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Put this thing through the paces at another band practice (where we introduced a new member). Some band members wanted to experiment in drop A (AEADG), so I was afraid of everything being floppy and muddy.

But even despite my Aria being a 34" scale with a 120 B-string, it didn't sound or feel floppy in drop A! It sounded good! So yay! This is why I say things like scale length only tell part of the story with regard to 5-strings. I've played 35" scale 5ers that felt and sounded floppy in both B and A, even despite setups with strings like DR DDTs.

This bass continues to surprise me in all the best ways.

I got it switched, and “new” drivers loaded in this evening. Thanks for the help!

TroyK said:

I am impressed with Rumbles, especially for the price, but they do greatly benefit from a high pass filter.

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Same for the GK MB 112. I’m playing a gig tomorrow with an Ampeg RB112 that I haven’t gigged with before. Curious about how it’ll sound.

agedhorse said:

There are no factory recone kits available, all of the aftermarket kits I have seen are poor to abysmal. Just beware.

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I'd take poor over abysmal any day.

I'd call that livin' large!

Hopefully not derailing the thread, but I’m looking seriously at the Trickfish 3K and the 1.5K… playing some larger places, and at present I’m gigging with an Epifani Piccolo with the 1000 watt mod… any opinions on either of these amps from you veteran bassmen? I really appreciate the input!

As usual, CNN has it wrong. The singer actually fired the drummer and is chucking his kit. He really means it this time.

been getting this one multiple times today. No warning. I navigate to a thread, start reading and scrolling as normal then POP it clogs my screen.

Aloe said:

I wonder if it can be used as a tie clip to pitch check a vocalist.

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If you string him high enough, sure

I picked up another Gator case, this time for my 5 string pro player. Note the fit here is not as good as it was on the 6 string custom. The main differences are that the 5 has a slightly thinner body, and the combination of the 33 inch scale with the volute on the back of the headstock mean the neck does not sit in the cradle the same way because the volute lifts it. I considered trimming the case so that the neck fits better, but for now I solved it with bubble wrap under the neck and around the body.

IK, old thread, but I just had to learn this tune for a gig. I have been diving into Larry's playing of late after listening to him a bunch. Larry is a monster and his playing is great here as always. It's obviously a five string and to me sounds like just a really tasty and warm active five string tone w roundwounds--could be a Yamaha, MTD, mighta been a Tobias-I think he had one back then. Don't think it's a Sadowsky - many Nashville cats used those(and still do) but this doesn't have that sound to my ears. I hear no effects or amp sound, just DI'd bass, but you know it's going through an as-good-as-it-gets front end, comp, eq, etc. Brent Mason is no slouch on guitar either

There’s been nobody online here recently that you had issues with, have you? Wouldn’t surprise me to see someone go to such lengths to inconvenience you this way. To set up a dupe account, that is.

Worked out fine. I couldn't find a model with just two segments, so I got one with three. Kareem Abdul Jabar could play the bass at full stretch, but it also works well for normal sized people. Actually it was a brilliant idea by Steve Azola to use a monopod. Very sturdy and solid; easily adjustable; hardware readily available. And the monopod I got still fits into the original Azola bag.

Another bass that Miss Pink.bass slaps effortlessly is this red Fender-ish looking model. She gets a great sound, and can play for hours.

bass player 53 said:

I have a 2012 RAV4, and the answer is yes.
My db goes diagonally with the back seats folded.

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I will have to quality my original answer to say that the 2013- current RAV4’s are a different length and width. If you push the front seat all the way forward, you still might be able to lay the bass diagonally. But, no one will be able to sit in the front passenger seat. Another thing, though that
would probably work is to put a travel type pillow or small couch pillow or two under the scroll.

As far as I know, the gas RAV4’s don’t have
CVT’s as stated. I know mine doesn’t.
The 2026’s are all hybrid’s. There is a new line of Toyota EV’s.

My car had fantastic initial build quality, and I’ve had no issues with it for 14 years.

fu22ba55 said:

I'm just more curious about how others accept the poor tension on the Drop D, and the majority of the answers are just "deal with it.".

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Not everyone accepts that the tension is "poor," in which case there's nothing that needs accepting. To many, the tension change either isn't that noticeable or else doesn't make a big enough difference to care about. I used that Hipshot device for a couple of years, until I went to 6-string, and the tension change never bothered me as much as the fact that you seemingly were never *quite* in tune when you used it (though a quick little tug on the string usually sorted things out well enough).

Or, to paraphrase @thrashingbass and @JimmyM, it's not a compromise if you were never compromised.

I've long since resisted running a preamp pedal (in this case the AO Ultra) into a head preamp (Orange Terror Bass), it always just felt like I'd have so many EQ options clashing and struggle to get a good tone. AOU always went directly to power amp, Orange amp would only be driven by regular distortion pedals.

Of course, it turns out that's nonsense. Haven't tried it at gig volume yet, only at home, but plugged the AOU into the Terror Bass regular input, set the EQ pretty flat - some bass boost and treble roll off on the amp, turned down the bass shelf and raised some mids of various frequencies on the pedal - and it almost immediately sounded great. Really easy to fine-tune with the 6-band on the Darkglass, lower gain on both than I'd usually run, some clean blended in. Exactly what I want from my sound.

