10's, 12's or 15's?

[Guest monsterthompson]

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1423069876' post='2680330']
There's a whole new debate (old & done several times). Does the body have any bearing on how an electric instrument actually sounds?
Does the Ampeg plexiglass thing sound plasticy? Are Gus basses only good for metal, or do they sound plasticy too?
I think the body & neck material has very little to do with the sound & it's all about the stings & electrics (pickups, etc) & the scale of the instrument.
[/quote]
fair enough. however an unplugged acoustic instrument may be a better analogy. the string/driver choice will have an impact on the nature/quality of the tone output, but the body/cab will be more influential on how it projects to the listener.

[xgsjx]

[quote name='monsterthompson' timestamp='1423158878' post='2681612']
fair enough. however an unplugged acoustic instrument may be a better analogy. the string/driver choice will have an impact on the nature/quality of the tone output, but the body/cab will be more influential on how it projects to the listener.
[/quote]
That would be a good analogy.

However, your analogy using the electric instrument might be a valid one too. I believe that I'm right, that the bodymaterial of an electric bass doesn't have much baring on tone, but I can't guarantee it.

[stingrayPete1977]

[quote name='owen' timestamp='1423148655' post='2681434']

Wrong, it sounds FABULOUS!
[/quote]
+2 what an awesome sight it was too.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1423170754' post='2681853']
I believe that I'm right, that the bodymaterial of an electric bass doesn't have much baring on tone, but I can't guarantee it.
[/quote]It can make a major difference, with guitar as well. The more dense the wood the brighter the tone, and the longer the sustain.

[bartelby]

At band practice last night I went into the rehearsal room and there in the corner was an old Ampeg 1x18" stacked on an old Ampeg 2x15".
Blimey, I though, I'm gonna give them a blast!!
Plugged in my amp, plugged in my bass...
Totally underwhelmed by the low frequencies.

Unplugged everything and set up my 4x8" and 1x15" cabs. Much better.

There's nothing like a practical to prove the theory.

[Lozz196]

A 4x8 and 1x15 together - the don`t mix cabs police will soon be at your door...............

[bartelby]

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1423216801' post='2682238'] A 4x8 and 1x15 together - the don`t mix cabs police will soon be at your door............... [/quote]

I know!

That was actually going through my mind as I was typing...

I'd prefer to have 2 4x8"s but I'm skint.

[JTUK]

[quote name='bartelby' timestamp='1423215403' post='2682216']
At band practice last night I went into the rehearsal room and there in the corner was an old Ampeg 1x18" stacked on an old Ampeg 2x15".
Blimey, I though, I'm gonna give them a blast!!
Plugged in my amp, plugged in my bass...
Totally underwhelmed by the low frequencies.

Unplugged everything and set up my 4x8" and 1x15" cabs. Much better.

There's nothing like a practical to prove the theory.
[/quote]

What were you expecting....?
I'd be thinking low mush and a generally unusable sound

[bartelby]

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1423219962' post='2682289'] What were you expecting....? I'd be thinking low mush and a generally unusable sound [/quote]

It was actually quite pronounced in the mids, not a low mush.
But your 'low mush', might be my 'lovely lows'...

It was a far from unusable sound, but just had less lows than a much smaller set up.

[discreet]

[quote name='bartelby' timestamp='1423222500' post='2682343']
It was a far from unusable sound, but just had less lows than a much smaller set up.
[/quote]

Fewer lows. Maybe they were so low you couldn't hear 'em?

[chris_b]

Looking at the cabs you own it's no surprise that you didn't like the 18's and 15's.

I know people who get a great sound out of Ampeg 15's, but I prefer tight, warm and punchy for my sound.

[bartelby]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1423222816' post='2682349']
Fewer lows. Maybe they were so low you couldn't hear 'em?
[/quote]

I couldn't feel them either.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1423223072' post='2682355']
Looking at the cabs you own it's no surprise that you didn't like the 18's and 15's.

I know people who get a great sound out of Ampeg 15's, but I prefer tight, warm and punchy for my sound.
[/quote]

Now I didn't say I didn't like them. Just pointing out that the theory of old big speakers may not produce as much low end as smaller modern speakers is perfectly valid.

[xgsjx]

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1423172912' post='2681910']
It can make a major difference, with guitar as well. The more dense the wood the brighter the tone, and the longer the sustain.
[/quote]
I know it's been a commonly debated subject. I know that in an acoustic instrument there is a noticeable difference, but for electric, the debates have mostly said it's minimal.
The string rests on the bridge & nut (another 2 parts that are contested to whether they affect tone) & the sound is picked up from the electrics.
From my understanding, the density could impact how the vibrations travel, leading to < or > sustain, but not play that big a part on the actual tone, hence different body materials still sounding similar to ones made of wood.
Is it more to do with the density of the material & not whether it is wood? Meaning that if a bass is made from a hard alloy, it would have similar characteristics as a hard wood of similar density?

I've not got the means to test & it's hard to trust a manufacturer, as they're gonna say what is going to sell more.

[Skybone]

Just to reiterate here, I was asking the question in general to try and narrow down the choices so that I can figure out what to get when the time comes. There's a myriad of gear available these days, for both guitar & bass players, we are spoilt for choice in fact, and that makes the decision of which to go for even harder. I do not intend on buying anything "blind", it's a big wedge of money, which as we all know these days, definitely does not grow on trees. So whatever I decide upon, it has to be the right choice for me, and only I can make that decision, but I intend to do a lot of research prior to shelling out anything.

My guitar amp is a very understressed 50w, I have used it regularly at full bore, and it still sounds gorgeous & LOUD now as it did when it was new. It still has the same valves in it as the day I picked it up from the factory. I might try it, I might not.

As for the tonewood discussion, it definitely does make a difference on an electric guitar, as it does on an acoustic. I have predominantly played mahogany bodied guitars, which do give a fuller sound throughout the spectrum. I owned a maple through neck guitar for a while, and although it looked and played superbly, there was something missing in the sound. Playing in a three piece metal band, it snarled like nothing else, but there was little "girth" in the sound, it left plenty of room for the bass, but there was a little too much room in the overall sound of the band, where with the other mahogany bodied guitars, there was snarl AND girth, and still loads of room for the bass (even when recorded you could tell the difference between them). If you listen to an acoustic guitar of the same size body & same make, but made from different tonewoods, there is a marked difference in the sound from mahogany to maple & rosewood.

Anyways, I'm liking the look of the Ashdown Rootmaster's, the Laney RB7 or 8 or the TC BG250 combo's. The next problem is finding somewhere where I can try them out with my gear. Not sure about whether I'll use the B3 before the amp yet, I'll have to wait & see if I need effects or not. As for the amp/cab or combo route, again, been there, done that. My preference would be for a combo, less to lug about and more importantly, store. OK, so they're a bit heavier than an amp & cab, but all the amps I'm thinking about all around the 25kg mark, which isn't unmanageable.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Skybone

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1423228365' post='2682479']
I know it's been a commonly debated subject. I know that in an acoustic instrument there is a noticeable difference, but for electric, the debates have mostly said it's minimal.[/quote]Said debates don't take place between luthiers. They shouldn't take place between players either, as Les Paul among others sorted this out in the 1940s.
Density is the main factor, not weight. Thirty years ago I found that solid rosewood gave tone and sustain that you couldn't get with anything off the shelf, including ash, but at the cost of literally unbearable weight. I then went to a semi-hollowbody construction similar to what Rickenbacker uses in their semi-hollows, with the thickness of the top and back about 1/4 inch. The weight came down to about the same as a solid poplar body, but the tone and sustain of solid rosewood wasn't lost in the process.

[LukeFRC]

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1423172912' post='2681910']
It can make a major difference, with guitar as well. The more dense the wood the brighter the tone, and the longer the sustain.
[/quote] oh dont start that one again! Well not before weve been around "fodera:worth it?" "Barefaced handles I have known" "this months flavour of the month love in" "rosewood or maple" "are fender any good" "valve or solidstate" "tweeters yay or nay" "and "bass reflex vs horns"

[chris_b]

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1423228365' post='2682479']
....but for electric, the debates have mostly said it's minimal....
[/quote]

Not so. Anyone who says different is usually shouted down to the point that any kind of sensible debate is cut off. Anyone with a different view has to be pretty thick skinned to get into this and many other debated here. So we tend not to hear the other side of the story.

