funkle

Patience and kindness is important here. As long as you turn up regularly and do the work, you will get where you need to go.

Very true….but not for £10k….a line has to be drawn somewhere…

By the way my context for comments is I have studied with Jeff at Players School in 2007-2010 and started doing the course as a way of getting back into daily reading over the lockdowns after long periods of not practicing. I have to admit I skipped a lot of the first book, at least until later lessons. The numbers you saw in lesson 1 I think indicate which fretting fingers to use for a note. 0 would be an open string, 1 would be index finger, and so on. Go slow and steady and you’ll do great.

That’s right. If you are really unsure of what you are doing, getting a teacher to go over it with you is good too. I’ve been steadily working my way through the course. I bought all 6 packages. It is fantastic and one of the best things I have done in my career. Super logical etudes, progressively getting trickier and more detailed. Start at the beginning and work your way through slowly and you’ll get exactly where you need to. I’ve almost finished up the second book and will start the third in a couple of months I think.

Was thinking the same....the thought of deepening the routes is not pleasant

Does anyone know if the preamp in the Wal Mark 1/2/3 gives any shape to the sound when set flat, or is it genuinely flat? If it is flat, then these pickups are very mid-prominent pickups. (Let me just say I own a Stingray clone and a G&L L2000e to give weight to that statement...)

You know, every day I learn from new mistakes. It's a sobering part of this project, but part of the package, I guess. I made a couple today that I am sorting. Mistake 1, wrong strings. I borrowed my friend's Wal Mark 1, an extremely generous act on his part. I have been setting it up (again a generous act of permission from my friend to allow me to do so), and learning about its engineering in the process. Turns out it is strung with Ernie Ball Slinkies (Nickels). I had thought it was strung with steels the last time I played it, so assumed I would do the same for my build. I stuck some Slinkies I had around on my bass and, lo and behold, more of the mids I was needing. *slaps forehead* Mistake 2, pickup height. In re-setting up the Wal I am now comparing to, I lowered the action significantly. I then wondered why it sounded very different to when I was round at his house - he has a combo without a tweeter, whereas I have a FRFR 1x12 with a horn, I wondered if it was that, I wondered if it was something about the pre, the room I was in, etc. I finally clued in that I had not lowered the pickups to match the newly lowered strings. I followed a recommendation for Wal setup from Paul Herman, quoted by a Talkbasser - see https://www.talkbass.com/threads/wal-bass-club.367800/page-186#post-15677637 - essentially make sure the pickup polepieces are about 6mm below the fretted string at 21st fret ish - and suddenly the beautiful Wal sound returned. I realised then that I have not messed with the pickup height at all on my own 'Wal-ish' and that I am likely missing a key step out of my own set-up here. Thus making all my hard efforts to date and constant tinkering a bit less reliable. Aargh. I emailed the maker of my pickups and he has his own set of these pickup set at about 3mm below the open unfretted strings. I may need to play with that more tonight and I wonder even if I should try it lower. More experimentation. I don't have much depth to the rout for the pickup and it could be a limiting factor. I have days off next week and am gearing up to try and be ready to record properly then. Hence all the activity this week as I try and make as much as I can as similar as I can, and experiment.

And also, for laughs….this thread, which can also show how much is the players hands and signal path…. https://www.talkbass.com/threads/wal-tone-for-320-the-answer-is.1475984/

I forgot to say as well. As far as I am concerned series mode on both pickups is the straight up bomb. Parallel is fine as is single coil, but series just sounds so meaty. Again, not too surprising given what we are aiming for here.

Ok, I made some progress last few days. I spent until 02.00 last night, literally hours, playing through headphones and tweaking. I *think* these pickups are the right ones - clean, clear, and even up the spectrum, though amazingly when I put them through a frequency analyser not much happening above 3k. They sound brighter than that - I was really surprised. Anyway @skelftells me that’s what Wal pickups are like too, so I believe him, and hope that I won’t end up having to try out another manufacturer’s pickup, it’s expensive. I will compare to the real deal soon when I borrow my friend’s Wal, but unfiltered, the pickups don’t have the resonant peak or character of a typical passive pickup. I think this is probably as it should be; once they interact with a filter that causes a resonant peak, they gain character. So, if a Wal is similar, I reckon using the passive tone knob on a Wal Pro would help to give the flat pickups a little character, and using a LPF on a Mark 1/2/3 gives a lot of character, depending on the setting. The ACG EQ-01 is really clever. I like it, and now I can see better how to use it. I can dial in a reasonable Flea sound from BSSM with it, if I play hard (just like Flea) and get the filters just right. I think the ability to roll back in treble after the pickup HPF filtering is really clever. A little goes a long way. However, I have still felt the overall sound to be very clean, clear, and open; too clean. That’s exactly what I should expect, I guess, the ACG system is designed to be transparent, the pickups are flat, and the maple neck takes out a lot of mids. So, one breakthrough last night was trying different kinds of distortion to make the signal dirtier. I suppose I’m trying to emulate the effect @NickA(and @skelfas well, in a long and very helpful telephone conversation) have both advised about - the distortion caused by the EQ circuit built into the Mark 1/2/3 basses. Anyway, long story short, the best form of distortion that caused the sound I wanted to hear was using Amplitube SVX and loading up a B15 to give some tube saturation. Fairly mild, but the effects were beautiful. I tried lots of other effects in my DAW, but that one was the best. The resulting sound got really really close the Flea BSSM sound. However, I made another experiment today. I realised that my preference for a maple fretboard is probably working against me, and I swapped around another Jazz neck I have with a rosewood fretboard on to the bass, and have spent a while messing around. Bam. Instantly a ton more growly mids, a less clean and clear sound, and playing hard with the filters set right sounds much ‘dirtier’. I’m really happy. Rosewood seems to be just right here, not surprising I guess. (It looks like my dislike of rosewood on other Fender style basses may depend on the kind of pickup used. It sounds too middy/not enough treble to me with Jazz or Precision pickups, but I hear no lack of treble here with this system, and the mids sound wonderful. Where’s that helping of humble pie gone….) The final bit of experimenting I want to try this weekend is to use the new rosewood boarded test bed through my DAW into the B15 emulation, for the tube distortion. I am hoping that will be basically perfect. We will see. I am hoping the recipe here will be convincing to others too. We shall see. I have some leave coming up in a week or two. My plan is to borrow my friend’s Wal and do some recording then for you all.

Great idea! I wish I knew how to do that. I’m still on the lookout for correct sized inserts…. In the meantime, I eventually filled the holes for the tuners with wood filler and helped some of the natural ageing of the wood by Kiwi’ing the neck a little. It’s getting even better now…

@molantricky one. A gift is something you want to get right. Personally I think the Ray4 is great, and a superb modding frame, but in your shoes I’d probably go for a Ray34. I don’t think that needs any mods at all; only reason I never bought one is my preference for Jazz necks. Only get those on a Ray4 or an SLO Stingray

Huh. I only tried treble off the neck pickup briefly. Not sure what else to say about it yet. The ACG preamp is clean and clear. The Wal preamp isn't for sure...

No joke there. I think it’s great, now that the person using it has a clue…lol. Incidentally, my friend with a Wal has kindly agreed to lend it to me to record. I’ll have to sort that out too, but it will be useful. I recall it as being much darker and ‘dirtier’ sounding when pushed than my current effort. That may be a theme we come back to.

I’m still working it all out! I had to phone @skelfyesterday to work out properly how the treble stack works, he was very kind in his guidance and now I have a better handle on it. I thought the pickups were super bright until he guided me - that the treble stack there is boost only on the top ring…whoops…I thought the centre detent was ‘neutral’. I know everyone is dying to hear recordings. Will try to do some ASAP. In the whole it sounds Wal-ish, but I think less middy and grunty. Although I figured out yesterday a Flea-ish BSSM sound I was happy with. The sounds from each pickup alone are wide ranging with adjustable resonance and the HPF, trying to blend them is a whole other level of experimentation. Parallel on the pickups sounds very even and clear, ‘single coil’ (or rather single row) is Jazz Bass ish, and series on each pickup is monstrously loud with a huge bass boost and a nice thickening of the top end. Adding the treble back in on top of that is pretty amazing. I generally have the feeling that these pickups are in the right territory but that to get the BSSM sound needs just a little harmonic distortion in the chain somewhere. I will I think borrow my friend’s Wal and record that too in order to properly compare, if he’ll let me. I am reluctant to say more because I want to tweak the setup, play with it a lot, perhaps try nickel strings instead of steels, and I might even swap the neck over from my sole remaining Jazz with a rosewood neck to see what that sounds like, for contrast. Tiny adjustments of the filters give big changes. It’s going to be tricky to try and give a comprehensive recording, because everything seems finicky right now. Probably I will find a few settings I like the best and record those.

Quick teaser of the look of the test bed currently... The black knobs were just what I had laying around. I kind of like them though, oddly. The pickup ring covers are temporary as well until we see what I do with the test bed. Somebody had done something crazy with the previous string retainer, so we had to invent one of our own to cover the strange diagonal alignment of it. I like it.

I just got the bass back today. I would upload some photos but the server photo size problem still seems to be getting sorted out, so I can't...I have a lot of photos on the server I can't delete. It looks rad, lol...especially given it's a real 'test bed' bass. My first impression is that the bass as a whole is going to take a while for me to get to grips with. The pickups sound fantastic, I think slightly brighter sounding than Wal pickups, but a very broad palette, and the ACG-EQ01 is perhaps more confusing to get to grips with than I first thought. I will need to spend a while with it before I do any recording, but the range of tones even from a single pickup is very broad, and two pickups with all the switching options is quite a lot of options. Of course, some of the brightness may well be that it's a maple-fretboarded bass wearing steel strings and the pickups are simply translating that accurately...whereas every Wal Mark 1/2/3 is either rosewood or ebony. I'll post up some clips once I get my head around everything.

Just sold a Celinder to Ben. Straightforward communications, quick payment, and a pleasure to deal with. If only all transactions were like this! Thanks Ben.

Checked in with Chris again. He’s away but will be back soon and my job first in the list.

Bought a Uni Pre 4 from Owen, great price, fast shipping, great communications. I can’t say better than that, he’s a lovely chap. Thanks Owen!