Stub Mandrel

Played the Ex's in Penarth last night, my 'home' gig in many ways. Was expecting a half-empty room due to awful weather, but it was pretty full. It seems our loyal fans plus the local musos had come out, but not the 'casual' punters which meant lots of appreciative listening but little dancing. Awful new lights that just dazzle, hope my forceful feedback can get them toned down a lot. I used my new Sire and had a great sound but felt the PA was just reinforcing the bottom end. Playing with pedals again. The drive on the mojo mojo was set too high and the octaver just made mud, but chorus, compressor and hpf all worked fine. We invited a well respected local singer up for The Hunter which went down well. A less successful song was finishing on Sultans of Swing as Al forgot the words and got a bit lost... but e solos were ok. Lots of positive feedback, including on my playing which was an ego boost! Got sent a video by a friend with apologies for sound quality. I am pleased with the little improvised diddle I managed at the end 😁 WhatsApp Video 2024-09-08 at 18.38.51.mp4

We braved the rain to see James Oliver last night. Loads of his banter, amazing what he gets away with. High point included him going out into the porch while playing. He greeted a smoker who apparently replied "eff off". He also whacked his 56 tele so hard against the mike stand the cable fell out... Had a good chat at the break about what it's like to gig with Norman Watt-Roy. 20240906_223725.mp4 Afterwards the roads were pretty floody...

Poor guy. At least he's had a great gig to remember.

Cripes!

Neither weight nor neck dive has ever caused me an issue. Clearly many bassists are passionate about these things, but I just don't get it.

0.8 to 1mm but you ain't seen me right..?

Some edits after giving it a good workout today. Passive sound is good and yes definitely brighter either than a Jazz or P with new strings. Active, I didn't need the pad on my amp, it's set very close to unity gain in 'neutral'. It didn't supercharge the bottom end with my very balanced stage rig in the way it did on my brother's very scooped Elf + 15 rig. Sound wise I enjoyed it at volume; a caveat, I tend not to have strong preferences but enjoy the differences between basses, rather than seeking a particular sound. Balance was good on an ordinary Fender 50mm strap. Felt like it sat a little lower than a Precision. Intonation is very good, haven't had to adjust. Held tune very well despite being transported in a bag rather than a case. Some things to criticise: Tuners look a bit cheap, but are actually decent. Ditto strap buttons, they have a slightly uneven appearance, as if the chrome is very thick over a poor surface finish. Grained plastic covers behind control and battery cavity look a bit meh. Screwdriver access to battery cavity. Nothing to shed tears over.

Now I'm out of the gear challenge, I've ordered that new pedalboard I've wanted for years...

Thanks. So a brain melting SPL of 120dB is only one acoustic watt! Our amps are so very inefficient!

Summary of how it went: I have changed the order of my pedals. See above, permanently moved HPF. Decided which is the best overdrive and changed its settings. Behringer Valve Screamer clone is way too bright, even with tone right down. Mojo Mojo is darker and a better fit for me. The HM2 pedal (had it since the 80s) is glorious, but completely unsuited to what I need - even Peaches. Tweaked my compressor settings, slightly more attack. Investigated the effect of switching it in and out on hoe the overdrive (and amp) react. Reduced the eq on my amp. Things had crept away from being pretty flat; now I've just boosted bass a bit (Orange Terror). Still not sure about octaver. Joyo XVI. Changed the balance of up, down and dry. Decide it's great for Superstition, but not much else. May use it as a five string surrogate. Decided I was very happy with my chorus setting (Max width, level and delay, minimum speed) - it's an 80's Ibanez Digital Chorus and still works well. Crikey I see they are famed for their warmth and go for about £150! Matched effects to a few songs. Absolutely nailed the bass sound for Crazy Train. Got to know the preamp on my Sire a bit better. Made a bloody racket. Now, why didn't I go in the loft and find my DOD DFX9 or my Melos Mini-Fazer? EDIT: I recorded the whole thing on my GoPro - which rewarded me by telling me the SD card had to be reformated, losing everything...

Two reasons - first is to stop me doing stupid things like putting a 5-string's low-B through the signal chain, second is they seem to disagree a bit, especially the voltage doubler in the HPF. Normally noiseless, if the HPF is before the compressor the very high frequency noise is amplified and the octaver then drops it into an audible hiss. Only there when not playing anything , but enough to be an irritant.

That's pretty much how I got my mojo back. Thanks Planet Rock!

On the other hand, set yourself the challenge of making the original bassline 'disappear'.

