LawrenceH

[quote name='mcnach' post='1211495' date='Apr 26 2011, 10:14 AM']even the sealer? hmmm, I found your thread... that seems the absolutely cleanest and nicest way to strip a body! I just bought a sander on eBay (there are loads! cheap! ) but I will definitely try this first. Thank you![/quote] Yup, the sealer didn't come off uniformly but where it didn't, the heat definitely softened it to the point of being more of a gel that could be scraped away easily. Probably it was an advantage having the black finish on there and doing it in one go, as that would have held the heat nicely and spread it into the sealer. This and/or the evil nitromors have got to be worth a try, with a power sander you always run the risk of accidentally 'recontouring' the instrument!

Mine would be that gold-on-gold jazz that's perpetually on ebay...which I would LOVE.

[quote name='mcnach' post='1211000' date='Apr 25 2011, 04:35 PM']I was hoping to leave it till the very last minute with very fine sandpaper... but it's looking like a heaavier job is required, yup. Live and learn! [/quote] Before you do that - Tresemme hairdryer on its hottest setting did very nicely for me stripping a poly body including sealer coat. Gentler than a heat gun so no scorch marks but softened the finish enough for me to scrape off easily. Worth a try!

[quote name='Darkstrike' post='1050724' date='Dec 7 2010, 05:55 PM']Heh, I'm betting it's 100% this part of the quote. "I also changed my E string to a heavier .125 from a 5-string set." [/quote] The tension doesn't change depending on the peg position but for some reason the subjective feel does. In a similar vein I really noticed how flappy a Fender E string feels when I switched from my previous Ibanez. Same strings, same guage, same scale, same action/set-up. There is tech stuff written about the difference between 'tension' and 'compliance' which is probably relevant.

[quote name='leschirons' post='1209536' date='Apr 23 2011, 09:18 PM']Son of a preacher man. A: I can't hear everything that's going on. B: I can't keep it that busy without seeming to crowd out the whole song.[/quote] I think both these things are connected. Zero growl in the mids there, proper old-school US sound!

[quote name='Tom_Strutt' post='1208507' date='Apr 22 2011, 05:50 PM']My 78 Jazz has just stopped working.. I have a gig tomorrow night which is getting recorded and I ideally want to use it! I opened up the part by jack input and cant see anything lose or wrong and it was literally working 2 hours before I discovered it wasnt working... What can I do? Please help![/quote] Do you have a basic multimeter and soldering iron? If so, you'll probably be fine! Either way you need to do some basic fault-finding. First try another lead, and ideally another amp (or into a tuner or something, just so you can confirm you get no signal out). If it's not either of those, unscrew the control plate from the body with the lead plugged in, and check that the tip of the jack is actually engaged with the contact on the socket (ideally, use a multimeter set to resistance (ohms) for continuity test). Also check that the socket is clean at the contact points as corrosion can stop it working, and that there is continuity with the jack sleeve and the socket sleeve. Next, use a multimeter to check the resistance between all the points that are supposed to be connected to earth on the control plate using a standard jazz bass wiring diagram. All the metal bodies of the pots and the jack sleeve should share a common earth with one side of the pickup. If they're all fine then check for shorts to earth/breaks in the + signal wiring (on pickups directly, with volumes down - should be 6-8k each).

[quote name='machinehead' post='1206623' date='Apr 21 2011, 12:02 AM']Apart from the finish, does anyone know what differences there are between the MIM roadworn series and the MIM classic 70s range?[/quote] Pickup position, neck wear. That's about it (officially) although I suspect they pick the bodies for the RW series and the QC is higher. Having said that, the 70s classics are niiiiice if you like that funky funky sound!

[quote name='Soliloquy' post='1206133' date='Apr 20 2011, 05:20 PM']I'm thinking you can just wire the capacitor in line with the pickups. Presuming you're happy with not being able to control the passive tone level. I always prefer to have mine off anyway, so I think I may try it.[/quote] If there's room in the cavity you could always wire in a small pot there along with the cap to act as a trim, allowing you to tweak the sound before closing it up.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='1205752' date='Apr 20 2011, 12:58 PM']I don't believe any bass amps out there are under-specced with regards to power output. However some meet more stringent specs than others. [b]The anecdotal evidence regarding all the lightweight high power amps suggests that whichever one you think is loudest is the one whose full power compression/limiting best suits the dynamic feel you like.[/b] It's just like how some people think the SVT sounds and feels amazing whilst others think it sounds compressed and midrangey when you're cranking.[/quote] This.

