LawrenceH

[quote name='4 Strings' post='1066017' date='Dec 21 2010, 06:46 PM']This seems to be a rather recent phenomena that for almost any bass for sale, especially old Precisions, the first question regards its weight. Why is this?[/quote] Because all the kids playing their hip young person's music got old.

[quote name='gary mac' post='1065752' date='Dec 21 2010, 03:11 PM']I've got a VMJ and it's a very very good bass. I would advise you to try before buying though as the first three I tried were decidely ropey one way or another. Also some of them are very heavy, for example my daughters one is over 11lb.[/quote] +1 - All the ones I've seen in shops have been a bit dicey QC-wise, but from pics up on here I can see people have some very nice examples so they must be out there. The (fretted) ones I tried sounded really nice though.

[quote name='StevieD_FenderP2009' post='1065604' date='Dec 21 2010, 01:02 PM']Also, LawrenceH, I did fit a Badass II straight into the holes as that is what I replaced the bridge I sold to Paul with. it just dropped straight on again without any modifications to the bridge or body[/quote] Weird, as I said above I've got a Gotoh 201 and the screw spacing's definitely about 70mm (confirmed [url="http://www.wdmusic.co.uk/product/Bass_Bridge_Chrome_GEB201C"]here[/url] I was sure the badass II was interchangeable with that bass - sure they weren't widened screwholes from being redrilled on the P? It would only have to be bigger by 2.5mm on each of the outer screwholes. It's definitely not a Jap v MIM/MIA issue as all my basses, plus the Gotoh, measure the same. P basses are the same as Js at the bridge, right?

[quote name='Grand Wazoo' post='1065300' date='Dec 20 2010, 11:57 PM'][size=2][b]Yes sorry guys, the postage cost is not down to me, mainland uk its £30 and to any other European destinations turns into £90, I can't do bu**er all about that. Of course if the winner is close by and willing to collect it from London, Greenwich area, I will refund the UK postage cost of £30, and bob's your uncle [/b][/size][/quote] Which courier is that?! Btw I can't believe this didn't sell on here - I'd have been all over it like a rash if I didn't already have 3 jazzers! Good luck

[quote name='Paul S' post='1064933' date='Dec 20 2010, 07:07 PM']Could someone with a MIA Precision and/or Jazz please step up here? I am trying to sell this bridge on and could really do with the information. Thanks![/quote] An MIA J or P will be totally different thanks to the through-body stringing, unless it's a reissue or quite an old one. The USA 75RI has the same bridge spacing as the others, ~70mm. I'm pretty certain P basses without through-stringing option are the same as Js. Maybe ask Stevie if he can give you a photo of the bass it came off without bridge attached? I'm can't believe he could have fitted a Badass II in the same screw holes.

[quote name='Chris2112' post='1064244' date='Dec 20 2010, 07:05 AM']If this were the optimum arrangement for the system they'd probably be making them like that.[/quote] Look at it from a biomechanical perspective and that doesn't really make sense - the length and proportions of the arm of the player will vary the angle of pivoting as well as the scale distance that can be covered comfortably. Tonally as well, optimum scale length depends what you're after. I'm sure 34 to 37 is a good choice for a lot of people, but that Super J looks more my thing. Purely based on the degree of curvature my wrist position naturally wants to place on my hand at different points up the neck I'd probably be happy with a very subtle fanning.

I like the concept of fanned frets, but would be more interested in a less extreme version of it - say a scale length that varied by an inch or so.

The TV sound thing is particularly challenging as you have very strict requirements for dynamic range and frequency balance. Plenty of bands sound pretty ropey on TV even nowadays (just listen to Glasto highlights!), I wouldn't judge a band's sound based on it.

[quote name='Paul S' post='1063614' date='Dec 19 2010, 03:29 PM']Lawrence - thank you. Just measured the new bridge and the centre-to-centre distance between outermost screw holes looks to be around 75mm, whereas the two MIJs here are the same as yours, around 71mm. The plot thickens![/quote] I just remembered that my old SGC Nanyo has a Gotoh bridge that looks the same as the one you've got, like yours it doesn't have the name stamped on it anywhere. Anyway, I measured that as well and it also comes in at 71mm. Looks like yours is a bit of an oddity.

