Unfortunately I don't know which sound you're looking for. The EB Cobalt Flats are very bright, even after their set in period. They are almost the complete opposite compared to the TI Jazz Flats which are very soft and mellow. D'Addario Chromes have fat lows, a bit scooped mids and bright highs which gets lost after their set in time. I found La Bellas LT Flats work very good for me on the 35" CR5. They have a nice balanced sound with smooth and round mids, strong but not too fat lows and mellow highs. I also like the lower tension handling and their plain surface.
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NS Design Club
- Thread starter Danny O Danny
- Start date
I had a WAV4 for while, but had to sell it a few years ago. I knew that it wasn’t in the same league as a CR, but I did some work on the fingerboard, replaced the tuners, and played the heck out of it.
Yesterday, I went shopping for another ABG to replace my little Guild. That was a bust, but I ended up finding a used WAV 5C Active.
This one felt and sounded significantly better than my old one, and the B string was a definite plus. It has a few minor handling scratches and was a little more than I was intending to spend, but the shop cut me such good deal that it ended up coming home with me.
It was only after I found an odd-looking wall wart in the gig bag, that I did some more research and realized it’s actually a Czech-made NXTa.
Now I’m starting to understand what all the fuss is about with the Czech range. This thing is way more resonant than a WAV, and the action is low enough to give it a nice, even mwah all the way across the richlite fingerboard.
I’m probably going to raise the action a little to reduce the tonal contrast with the open strings, but still, it’s a dream to play, and even without my FDeck HPF preamp, it sounds great through my EB pedalboard in active mode.
I’m curious about the strings, which have multi-coloured silks at the headstock. Can anyone tell me what brand these are?
Yesterday, I went shopping for another ABG to replace my little Guild. That was a bust, but I ended up finding a used WAV 5C Active.
This one felt and sounded significantly better than my old one, and the B string was a definite plus. It has a few minor handling scratches and was a little more than I was intending to spend, but the shop cut me such good deal that it ended up coming home with me.
It was only after I found an odd-looking wall wart in the gig bag, that I did some more research and realized it’s actually a Czech-made NXTa.
Now I’m starting to understand what all the fuss is about with the Czech range. This thing is way more resonant than a WAV, and the action is low enough to give it a nice, even mwah all the way across the richlite fingerboard.
I’m probably going to raise the action a little to reduce the tonal contrast with the open strings, but still, it’s a dream to play, and even without my FDeck HPF preamp, it sounds great through my EB pedalboard in active mode.
I’m curious about the strings, which have multi-coloured silks at the headstock. Can anyone tell me what brand these are?
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I have put my poor WAV4 through yet another incarnation, which I now call my WAV411...4 strings, 1 pickup, 1 control (volume only). So it is now a totally passive bass with just a Lace Alumibar pickup. (See pic below. The piezo is still under the bridge, but is not hooked up except as a bridge ground.) At some point, I'll be experimenting with strings on this again, and I'm intrigued by the LaBella DTFs. When it comes to flats, I like the Ernie Ball Slinky Cobalts, but in a previous post on this thread, someone posted that the NS tuners tended to just slide the silk off those strings. I've had luck with using TI Jazz flats, which are on it now. As long as you don't try to re-use them if you need to remove them for anything, they tune up fine. However, they're pretty mellow strings, and I'd like a bit more punch and growl, though I'm not sure how much of that the Lace pickup has in it. @TheBass mentioned LaBella LT flats, but has anybody tried the Deep Talkin' flats? Do they hold up OK in the jaws of an NS tuner?
Has anyone tried any coated string like Elixirs on an NS Design bass guitar? I ask because it seems to me that the coating on the string would keep the bridge from properly grounding the strings. I have heard of this happening with basses that tune in the regular way, but it doesn't happen often because the coating on the strings is not supposed to be on the ball ends which contact a normal bridge. But of course the NS Design bass guitars have the ball ends at the end of the neck instead.
NS Design bridges are not metal, and the basses usually have active pickups. I doubt there's any grounding in place anyway.
The bridge on my WAV4 is definitely aluminum. I'm sure it's not custom-made.
Well, I just measured the resistance between the strings and the ring of the output jack of my CR5 at 2.3 ohms. The strings are galvanically connected to GND. At least the bridge of my CR5 is made of die-cast aluminum. The connection to GND is provided by the aluminum bar in the bridge. Under the aluminum bar is a copper foil that covers the piezo transducer and makes the connection to GND, I assume.