Nicely balanced sound, tricky with that many guitarists!

Whoops it's been pointed out that this is a Z3...

This bass seems to be incredibly under-represented in terms of review, and those I've seen don't fit entirely with my impressions. So I'm going to have a go. I'm not going to compare with other Sire basses. The body First thing you notice is the bookmatched flamed maple to, supposedly AAAAA. The figure is very dependent on the angle light hits it, so sometimes one side will look much more pronounced than the other. It's a veneer (apparently the new DX model has a slab) over maple backing. The main body is alder, and has an almost square edge and the front carve has a longer than usual curve so it's a bit like a precision version of an Aerodyne Jazz. The alder is a rich dark colour and the maple is paler giving the impression of a bound top. IMHO it looks fabulous and is what caught my attention. There's no scratchplate, but an abundance of tasteful black knobs and one switch. It's not a heavy bass IMHO though I haven't weighed it. The Neck This is 'supposed' to be a P-bass, so I'd expect something comfortably above 40mm at the nut. It isn't, it's well into Jazz-bass territory, I measure mine at a smidgin over 37mm. I would say the neck is the best feature of a good bass. It has very 'rolled' edges, more pronounced than my Squier Jaguar; perhaps because the frets are set back, so the roll goes all along the edges, rather than the rolling being just between frets as on the Jag. The profile is supposedly an asymmetric 'C', I think slightly deeper on the bass side. This is genuinely one of the most comfortable necks I have played, feeling instantly at home, very like my Flea Jazz but perhaps 'fitting the hand' a bit more. Neck radius is quite pronounced. Headstock is the tasteful (some will disagree) and distinctive Sire shape with Marcus Miller P10 and a Sire logo in thin, slightly 3D silver writing that appears 'embedded' in thick lacquer. Visually, the neck is stunning. Roast maple with a nice figure and a fingerboard of even darker heavily figured maple with gorgeous abalone inlays. The dark bands along the side of the fingerboard slab oozes 'boutique' Tuners are the open type, chrome, nearer to Squier size than standard Fender, but with cast rather than pressed back plates. They work well with littel backlash. The new DX version has golden hipshot ultralites (but I prefer the more traditional aesthetic). The Nut It's a bone nut, not synthetic. The Bridge This is a 'slightly beefed up' BBOT with 'high-mass' bridge pieces. (DW version has a full hi-mass bridge in gold) String spacing is about 18.5mm and fixed. You can anchor stings on the bridge (this is how what seem to be a new set of decent stainless strings are fitted) or fit them through the body. I quite like the strings and will probably replace with Rotosound 66 Swing Bass through the body when they lose their sparkle. I can't comment on the 'as new' setup, as it was secondhand. It was pretty good, but I made tweaks. Truss rod adjustment is at the butt end, but there's a large recess making this easy. I had to add a 1/6 turn to get my preferred very slight relief. I dropped all four bridge pieces by about two turns of all the adjustment screws, a hefty drop in action. Any more and the g-string started to rattle; I suspect the E, A and D could come down a tad, but action at the 12th fret is about 1.75mm or less on the E, which is fine for me. Lets me dig in and clank if I want but sounds clean most of the time. I had to deepen all the nut slots quite a lot, maybe approaching 0.5mm to get the light action on the upper frets that I like, nowhere near buzzing. Pickup adjustment seems fine since I dropped the action, may adjust them once I have played it a bit more. Pickups and Preamp Pickups are standard PJ arrangement labelled Sire x Marcus Miller. With the switch in passive mode the bass sounds bright and punchy compared to my precision and jazz which have vintage style alnico pickups. You have a stacked passive tone and volume and a blend pot, all of which do what you would expect of them. In active mode you get four more controls (the passive ones still work). These are bass and treble and a parametric middle control. I found I could get a good range of tones by choosing a level for the mids, then adjusting frequency to taste. Repeat for different boost/cut settings. Helpfully, the controls have centre detents (except tone and volume) and if you set the active controls to the middle the sound is very close to passive mode with a touch of volume boost (apparently you can set the volume with an internal pot). This makes it easy to get a good starting position. Others have criticised the Sire preamp; I found it much easier to get useful sounds than my two basses with simple bass+treble active circuits. I have only played through fairly small rigs so far, but ones with a very good bottom end response. Through my brother's Elf/Portaflex 15 setup pushing the bass up gave a huge sound. It certainly excels at harmonically rich, mid-heavy, funky sounds, and you have to work harder to get a good punchy but dark rock tone. It would be a sin to put flats on this bass, it brings the richness of new roundwounds out front and centre. Overall Looks-wise it's a complete contrast to all my other basses, it is very 'boutique' (and the new DX version even more so with gold hardware). It's a very nice, comfortable bass to play. The neck is lovely; utterly different from a precision despite the 'P' designation, although jazz bass afficionados should feel at home. The sounds it produces lean more towards the funkier end of bass playing to my ear, I look forward to seeing what it does in a blue or classic rock context over the nest couple of weeks... Biggest surprise? I'm a pretty meh slapper, but I actually find this bass relatively easy to play slap on, although this may be helped by me using it mostly with my Joyo BadASS with the compression turned on. Some more pics tomorrow, not got the light to get decent ones.

