• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Fodera Yin-Yang Standard Wait Support Group

#141
nostatic said:
ok, so finally have a few minutes. Brief history - played for going on 25 years (on bass, add another 15 if you include guitar). Right now play in 4 different ensembles (along with a crazy day job - sleep optional), mostly jazz but also a Steely Dan tribute band and my group veers into soul and funk regularly. I am a huge Rob Allen fan, and have a Deep 5 that is a "never sell" instrument. That kills for the jazz stuff and in a pinch can cover other genres but you're not going to be able to do other things (slap, chords) on it. From '00 to earlier this year I only played 5-strings but forced myself to add a 4-banger back into the mix. I also went to BNC this year so I got exposed deeply to Victor, Anthony, and Foderas. That isn't really my sound, but that being said, my sound has changed a lot over the last year. Doing 90 gigs in 9 months with 4 different bands can have that effect :D

At any rate, I have owned a lot of boutiques. And sold most of them. Right now I have a pair of Rob Allens and a Fender AmDlxP (PJ) which actually is a *great* bass. I ordered a pair of Skjolds (5 fretted and 5 fretless) originally timed to be done this month in time for my 50th b-day but those won't be finished until end of the year or early 2012. I've wanted a 4-string "stunt bass" for more chords/soloing in one of my ensembles. The YYS caught my eye for a bunch of reasons but I didn't want to plunk down $5K sight unseen. Been there (well, less money), done that.

A local shop got #18 in a week or two ago. I was going to try and go up over Labor Day weekend to check it out but they were closed. So I put it out of my mind. Last night I had rehearsal out in the valley, had seen the bass on their site, and figured I'd swing by before rehearsal. I had talked myself out of it (didn't want the painted finish, have other candidates for the "need", can live with my Fender, etc). I figured I'd play it and go, "meh, nice but not earth-shattering." Sadly for my budget, that wasn't the case.

First off - very skinny strings. I play 45-105, and my Rob Allens have La Bella nylon tapewounds which are a tad thicker even. I grab the bass and it is light. And comfy. I play the neck and say, "uh oh." The neck feel and finish is sublime. I plugged it in and instantly heard how Victor gets some of his tone (sorry, but I can't add the finger part of the equation). Like I said, that isn't really *my* sound, so I rolled onto the neck pup and got a nice fat P-bass sound but with an edge. I thought it might be a tad thin (strings?) so I rolled on a bit of bass. Yow! That kicks butt.

Messed around more and found it just damn easy to play. My recent experience with my Nordstrand gave me an appreciation for basses that are just flat out easy to play. They inspire you to try new things and court some risk in your playing. The YYS did this in spades. I played a bit more, explored some sounds, and then had to run to rehearsal.

Thought about it over night, and since I turn 50 in 2 weeks, have a father who is 86 and just diagnosed with bladder cancer, a son who just started high school, and just landed new project contracts at work that should keep my team employed for another 2 years or so...well, let's just say life is short. I don't collect, I play. As I said, have done 90 gigs so far in 2011. Very few vices left, so why not play what you want and make music.

Quick snap of #18 now in my office. I always reserve judgement until I get a bass into a gig situation as I've had basses that sound great alone but don't cut it in a band situation. But I have high hopes. Have shows Fri and Sat so it'll get a quick baptism.

yys2.jpg


yys1.jpg
Click to expand...


Oh man, I don't think I can sleep tonight. :hyper:
 
#147
nostatic...thanks so much for the kind words. Cannot wait to hear about the gig! In terms of strings, they come with Vic's set on them (40-55-75-95 Ni), but you can run any set you want on them...obviously you would need a slight truss rod adjustment, but no biggie other than that!

Cheers,

J

nostatic said:
I record every gig (you don't want to know how many files I've got) so I'll have live recordings and will likely do a quick and dirty track tonight. I'm nothing if not thorough :D
Click to expand...
 
#150
cats can adapt...

