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Double Bass NS Design WAV4 megathread part I
- Thread starter ElMon
- Start date
- Status
Well it's not quite like that but after much listening and practicing a thing called "muscle memory" develops but "big ears" is still an essential skill.
Well, if you switch from arco to pizz, you lose quite a bit of volume and rather a lot of bottom, so that sounds spot on.
Yep, that makes sense. My next project is to try installing these piezo buffers before the switch and pots:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
While an external preamp can certainly rescue some of the lost bass response of the piezos, there is still a major mismatch with the pots when directly wired to the piezos. I first thought I might be able to just use one PZP-1 before the output, but two should better feed the pots.
Why do this? Well, I don't like the idea of yet another external box for my setup with a standard bass guitar (Spector 5 string) and Wav4, and I just couldn't justify stepping up to a more expensive NS CRM4 with active electronics; I'm just a weekend warrior. A single 9V plus two of these PZP-1s should fit nicely inside of the cavity and I'd imagine this would a) give a much better match for going direct to PA and b) enhance the frequency response BEFORE the tone control and blend switch.
Incidentally, with my PodXT or direct into my amp, I have no major tone problems. But via passive DI into PA mixers, this impedance mismatch is VERY apparent. Perhaps an active DI might sound nicer. The other thing is that with such a high impedance, a long cable run to an external preamp might have a more profound effect on frequency response than having a short run to two onboard piezo buffers. I may need to switch out the pots and cap on the DPDT switch to compensate for the piezo buffers. But, this should all be a relatively simple mod. I'll let you all know how it goes.
Incidentally, special thanks to Walter Harley, the guy that developed the PZP-1. This piezo buffer was originally designed to fix a similar piezo impedance mismatch with active magnetic pickups in a Fender A/E bass. But, in theory, the PZP-1 should accomodate any piezo pickup to drive more reasonable impedances. Walter recommended several mods that I'll test out and let you all know the results. I've read that a few of you have your WAV4 tone control turned all the way down in an attempt to kill the overaccentuated high end (due to the diminished low end). This mod should certainly help that. It remains to be seen how this might affect the arco/pizz selector.
Does anyone have any arco clips of the wav? Obviously it's not going to sound like arco db but is it still a usable sound? I miss playing adb so much but it's going to be awhile before I have enough saved for an instrument I'll be happy with.
Plus the wav could be cool for ambient rock and stuff
Plus the wav could be cool for ambient rock and stuff
I've browsed through the megathread so I'm hoping I'm not asking a redundant question.
Can anyone comment on the playability and sound of the wav arco-wise? I guess I don't really expect it to sound 'real' but is the tonal character at least similar?
My main issue right now, as far as playability, is the lack of a heel. Although I'm a piss poor player I'm 'trained' so I would like something that is going to be familiar to the techniques I slaved away in the practice rooms to accomplish.
I'm really not in a position to afford an UR that I'm going to be truly happy with so I was thinking of maybe getting the wav for now. It would also be nice since I live in an apartment.
I do like the idea of using it for more experimental music as well. Like ambient stuff soaked in reverb and delay. But really, I could probably just get a blem palatino eub for that kind of thing.
If anyone can point me to soundclips that'd be great too. I found a few in the megathread but they seemed to be out of date.
Can anyone comment on the playability and sound of the wav arco-wise? I guess I don't really expect it to sound 'real' but is the tonal character at least similar?
My main issue right now, as far as playability, is the lack of a heel. Although I'm a piss poor player I'm 'trained' so I would like something that is going to be familiar to the techniques I slaved away in the practice rooms to accomplish.
I'm really not in a position to afford an UR that I'm going to be truly happy with so I was thinking of maybe getting the wav for now. It would also be nice since I live in an apartment.
I do like the idea of using it for more experimental music as well. Like ambient stuff soaked in reverb and delay. But really, I could probably just get a blem palatino eub for that kind of thing.
If anyone can point me to soundclips that'd be great too. I found a few in the megathread but they seemed to be out of date.
