Beer of the Bass

The moulded jack socket on my KNA DB-1 pickup has started playing up, I think one of the contacts has lost it's springiness, the plug sits loosely in it and crackles intermittently. I like the pickup otherwise, so I'm happy enough to fit a new socket on there and stick with it. But I'm wondering what the best available line jack socket is. Some of the US made pickups come with Switchcraft jacks which I can't find over here, the locking Neutrik jacks are huge and won't fit in my jack clamp, otherwise there's the Rean model or acoustic guitar type endpin jacks with the strap pin washer removed. Which to choose?

I had my first Guinness Zero last night. The first few sips are pretty convincing, but by the end of the glass I'm noticing some odd flavour notes that don't quite sit right.

Update; dropped my bow off with the local repairer, it should be ready next week. We're going with some chestnut hair he has, since I know quite a few bassists like a somewhat coarser/grippier hair for Spirocores.

Yeah, I did some looking around, I gather that the wedges are routinely replaced during a rehair and the tip facing is often installed using CA glue anyway, so it doesn’t look like I've butchered it in a way that would affect rehairing particularly. Bowspeed have some likely looking options if I was able to step up to £300 or so, and will send them out on approval. So what I may do is have the current bow rehaired for now and see about clearing out some bits and pieces for a bow fund. Then if I was to try couple on approval later in the year, I'd at least have the one I'm already familiar with in decent playing condition for comparison.

I'm a fairly casual player these days, absolutely no classical aspirations, I either dip into the local free improv scene or play in folky acoustic or singer/songwriter type situations. I do bow a certain amount though, either for more melodic parts, textural stuff in improv or to work on my intonation when practicing. I play German bow and have had the same no-name wooden student bow for about 20 years now, a fairly generic Chinese one. I've had it rehaired in that time, but it's quite a bit overdue for another. Though I did some DIY repairs to it during lockdown in 2020 (when everything was shut) just to keep practicing- the tip facing has been reattached with CA glue and the wedge at the tip is a homemade replacement I whittled from a piece of maple scrap. I don't if those plus the low value of the bow might make it marginal for another rehair. I could look at a new bow, but in my budget it would be a <£200 student bow. There are probably more options today than when I got this one, but that's still not getting me into nice bow territory by a long way. I'd probably be looking at things like the Vingobow from China, importer brands like Gewa, possibly the P&H carbon bow, or I think Bassbags have Romanian made student bows. I know there's a rehairer just a couple of miles away from me, I could possibly drop in with my bow and see if they think it's viable for a rehair. But I'd be curious to hear the opinions of the Basschat massiv.

Hmm, yeah, I suppose we don't want to derail too much from the OP and his bass. I quite liked those Stentors when I've tried them, though the stock endpin isn't long enough for my height and where I like the bass to sit. The ones I'd played seemed quite articulate for pizz playing, possibly the petite shoulders and proportions help with that. And setup-wise there are points in between high tension steels and the lowest tension rockabilly slap strings, you don't have to go all the way to one end or the other if you want to explore a range of styles and still be slap-friendly. Someone else will have more specific recommendations, I'm firmly in the Spirocore camp and don't have much experience outside of it!

A bandmate a few years ago owned one of the early 90s ones that hung around the rehearsal space, and I'd play it sometimes. This one was definitely solid wood as it had suffered a half-arséd attempt to strip it. My impression was that the body and neck were not bad, perfectly functional P copy, but the tuners, pickup and pots were naff.

If you get a chance to try a double bass with a lower action, higher tension steel string setup you might find that easier to adjust to. I'm used to playing double bass with Spirocores at a medium/low height, and it takes me a while to get much out it if someone hands me their low-tension slap setup bass.

There's a website that presents stories from multiple former members and catalogues existing court cases in Argentina against the bandleader. But since it's sensitive material relating to a current UK police investigation, it's presumably not one to share on basschat.

