Dankology

@BigRedX Things have got a little better today with incremental truss rod adjustments - I think there was still way too much relief and this was influencing the tuning issue. I can't quantify how out they were but certainly enough for my not-excellent ears to pick up on. It's still not perfect but I can just about play octaves now without cringing. I've still got way more buzz than I'd like but you're quite right - the overall situation is now siginficantly improved. I think the nut could definitely do with a proper seeing to too. I'm definitely not seeking perfection here - I have at least a couple of instruments (a mando and a guitar) that I'm happy to tune differently depending on which key I'm in. The saddles' positions relative to each other do look properly odd though. I was hoping to pick your brain regarding my theoretical custom build. In my head it's looking very much like the Elvis Costello Jazzmaster https://flickr.com/photos/mediawench/4096773922/in/set-72157594485374924 (maybe with a slightly scaled down body size) but almost certainly without the whammy bar and with more orthodox circuitry. I've always been a fan of P90s on guitars and was considering two of these rather than the three Jaguar-style ones. I am a fairly heavy handed player at times and I'm intrigued by what you were saying about your Hooky 6-string - ideally I'd be wanting something that functions as an extended-range bass rather than an extended range guitar, if that makes sense. Not for six grand though...

Tonight's update... I followed @BigRedX's instructions re starting from scratch and initially setting the saddle height at 15mm. I needed to put in a shim of two layers of a plastic RAC membership card going up to the lowest neck screws in order to keep a straight line from neck to saddles. I then raised the bridge up a further 2mm and tuned up. The low E is in tune when played open, at the 12th fret harmonic and when fretted at the 12th fret. But every note from 1st to 11th fret is sharp - this gradually settles towards the octave and is sort of OK beyond there. The A and D strings are similarly affected but to a lesser extent - ie the A's intonation is right from the 10th fret up, the D from the 7th. Perhaps I need to let tonight's adjustments settle overnight but I've not got a great feeling here. I did contact my luthier but have to admit that I jumped pretty much straight to asking about a custom build...

I was nearly there last night, let me tell you.

@BigRedX Thank you for the very comprehensive guidance - I'm very grateful to everyone that has offered their expertise here. I'm hoping to set some time aside this evening to start bottoming this out properly. I'm a bit gutted if I'm honest - the Squire had sat unused for months until recently and has now become absolutely essential to about half a dozen new songs. Will report back!

Thanks for that. I've admitted defeat for this evening but I'm going to try everything suggested so far tomorrow and see how far I get. Re the nut, it seems to have the proper slant towards the bridge but there's also a left/right slant and the slot itself isn't wide enough to let the string get to the deepest point.

I think the low E slot is cut slightly wrong - the bottom of the slot is little slanted so the string doesn't sit quite as low as it might. Will try and file it down... I thought I was reducing the relief by tightening the truss rod but met significant resistance. Or should it need a good bit of effort to tighten it up? I am truly out of my depth here.

The shim was a stiff piece of card (from a packet of strings, or something slightly thicker), it starts at the body end of the pocket and reaches about a third of the way up. Photos attached! Looking at the nut, I wonder if the low E slot could do to be a bit deeper.

I've had another mess around but this is driving me mad. There was barely a 1/16 of a clockwise turn left in the truss rod. In desperation I ended up giving it about an 1/8 of a turn counter-clockwise from its original position and this has allowed me to get the intonation right at the 12th fret. But now every note between 1st and 11th frets is significantly sharp and the string buzzes so much as to be unplayable. The other strings are unaffected. I've included a photo to show how high the action remains despite the bridge being as low as it can go plus a neck shim in situ. I'm beginning to suspect that the neck has something horribly wrong with it but would be grateful for some pointers to try before I smash the thing into pieces and throw it on the fire.

A new set of strings has just arrived, funnily enough... Will see how things go with them.

As noted in a recent posting, I'm using my Squire VI more regularly nowadays, in fact it's the only instrument I've used at our last couple of rehearsals. But the more I use it, the more I'm noticing problems. I've already fitted a Staytrem bridge as the original didn't allow enough saddle movement to intonate the low E and have shimmed the neck slightly. I'm currently using the Newtone Axiom strings which have a 100 (or thereabouts) on the lowest string. But I'm still struggling to intonate the low E despite the saddle being maxed out. At the moment it seems I have two options: drop the bridge to its lowest and get decent intonation but rattles all along the string OR raise the bridge and then have every single note up to about the 15th fret sound sharp. The other strings seem pretty fine. Looking down the neck, there seems to be significant relief (I should check I'm phrasing this correctly here: to my eye the neck seems to bow away from the strings around its midpoint). So I'm wondering if an adjustment here might be what's needed. But this is something I've never had cause to adjust on any guitar before - is it really as simple as gradually turning the adjustment clockwise and seeing how things go? Or does what I describe above speak of a more signficant issue?

I quite like a sort of hybrid system I've seen on one of the free online bass lessons sites: four lines representing the strings but with note names rather than fret numbers. I convince myself it encourages me to think more about what I'm doing rather than just mindlessly playing the fret numbers.

