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Fodera Club Part III

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#782
peterpalmieri said:
What exactly is this removable fingerboard feature, I don't get it.
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The section of fingerboard with the top four frets on it is removable. It's held on magnetically and is easily removed in a matter of a couple seconds. It dractically improves the slap tone by 1) allowing you to slap in the same position you would on a 20 fret bass, and 2) not impeding the string's movement at that point. Makes a big difference, particularly with the thumb sound on the lower strings. When it comes out, it raises up and frets out the strings. You can't easily mute them with your left hand, since they're fretted out at the 24th fret, so a left-hand-actuated mute switch was in order. :bassist:
 
#783
Couldn't you just turn the volume down or hit the regular mute switch that is typically on a fodera? I don't see why you'd need to take the thing off in the middle of a song and even if you did it seems it'd be just as fast to hit the mute switch than the contraption on the neck bolt.
 
#784
thepontif said:
My new bass is coming up in a couple months now.
Making good headway now on the moving bridge PU assembly. Initial drawings look really cool. The guy designing it is a physicist with his own design business. He's working on a Mars rover right now. KEWL!
The bridge PU on my model will be able to be moved a total of an inch in .125" increments from 2" from the bridge to 3" from the bridge. So you can get the 70's position, both of the 60's varieties, and a bunch others. In a Mahogony body it should offer real major flexibility. It should ultimately be available in other models too. Possibly as a retrofit.
It'll have the removable fingerboard feature with the addition of a momentary left hand mute switch. A capacitive switch actuated by touching the strings and one of the neck screws simultaneously which will kill the output so when you pull the fingerboard piece out it doesn't make noise when it frets out the strings.

Build starts in late May, early June I believe. I'm psyched!!
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Mike, you really need to turn UP the drip man! Ha! I mean the term "Super Geek" doesn't even do you justice!

But seriously, that movable pickup sounds like a great idea. Hope you have a patent on that?

I've seen your removable finger board before and that has to be the coolest/functional mod I have ever seen. I actually want to do that to my Emperor but I'm afraid to think of how much cash that will cost me right now. One day though... Ahem....

You've seriously peaked my curiosity as to what the reasoning is for the mute switch using the strings and neck plate. How/why did you come up with that approach?

Overall, I'm psyched to see this bass once it's completed! I hope you'll make a video showing off it's features.

You is da man!

All the best and good grooves!

Gerry
 
#786
harrybosch said:
gre107, why would you do that to your emperor? Doesn't your bass only have 21 frets?
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I would do it to add the additional frets. This however would mean I would have to have Vinny and crew shave the horn so I could have access to them. I'm imagining this would take some time to do. And I would only have Fodera do this because I'm guaranteed it will be done right.

There are times that I would like to have the additional frets but I would like the option not having them when slapping etc. The lesser fret amount when slapping provides a more traditional tone or at least in my mind it does?

Peace
 
#787
harrybosch said:
Couldn't you just turn the volume down or hit the regular mute switch that is typically on a fodera? I don't see why you'd need to take the thing off in the middle of a song and even if you did it seems it'd be just as fast to hit the mute switch than the contraption on the neck bolt.
Click to expand...

There's no contraption. Not sure what gave you that idea. You simply touch the strings and one of the neck bolts and it shuts off the bass as long as you're touching them both. It's a solid state, capacitive style analog switch circuit that works passive or active. Easy to do on purpose and from all of our tests virtually impossible to do by accident. And not expensive to impliment/install either. What's the down side?

You could just turn the volume down, but in the heat of a gig, or right between the tune where you have the big solo and the slapper that comes right after it can be a lot to think about. Not for me, necessarily. But for some guys they want something real simple to use. Not all Fodera basses have a mute switch anyway. I don't, for example, because I set mine up as a mid frequency switch which is one of the options on the new preamps.
 
#788
gre107 said:
I would do it to add the additional frets. This however would mean I would have to have Vinny and crew shave the horn so I could have access to them. I'm imagining this would take some time to do. And I would only have Fodera do this because I'm guaranteed it will be done right.

There are times that I would like to have the additional frets but I would like the option not having them when slapping etc. The lesser fret amount when slapping provides a more traditional tone or at least in my mind it does?

Peace
Click to expand...

The current design is for a "removable" fingerboard. Not a fingerboard extension. You'd need to start with a 24 fret neck.
 
#789
gre107 said:
Mike, you really need to turn UP the drip man! Ha! I mean the term "Super Geek" doesn't even do you justice!

But seriously, that movable pickup sounds like a great idea. Hope you have a patent on that?

I've seen your removable finger board before and that has to be the coolest/functional mod I have ever seen. I actually want to do that to my Emperor but I'm afraid to think of how much cash that will cost me right now. One day though... Ahem....

