LawrenceH

Usable EQ is one thing, but something that gets overlooked but matters a lot when using a bass with more than one pickup IMO is whether the preamp buffers each pickup separately before any blending. This will have a real and noticeable effect on tone. Personally I'd want a pre that buffered each separately but with the option for full passive operation, with the appropriate loading.

Very hard IMO to separate the 60s P bass sound from the use of flats... Try this one for a more 'upfront' roundwound P sound http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3WwQkBTuwA

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1330379067' post='1556617'] Me, drummer, guitard: Black shirt, trousers, shoes. Girls: Red dresses. Horns: Multi-coloured zoot suits with matching hats, trousers, waistcoats, ties, spats and shades... I know. Apologies for low-quality pic. [/quote] I like this, very Kid Creole and the Coconuts! Do you do any of their songs by any chance?

[quote name='KiOgon' timestamp='1330207104' post='1554234'] Wonderful improvement in clarity & hardly a rattle in the room! My bungalow is suspended - wooden floors all through & the sound is clearer without any reverberations throughout. So when Kaz is kooking in the kitchen, she loves me playing even more Best £42 I've spent in a long time - let's face it you can spend that on a set of strings but this will make far more difference & last for years Cheerz, John [/quote] You put your whole bungalow on a gramma pad?!

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1330089963' post='1552547'] However I am still to be convinced that any of the usual angles of pick up we see make enough of a difference for them to be anything other than a visual affectation. [/quote] It's quite subtle but I'm pretty sure I can hear the difference on my P/J aerodyne between the low and high strings due to the different cancellations, compared to a standard jazz bass with both pickups on full. Plus I first noticed the difference, and went looking for the explanation rather than the other way round (ie reasoning there must be a difference and going hunting for it). Bass strings are closer to 70s jazz sound, top more like standard jazz, but both obviously with a bit more heft from the P pickup.

The other aspect of an angle pickup is how it interacts with a straight pickup when both are used in parallel - the mid scoop will alter across the strings giving more tonal difference from low to high.

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1329962055' post='1550607'] In theory, the lower the value the pot is, the less high end is removed. In practice, the high resistance of the pot means that the signal becomes so weak at the end of the pots rotation that you can't really hear the difference anyway. Easiest way to approach it is to experiment changing the capacitor value and the pot value. Having said that, I'd fit the Seymour Duncans into the bass first and see if I actually needed to make any 'tweaks' with those in place - otherwise you've no idea where you've just moved the goalposts to... [/quote] I may be misinterpreting but that doesn't sound quite right to me. A higher pot value loading the pickup [i]increases[/i] the height of the resonance peak, effectively giving a treble boost centred at that resonance frequency. If you want more upper mid bite, switch to a 500k pot. But I agree it may well be fine as is once you drop the new pickup in. There's a good illustration of this effect and others here: http://www.hardman-guitar-amplifiers.co.uk/pickups.html

That body isn't from a 70s Fender - the pickups aren't 70s spaced, they're 'standard' (60s style and mid-80s onwards). Most 70s Jap copies of Fenders also seemed to use the 70s style spacing so I'd say the body is likely more modern.

[quote name='leftyhook' timestamp='1329865039' post='1548943'] I had a Dimarzio Jazz pick up fitted to my Squier P/J. It definitely sounded punchier when on full (very sudden fall off of volume when rolled down) I then bought a Dimarzio neck pick up from ebay (original 70's). Sound check in house. "Hmm.... not as crunchy as I had hoped' Let's see live" What a let down. Boomy with less cut that the stock pick ups! After the first 3 songs I just wanted to pick up my Wal. One gig they lasted then I sold them. Now this bass might not be an American Fender, but it's a decent Squier and I can't believe the Dim'z's didn't improve it beyond just being louder. Did I do something wrong to not get a great sound? [/quote] If you wire them series (DiMarzio's default wiring) they are VERY loud and boomy. Parallel gets you a bit more open top end but still quite thick in the lower mids. Also as Mog says if you just used the stock Squier 250k pots then you will lose a lot of the characteristic response peak in the upper mids, that's why Dimarzio recommend using 500k or even 1M pots - makes a very worthwhile difference IME, brings back a lot of character. However, if you really want that classic single coil upper/mid treble bite then you're best looking elsewhere, from what people say on here Wizard would be a good place to start but don't underestimate some of the Fender offerings either.

