I'm wrapping up the holiday show at Oak Ridge Playhouse tomorrow afternoon. The gear of choice has been the fretted Zenith, Genz 9.2 and one Acme B-1.
A cool thing happened today. I had put a set pf D'Addario Chromes flatwounds on this bass when I bought it several years ago. Looking for something better, I tried a set of Thomastik Acousticore strings on the Zenith for the Friday night show. I did not like them on this bass. I play fairly hard-striking fingerstyle, and the TI's rolled a bit much. I loosened the truss rod quite a bit due to the low tension of the TI's. Today, I put the D'Addario Chromes flats back on, but decided to try it at home first to see if I needed to readjust the truss rod. Voila! No!
As it turned out, I had not loosened the truss rod enough when I originally put the Chromes on. The bass spoke much more clearly, with no fretting out. It sounded terrific on the gig tonight. Notes on the D string up to the 7th fret that had been fretting out a bit were strong. The fretting action was not much more than before.
The combination of the bass, Chromes, amp and cab was terrific tonight. It was one of those "I've found my voice" moments that all us bassists aspire to have.
It was also one of those "I didn't know what I was doing with this bass" moments as well. I've had the Chromes on this basses for a long time and just thought the bass was quirky. I should have continued to work with the strings and the truss rod adjustment more than I did!
As a word of explanation, the Zenith has a non-adjustable bridge saddle, so you can't raise the string height at the bridge- it has to be done via truss rod adjustment.
getting desperate for a fill in.
