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Aria Sinsonido Portable Bass

#122
Bizarre:

An Aria dealer in NY told me today in e-mail that Aria raised the price of the Sinsonidos - +$100!

I find that bizarre. I guess the word got to Aria that we're enjoying this bass too much. :)

So, if you jumped into the Sinsonido world recently - congratulations. If it was something you planned to do but didn't get to yet - my condolences.
 
#123
I did my first gig on the new fretted.(Fretless coming soon !)
My thoughts...there are some great qualities and some problems.
It has some great tones in the middle of the neck.Nice and round and woody.It does have a cool thumb sound.Can't beat the weight.
People look and wonder what the heck it is.
As some of you have said, the balance in volume between strings is challenging. It's tough to go from playing on the A & D string and having a fat sound,dropping to the E and getting smaller. The difference in the amount of attack needed to balance it out is quite large. Another interesting phenom I found, when playing 5ths in the mid to upper regis,
a few cool sub harmonics occur.Almost sounds like a boss oct pedal is on.
So, has anyone tried using a mixed set of strings? I'm thinking that may be one way to balance it out. A loud string on the E, maybe G and duller on the A & D.
All considered, it wants to be played a certain way and if you oblige, it's a great sounding bass.
 
#124
Interesting comments.

Yes, I can't call it perfect string to string volume, although I view it as clearly inside the range of acceptable.

But, are you playing with any effects?
Now that I'm playing it with some compression, it's essentially gone for me.

Yeah, I get a Ton of comments on the look of the bass - not just from non-players, but bass players, too. Last gig - last week - I had 5 different people make remarks about the look or the sound. Some musician friends that night gave me some feedback that the tone was Uber.
 
#125
Here's something I found: When I replaced my strings, I noticed the same problem. More specifically, the A was very soft. This wasn't the case with the old strings. I found that the new A string was slightly higher in gauge and that it didn't fit into the slot nicely at the bridge. What this does is that it doesn't make as good contact to the pickup tube that is just in front of the bridge. After wedging the string down, all the strings then sound pretty even in volume. Maybe this is the case?
 
#126
S1.JPG

How about photos showing how portable the Sinsonido is? This is Greece, between Ithaca and Cephalonia
 
#129
Hi Frank! How's it going? I ordered some BNT strings at my local shop here in the UK: no use. Tried the big music shops in London: nothing. 2 months after starting looking I've got to go to the importer. Makes me feel really suburban!

Get that motorbike picture. Now down in Greece you'd be sitting on the back, sidesaddle, playing the Sinsonido.
 
#131
pocket_groover said:
That's a great shot! Reminds me of the old 1960's Fender ads where they show a surfer, a skydiver and other situations playing a Strat or Jaguar while in action.... The slogan was "You won't part with yours either"
Click to expand...

Thanks for the comment about the shot, but, heck, it's a while time since anyone referred to my bod in the same sentence as a surfer. In that respect I parted with mine a while ago.
 
#133
I am now depending exclusively on this bass for gigging.
I actually don't own any other basses.

I had a fretted and a fretless. I sold the fretless to buy a fretted as a backup to fretted #1. [Don't ask - I'm just a whole lot more comfortable in life doing it this way.]

So, fretted #2 came with two issues:
- The G string has funky overtones.
- It has some kind of grounding problem - it's much noisier than #1.

Before I draw too many conclusions on the funky G, I'm just going to swap the string out, and see if it's just a bum string.

As far as the grounding problem, I need help. Anyone have the electronics apart enough to be able to tell me where I can safely look for ground wires? Any other advice?
 
#134
SBassman4x said:
- The G string has funky overtones.
- It has some kind of grounding problem - it's much noisier than #1.
Click to expand...

As far as the funky overtones go, could you see if the G string is properly seated in the groove at the bridge? If not, it might be rattling on the pickup tube just in front of the bridge (see my post above).

I've had the electronics out. As far as I can tell, there are two separate preamps hooked up to two pickups in the pickup tube. There are two shielded wires going from the pickups to the preamp. If the ground broke on either one, it might hum. If the ground is broken at the preamp it's a simple matter of soldering it back. If at the pickup end, I'm not sure if you can take the pickup tube apart. It's probably a warranty issue then. Another thing is the ground to the 1/4" jack from the preamp. You might check both ends of this as well. Is the hum from both channels (plug in a stereo headphone and see)?

BTW, Aria sent me a whole new preamp board complete with 1/4" jack free of charge. All I had to do was solder the pickup wires to it and install it in the bass (it's held in place by the pot shafts). They have great service!
 
#135
Ok, here's an update:

- G string - it's better after the re-string. Not perfect, but now inside my comfort zone.

- Hum/ground prob - I opened up the cavity, and inspected carefully. Couldn't find anything not connected. However, I had Both basses open, and clearly, my *good* bass shows far cleaner soldering than the *bad* bass. So, I'm going to attempt to get a whole other pre-amp kit out of them, like you achieve.

How did you do that? I don't see a support e-mail address at their website. Did you just call them using the phone number at the website? I'm bad with things like sending in warranty cards. Did you? Will they just help me regardless?
Thanks.
 
#136
SBassman4x said:
Ok, here's an update:

How did you do that? I don't see a support e-mail address at their website. Did you just call them using the phone number at the website? I'm bad with things like sending in warranty cards. Did you? Will they just help me regardless?
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Frank, I just called them up using the phone number at the web site. I didn't send my warranty card in either and they said no proof was necessary. Apparently, Aria has a lifetime warranty (strangely enough, it doesn't cover pots, which was the probem with mine). They were very trusting and generous.

Couple of points:

1) Can you return the bass to the retailer for another one?
2) If you can't get anywhere with a new preamp board, I still have my old one with a bad pot. You could send me yours and I'll swap the pot from the new one into my old one and send it back to you. I don't mind keeping your "bad" preamp...I could probably fix it (I'm an electronics design engineer).
 
#137
pocket_groover said:
Frank, I just called them up using the phone number at the web site. I didn't send my warranty card in either and they said no proof was necessary. Apparently, Aria has a lifetime warranty (strangely enough, it doesn't cover pots, which was the probem with mine). They were very trusting and generous.

Couple of points:

1) Can you return the bass to the retailer for another one?
2) If you can't get anywhere with a new preamp board, I still have my old one with a bad pot. You could send me yours and I'll swap the pot from the new one into my old one and send it back to you. I don't mind keeping your "bad" preamp...I could probably fix it (I'm an electronics design engineer).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

As for a return, it's actually getting harder and harder to find these babies. Music123 went out of stock and never restocked, and there are only a couple of people left on the planet claiming to deal them. The body and neck is sound, so I'm going to try to get it fixed.

I'll call them then and see if they also offer to send me a preamp. I'll let you know how it goes, and thanks for the offer and all the great help. Much appreciated.
 

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