Recent content by Tim Skaggs

In general, the last adjustment should be the intonation. Adjusting the intonation should not change the action any significant amount, but there are a few bridge designs that can change action while adjusting intonation. One is the notorious Gibson 3-point bridge. The “frame” of the 3 point...

The owner’s manual shows the rated max power of 120 watts is into an 8 ohm impedance and it does not show a 4 ohm impedance output value. There is no mention of anything being 6 ohm in the manual. The 4 ohm load will result in significant additional heat…and failure. I wouldn’t even turn it...

Well, 1. the mixer is a widow maker or 2. just provided a quality ground when you touched something else that was energized. I lean toward 2.

I’ve never had it happen to my bass, but I have had it happen to my violin. Same result on a much smaller scale…

To experience an electric shock as you describe and others have said (more than a static electric discharge), you had to be in the path between a power source capable of providing a significant current and ground. Based on what you said about your bass being connected to the mixer via a DI box...

I play in two rock / blues bands and one bluegrass band. I’ve been doing the rock thing about 4.6 decades. I’ve found the only people who show any interest in what I’m playing are other bassists. About one in every several dozen gigs, another bassist will show some interest in what kind of...

Legendary human & I don’t know anything else to say.

In my opinion, the only reason to use an acoustic bass is to look like everyone is playing an acoustic instrument. It’s not a requirement to get the best tone, but a muted acoustic bass with flats can create a great foundation for bright ringing amplified acoustics. I stopped using bright...

Definitely. I played in a 3 piece for years and covered all kinds of stuff on bass just to keep the feel. The most difficult was playing bass in place of the Fender Rhodes piano walk-down part between the intro and the chord progression of the verse of “Stay With Me” by Faces / Rod Stewart...

Way too many for even a list of 100 best, so I’m not even going to name a song, but my bet is that if there was a way to quantify every aspect of a bass line and find one or a dozen that come out on top, the one or some of the dozen will be by Jamerson.

Welcome. It’s a good resource of bass-centric info and entertainment…

I fully agree a shim is generally an ineffective way to deal with frets, humps, jumps, etc. I’ve seen shims used to make an essentially unplayable bass play on all frets very poorly; not a real solution, but an attempt that some players will use to keep from scrapping a neck. It was the reason...

The very short answer is “yes” you can “forward shim” a neck and it’s not a rare or unusual thing to do when necessary. One of the fundamental purposes of an adjustable height bridge is to compensate for anomalies in the other parts of the bass. -The top of the body (surface where the bridge...

@Wasnex covered it pretty well, especially the tube amp thing. If your 200 watts @ 4 ohms amp is a solid state amp and you connect it to an 8 ohm cabinet, it will cut the output of the amp by roughly half; so it could be as little as 100 watts @ 8 ohms, but more likely to be a little over half...

I can’t cite any specific examples, but I would agree, the pick attack works well with some synth type bass lines. It depends on the synth sound for sure. Some with a slow swell is probably best with fingers…or an E-bow…if they still exist:thumbsup: