Beer of the Bass

With any luck it'll just be a fit issue that you can figure out with a little fiddling, though if it does turn out to be faulty you should be able to get it replaced. It's a decent sounding pickup, so I'd try and work it out rather than looking for something else immediately.

The design of the Epiphone is a little more appealing IMO, with its 60s style pickups and more practical 2-part bridge. It's odd that there doesn't seem to be a current vintage style Gibson.

The new Vintage Pro ones with the proper old style pickups do look great! I know that doesn't help...

Nice job. Is that a Tuff Cab finish you've used? I've been quite pleased with how that stuff looks and holds up on my DIY cabs from a couple of years ago.

I feel like some piezo pickups have more of that thick, compressed tone that's easy to work with but not so natural. The K&K Bass Max or the inexpensive J-Tone "Big" pickups on eBay have that type of character.

The bit that puzzles me is that geared wooden pegs were more common in the 3-string era, especially on Germanic basses (which this looks like due to the outside linings among other details). From the style of tuners I'd have guessed at this being somewhere in the first half of the 20th century (though that's very much a guess), when 4 strings were standard.

I was going by the "Boosey & Hawkes" rather than the Excelsior model name. I was aware that Hawkes and Boosey had been two separate companies originally, and just googled for the company history.

If it's clearly stamped "Boosey & Hawkes", it has to be 30s or later, as it looks like the two companies merged in 1930. That makes the 3-string aspect puzzling, as it seems a little late for that. Could it be a 4-string that's had the tuners modified for some other reason?

It's hard to generalise between number of valves and headroom or character. Preamp valves are not only used as simple gain stages - the number can vary depending on the approach the designer has taken, and whether any are used in auxilliary roles like reverb, active EQ stages or FX loops. And in power amps, a pair of EL34 (for example) could be used in amps ranging from around 20 watts to 80 watts depending on the voltages and topology, and with or without a valve rectified power supply.

Fake poo is a steady seller, if you run a joke shop!

I don't mind it at the light, subtle end of things, like the Gibson VOS models, but if the more extreme examples are falling out of favour I'm OK with this trend!

It's something I'd love to try sometime, but the extra setup time, transport hassle and soundguy acceptance factor (when it's already a 6 piece band with brass) put me off. The gear I already have around would probably make for a fun setup though, maybe using my Schalltechnik HPF to roll the lows off the guitar combo rather than doing the octave thing.

Could it be down to the cabs rather than the amps? I'm not sure of the model numbers and age of the various ones I've encountered, but quite a few 8x10s have been way darker sounding than I like, or in the case of some of the 4x10s, had an annoying gap in the upper mids between the 10s and tweeter.

Emmett Otter only needed one string!

I've noticed that a couple of places have these very cheaply, but reviews are mixed, to say the least. In Ashdown's own demo it sounds good in the intro, but terrible during the actual demo part of the video. https://youtu.be/mm9kXJ3RYxo So, what's going on with that? If anyone here has used one, can you get anything worth having out of it?

If the PF-20 is anything like the Pf-50t and other Ampegs, it shouldn't be mid-scooped with all the EQ knobs at noon, and should be capable of boosting the mids. From what I've seen of the Ashdown LB30/CTM30 schematics, I'd expect the Ampeg to have more mids on tap than the Ashdown. So it might not be a change in the direction that you're looking for.

I guess the change must be driven by the new CITES regulations on rosewood.

Same here, but to my mind doing it right involves only pulling it out in the moments where it really adds something, which for most bands is a very small proportion of their set!

Cheers, I've gone ahead and ordered one of those.

I don't have a steady pedalboard at the moment, and since I use no more than two pedals in any current project, I don't feel I want to go that route. A simple wall wart type power supply with a small daisy chain would be more convenient, but I keep running into noise issues with the ones I've had. For double bass gigs, I'm running a Schalltechnik Vong HPF/LPF and a Harley Benton tuner that's pretty much a TU-2 copy. For electric bass gigs, it's a fuzz (either a Superfuzz or Big Muff clone, I haven't settled on which yet) and the HPF/LPF. Both a Dunlop/MXR 9v and a generic 9v plug top supply from eBay have high frequency noise in various situations, and it doesn't appear to be a daisy chaining issue since it still happens with only one pedal powered. Both are SMPS types. I have a Harley Benton Powerplant Junior (linear supply with isolated outputs) which is quiet in all situations, but the form factor is less handy for my purposes. Everything is quiet running from batteries too. As far as plug-top supplies go, is something like a 1-spot going to be more reliably quiet than the other ones I've had? And are there other specific ones known to be decent?

Which venue was that, out of curiosity? It's always handy to keep track of which ones have useable backline!

The Ampeg PF-50T is 8.8kg, and might be a better comparison as it's also a 50 watt amp. It saves quite a bit of weight by just having a cage on top of the chassis rather than a full wooden cabinet. Mesa had a couple of surprisingly light valve bass heads too.

I did once email them and ask, trying to determine if it would make a good piezo preamp. At the time, they didn't have that information available.

If you do stick with the double bass, don't be afraid to drop your bridge adjusters right down, go for some low-tension strings and use lots of amp. Also I feel like much of the physical challenge is in carting the instrument and gear around, so some help with that might go a long way.

Yes, that bit puzzles me. I can understand getting heated over the political stuff that can make a big difference to people's lives and wellbeing, and I've definitely done it myself. But to do so over the minutiae of bass amplification, flats vs. rounds, whether 4 strings are enough (etc etc) seems plain daft!