Beer of the Bass

If Hammon's website is still up, there was a picture of the individual parts laid out. Basically, the centre of the pickup is made of a number of thin layers of steel stacked up. The laminations are parallel to the face of the pickup and each layer has four holes for the polepieces to pass through. I think it's much like the material transformer cores are made from. So still a bit more going on than most pickups...

One of the bits that makes them particularly complex and expensive to make is the polepiece adjustment mechanism, which doesn't really affect the sound AFAIK. Otherwise they're arranged like a guitar P90, except with a laminated steel core through which the polepieces pass. I wouldn't be surprised if someone started making a functional equivalent without necessarily copying the adjuster mechanism and cosmetics. They wouldn't have any problem shifting them if they did, especially if they were sized to fit in existing soapbar routes.

While we're on the topic of five string flats, has anyone tried the Rotosounds on a five string? I'm thinking of going back to flats, and I like strings at the clankier end of flatwounds, so it's those or the Chromes.

The neck through ones are not bad - I think they were made in Korea. A friend of mine had a very similar bass which I think came from the same factory, and I remember quite liking it. I wouldn't pay a huge amount though...

I think it was just a distributors badge, attached to various grades of Japanese, and possibly Korean copies. I've seen a couple that were not bad, and some atrocious ones. Sorry, that's probably not much help!

Can that price be right? They'll be struggling to keep up with demand if so.

The E on mine seemed to improve in the first couple of weeks. I'm not sure if the sound changes as the core stretches out, or if I adjusted my technique without noticing.

Preamp valves can last a very long time. I'm playing a 1969 amp with original Brimar ECC83s which are in good health, but the power amp valves were long gone. Regarding warming it up, it will take 20-30 seconds or so for the valves to reach their operating temperature, but you'll hear that, as they don't pass any signal when cold. Other than not chucking it around while it's still hot, there really isn't much to worry about.

I changed from Spiro Mittels to the Honeys. The Honeys feel quite a bit lower in tension, but it is hard to judge as they are also thicker. They are much less floppy than most dedicated slap strings though. They are definitely less tiring than the Spiros when digging in.

If it's rosewood, there's no real need to redo the ebonising after the surface has been dressed, I'd say. I've seen a couple of basses with bare rosewood fingerboards which have held up fine for many years, and one of those was an old Kay wearing roundwound gut strings which would be quite hard on the fingerboard.

What sort of date would people say the whole mastering "loudness war" kicked in?
Yesterday we had music TV channels on for an hour or so, and the difference in mastering style between newer stuff and 90s or older stuff was striking. All of the recent stuff was constantly loud and shiny and in-your-face in quite a wearing way.
I view added harmonic distortion on bass as a separate issue from that, as I hear lightly driven bass sounds going back much further than the last couple of years, on records which have a lot of dynamic range. Most 70s prog is an example!
I realise that a "natural sounding" recording is pretty much an impossibility and not particularly desirable anyway. Frank Zappa pointed out in an interview that since multitrack recording and close-micing came in, all recordings are an illusion, as there is no one place in the room you could put your head to hear the combination of sounds that end up on the recording.

Be warned that most grille cloth is quite open meshed and you will probably still see the yellow cone. Look at the old Fender cabs where you can see the metal dust caps through the grille. The stretchy hi-fi style cloth is a bit less transparent (I can't see the white cones on my old Wharfedales), but also much less protective than the stiffer stuff.

What's the consensus on commenting on prices you've been offered in your own "wanted" thread? I've just done this, where someone offered me something for more than the new price, and I'm wondering whether I should have passed comment or not.
This was from someone with no feedback who uses too many exclamation marks, both things which make me slightly uneasy!

I've used my Clarus for electric bass. The basic sound is good, but the EQ is not great for electric bass IMO as there is not much "voicing" built in and the mid control is not centred in quite the right place for my needs . I'd imagine it would work well with an active bass where you've sorted out your EQ on the way in. I like to run an OLC flipster (FET preamp voiced to sound a bit like an Ampeg fliptop) in front of mine when playing electric. The HPF is useful if you're trying to squeeze the maximum level out of a small cab.
I should probably keep quiet about this (as it's not a bad product), but I wasn't crazy about the DHA DI-EQ I had. The EQ didn't seem to work in nearly the way I expected and it was quite hard to get really musical results.

