Ancient Mariner

I was waiting for the 5 lovely daughters appending to the Mrs. Palm comment. My J type has roundwounds and my P type has flats. Sometimes I wish for more sustain with the flats (the bass itself is quite capable, but limited by the strings). It's not marketing and there's no mystery to it - there will be times that the song calls for a sustain at a reasonable level for 4 or 5 seconds, where the transient from plucking the string again would be intrusive.

[quote name='andydye' post='1287347' date='Jun 30 2011, 09:37 AM']a mate of mine (Martin) worked for Matamp as a builder and is now going solo [url="http://www.martamp.com/"]http://www.martamp.com/[/url] he mostly does all valve guitar amps but he does do nice cab builds too...ask him for a quote (and a timescale - he's usually quite busy), lovely guy though.[/quote] I knew Martin from 18watt.com - great bloke. It's good to see the business has taken off for him.

Mine's now twin-pickup, and I'm just about to go carve out the body cavity so I can fit a couple of full size CTS pots in there. Last night I popped in the Seymour Duncan SPB-2 I got from Samhimself and rewired it with the pots and a pickup switch. My respect for the original pickup has increased significantly - the Duncan is a bit more focussed, but there isn't a huge leap in tonal quality and output is unchanged. Quick update - finally got it back together properly, and it does sound good. I popped a WIMA 0.0047 cap cap in, and with 1 meg pots (they were all I had to hand - robbed from an old strat wiring loom I was expecting them to be 250K!) it's very crisp fully open and nicely deep with the tone rolled off, but without mud. It might be time to do some pot and cap replacement on the Jazz now.

Hmmmm. Rotosound. Their [b]guitar[/b] strings were truly terrible in the late 70s and early 80s, but I had a set a couple of years back (apparently fitted as standard on my JJ goldtop, so I replaced like for like) and the quality seemed much better. Not yet tried the bass strings, but will do soon as they seem to have a good rep.

Can you work it out from the hints you get from the wrong tabs + listening? If it's a rush job then would it be good enough to make it 'sound like'?

Behringer are entirely usable if you don't leap on them with jackboots, but the tonal quality of their pedals is unpredictable. The guitar equivalent pedal is perfectly OK, but not outstanding, which is probably also true of the boss version. I've had a few behringer pedals: one was junk (acoustic modeller) some were OK and one has a permanent place on my pedal board (UT100 trem) because it's a great pedal. The Boss is unlikely to be junk, but not all Boss pedals are good either.

You've given me amp-building GAS again!

A lot of the time it's not how the instrument sounds of itself, but [b]how it responds to our playing[/b].

The Ryders are good (if you can find one) but will require setting up and new strings to be OK.

Tone is always a sum of the parts used, and swapping out one or 2 things will only take you so far. The hard and heavy body will certainly affect tonality, and it sounds like you've got an overwound pickup (hence the higher volume - also a lack of treble tones don't bother you). And pieces of wood that have been vibrated together for 30+ years will have been altered compared to a new instrument (there is a playing in time for guitars, and presumably basses). And it may well be that you've found a truly great instrument (at least for your own ears). I've spent time in music stores, working my way through selections of certain guitar types, and there are often just one or 2 out of 20 or 30 instruments of the same type that are really great, with most be just tolerable and the occasional dog.

Or if you want to just try a cheap'n'cheerful option to see if it really works for you then the Behringer BD21 can be picked up for relatively little - has a good rep for tone too, although the plastic case won't take too much abuse.

I'd avoid the small Fender Rumbles. A friend had one, and it had no depth to it while delivering far too much volume in the upper mids. Not recommended.

[quote name='steantval' post='1273154' date='Jun 17 2011, 08:36 PM']I presume your talking about PRS 6 string guitars here then I have to thoroughly disagree with your comments. Our guitarist has two superb PRS's purchased in the USA and his sound is anything but thin when playing through his Cornell Amp and 4x12 Cab. We have played several large gigs and recorded in studios and the comments from all the sound engineers have been what a great guitar tone/sound he has.[/quote] Maybe he got the 2 good ones? I did say 'often' sound a bit thin. Santana doesn't sound thin, nor does Johnny Hiland, but IME a lot of PRSs do sound thin and a bit characterless, very much like Ibanez guitars. It's not just the players either - I've tried a few myself, but they've almost always been handed back quickly, then only except being a Johnny Hiland sig. I'd like to try a 245, because Rob Chappers made one sound so good, but OTOH I've heard recordings by other guitarists using a 245 and that sounded thin too. Guitars are highly variable, and just like with Gibson, Fender et al, PRS are variable in tone, though usually consistent in providing a pretty finish and accurate assembly.

