Beer of the Bass

Thick conductive metal around a pickup can have a measurable effect on the pickup's response, it causes eddy currents which act much like adding extra windings which are shorted out. Though that would usually have the effect of reducing high frequencies, making things darker sounding.

I find double bass is different enough that whatever spacing or number of strings I'm used to on electric bass doesn't really affect it. I'd find changing between two different feeling bass guitars more challenging, I suspect.

Though as you say, that's not at all standardised. A lot of people playing modern jazz styles with higher tension strings go somewhat lower, and I'd say perhaps 6mm G to 9mm E would be considered a medium for that. You might go higher if using lower tension strings or if maximum acoustic projection is the goal, but personally I wouldn't take that approach on an EUB.

I've been starting to try and get some tunes recorded at home, and getting a double bass sound that I'm happy with has been a bit of a stumbling block. I thought I'd put the thread in this section as not everyone with recording experience is browsing the double bass section. I've been using a Red5 Audio RV12 mic, which is an inexpensive cardioid condenser. I don't have a great sounding room, so I've been placing the mic relatively close to avoid too much room ambience. I'm happy with the Red5 for acoustic guitar and other instruments in that range, but I've been struggling with the low end being 'lumpy' and hard to tame with EQ when recording my double bass, even when trying a few different positions and avoiding the f-holes. It's been viable for demos or when mixed with a pickup for the low end, but I feel like it could be better. I'm wondering if this might be due to the proximity effect with a cardioid mic, and whether I might have better results with a different mic, perhaps an omni. So, are there any particular recommendations for an affordable mic that might work well for pizz double bass in this setting? I can't go for anything particularly fancy, maybe £100 or £200 at the absolute upper limit. I'm using my Zoom R24 as an interface, into a laptop running Cubase.

I'm surprised that there are still modern production valve amps that don't offer good DI options. The ones on my Ampeg PF50T are really useful, and the "soundguy acceptance factor" is way more favourable than with a DI box connected to the back of the rig somewhere.

There are very few instruments using softwood necks, even if it works for solid bodies and most acoustic stringed instruments use it for the top. So it might not be the ideal choice in that role.

Full plywood bodies were common on lower priced instruments, especially those made in Korea, until some time in the 90s. They started becoming less common after that.

Years ago, the leader of the school big band didn't notice for months that I was playing fretless, but he did once or twice tell off the trombones when it was actually my intonation that was off, while I tried not to smirk...

The double coursed strings on a mandolin sound horrible with more than a tiny amount of distortion. I had a solid body electric mandolin for a little while, and it was fun with modulation effects, but anything gainy didn't really work. I think this is why electric mandolins have also been made with four or five single strings.

How things feel and respond at a given height varies with the amount of relief in the board, but 4mm G to 6mm E is already at the low end of what you might see on acoustic double bass. So if the goal is to achieve a tone and response that resembles double bass, or to develop technique that could be used on double bass later, I perhaps wouldn't go down from there. Of course, if you want to do something that's more unique to the electric upright, then anything goes.

Could that be the graph from the 12" Basslite? I remember looking at those for my cabs and wondering if that spike would be offputting. Most of the Eminence line have peaks around there and many of them can sound quite pleasing, but some models have it narrower and more pronounced than others.

I did used to bring a spare amp head when we hosted a monthly gig with guest bands using my amp, and I was using a vintage valve amp at the time. The backup (my GK MB200) was needed once, though afterwards I worked out that the failure was the speaker cable on my valve amp. As the valve amp was on a jack-to-jack cable and the GK is on Speakons, swapping them sorted it and I wasn't going to faff about figuring out the root cause during the gig.

I wonder if Ellefson was talking about the tone when running both the P and J pickups on full? The spacing between two pickups affects which frequencies are scooped and which are reinforced when both are run together, hence the fuss over 60s vs 70s spacing on Jazz basses. So I guess reversing the P pickup might make a more pronounced difference in a PJ bass with everything on full than on a solo P pickup.

I don't know if they're all the same, but the foto flame strat I've seen with the trem backplate off was a light coloured, plain grained hardwood under the printed outer veneer. Likely alder or basswood, so very much in the range of materials usually used for a Fender with a painted finish.

I'm not sure if it's been said yet, but I feel like the amount of cost and effort that it's justifiable to put into resilience measures (like backup gear) varies greatly with the amount of pressure and the money involved in a given gig. So I could picture myself taking a lot more precautions with certains kinds of function work than I would for a laid back set in a scruffy pub.

They do look like very nice mics, and there are some players using them who are notable for how well they get their sound across live. I can't afford one either, but the general principle of using a cardioid mic pointed towards the top in about that area could certainly be explored with more affordable mics. I've had good results on demo recordings with a Red5 Audio side-address condenser tucked under the bridge or tailpiece with foam, and a few people are using Sennheiser side-address dynamic mics that way live too.

I've heard plenty of plywood solid bodied instruments that sound good. It does have some practical downsides in the form it tends to be used in budget guitars - it can be prone to small cracks in the short-grained areas around bolt-on neck pockets, it often doesn't hold screws well, particularly close to edges, and the finish often sinks into the grain in unattractive ways over the years.

A 40 litre model would be pretty close to the pair I built several years ago now, though the bracing and porting in mine drew heavily from the Mark I basschat 1x12", and I used Eminence Beta 12A drivers because I found a couple lightly used at good prices. Those cabs are still serving me well and I haven't found any compelling reason to change them. I think I went slightly deeper and less wide in my proportions though.

Everything might have a price, but what I could get for selling my basses is so low compared to their utility to me, or to the amount I could find a workable replacement for, that I can picture very few situations where they would seem worth selling.

Bassists are often more receptive to features that weren't typically present on gear 40 years ago.

At the moment the basses I would never sell are the only ones I have. A 4 string bass I built over 20 years ago, now fretless, a 5 string bass I built later on, and my old double bass. The DIY builds are too personal to me to sell, and would have hardly any market value anyway, and the double bass is as good sounding a bass as I'm likely to ever be able to afford, even if it's quite scruffy looking.

I haven't tested in any objective way, but from the guitar and bass amps I've tried different preamp tubes in (of the same type), it seems like the amount of difference is very dependent on the amp circuit and tube position. In the cases I do feel there's a difference, it's a subtle one. And there probably is a dollop of conformation bias going on too, which makes it even trickier to be sure about.

It's not something I have a need for at the moment, but a compact 1x10" with a properly done crossover and HF driver seems like it might make a very nice jazz gig-sized double bass cab.

Yeah, I could see that. But it's hard to think over the logistics of it without getting into the old idiom of "Well, if that's where I was going, I wouldn't be starting from here"!

It occurs to me the acoustic response might be a bit hit and miss, since it's designed around a flat-top acoustic guitar style bridge and you're replacing it with a floating bridge and tailpiece. The bracing is usually designed quite differently between the two. Though with acoustic bass guitars the tone through a piezo might be more important than the unamplified tone.