LawrenceH

[quote name='StevieD_FenderP2009' post='976023' date='Oct 3 2010, 02:49 PM']I must be really stupid because alot of that made absolutely no sense to me The wiring kit I bought was the same wiring kit as used in Fender's current AM series and the Steve Harris sig series but I just didn't bother wiring in the cap and I think it was a 0.05 cap... now I don't know what that means but yeah, i didn't wire it in From what else I read here, it looks like capacitors aren't actually needed then?[/quote] They're not needed unless you want the ability to roll off the high end. --However, counter-intuitively, in passive basses caps can make the overall tone a bit more bark-y because as you roll them off you get a slight peak just below the roll-off frequency. With my Jazz, if I roll the tone nearly but not quite off with the bridge pickup solo-ed, the mid-range stands out a little bit more. But the effect is quite subtle and doesn't sound like what you're after--

[quote name='Marvin' post='975364' date='Oct 2 2010, 08:00 PM']This guy comes across as a complete idiot.[/quote] I think you've missed the point, rather spectacularly. You can definitely FEEL 27 Hz and below when the power's high enough! And I don't think he'd have infra subs and then just leave a big gap between 40 and 150 Hz either. I'm sure if you play a conventional bass line through their system it'll sound punchy and dynamic. It'll just shake your booty like a fat nun on a washing machine at the same time if the lower signal's there as well. I know BFM and Alex are at pains to point out that loudspeaker size per se doesn't govern tone, but when it comes to reproducing deep bass bigger is always better, it's physics. Small 8" home subwoofers can produce very low bass indeed but they do it a lot less efficiently than mahoosive great big drivers (in suitable boxes). By the way church organs often have 32ft pipes (16 Hz), and some have 64' 'stopped' pipes! You can't exactly hear them, they just add general massiveness to the sound.

Really interested to hear your experiences here. Based on these I'll be proceeding with caution with respect to shielding when I put my jazz back together!

Bass players hark on about Zender (who was awesome) but I really haven't enjoyed any Jamiroquai stuff since Toby Smith left the group, in my opinion whatever the contracts may say he was an important creative force and kept the band interesting with his voicings etc. JK's more recent offerings have been very derivative and uninspiring to me, admittedly these will always do well in the pop/club market but musically they're completely forgettable. I think Smith and Kay complemented each other nicely with the former's musicality and the latter's uncomplicated charisma. Runaway has a good bass line and harks back to an earlier sound, but that's about all that stuck in my mind from the 2000s. Recent live incarnations of the band seem competent, but definitely have a session-player-marking-time vibe. The modern recorded stuff is very over-processed for my tastes, sounding far too Logic-ed to the point where quantisation and compression has just killed the groove. Lately they've become half the band they used to be (geddit? sigh)

I thought that real 'collectors' vintage basses were indeed prized for having original soldering. Why, other than it helping with authenticity, I have no idea. But perhaps that's more of an issue for 60s instruments. Personally, if I thought it sounded great as is then I'd leave it, but if it had a decent acoustic tone that wasn't really being conveyed when plugged in then I'd have no qualms about swapping the pickups. Basses are great to play, but if I wanted an ornament then I'd prefer a nice Chinese ginger jar If you do swap them out, maybe it'd be an idea to take some detailed photos of the original pups and soldering while in the bass to prove that the originals were at some point there.

[quote name='Musicman20' post='971491' date='Sep 29 2010, 10:40 AM']I think if they sound great, I wouldnt worry. They are very sneaky on their specs.[/quote] This. The pickups on my Classic 70s are a LOT better than the supposedly US ones on my CIJ 75RI, so now the ones from the Classic 70s sit on the Jap as I've said before. I have a feeling this will differ between individual pickup sets but based on my experience trying a few the Classic 70s 'Vintage' pups seem very consistent. I'm really torn as to what pickups to put back in the Classic, Custom Shop 60s, Vintage 75s or another set of the originals as they just work so damn well.