From playing through my regular rig last night (Streamliner 900 and Berg AE210) I'm finding that as usual I love PJs but this has a different character than my AmDlxP. I need to put a new set of strings on the Fender though as I think the set on the YYS are fairly fresh.

At any rate, the usual three main tone are on tap, and I'm liking neck and mixed pretty much flat with about 50% of the tone rolloff. On the bridge pup I dial in some bass and some mid. And that tone is sick. The devil is always in the details of the live mix though so Friday will tell me a lot as that is a fairly large and live room. Saturday is a small trio thing so that'll be a yin/yang of gigs for reference.

Does anyone know the default frequency of the mid control? It's sounding more towards upper mids (600 or 1000?). I never boost treble and this preamp seems like mostly sheen up there. It isn't harsh like the Fender is. The bass control rocks. The tone rolloff is interesting. I'm guess it will be the progressive string tamer - roll off with a new set of strings then dial back in as they age.
 
#152
#155
ok, first gig report. A very long week at the day job, then 7pm load in, 7:30pm soundcheck (ha!), 8pm downbeat. Soundguy shows up at 5 minutes to 8pm. Right on time! Eventually we get to it. For this gig, which was a somewhat late addition, our regular sax player (who is a monster) couldn't make it so we had a sub who tripled on sax/flute/guitar. I was able to dial in a stage sound that I liked. Unfortunately the sound guy seemed to have some other opinions on what things should sound like. At any rate, these were from an H4n about 5' in front of the stage. And my usual caveat - my slap playing is very much a work in progress as I'm much more comfortable fingerstyle.

As per normal I had a Rob Allen for the more straight ahead, but since the YYS is the new kid on the block I used it for most of the tunes. Like any new instrument, some adjustments were required. Biggest difference actually are the lightweight strings. Easy to over-bend and use too much vibrato. The other challenge is that the bass is just so damn easy to play and fun that it is really easy to fall into the "too many notes" trap. Oh well, as long as the singer is happy, the drummer and I are having fun, and no one goes to jail I'm fine.

Definitely a more aggressive tone than my Fender or the Nordy. That's part of why I got it though. On All Blues I rolled to the bridge pickup and dug in and got exactly what I wanted tone-wise. On God Bless The Child I was on the neck pup and got a good "fat" tone. One thing is that you can push the tone around a fair amount with the onboard eq and a little goes a long way. Use Me is 50/50 pup mix and I'm running DI out of the Streamliner 900 head which has a lot of booty. I actually have the bass down to about 10 o'clock (and am post-eq).

Tomorrow night is a trio hit and is much more open/experimental so I'll get to mess around quite a bit more. Which isn't necessarily a good thing :D

Next Friday we're back with our regular sax and I actually have a double header with a 3 hour gig with my ensemble, then 30 minutes to get to another venue and do a set with Steely Jam. Never boring...

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

obligatory action shots

joint3.jpg


joint1.jpg
 
#156
Okay, just tried one today! #10
And it's the first Fodera I've ever tried..

Strings are a bit loose, but I think that's mainly because of the 40-95 super light strings, and the non angeled headstock.. Loose strings is cool but I would prefer the strings to be a bit tighter than that.. The head looks a bit weird when it's not angeled on that bass.. so I might consider getting myself a Deluxe Monarch for that reason :)

The articulation, and the lows's response of this bass is incredible, it sounds so good with both pickup to play almost everything, single bridge pickup for fingers and harmonics, and definelty that cool modern PB sound with the neck pickup!!
EMG's and the pope preamp does a pretty great job on that bass

The wood seems to be amaizing, the bass is lightweight and very well balanced comparing to my other basses, the neck feels thin and great, the finish as well, there's good space to slap, the distance between the strings and the body is a bit far btw, which didn't really bothered me, even that I slap 90% of the time..

The cool vic's sound is definetly there.. I got to play lots of his records, and felt like I was listening to him while I was doing it :D
I'm definetly getting myself a Fodera Monarch 4 strings with PJ EMG pickups, if I don't have the chance to get my hands on the used one I'm trying to, than I might consider get myself that new standard yin yang! Because I'll never make it to wait 2 years to get one, and afford a new one.. :)

It's definetly the kind of bass which make me want to sell all my other basses for!
Is the price worth it? Honestly, maybe it costs them less than that to build it, but they have a shop and they need to keep running their business! And in my opinion, the talent that comes out from them on their piece of art, makes it every penny worth it!
Fodera, you are fantastic!! Bravo!
 
#158
Thanks - still figuring out how the bass behaves. It does tend to whisper little things into my ear daring me to try things.

Here is the bass doing a more straight ahead thing (excuse the ending):

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

By contrast, here is the Rob Allen on the next tune:

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

The two basses can cop some of the other's vibe, but they are really polar opposites (yin yang even?), which is why I wanted this setup.
 
#159
Thanks so much for the kind words...BTW, the strings being a bit too loose may also be because the Truss Rod need a touch of loosening...I just played my YYS out last night and although there is slightly less string tension than our back-angled peghead instruments, there was still plenty of string tension. Of course I also play 40-100's instead of the Vic set.

nostatic, thanks so much for your posts. I too really enjoyed hearing you play!

Regards,

J

libanass said:
Okay, just tried one today! #10
And it's the first Fodera I've ever tried..

Strings are a bit loose, but I think that's mainly because of the 40-95 super light strings, and the non angeled headstock.. Loose strings is cool but I would prefer the strings to be a bit tighter than that.. The head looks a bit weird when it's not angeled on that bass.. so I might consider getting myself a Deluxe Monarch for that reason :)

The articulation, and the lows's response of this bass is incredible, it sounds so good with both pickup to play almost everything, single bridge pickup for fingers and harmonics, and definelty that cool modern PB sound with the neck pickup!!
EMG's and the pope preamp does a pretty great job on that bass

The wood seems to be amaizing, the bass is lightweight and very well balanced comparing to my other basses, the neck feels thin and great, the finish as well, there's good space to slap, the distance between the strings and the body is a bit far btw, which didn't really bothered me, even that I slap 90% of the time..

The cool vic's sound is definetly there.. I got to play lots of his records, and felt like I was listening to him while I was doing it :D
I'm definetly getting myself a Fodera Monarch 4 strings with PJ EMG pickups, if I don't have the chance to get my hands on the used one I'm trying to, than I might consider get myself that new standard yin yang! Because I'll never make it to wait 2 years to get one, and afford a new one.. :)

It's definetly the kind of bass which make me want to sell all my other basses for!
Is the price worth it? Honestly, maybe it costs them less than that to build it, but they have a shop and they need to keep running their business! And in my opinion, the talent that comes out from them on their piece of art, makes it every penny worth it!
Fodera, you are fantastic!! Bravo!
Click to expand...
 
#160
For those interested in more YYS live clips, a few snippets from Saturday's trio hit. No FOH support as it is a coffeehouse. GB Shuttle 9.0 into a Berg AE210. Forgive the various hiccups - this is a loose experimental jam situation where we don't have set lists and often are playing tunes for the first time (and maybe there is a chart, maybe not). We tend to try and find medleys and odd arrangements out of the chaos. This gig is one that I really was interested in using the YYS for as it makes chords and various noises easier (at least to my hands). I always bring a Rob Allen fretless and a fretted bass to these gigs and generally switch off during the night (8-10pm, we are supposed to quit at 10pm as there is an apartment building above the venue).

Started the night with the YYS and never pulled the RA out of the bag. We also didn't take a break, instead barreling straight through a 2+ hour set until we finally had to pull the plug. Some plenty rough moments (such is playing new tunes with no charts live) but you can get an idea of how the YYS plays in a mix and also plays with pedals. At some points I'm using a Micro Pog, SA Multiwave Bass Distortion and/or Env Filter.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back