Beer of the Bass

Is that a five string bridge with four saddles on? Mr Philips would be proud of this innovation!

I've never snapped a pick, but I do wear the edges a fair bit, especially when I was in a band doing a lot of rhythm guitar. Nylon wears in a raggedy way, so I like the Dunlop Tortex or Ultex as they wear smoothly. The Gibson and Fender celluloid ones also wear smoothly for me, but a lot faster.

Do you tend to favour the neck pickup on a Jazz? I feel like the bridge pickup sound on a jazz is pretty distinctive whether fretted or fretless, but the neck pickup definitely overlaps in territory with a Precision, and the high end/scooped mids of both pickups together stands out more on a fretted bass.

I think my old German flatback bass has done some time strapped on a roof rack in an unpadded canvas bag. I can't think of any other explanation for the pattern of deep scratches on the back!

That's a cool sound, but isn't that about the cheapest bolt-on neck Les Paul copy you could buy at the time?

I don't know much about them, but I have a vague recollection of the ones used by Rory Gallagher and his band being called Stramp, not Tramp.

Yeah, I think they probably should make it clearer on the listing. Double bassists would bid silly money for NOS sets of Lycon or Golden Spiral strings, but old Picato tapes aren't a particularly sought-after thing AFAIK, especially when there are plenty of good tapewounds being made today.

If they've been stored in dry conditions they're likely to be fine, but 40+ years is definitely a little outside of normal stock rotation practices!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372808795050 These are described as "new" with no disclaimers, but that packaging doesn't look like anything made while I've been playing, and I'm 40 next year! The packet art is kind of charming in a kitschy way, but I wonder if there's much demand for NOS strings?

Does it run clean like that? Most amps that use a master volume would be getting pretty dirty with every preamp control maxed.

Maybe just people expecting more than even a very good single 8" will do?

Are those multiple Fender 400PS heads racked up in the older picture? That must have been a pretty crazy setup for the time!

I'd also say it is for me, in the bands I play in, although I do run into bands playing in the same venues who'd probably want more power. I've usually got one guitarist on stage with a style that's not too heavy, plus brass, and my bass sound has a lot of midbass in it, not pushing the deep lows. In that setting it sits nicely with the level of the acoustic drums and guitar backline, and beyond that we'd need decent PA anyway. But if you brought in multiple guitarists doing the chunky modern rock thing, a scooped bass sound and a drummer using double pedals, the PF50T wouldn't be my choice.

For wah I'd say Michael Henderson on Miles Davis' On the Corner. I thought this was some sort of envelope filter at first, but apparently it's a wah with very good foot technique! For envelope filter, Parliament's Chocolate City is a big favourite, and I think it's because of this that I won't even consider filter pedals without a reverse sweep mode. Thinking about it further, I really can't come up with a favourite example of synth pedals on bass. There are keyboard synth or sequenced basslines that I love, but I feel like synth pedals are mostly a convenient means for a bass guitarist to imitate those live.

Impressively neat work with the tolexing there! I've done a couple of guitar combos, and there's certainly a knack to doing it well. I suspect that Ampeg never put in that level of attention to detail over the check pattern.

If you're making a big box that looks like an amp, and then putting an amp inside the box, are you really going ampless?

Yep, it looks like the Carbon would fit the bill. The Audio Technica AT95E mentioned in the linked thread falls into a similar price bracket too, so I'll do some searching around for opinions on those two.

I'd definitely be looking sub £100, both in terms of what I can sensibly spend at the moment, and what I'd be willing to put into this old turntable. So I could certainly look into some of the suggestions here.

I'm presuming that the cartridge is the original; I can't see any markings on it, but the styli that fit are labelled as a replacement for the Pioneer PN10/11/14/15/20 cartridges.

I'm not a massive hi-fi enthusiast, but have and listen to quite a bit of vinyl. I have an old 70s Pioneer Pl-11 turntable that I've had for a long time, with the original cartridge. I had a few NOS styli that I picked up a few years ago, but I've just put my last spare on, and it doesn't seem to be a very easy replacement to find now. So, would it be worth thinking about a new cartridge rather than looking around for more replacement styli for the old Pioneer cartridge? And if I did, what's OK and not too expensive?

The Orange Terror Bass definitely gets a big chunk of the flavour of certain valve amp sounds, too. When I've used one I'm not always sure if the voicing is to my taste, but the character is certainly there.

I used to use my 506 quite sparingly, chorus on one tune, octave and distortion on sections of others, so I had the effects off most of the time and it was the difference between the Zoom with effects off or bass straight into amp that was noticeable. But I'd expect like any other piece of affordable digital kit, things will have come a long way in the past 20 years! I don't have any complaints about the sound quality of my Zoom recorders, for example.

I'd hope that they've improved since then! I had the original 90s 506 which I used to use all the time. One rehearsal I forgot to bring it, and the drummer said something like "Man, your bass sounds really good today. Did you change something?". I don't think it came out again after that...

The guitarist in my band borrowed a Koch amp the other week...