- Jul 16, 2007
- 335
- 16
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist:Orange Amps, EBS FX, Ernie Ball, Fender Bass Guitars
This instrument is great however I have more than one issue with the stand that is supplied with the bass.
After about 3 weeks of having the bass the stand snapped where the bass attaches to the stand (if you'll look, the piece of metal conecting the 'anchor' to the main pole is really thin, this is where it snapped).
I spoke to the music store and the distributor about getting a better quality czech stand and being credited some money for the cost of the wav stand. I was told that this wasn't possible as NS Design had stopped shipping the czech stands without the basses and was told that there were new improved stands for the wav which were of higher quality and so was sent a replacement stand.
The 'improved' stand arrived at my house. I opened up the packaging to find a new stand snapped in the exact same way as the first one. At first I thought they had accidently sent me my old stand but it was a new stand. The improvements had been made to the adjustment of the legs.
I phoned the distributor who told me to return the stand and they would see if they could get me a czech model stand.
During the sending back of these broken stands I suddenly noticed something which I think anybody thinking about buying a WAV should take into account.
The stand on the NS Design website is said to be made of steel and that it weighs 3.2 kg. After showing the broken stands to various people they commented that the stand was not steel but a metal alloy and when I weighed the stand I found that the stand weighed only 2.4Kg.
This may not be the case with every stand but I was shocked to know that the stand advertised is obviously not the stand provided. A stand which is not capable of taking the weight of the instrument and not fit for purpose.
After a week and a couple of phone calls I was supplied with a Czech model stand.. not for free but for a reasonable price considering the retail price. The stand is 1000 times better quality and so much more sturdier!
Sorry this has turned out to be a bit of an essay but I think that people should complain if they have been having problems with stands collapsing instead of finding DIY ways of fixing them or going out and paying full wack for the better stand.
I still had to pay something for the czech stand but it was better than paying out £200 for one.
Maybe if NS Design get enough reports back they will do something to provide studier stands with what are great Eubs.
The store and the distributor were great with helping me get the stand in the end even tho I got frustrated being standless and unable to play the bass!!
After about 3 weeks of having the bass the stand snapped where the bass attaches to the stand (if you'll look, the piece of metal conecting the 'anchor' to the main pole is really thin, this is where it snapped).
I spoke to the music store and the distributor about getting a better quality czech stand and being credited some money for the cost of the wav stand. I was told that this wasn't possible as NS Design had stopped shipping the czech stands without the basses and was told that there were new improved stands for the wav which were of higher quality and so was sent a replacement stand.
The 'improved' stand arrived at my house. I opened up the packaging to find a new stand snapped in the exact same way as the first one. At first I thought they had accidently sent me my old stand but it was a new stand. The improvements had been made to the adjustment of the legs.
I phoned the distributor who told me to return the stand and they would see if they could get me a czech model stand.
During the sending back of these broken stands I suddenly noticed something which I think anybody thinking about buying a WAV should take into account.
The stand on the NS Design website is said to be made of steel and that it weighs 3.2 kg. After showing the broken stands to various people they commented that the stand was not steel but a metal alloy and when I weighed the stand I found that the stand weighed only 2.4Kg.
This may not be the case with every stand but I was shocked to know that the stand advertised is obviously not the stand provided. A stand which is not capable of taking the weight of the instrument and not fit for purpose.
After a week and a couple of phone calls I was supplied with a Czech model stand.. not for free but for a reasonable price considering the retail price. The stand is 1000 times better quality and so much more sturdier!
Sorry this has turned out to be a bit of an essay but I think that people should complain if they have been having problems with stands collapsing instead of finding DIY ways of fixing them or going out and paying full wack for the better stand.
I still had to pay something for the czech stand but it was better than paying out £200 for one.
Maybe if NS Design get enough reports back they will do something to provide studier stands with what are great Eubs.
The store and the distributor were great with helping me get the stand in the end even tho I got frustrated being standless and unable to play the bass!!