I've got an EA Wizzy 10 with a sprung handle on the bottom, so I can confirm that they do work OK as a tilt-back mechanism. It does spring back with a loud clack when you lift the cab though.

Hey, not only did someone bid on the truncated brown bass monstrosity he was selling, but they've posted feedback saying they were satisfied with it! The mind boggles...

I'm sure I recall Peavey running a magazine advert in the 90's touting the low tuning as a selling point for 5-string players. I can't remember which product it was for though...

I thought I'd update the thread with what I've ended up with. Alex Claber offered me a "tired looking" empty cab, without fittings which was built as a Super 12 prototype and just hanging around the workshop, as it was not quite up to his cosmetic standards to send out to a customer. I picked up a pair of B&C 12HPL64 drivers from the BC classifieds which I thought would do a good job for my needs, and combined the two. I then tarted it up with black and silver grillecloth (from a vintage radio guy on eBay), gold piping and some corners and handles. Adapting the cab for a cloth grille took some fiddling, as it was built for a metal grille.
I'm well pleased with the results - the B&C drivers have very good sensitivity and have nice even response through the mids and upper mids. F3 is at 80Hz, so it's not a sub-bass monster, but I'm fine with that. They have lower excursion-limited power handling than the Kappalites Alex would have used, but I only have 100 watts to play with, so that's a reasonable compromise in this case. It is a lot clearer sounding than my old 1x15", so I have removed the "bright" cap from my amp. The cab is also ridiculously light - I think it may weigh less than the head! I'm looking forward to gigging this rig. So thanks, Alex. If my band ever gets to playing bigger venues, I may have to call you up for a Super 15!
[attachment=93367:bass cab new 2 003.JPG]

There's also this from Stewart Macdonald - cunning tooling for rescuing broken truss rods:
[url="http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Special_tools_for_Truss_rods/Truss_Rod_Rescue_Kit.html"]http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Special_tools_for_Truss_rods/Truss_Rod_Rescue_Kit.html[/url]
Not cheap, but you could maybe sell it on after you've used it.

Bought a pair of B&C speaker drivers from Deek. I'm pleased with the speakers, he was pleasant to deal with and I'd not hesitate to buy from him again.

Tru-oil can be obtained from hunting/shooting/fishing type places as it is intended for gunstocks. I've only used it as a very thin wipe-on finish on a body, so I can't comment on hardness, but you'd need a large number of coats as it goes on very thinly.

[quote name='bear-foot-bass' timestamp='1321221414' post='1436748']
Was watching Goodfellas last night when the perfect bass sound popped out. Tracked it through to Nilsson's 'Jump Into the Fire'. Fantastic intro but the vocals are baad.
Is this just a tube amp distorting?
[/quote]

Indeed, I'd say it's flatwound strings into a fairly bright sounding grindy valve amp. Good sound!

I had reasonable results with Tru-oil on Ash for a satin finish, ending by buffing with the finest grade of steel wool I could find. I didn't use any grain filler, but I did start with several coats of the Tru-oil sealer before moving on to the finish itself. There is still quite a lot of grain texture, which is what I wanted, but it has a nice sheen.
Pictures here:
http://basschat.co.uk/topic/137533-swamp-ash-5-string/page__view__findpost__p__1336777

I reckon Artisan sounds better than Technician. I'm not really a writer, and I'm better at reacting to and complementing other musicians than starting things off myself, but I think I'm not totally without creativity.

[quote name='daflewis' timestamp='1320924933' post='1433155']

It's worth trying the honeys, though a work of caution, they are designed to sound like gut, so they aren't the most growly and sustaining string in my experience - though Beer seems happy with that side of things.

I've currently got some prototypes of a new hybrid on my main working bass and have to admit that they're very promising - a bit higher tension, but really responsive under the bow with a lovely thud at the beginning of a pizz note and a brighter sustain (they'll even work with a magnetic pickup) - i actually don't want to take them off, which is a good sign!
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Yeah, I like the Honeys for pizz, but they're more Charlie Haden-ish then Dave Holland-ish, if that makes sense.
The new hybrids sound intriguing - do keep us posted!