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Beer of the Bass

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Everything posted by Beer of the Bass

  1. Beer of the Bass
    Cross-posted from amps & cabinets in case of double bass interest: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/175679-acoustic-image-clarus-1r-head-series-ii/"]http://basschat.co.u...head-series-ii/[/url] (Mods, feel free to delete if I'm not supposed to do this!)
  2. Beer of the Bass
    Extremely clean and flat voiced head, 200 watts into 4 ohms or 300 watts into 2 ohms. Compact and lightweight at 5.5lbs. These are intended as general purpose instrument amplifiers, they are an excellent choice for double bass but also worth a look for bass guitar use. They are also popular with jazz guitarists. The Clarus features a high impedance input (10M ohms) and switchable highpass/notch filter which are very useful when amplifying double bass. Unlike most amplifiers, no separate pre-amp is necessary for piezo pickups. The HPF is also very effective for controlling the sub-bass frequencies when using small speaker cabs, to maximise the volume available without speaker over-excursion. When used with electric bass, the Clarus sounds similar to a clean DI signal - the amp is much flatter than the inbuilt "voicing" of most other amps. This makes it a good choice with an active bass, but to be quite honest, I like something a little more coloured with a passive bass. This is the 1r model with a high quality digital reverb built in. The amp is in decent condition as can be seen in the pictures. It has been stored and transported in its own padded bag, which is included. The only cosmetic flaws are some very minor dings (seen in the photograph) and a couple of small screws missing from the casing. The bag has approx. 3 inches of torn seam on one side. The original manual and a spare fuse are in the bag pocket. I have had the amp several years, and I think this model dates from around 2003. Going by other recent prices, I think [b]£320[/b] should be an attractive price for this. Can be tried and collected in Edinburgh or I'm happy to post within the UK at cost - PM me and I'll get a quote. [attachment=107071:clarus 014.JPG][attachment=107072:clarus 016.JPG][attachment=107073:clarus 019.JPG] [b]NOW SOLD[/b]
  3. Beer of the Bass
    I find that I love Chromes or Ernie Balls for the first 3 months, then they get a touch darker than I want. They still sound good after this, but it becomes more of a classic flatwound sound than the flat/round hybrid other players describe. This experience has been repeated over several sets. For those three months, they have plenty of growl for my needs. I don't know if this happens for everyone else or if my body chemistry just knackers them!
  4. Beer of the Bass
    Maybe they're better now than 10 years ago (are they?), but I hated Elixirs on both guitar and bass when I tried them. I got a couple of free sets from their stand at a guitar festival when they were a new thing. The coating went all raggedy after a few weeks and started peeling, it was like playing strings with eczema! I've settled on D'Addario 11-49 (0.018" plain G) for electric guitar as I find it would take some work to develop a light enough touch for 9s or 10s. Any heavier and it doesn't sound like I want a solidbody electric to sound, any lighter and I tend to overplay them. I do have honking great 13-56s on my archtop, but that's because it takes heavy strings to get the best acoustic sound from that guitar, not to try and make it feel bass-like.
  5. Beer of the Bass
    The big problem with valve amps in this kind of situation is that people often don't understand that they take a little while to warm up when switched on. I've watched people turn an amp on then start flicking the power switch on and off repeatedly (which is hard on the power supply, especially with a valve rectifier), wrench the input jack around or unplug and re-plug the speaker in a vain attempt to get some sound out. Any of these could require a tech visit in short order! At gigs where backline is shared, I've started taping simplified instructions in big letters to the top of my amp, then hanging around to watch the other bands soundcheck in case they do anything stupid. I'm sure college students will be even worse due to lack of experience. Peavey Bandits seem indistructible, but are also very loud when turned to 10, which might be worth bearing in mind if you think your students will do that.
  6. Beer of the Bass
    I'd say they're not Superflexibles, as Superflexibles are more turquoise on the silks than the royal blue of these ones, and the ends are sort of barrel shaped. As to what they are, I don't know!
  7. Beer of the Bass
    I tried this a few weeks ago with a BSS AR116 on the output of a 100 watt valve amp, running off the spare speaker output. Since the input impedance of the DI box is 50K ohms or more in parallel with an 8 ohm speaker, it makes no significant difference to the impedance the amp sees, and very little power goes to the DI box. I found that it needed heavy EQ to be usable though, as an amp that sounds good through a tweeterless cab can be painfully bright when run direct. Even the 4KHz lowpass setting on the BSS isn't enough on its own.