After a lot of screwing around trying to get the stock stand to be what I wanted it to be, I finally broke down and bought the CR tripod stand, the endpin stand, and the adapter kit.
Now the bass looks and works as good as it sounds and I am truly happy with it. The CR tripod is built like a tank, but I prefer the endpin feel. The endpin stand works great and is heavy duty as well.
NedSteinberger.com still shows the stands in chrome but all the new stands are painted black so they don't look like drum hardware anymore. Very cool.
Now the bass looks and works as good as it sounds and I am truly happy with it. The CR tripod is built like a tank, but I prefer the endpin feel. The endpin stand works great and is heavy duty as well.
NedSteinberger.com still shows the stands in chrome but all the new stands are painted black so they don't look like drum hardware anymore. Very cool.
funkybassplayer
Commercial User
I carry my WAV tripod in my trunk incase the drummer need something to hold up his crappy rack. I haven't touched it except for playing at the house. Since i got the endpin it has been great. i deinatly recommend one.
smakbass
Smakkin basses for 25 years..
My original stand never broke but I sure dont regret getting the CR stand......its built like a tank and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
Hey all, I've been enjoying my new WAV4 for a couple of weeks. One thing I encountered, as expected based on the Megathread, was that the WAV4 doesn't do to well without a good piezo preamp. The bass is very weak, to the point that the tone control needs to be set all the way down to tame the brightness of the instrument. I know that some out there have opted for outboard preamps like the K&K Pure Preamp. I thought a more tidy idea would be to install the preamp inside the WAV4 itself, esp. considering the large space available behind the metal cover on the back.
After a bit of searching, I came upon a piezo "buffer" approach developed by Walter Harley. His PZP-1 is a piezo buffer that amplifies the output of piezo pickups to better match bass amplifiers or sound board input channels. After contacting Walter, he suggested that two PZP-1s would work better in a WAV4 since they would help to decrease the impedance mismatch with passive tone and volume controls. I'm not sure how correct this is, but I bought two PZP-1s ($49 each). Walter wired them to run off a single 9V battery.
After getting the PZP-1s in the mail, I went about installing these in my WAV4. I bought a stereo 1/4" jack to replace the mono jack. The green wire on one of the PZP-1s connects to the "ring" of the stereo jack and serves to connect up ground to the 9V negative terminal when a mono 1/4" instrument cord is plugged in. This keeps the PZP-1s from wearing down the battery when the instrument is not in use. Since the WAV4 has two piezos, I planned to run the PZP-1s as close to their outputs as possible. A review of Bob Gollihur's WAV4 schematic reveals that the "high" piezo (the one under the D and G string side of the bridge) connects to a DPDT switch that acts to reverse polarity relative to the "low" piezo (that sites under the E/A side of the bridge). This sort of mixes the two piezos and allows an arco vs. pizz selection. I opted to run the PZP-1 downstream of the polarity selector switch with no mods. I soldered the second piezo into a second PZP-1 directly and ran the outputs to the tone and volume controls.
After wiring this all up, I noted that the selector switch worked fine but that the tone control no longer worked, likely due to having the wrong values of passive components on the tone control. So, I swapped out the 6.8 nF cap on the tone control for a 0.1 uF cap and this seemed to work okay (see notes below). I then used double sided foam tape to affix the two PZP-1s to the foil backing inside the cavity. A similar approach was used to mount the battery (for now).
A couple of notes about this mod. First off, instrument has a much fuller sound now, much stronger bass than when I was using a PodXT to drive the piezos. An outboard preamp might do this as well, but I just don't like sending such low output over a long distance to an amp, esp. considering noise pickup and effects of cable capacitance. I can now run my WAV4 direct into a sound console with a passive DI box and I still get bone shaking bass. The arco/pizz selector works fine, although the differences between the two settings are not as apparent. But, when bowing, you still need to have the selector set to arco to get a decent sound. The tone control works, but does not provide as much treble cut as before. I will probably need to swap out the pot for a lower value (e.g. 100K). But, it actually sounds fine as is. Since the PZP-1s have an output pot, it is possible to vary the output of each pickup to your liking. I'm currently experimenting with this to get the best combination of strong bass and convincing URB sounds. That's the one very cool thing about this mod that you wouldn't get with an outboard preamp/EQ.
