Latest Posts

As mentioned, check the string routings and angles through the nuts and bridge. Set the witness points well, check the wrappings on the tuner pegs, check the neck stability, these are all at least as important as the tuners themselves. Also, new strings will stretch out a bit, I feel it is better to let them stretch out on their own as opposed to aggressive stretching.

Reporting back as promised. I had sent a support request to NS Design. After first corresponding with a customer service rep and engineer, I actually got a call from Ned Steinberger, himself, yesterday! What a nice gentleman! By the time he called, I had figured out the logical cause of my battery drain. It appears that the spring for the C string pickup was contacting the input jack and shorting out the batteries. I also noticed that the fiberglass boards connected to the fourth and fifth potentiometers were bent back. I couldn't detect any actually contact with the base of the potentiometers, but I carefully straightened both of them back.
Ned felt that I was on the right track regarding the battery drain and offered additional support If the problems persisted with the fourth and fifth pots. He wanted to make sure that in adjusting the truss rod that I knew it tightened in the opposite direction (counter-clockwise) than what is common. Before opening up the electronic cavity, I had briefly tried to decrease the fingerboard relief, but got spooked when I went around about a full turn without any resistance. I later found out that this is normal on this bass and that there is a "neutral" point on the truss rod adjuster before it begins to grip and move.
I was able--with great difficulty-- to slip a short section of heat shrink tubing over the C string spring as an insulator and then adjusted it to rotate further inboard at the same time rotating the jack so that the ring and tip connections were farther away from the spring.
The battery drain issue is fixed and I now have proper control action on both the fourth and fifth potentiometers!
I am extremely excited and want to thank you all for your help and guidance! Next up, fingerboard relief...then I need to begin the task of actually learning to make my way around this beautiful instrument!

Kim

we don't have a horn player, so it's either me or the guitarist playing the sax and trumpet horn stabs
i tend to think this might be overplaying adjacent

Passinwind said:

Sweet! And a 500C is as classic as it gets.

Click to expand...

I've gotten so much mileage out of that 500c. Have had it at least 25 years and used every day that I'm home - and it's on right now... Makes everything sound 'more' All the crackles and pops out of it after he recapped it, etc.

Yesterday I was trawling the steadily emptying shelves of my friend's music store, which he is closing after 30+ years. In years past I stumbled on hidden treasure there — NOS pedals and such. That is rare now, since so much of everything has been sold off. Yet as forgotten inventory emerges, like the remains of shipwrecks and wooly mammoths revealed in the drought-ridden Danube and Rhine these days, I discover unsold gems.

I asked him what was up with Dophix pedals, and whether I could play a few. We settled on "you try it, you buy it". Either he or I would take home each that I played (since he is strict about "new" meaning "unplayed", and I respect that). In the end, I bought two of the three I played, and he took home the third plus a duplicate of one other.

So... to business.

The ones I demoed were LUSSURIA (discontinued), DAVID and NETTUNO. LUSSURIA had impressed me in online guitar demos. The fluttering from low frequencies fed into the drive was beautiful, reminding me of BJFe. But in hand, I found it to be too "bass adjacent" and not really suited to bass guitar.

Similarly, I liked the guitar demos I heard for DAVID. A punchy, big tube amp kind of thing; possibly as one reviewer suggested, Marshall-esque. In hand it was better than "bass adjacent" through some of its range. And what a sound at all times. A bonafide ***-kicker, tactile, with rich harmonics and credible tube amp-like compression, etc. Really nice.

Because I hadn't heard any demos of NETTUNO, imagine my surprise when upon playing it I was immediately seduced by its thickness and fundamental (pun intended) suitability to bass guitar. Its simultaneous composure and anger, its earthiness and violence, is something you just have to play to really appreciate, I think. What a honey. I dubbed it one of my favorite silicon fuzz pedals at once. Not a wide range, but one big sweet spot and all quite usable. When I was done playing, my friend said "That last one was brutal." He was not wrong.

Snaxster said:

HeavyMetalfx said:

Does the look of a pedal have any influence when you purchase a pedal?

Click to expand...

By default, I pass on images of human faces or body forms.

Click to expand...

That's what I said about it three years ago (almost to the day). I still have that to say. But for these Dophix pedals I must make an exception. I mean, I might treat them to some artist tape eventually. But I won't reject them for their admittedly subtle and tasteful graphics.

2saddleslab said:

I remember his mom bringing him down from Dayton when he was about 15 to hear my 1st trio playing at our home base in Newport, Ky. He's always had the musicianship, professionalism, & graciousness of someone beyond his years.

Click to expand...

Yeah, when I was growing up in Dayton I think I first saw him being driven around by his mom and sitting in with Eric Jerardi at an outdoor fest.

Tealvillain said:

While I am mainly a finger style player. I can do pickstyle well. But as Ive gotten older and my grip more...precarious I find picks fall out of my hand a little easily now and i cant play extended sets caused by my Hypermobility in all my fingers with a pick without ending up with my thumb going numb or hurting like hell by the end of the night. Ive been considering using Thumb picks as Ive heard theyre pretty good for someone double jointed in the fingers and they dont slip as easily. Anyone have experience with them? I feel if i do buy some im gonna use em on guitar as well. But im not sure how that affect me if i like to play fast and play some punk stuff sometimes. Any advice

Click to expand...