I hadn't encountered them before, but having looked at some videos, I'd probably leave if they were on somewhere. It's like theme park entertainment, and I'm fairly sure it's not played as fully live as they make out. I feel bad for the rank-and-file members who don'thave much choice once they're here - the ringleaders not so much.

Totally off topic, but I hadn't expected "Activier" to be pronounced that way. When I saw the model name, in my head it rhymed with Lawrence Olivier!

I reckon nobody would look askance at a neatly done access hatch on a removable neck bass. Some very well-respected luthiers do them, for example; https://www.talkbass.com/threads/nz-non-standard-cleveland-removeable-neck-and-sound-post-hatch.562329/

Wonder if they'll get an angry letter from John Hall's legal team for the shape of the bass?

I watched a couple of the videos. The part that makes me feel old is the way all the plagiarism was from other primarily online content creators, and not some of the gigging, record creating players who originated those jazz/funk/fusion styles. Even ignoring the ethical aspect, something about that just sort of leaves me cold. Like it's a gamer mentality applied to music.

I'm guessing those are the Indian made guts that a few different sellers have. Most of the classic gut string jazz sounds would use a plain gut G and D and a silver wound gut E and A, and the ones one the link are all plain. Plain gut on the lower strings is hard to get a good pizzicato sound with and I only see them being used by a few slap players.

My takeaway from the video was less about them being 15s, and more about how some of those older driver designs have a really pleasing thing going on in the mids and highs, if they're used without pushing their limits too hard. The others have portability and overall volume advantages, but that Trace cab is an immediately likeable bass sound for me.

I'd want to get a really close look at the output transformer and the label itself. If the 8 looks to be written on or a sticker applied after the original manufacture, and the output transformer is the same as the stock 4 ohm model, the only other reason I could think of for relabelling it is if someone had been running it with one pair of power valves removed for lower power.

Though if you're an acoustic trio without drum kit or backline amps on stage, that's probably as close to an ideal scenario as you'll find for making a mic work. If you don't want to spring for expensive dedicated bass mics, various dynamic mics can work well - the venerable SM57, or a side address dynamic like the Sennheiser e609 or Superlux PRA628 wrapped in foam under the bridge or tailpiece. A few bassists on Talkbass are mounting the Sennheiser e604 on the string afterlengths too.

I'm not sure piezo pickups are the place to look for "air", but that said, the J-Tone Big pickups do have quite a thick, midrangey tone that can come across as a little electric - it's perfectly usable, but you may find you like others better. And a lot of players find they prefer a single element pickup to one with two sides - I would try the J-Tone with one element hanging loose first just to determine if that's a good direction to head in. I'm getting results I'm quite happy with using the KNA DB-1. As pickup sound goes, it's fine, and the high end is more open sounding than I got with a single element J-Tone on the same bass. But both the fit and the way a pickup responds on your specific bass can be extremely variable, so don't take that as a firm recommendation!

Hmm, it's nice to see that Bowspeed stock as many German bows as they do, I'm used to just never seeing them. I remember reading an older British tutor book (might have been Eugene Crufts) that simply said "in Britain we play the French bow", but my first couple of lessons were on German and it stuck with me. I'm still playing a very basic student bow that's probably not economically worth another rehair, so something even slightly nicer is on the wish list.

Interesting mix of quite quirky and more conventional styles there. I'm enjoying the looks of the one in the first post with the Austrian/Hungarian style scroll and the unconventional wood choices, very individual looking.

17 basses? With the size of the market in the UK, that would be slow to move however well advertised they are, unless a dealer takes them at a job lot price to resell over a few years themselves.

There must be some shops in your area who would take at least some of them on consignment - it can be slower but the returns are usually slightly better than auctioning with limited info and it gets you a professional opinion on them. If it's a large number of basses, they're likely to only want to take the better ones, but it's worth enquiring.

The shape, size and panel layout look identical to a FAL combo that used to be kicking around at a scruffy arts cafe I frequented, and I think FAL were also a Leeds company. I wonder if Linear (on the back panel) are the same company as the older Linear Concord valve amps.