I don't know what kind of strange watts they use over at ampeg, but I'd hazard a guess that the smaller number is the more 'realistic' one.

I would bet that a badass v stock bridge is going to change the character of the bass tone more than dropping a standard gauge E on there would - but I'm sure you've had enough different basses to know already whether it'll be to your liking or not!

Much earlier it was mentioned and you seem to have found a solution...but disconnecting the tweeter, and potentially a crossover if there is one, is definitely worth a shout here to get a smoother old-school thump. Also, I personally think the Markbass cabs are excellent but rather forward and detailed sounding, so it's not surprising that if the strings don't give you the sound you're after you will really notice it on their cabs.

[quote name='niceguyhomer' post='1199780' date='Apr 14 2011, 07:14 PM']I couldn't decide which small combo to buy for home practice so I just ordered a PJ Bass Buddy which'll also serve as a back up DI and recording tool. My headphones are pretty cheap but not nasty AKG K512s which I think I paid about £30 for. My question is, shall I use the £100 I've saved by not buying a combo on some better cans? Will I notice any difference?[/quote] I've posted this before, but in my opinion headphones start to get really good at a price-point that is much lower than for studio monitors/hifis. Really good pairs all sound more similar to each other IME - which you might expect, given that the reproduction is getting more accurate. Around £100 ('budget' in studio terms), there is more variation so you're best off looking for one that has a sound you're happy with if possible. Personally I really like Sennheisers, right across the range. I don't like cheap Sonys at all but I think the expensive ones are very nice . You should hear a LOT more detail on a £100 versus £30 pair, once your ears adjust. I definitely think it's worth it. Btw common convention is that open-backed are better for fidelity, closed-backed for isolation.

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1198791' date='Apr 13 2011, 10:10 PM']I recorded a practice session the other day and tried polishing the turd...I was making this up as I went along Better, worse or just different? You decide!, WARNING! Its about 3x longer than the original!!![/quote] Anything that makes Moondance last any longer is automatically worse

I've always found actual snake oil makes an excellent fretbaord conditioner - I prefer to use British snake oil. Adder for my P/J for a solid, all round tone, grass snake on a J-bass with flats is great for dub. Smooth snake oil is quite rare so hard to get but it gives a real silky finish on my fretless, ideal for jazz. Coral snake is also good but it's difficult to be sure it's genuine stuff and not just milksnake oil.

Going off-topic and rambling more than slightly - I know what you're saying - but at the same time I find these types of debates a bit baffling, with one camp tending to establish themselves as 'scientific' and requesting 'proof' but with a lack of understanding of both how to formulate a hypothesis clearly, how one goes about non-ideal empirical testing, what 'significance' means and how you measure it statistically, and then how you modify and develop an initial hypothesis based on subsequent results. People tend to talk in very black and white terms, forcing the hypothesis to be eg 'does maple have a completely consistent sound that is completely consistently different from rosewood (and vice-versa)'. Clearly that's a pretty simplistic approach to the problem and the answer is invariably no, and this then is taken as proof that there is no tonal difference between maple and rosewood. I find that frustrating. A more realistic hypothesis, and one that matches subjective reports more fairly, would be that there is a set of common 'average' characteristics that represent the archetypal maple sound, and a different set of 'average' characteristics that represent the rosewood sound. The standard deviation of any particular element of that (eg HF decay time) will probably allow for significant overlap between the two 'average' sonic signatures from any individual pair of wood pieces. But, nevertheless, this hypothesis would predict that a (perhaps relatively small) sample of maple necks will have significantly different (statistically speaking) tonal characteristics to a sample of rosewood necks. This means a) you could never predict with absolute certainty the wood type from the sound alone, but b ) you could get it right x many times better than chance alone would predict. Testing this using measurement equipment under controlled conditions would be time-consuming and expensive, and personally I don't really care enough - I know what I like, I hear what I hear and since I spend all day in the lab, as well as many evenings, I don't feel the need to prove anything more rigorously for my hobby FWIW every maple-board bass I have ever played has sounded somehow maple-y to my ears, the rosewood instruments being more variable. Trying to think about describing that difference, it's something in the way the upper-mid/HF decays after the initial attack, rosewood seems to damp these frequencies faster and playing-wise I sometimes get an impression almost of a compression effect in action on maple-board necks. Back (nearly!) on-topic - my friend has just bought a set of Bareknuckle pickups for her Ryder tele - be interested to see how it sounds! EDIT: Oh btw - definitely not saying you have no idea there, just that it's the way these things often end up, so it makes sensible discussion tricky after a bit! (talkbass? )

