Modern Scroll Bass for Salsa?

[Rick Cole]

So let me begin my paying homage to Ampeg. The purists tend to favor the OG baby basses as THE instrument for authentic Salsa. My questions about scroll basses are a bit related. Bobby Valentin played a fretted Ampeg scroll bass. I am not actually crazy about the sound of his bass, but I did see a recent snippet of him playing a Ray Ramirez scroll bass. I checked out the Ray Ramirez website and saw that his scroll is available with the Ampeg style diaphragm pickup. Does anybody know how this sounds? I saw also on the M O G Facebook page a video of somebody playing a M O G scroll in a Salsa band that sounded good. From what I could gather from the photos, the M O G scroll has a P-J pickup configuration, unless there is an option that wasn't pictured. Can anyone provide some more info about the M O G scroll? I'll take the risk of being flamed and say that if I could get a good sound out of a scroll, I'd be pretty happy to have a very portable 34" scale option, maybe even with 5 strings. I am not really considering Eastwood scrolls, but should I?

I'll briefly mention that I am currently playing an Azola gypsy and get a pretty good sound out of it without any tweaks or electronic wizardry. I have added a German upright bass IR and some compression to good effect, but certainly not a necessity.

Thanks in advance to anybody who cares to educate me about this.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Here's 381 pages of education about Ampeg-type Scroll Basses, if you want to do some reading......

love of Ampeg and other Scroll Basses, Part 2

If you want to know specifically about modern Ampeg-style Scroll Basses that have a Baby Bass-like percussive pickup, search that thread about my Series IV model, and about my upcoming Series V model.

There's also plenty of discussion about M.O.G, Ramirez, and Eastwood basses.

And, of course, most of the thread is about the original Ampegs from the '60's.