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Check out the classic vibe series too!
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May 29, 2012 02:43
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Thanks for the tip! I played a Squier Classic Vibe and Vintage Modified and thought the Classic Vibe had much better tone and action, but I think the Vintage might have been set up badly. I mentioned how much fret buzz there was on the Vintage to the assistant and he just said that was par for the course with alot of basses. As a guitarist it annoyed me though. Ended up getting a Hofner Galaxie Short Scale. Got back and read alot of people online being critical of the tone, which is probably accurate, but I love how light and easy to play this thing is. (Also it was £80 less than the Classic Vibe! I'm a cheapskate!)
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May 29, 2012 16:41
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A while ago, I bought one of these guys: It's a Danelectro '63 Reissue long scale bass. I was curious how the "lipstick tube" pickups would sound with flats, so I strung it with some LaBellas and...it's not too bad! It's no vintage Fender for sure, but for an el cheap-o four string I think it gets a pretty decent sound. The electronics hum a bit, but it seems deep yet punchy. I tried it with a minor, bluesy type chord progression: http://www.vaughn-s.net/danelectro/minor%20blues.mp3 Some sort of pop/rock thing with a basic Em-D progression: http://www.vaughn-s.net/danelectro/steps.mp3 This is how it sounds with a doowop kind of chord progression...just basic root notes with a few passing tones: http://www.vaughn-s.net/danelectro/doowop.mp3 And this is...I dunno. Like some sort of rock thing with a weird chord progression. I just wanted to try it with a pick, for a bit of extra thump: http://www.vaughn-s.net/danelectro/rock.mp3
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Jun 9, 2012 18:51
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I just picked me up a used Squier VM fretless, which is a fun time except there's a bunch of, uh, 'fret buzz' in certain places, especially just over the 3rd and 4th fret lines. It's not normal buzz (you want a bit of this anyway for the mwah, right?) but really high-pitched like a mouth harp - almost like whistling, biizziiwww It disappears if I move my finger slightly either way, so I'm not sure if it's anything to do with the fretlines themselves - they're very very slightly recessed, if you run your finger over the fretboard you can detect a subtle difference when you cross them, but it's not a gap. Plus it feels like that on the other lines that don't cause this noise. I'm going to add a bit of relief (there's no clearance when I fret at the top and bottom of the neck) and probably change out the rounds for something flatter soon, but are either of those likely to cause this issue? Any tips anyone has for setting up a fretless would be mucho appreciated too, this is totally new to me
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Jun 10, 2012 20:16
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baka kaba posted:Any tips anyone has for setting up a fretless would be mucho appreciated too, this is totally new to me http://www.garywillis.com/pages/bass/bassmanual/setupmanual.html
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Jun 11, 2012 15:03
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Yeah I was looking at that one earlier actually, it's pretty helpful cheers! I was wondering more if there's any general advice, like about keeping your action low because a bit of buzz is part of the sound, or anything really - stuff I might not have even considered. I see that site recommends trying to play with a really soft touch for better dynamics, and raising your pickups to compensate - is that the usual thing? Basically I have that weird buzzing to try and deal with, the action seems pretty high to me (the saddles are raised right up and there's a good 6mm or so clearance at the 20th fret line) and the thinner strings are a bit too quiet for me, especially on one pickup (plus one pickup is quite a lot lower than the other). So I'm probably going to mess with it a fair bit, and it would be nice to know what my options are and if anyone has anything to keep in mind, and all that
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Jun 11, 2012 18:25
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My fretless has a ramp like Gary Willis', and I do subscribe to his general ideas about setup. Keeping your action low lets you play faster and have a larger range of dynamics. Start by checking the relief of the neck - press down at the first "fret" and 18th "fret," see what the distance is between the string and the fretboard.
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Jun 12, 2012 21:57
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Seventh Arrow posted:A while ago, I bought one of these guys: That's a sweet looking bass. Probably should have bought one of those.
