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Club Bordwell Part 4

#2,801
Mine was in the latest round… massive Turner Gordo Duo pickup. Walnut top and maple fingerboard bound with walnut.

Electronics are an Underhill single filter with a bass eq and an added mid eq. 4 way pick up rotary switch. Neck bridge parallel serious. It's almost too many options. Next bass is going to have a volume knob, a the rotary selector, same pickup. It's Massive
 

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#2,802
RedGrange said:
Mine was in the latest round… massive Turner Gordo Duo pickup. Walnut top and maple fingerboard bound with walnut.

Electronics are an Underhill single filter with a bass eq and an added mid eq. 4 way pick up rotary switch. Neck bridge parallel serious. It's almost too many options. Next bass is going to have a volume knob, a the rotary selector, same pickup. It's Massive
Click to expand...
Sweet! There can't be too many of us with white pickups in a CB.
 
#2,803
RedGrange said:
Mine was in the latest round… massive Turner Gordo Duo pickup. Walnut top and maple fingerboard bound with walnut.

Electronics are an Underhill single filter with a bass eq and an added mid eq. 4 way pick up rotary switch. Neck bridge parallel serious. It's almost too many options. Next bass is going to have a volume knob, a the rotary selector, same pickup. It's Massive
Click to expand...
Can you post some sound samples? I'd love to hear that pickup.
 
#2,804
I posted a NBD thread about mine that arrived yesterday.

To save you the click, here it is, again...

This showed up yesterday, from Cilff Bordwell, my third instrument from him. He designed me a fretless 6 a few yeas ago that just had the perfect tone, so I needed a 5 with something similar. My other fretless 5 is a 2025 Stingray Special 5HH... Great bass, but still not quite my holy grail tone. Cliff does amazing work and is so great to deal with.

Spanish Cedar body, Katalox fingerboard with Luminlay, heavily spalted maple top, 3 piece maple neck, Nordstrand Big Blademan pickups with Nordy 4 band pre. It sounds a tad different than my 6 but still in the ballpark of the tone I was chasing. I had him do the neck like my Stingrays, so when I picked it up, it felt like I already knew it.

Less than 9 pounds, too.

Additional thoughts... I'd asked Cliff about why he put the pickups where he did... "Wal spacing". Which, given my main fretted 5 is a Wal, was a nice surprise. What's interesting is since I wanted him to try to get as close in tone to that other fretless 6, it ended up quite different. The 6 has the Big Blademan pickups as well... but soapbars. They might as well be a different pickup. These are heavier, and the blades are spaced much further apart than on the soapbars. I'm wondering if the magnets in these are just bigger. On the 6, we went with the JC-3P, designed to use with the Big Blademan, but I found that I wasn't using the special mid switch or the passive mode. The JC is wired slightly different than the regular 3band pre, something different with where something's soldered and I think a different frequency on one of the pots. So I just had Cliff do that one thing to the pre when he wired it.

It sounds different, but I can't quite put my finger on how, yet. Definitely a lot of mwah and aggressive growl when needed. I can definitely feel that the katalox is harder than the ebony. I think it sounds just as good as the other one, but with subtle differences I'm sure I'll figure out as I play it more. This will be my gigging bass for the future, gonna put the Stingray away for a bit.

The spalting on this is INSANE. It's hypnotic, close up.

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#2,805
lordradish said:
I posted a NBD thread about mine that arrived yesterday.

To save you the click, here it is, again...

This showed up yesterday, from Cilff Bordwell, my third instrument from him. He designed me a fretless 6 a few yeas ago that just had the perfect tone, so I needed a 5 with something similar. My other fretless 5 is a 2025 Stingray Special 5HH... Great bass, but still not quite my holy grail tone. Cliff does amazing work and is so great to deal with.

Spanish Cedar body, Katalox fingerboard with Luminlay, heavily spalted maple top, 3 piece maple neck, Nordstrand Big Blademan pickups with Nordy 4 band pre. It sounds a tad different than my 6 but still in the ballpark of the tone I was chasing. I had him do the neck like my Stingrays, so when I picked it up, it felt like I already knew it.