[quote name='Phil Starr' post='970186' date='Sep 27 2010, 11:06 PM']Just as an added point I've noticed that the quoted specs for these size of piezos vary from a bottom frequency of 2kHz to 4.5kHz so I guess they are not all the same.[/quote] I did wonder if the UK ones were different to the US ones in performance. I have the US ones, perhaps the UK units perform better. They're certainly more expensive. Thanks for the plug description btw, I'd love to know if anyone's tried this, sounds a bit convoluted for us to do as an experiment when we're not happy with the HF anyway but in future may well try it. Gilmour - thanks for letting us sidetrack the thread! Glad you're getting on with yours, would be very interested to hear them sometime and see how they stack up to ours.

[quote name='DaveMuadDib' post='970093' date='Sep 27 2010, 09:42 PM']After further inspection (read: fiddling) the washers are not actually affixed to the control plate at all - they're just being held down by the pot nut! DOH!! Just a simple 1:1 control plate it is then!! [/quote] Ha ha that's hilarious! I actually thought to myself 'that's funny doesn't look welded to me' but dismissed it immediately. Be interested to see how this turns out

[quote name='DaveMuadDib' post='969855' date='Sep 27 2010, 06:49 PM']Ordered - I'll give it a go![/quote] Hope that works, but if not then that looks replicable if you knew someone handy with tools. Is it just cheap pressed steel washer-type things? Could punch something similar into a washer of suitable diameter, bend the washer around a former then glue it to the plate.

[quote name='Phil Starr' post='969625' date='Sep 27 2010, 04:19 PM']wow, thanks a lot. The jacks are just an undersized conical horn with a reflex port, a nice design with some neat bits of improvisation but for me the phase plug needs to intrude into the cone area to avoid cancellation at high frequencies and the horn is a long way short of optimal. I'm open minded however I used to build my version of a horn/reflex hybrid years back for a number of bands and they always sounded sweet I was kind of expecting the sorts of things you are describing from the Jack though. That Yamaha is the horn I'm using for A/B 'ing with piezo's at the moment. The nearest I've got is with a 1" piezo driver with a big moulded horn which sounds pretty good but won't quite handle the power. Using multiple piezo's gives the phasing problems you describe. I'd love to use the piezo's because they are electrically more robust than the coil versions and I hate expensive crossovers. I know I'm going to end up with 'proper ' horns and an electronic crossover in my heart but I just want to try a couple more experiments first.[/quote] I certainly wanted the piezos to sound good. But to me at least they really didn't and I consequently feel a bit sceptical about other people's glowing reports. Maybe some people just don't hear what I hear, or maybe there's some gross distortion using comp drivers that I'm strangely immune to (other than the usual harshness at the lower end of their useable frequency response). It wasn't a subtle difference though. We fitted the not-really-a-true-phase-plug as recommended in the Jack plans and found the performance difference negligible. I'm interested to know if you'd think a more complex design would lead to a real-world noticeable improvement.

