LawrenceH

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.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1193397' date='Apr 8 2011, 11:15 PM']When removing the decal you will inevitably end up cutting through to the wood in key areas, if you ignore this and go ahead and apply more lacquer without fully prepping the area you will end up with uneven blotches and tide-marks in the finish not only because of how the wood reacts to different finishes but because all clear lacquers are not in fact clear but are idiosyncratically coloured.[/quote] Ah right - ta! I'd not needed to remove the decal on mine as I was spraying a solid colour on the front, and the clear over blended fine with the rest. I wanted to check there wasn't going to be some horrendous peeling years down the line.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1193293' date='Apr 8 2011, 09:00 PM']It's the difference between getting the job done and getting the job done right.[/quote] Err, OK - what's the difference in terms of what you see afterwards then? I'm not being facetious, I'm genuinely interested!

Bergantino cabs ARE just bits in a box! The concept pretty much describes how any conventional speaker cab works, right up to some incredibly expensive and wonderful-sounding studio monitors. I expect Bergantinos do use some relatively expensive bits and they are probably combined in rather more careful fashion than a lot of bass cab manufacturers, but all the same you probably pay more because it's a small company making an upmarket product.

Can I ask why you have to take it back to the wood? I thought old Fenders were coated in some kind of inert poly before spraying the lacquer - is it to do with the use of a clear rather than solid colour? I did spray the Halfords acrylic lacquers over polyurethane no bother, in fact it was easier getting a really flat finish with the poly there than on the stripped and re-sealed wood of the body.

[quote name='Musicman20' post='1192191' date='Apr 7 2011, 08:05 PM']Hey, I'm not actually complaining. I'm just discussing my opinion. This is allowed. Please dont dismiss other views just because you might not agree. Some of us don't just fall for hype, we ask why! No one should pay a premium just because its a high end product. Look at the USA prices between two or three cab makers, then look at it here in the UK. Disproportionate differences. One or two have a massive difference when in the USA they are virtually the same price. I'm not aiming this at any manufacturer, I've seen it quite few times. Certain cabs are overpriced in this country when you compare it to the USA, and what I mean by this is the fact other high end gear doesnt have the vast difference once they get to the UK.[/quote] I don't think Stevie dismissed your views or was being combative, he just gave a reason why a 4x10 might be very expensive. I dont' know if that applies to Bergantino cabs or not but take the scenario of a small US manufacturer using high-end European drivers (that are more expensive than the Eminence units anyway), which are then shipped to the States, then shipped back to Europe in cabs without the economic scale savings of a larger manufacturer - easy to see why they might be so expensive. A truly decent compression driver/horn/crossover isn't cheap either and a lot of bass cab manufacturers will skimp in all these, even if they use good woofers. It would probably cost literally ten times as much as the piezo used in SWR/some Markbass combos (about a tenner retail I think). The silly light GK neo cabs could well be using pressed frame woofers with quite small magnets - these are much cheaper, and weigh very little. Bung them in a box made of relatively thin ply and you're done, but it'll sound pretty different to a proper high-end driver in a decent box. The thing is, it's bass guitar not hi-fi so you might like the sound, even though it's technically quite distorted/inaccurate.

[quote name='stevie' post='1191684' date='Apr 7 2011, 01:20 PM']The difference is probably due to the quality and cost of the drivers they fit.[/quote] +1 - Being bassists we tend to get a bit fixated on TS parameters and excursion as the markers of a 'good' driver but there's an awful lot more to it than that. B&C PA drivers are excellent, and fitted in a lot of the big pro-sound systems. Funnily enough I've never seen any with Eminence drivers in, though that could well be because we're in Europe - and I've only used a few big systems anyway so I'm sure there are some. What BFM says about the market sorting itself out in a year or so is probably true, but speaker manufacturers tend to be relatively small concerns so I do wonder if the after-effects of this are going to be felt for a lot longer than that.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1190784' date='Apr 6 2011, 06:19 PM']It certainly sounds like something you'd read on here..... utter tosh. [/quote] You should hear how loud my bass is when I take the pickups right out But it does seem to change the tonal balance on top of the volume drop in my experience