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Jun 12, 2012 22:55
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I've been slowly loosening the truss rod since there's no daylight or movement at all under the middle of the string, I guess when people say have the neck flat they mean a tiny bit of relief at least, right? So you can tell there's no back bow. I have a tiny gap now except under the G string, I figure I should get that clear at least, and then get to lowering the action? Also the notes are slightly choked at the highest frets, is that going to be a lightweight bridge issue or something? I've heard people recommending swapping it out for various tonal reasons I appreciate the help too, I really like this bass so I want to get it as magical as possible 
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Jun 12, 2012 22:55
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Al2001 posted:That's a sweet looking bass. Probably should have bought one of those. I picked one up yesterday and it sounds fantastic, with that warm punchy tone you get from decades-old pickups, and that's with the knackered strings the shop put on it. Planning to put some tapewounds on it as soon as possible but it sounds excellent considering the price you pay for one(I paid £225). Plus it looks sexy as hell
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Jun 12, 2012 23:02
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Did you get it in Leeds? vv That's cool, just checking I didn't miss one during my last-minute dash round Leeds guitar shops a couple of weeks ago. Would have been so angry with myself. vv Al2001 fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jun 13, 2012 |
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Jun 12, 2012 23:52
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Al2001 posted:Did you get it in Leeds? I didn't, I was on holiday in London when I got it. It was a right bag of laughs getting it home on the train.
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Jun 12, 2012 23:55
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baka kaba posted:I've been slowly loosening the truss rod since there's no daylight or movement at all under the middle of the string, I guess when people say have the neck flat they mean a tiny bit of relief at least, right? So you can tell there's no back bow. I have a tiny gap now except under the G string, I figure I should get that clear at least, and then get to lowering the action? The notes are probably choking out up high because your bridge saddles are too low and the neck is too straight. Make sure you have about 2-3mm of relief as measured like the link tells you to, then get the saddles where they need to be so the notes don't choke out. This is a setup issue, don't go replacing any parts just yet. Also, if you want a low & fast fretless you'll have to learn to play softer - if you're digging in you'll need to play right on top of the bridge or raise the action.
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Jun 14, 2012 20:59
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The saddles were high as gently caress, when I went to pick it up and the guy said 'the action's pretty low' I almost did a double take. I ended up putting a bit of relief in it and lowering the saddles so I didn't have like 8mm of action on the higher frets, I might be able to take it lower but I'm gonna have a play with it as it is. It's definitely one of those things you have to decide for yourself, right? Playing soft is working out nice so far, it just has a really nice tone that makes me want to really dig in sometimes. I just need to restrain myself! One question though - I put enough relief in the neck to get about 1mm of relief on the G string, if that. When I started to lower the saddles there was a bit of nasty buzz above the 15th fret, say around the 17th and higher, which means too much relief, right? I took it back a touch and it seems ok but yeah, definitely not enjoying 2mm+ of neck relief right now This thing is great though, fully enjoying the fretless experience. Everyone should have a go!
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Jun 15, 2012 00:41
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A local guy here is offering me a Dingwall Combustion for $875. It's a V1 with the B-booster installed. Overall in really decent shape, just 2 small dings on the bottom corner. Thoughts? I am in the market for an active 5'er and this seems like a good deal. The whole fanned frets things is probably going to take awhile to get used to though. JayKay fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jun 15, 2012 |
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Jun 15, 2012 23:36
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JayKay posted:A local guy here is offering me a Dingwall Combustion for $875. It's a V1 with the B-booster installed. Overall in really decent shape, just 2 small dings on the bottom corner. Thoughts? FWIW I've never played a Dingwall, but everyone I've ever heard have one says it's how a 5-string should play in terms of string spacing and string tension on the B. I've also heard multiple people say "The Voice Of God" when talking about those basses too.