I've been playing for a good amount over two decades now, and I'm still semi-regularly having to learn to listen with my ears, not with my eyes or my preconceptions.

trothwell said:

I came across this post from a while back:

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/wh...ing-stainless-preferred.1671402/post-29067014

describing using the LaBella RX, in particular a light 6-sstring set with an especially thin B string that supposedly sounded very good. Sounds intriguing! I ordered a set.

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I really loved the old hard rocking steels they made and these are similar. The clarity described is definitely a trademark. I don’t know how they do it but I always get clarity, depth and great body to my tone.

michael_t said:

How's the volume in active? I ask because this particular model is designed to have the same output between active and passive.

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I finally got a chance to look. No, active is louder.

I learned the hard way.
I spent a lot of money on basses that sound different and offer different things. 4 strings, 5 strings, 6 strings, fretless and fretted. Different pick ups, different woods, different necks.

Moving between all of these was work. So after analysis of what I used the most I narrowed it down to 2 - the same exact quality bass, one fretted and one fretless. I have found I play fretless the most but like the ease of chord work with frets. And I found that maybe I didn't use the B or C on every song, but I did use them enough to warrant them being there. I also realized that I played better and was more comforable with wide necks.
So.... problem solved. EQ, preamp and playing techniques solve any tonal variance I might want from gig to gig.

ogrossman said:

Are your basses active?

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I play with a passive Squier VM Jazz 5 (Fender designed pickups). Maybe it distorts the input with the gain at full, but that's a sound I like (which is very far from a distorted sound IMHO).

Long ago, when I started playing, I subscribed to music magazines. I remember advertisements for Pedulla, Kubicki, Linc Luthier, Spector, Alembic and Warwick that looked so cool.

Back then, a postcard was inserted in the magazine. You would check or circle selections to receive brochures from different companies. I think one of the first brochures I received and really wanted one was FBass. I didn't have money back then but in my older years I've been able to get 2 FBasses: BN6 and VF6-PJ Fretless.

@JC BASS 91 referenced Carvin. Their brochures always looked great and the prices were more down to Earth. My father ordered a speaker to fix one of his guitar amps. One of my friends bought a full stack Carvin Guitar amp.

lurk said:

I heard an amazing trio concert years ago with John Betch on drums and a really unique bassist named Johnny Dyani. Can anyone point me to a recording of this band?

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I am sure that must have been a special performance! I don't think that there is an official recording of that trio. There are two pretty amazing duo records by Ibrahim and Dyani ("Echoes from Africa" and "Good News from Africa", both on the Enja label). There is also video on youtube:
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I was lucky to get a copy of "African Marketplace" early in my jazz listening explorations. His music is very special and something i have returned to regularly for more than 30 years now.

Standalone said:

Ha, yes I am super sensitive to phasing and small delay artifacts.

But these drift issues exist in digital recordings, and are part of the reason — as I understand it — for linking studio devices with a word clock via coaxial cables.

The drift challenges that stand out in memory happened with simultaneous recordings from two of the same model Zoom recorder!

From my friend:

“Yeah I can upscale it in DaVinci Resolve which is what I use to edit.”

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Nice, thanks for following up to get an answer about the 4K thing.

I've found that no two digital recorders will record at the *exact* same speed. What I usually do when replacing audio with the soundboard recording is put both the throwaway audio and the new audio together as separate audio tracks in a DAW, and then find a loud noise at the beginning and end, and mark them. Then align both the the starting mark. Then look at the ending mark and see how different they are. The difference in length between those 2 noises can be compared, and a percentage difference can be computed, which can then be applied to the new audio file to micro-stretch or micro-condense it by that tiny percentage.

I haven't done much mixing of two separate audio sources together though (like audience + sbd). I'm sure that's a whole other ball game.

ardgedee said:

There's crackle finish, where you lay down a color (or other coating) and then overspray a contrasting color that breaks and shrinks in reaction to how it adheres to the under-layer, or through heat or chemicals. My grandfather had a mechanical typewriter with a crackle finish, that was from about a hundred years ago and as an industrial finishing technique crackle is older than that. Sometimes you might see it called Craquelure though that's mostly in fine art.

Kiesel offers several kinds of crackle finishes as options. These days for guitar finishes I think it's mostly associated with 80s-style hair metal.

A skilled finisher can control the pattern of crackle to some extent, though I don't think you could ask to have your band's name written in crackle.
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Don't know if this is what OP has in mind. Hopefully they can come back with some photos if this isn't what they're thinking of.

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Yes, it's referred to as craqueleur - before its use for '80s-style hair metal, Danelectro used it on their sitar-style guitar and other of their guitars from the '60s. The technique began centuries ago as a Decorative Arts "aged finsh" look for furniture and picture frames. It's commonly used today for craft. There are a few ways to achieve it, and depending on approach can offer large 'cracks' (like the '80s guitar example) or small cracks like on this Dano sitar.


Dano 6-string...

...and a Dano 12-string with larger 'cracks' on the hs face - managing the size has to do with the amount of top-coat applied & curing time.

This '60s Dano Hawk is an example where once the craqueleur texture was achieved, it was sprayed red -