[quote name='mcnach' post='1196094' date='Apr 11 2011, 07:14 PM']maple/rosewood: can seriously anybody hear a difference that can only be attributed to the maple/rosewood fingerboard and nothing else? So far I have never seen real evidence.[/quote] I'm pretty sure I can, but to tell for sure would require swapping fretboards on a single neck and installing frets of the exact same profile/spec which is a lot of work! Especially as to do it properly would require multiple examples of each board and to set up blind tests and/or measurements. Of course I couldn't tell for sure on a recording because you can make one sound like the other, always more than one way to skin the proverbial cat, but for a given bass I'd say if all else stays equal, maple will tend to make it sound 'snappier' compared to rosewood - I've tried enough basses to be confident that there's a trend there. I don't know if lacquering a rosewood board would give the equivalent change though.

I had a Puma 110 briefly and took some piccies of the inside, including speaker. The Sica model used is just a pressed steel chassis, it is indeed essentially their 'standard lite' model as you've been told. They do a 'premium' version with a cast chassis, and tbh I'd expect a cast chassis on a combo this expensive. Modelling the Tecamp to give an idea of what will work as a replacement is a bit complicated because the port is a shelf-type, which WinISD doesn't cope with - I'd never designed a speaker with modern software before when I tried, and came unstuck because of this (used to just do it the old fashioned way, measuring the tuning and adjusting empirically). You're probably best off as Stevie says just using the TS parameters of the Standard Lite and looking for something in the same ballpark. The internal volume of the 110 is pretty titchy so you want one that works well in a small box. What I didn't like about the 110 combo was the amount of overlap between the upper end of the woofer and the midrange unit, thanks to the cab only employing a simple high-pass filter cap for the mid rather than a proper 2-way crossover. It makes the midrange rather harsh. The Puma 112 I replaced it with didn't have this problem, presumably because the 12" unit doesn't have such a high frequency response so there is less overlap despite the simple cap crossover. For this reason, and the fact it likes a big box for a 10" unit, I'd suggest the Deltalite II is NOT a great choice in this cab - it has a whopping great peak around 2.5k-ish that will sound nasty against that 4" midrange. Again as Stevie has said I've been playing with the Celestion cast chassis neos, though actually the NTR10-2520D, not E. This has a very smooth extended mid-range and is happier in a smaller box than the Deltalite, and is probably more similar to the Sica driver but considerably better quality. Compared to the Deltalite II in a small box, it is less sensitive in the upper bass region but compensates by going lower and taking more power before you hit the excursion limit (Xlim is 12mm compared to 8 on the Deltalite). BUT - because you have the mid-range unit in the 110, then the NTR10-2520E might be a better choice. The bass end in practice will behave very similarly, but it rolls off lower down (less nasty overlap with your mid driver) and has even greater linear excursion than the 'D' model so you will get very tightly controlled bass right up to the performance limit of the cab (Xlim still fixed at 12mm). It'll most likely sound a bit less bassy than the Sica unit run flat, but will actually go louder and deeper. You could also try B&C, Faital or Beyma but they will be more expensive units - the Celestion are on offer at £90 here, and if they're as good as the 'D' units well worth it IMO: [url="http://www.lean-business.co.uk/eshop/celestion-ntr102520e-10%C3%82%E2%80%9D-250w-neo-pa-driver-p-526.html"]http://www.lean-business.co.uk/eshop/celes...iver-p-526.html[/url] I'd definitely take the Celestion over the Sica Standard Lite model, but I'd guess the Premium Lite would also be worth a shout, though I haven't checked the spec. The Eminence units are good for the money, but based on my experience the Celestions are better if you're after even tone in a small box. They just stay so clean for so long!