  8. Beer of the Bass
    [quote name='KingBollock' timestamp='1334682029' post='1619712'] What is the actual, physical difference between a cheap and expensive pick-up, that are the same type and impedance? And how do the various materials effects the sound? [/quote] I've been pondering this lately, as I'm gigging a £99 guitar on which I can't find any reason to change the pickups! It strikes me that while you get less choice, mass produced pickups that copy an established recipe closely can't go too far wrong. The very cheapest far eastern pickups are made to be as cheap as possible while still looking like the originals, but the better ones are copying established designs more closely. The differences between two pickups using the same magnet material, gauge of wire, standard bobbin shape and wound with the same number of turns are going to be vanishingly subtle, to the point of insignificance in most playing situations. OTOH some premium brands do have their own unique designs going on, but for basic Fender style stuff the cheapies have it pretty well covered.
  9. Beer of the Bass
    Chequered binding doesn't seem to crop up in the usual luthiers binding/purfling sources, so perhaps Ric do have some kind of "trade dress" protection going on, like Dimarzio do with cream coloured humbuckers. It could be a tough one to protect though, as I'm sure some of the older Martin guitars had something similar. EDIT: I did a quick google search, and there are open online sources of very similar checkered purfling, so maybe not.
  10. Beer of the Bass
    Mind you, Formby was actually quite a principled chap, who made a statement by refusing to play segregated venues when touring pre-apartheid South Africa. My respect for him was increased greatly by reading about that!
  11. Beer of the Bass
    Going to gigs as a punter, there are times where I get a kick out of seeing performers playing the hell out of unwieldy, impractical but "real" kit against all practical considerations of that choice. It's not so much amps that I get this with, but if I hear a great keyboard player and they've dragged along a proper Hammond and Leslie because that's what they love playing, the performance feels like something special. I recognise that this is not particularly logical, and if you blindfolded me they could be playing a Nord and I wouldn't know. With music being an art form, how the performer and audience feel about the tools and process used in the performance can be as important as the empirical properties of those tools. Having said that, there will be performers who find all the modelling technology inspiring and enabling, who will turn in their best performances using said technology.
  12. Beer of the Bass
    I've not seen Mr F's band, but I get the impression that the stacks of mismatched and obscure old valve gear favoured by the Doom lot are kind of like an art installation in themselves. So their presence is part of the performance, even if it might be possible to create that sound by other means. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a different approach from many other performances. Myself, I enjoy using simple valve amps, especially for guitar, because there isn't as much to dial in while I'm using them. Once I've got a sound I like, I can more or less forget about the gear and play some music. I haven't messed with modelling gear for bass, but I've played guitar through some of the Line 6 amps in rehearsal spaces. I find that the presets can sound like an exaggerated version of the amp they're trying to model, presumably so they sound recognisable, but I guess any serious user will take the time to tweak the presets to their taste. I don't see the need for modelling gear to exactly recreate the sound of older amps, it just needs to sound musical and be enjoyable to use and listen to.
  13. Beer of the Bass
    I've got an Ernie Ball 4 string set, with a D'addario Chrome B. Chromes and EBs are similar enough that this does not feel, sound or even look mismatched. There was an eBay seller recently who had Chrome B strings for about a fiver, so it was cheaper for me to add a B to a four string set than to buy a set of five. The B-string is great down low, a much more enjoyable sound than a roundwound B to my ears, but can get a little thumpy above the 8th fret or so. This is not terrible, but it does affect what position I choose to play some lines in.
  14. Beer of the Bass
    I think I can proudly present this as the shonkiest example of an eight string on Basschat! [attachment=104601:8 string 2 001.JPG] It's a cheap p-bass copy modified with four guitar tuners, an alnico pickup of unknown origin and naff stick-on inlays. Surprisingly the neck has held up OK, but I do have light strings on (a 40-100 set plus .017, .025, .035 and .045" octave strings). The courses are reversed, Rickenbacker style, and it sounds unexpectedly good, though it would benefit from an eight saddle bridge.
