Well, it's "new to me" anyway... a few minutes ago I received this 2007 bass, in NEAR MINT condition (plastic still on the rear control cavity).
I have an usual situation in my building here where the passing local powerlines kind of "lean over" from the road and pass right over my 3rd floor balcony. The main issue (I suspect!) is because they are only about 30 feet above my STEEL ROOF that they are inducing all kinds of magnetic currents into the roof, and that is "beaming down" to make all of my conventional magnetic pickups virtually useless. ( Even the EMGs suffer from about 40 dB of VERY LOUD HUM).
Anyway, I've been pondering how I might at least partially mitigate this, and found out that "lightwave" pickups are still on the market, and have been so for more than a decade now. (actually twigged to this when I saw the fretless on sale here in the TB Classifieds!) So I was keen to try them, and wouldnt you know the first time I looked on Reverb I spotted an older used Lightwave bass HERE IN CANADA (actually, way on the other side of the continent, but in Canada nonetheless - thus no CITES to worry about).
Got the bass today, and its DEAD SILENT as far as 60-cycle hum goes... absolutely zero hum in any direction up here on the third floor. So I am extremely pleased about that. I notice its on-board preamp does have quite a bit of HISS... but with the conservative EQ settings I will use with it, that only amounts to maybe 2-3 dB of fairly unobtrusive white noise. A DARN SIGHT BETTER than the 40+ dB of HUM being induced into all of my magnetic pickups (humbuckers, the lot of them!)
Oddly enough, I have had the magnetic field strength professionally measured now, and there is only about 50 milligauss of continuous background radiation here ( roughly ten times the amount I measure in "quiet" environments). But that 50 Milligauss seems to be enough to overpower even the finest humbucking pickups that money can buy.
In civilized places like Europe, they actually set a limit for permissible residential exposure down around 5 milligauss. But here in North America it's a big free-for-all, and there currently (pun intended!) is ZERO legislation about magnetic field levels in Canada ( there are vague 'work-safety' industrial guidelines around 200 milligauss, but that's all)
Hopefully one day I can get the power company to move a short section of their lines off my property and across the street, but the question remains, who is gonna pay for that? ( I'm presuming 'The City', as they were the ones that issued the building permit to put this building so close to the road in the first place...)
And in the meantime I still have a lot of recording work to get done, so I'm very grateful that the Willcox company (formerly Lightwave Systems Inc.) took the initiative to get these optical pickups to market.
This old "hybrid" bass comes with one magnetic pickup, but when I turn the blend control to 100% "Optical" its hum completely disappears. The Lightwave ad copy talks a lot about how the optical pickups result in extra long sustain ( due to no magnetic pull!) - and their current models do not have the magnetic pup ( It was a short-lived option, I believe). So when I ordered this instrument, I had plans to replace the magnetic pup with a non-magnetic dummy filler piece of some kind. But actually, it turns out that this bass has ludicrously good sustain as it is - so I don't think I will bother!
All in all I am very impressed with the build quality of this "low-end export model": fretwork is perfect, inlays are perfect, finish is perfect, all the woods are nice... everything about this instrument is very very good quality...
I have an usual situation in my building here where the passing local powerlines kind of "lean over" from the road and pass right over my 3rd floor balcony. The main issue (I suspect!) is because they are only about 30 feet above my STEEL ROOF that they are inducing all kinds of magnetic currents into the roof, and that is "beaming down" to make all of my conventional magnetic pickups virtually useless. ( Even the EMGs suffer from about 40 dB of VERY LOUD HUM).
Anyway, I've been pondering how I might at least partially mitigate this, and found out that "lightwave" pickups are still on the market, and have been so for more than a decade now. (actually twigged to this when I saw the fretless on sale here in the TB Classifieds!) So I was keen to try them, and wouldnt you know the first time I looked on Reverb I spotted an older used Lightwave bass HERE IN CANADA (actually, way on the other side of the continent, but in Canada nonetheless - thus no CITES to worry about).
Got the bass today, and its DEAD SILENT as far as 60-cycle hum goes... absolutely zero hum in any direction up here on the third floor. So I am extremely pleased about that. I notice its on-board preamp does have quite a bit of HISS... but with the conservative EQ settings I will use with it, that only amounts to maybe 2-3 dB of fairly unobtrusive white noise. A DARN SIGHT BETTER than the 40+ dB of HUM being induced into all of my magnetic pickups (humbuckers, the lot of them!)
Oddly enough, I have had the magnetic field strength professionally measured now, and there is only about 50 milligauss of continuous background radiation here ( roughly ten times the amount I measure in "quiet" environments). But that 50 Milligauss seems to be enough to overpower even the finest humbucking pickups that money can buy.
In civilized places like Europe, they actually set a limit for permissible residential exposure down around 5 milligauss. But here in North America it's a big free-for-all, and there currently (pun intended!) is ZERO legislation about magnetic field levels in Canada ( there are vague 'work-safety' industrial guidelines around 200 milligauss, but that's all)
Hopefully one day I can get the power company to move a short section of their lines off my property and across the street, but the question remains, who is gonna pay for that? ( I'm presuming 'The City', as they were the ones that issued the building permit to put this building so close to the road in the first place...)
And in the meantime I still have a lot of recording work to get done, so I'm very grateful that the Willcox company (formerly Lightwave Systems Inc.) took the initiative to get these optical pickups to market.
This old "hybrid" bass comes with one magnetic pickup, but when I turn the blend control to 100% "Optical" its hum completely disappears. The Lightwave ad copy talks a lot about how the optical pickups result in extra long sustain ( due to no magnetic pull!) - and their current models do not have the magnetic pup ( It was a short-lived option, I believe). So when I ordered this instrument, I had plans to replace the magnetic pup with a non-magnetic dummy filler piece of some kind. But actually, it turns out that this bass has ludicrously good sustain as it is - so I don't think I will bother!
All in all I am very impressed with the build quality of this "low-end export model": fretwork is perfect, inlays are perfect, finish is perfect, all the woods are nice... everything about this instrument is very very good quality...
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