[quote name='warwickhunt' timestamp='1329674210' post='1545684'] No you are absolutely correct moving a cab closer to a wall for boundary reinforcement (or better still a corner) WILL make an audible difference but it won't matter if the cab is front or rear ported. Moving it 'too' close to the wall or corner can be detrimental but again it makes no difference if it is front or rear... and believe me, following on from a thread re. porting, I tried this. [/quote] If a rear port is close enough to a wall to affect air flow from the port, then it will mess up the tuning. Placed right up against a wall it will effectively behave like a leaky sealed box. A couple of port widths away from the wall is a good rule of thumb.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1329753165' post='1546780'] Having said that, I will play finger style if it suits the song. Don't like it, though. [/quote] Have you tried turning off the VPF? Woahaha

One-piece pickguard, knobs, white pickup covers and that burst all look kosher early 80s to me Oh, and hasn't the serial just been photoshopped out? Looks a bit fuzzy

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1329687137' post='1546038'] I suppose what I mean is that the neck is actually 'played' - it's an essential part of the instrument, it's design and construction is much more important than that of the body, which is basically somewhere convenient to locate the bridge, electrics, etc, and could be any old shape. [/quote] Well, the body between the neck joint and the bridge is also directly tensioned by the string...but to illustrate why that's not the only important factor look at one cure for dead spots - a clamp on the headstock. Doesn't have to be directly in the path of the tension on the neck, just has to add mass to it, changing the resonant frequency and consequently shifting the dead spot. Similarly, the rest of the body aside from the bit between neck/bridge will affect the overall resonance. [quote name='discreet' timestamp='1329687137' post='1546038'] There's a very real danger that I'm talking out of my arse here, of course. [/quote] A risk we all take on BC I think...

Why do you care about the resistance? It doesn't tell you anything about how the pickup will sound.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1329685893' post='1546002'] I'm sure that's a whole different kettle of fish... the neck is subject to string tension and so on. I could be convinced the neck wood makes some sort of difference compared to body wood. [/quote] Not sure I follow, the thing about the dead spot is that it's a result of resonant cancellations between the string and the anchor (ie wood). If neck vibration was insignificant then dead spots wouldn't be audible, but instead they demonstrate quite nicely that vibration can alter the decay characteristics of the string in quite drastic fashion - dead spots can be pretty unsubtle! Yes there's the effect of tension in the system, not to mention the truss rod, but that doesn't really change the basic concept.

[quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1329680343' post='1545867'] Ahh, this old chestnut again. My take on it: Do different pieces of woods make (Electric) guitars sound different? Theoretically...yes. Does the wood you use to make a guitar influence the sound more or less than the shape of the guitar? (different guitar shapes will have different vibrational modes). No idea. Is the difference between two pieces of the same wood species bigger than the difference between two pieces of wood made from different species? No idea. I suspect the answer is "yes, but only sometimes". Does the effect of the wood make much difference at all when compared to the effect of your pickups or your amplifier? I very much doubt it. [/quote] I'd agree with all of this...except to add that you'd expect the nature of the effect to differ from those of pickups/amp, since there is a time component to any effect of wood whereas pickups would (mostly) act as a fixed filter (at least for a given note). A clean amp will similarly impart a fixed EQ characteristic (distortion is another factor again). So yes the effect might well be subtle, but it may still be audible through a fixed EQ as an altered decay curve. There's also the issue that people don't use particularly exceptional woods,in mechanical terms, for guitar construction very much. You're constrained by weight, workability and strength to a certain range of properties. My balsa-necked ironwood body bass remains a gorgeous dream. I'd like to experiment with it myself just for my own idle curiosity but to do it properly would require a significant investment, and essentially it's just reinventing the wheel. Playing around swapping components between my various jazzes I've felt there are certain characteristics that stay with a particular instrument regardless of electronics. As I've said before though, if the effect of wood was [b]always[/b] negligible, then we'd never encounter dead spots on necks.

[quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1329677581' post='1545772'] ou may not call it unscientific, but I do. Perhaps it's best if we agree to disagree on that point. There's plenty of other things going on here that are ripe for discussion. [/quote] If you like...to me it's 'scientificness' really depends what point is being made.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1329676814' post='1545747'] Wow, thanks for the very detailed response! I may make a P-Bass out of Baltic Birch as an experiment. I've been thinking about quality plywood for some time, since I made a Bill Fitzmaurice J12 from the same material. And yes, I need to get out more. [/quote] Sorry I wasn't able to give a more useful answer. But actually thinking about it I'd suggest finding a plywood with a really good stiffness:weight ratio, something prized in acoustic instruments, so maybe something like poplar over birch. The bonus there is, even if you find the tonal difference completely negligible then at least you don't have a back-destroyingly heavy bass! Just watch out for neck-dive...now if you really want to experiment neck wood is rarely mentioned but since it's the thinnest, longest part of the structure supporting the string its properties ought to be more important than the body. [quote name='flyfisher' timestamp='1329677115' post='1545754'] Yep, and I'm also surprised that nobody has mentioned how the original wood is sawn. Flat-sawn, quarter-sawn or rift-sawn could all be expected to make a difference. [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_sawing"]http://en.wikipedia..../Quarter_sawing[/url] [/quote] Err, actually I mentioned it and so did Max in the original post