  15. Beer of the Bass
    I used to use mine with a guitar amp - if you want to sound "electric" it's the way to go. Double-coursed strings sound manky with distortion though!
  16. Beer of the Bass
    In the photo, it looks like the shield from your pickup wire is going to the end of the pot track (i.e output) and the central conductor is going to the pot shell (i.e. ground). Reverse those connections, and I reckon it'll be fine. On a Fender pickup, you wouldn't notice any difference as the poles aren't grounded, but the Delano must be made with the poles connected to the shield. So the poles which are normally grounded are now connected to the hot wire, causing a short when the string touches it.
  17. Beer of the Bass
    [quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1333372507' post='1600680'] Shuguang. What plate voltage is the amp running? [/quote] Shuguang are one I hadn't thought of trying, but I guess if they withstand Doom they'll be fine for my usage. The plate voltage is at 500v, so it's on the high side but not outrageous. Space is a bit tight with the fat bottle 6CA7s, so possibly they're getting hotter than is ideal - though they've never red-plated.
  18. Beer of the Bass
    I've got a late 60's Carlsbro CS100/8 PA head which I use for bass; it's a 100 watter using EL34s. I've been running Electro Harmonix 6CA7 valves as they were on special offer at the time I got the amp. I don't run the amp particularly hard, as the power stage stays clean, and I've always set the bias fairly conservatively. Everything in the amp is healthy, it's been re-capped and thoroughly checked over. I've just had a valve develop noise issues, for the second time in only about 12 gigs - the first one developed random crackling and sizzling noises and got replaced, now one has started producing microphonic jangle through the speakers. I have a spare to replace the offending valve, but the next time I re-valve, what's out there that might be more reliable? NOS are out of my price range, so I'm wondering which currently-made valves have been more reliable for people.
  19. Beer of the Bass
    I'd second the idea of keeping the valve amp but changing to a lightweight modern cab. I'm happy with a 100 watter into a modern neodymium 2x12", but maybe in a really loud band more speaker area could be useful.
  20. Beer of the Bass
    It'd be a great DIY project, if that's something you're into. Most of the old Fender layouts and schematics are widely available, so it would be quite feasible to closely copy a Bassman 100.
  21. Beer of the Bass
    I'm quite impressed with the AXL Badwater tele-ish guitar that I'm using with the band I play guitar in. It was all of £99, and the only thing that really needed changing was the nut. The neck and frets are decent and the pickups are proper alnico magnet jobs which I can't find a reason to upgrade. It's miles ahead of the Korean Squier I started on in the 90s. It'd be interesting to see if the basses are similarly good for the money.
  22. Beer of the Bass
    I guess the power stage could be working to spec but the pre-amp clipping early due to peculiar gain-staging. It may have been tweaked from a guitarists POV perhaps. Is that a PCB based build? Quite surprising for a DIY job - I wonder if the boards came in kit form at the time.
  23. Beer of the Bass
    Is the output up to scratch now? I reckon you should try it with your band before putting it up for sale. A healthy 100 watt valve head makes for a pretty good pub gig amp and ought to pair up nicely with your two 1x12" cabs if the impedance is right.
  24. Beer of the Bass
    I rather liked the newer model Laney LC15-110 when I tried one. That's worth adding to your list IMO. Though I went with the option of building my own instead, as I really wanted a Fender Princeton Reverb but couldn't afford the reissue.
  25. Beer of the Bass
    I always thought the Sex Pistols were an interesting one regarding authenticity, since they appear to have been a manufactured band under the guidance of Malcolm Mclaren and at least one of them couldn't actually play in any meaningful sense of the word. Yet they are seen to epitomise Punk authenticity by many. What's going on there? [quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1332231442' post='1585011'] so when the lead guy from Mumford was playing his songs up in edinburgh before he was famous, same songs, same style but just acoustic... was that authentic or non authentic? at which point did it switch? [/quote] I remember seeing him around too. I think it's the media presentation of them as being the new Folk which gets peoples goat, particularly among folkies who see them as yet more acoustic singer songwriter types with added waistcoats and banjos. Personally it doesn't bother me, as I'm free to not buy their albums if it's not my thing. Considered as a singer songwriter he's probably no more or less authentic than any number of other blokes with acoustic guitars.
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