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Jun 16, 2012 07:00
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Noise Machine posted:FWIW I've never played a Dingwall, but everyone I've ever heard have one says it's how a 5-string should play in terms of string spacing and string tension on the B. I've also heard multiple people say "The Voice Of God" when talking about those basses too. Yeah, there have been several threads on Talkbass about mid-to-high-end basses people have been disappointed with, and with Dingwalls it never has to do with the sound, it'a always whether or not you can get down with fanned frets. Personally I'd jump on it.
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Jun 17, 2012 12:40
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I am planning to get another bass pretty soon and I was hoping to get some advice. I have a Ibanez SR505, and I feel like it's pretty good for finger picking smoothness and the like, but I want another bass to be used for slapping and picking. Basically I'm wondering what kind of things make a bass sound less smooth and more forceful I guess? Something that would be good for distortion. I think that means a humbucker pickup, but I know nothing about how guitars work. Looking to spend around a thousand if I have to. Thanks in advance for any help!
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Jun 17, 2012 17:30
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The bass you have should be fine for any style of playing you throw at it. What kind of strings are you using? Are you doing extreme EQ on the bass or your amp? Get a set of stainless strings (I prefer DR hi-beams.) Set the EQ on your amp and bass flat. Set your pickup blend at full neck pickup. Play with your right hand over the fingerboard, over the neck pickup, then over the bridge pickup, and see all the different tones you get. Set the blend to full bridge pickup and do the same, then do both pickups. Then do the same with a pick. 90% of your tone is in your hands, your string choice, and the use of your pickup blend knob. Don't buy a new bass until you understand all the tones you can get out of the one you have. Your bass does have humbuckers, by the way.
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Jun 19, 2012 03:02
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tentril posted:I am planning to get another bass pretty soon and I was hoping to get some advice. I have a Ibanez SR505, and I feel like it's pretty good for finger picking smoothness and the like, but I want another bass to be used for slapping and picking. Those SR500 series Ibanez basses are great. I had one for a while and could get all sorts of tones out of it. Definitely do what DEUCE SLUICE said, but if you still want to spend a grand on a bass do the following: 1) Listen to music that you like where you've gone "holy shitfuck, that's a groovy bass line". 2) Go on Wikipedia and figure out what bass they're playing 3) Go buy that bass. You'll probably buy a Fender Jazz or Precision bass since odds are they're using one of those two. Unless your favorite bassist is Justin Chancellor. In that case, take out a mortgage for a Wal and 900 pedals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kat6WNUS-k
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Jun 19, 2012 04:52
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DEUCE SLUICE posted:The bass you have should be fine for any style of playing you throw at it. What kind of strings are you using? Are you doing extreme EQ on the bass or your amp? This. Plus you can also get a super hot signal by raising your pickups closer to your strings.
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Jun 19, 2012 05:10
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you crazy modern bassists and your fancy pickup blends and active EQs. i had to spend a fortune on a 70s 4001 rickenbacker, flatwounds, an orange cab and a rotating roster of vintage tube and solid state heads to get my sound.. i should probably just give in and buy an AD200B already. love those things with no horn in the cab. edit: just to clarify. new guys don't do this! it took me 6 years to realise what bass/amp/cab combo fit best with my playing style and style of music..  
niff fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Jun 21, 2012 |
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Jun 21, 2012 12:24
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My point definitely isn't that basses don't sound different, but that having a bass for a particular style isn't a necessity, and that only by understanding the variety of tones you can get from your hands will you be able to make a good decision on what bass to buy. Sorry, that sounded more bullshit zen master than I had intended, but you get the idea.
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Jun 21, 2012 17:15
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Awesome setup niff, what style of music do you play? I've ended up in a similar direction as you with a Fender Jaguar strung with flats through a 70s V-4B and sealed 4x10 cab. 
Doomy fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jun 21, 2012 |
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Jun 21, 2012 17:36
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Awesome cord! I can't tell if I posted this in this thread before (If I did, I blame  ) but I had a J-retro preamp for years that I really liked until I found out that I could get the same tone with passive electronics and a bit on palm muting on the lower strings...