I will trust a manufacturer when they are the likes of Mike Tobias and Roger Sadowsky. These guys, and others like them, are not trying to sell basses by BS but by putting into practice what they know. And they know a lot more than most of the members on Basschat.

[JTUK]

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1423232036' post='2682548']

I will trust a manufacturer when they are the likes of Mike Tobias and Roger Sadowsky. These guys, and others like them, are not trying to sell basses by BS but by putting into practice what they know. And they know a lot more than most of the members on Basschat.
[/quote]

Agree... no luthier is in the kidding/BS game if they sell basses at £2k plus.
But there is a limit to how many combinations a luthier will use as he knows the tried and trusted
woods and experiments are risky AND expensive. You can clamp woods together to approximate
glueing them and do basic sound tests but you'll not really know how it turns out until all bolted together.
This is why expensive selected woods also tend to have very good and sound construction techniques
as you don't want to do all the work for it to 'fail'.
When you use cheap woods, the combinations are more variable but the driver might be the price and if
it doesn't work, well, it was cheap anyway.

[alexclaber]

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1423228365' post='2682479']
I know it's been a commonly debated subject. I know that in an acoustic instrument there is a noticeable difference, but for electric, the debates have mostly said it's minimal.
The string rests on the bridge & nut (another 2 parts that are contested to whether they affect tone) & the sound is picked up from the electrics.
From my understanding, the density could impact how the vibrations travel, leading to < or > sustain, but not play that big a part on the actual tone, hence different body materials still sounding similar to ones made of wood.
Is it more to do with the density of the material & not whether it is wood? Meaning that if a bass is made from a hard alloy, it would have similar characteristics as a hard wood of similar density?

I've not got the means to test & it's hard to trust a manufacturer, as they're gonna say what is going to sell more.[/quote]

I'm trying to remember if I've written a column on this - no, I haven't...

So this is how I see how tone happens, step by step:

1. Finger/thumb/pick strikes the string. This determines the initial balance of harmonics and percussives.
2. This stimulation excites the whole string.
3. The excited string loses energy to four places - the pickup(s), the air, the bridge saddle and the nut/fret/fretting finger.
4. The energy lost into the pickups and air is gone for good.
5. The energy lost into the bridge saddle travels through the bridge and set the body resonating.
6. The energy lost into the fretting finger is gone for good, whilst that going into the nut/fret travels down the neck and sets the body resonating.
7. Depending on the frequency of the energy entering the body/neck it is either damped and lost (turned into minuscule amounts of heat), resonates and emits into the air and is lost, continues resonating within the body/neck or resonates within the body/neck and is returned into the string via the bridge/fret/nut.

The tone you hear from the bass is what the pickup 'hears' at its specific location - with a wide-range pickup like an Alembic or Q-Tuner it's very similar to what you'd get from close micing at that point. The tone at that point depends hugely on how the body/neck of the instrument is taking energy from and returning energy to the strings.

I noticed a HUGE change in tone after removing a very thick layer of gloss paint off the neck and body of my first bass - it was absolutely transformed, it suddenly sounded alive! Instead of sounding dead and always wanting new strings it had much more midrange character and growl and more brightness up top. Why? Because the body/neck were no longer damping so many of the good frequencies.

Before the bass cab thing I spent ages on designing a custom bass and put a lot of effort into finding out everything I could about how the parts of a bass affect how it sounds.

Another example from that custom bass thing is I ended up with an ebony nut. Why? Because when you fret a note your finger provides damping despite being behind the fret. My first bass had a zero fret and I always noticed that the open strings on that sounded much more different from fretted notes than when playing basses with normal nuts - despite some luthiers claiming a zero fret sounds more consistent (a classic case of a brain's ideas over-riding the truth from the ears). But open strings with bone nuts still sounded different to fretted notes - with an ebony nut the softness of the wood (compared to metal anyway) adds that bit of damping which the finger would - voila, more consistent tone!

I always say that when bass shopping, play it unplugged. A bass that sounds great unplugged can always be made to sound great plugged in with the right pickups. A bass that sounds mediocre unplugged will never sound better than mediocre plugged in, whatever you do. It is an acoustic instrument first - just a very quiet one!