Someone on Facebook got their Z7 today. From Sweetwater in teh USA. https://www.facebook.com/groups/514552795335923/permalink/6800892833368523/ It proves they are out there and have the new 'optimistic' horn.

This may (I hope) be helpful. Each line represents a particular speaker efficiency in dB/W. 90 to 103 is a pretty representative range for PA/bass cabs. 'HiFi' speakers can be well below 90dB/W. Left to right is increasing amplifier power in watts and vertical is SPL at 10 metres for a speaker in free air (if it was against a wall the sound would be louder, as it would if sound is confined in a room, but the relative differences in SPL still stand). To properly understand this, 10bB in SPL is a doubling in loudness and is what you get by increasing amp power by ten times (e.g. from 30W to 300W), or increasing speaker efficiency by 10dB/W (e.g. from 93dB/W to 103dB/W). So a 60W amp through a 103dB/W speaker is as loud as a 1000W amp through a 90 dB/W speaker. These are realistic figures for amps and speakers (horns are very efficient, if those huge concrete horns were on the chart they'd be giving 110dB/W or higher... that's why the old record players could make a listenable volume just from the movement of the needle, a fraction of a watt of power). In the real world things are complicated by what we play through the speakers. The perceived loudness in 'phons' at our lovely bass frequencies requires lots more SPL than those just a bit higher. Very roughly, us bass players need about 10-15dB SPL more than guitar players to seem as loud, which is why our amps have to be several times more powerful AND use more efficient speakers:

I recall reading a book, already old in the 1980s, that claimed a blind test comparing a recording to an orchestra (behind a thin curtain) in a concert hall with an audience found around 10 watts was equivalent to the full orchestra, but IIRC that used huge horns. Another book I found recently has some interesting stuff. A lot has changed. Labyrinthine bass reflex arrangements instead of simple ports, for example. But this is a very relevant page: I would be interested to know how 'acoustic watts' compare to a dB/m reference, but also that he points out that it may take between 2W and 500W of electrical power to generate 1W of acoustic power. Even in 1966 it was well known that speaker efficiency is at least as important as amplifier power.

By October I've spent two years gigging with no effects except for ONE gig. I realised I was overdoing them to no great benefit. My playing has improved to compensate, I find I am much more aware how pickup balance (if using a two pup bass) contributes and how much more finger position, attack, muting, digging in for more overdrive etc. can change my sound. I'm ready to go back to effects, but I want to use them in a subtler way. I also want to get some brighter, funkier tones dialed in for certain songs and also work on better overdrive/distortion sounds that don't either obliterate everything else or just disappear. I've booked a two-hour session at a good rehearsal studio just for me. I'll be taking my new active Sire as well as a P and a Jazz (all with new or nearly new strings), my usual rig and all my pedals. I hope to come away with my no-effects sound dialled, and a better idea of which effects work and when - and which ones add nothing useful. I've already made some massive improvements by re-ordering the effects, especially putting the HPF after compression and octaver.

Jazz bass as received (s/h): And now: Jaguar SS: 40th Anniv:

I just wish it was easy to turn the logo through 90 degrees...

I also have a Joyo MA10B in my partner's lounge (and a Hohner B2). Alternative heads for the C2 cab are an Elf (just loud enough to gig with a quiet drummer) and a wee Hotone mode redundant by the Joyo BadASS.

This, this and this.

I used a pair of 2x12s (one a closed back guitar cab, the other with a pair of full range Mackie PA speakers) as my rig in the 1990s. I was way ahead of the curve 🙂 Now I use a GR Bass AT212 slim, with an Orange Terror. Of course, it works for rock, but I do struggle to set the volume as anything beyond 10 o'clock on the master is too loud.