[quote name='Phil Starr' post='969100' date='Sep 27 2010, 08:06 AM']I'm really interested in how you find these as PA speakers. What do you put through them? How are they on vocals? I've never managed to squeeze the sound I want out of piezos but they are working hard in my designs. The array means you are working each one much less but there are technical problems when high frequencies come from multiple sources spaced like these. The test of course is what they sound like and vocals are very revealing. I guess I ought to check up on your gig diary next time I come up to Reading.[/quote] Hi Phil, I thought I'd chip in here as my father and I built a set of 4 Jack 110s using Deltalite IIs and the piezo arrays (2 with 12 piezso, 2 with 6, piezos imported from Speaker Hardware in the States). We initially tried them on bass without piezos and found the sound to be very good, smooth and with excellent clarity despite the lack of tweeters. However. On PA duties, the piezo arrays to my ears (and my dad's, a relatively experienced sound engineer) sound dreadful, and we spent a long time trying to EQ them and fiddling around with crossover frequencies. The Jack 10s were very boxy sounding overall, and the gap between the speaker cut-off and the piezos kicking in properly (from memory, somewhere like 1-2k is much more audible than the graphs led me to think it would be, and we found impossible to restore with EQ in a way that was satisfactory. I tried a bit of modelling in hornresp using the jack 10 design, and found it behaved pretty similarly to what was predicted, the cut-off is just too low for those piezos. Additionally, overall the mid/upper mid-range response sounded flat and lifeless yet somehow also harsh. Above 2-2.5k it's there, but it's not nice. And yes, although everyone on the BFM site insisted the wiring must be incorrect, we double and triple-checked and basically lots of tweeters together pretty much sounded to us like a phasey version of one on its own. I A/B'ed against an Eminence tweeter (NSD2005 I think? OEM in Yamaha PAs) coupled to a horn and that was significantly better especially lower down, although it's still far from perfect. Much greater clarity across the usable frequency range. The Jack 10s are very loud though and as I said they did sound bizarrely nice on bass guitar. I actually think they'd work well as part of a 3-way design (although the lower-mid hump does make them very boxy so you'd really want to cross at about 800 max) but that sort of defeats the point of them. BFM insisted EQ was essential for any PA rig, I have to say I don't agree with that philosophy for little portable rigs but it is so for the Jacks as their untweaked response is very uneven indeed. But our experiences illustrated the point quite nicely that there's a lot more to speakers than flat frequency response. This works in the Jack's favour across some parts of the frequency range (I liked the upper-bass/low-mid clarity) but not others (anything 800-ish up). My 2p, take or leave it! Others say they're very happy with theirs and good for them, this is just our experience although I will say we did try and exhaust possbilities of faults/errors on our part before making up our minds.

[quote name='DaveMuadDib' post='969311' date='Sep 27 2010, 12:00 PM']Well, the situation is like so (kinda complex to explain!): The VM Jaguar has a concentric pot for each p'up, and quite uniquely, the bottom tone knobs click as they turn, while the smaller volume knobs on top rotate smoothly as standard. The potentiometers themselves are completely normal. So to achieve this clicking mechanism, there is a metal disc beneath both of the knobs, one half of which is welded to the control plate, the other half of which is slightly raised. There is also a tiny raised dome in the middle of this half of the disc. The large tone knobs have a series of holes underneath, dotted equally around the circumference. So the dome interacts with the hole in the knob, providing the clicking mechanism! (You might think that the knobs would be non-replaceable, but luckily the large unique tone knob is black, so it's only the top one that I need to replace, and I've done so already!) Phew! So if I were to replace the control plate and wanted to maintain this mechanism, I would either need to relocate the metal discs (impossible, and I don't want to damage the old hardware), make new ones (rather implausible) or bypass this nice clever clicking mechanism (undesirable). But it looks like the latter might have to be the solution! How uneconomic would a replacement control plate be? I'm a rather poor student [/quote] Any chance of a photo?

I've seen someone gig with a cube 30. It defied belief. They had quite a good tone too, and when I tried one in a bedroom setting once, I was very impressed.

[quote name='molan' post='968866' date='Sep 26 2010, 09:36 PM']You know, I genuinely think this is one of the most ludicrous comments I've ever seen on BC, lol. I'm assuming you have a £5 plastic Watch, drive a Trabant, keep your money in one those fabric and Velcro wallets and play a £50 Chinese made bass - after all, each these will 'do' the job for which they were intended. . . Personally if I met someone with all of those expensive things you listed I'd assume they'd worked bloody hard, been very successful at their careers and were reaping the benefits - and good luck to them, that's what I'd say [/quote] No, I think claiming a Trabant is the automobile equivalent of a £1200 bass guitar (let's say, oh, a Sandberg or a Shuker) is actually the most ludicrous comment on here And some (not all) of those Fodera prices are effing ridiculous (truss rod cover?!). Of course anyone is entitled to buy such a status item and if it floats your boat great, but you can't have it both ways, everyone else is entitled to think what they like when they see it. You'd better play extremely well indeed if you don't want some of them to think you're a bit of a wally!

