I totally forgot about the Barbera, Marty! Never tried one...seems very complicated to get one. I could never trust my own bridge tracing. Can't draw a straight line with a ruler 
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May your Barbera last for many years to come. If the incidental threads about the Barbera here on TB are to be belived, you're pickup has lived a charmed life and you are blessed with good fortune indeed. I wrote a letter to Barbera and recieved their brochure that included a little 7" plastic demo record. These recorded examples just weren't my " cup of tea" so to speak. Just my take though, George Mraz sounded fantastic using a 4 element Wilson, through a GK 200MB Combo.
Ric
Fascinating, do you do anything special to protect the embedded pickup elements, when taking the case on and off
your bass?
Ric
Not surprising that it wouldn't be your cup of tea, Ric. After all, it falls squarely into the class of bridge-mounted pickups that we so often point out don't transduce the temporal attack/decay of the instrument very well. Being so close to the strings, I'd imagine that the Barbera does that, if anything, less well than bridge-wing pickups. On the other hand, resistance to feedback should be phenomenal.
All true, around the time the Barbera was introduced the Schertler Stat B's were avaliable and Dyn B's were just starting to be avaliable. I was using a Underwood with a Crown GLM 2 mini condenser feed into a Fishman Bass Blender. At that time, Barbera required you to send a bridge out to him, or have him send you a new unfitted bridge with the transducer installed. Either way, it was way to expensive for me at the time. There have also been individuals here on TB that have had a few unresolved repair issues with Barbera's going out and the manufacturer not being receptive to reparing the dammaged units. Regardless, it's not the sound I'm after anyway.
Ric
Well, for what it's worth. Somebody always reports here that they've never had a problem with the Barbera. But my experience face to face with users owners has been that they've all experienced failure at somepoint. So..go ahead a believe what you read. 
It is an expensive pickup, a PITA to get. All this puts the Barbera at the bottom of my list.. especially because of all the bridge mounted pickups I've tried, it was the most active electric bass sounding. Fidelity is good, if you want your acoustic bass to sound like an Alembic from that '70's fusion craze. Think Bunny Brunel. My take. Super fast transient response. Too fast.
It is an expensive pickup, a PITA to get. All this puts the Barbera at the bottom of my list.. especially because of all the bridge mounted pickups I've tried, it was the most active electric bass sounding. Fidelity is good, if you want your acoustic bass to sound like an Alembic from that '70's fusion craze. Think Bunny Brunel. My take. Super fast transient response. Too fast.
This makes perfect sense, based on what I mentioned in post #47. Thanks for adding your personal experience.
I have a Barbera on my Merchant Vertical Bass (EUB) and boy, yes.. it is a great salsa sound but not too acoustic. However, I do find one can work more wonders with such a strong signal and no feedback - lots you can slap on that to mould it different ways. Although.. there is a drawback.. barbera uses piezzo elements embedded in the bridge under the strings, 2 per string. The issue here is that piezzos have wires soldered to them.. or more exactly.. not to them as piezzos are ceramic and you cannot solder a wire to ceramic. So the wire contacts are soldered to a blob of solder deposited on some sort of silver/conductive dust glue which is stuck to the piezzo. Well,... the glue tends to dry out eventually and detach so you start getting intermittent drop in the signal as the solder contacts are jingling around in the tight space where they are embedded while you play.
I currently have a D string with only one piezzo active which makes it half the volume of all the other strings - so .. unusable piackup.
Now comes the interesting part..
1. I send an email to Barbera explaining my predicament and asking if he would be willing to sell me a couple of piezzo elements. I know what I am doing and can replace the failed one myself.... - no answer for three weeks.. eventually never answered me
2. Three weeks into the wait, I give up and call his shop.. get the guy. I explain the situation and while he is trying to convince me that I should send him the whole bridge for repair ($500 USD + shipping (and I am in western Canada which means customs too)), I am trying to convince him I can repair it if only given the piezzo with same specs (cuz I can't tell where he gets em or what specs they actually are). He reluctantly agrees and says he'll email me the paypal info and how much to send him. Click.