[quote name='Ashdown Engineering' post='1196330' date='Apr 11 2011, 10:38 PM']The front end is an evolution of the Little Giant preamp with a few nips and tucks under the hood, yes it isn't fully parametric but the controls do all interact with one another hence us describing it as semi parametric, we will however now simply describe it as an interactive eq if this will make people happier ;-)[/quote] Interesting...does this mean that the filter Q isn't fixed, but varies according to where the other filters are positioned to give more constant response? If so this is quite a useful feature in practice though it's a tricky one to describe - 'smart' EQ might be one way I guess. Technically it would be sort of semi-parametric, but the other way round to what you usually get! It looks an interesting product, but I think reliability and build quality will be crucial. My old (UK built) EB12-150 has never let me down and internally is nicely put together, I'd agree with others that it's a real shame the Superfly had flaws as the versatility of a digital front end would be great. Can I ask what is it that makes the power section special on this compared to other current class D offerings?

[quote name='Clarky' post='1194789' date='Apr 10 2011, 05:17 PM']Thanks all for advice. I think I am going to try out some of those foam sound hole plugs and add a mag pickup so I have the choice of piezo, mag or both (since my Coda combo has two channels). Surely that should make things better?!!![/quote] Sounds like a great place to start. I still think, from a sound tech's perspective, getting a good stage sound with optimally positioned monitoring is the most important starting point and once you have that a lot of these problems disappear. The double bass body has a lot of resonance in the lower mids. If the stage space and material does also, and you're exciting exactly those frequencies with your combo coupled directly to it, then you will always struggle. Position the monitor differently and/or absorb a lot of that boom and you will not only improve the feedback rejection, you'll also get a better sound for the band as a whole and be able to hear more clearly at a given volume setting. It's always tempting to look for a high-tech solution (feedback killers, parametric EQs, gates) but simply moving an cab to a more optimal position can achieve much more. When I was going out doing sound regularly, my secret weapon was light-duty truss with heavy stage cloth - not always practical but I got more compliments about the sound in difficult spaces when using that, than anything else more high-tech! Plus it looks cool

Sounds like a couple of unlucky experiences on this thread - all the Yammys I have tried, even the cheapies have been solid as anything, quality hardware well put together. I wouldn't want to have to get anything of theirs repaired through them though, as the corporate presence in the UK seem a bit elusive! This has always worried me slightly about their PA gear, though it has always performed well for the money when I've used it. Wouldn't fuss me for a bass though as there's little major to go wrong in a bass other than active pre-amps, that isn't down to shoddy hardware that you can usually pick up on when you buy. Whoever charges £80 for a replacement jack, that is a terrible shop and you need to look elsewhere! Even if that's the quote from Yamaha, then that's so easily fixable it should be doable in-shop for far less. Sorry to hear you got stung like that. Those 374s are great basses.

On a boomy stage, if the coupling is a problem and especially with a down-firing speaker (are we talkinng mesa scout's passive radiator?), some serious isolation between cab and stage might help a fair bit. Thick layers of wool rug might help, though obv you need to make sure the speaker still has some air below. We used to find plonking the bass amp on layers of folded black twill stagecloth made a reasonable difference on these booming stages. Got to be thick though.

[quote name='BassBod' post='1194470' date='Apr 10 2011, 12:08 PM']You wouldn't listen to it at home....on a sunny spring Sunday morning.....[/quote] Thanks to this thread I just have! Actually it's not as awful as I was expecting after reading through the comments. It's a bit like free jazz for people who don't like jazz, only it's a bit lacking in development of ideas - the slightly sloppy technique is part of the aesthetic, fair enough. One thing: the drummer is a surprisingly smart guy - ear defenders.