My AC30 lived in the boot of our car for several years because it was too heavy to continually drag between the parking area and the house. Just make sure that when things get chucked in on top that nothing sharp can poke through a speaker cone.

6CA7 - my favourite power valve for clean warmth. Interesting routing of the heater cable and earth rail, but if it works (and it does, from your description) then that's all that matters. Traditional hand-crafted mix of board and PTP wiring looks good. Nice to have the expected voltages marked on the chassis too. Congrats on your 'new' amp.

[quote name='skankdelvar' post='1270122' date='Jun 15 2011, 02:00 PM']Considering the relatively small numbers produced, I've always wondered why there are so many USA PRS's for sale out there.[/quote] Because once you get past the name, the pretty tops, the price and all the testosterone-fuelled anticipation they are actually fairly ordinary guitars that often sound a bit thin.

[quote name='vmaxblues' post='1269286' date='Jun 14 2011, 09:54 PM']If I wasnt struggling for space I wouldnt let it go. If you guys havent tried one, you need to, they are so focussed on the sound, truly great cabs. If we had someone to build to order that would make great sense, so good luck to you.[/quote] I looked and considered, but you're not local and I don't really have spare cash right now - otherwise I'd have been in contact.

I went over one of my basses yesterday that I'd restrung with flats some time before, with much higher tension. It played OK, but must have been at least 5mm at the 12th. Got it down to about 3mm, and it feels low and easy now - almost too easy. Had to tweak the truss rod as well as drop the saddles (the shim I put in seems to have compressed as well). I quite liked the higher action in some ways, as it allowed me to dig in more, even though it was a little inhibitory to easy playing. One thing I did find was that playing around the 12th fret on a neck with no relief caused rattles behind the fretting hand where the strings would rattle on the first couple of frets further down the neck. One of my basses arrived with an action so low that I couldn't play it at all without serious rattles, although a fret level helped a lot too.

Gig bags for my (maple necked) basses and guitars, hard cases for mahogany necked guitars.

Well, I did add a second pickup: The good - It's very interactive with the P type already present, wired like a Jazz without a tone control, resulting in a wider range of tonal textures and a lot more clarity. Plus it looks interesting as long as you don't see the hacked-aboutness of the pickguard. The bad - it's interactive with the P-type pickup, and it's a little hard to predict compared to a standard tone control, plus if I ever wanted to do a Jaco that's now not such a great idea. Also the original pots are truly pants, and won't shut off the signal from either pickup* & the P-type is >> more powerful than the lipstick job. But it's done what was needed, which was to provide a greater tonal range and particularly more clarity. Now maybe If I can complete the deal for a duncan replacement I won't need it! *This explains the complete dark muddiness of the bass originally - the tone pot just doesn't shut off, and so it was continually bleeding a lot of treble off - a simple pot swap would have fixed it. D'oh.

FWIW I've always had good results using audio taper pots in both volume and tone positions. Changing pots doesn't always make a difference though - even some of the cheapest-looking ones work fine, although certainly not always! I suspect if you've swapped out your existing pots and the sound hasn't changed then that's how it really is, and further changes will only alter the roll off points, rather than opening up the instrument like replacing bad pots with good does. BTW caps make a difference to tone - for my ears at any rate. However I also like to tweak cap values for guitar, usually to lower values than standard, because a cap is never truly out of the circuit unless you mod your tone pots to create an infinite resistance area (some guys paint nail varnish on the track at the max end of travel). In amps, the type and make of cap can make a very substantial difference to tone, and there's no reason why it should also make a subtle difference to bass & guitar tone too, provided you actually *use* the tone controls.

Another possibility is that you've just found a great instrument at any price, and it just happens be to a grand. I don't know if basses are as variable as guitars, but it's likely that many are just 'OK' at the prices, while there will exist the occasional real gem regardless of price. It's worth playing a few more similar US models ASAP so you know what they are generally like. If this is anything like my experience with Les Pauls then you may be hunting for a long time to find another that's as good.