The Last Bass Outpost
Gear Discussion Forums => Other Bass Brands => Topic started by: ilan on April 09, 2022, 02:51:46 PM
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/275258817924
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/OOkAAOSwqJ5iT1J~/s-l1600.jpg)
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I get it - - - - it's chambered, just missing one side of the chamber. Er, right?
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I like the mention of Jaco Pastorius in the description. Jaco loved moveable P pickups. ;D
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I like the mention of Jaco Pastorius in the description. Jaco loved moveable P pickups. ;D
Let's see. . . ruin a bass put a crappy drawer guide inside and set the pickup right where it was in the first place. Sounds good to me Jaco.
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Sliding pickups always seem like a nice idea that is inelegantly executed. It would be nice if you didn't need to see all the internal guts and frameworks required to make it work. I do also wonder how many times you can move a pickup around with regular guitar wiring before a solder joint fails or something snags.
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Warwick made quite a nice sliding pickup Star Bass for Guy Pratt.
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Who had the siding pickups in the 70's" Seemed more secure with 2 rails.
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People who play Fender shapes are by definition not obsessed with looks. I cannot register any optical deterioration. The general rule with Fender is, the less you see of it, the better. Here the large cavity proves beneficial. :popcorn:
Jaco was of course famous for his fretless P Bass with that humbucker sound.
Ironically, it's the only fretless Fender model he could have played off the rack. IIRC Fender did not offer fretless Jazz Basses when he pulled the frets out of his in the 70ies. They had by then only done a small run of fretless P Basses with - surprisingly - maple boards, making it I guess the Unprecision Bass.
(https://dyn1.heritagestatic.com/lf?set=path%5B1%2F7%2F5%2F0%2F6%2F17506783%5D%2Csizedata%5B850x600%5D&call=url%5Bfile%3Aproduct.chain%5D)
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IIRC the fretless P was introduced in 1969 and had a rosewood board.
BTW my first Fender was a 1980 fretless P.
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Your Fender knowledge beats mine. I concentrate on beautiful things.
My first bass was a Korean or Japanese "Johnny Guitar" Jazz Bass knock-off - I hated its looks, but it was all I could afford. To me back then it was the most un-RnR shape imaginable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVtLuMgtUc0
The shop also had a Burns Flyte for - roughly - 15x the price, I would have loved to have that.
(https://hendrixguitars.com/Images/Ba499.jpg)
Within a year or so I had turned the Johnny Guitar contraption into a fretless alright by wearing down the frets with my constant playing. 8)
As you see, my disdain for Fender shapes is deeply embedded in my childhood. :mrgreen:
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Here's my contribution 8)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t98NAXLGCxM
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Oh my, your Grijpervogel is lovely Holländer, it would have me dancing in the moonlight in no time! And I would not just have chocolate stains on my pants either.
You've come a long way since peddling Czech rip-offs. :-*
Phil would have wanted you to play that run with a pick though. 8)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unnh0T2Ftro
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Who had the siding pickups in the 70's" Seemed more secure with 2 rails.
Westone 'Rail' bass?
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My first bass was a Korean or Japanese "Johnny Guitar" Jazz Bass knock-off - I hated its looks, but it was all I could afford. To me back then it was the most un-RnR shape imaginable.
Mine was a 1967 Höfner 500/1 (blade pickups era), and it was far less RnR shape. 14-year-old me would have killed for your J copy. But eventually I didn't have to - a year later my parents got me a MIJ J copy, that I strung with 050 flats and the resulting action was such that you could fly a plane under the strings.
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Well, it trained you then! 8)
(http://israelforever.org/interact/blog/idf_combat_fitness_484_x_252.png)
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For what?
Two year later I played a friend's bass at a gig (a well set up Fender P) and was like, what ARE those strings? They bend, they are soft... It was the first time I played roundwounds. Then my dad got me my first Rotosound Swing Bass 040 set when he came back from London. I just had no idea playing bass could be that easy.
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You left the manly world of high-action flatwound stiffers? Ilana, I'm aghast!
I had my Road to Damascus experience too when I first played Rotosounds on an Ibanez 4001 knock-off (also about two years after I had started playing). It opened a new world. I first thought: "This new sound, it must be the Ibanez." Then I bought roundwounds for my Johnny Guitar J and all of the sudden realized that it began to sound like the Ibanez too. ;D
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You left the manly world of high-action flatwound stiffers? Ilana, I'm aghast!