3. No email for 2 weeks. I call again.. can't reach him... leave a msg... no callback. Then .. check this, I call from my number.. goes to vm... I call from my wife's number - he picks up.
He sounds really annoyed (cuz its obvious I tricked him) and tells me that hes super busy but will get around to it soon.... never heard from him again. Never called him back.. for about a year now, as I was made to feel like he made me into some sort of a badgering customer (my sense of decency and pride got wounded here as you can tell).
Is that just HORRIBLE customer service or what? Dude, if I didn't want to sell you the part.. I could have just said,, sorry, not our policy,, need to send in the whole thing for repair. We don't ship out single parts. - that would have ended my wait, calling, emailing etc..
Instead, I am made to feel like I dumped his sister or something and am stuck with a half working pickup...
So,, anyone have a malfunctioning barbera they d be into selling me?
thanks.
I currently have a D string with only one piezzo active which makes it half the volume of all the other strings - so .. unusable piackup.
Now comes the interesting part..
1. I send an email to Barbera explaining my predicament and asking if he would be willing to sell me a couple of piezzo elements. I know what I am doing and can replace the failed one myself.... - no answer for three weeks.. eventually never answered me
2. Three weeks into the wait, I give up and call his shop.. get the guy. I explain the situation and while he is trying to convince me that I should send him the whole bridge for repair ($500 USD + shipping (and I am in western Canada which means customs too)), I am trying to convince him I can repair it if only given the piezzo with same specs (cuz I can't tell where he gets em or what specs they actually are). He reluctantly agrees and says he'll email me the paypal info and how much to send him. Click.
3. No email for 2 weeks. I call again.. can't reach him... leave a msg... no callback. Then .. check this, I call from my number.. goes to vm... I call from my wife's number - he picks up.
He sounds really annoyed (cuz its obvious I tricked him) and tells me that hes super busy but will get around to it soon.... never heard from him again. Never called him back.. for about a year now, as I was made to feel like he made me into some sort of a badgering customer (my sense of decency and pride got wounded here as you can tell).
Is that just HORRIBLE customer service or what? Dude, if I didn't want to sell you the part.. I could have just said,, sorry, not our policy,, need to send in the whole thing for repair. We don't ship out single parts. - that would have ended my wait, calling, emailing etc..
Instead, I am made to feel like I dumped his sister or something and am stuck with a half working pickup...
So,, anyone have a malfunctioning barbera they d be into selling me?
thanks.
The Rev Solo II I have on my POS Palatino upright makes it sound a whole lot better than that bass has any right to. When/if I'm able to get my motorcycle sold and I get the Upton Bohemian Hybrid I'm hankering for I plan on transferring it over. Then I'll look into getting a Troll (if for no other reasons than 1. they supposedly sound great, and 2. my brother helped build the Fremont Troll here in Seattle and he gave me my first bass).
I'm a bit late getting back here, but I guess pickups are horses for courses. My Barbera sounds anything but "electric" on my bass (1989 German carved), so I suppose each bass is gonna be different. However, I've had a real good run with it, but the comments on the customer service and other problems have me concerned, so I think I'll be taking my RSII along to all gigs as a backup.
Interesting, I have a POS (piece of sh%*^) Palatino upright electric bass and a so much better Eminence Portable upright bass..
which brought me to the next thought..
Does anyone know or have tried, or do you think the REV II SOLO would sound good with the Eminence basses?
Here is a recording right now recorded with a WalterWoods amp and Epifani Speaker with Full Circle on the Eminence.. would the Rev II Solo sound better? Or how do you think it would compare?
Some People think a Rev Solo II is better than a Full Circle but more think the other way.