[quote name='Paul S' post='1063524' date='Dec 19 2010, 02:08 PM']I also lined it up against my MIJ Jaguar and it wouldn't fit on that, either. Anyone have any ideas? Do MIJ Fenders have different screw hole spacing to other Fenders?[/quote] Can't offer any useful suggestions, but I've just put the bridge from a 97 CIJ 75RI up against an MIM jazz bridge and the spacing's identical. The centre-to-centre distance between outermost screws on the MIM bridge looks to be somewhere between 70 and 71 mm, so that should let you work out which one of yours is 'standard'. Hope that helps

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='1063016' date='Dec 18 2010, 10:07 PM']There's two lines of thought there. One is the way the producer wants it to sound, the other is true to the band's live sound. Ent made it no secret about how he felt about the butchering of his tone, which was accomplished by low passing so severe that his RotoSounds ended up sounding like tape-wound LaBellas. It had nothing to do with modes of playback, everything to do with conformity, and most odd that Ent put up with it.[/quote] I can see where you're coming from but a 45-year-old recording from the dawn of the roundwound, multitracking and close-mic-ing era is hardly representative of 'most' record producers I think they got with the program pretty quickly, and they were pretty good at getting acoustic jazz recordings down by the late 50s. This true live sound, would be the same one that was on the typical low-xmax, undersized box pre TS speakers used by most artists of the day? With the need to be loud enough that's gotta be at least as limiting as the recording aspects.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='1062924' date='Dec 18 2010, 08:44 PM']When it comes to getting the bass right in the PA I'd say 90% of soundmen are clueless. Record producers aren't much better; I only heard the Ox's true tone on one track, 'My Generation'.[/quote] Getting a meaty bassline to jump out of a tranny radio without absolutely shagging the speakers places quite tight constraints on how you commit it to record! But most record producers are clueless? I wonder how most pop records were 'meant' to sound?!

In discussions like this I think it's worth bearing in mind that while many people wouldn't be able to tell specifically what was wrong with a mix on a recording, they can often tell that a mix is bad. Same applies live, I've done sounds for bands where people have said the band played a lot better than at a previous gig whereas I know the main difference is that they had a better mix and the audience could hear the track as a whole better. Good bass tone allows the musicality of the band to shine through - there's so many different ways this can be achieved with different styles, basses and players, but that doesn't mean everything's entirely relative.

I wonder about the 'valve sound' people refer to, and whether we all mean the same thing. I tried an Orange Terror in a shop and it was an incredibly coloured sound to my ears, seemed to swamp the actual tone of the bass. OK if you like that kind of thing but not to my taste. I think probably my idea of the 'classic' valve tone is the one you get plugging into a decent vintage mixing desk valve preamp, perhaps driving it pretty hard but still a much subtler (and IMO very musical) warming effect. I liked the preamp on the old SWR Redhead combos a LOT for getting this kind of tone. Is the LM tube like this?

Some tasty playing there! Funk envy...

[quote name='thinman' post='1062433' date='Dec 18 2010, 01:17 PM']Yes - but some of that power can be in the PA. I'm not saying people shouldn't have a powerful amp because they can always turn it down - my point is that once your bass backline starts to drown out the drum kit and the venue dictates that the band needs to be louder, you're into drum micing territory and probably feeding a bit of bass into the PA too. Having plenty of headroom in an amp is fine but I still don't get the need to match that with a lot of big cabs (and by that I'm taliking about multiple 4 x10"etc ) and above. I'm NOT saying no-one shoukd have such a rig - each to their own and all that - I just don't really get the point![/quote] To elaborate on what's been said above, there's a real difference in terms of power requirement between bass that's loud enough to be heard with a traditional sound, and bass that's got serious LF content at a similar volume. For a more modern, deep sound there's still no substitute for power and size. And many compact subs at the lower end of the PA market are IMO rather compromised in their musicality for the sake of LF extension and sound sluggish as a result. Add to that the advantage of keeping vocals in a modest PA separate from power-demanding instruments like bass and there is definitely an argument to be made for running an old-school, separates-style system. It's very reliant on stage acoustics and the musicality of the players though. By the way I'm not disagreeing with you per se, since I've gigged quite happily with a 130w 1x12" combo for years! But I'm after a funky, up-front sound that's quite mid-heavy and just doesn't need that kind of LF.

