Kala UBass Megathread, Part 5

[SBassman]

Well, there was only one logical step after seeing this hog placed in my lap this morning. I jumped on the Kala site and instantly ordered some Silver Rumblers. Gotta put Silver Rumblers on this beauty immediately.

[davewave]

Some pictures of Pyramid strings on my fretted spruce.


These two little tricks have eliminated 90% of the buzz and rattle.
The last 10% I compensate for with technique, and live with as part of the "charm" of this instrument.

1) To compensate for the wide nut slots, I pulled each pair of strings together with cable ties to minimize movement and rattle.

This still gives me the option of switching back to elastic strings, but I'm getting more and more committed to the Pyramids, a new nut is in my future.









2) This shows how I added a stack of washers to the end of the E string to get the fat part of the string to go over the saddle.















I still maintain that my ideal U-bass string would be if Pyramid would offer black nylon wrapping on these.

[imperialbari]

The original G string of my fretted acacia acoustic suddenly went radically flat at the 12th fret after 4-1/2 month. I could almost restore the octave by mounting the string the other way round. But when I found out the tuning of the frets from 4th through 9th (or so) had gone erratic, I mounted the G string from my spare set of Pahoehoe’s.

Within the spare set I wasn’t in doubt which one was the G, as it was clearly the thinnest. But when I started mounting it, my doubts started: the new G string was as thick as the almost 5 months old D string.

Anyway I got the new G string up to pitch without too many layers on the tuner stem. Took two attempts.

A couple of questions surfaced:

If the Pahoehoe G strings are more vulnerable to uneven stretching, can they then be bought separately?

I have seen no fret impressions on the Pahoehoe’s. The Thunderguts are told to be vulnerable at that point. How do the Silver Rumblers react to frets?

I use the Thunderguts on my fretless hog, where I like them very much. I don’t say they sound like the most remarkable electric bass sound I ever heard, but they share two important elements with that sound. A punchy attack that makes it easier to determine the actual pitch than with the more wooly Pahoehoe’s. And they have a better sustain. By the way that remarkable sound was played in a TV concert reportage I zapped into several decades ago: Jaco Pastorius!

Fret impressions may be compared to one-sided sausaging. I haven’t experienced it myself, but in my little black book of acoustics this phenomenon equals uneven intonation => unpredictability => not to be invited.

Klaus

[davewave]

Originally Posted by imperialbari

How do the Silver Rumblers react to frets?

About the same.

Some well articulated observations, Klaus.
I think a guy needs to have spare strings on hand and not be hesitant to replace them.

I've not seen individual u-bass strings listed for sale from any of the manufacturers.

Originally Posted by imperialbari

...Thunderguts... share two important elements with that sound.

A punchy attack that makes it easier to determine the actual pitch than with the more wooly Pahoehoe’s.
And they have a better sustain...

...Jaco Pastorius!

"Wooly" vs. "punchy" is a good analogy.

While I've not done a scientific A/B comparison of Rumblers to TGs, my perception is the new formula has slightly more of the punch and sustain you describe.

[SBassman]

I just strung the new hog with Thunderguts.
Awesome goodness.

[Peredur]

Originally Posted by davewave

Some pictures of Pyramid strings on my fretted spruce.
These two little tricks have eliminated 90% of the buzz and rattle.

Excellent! Problems I did not know I was going to run into already answered. This is what the internet is for. When my 5 arrives I will be going with Pyramids to see how they feel on my 4.

[slaerts]

Hey guys, just a little caution note. I pulled my feedback suppressor off my hog. I did it carefully - like I always do, just not carefully enough. A small piece of wood around the hole came off with it. Luckily I've found the piece of wood and it looks like it will glue back into place. Please be careful if you're taking the suppressor on or off in future.

[imperialbari]

Originally Posted by slaerts

Hey guys, just a little caution note. I pulled my feedback suppressor off my hog. I did it carefully - like I always do, just not carefully enough. A small piece of wood around the hole came off with it. Luckily I've found the piece of wood and it looks like it will glue back into place. Please be careful if you're taking the suppressor on or off in future.

The very reason why I abstain from buying these lids. The edge of the sound hole is bound to be vulnerable.

Klaus

[imperialbari]

The Pahoehoe’ not being available as single strings made me change the whole set on my fretted acacia UBass. Saving the 3 lower strings made no sense now that the G string had to be changed anyway. I pulled the strings rather hard to avoid too many windings on the stems. With the surprising result that the A string ended up in Bb. And the E string in G#. The A string came down to pitch on its own by settling in. The E string had to slip a bit in the slot.

The octaves were somewhat flat on the 3 upper string so they were rewound.

Trivial of course, but the replacement of the 4 or 5 month old Pahoehoe’s reminded me of my original fascination of playing the new UBass with the new strings. New Pahoehoe’s are much more like the Thunderguts than my old flappy and wooly set had gone. Only I hadn’t noticed the day to day deterioration of the sound and playing qualities.

Klaus

[3234718]

Originally Posted by imperialbari

I pulled the strings rather hard to avoid too many windings on the stems. With the surprising result that the A string ended up in Bb. And the E string in G#.