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Jun 21, 2012 20:42
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Doomy posted:Awesome setup niff, what style of music do you play? I've ended up in a similar direction as you with a Fender Jaguar strung with flats through a 70s V-4B and sealed 4x10 cab. aw hell, i wish i had a 70s ampeg anything - i live in new zealand so they are impossible to find. i play in a stoner rock band (someone dubbed us 'stoner pop' the other day! ha) with a lot of messy/loud guitar noise so i am cranking the low and low mids. the orange cab, rickenbacker (specifically the neck pup) and the flatwounds emphasise the midrange i want. the heads i rotate are generally new zealand made Holden heads, either full tube or full solid state depending on what i am looking for/what's available - i do much prefer the full tube, if it has KT88s.
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Jun 22, 2012 02:45
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niff posted:i play in a stoner rock band (someone dubbed us 'stoner pop' the other day! ha) with a lot of messy/loud guitar noise so i am cranking the low and low mids. the orange cab, rickenbacker (specifically the neck pup) and the flatwounds emphasise the midrange i want. the heads i rotate are generally new zealand made Holden heads, either full tube or full solid state depending on what i am looking for/what's available - i do much prefer the full tube, if it has KT88s. The rick's neck pup through that orange cab must sound deadly man. I'm always running my jaguar's neck pup and it always sits super well in a loud mix without cutting.
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Jun 22, 2012 15:27
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The 70s pups are so great - would love to try one of the old 'toaster' neck pickups and see what that's like. This is for the bass gear geeks - I recorded our new album with stereo bass.  left setup is an Ashdown ABM 4x10 running a Holden DC208 head with inbuilt fuzz channel for maximum wooliness - input is the bridge pup from the rick. right setup is the classic orange AD200B+OBC410 4x10 setup, running the neck pup from the rick for a classic sound. the signals are split up with this, which came w/ my bass - original 70s box!  I am slightly disappointed though, because 1. I hadn't disconnected my horn in the cab, and 2. I was using dead roundwounds so I have an almost Geddy Lee clackity clack. I'll post some clips once it's all mixed. I really think it's something every bass player should try - gives you so many tonal options.
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Jun 23, 2012 01:18
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DEUCE SLUICE posted:My point definitely isn't that basses don't sound different, but that having a bass for a particular style isn't a necessity, and that only by understanding the variety of tones you can get from your hands will you be able to make a good decision on what bass to buy. I got that from the first post, don't worry. I'll try out some EQs for sure and see what I can come up with. Basically once I got it I found a tone that I was comfortable with and almost never touched the knobs since. And I guess if I don't need another bass I can use that money on a couple pedals or a really nice amp. Thanks!
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Jun 23, 2012 14:37
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I've just started in this band with two guitarists, sort of a prog-rock kind of thing. They both play Ibanezes, with one playing an artcore through a mesa head and the other playing an..uh..I don't know the name of it, but it's more metal-styled. An RG? Through this Line 6 combo. So I have these two tones to fit in between; a more high gain metal styled tone, and a more mellow but still high-gain tone. What would be a good way to cut through? Boost my mids? I have a three-band EQ on my VT bass pedal, and a 10-band on my head, so I have some sculpting capability. edit: I play a standard jazz bass-> Tech 21 VT Bass pedal -> Hartke head/cab dissin department fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jun 23, 2012 |
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Jun 23, 2012 19:34
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I have recently found the value of mids, and really sculpting your tone to fit the band's sound. You might find your hi-gain tone sounds great by yourself, but in a band setting you disappear in the mix and don't get the effect you want in the song - unless you utilise a properly EQ'd clean blend as well. I can't tell you the amount of bands I've seen where the bass tone sounds great during their individual line check then completely disappears when there's two guitars in play.
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Jun 24, 2012 00:50
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Honestly this might not go down well, but you'd be best having all three of you adjust your tones so you get a good mix. They may looooove their individual tones but it's gonna be compromised anyway just by having the other guitar there, and if you all work together you can get a sound that fits well and has all the important elements of each person's tone. If you have to apologetically fit the bass in somewhere the band might not end up sounding the way they actually want
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Jun 24, 2012 04:30
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If you have access to like, a four track recorder or something, record everyone. See how you sound as a whole band, but not while you are actively playing. People tend to listen to their own tones more often than everyone's tones when they are actively playing their instrument in a band setting.
