LawrenceH

I'll bite! We've not managed a video yet, but here's a Spotify link, the only song I've ever recorded to feature a (mercifully brief) bass solo but don't let that put you off: We've also just released a (very questionable) Christmas song as a bit of a nod to that glorious tradition. Spot the obvious reference on the cover art:

Thanks that's useful and that description of your Spector is bang on how I hear/feel it. Do you have an actual figure, or range of figures, for that weight? Been experimenting recently and found very modest differences can be significant when it comes to neck dive on a light body. For reference my current jazz neck minus hardware weighs about 780g, has that slightly chunky 70s profile.

Really intriguing project you've got here. Echoing the question on weight of the jazz necks (and how much an ebony/rosewood board would impact that). Also interested in how you perceive the timbre comparing different fretboard materials. I like the way all-maple necks can appear to sound/feel a little compressed.

You're not, they are!

Worth bearing in mind that any recorded bass in a track will have multiple stages of compression contributing to the final sound. Taking a classic setup you've potentially got compression from a (mic'ed) amp, a channel compressor, tape saturation and a mix compressor. Potentially extra channel and/or bus compressors and a tape bounce or two! A lot of these will only be shaving off the odd dB or two but it all adds up. In my opinion, the best way to use compressors on bass is to use several of them, with none of them working too hard individually. That way you can choose the sound sculpting you want practically independently of the dynamic range reduction.

That is a bit of a stretch, I'd have thought Joy Division etc. occupy a pretty small niche in the wider scheme of things, while the only New Order song anyone is likely to recognise outside a very particular age/race/location demographic features a sequenced synth bassline. I think we all tend to overinflate the general importance of our own influences and heroes. Someone replied earlier saying they'd not heard of any of the bassists I'd listed even though it included one who played on the global best-selling album of all time, plus another who played on the bestselling jazz album of all time. Again though that seems perfectly reasonable, there's an awful lot of music out there and what we grow up with tends to dominate our perception.

Thinking from the perspective of smaller venues where lots of room modes and reflective surfaces can interact in a relatively small space... I've never found that settings on individual channels transfer all that well from one venue to the next even when eq-ing the room. It's a very useful starting point, but since the room effects have position-dependent components with respect to individual instruments, and a lot of musicians adapt how they play to the room, some further tweaking of the individual channels always seems to be necessary.

We've got quite a lot of strange perspex boxes made by our workshops (for laboratory experiments). It's heavy and prone to cracking, but you could certainly do it with the right cutting blades and drill bits. But if you wanted it to sound good you'd need some kind of wadding inside which might spoil the look.

If I didn't do it, I'd have missed out on a lot of stuff I grew to appreciate and ended up learning from. Not everything though, some of it's just rubbish.

I strongly agree with the general sentiment of this thread, and have always had a sense that I should try harder to 'get' stuff I don't like. But I also think there is some stuff that after careful consideration in the spirit of open-minded self-improvement, truly, genuinely, objectively is just utter toss.

Those are important considerations and I find the off-axis response is a big deal working live - one reason I find the Shure cardioids easy to work from both sides of the mixing desk is that their off-axis behaviour is relatively consistent with the on-axis. Re the personal choice and learning curve, I've done sound a couple of times at tiny, intimate gigs for a very good 'name' singer who favours the Beta 58. She really knows that mic and uses the proximity effect well. She makes that mic sound expensive! The downside at the desk is that such technique requires better, more transparent compression than the tiny gig rig provides and I have to ride her fader to tame the dynamics - better inbuilt compression is another thing drawing me towards a small digital mixer. The EV mics are intriguing - iirc the Shure dual diaphragm mics like the KSM8 are supposed to have greatly reduced proximity effect, I'd like to try them but they're pretty spend-y!

Well I wasn't criticising maple to try and hurt its feelings I like maple necks and all my current instruments have them. Was more just to point out that the urethane lacquers are actually quite effective at limiting moisture-related movement. The floor is parquet blocks, each one about the width of a neck and considerably shorter. The gaps between the blocks can open up by several mm. Different blocks move different amounts too, and swelling/cupping are noticeable despite being constrained by a very strong adhesive (these are old reclaimed blocks, never designed to float). FWIW maple seems to be very similar to beech in terms of hardness and relatively large moisture-related movement. Great furniture wood and lovely to work but a disaster as a kitchen worktop. In comparison a mahogany parquet floor laid the same way with the same oil treatment shows no sign of movement whatsoever across all ~35sqm. The tropical hardwoods are usually very stable.

Based on a sample size of one MM Stingray versus numerous lacquered Fenders, I think there's something in this. With the addition that oiled finishes are typically touted as 'breathable' whereas polyurethanes are far less so. The 'ray is lovely but it does drift with the seasons, the Fenders do not. I also have a maple parquet floor that has been oiled and the pieces move loads with humidity. It's an inherently unstable timber

I find with mics it's not just the source but the speakers/desk you put them through. If the speakers are weak around a high crossover point then they won't play nicely with a mic that has a presence lift in that same region. The first time I put an SM58 through actually good PA years ago was eye-/ear-opening. Now I mostly have Shures because they are safe and between SM57/SM58/Beta 58/SM86 there's enough to cover most preferences. I also think there's a place for the cardioid SM58 in a time when most mics are super/hypercardioid. Problem with the latter is the bass proximity effect is just too much; a lot of singers I can't use eg a Beta 58 on because of this. Interested to try the e935 as a cardioid, but I never liked the scratchiness of the e835. Another issue that works against SM58s apart from fakes is that they don't die per se, but they can degrade, so if you've only used old knackered ones you view them dimly. My own favourite live is the SM86. Not as famous as its dynamic sibling but it's great - lots of the good points of the 58 with the added clarity of a condenser. I greatly prefer this to most dynamics on a good female vocalist and on my own rather weak voice.

Interesting read for me as I'd come to a similar conclusion to - I bought a little Yamaha DXR8 a few years ago and have since found it very capable of carrying vocals/keys/acoustic guitar etc in a pub scenario at a quality we'd have been amazed by at the turn of the century. Apart from the easier weight and the smaller storage footprint, the (lack of) visual intrusion up on a pole is a very nice bonus. Couple of things that follow from what Phil has said - the quality and design integration of horn, crossover and compression driver matter a lot more than the woofer and you can see this in these mid-price little cabs. The Yamahas have a fairly decent Celestion compression driver and cross using DSP with FIR. The woofer is just ok. Cheap out on the top though and it would be much more objectionable. I think our low-end bias as bassists, and a DIY culture that has focused on bass response partly because that's easier to model, clouds our focus a little bit. 500-5k is where the money is IMO. In the age of DSP it's really hard to beat what can be done with modern active FIR crossovers and bespoke programmed multiband compression. I've built several good, flat and well-behaved speakers with passive crossovers using that excellent Bagby spreadsheet program combined with outdoor measurements, but it's a lot of work and the passive components are expensive especially if you have to tweak spec from a prototype. About the only way to make it cost-effective would be to do what LFSys appear to have done and turn it into a premium product. If those cabs had a PA form-factor and big brand behind them I expect they'd cost a lot more (and some components would be downgraded too!).