Yup, just recently and it was very successful. I had a right-hand injury and couldn’t hold a pick with my index and thumb, so I went to these for a few gigs and it worked out spectacularly. These clip on very nicely, and they do not fall off and worked out really well. You can grip with your other fingers as necessary.

Should have updated this thread last year when I added more fiber to my diet. These fiber saddles by Webbteca.musical.industries are amazing.

G.Bisson said:

Dark photos
Steddi Go! and Space Heater
View attachment 7563480

Bass Dude and Partical Accelerator
View attachment 7563481

Click to expand...

Cool, I'm planning on doing something Sushi/C2C based myself fairly soon, whenever the trauma of my six year tube amp build finally subsides.

Panych said:

If you don’t mind multi-scale, i would also consider a Dingwall SP-1, SJ or Combustion. They are really amazing basses.

Click to expand...

Yep, one of my favs! I went with the Fender Ultra V (if anything, just to have any arsenal) and am testing a used exotic xj-1. I played my jazz for the first set and my super J for the second--it definitely is the superior instrument for feel and playability until I get the jazz into my tech for set up!

Lammchop93 said:

Those white ones are gorgeous! I’ve been looking for one for a while that has a good dark fretboard. Yours is stunning!

Click to expand...

It was one of the early ones. I liked that the color was more of a cream, like a vintage look. It actually looked similar to
the vintage finish on my ‘74 4000 in the photo.
I know later runs had brown fretboards. You could probably use a dark stain on the fretboard if that’s all you can find.
When I sold mine, I told myself that my Rickenbacker 4004 models had a similar humbucker sound, so it was kind of superfluous.
But I realize the differences, like mahogany body/neck, and the J bass pickup positions actually made it sound more “Gibson” than “Rick”.

ric4682 said:

Sounds like this is the best way to go. I bought some citristrip, so I’m going to give it a go on a tiny patch on the inside and see what happens.

Click to expand...

Ask headless USA or peekamoose they know everything about theses instruments , the value rise every year , really you don’t want to ruin the original finish ,maybe if you are lucky you can find a n.o.s faceplate , good luck , let us see how it’s end up .

Your best bet is to omit the FRFR marketing talk and get a capable monitor wedge. While these might not be perfectly flat, they are flat enough - the good ones, that is.

Popular, but also kinda expensive is the QSC K12.2.
Kinda cheap would be the Headrush FRFR 12 - especially if you can find the first edition. These run at less than 300 bucks.

I also tried the DAS Audio Vantec 12" this weekend and was quite impressed. These go loud and are easy to carry, while sounding really smooth.

A few things on the Taurus Abigar Mk2 Xtreme feel quite weird.
The Character switch. Before I measured it, I was quite certain that there is more going on than just a mid scoop. The audible difference is not as big as the difference in how the pedal feels when you play one setting, then flip the switch. However, recording myself playing the same lick, then flipping the switch and playing the same lick again is quite clear on the topic: Listening back to the record, it's just a bit of mid scoop added in setting A, and a bit more in setting B.

Then, the Bass knob. I feel a bit unable to describe what it does exactly. At first, I thought it might be like the bass knob on the Doom2, which basically only adds clean signal, or low passed clean signal (set via switch). Playing a bit more, I am fairly sure this is not correct, and I want to guess that there is a fixed amount of unclipped lows, and the bass knob increases the low frequencies. Furthermore, I want to guess that the gain knob maybe somehow affects the amount of lows being clipped.

With the gain at zero, your low notes stay largely untouched, while plucking a chord high up the neck gets a solid amount of drive. Increasing the gain while playing the open E shows how the clipping of the lower notes increases. "Well, el_murdoque, of course it does. That's what gain knobs do. You turn it up, you get more clipping" you might think now. But we're on page 199 of this thread and I have played a certain number of drive pedals. The Abigar will be the 115th review on the corresponding website. What I'm trying to say is that I should, by now, have a finely tuned gut feeling about these things and the Abigar acts differently to what is normally expected. With the gain low, there is a certain mismatch between low frequency clipping and higher frequency clipping and that mismatch gets more and more balanced the higher you set the gain. So the low frequency clipping increases after a non linear fashion through the travel of the gain knob. Furthermore, the gain knob is obviously something non-standard - it passes signal at zero. It also works a bit like the Doom2, insofar as not really affecting the output volume. Yes, there is a bit more coming out of the speakers because the pedal adds more harmonics at higher settings, but when you scroll up a bit, you see that I took two measurements, one with the gain at zero and one with the gain maxed and the lines are not showing a gap of a dozen dB, there's just a sliver of a small difference.
So my working theories would be that probably, there is some sort of cross filtering going on to feed the signal clear low end and raising the gain lowers the frequency of the split, or something like the Depth knob on the Broughton pedals is happening where more bass is fed into the gain stage at increased gain pot values.

burpgun said:

Didn’t Simon Gallup of the Cure play one of those circa Disintegration?