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Jun 24, 2012 12:39
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I got a couple of questions hopefully you guys can help, i've been playing Bass for 5 years now and just picked up a new bass and a new combo amp. 1.This is the combo amp I bought and as you can see it has a EQ on it rather then Tone and Bass controls. The problem i'm coming into is I have no idea how to use a EQ or what does what  . Wondering if anyone knows a good resource I can look at to see what settings I should put it on to get like a Clean sound or cool sounds  2. I put some Rotosound Flatwounds on my bass and noticed the E string doesn't fit into the bridges hole, but fits fine into the nut. Should I go and get the bridge adjusted to fit or will it be fine half laying in it? I'm not getting any additoinal hissing or anything, just worried about future neck warping but wasn't sure if that's just a product of it not fitting in the nut instead of the bridge. This is the bass I just bought, the Epi T-Bird. Thank you all for your help  .
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Jun 24, 2012 17:06
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I think you can use the Shape knob for a fancy tone control, but the easiest way to use the EQ is set it flat, play your bass and move one of the bands to maximum and minimum, and see how each one affects your sound. Then you can kinda sculpt the tone you like by adding more or less of each element. Or you could stare at this!  If you're playing with other people you can use it to cut frequencies, so your tone 'gets out of the way' of the important elements in other instruments - like guitars tend to have the bulk of their tone around 350Hz or so, so you don't want to be putting out a lot at that frequency yourself otherwise it gets muddy, like two people talking over each other And I think your strings are probably fine, so long as your E sits in the saddle groove if that's what you meant? You can lower the saddle to compensate if it means the string is sitting too high. I could be spectacularly wrong though
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Jun 24, 2012 20:20
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Thanks that graph looks awesome as soon as I learn to read it.  As for the bridge, here's a picture of what I meant: You can kinda see how the E string doesn't fit in the guide hole instead it sorta half sits in it. Thanks for all the help e; Top view 
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Jun 24, 2012 20:41
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You might have to file those corners down unless there's another way to adjust the bridge. The saddle touching right there seems like it would mess up intonation or cause a lot of buzzing. Also, does your bass have piezo pickups? Because it doesn't look at all like the bridge pictures on the zzounds page. I would imagine it wouldn't work right with the saddle touching like that.
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Jun 24, 2012 20:51
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Nah just the Epiphone T-PRO Bass Humbuckers that are shipped default with them. e; Unless those are piezo's, not sure. They're the same as the ones in the ZZounds picture.
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Jun 24, 2012 20:59
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What's actually stopping it from fitting in? Is it balanced on one side of the slot, so it sits on a corner or something? It's hard to tell what's going on (especially with my crappy dark monitor) And yeah that graph made me laugh at first, then I got the idea and went hmm! Basically the frequencies go along the bottom, 20Hz, 30Hz, 40... 100Hz, 200Hz, 300... (sometimes there's one less line than there should be, god knows why) and in the Associations bit you have some of the characteristics people hear - so if you have enough oomph in the 20-100Hz range your tone feels 'powerful'. If you have too much it makes your sound 'boomy', and not enough leaves your tone feeling 'anemic'. I guess if you tone it down a bit it goes from 'powerful' to uh rumbleful, more of a subtle low end. Anyway this is all totally subjective but it'll give you a general idea of what to look out for, and especially how to solve issues with your tone
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Jun 24, 2012 21:16
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| # ? May 12, 2024 13:17 |
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I think the only thing stopping it is that the strings are too fat to fit into the semi circles. I guess I could always just buy some other / less thick brand of Flatwounds unless filing them down including those metal circle things is so easy a idiot like myself could do it?
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Jun 24, 2012 21:20
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