[quote name='machinehead' post='1188362' date='Apr 4 2011, 09:29 PM']I've often wondered about pickup positions. Especially when people talk about the "sweet spot" for a Stingray or similar. Surely all this changes as soon as a fretted note is played? The higher up the neck you play the more the effect is. Am I missing something? Frank.[/quote] You're right, but there are trends you can pick out. As the pickup moves towards the neck it will always get proportionately more of the fundamental compared to higher harmonics, pretty much wherever you play - until the point at which the pickup is more than halfway along the vibrating portion of the string. Which is only going to happen right at the dusty end of the fretboard, if at all. Similarly, if you think about a bridge pickup then it gets relatively little of the fundamental, and moving across just a few frets especially lower down isn't going to have a massively significant impact on that either. For the first few harmonics, then there are going to be points on the fretboard where a given pickup is at a null wrt to a particular harmonic. As you move the pickup towards the neck then this is going to lower the harmonics that are affected by this, and I suspect this will lead to a more pronounced unevenness of tone across the fretboard - having the pickup halfway along the vibrating length of the string, ie right in the null of the powerful octave harmonic, could really give an apparent drop in output for that particular fret position across the strings.* The bridge pickup should be comparatively immune to this since the harmonics affected will be higher up. If you wanted to have a vaguely scientific approach to positioning the neck pickup then I'd guess a good approach would be to calculate the position of the lower (say, octave and octave+5) harmonics for each of the first few frets, and make sure the pickup was 'between frets' for the major null points (and maxima), and ideally have the nulls between a couple of frets that are keys you don't play in all that much! Alternatively, I suppose a fat double pickup allows you more leeway as its sensing field can span either side of a null point. *edit: assuming you have trouble reproducing the fundamental to similar volume level, which is likely often the case

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1188048' date='Apr 4 2011, 06:01 PM']Not at all. What I am saying is that 'stunt' bass is not very entertaining. Its like those video outtake programmes. watching people forget their lines or fall over is amusing a few times but quickly gets boring. Same with the home movie howler programmes: 'oooh, look. He fell over/the kid headbutted him in the nuts/the cat opened the door'! It gets tedious quickly. If a solo has no musical 'point', its acrobatics. And I don't know about you, I don't find acrobats very entertaining Of course its subjective. But lets not all agree that its all good. Its not. In the grand scheme of jazz, some of it is good, some of it is great and some of it is pony poop.[/quote] Acrobatics is awesome - I wish I could do a double somersault or a volley of backflips, that would be deadly. Also, how is acrobatics like those outtake programmes? No-one watches them except to laugh at other people's failure, whereas acrobatics is about skill, grace and poise - pretty much the complete opposite. But back to the jazz. It's different things to different people, and I hope you'll forgive me if I say that judging purely from posts on here, you have a very 'serious' attitude to jazz. Which is fine, and Coltrane's unfettered intellectualist fervour is a great thing. But for me, just as important is the fun. A huge aspect of jazz is the live performance and it makes no sense in that context to separate out 'musicality' from the 'entertainment'. Whilst jazz has become its own, huge thing, that approach seems to completely disown jazz from its roots in music for dance, entertainment and general good times. We talk all the time about musical language and dialogue with the audience is an essential part of that. I do agree that there's a fair amount of pretty rubbishy fusion and that musicality is something that to an extent, if not being objective, at least has a common subjectivity that we can define. But you can't be the sole arbiter of which goals are 'worthy' in the music upon which we make the judgement. My wife is a keen dancer and her appreciation of music is based on very different, but still completely valid, criteria, to what I perceive yours to be. Also, there is at least as much crappy jazz as there is fusion, where there's not even any kind of pyrotechnic to detract from the general averageness of the music. Btw I think Wootten tends to be very musical even when he's doing technical displays, for me it sets him apart from a lot of the other bass 'virtuosos'. Berlin as well, although I still don't like his stuff, is generally a musical player.