Metallic paints won't look right at all, unless you don't mind having a control plate that doesn't look like actual metal (in which case no problem). Best thing I can think of would be to use a yellow-tinted translucent spray paint. Getting it to stick might be a problem since you couldn't do the usual roughing up before spraying. Electroplating is the only really good way of doing this, gold leaf can look ok if you're really good with the application but it won't be durable at all.

If I'm not mistaken those Shukers listed as stock are 70s spacing

[quote name='skej21' post='968545' date='Sep 26 2010, 04:55 PM']As for Guy Berryman, I happen to think that his bass lines are perfect for the music he plays (for example, 'Trouble' wouldn't be the same without the signature bass part).[/quote] +1. Coldplay are dreary, unimaginitive s*** and the bass parts suit this perfectly! To the OP, I know what you're saying about people who are better than you as I always learn so much from these experiences, but what if all the people better than you follow the same rule?! Whether you should play what you're told or improvise really depends on the genre you're in and the philosophy behind the music/band. But I do think FWIW that there are a lot of terrible bands out there with respect to the role of the bass guitar. That Roots vid is awesome though

[quote name='molan' post='945716' date='Sep 4 2010, 09:23 PM']Here's the official new vid for Lowdown - if you can take your eyes off the stunning girl at the beginning then the Atleier is featured a fair bit here too [/quote] Highly embarrassingly I think I fancy Chaka Khan more :wacko:

I've only got second-hand reports of their bass combo being brilliant, but in terms of uncompromising sound quality in a tiny package AER make the best small monitor speakers for vocals and keys that I've ever heard. The mid-range was particularly detailed and sweet, the only stage monitors I've heard that don't sound dodgy around here. Their current bass gear (Amp One, Basscube 2) must be worth auditioning, not cheap though. Digital Village stock them if you've got one nearby?

[quote name='Jigster' post='967965' date='Sep 25 2010, 08:57 PM']cheers guys, keep it coming - LawrenceH - how did you find the neck on the J - I read one review that it's described as a slim neck but is actually quite thick??[/quote] To me it seems small and fast, but I don't have any modern Jazzers to compare it to directly. I certainly didn't have a problem with it despite coming from an Ibanez SR500 with those ultra-slim super-fast necks. In fact the profile is very comfortable for me and the finishing (although cosmetically not great at the nut) is otherwise very good and ergonomic (no sharp fret ends on a bound fingerboard!). My hands aren't huge either. I did used to play a couple of American jazzes that other people owned at a jam night, one standard, one deluxe, and I find the Classic 70s easier to play than I remember them being. The perceived difference may be down to the fret size/profile and set-up as much as anything else though. I guess the shape of the profile is quite rounded so it might seem a bit chunkier than some since it stays fatter closer to the edges, but the maximum front-to-back differences doesn't seem all that great, I certainly can't imagine it being much thinner on a non-laminate without having stability issues. IMO the narrow string spacing of a jazz means thickness of the neck is anyway far less of an issue than on a P or a 5+ string unless you have very small hands indeed. Hope that helps!

I find the black beauty coating very robust playing both fingerstyle and slap. It wears down on the bit that contacts the frets (which you don't see) but I haven't noticed any flaking and after a good 8 or 9 months I'm still happy with the feel and tone of them on my jazz, and I really don't like dead strings. A pick would probably be a bit much for them though.