Less than 9 pounds, too.

Additional thoughts... I'd asked Cliff about why he put the pickups where he did... "Wal spacing". Which, given my main fretted 5 is a Wal, was a nice surprise. What's interesting is since I wanted him to try to get as close in tone to that other fretless 6, it ended up quite different. The 6 has the Big Blademan pickups as well... but soapbars. They might as well be a different pickup. These are heavier, and the blades are spaced much further apart than on the soapbars. I'm wondering if the magnets in these are just bigger. On the 6, we went with the JC-3P, designed to use with the Big Blademan, but I found that I wasn't using the special mid switch or the passive mode. The JC is wired slightly different than the regular 3band pre, something different with where something's soldered and I think a different frequency on one of the pots. So I just had Cliff do that one thing to the pre when he wired it.

It sounds different, but I can't quite put my finger on how, yet. Definitely a lot of mwah and aggressive growl when needed. I can definitely feel that the katalox is harder than the ebony. I think it sounds just as good as the other one, but with subtle differences I'm sure I'll figure out as I play it more. This will be my gigging bass for the future, gonna put the Stingray away for a bit.

The spalting on this is INSANE. It's hypnotic, close up.

IMG_7487.jpeg

IMG_7514.jpeg

IMG_7510.jpeg

IMG_7511.jpeg

IMG_7513.jpeg

IMG_7515.jpeg

IMG_7516.jpeg

IMG_7506.jpeg
Click to expand...

Seeing it in the sunlight is something else, congrats!

That fingerboard edge too. Daaaang.
 
#2,806
RedGrange said:
Mine was in the latest round… massive Turner Gordo Duo pickup. Walnut top and maple fingerboard bound with walnut.

Electronics are an Underhill single filter with a bass eq and an added mid eq. 4 way pick up rotary switch. Neck bridge parallel serious. It's almost too many options. Next bass is going to have a volume knob, a the rotary selector, same pickup. It's Massive
Click to expand...
Did it arrive yet?
 
#2,807
nonohmic said:
Seeing it in the sunlight is something else, congrats!

That fingerboard edge too. Daaaang.
Click to expand...
I keep getting distracted by how good that edge looks.

What's cool about that board is that when I originally saw the block Cliff took it from, the blond strip was only about a half inch or so. Was a total shock that it had so much blonde. When Cliff saw how close the color was to the maple, he suggested that. I'm glad he did.
 
#2,814
lordradish said:
Is there a big volume disparity? The Big blade is huge. These are actually bigger than my Wal pickups.
Click to expand...
Not speaking from experience on this exact set up, but I have East preamps in all my basses, and they have internal gain controls for each pickup, which allows you to compensate for pickup level disparity, be it from resistance strength, pickup height etcs. It's really handy, and I expect Nordstrand preamps have something similar going on.
 
#2,815
eude said:
Not speaking from experience on this exact set up, but I have East preamps in all my basses, and they have internal gain controls for each pickup, which allows you to compensate for pickup level disparity, be it from resistance strength, pickup height etcs. It's really handy, and I expect Nordstrand preamps have something similar going on.
Click to expand...
I know they have something in the JC-3P that you can adjust the volume between parallel and serial mode, not sure about the individual pickups.

I have so many options with my wiring. I was playing around with it last night, I think the massive Big Blade in the neck position is a bit boomy. I find adding in the bridge pickup as a single coil tempers that nicely. Still have a lot of things to play around with. It also sounds a bit tamer in parallel, obv.
 
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#2,816
lordradish said:
Is there a big volume disparity? The Big blade is huge. These are actually bigger than my Wal pickups.
Click to expand...
I don't believe so.

The pup spacing on this CB is pretty close (relatively speaking, based off eyeball). My bass is wired with 4-band EQ, single volume, and blend. Most of the time, I set a general EQ, and if I need to adjust live, I use the blend knob. On most basses, I usually bias it toward the bridge, as I like a little more definition. I'll start to push it towards the neck to warm up the tone.
 
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