Sorry - I missed this reply. I checked the resistance in the shop before taking it home: it was something like 6.4ohm - which reassurred me based on your earlier advice. Seems to be working well and I'm liking the sound too 😀

I've always loved vinyl and when I was a teenager it was a cheap way to pick up loads of classic stuff. Still love big covers, two "programmes" per album and the whole ritual of putting a record on. A few months ago I almost gave up on new vinyl after picking up a run of noisy sounding LPs. Even a new cartridge didn't help. I eventually picked up a much nicer turntable and I cannot express how much better everything sounds, even through a middling amp and low end speakers. Even my other half, who semi-tolerantly indulges this stuff, has repeatedly commented on how good it sounds. So I'm fully recommited now and would strongly encourage any waverers to check out a decent modern deck. Of course, I'm aware that much of what I'm liking will be down to distortion and the limitations of the format but I'm OK with that. In terms of the vinyl revival itself, I'm torn: I love that new music is coming out on the format but the prices are ridiculous, even for nondescript secondhand stuff. I fear lots of nice new stuff is getting wrecked on cheapo pseudo-vintage decks and labels that have always pressed vinyl are now being squeezed out of the production process. On the other hand, CDs are now cheap and plentiful, so I'm filling in gaps in my collection on the cheap again. Jeffrey Lewis wrote a great song about it that I'm sure I've posted here before: https://youtu.be/3urXygZXb74

Well, Squire VI to be completely accurate. I bought mine a couple of years ago on a bit of whim from someone local for about £120. Judging by the comments on his Facebook page after it sold, I suspect it had been an object of derision in his band and, to be fair, in its then state really wasn't much of an instrument. Since then I've picked up one of the Staytrem bridges, shimmed the neck and switched to the fab Newtone Bass VI strings - I'm still pondering upgrading the pickups and nut as well as ditching the whammy bar but for now it is a useable bass and occasionally got used for overdubbed parts on the odd song. But for the last few weeks I've been using it almost exclusively at rehearsal and it's been a bit of game changer. We're a guitar/bass/drums three-piece and using it for octaves, runs against open strings, chords and high register melodic stuff etc has allowed the guitarist and I to blur our roles and the jamming has lead to more bits of new music than we know what to do with. I'm also using more effects than ever before, which is fun. It weighs a ton and the low end is a bit lacking for it to take the place of a normal bass but it is fast becoming one of my favourite instruments. So, is there anyone else in a similar position? These things seem to get very little love online (other than in the dedicated Facebook group!) but I suspect that that is more to do with the crappy bridge and strings that the Squires leave the factory with. On the downside it has made me want one of those Hagstrom 8-strings...

All seems good!

You've obviously never watched me shopping on Ebay... No, I have not considered this at all. In fact, my only process here has been knowing someone with a similar set up and assuming I could do the same with my amp. This is the cab: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Trace-Elliot-4x10-Bass-Guitar-Speaker-Cabinet-/165322491861?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0 And the amp is the aforementioned GP12 SMX combo. Have I done something daft here?

I've long wanted to supplement my 15" GP12 SMX combo with a 4x10 cab but have never quite managed it. Last night I fell into conversation with some folks on the Facebook Trace Elliot group and someone recommended a 2x10 - I went looking for a photo and accidentally found a fairly tidy looking 4x10 on sale at Johnny Roadhouse for £100 - which seemed silly to ignore. So, vomitty child permitting, I'll be picking it up tomorrow in good time for rehearsal later in the evening. Given that the combo on its own loosened every light fitting in the house when I first bought it, I am really quite excited about this addition. Do pray for my lumbar spine though.

This is something I've long fretted over, and moreso on the odd occasions when I use a pick. But... we record all our rehearsals and most of our gigs and every time I listen back the bass sounds fine (other than all the bum notes, of course). It's almost some weird psychological/aural trick in the moment that makes me more conscious of the higher frequency content and somehow filters out the low end. But it's definitely there when listening back later on. This is with a US standard with JVX pickups. I do fancy having the series option though - is there a sensible way of doing this given the EMG solderless/plug & play system?

If my Squire VI is anything to go by, a new socket will end up being the tiniest and most trivial on a long list of mods and fixes. Love mine BTW.

Aside from the potential rights and wrongs of the recruitment criteria (and the seemingly random use of capital letters), that sounds like a band I'd really enjoy not being a member of.

Yours is also presented the most prettily... Really appreciate the time you put into this. These are my thoughts exactly. I really like the way the run sounds and as much as any flurry of quiet, low end notes might have done the trick, it was really bothering me that I couldn't identify what was being played. I've always had a thing about wantng to get my fingers (and ears) around tricky passages, even if it's a song I don't particularly like - just to have another tool in the toolbox, as it were. I was pretty far off as it happens. In my defence, while I was fighting with it I did think that it reminded me of Neil Young's Old Man - and it turns out that it is the same guy on bass. So I may be tone deaf but not entirely cloth-eared 😀

Thank you all for your sterling efforts. I'm looking forward to working my way through these latest versions tomorrow. Fascinating how much variation there is here, latter-day rearrangement aside... 😉

Second gig with our new band on Friday night! The sorry tale of how we were reduced from a 5-piece to a renamed trio is recounted in another thread but the new band is shaping up very nicely indeed now. The gig was a free-in in the bar at a small local theatre. We all know virtually everyone involved in some way so the preparations were very relaxed and informal. The guitarist had been in touch with the venue engineer a few days before to sort out the set up and had explained we were 2 x vox and wanted at least some of the kit in the mix so we could use some effects on it. All was ok'd and it was arranged to meet him on the afternoon of the gig - no show... As we loaded in we were greeted by what I can only assume was a volunteer/work experience bod and the "desk" photographed below. (In case the photo doesn't attach properly, imagine something you might give to child who wanted to pretend they were doing a podcast.) We resigned ourselves to just putting the vocals through the PA but soon realized that there wasn't even a basic built in reverb so rushed back to the rehearsal room to grab the XR18, modem, tablet etc. Amazingly, it all went well from there on: really decent crowd by the end, many of whom seemed to be happily bopping along. All our giveaway cds were nabbed and we even had a girl come up at the end to ask for a setlist - although I wonder if she had anticipated something like the very pretty one that our guitarist had shared on Facebook rather than the crumpled, beerstained plain A4 printout I was standing on. Oh, how I have missed playing live. (a free live EP from our first gig is available here: https://deadtenantmusic.bandcamp.com/releases )