[quote name='Lozz196' post='967344' date='Sep 25 2010, 09:32 AM']I`ve had the 70s Jazz, and the 50s P, and both were amazing quality. The Jazz was the only Jazz I`ve ever had, so no real comparisons, but the 50s P - well probably the only real difference from my US P-Basses, aside from neck size, was no string-thru-body. The rest of it, in terms of quality, playability, and tone, no real difference at all. As Burrito says, an amazing jump from MIM Standard to these guys. I`d thoroughly recommend them to anyone.[/quote] I have a Classic 70s. Bought secondhand with a bodged non-fitting scratchplate, so hard to comment on certain aspects of the set-up. But IMO it's very good, the only things that I noticed were first that up close the finishing around the nut was not as tidy as it should be (though the neck is otherwise lovely and feels very nice to play), and the neck pocket is not as tight as my CIJ Jap 75, however it's nothing dreadful either. There was also a pointless body route underneath the pickguard which would be a bit annoying if you fancied playing without a guard, however I stripped off the polyester finish and before respraying I filled this with Ronseal wood filler! I believe that the American jazzes at the moment also have this routing hole, and davebass5 (I think) posted a pic of one with really dreadfully over-sized routing around the neck pup so the Highway and Classic series instruments actually appear to be better in this respect. The pickups (Standard Vintage Alnico) sound very good indeed to my ears, much more lively and generally better than the rather dull-sounding supposedly American ones in the Jap 75RI. So much so that they now reside in that bass while the Classic 70s undergoes my apparently never-ending attempt at a refinish, but while it was all in one piece it had a lovely open, grinding growl to it. I can't decide whether I should get an extra set of the Standard Vintage or whether to try US 75 pickups, which thanks to basschat I discover are available separately. The frets, though supposedly 'vintage', are actually quite different in profile to those on the Jap 75RI (which are tiny and smoothly rounded) and I prefer them as I think they impart a bit more growl to the tone but are still a bit less mahoosive than medium jumbos which I find a bit awkward in comparison. Oh yes, it's also pretty lightweight with no neck dive, I think the tuners help here - they're MIM steel ones as far as I can tell and weigh a lot less than the (brass?) Jap ones, so technically they're probably less desirable but I think they're a boon. Having a bullet truss is very convenient too. Finally, A/Bing the 75RI with the Classic 70s, I can hear a real difference in the character of the sound with the two pickups on full, which I attribute to the 70s spacing (v the bizarrely 60s spacing on the Jap 75RIs!) rather than the diferent body woods (ash v alder). I say this because blending the pickups in and out I can hear a different set of frequencies cancelling/reinforcing. The 70s spacing sounds both deeper and crisper, maybe less warm but definitely not 'lifeless' or boring. I like it.

The 301 is a solid body colour yes? I don't know what wood those ones were, but the translucents like the 320 and 330 were apparently sen (there's quite a useful thread on the Bass Collection instruments on basschat somewhere) which looks a lot like ash but is very light. Reason I say this is because I have both a 320 and 330, the former has P/J and the latter soapbar but otherwise the hardware on each is identical. The 330 sounds a LOT richer to my ears than the 320, which I have to put down to the pickups. Long-term I will swap out the pickups on the 320 with wizards and see how it sounds then, but I suspect the biggest problem with the 301 is the pickups.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='966730' date='Sep 24 2010, 02:21 PM']It wpon't certainly. It might if you expect it to produce bass cab lows. Expect it to sound like a guitar cab and you are good to go. It's based on a Fender Bassman anyway. I wouldn't use it as a standalone, but as the top half of a dual amp rig, golden.[/quote] Hmm, not exactly, it might be ok or not depending on the application. Even if you run it as part of a two-part rig, unless you have a separate amp powering the bottom cab and high-pass filter the Peavey you still risk blowing the speakers at higher power. They'll move loads if you put much below 100Hz through them, even if acoustic output is negligible.

[quote name='Lozz196' post='959456' date='Sep 17 2010, 02:07 PM']Fenders website lists the various pickups they make, Clicking on each respective bass details the pickup that is fitted to that model. You can order most (if not all) of their pickups individually, however the only one that seems to be widely sold is the Vintage/Original, which used to be called the 62. Its a pretty good pickup, great for upgrading say a backup MIM Precision, if yr main bass is a MIA Precision. Its a "fatter" sounding pickup, so makes the MIM more comparable to the MIA (this is what I`ve done, and I`m very pleased with it).[/quote] Very useful! Thanks to this I've discovered you can buy the Vintage 75 pickups separately...I have a feeling my Classic 70s is gonna get pimped (especially given that it's pickups have been thrown into a CIJ 75RI!)