You've seriously peaked my curiosity as to what the reasoning is for the mute switch using the strings and neck plate. How/why did you come up with that approach?

Overall, I'm psyched to see this bass once it's completed! I hope you'll make a video showing off it's features.

You is da man!

All the best and good grooves!

Gerry
Click to expand...

Movable pickup has been done before, so I'm not really inventing anything conceptually. Maybe the WAY we're doing it is unique, but device patents are expensive to get and very hard to enforce. It's probably not worth it. There's a guy out west somewhere named (I think) John Agapetus, with a motorized movable PU with computer controlled positioning and presets and all that jazz called the sweet spot select system. I'd though about doing something similar but the noise the motor throws into the PU is just too much to deal with elegantly. He was relegated to using EMG's because of their low sensitivity and good noise rejection. I don't like EMG's and I don't want to sacrifice sound for features. I want a system that will work with virtually any PU, that's not too expensive to make, that is easy to use, and easy to install, is reliable, and looks elegant and not like some Rube Goldberg contraption. Ours has 8 detents. You can hear an 1/8" of change in a bridge PU, particularly when it's closer to the bridge. Any finer than that is pushing overkill. You just grab the PU and move it where you want it. Easy.

As for the reasoning/inspiration for the mute switch....

I've just wished on many occasions that I had a way to mute the bass with my left hand. We (David Yates and I) initially thought of mounting a little tact switch on the back of the headstock or something like that which would have required running a little wire down the neck and figuring out a reliable way to connect it to the circuit via the neck joint. But after developing the sensitive turn-on circuit we use in the current preamp, which turns on the preamp so easily that if you reach inside the control cavity and touch ground and the ring terminal of the jack with your finger (unless it's really dry) it powers up, we realized we don't need a mechanical switch at all and that we can put it on the body and take the neck joint connection out of the equation completely. That means no extra stuff on the bass, nothing to break, nothing ugly or daunting, and minimal expense in both parts and labor. It's my model, I wanted a left hand mute switch, so I'm developing a left hand mute switch. Simple as that. I get what I want, Fodera gets a cool new feature to offer, customers get another option that won't add much cost if they want it....who loses? It's awesome!
 
#791
The screws that hold the neck on. It's a bolt-on. Sorry if that wasn't clear. It's a bolt-on, 34" bass that's based on an emperor but with a different body shape design to be more "P" bass-like.
 
#793
Mike, have you seen the "Walk on Water" brand that did the sliding pick ups? He is a builder in Colorado.

Link Removed

It is hard to see what he did in the picture, but the EMGs are on a sliding rail. His instruments are pretty funky looking, but I got to play a few in Austin at a trade show. They sound great and he seems to be into trying different things with the electronics.
 
#795
Did'nt the Gibson Ripper or Grabber back in the days had a pickup that you could move?
 

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#797
The Gibson one is the first one I ever heard of. It's really a great idea in general, because moving a PU is the most fundamental way to change the basic sound of a bass. You can't change the other physical characteristics very easily, and shaping tone with EQ doesn't really ever fundamentally change the sound. It's the same sound with different frequency response. But moving PU's or turning balancers or switching coils in and out is making a difference at a very, very basic level.

That Walk on Water thing seems interesting, but it appears he's not using a standard PU. Or did I miss something?
 
#798
Brams77 said:
Did'nt the Gibson Ripper or Grabber back in the days had a pickup that you could move?
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Man, having a picture of one of those Grabbers in a Fodera thread is just not right. One of the worst instruments even made (well, maybe not that much worse than the Ripper).

The movable pickup thing did work on that bass though... you could easily go from suck to REALLY suck

:p
 
#799
KJung said:
Man, having a picture of one of those Grabbers in a Fodera thread is just not right. One of the worst instruments even made (well, maybe not that much worse than the Ripper).

The movable pickup thing did work on that bass though... you could easily go from suck to REALLY suck

:p
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And I thought I was flaming away at walk on water;)
These basses were very popular tho and ofcourse they look cr*p they didnt cost much then as they do now, I guess for the money spent it was decent.
 
#800
thepontif said:
The Gibson one is the first one I ever heard of. It's really a great idea in general, because moving a PU is the most fundamental way to change the basic sound of a bass. You can't change the other physical characteristics very easily, and shaping tone with EQ doesn't really ever fundamentally change the sound. It's the same sound with different frequency response. But moving PU's or turning balancers or switching coils in and out is making a difference at a very, very basic level.

That Walk on Water thing seems interesting, but it appears he's not using a standard PU. Or did I miss something?
Click to expand...


The first link that I posted had EMGs I think. The pics in my second post were his own pick ups that he builds, I believe.
 
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