

[quote name='Jase' post='275152' date='Sep 2 2008, 02:43 AM'].....and also the further you go up the neck you'll find yourself playing just past the line, the note isn't directly on the line for the full scale of the neck, lined or unlined it is a challenging and at the same time a rewarding instrument to play. You become more aware of what you and others are playing too. Look at the board everyone else does [/quote] Huh? Sounds like your fretless isn't set up with proper intonation.

It might be a scout thing, I don't know. What you do is magnetize the needle as outlined, then put it on a cigarette paper or somesuch, which you proceed to, very carefully, place on the surface of a glass of water. After a while, the paper is soaked, and should fall to the bottom of the glass, leaving the needle floating (yes, floating!) on the surface of the water. If left undisturbed, it will align itself with the earth's magnetic field.

Oo Now I know...

Go to your local auto repair shop (or some similarly industrial spot), and ask if they have a grinder?

[quote name='joe_bass' post='267915' date='Aug 22 2008, 04:19 PM']But it does damage them then.[/quote] This may be a lengthy simile. Bear with me. Have you ever made a compass out of a sewing needle? The process is kinda simple. You take a magnet of some strength, and stroke it along the needle repeatedly, in the same direction. What you do is, you change the orientation of the iron atoms in the needle (which are in essence atom sized magnets) so that their magnetic fields are aligned, thus giving the needle as a whole a magnetic field. (Normally, the various fields of the atoms cancel each other out.) This takes a while to accomplish, as you know if you've ever done it. And what you accomplish is that you turn a non magnetic needle into a very weakly magnetic one, and possibly weaken the other magnet by a similar amount. /simile Now, what you're going to do, is take one kinda weak magnet, and hold it somewhat close to the pickup magnet for a short while (minutes, at most). Close to, not purposefully grinding it against it. Any change in the pickup magnet due to this is negligible, trust me. I'd say a bigger threat would be to lean the bass against the amp, so the pickups and speakers line up...

Not noticeably.

Have the wire from the neck pot to the bridge pot go from the same spot on the neck pot to one end of the switch instead. Have the wire from the bridge pickup to the output jack go from the same spot on the pot to the OTHER end of the switch. Have one last wire go from the middle lug on the switch to the output jack.

This applet? [url="http://till.com/articles/PickupResponseDemo/index.html"]http://till.com/articles/PickupResponseDemo/index.html[/url]

[quote name='P-T-P' post='264526' date='Aug 18 2008, 02:20 PM']Does the tone pot and capacitor, in effect, bleed off the treble, 'cause to me there's no obvious throughput of the signal?[/quote] Yup. In essence, the cap presents a resistance that's of different magnitudes depending on the frequency; for the treble parts of the signal, it's pretty low, for the bass, it's kinda high. Then the cap is in series with the tone pot, which means you can vary the apparent resistance. When the pot is at max, the resistance is high for both bass and treble, and all parts of the signal find it's easier to go through the amp; with the pot at zero, resistance is still high for the bass, so that still goes through the amp, but it's low for the treble, so that is essentially shorted through the cap/tone pot, and doesn't reach the amp. Was that laymanny enough? Also, the important thing is that the tone circuit connects the "hot" and "ground" parts of the circuit; it doesn't matter much if the connection to "hot" comes between the pickup and volume pot, or between the volume and output jack. I've no doubt there's /some/ difference, but it'll work either way. As you discovered.

Think I have the solution; it requires two stereo pots, and one 4pdt switch. I'll try to draw it up comprehensibly. Stay tuned... Here it is. The middle two poles are the standard dpdt series/parallel switch, the outer two change the pots for both pickups, from the ones wired in series to the ones wired in parallel. Up on the switch is series, down is parallel. Things to check for are: 1: The phase between the pickups; 2: The exact wiring of the pots for series; 3: What value should the series pots be, anyway?

Ah, I see. Thanks!

How do you mean? point the headstock to the roof, or what?

Yeah, you understood me right. Good pics, BTW. The problem with the last one, as before is that the pots aren't individual volumes. I THINK they actually need to be connected to the pickups in parallel, when the pickups are in series. Another strangeity with my starter idea, is that when you flip the switch, yoou change which pot controls which pickup; when you think about it, that combines with the issue about resistance =/= volume that you described, in an almost intuitive way: with one pot at full and the other at zero, it's the same pickup that's soloed, no matter what the switch position. Still, stereo pots might be a good idea. That'd solve the issue about reverse tapered audio pots, too. Don't know how many poles you'd need on the switch, though.

Heh. My theory was that thumb-over-neck technique is a habitual thing, and the BluTack is mainly just a way to disrupt that habit. On another note, I found I had a less bent wrist when trying out the thumb-over-neck approach; one thing to watch out for when switching, I guess. I mean, you don't want to strain your wrist, and if adopting proper technique means you increase the strain, something's not right, right?