We tried the PL, it's good for gap filling if the cutting's off, but it's inherently far messier than standard glue and a bit of a PITA to neaten up afterwards. So we decided that for future builds we'd stick with normal wood glue unless we'd been particularly hamfisted on the cutting.

[quote name='obbm' post='1061911' date='Dec 17 2010, 07:01 PM']Neck side dots are illuminated blue through fibre-optics from a single LED in the control cavity.[/quote] Does that mean you can swap the LED and change the dot colour? Sweet! (Is that how they normally do it?). Not normally a big fan of strange custom shapes but this looks very sleek and functional. Looks like a proper player.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='1061141' date='Dec 16 2010, 11:23 PM']Bet the difference between plugging between the cabs and both straight from the amp is that one of the jacks is wired out of phase/polarity.[/quote] Yup - or a very weedy speaker cable that can't handle the full current (or worse, instrument cables that are totally inadequate!)

[quote name='Phil Starr' post='1061168' date='Dec 16 2010, 11:54 PM']If you play without compression you might have a dynamic range of 40dB and this means your average level could be 20dB less than your peak. This is a ratio of 100:1 so the thousand watt amp could be only producing an average of 10W! So long as you [b]keep out of distortion and don't use a limiter/compressor[/b] you'll be way away from the limits of your speakers. If you look at the Eminence website you'll see that as well as the RMS (EIA) rating of their speakers they also give a program rating of double this and a 6dB 'crest' rating for short term peaks.[/quote] This, along with the low-frequency excursion, is the make or break aspect. It's actually pretty easy to clip some amps momentarily without really noticing through tweeterless bass speakers, and you can therefore be driving them much closer to the maximum than you'd think for the rest of the time in a manner that you'd never get away with for full-range drivers reproducing, say, vocals. Given that you want extra volume, I can't see adding the 2x10 being all that useful, unless you find that having the smaller cab (which will be louder per-driver assuming equal driver sensitivity thanks to the impedence) on top gets them firing more into your ears for monitoring purposes.

[quote name='Prosebass' post='1056289' date='Dec 12 2010, 06:21 PM']Rounds every time for me .....however For the sound you want try these [url="http://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/products/622-rotosound_tru_bass_black_nylon_strings_65_115_long_scale_rs88ld"]Tru Bass[/url] I have used them on short scales and they have a lovely warm rounded tone .[/quote] Gotta agree there - from your description I'd say tapewounds will give you exactly what you're after. Give them a go!

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='1056201' date='Dec 12 2010, 04:57 PM']I know a the effect of a port is in a band about the tuning frequency of the port (not sure how wide, an octave or two?), and doens't do much outside of that to the sound, but the excursion below that band is increased beause the speaker acts like it is not in an enclosure.[/quote] Actually pipe resonance well above the porting frequency can be a bit of a b****r to eliminate, one reason why designers might choose to put ports on the back of speakers. I'd also say 200 is a bit optimistic for what can be eliminated with lagging! Reduced maybe. As for more esoteric cab designs, they can do all sorts of weird and wonderful things well above this frequency. Look at Bill's Jack 10s compared to the same Eminence driver in a ported cab, the mid-range response is massively different - one of the reasons he favours the Eminence drivers as their rising mid-range compensates to an extent for a drop in output from the horn.

[quote name='Lozz196' post='1056103' date='Dec 12 2010, 03:33 PM']If looking at Fender Jazz - try the Classic range, they do both a 60s & 70s, which are very good instruments, great sound/quality/playability.[/quote] I concur - them or a Highway One, same great pickups but with a graphite-reinforced neck, badass bridge and nitrocellulose finish. If you don't like the badass you can flog it for a ton and put a BBOT on

[quote name='icastle' post='1056037' date='Dec 12 2010, 02:15 PM']If you're looking new then perhaps consider trying out the Ibanez SR 500 - Bartolini pups and tone control come fitted as standard. I've had a 5 string one of these for about 5 years now and haven't been tempted away from it yet [/quote] It's a good bass, I had one for a long time - but mine was tonally very different from a 'ray or the Fenders. I found it just too dark for my tastes even after I swapped out the pickups, and I ended up getting jazz basses instead which made me a very happy Larry. Most important to me would be whether I wanted a jazz, precision or stingray tone, or something a bit different.