I recently got hold of an aerodyne in a trade. Not sure if I can afford to keep it really, but I'd like to, it's great! Really light, well balanced and great quality control to the fit and finish. It plays very nicely as well, the neck is a shallower profile than my CIJ 75 and MIM 70s and unlike typical jazz basses isn't finished to a high shine, so it's good if you don't like that glossy neck thing. The binding looks a lot cooler in real life than a lot of the photos suggest, too. The sound - I was slightly surprised after reading a couple of comments online about the stock pickups. It has pretty hot output (much more than my other two), J and P are really well matched volume-wise and it has very authoritative presence, lots of solid bass but still gets the Fender-y growl across very clearly. This is important to me and I've previously avoided overwound pickups because I like a bass with a characterful tone, but this one is great. I was thinking about dropping DiMarzios in (cream, after seeing TRBboy's awesome black Yamaha) and if I keep it I may well do that, but actually the sounds is already quite a lot how the Model P/J are described. Acoustically, the bass body has a warm, rich resonance too. The frets - they seem very small to me, more like vintage than the medium-jumbo I thought they were supposed to be. They are very well dressed at the ends too. But now, I'm really thinking about defretting and epoxying this thing as an excuse to keep it. Dare I try and bind the neck in matching cream as well? Risky, but I like the feel of binding and it would look absolutely killer! The lack of upper contour is the only possible problem I can see, but the curved top mitigates against that and in any case I've been trying to rid my playing of 'lazy' arm resting because I've been told it can trap the nerves and it definitely cramps the wrist. Anyway overall I didn't expect to like this bass and am now having a serious dilemma about how to fund keeping it! I notice the new ones are now £700 and tbh this one plays just as well as any other Fender I've tried, US, Jap or Mexi.

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1187939' date='Apr 4 2011, 04:27 PM']I think we need to define what the purpose of a solo is. WHen someone like Wooten does one of his mad clinic solos, its not good jazz its great technique presented in a circus act/entertainment fashion. I can't access the Salina video here so can't comment but a lot of fusion solos are not, for my money, jazz solos per se but something more akin to HM stunt guitar [/quote] So what you're saying is, that jazz isn't meant to be very entertaining.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1186761' date='Apr 3 2011, 02:48 PM']Pants. Well if all is lost, why not try what I suggested earlier with the acetone fumes? You might still be able to coax it in the right directions with a rolling pin or something.[/quote] Rolling pin is actually a really good idea! I'd whack the guard on a piece of greaseproof paper with a correct-sized template drawn on, give that a go with a warm pin, and maybe positioning a hairdryer above to get some gentle heat. I guess the acetone fumes could help but I'd be worried that by the time they'd penetrated enough to soften it, it would take ages to firm up again. Plus containing the fumes would be tricky - I could do it at work but I'm guessing you don't have large containment hoods at your disposal!

I haven't needed to read anything for years (I'm just a weekend warrior though! Doddy tends to come at this from a working pro perspective), and in fact I'm not sure I've ever read anything for bass as such, though in another life I was a pianist so I could do it (but wouldn't enjoy it). However...although Ive said in the past I don't think 'formal' theory is /absolutely/ necessary, the things I learned for which reading was a prerequisite inform my playing enormously. I think in keys, degrees of the scale and chords which reading can help you do. Don't confuse 'theory' with 'reading', which seems to be implied quite often by comments on here. Just because you know the alphabet doesn't mean you know the language. Reading is to me the boring bit that you get out of the way to assist in unlocking how music works with your ear. It's perfectly possible to be an excellent reader and know next to nothing about music theory - likewise as long as you understand the relationship between your fretboard, note names, chords and keys then reading per se only matters at gigs where sheet music is plonked in front of you. Music theory is way more fun and involved than learning to sight-read. Plus a little bit goes a long way in a lot of styles of music.

UV is normally used as a curing agent, not to make stuff pliable - not sure how it affects nitrocellulose though. Gentle controlled heat is probably a reasonable starting point. Something like an electric blanket around glass plates might be an idea, or one of those heat mats used for keeping exotic pets or germinating seeds! I'm used to having all sorts of laboratory equipment at my disposal that would be ideal for this, but I'm guessing you don't unfortunately.

[quote name='endorka' post='1185841' date='Apr 2 2011, 02:38 PM']My experience is completely the opposite. Unless they are going to provide a perceptive and skilled accompaniment, I'd rather they just stayed out the way. Particularly the hi-hat. My preference is for soloing over ballads, I find it is the arena in which I can make the double bass "speak" most, and where its low register and volume are the least detrimental. Jennifer[/quote] I kind of agree with both you and Doddy, even though you disagree! What I mean is, solos in groove/swing-driven songs often totally ruin the mood unless the band keep going - it's not like the rest of the band stops for the blistering trumpet solo, is it? On the other hand, unaccompanied solos in melody-driven ballads can be beautiful and give the bassist a chance to bridge harmony and melody in interesting ways, often unique in style compared to other instruments. Although, if the accompaniment is good and gives harmonic space, it can make it even better.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1186384' date='Apr 3 2011, 01:02 AM']It's Kibisi Douglas' bass from Baka Beyond.[/quote] It's bloody ridiculous is what it is. There's one of these for sale for £220 down the road from me, and it hasn't needed repair work either, unlike that one.