Well I have had 3 years of formal classical training on upright. And I'm on the fence about stringing one of the P's with a LaBella Jamerson set (052-110).
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052-110 sounds brutal! I bought a used Jazz a few years back with those on. The bridge plate itself was pulling forwards under the tension.
(https://i.imgur.com/TJVcOj6.jpg)
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The Fender bridge in all its royal beauty. Utilitarian is the only apt description. :mrgreen:
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Utilitaristisch! Not like one of those superior Gibson bridges that scatters saddles and components everywhere when you remove the strings.
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I thought the Fender bridge was genius . You take a steel plate , put a bend in it , drill some holes , add nuts , springs and bolts . I still like them over most high mass bridges , but then I like the Dano popsicle stick bridge .
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Utilitaristisch! Not like one of those superior Gibson bridges that scatters saddles and components everywhere when you remove the strings.
:mrgreen: I'll give you "utilaristisch", did you stumble on a German dictionary in your kilt?
Holy Immaculate Three Point, forgiveth him for his loose tongue ...
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I thought the Fender bridge was genius . You take a steel plate , put a bend in it , drill some holes , add nuts , springs and bolts . I still like them over most high mass bridges , but then I like the Dano popsicle stick bridge .
They do sound better than any other bridge on a Fender. I encourage every Geddy Lee Jazz Bass owner to replace the BAII with a bent plate bridge and get the low frequencies back.
Leo never meant for his bridges to be seen, he hid all bass and guitar bridges under chrome ashtrays. In the Tele he didn't even bother to put a plastic cover on the bridge pickup.
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They do sound better than any other bridge on a Fender. I encourage every Geddy Lee Jazz Bass owner to replace the BAII with a bent plate bridge and get the low frequencies back.
Leo never meant for his bridges to be seen, he hid all bass and guitar bridges under chrome ashtrays. In the Tele he didn't even bother to put a plastic cover on the bridge pickup.
I agree all around. IMO the bent metal bridge is a model of effective minimalist design and it works very well. Adding threaded saddles to one provides flexible string spacing as well.
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They do sound better than any other bridge on a Fender. I encourage every Geddy Lee Jazz Bass owner to replace the BAII with a bent plate bridge and get the low frequencies back.
Dave mentioned something about this a few months back, so I bought a Kluson bridge on eBay. I still haven't gotten around to trying it. I'll get to it before summer and try to record some A/B samples.
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I convinced two of my friends, both pro players, to un-mod their Geddys with a standard bridge, I think they are very happy with the result. It's my other mission in the bass world (second only to shunting every .0038 capacitor on a pre-'85 Ric).
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Does this mean there's going to be a trend toward "low mass" bridges? :D
I can see it now in the marketing campaigns ... soon everybody will know that low bridge mass means "more sustain"...
because literally everything you can possibly buy to do to a guitar gives you "more sustain"
And somehow this will be true of low mass bridges and high mass bridges at the same time!
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To me “more sustain” means more palm muting or even a possible sponge .
And I’m very fussy about note length .
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To me “more sustain” means more palm muting or even a possible sponge .
And I’m very fussy about note length .
+1
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Does this mean there's going to be a trend toward "low mass" bridges? :D
I can see it now in the marketing campaigns ... soon everybody will know that low bridge mass means "more sustain"...
because literally everything you can possibly buy to do to a guitar gives you "more sustain"
And somehow this will be true of low mass bridges and high mass bridges at the same time!
Marketing. :rolleyes: Or as Yogurt (Mel Brooks) said in Spaceballs, "Moichandising."
The worst example I can think of in bridges was the claim by Quan that the Badass Bridge was made of special "tone transfer metal." :rolleyes: It was just zinc alloy.
Here's what I learned from Micah Wickersham at Alembic: the higher the mass of the bridge, the more energy is retained in the strings, and the less energy is transmitted into the body. That's why Alembic deliberately makes their bridges high mass, with a brass plate buried in the body, to have more sustain and to minimize the effect of the body wood on the tone.
By the same reasoning, lighter bridges transmit more string energy into the body. But you have to consider that different bridge designs have an effect too.
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We're not in disagreement here. It may explain in part why I have never played an Alembic that I liked. They were all heavy and thin-sounding, and needed that onboard preamp to correct it. It would be interesting to play an Alembic with a bent plate bridge/tailpiece.