Ah, but that one doesn't include the volume pots. They were what I began to ask for, before I got carried away. Let's start at the beginning; individual volume pots in series wiring. Ignore the switch for a while. If a pot is wired in parallel to a pickup, lowering its resistance is essentially the same as shorting the pickup to itself, right? Following the path of least resistance, most of the signal goes through the pot when it's set to zero resistance, and more goes to the amp when the pot's at full resistance? Since I can't be bothered making another schematic, here's some shorthand: (neck pickup<parallel>volume pot 1)<series>(volume pot 2<parallel>bridge pickup) There's pickups in parallel with one volume pot each, and two such pickup+pot aggregates wired in series. A standard jazz wiring, excluding the tone pot, would, in the same improvised shorthand be: (neck pickup<series>volume pot 1)<parallel>(volume pot 2<series>bridge pickup) Now, assuming both these versions work somewhat satisfactory, an on/off switch as wired in my above schematic ought to toggle between them, unless I've made a mistake in dreaming this up. Have I? I realize that there probably will be some issues with crosstalk, i.e. both pots will influence the volume of both pickups so some degree, in the series version, but I don't know what to do about that, don't know if anything CAN be done about that, if you're going to still be able to control the volume of each pickup. The issue, as I see it, with connecting the pots in series with the pickups, and then the pickups+pots in series, too, is that the wiring will be something like (bridge pickup<series>volume pot 1<series>neck pickup<series>volume pot 2) i.e., both pots change the volume of both pickups equally much, and there is no way to change the balance between them. Hope that's clearer. And yes, phase is another thing to consider; I haven't started worrying about that yet, though.

So, basically, if you have two different pickups, and a switch that changes them from series to parallel wiring; is there a sensible way to have individual volume pots for the pickups? My initial scribbling suggests that, when the p'ups are in series, if you place a pot in parallel with each p'up, with the pot at zero, you essentially short out the p'up, letting the other one sound. I'll draw up a schematic, hang on. Sorry 'bout the colour. Lower left & upper right are p'ups, lower right & upper left are pots, centre thingie is an on/off switch, that ought to select between series/parallel, down is connected to ground, up to hot. One concern is, I think in series, the pots are connected the wrong way around for audio taper (as max resistance then means max volume, while in parallel, minimum resistance is max volume)... Anyway, comments?

I see the ground, but whence do you take it to the hot?

One thing I've come up with lately as a possible help to develop this "thumb in the middle of the neck" playing style: place a little bit of BluTack there, and anchor your thumb on it; then play scales without changing position, utilizing all your strings. I've yet to try this myself, so I ask; ye who know, does this sound like a good or horrid idea? This should not take up the whole practice time, of course, but in short bursts? Interlaced with playing the same scales, without the tack, while consciously focusing on the thumb?

[quote name='Cliff Burton' post='257744' date='Aug 8 2008, 03:35 AM']Cheers man, shoulda said, I know my blues scale over two octaves. Are there any modes of the blues scale?[/quote] Hm, debatable, I'd say. Of course you COULD play it from the six different notes in it, but my guess is that the lesser used five aren't really...useful. You see, the blues scale (as you may know) is in essence a minor pentatonic (r b3 4 5 b7) with an added chromatic tone between the 4th and the 5th. And, if you're going to add a chomatic tone like that, there is by far the most logical place for it to be. When it comes to pentatonic scales, however, there are actually two different sets of modes yoou could derive from them. One way is to take the minor penta, and start from the different notes of it, just like you did above with the regular modes. This gives the following formulas: r b3 4 5 b7 (minor pentatonic) r 2 3 5 6 (major pentatonic) r 2 4 5 b7 r b3 4 b6 b7 r 2 4 5 6 The other way is to take the penta scale, focus on the scale degrees it contains, and take those through the different modes of the regular modes. So, take the minor penta, see that it consists of root, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh, and look those up in the different modes: Lydian: r 3 #4 5 7 Ionian: r 3 4 5 7 Mixolydian: r 3 4 5 b7 Minor: r b3 4 5 b7 (This encompasses all three minor modes, as the notes that differentiate them (the second and sixth) are excluded from these scales.) Locrian: r b3 4 b5 b7 From there, you might experiment with adding that bluesy sharp fourth/flat fifth to those of these scales that doesn't already have it, and make a note of which is works in. According to you, of course; it should be your ears that act as guide and final arbiter here. All we can do is point you in diverse directions. Don't get lost

I seem to recall a someone suggesting that, to make a bass solo stand out a bit, you could just do arpeggios based on the chords in the song, but shifted one fifth higher. So, during a standard Dm7>G7>Cmaj7, you'd do arpeggios on Am7, D7 and Gmaj7 respectively. The idea being that this way, you stress non root notes, thus standing out a bit more in the mix, even if you stay in the lower 12 frets or so. This seems to take as granted that you improvise the grooves based on the chords anyway... Am7 over Dm7: 5th, m7th, 9th, and 11th. D7 over G7: 5th, maj7th, 9th, and and 11th. Gmaj7 over Cmaj7: 5th, maj7th, 9th, #11th. OK, that might not work too well. Maybe if you stay in the scale? Use Am7, Dm7 and G7? Meh, I'm just talking out of my ass anyway.

[quote name='TheBrokenDoor' post='257353' date='Aug 7 2008, 05:26 PM']SteveK are you sure about suggesting he play a minor 3rd scale (blues pentatonic) over a major 3rd chord (C7)? Also, isn't the alternating half-whole-step scale the octatonic scale? With the true diminished being stacked minor 3rds? That's how I was taught it anyhow! Dan[/quote] Yeah, the min/maj 3rd clash is what makes it bluesy. Try bending it a semitone, into major...might I also remind you of the infamous Hendrix chord; in essence, an E7 (#9), though the #9 is enharmonic with the minor third... And the half/whole scale (and it's only other mode, the whole/half scale) IS the diminished scale. It gets its name from the diminished CHORD, built from stacked min. thirds...which the scale in turn is built from.

If you're thinking of switching the bridge anyway, why not try sawing "access grooves" or whatever you'd call them, to accomodate tapered strings, in the old one (like on the bridge Sibob showed)? Sure, it might not work, but if it does, hey, cheaper!