Recent content by EricJ

I am going to be in Oak Park on Saturday afternoon. I haven't been on this list for a while--is there an easy way to send a personal message?

Is this still for sale?

A fretless can do pretty much everything a fretted can do, plus that way cool mwaaahh sound when you want it. I got a fretless Squier Jazz a couple of years ago. It is a gas to play, with a fingerboard made of bowling ball material, and sounds just great (Bill Lawrence P/Us and Gotoh bridge)...

I bought an EBS pedal compressor that fits in the subtle category and that I really like, but I bought it after I had a big enough amp to need it. Maybe that $200 goes toward an amp? Nothing better for technique than being able to hear yourself without wailing on every note!

If you decide to shell out some cash, try the low-end Heil. Much better for male voices than an SM58, with less boominess and less proximity effect.

Played it the other night. Forgot how much I liked it, and am keeping it!

So, I still have this bass for sale. I might be interested in trading for a mandolin, since that's what the proceeds of the sale will be used for. Maybe even a nice five-string (banjo).

Didn't help in my case to have foil just on the back of the pickguard. Really not hard--no need to desolder pickups or anything. Just some dots of solder to give continuity in the shield. I think you need to have a grounded enclosure around everything, because the wood of the body is...

Are the pickup and control cavities shielded? That's all it took to quiet a Squier J I have down. Copper tape. A Fender P I have had the shielding paint in the cavities and is always dead quiet.

It's easy to do it yourself. I've used the aluminum duct tape and the copper tape, and copper is easier to handle and much easier to solder. The soldering is the good part, of course. I don't know if there's a heaven, but if there is, they have soldering there! Seriously, it's not like...

I have the TC flavor of this box. It works with a bass about as well as with a guitar. Fingerpicked guitars, for example, don't work so well. It needs to be able to figure out what the chord is. So if you stick to the root with bass, you're fine. Strummed chords are really what it's meant...

Bump. Still have it.

The best thing about a Squier is that there is so much stuff available to swap in and out of it. Find a Squier you like the action on, put some nice pickups in and bingo. A little heavier than the equivalent Fender maybe, but otherwise pretty nice for not much money.

These are both passive.

I put some Bill Lawrence humbuckers into a Squier fretless Jazz. Sounded great but still hummed. So I did the soldered copper tape with a star ground, and wow--dead quiet even under these dimmable flourescents in my house that are just broadcasting EMI. Since I had the soldering stuff out...