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1329672586' post='1545645'] AFAIK good plywood (Baltic Birch et al) is uniformly dense and predictably stable... what other parameters need to be taken into account to make a decent plywood bass, do you think? [/quote] I'd guess that would mainly result in instruments that had very similar acoustic behaviour between one and the next. The thing about plywood is the way they stack layers with the grains in differing orientations to ensure uniform strength in different directions. The grain structure makes wood very complicated with elastic modulus that is itself orientation-dependent, and I don't know how that would affect vibration propagation in a composite structure like ply. Broadly speaking in a single bit of wood you'd expect it to propagate better along the grain as cross-grain would effectively mimic constrained-layer-damping, and that'd be most noticeable for higher frequencies (are quartersawn necks supposed by those who believe in tonewood at all to result in a brighter, 'tighter' sound than flat sawn?). It's not my field but I think for prediction purposes you'd have to model wood as not just one but a whole series of mass-spring-damper systems all interacting. It's probably easier to do it intuitively as a builder than scientifically! But you could get at least some idea from just playing around with the piece of wood you're dealing with, bearing in mind that one important property resonant frequency is indeed dependent on overall size/mass as well as material just as people have suggested (think xylophone keys). By the way I'm sure a bass built of baltic birch would actually sound fine. [quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1329673217' post='1545660'] 1. Whatever it is that the videos show, it is not an accurate, scientific representation of how a bass string (or any other string for that matter) vibrates. Please tell me that you're not attempting to pass off vid 1 as remotely scientific [/quote] I assumed the vids were just there for the visuals, to illustrate the way that a string vibrates as a complex wave that can be broken down to a set of sine waves. Yes, what you see is actually a strobing interaction with the (constant) video capture frequency but that doesn't really matter for these purposes and it's hardly what I'd call unscientific - no-one is inferring anything about any particular frequency per se just that a string vibrates in quite a complicated pattern. If you actually know the shutter frequency and can tune it in relation to a known string fundamental frequency, you could use it to look at specific vibrational nodes etc, but that's taking it a lot further than simply introducing the topic.

Great post IMO, I've been boring people to tears about this for a while now but a lot of people seem resistant to the idea that an electric instrument is still reliant on mechanical propagation of vibration, instead seeing the wood as an 'ideal' rigid structure whose resonant properties are negligible. Understanding the role of pickup placement and type seems a lot easier for some reason. One of the confounding variables is the overlap between wood varieties and heterogeneity within a single variety - ash for example can be hugely different weight from one piece to the next which will have a significant impact on resonant frequency (weight and stiffness). If you knew what you were doing you could probably build a plywood instrument with excellent acoustic properties, and I guess a fair few custom builds with fancy laminate tops etc already qualify.

None of the bands playing covers which I've enjoyed watching most have stuck to the originals. What matters is the musicality of the part in the context you're playing in. OTOH some people seem to expect a cover to be a clone, and struggle to hear an alternative take on it as anything other than wrong. A lot of the same people probably enjoy covers bands more than originals, most of us are pretty conservative in that sense - we like what we know! But if you give it a chance then subverting expectation can be great fun.

Impedance along with inductance is important for the sound of a pickup...but it sounds like you're talking about DC resistance, which is different and largely irrelevant in itself especially when comparing pickups with different construction techniques (magnets, wire type). Ignore the DC resistance values when comparing different product ranges and go with the tone descriptions - yes, it's woolly but the real specs that describe a pickup behaviour are rarely released, unfortunately.

In theory, all this is true...but people can still feel self-conscious trying an instrument and that's fair enough really. You don't need to do anything flash, but no-one likes looking incompetent! So better to keep it simple and also work on your finger technique for simple scales and exercises - that helps everything about your playing, including trying out a bass because if you are confident in control of the instrument you will be better placed to assess it. If I'm very nervous then I'd probably prefer a rather muddy indistinct tone that hides mistakes and fumbles rather than a bright, clear sound where good playing is rewarded but bad playing is exposed. With other instruments, notably brass/woodwind, it's accepted that there are 'student' instruments which are actually easier to get a passable sound out of than the really good ones.

See what you can manage with your RH ring finger instead? Surprisingly I once found it worked ok using 1 and 3! Definitely easier than one finger for passing notes

If the acoustics of the practice room aren't great, then if you're in the position to sort it out or if you can't maybe consider an alternative place - makes a very big difference. A good drummer can play quietly without messing up the feel..but it takes decent technique, the appropriate kit (light cymbals/sticks/skins) and the will to do it. One or more of these may not be possible! Over the years I have found female vocalists in particular struggle to hear themselves in front of a band, I've had to get monitors up to ear-bleeding levels for some of them. Added to the problem I find an SM58 not a good choice of mic for all female vox - something like an SM87 can work a lot better, but they cost - trying a few mics is a worthwhile exercise. Making sure the voicings of other instruments in the band aren't sitting too heavily in the vocal range helps a lot too.