With the bridge wing pickups the pressure on the sensor matters a lot. Too much and it sounds compressed. Also two elements (not the Rev Solo II) can sound worse than one. Very few use it on the treble side, most on the bass side.
At the end you have to try, every bass is different.
On my bass with a Shadow SH-950 (two elements) with the soundpost close to the bridge I needed two elements to catch all five strings evenly well (on a 4/4 acoustic upright) and got a compressed sound putting the elements in with a rather large pressure on them. Later the soundpost was moved, I removed hardly any wood from the bridge to reduce the pressure so that the element just kept in place and don't fall out by their own weight or by vibration and the found was a lot more open, it worked with the bass side element only even better then.
I'm sure the one element only was a result of the moved soundpost, but I'm also rather sure the better sound (even with both elements) was due to the reduced pressure on the piezos. I haven't tried it with the moved soundpost but unchanged bridge, I think, since I used a different pickup regularly at that time. But if I had, that might have been the motivation to reduce the pressure a bit since the amplified sound hasn't been much different than before with the SH-950.
With the bridge wing pickups the pressure on the sensor matters a lot. Too much and it sounds compressed. Also two elements (not the Rev Solo II) can sound worse than one. Very few use it on the treble side, most on the bass side.
At the end you have to try, every bass is different.
On my bass with a Shadow SH-950 (two elements) with the soundpost close to the bridge I needed two elements to catch all five strings evenly well (on a 4/4 acoustic upright) and got a compressed sound putting the elements in with a rather large pressure on them. Later the soundpost was moved, I removed hardly any wood from the bridge to reduce the pressure so that the element just kept in place and don't fall out by their own weight or by vibration and the found was a lot more open, it worked with the bass side element only even better then.
I'm sure the one element only was a result of the moved soundpost, but I'm also rather sure the better sound (even with both elements) was due to the reduced pressure on the piezos. I haven't tried it with the moved soundpost but unchanged bridge, I think, since I used a different pickup regularly at that time. But if I had, that might have been the motivation to reduce the pressure a bit since the amplified sound hasn't been much different than before with the SH-950.
I have the shadow 2 element! .. I can put that on my bass tomorrow and post up a sound file. We can hear that too if anybody is interested..
to compare to Rev II Solo or etc..
to compare to Rev II Solo or etc..
An important question is how many of those people have actually used both on the same bass. I think the number is quite small. While stated preferences between the two based on live performances and sound-clips do have some merit, I don't place much stock in them. When differences are dramatic, judgments can be reasonably made with sources of variance uncontrolled. I don't think that's the case when comparing those two pickups.
I mostly wanted to say that it probably depends more on the setup for the pickup than the pickup itself. And the experience I made with the Shadow bridge wing pickup showed that.
Rumor is rumor and should be taken as such. There might be some truth in it or the reason for it might not be the pickup itself but assumption of people.
So pulling out money for one more pickup to test is not always the wisest decision if they are just put in in some way. Fine tuning might change things dramatically.
BTW, similar things are valid for the selection of strings: don't decide if you like a string just after putting the new set on the bass. The strings change over some days to weeks and the bass top needs to adjust to the new pressure too.
Rumor is rumor and should be taken as such. There might be some truth in it or the reason for it might not be the pickup itself but assumption of people.
So pulling out money for one more pickup to test is not always the wisest decision if they are just put in in some way. Fine tuning might change things dramatically.
BTW, similar things are valid for the selection of strings: don't decide if you like a string just after putting the new set on the bass. The strings change over some days to weeks and the bass top needs to adjust to the new pressure too.
Well the Fishman and Rev II Solo pickups are definitely installed in different positions..
but here is the difference from the full circle to the Shadow 2 element (the one that looks like 2 underwoods or 2 bass max's - not the under the feet ones..)
Full Circle
but here is the difference from the full circle to the Shadow 2 element (the one that looks like 2 underwoods or 2 bass max's - not the under the feet ones..)
Full Circle
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