I always did that with the pahoehoe's. I got my most recent set up to stability in 5 days, restringing once a day up a whole step. Seems to work well.

[imperialbari]

Some of my first postings were about knotting the Pahoehoe strings to avoid them slipping though the tuner slots.

I stand by the efficiency of these knots as they are next to impossible to untie. So now I rather use cable binders for combined knots, where clipping the binders will leave the string free of knots.

As an experiment I haven’t trimmed the Pahoehoe strings after mounting them. Having the spare lengths available gives me good grips for pulling the said combined knots past the slots. Looks terrible, but works so far.

Just ordered 7 sets of strings from Kala. 2 Silver Rumblers, 2 Thunderguts, 2 Pahoehoe blacks, and 1 Pahoehoe Dreads.

I was tempted ordering a set of Pyramids also, but then I have other basses with wound strings. So I think I will prefer the more thumpy sounds for the UBasses.

Klaus

[3234718]

With the pahoehoe's, I've found this method to be the best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHLqHIwWEnc
....for the D and G strings. There no slippage and the knot seems to hold just fine. I just made sure not to trim them at all untill the final restring after they've reached stability so they're easy to work with. Now I'm at full stability with only one wrap around the post for D and G

[imperialbari]

Originally Posted by 3234718

With the pahoehoe's, I've found this method to be the best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHLqHIwWEnc
....for the D and G strings. There no slippage and the knot seems to hold just fine. I just made sure not to trim them at all untill the final restring after they've reached stability so they're easy to work with. Now I'm at full stability with only one wrap around the post for D and G

Thanks for the link!

I am not so hot on the Kala recommended loops to secure the G and D strings. They cause a double layer on the stem of the tuner or they take up the space for one winding.

However the video showed me one thing I hadn’t seen before: a stringwinder with a head big enough to give room for the winged knobs of bass tuners.

I looked in the catalogue of one of my suppliers and only found a winder for upright basses. Which may be an overkill. Any ideas about a good stringwinder for bass guitars?

Klaus

[SBassman]

Another nice benefit of the Thunderguts and Silver Rumblers is the ease in securing the string at the tuner post. No arm wrestling with a string and bass that are in danger of smacking you in the face. No degree in knots required. No blood.

The E and the A get secured simply by the slot of the tuner,
and the D and G get secured simply by being inserted in the hole of the post. That's it. Start them that way, tune em up to pitch and - actually play your bass.

[Peaceful]

Yeah! My Kala U-Bass arrived today. I tuned it up (it was de-tuned presumably to reduce shipping stress), plugged it into my Behringer practice amp and was delighted with the tone. All I need now is a band to play in.

I must say it looks as cute as a button sitting next to my Upton Bass.

[3234718]

Originally Posted by imperialbari

However the video showed me one thing I hadn’t seen before: a stringwinder with a head big enough to give room for the winged knobs of bass tuners.

I looked in the catalogue of one of my suppliers and only found a winder for upright basses. Which may be an overkill. Any ideas about a good stringwinder for bass guitars?

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/acces...-winder-cutter

[3234718]

Originally Posted by Peaceful

Yeah! My Kala U-Bass arrived today. I tuned it up (it was de-tuned presumably to reduce shipping stress), plugged it into my Behringer practice amp and was delighted with the tone. All I need now is a band to play in.

I must say it looks as cute as a button sitting next to my Upton Bass.

Welcome! It is adorable isn't it? There's 5 megathreads of info on the ubass. It's a good idea to go through them, I think. You have a lot of reading to do.

[Kryptos]

Originally Posted by Peaceful

...... sitting next to my Upton Bass.

Both ends of the spectrum well covered by this pair.

[kellyrojo]

Alright megathreadheads. I wrote on here a month ago about my fretted hog ubass that had some fret buzzing issues and low output on the E string. After getting a little bit of feedback from you guys I decided to exchange the fretted for the fretless. Sweetwater was kind enough to do the exchange for no fee so I will def send my business their way next time. Anyway, this is all MY OPINION so take it as you will. Fretted vs unfretted>>> as many of you have said previously the fretless is a bit of a better instrument. (again IMO) I am not a fretless electric player but I had my tech adjusted well enough to play this little dude with very good intonation within the first hour of playing it. It's really not hard at all with the short scale and the fretlines. All of that farting out that happened with the fretted, completely gone. The tone of the two is very comparable with the fretless seeming to have just a hair more...I dunno, chorusy thing?? Not mwah but just a more fretlessy tone......but this is very minor and I think the tone for both is great and almost identical. The new fretless does not have the uneven output level between the strings that the fretted had but I am thinking this has less to do with the frets and more to do with some kind of PUP flaw or set up issue.....unless someone else is having this problem on their fretted version?

Anyway, I know this is kind of old hat for a lot of the ubassers here but I just thought I would share my op in case anybody else is wavering between fret and no fret. I think the fretted is a very good instrument and is very gig worthy but I also think that the fretless fits the style of this instrument more naturally. If you are worried about intonation it is super easy on this bass. OK, have fun yall!

[pauliebass]

Thanks for the post. I'll be ordering one soon and am waffling between frets or no. I will probably order both and return one. Dunno yet, I'm gonna think on it for another month.