Click to expand...

Yes he did : 6mn30

Login to view embedded media

JakesAy said:

Pictures of steps.. I will nolonger be changing pickups. Make sure to ground all shielding. For grounding the pickup shielding, I wrapped some copper foil over the pickup mounting foam. Did the same procedure for both pickups..I get no noise when I touch the pole pieces and when I take my hands off the bass. Its very quiet now..

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing in such detail! Send that to Fender too.

Beyond string/pole piece touch-y noise, I wonder if that made the bass resistant to EMI as well. In the same venue and through the same rig, if another bass is picking up EMI while this bass does not, we might have a winner.

Don Kasper said:

Here is my quick harmonic sketch of the 2 sections starting at 0:08, showing the root movement in the bass notes and changes.
Thx for posting this tune...
Just my $0.03.
Login to view embedded media View attachment 7563389

Click to expand...

Thanks Don
That looks very useful. Once again you come to my rescue.
Much appreciated.
Alan

Wood and Wire said:

Sounds like you've already got your first accessory figured out.

You just need to make a simple connector mechanism (an even simpler version of the pickup connectors on the EMG Geezer Butler pickup kit), so that users can hot-swap pickups without having to remove any screws at all.

Click to expand...

Heh.....I don't think that's really practical. These percussive pickups involve the whole body structure, including the bridge, and the bridge mount.

But....It does lead to the idea that we may offer different versions of the EUB with different types of pickups, for different styles of players. You guys aren't all the same in what you want from an EUB.

The pickup that failed the test is a further development of the design that I used on the Series IV Scroll Bass. It's made specifically to add a sub-low warble character, like you hear in an upright bass. It worked well on the Series IV, in combination with the quad magnetic pickup. This new version is similar to what I'm planning for the upcoming (someday....) Series V AUB-2. The same principle in how it works, but in a different configuration. I realize now that, that sound character is not like a Baby Bass, or what the Baby Bass guys want.

So, after I get the Baby Bass version sorted out, I may go back and look at offering a version of the bass with the Series IV/Series V pickup. And see if some customers prefer that sound.

Also, there's the quad magnetic pickup, as I used on the Series IV. I still have all the tooling to make them, and I even have a couple of complete units sitting here in a box. How about mounting that, right up near the end of the fingerboard? That could have a really nice sound of its own. Either blended with a percussive bridge pickup, or by itself? Some players may prefer that over the Baby Bass pickup.

These are future options. For the immediate, I need to make the Baby Bass guys happy.

I also realized that I need to invent some new names and definitions for these types of pickups:

Diaphragm Pickup: The Baby Bass and AEB-1 style pickup, where the bridge is mounted on a horizontal thin spring steel sheet diaphragm. The bridge bounces mostly vertical, with some rocking motion. Magnetic coils under the diaphragm detect the movement of the diaphragm. The sound added is a percussive Boom down in the low range, around the bass strings' fundamentals. It's similar to a strike on a Conga at the start of the note.

Percussive Pickup: The style of pickup that I developed for my Series IV AUB-2, and intend to continue on other upcoming models. The bridge is mounted on a spring steel frame, and can move in multiple axes; vertical, horizontal and rocking. It has much more travel than a Diaphragm Pickup, which lowers the frequency of the added percussive sound into the sub-low range. The magnetic coils detect the movement of the bridge in all axes. The purpose is to add a sub-low Pop and Warble to the notes, similar to an acoustic upright bass.

These two types are both Percussive Pickups, but they are tuned differently. The Diaphragm Pickup sounds like tapping on a Conga or Tom; the Percussive Pickup sounds like tapping on the body of an upright bass.

sunbeast said:

The wiring is correct traditional J-bass wiring- you could mess with the tone capacitor and potentially the pot to shift some of the lower Tone settings but it shouldn't affect the higher Tone settings at all (it could have a funky implementation of a log taper, there are alot of variations on log taper and alot of cheaper pots will act more like switches, though this one doesn't quite seem like that to me based on the demo). The capacitor only generally comes into audible play around halfway down the sweep, the first half of the sweep from the top is mostly affecting tone via the loading through the potentiometer. The lowest tone setting in your video sounds like what I might expect from a 0.1uf tone cap, which does roll off quite a bit of midrange when turned all the way down- these days 0.047uf Is a much more common value and cuts less into the midrange when turned all the way down.

Click to expand...

Thank you!

I’ll take that

Definitely entertaining guitar player.
Hope he gets well.

mikewalker said:

I've never met a Kvass I didn't like!

I used to buy it fresh from the mobile vats in Moscow parks during the summer, I have never tried a bottled version. I read somewhere years ago that Coca-Cola was considering introducing it to the USA, but I don't think that plan ever came to fruition...

Click to expand...

Pretty much the same here, but there are some I've preferred to others. But between me not getting it often and the labels being in various Cyrillic script languages, I never quite remember which flavors/varieties I thought were best.

Beautiful mid-August night! My Gould sounded incredible as usual