Paddy Morris

I have 2 basses I use regularly. One is a laminate Chinese slapper. The other is a carved Westbury (also Chinese) which I use for jazz and swing. But they have different neck scales. So swapping between them plays havoc with the intonation, particularly in the upper registers and thumb position. One solution suggested by a luthier is to carve a new nut to shorten the scale of the laminate bass and make both basses the same. This sounds expensive, and I would be spending money on the inferior instrument. I have read that when players hire a bass with a scale they aren't used to, they will slip the bridge slightly off the f-hole notches to tweak the scale. Do you think that might work for me? I would doing it on the laminate, which presumably has a more robust top the carved one. Tone wise it's not really an issue, because the laminate is kept really heavily damped down to control feedback.

This happened to my all-laminate bass last year. It's a rough-ass gigging bass and has had a pretty hard life to be fair. A friend who is more of a guitar tech, injected some hyde glue in the gap and clamped it for a couple of days and it has been good as gold ever since.

Well blimey. I've learned a thing or two here.

This ⬆️ If you look at all the clever, expensive tech that Yamaha have had to employ to get even a vaguely acoustic sound from the SLB300 then it points to it being a very tricky task. I would just embrace the sound you are achieving from it with your current setup.

Jesus. Not for the faint hearted, but really interesting.

You could try a contact mic like an Ischell C3 or a Schertler. They are both pretty costly to buy just as an experiment though.

Blimey. How did you manage that? I did something simlar to my chinese plywood special. A friend who repairs guitars managed to apply a maple cleat underneath the smashed bit, then push the wood back up enough to patch it from the outside. The bass had a black lacquer finish, so it was easier to disguise once the finish waa smooth. I don't know if that would work on this though.

If you were happy to wait for a bit and wanted to avoid a dealer, you could advertise it in the instrument sales section of musicalchairs.info. Quite a lot of more valuable instruments seem to sell on there.

Have you reached any conclusions yet? I have a DPA but am always slightly disappointed with the results I get. I also find it unusable as a gigging mic. Have you considered trying a Nadine? I never have, but the demos sound very good.

I think it's a lovely, growly vibe. Personal taste, as everyone is saying, but I love it. You could reduce the high frequency element of it quite easily with a bit of EQ, but in a band context I bet it would cut through beautifully.

I've been working my way by trial and error through bass amp heads and these are the sweeping generalisations I've arrived at: TC - good, solid amps but the EQ generally positioned at the wrong frequencies for upright. Boomy and prone to feedback Warwick Gnome - excellent value, but EQ bands in the wrong spots also. Genzler Magellans 350 and 800- excellent for double bass. Even without an HPF, there's enough tone shaping to get you a decent sound in most situations. Genz-Benz streamliner - tube front end actually slightly more flattering to an upright bass than the more modern Genzlers. Great. PJB - Two Four. Couldn't get on with it really. It's very highly tuned to a single low frequency, so a real feedback hazard if you hit that particular note. Traynor YBA300 - delicious, but heavy. Far too much low end unless you use an outboard HPF. But I do use one, and I'm currently in love with the sound of it. Just about sits neatly on top of an LFSys Monaco if you lay it on it's side.

Yep. HPF is a must. God alone knows shy they are so rarely found incorporated into amp heads in the first place.

How were they for vocal mic feedback? We have a loud-ass drummer, so tend to have to crank the vocals up..

Thanks Phil. Budget limited as this is for pubs, bars and coffee houses, who won't usually go above £350/gig round our way. But it's just for 3x vocals and blues harp really. Possibly a tiny amount of mic'd guitar amp, just to sharpen it up. And trombone, when he's available to play. But the instruments are mostly all backline. It's mainly about not having a massive pair of cabs blocking everyone's sight lines. Probably we will try and keep it to less than £2K. Is that doable do you reckon?

We're looking to get a smaller PA speaker set-up. We're currently using an XR-18 into a pair of big Behringer Eurolive 1200w speakers. The speakers are great for outdoor, or a bigish indoor venue, but are much too big for a small pub. I see all the open mic / one man band looper type people using Bose L1 systems, but there are loads of cheaper alternatives out there now. Has anyone had a particularly good experience with one of these Bose-a-like products?