[stingrayPete1977]

I have a mag pickup on my double bass and no matter what the 'experts' tell us about mag pickups making it sound like a big P bass it just doesn't, OK it is not going to sound like a mic'd DB but the scale length, body chamber and all that wood makes it sound nowt like a P bass! I always think what a 50s hollow electric guitar sounds like compared to a solid Les Paul even if you fit the same pickups in the same spot etc the hollow one sounds nothing like a solid one does it? So on a smaller scale (excuse the pun) all these thing will alter the tone of a bass or guitar or even a DB when amplified. It has been said that a length of wood with a MM humbucker in the sweet spot with strings wrapped over it at 34" scale and the MM preamp inline sounds 100% Stingray, I might just try it one day and see

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1423231211' post='2682540']
oh dont start that one again! Well not before weve been around "fodera:worth it?" "Barefaced handles I have known" "this months flavour of the month love in" "rosewood or maple" "are fender any good" "valve or solidstate" "tweeters yay or nay" "and "bass reflex vs horns"
[/quote]Get back to us with your opinion after you've built a few dozen guitars and/or basses using different body, neck and fretboard woods.
[quote]the tone you hear from the bass is what the pickup 'hears' at its specific location - with a wide-range pickup like an Alembic or Q-Tuner it's very similar to what you'd get from close micing at that point. The tone at that point depends hugely on how the body/neck of the instrument is taking energy from and returning energy to the strings.[/quote]One issue I had with rosewood guitar bodies was an increased tendency for high frequency feedback. Rather than the usual spring/screw mount I ended up isolating the pickups from the body with foam rubber to break the feedback loop. It's not necessary with bass, since you don't run super high gain. This taught me why so many players who use super high gain and lots of distortion effects, like Steve Vai, prefer a lower density body, like basswood. I tried a basswood bass body once and the tone and sustain were so bad that it ended up as firewood after one gig. That's when I also found out that basswood doesn't even burn well.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Bill Fitzmaurice

[discreet]

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1423231211' post='2682540']
oh dont start that one again! Well not before weve been around "fodera:worth it?" "Barefaced handles I have known" "this months flavour of the month love in" "rosewood or maple" "are fender any good" "valve or solidstate" "tweeters yay or nay" "and "bass reflex vs horns"
[/quote]

What else should we talk about? You don't want to discuss how we actually play the bass, do you? That would be crazy!

Anyway, here are your answers:

Are Fodera worth it: No.
Barefaced handles: OK by me.
Flavour of the month: Squier. Probably.
Rosewood or maple: Maple.
Are Fender any good: Sometimes.
Valve or Solid State: Valve. Unless you have to carry your own amp, then Solid State.
Tweeters: Yay.
Reflex v Horns: Horns.

Edited February 6, 2015 by discreet

[LukeFRC]

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1423251378' post='2682892']
Get back to us with your opinion after you've built a few dozen guitars and/or basses using different body, neck and fretboard woods.
[/quote] experience? experience? this is into-web-forum land - where actually knowing what you're talking about doesn't quite matter as much as giving an oppinion about something. now wheres that hitting a dead horse emoticon you've got on your forums

[LukeFRC]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1423251727' post='2682899']
What else should we talk about? You don't want to discuss how we actually play the bass, do you? That would be crazy!

Anyway, here are your answers:

Are Fodera worth it: No.
Barefaced handles: OK by me.
Flavour of the month: Squier. Probably.
Rosewood or maple: Maple.
Are Fender any good: Sometimes.
Valve or Solid State: Valve. Unless you have to carry your own amp, then Solid State.
Tweeters: Yay.
Reflex v Horns: Horns.
[/quote][color=#ff0000][b] STOP IT![/b][/color]

[Musky]

[quote name='bartelby' timestamp='1423215403' post='2682216']
At band practice last night I went into the rehearsal room and there in the corner was an old Ampeg 1x18" stacked on an old Ampeg 2x15".
Blimey, I though, I'm gonna give them a blast!!
Plugged in my amp, plugged in my bass...
Totally underwhelmed by the low frequencies.

Unplugged everything and set up my 4x8" and 1x15" cabs. Much better.

There's nothing like a practical to prove the theory.
[/quote]
Never mind that. I want to know how they got an old Ampeg 1x18 on top of a 2x15!