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Just to clarify, we are talking about NS Design bass guitars here...the CR, the NXTa, and (specifically in my case) the WAV series. Not the uprights nor the Omnis. @TheBass, I'm sure you are correct. That is why, even though I've disconnected the piezo in my WAV4, I haven't removed it. All I did was disconnect the positive. The ground wire is still connected to ground so the bridge is grounded and the strings are grounded because the bridge is. Which takes me back to my original question: With a coated string, how is that grounding of the strings affected? I emailed Greg at NS last night about 11:30 his time about this, hoping to get a reply this morning. Nope...he replied last night, saying he didn't think the ground would be an issue but that maybe the coating would be too slick for the clamps in the tuner to properly hold. I'm still curious, though, if anybody else has an opinion about the grounding of coated strings. I wonder about this because a few of the guys on the Basses by Leo forum, a G&L forum, have had issues with coated strings because the coating has gotten on the ball ends during manufacture. While that shouldn't happen, I guess sometimes it does, and it affects the grounding of the strings, which causes hum.
I must add, in looking at the NXTa series, it's hard to tell what that bridge is made of because it's black, but the bridges in the WAV series and the CR series are obviously metal.
I would think the mechanics involved to keep it in tune, would make a good enough bite in the strings, ensuring positive contact/continuity.
That was my first thought, too, until I realized that, unlike on most bass guitars, there is no direct contact between the bridge and the tuning mechanism except the strings. So if the strings aren't grounded at the bridge, the tuning mechanism is also not grounded. I haven't had the control cavity apart in a while, but I don't remember there being a wire that runs from the tuners to a ground in there anywhere. Of course, my memory and a colander are similar in that a lot runs through it but very little is retained. And if there is a problem, I think I could pretty easily run a ground wire to that tuning mechanism.
I guess the most direct solution is to try a set. If I get a bunch of hum and I can't find a solution, I'm just out $45.00 for a set of strings that are now useless. It's only money...I can always go down to the basement and print more.
Actually now that you mention it, I have a set of Rotosound Nexus strings that a friend of mine sent me because he put them on a bass and didn't like them. I use Nexus strings on a G&L LB-100 I have, so he knew I could put them to use. They're roundwound coated strings wound with Alloy 52. I might give those a try and I'd be out no money. Thanks for mentioning that. Until you brought that up, I'd forgotten I had those. Have I mentioned my memory is like a colander?
Sorry, my mistake. I mixed up "bridge" (which in Steinberger terms is tuner housing + saddles) with "tuner housing" on the CR/WAV basses. Of course the bridge on Radius basses is metal. Just the tuner housing is not. Which doesn't matter, if the bridge is grounded…
I was looking at some old Facebook posts yesterday, and realized that my old 4-string electric was also a Czech-made NXT, just the first-gen model without the active preamp.
So the differences I noticed in terms of the quality and playing experience are apparently all about setup and incremental improvements at NSD, and not the difference between the Czech and Chinese models.
Interesting...
My WAV4 is Indonesian manufactured, which I assume means either Cort or Samick, both of whom are capable builders. The main structural issue I had with it was that the bridge height adjustment screws were just threaded into the wood. The tonewood is meranti, which is definitely an inferior structural wood to the maple (I think) wood of the Czech instruments. The wood itself stripped out under one of the bridge posts, so I found some brass inserts and put them in. That was a more of a challenge than I anticipated, but I finally got it done and solved that problem. I contacted NSD about the issue since they had told me they were looking for a new manufacturer for the WAV bass guitars. I suggested they begin using brass inserts for those bridge screws and use a different tone wood. I got an email back from Ned himself telling me they would adopt the insert idea, but that they did not plan to change tonewoods. Other than that, my WAV plays like a dream--sets up great and has a beautiful rosewood fretboard. The electronics were a disappointment, so I just removed them all, dropped a Lace Alumibar into it in place of the EMG-HZ, and now it's an incredible-sounding passive bass. Obviously, the Czech models are superior to the WAVs, but structurally I haven't found mine that bad except for those bridge screws. BTW, those of you who own NXTa and CR Radius bass guitars, I'm told your bridge height adjustment screws are also just threaded into the wood. Though it's a better wood than meranti, that is still a weak point, so I recommend you loosen the strings before raising your bridge height.
Interesting.
Very cool that Ned is still that hands-on. I like that!
The stresses on electric uprights like mine must be monumental in comparison...