For anyone interested, here's a link to Walter's site where he explains the PZP-1. You can build it from scratch or just buy a couple from him. It would probably be fine to just use one downstream of the tone control, but I do like the ability to blend the two pickups (even if you have to remove the back cover to do this in my mod):
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
All told, I'm very happy with this instrument and think the addition of onboard electronics really opens up the tonal possibilities.
Craig
After a bit of searching, I came upon a piezo "buffer" approach developed by Walter Harley. His PZP-1 is a piezo buffer that amplifies the output of piezo pickups to better match bass amplifiers or sound board input channels. After contacting Walter, he suggested that two PZP-1s would work better in a WAV4 since they would help to decrease the impedance mismatch with passive tone and volume controls. I'm not sure how correct this is, but I bought two PZP-1s ($49 each). Walter wired them to run off a single 9V battery.
After getting the PZP-1s in the mail, I went about installing these in my WAV4. I bought a stereo 1/4" jack to replace the mono jack. The green wire on one of the PZP-1s connects to the "ring" of the stereo jack and serves to connect up ground to the 9V negative terminal when a mono 1/4" instrument cord is plugged in. This keeps the PZP-1s from wearing down the battery when the instrument is not in use. Since the WAV4 has two piezos, I planned to run the PZP-1s as close to their outputs as possible. A review of Bob Gollihur's WAV4 schematic reveals that the "high" piezo (the one under the D and G string side of the bridge) connects to a DPDT switch that acts to reverse polarity relative to the "low" piezo (that sites under the E/A side of the bridge). This sort of mixes the two piezos and allows an arco vs. pizz selection. I opted to run the PZP-1 downstream of the polarity selector switch with no mods. I soldered the second piezo into a second PZP-1 directly and ran the outputs to the tone and volume controls.
After wiring this all up, I noted that the selector switch worked fine but that the tone control no longer worked, likely due to having the wrong values of passive components on the tone control. So, I swapped out the 6.8 nF cap on the tone control for a 0.1 uF cap and this seemed to work okay (see notes below). I then used double sided foam tape to affix the two PZP-1s to the foil backing inside the cavity. A similar approach was used to mount the battery (for now).
A couple of notes about this mod. First off, instrument has a much fuller sound now, much stronger bass than when I was using a PodXT to drive the piezos. An outboard preamp might do this as well, but I just don't like sending such low output over a long distance to an amp, esp. considering noise pickup and effects of cable capacitance. I can now run my WAV4 direct into a sound console with a passive DI box and I still get bone shaking bass. The arco/pizz selector works fine, although the differences between the two settings are not as apparent. But, when bowing, you still need to have the selector set to arco to get a decent sound. The tone control works, but does not provide as much treble cut as before. I will probably need to swap out the pot for a lower value (e.g. 100K). But, it actually sounds fine as is. Since the PZP-1s have an output pot, it is possible to vary the output of each pickup to your liking. I'm currently experimenting with this to get the best combination of strong bass and convincing URB sounds. That's the one very cool thing about this mod that you wouldn't get with an outboard preamp/EQ.
For anyone interested, here's a link to Walter's site where he explains the PZP-1. You can build it from scratch or just buy a couple from him. It would probably be fine to just use one downstream of the tone control, but I do like the ability to blend the two pickups (even if you have to remove the back cover to do this in my mod):
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
All told, I'm very happy with this instrument and think the addition of onboard electronics really opens up the tonal possibilities.
Craig
Attachments
funkybassplayer
Commercial User
No clips yet. I just finished this on Sunday. But I'll try to record some soon. I'm much better with electronics than I am with URB playing, and that's not saying much.
Craig,
Thanks for sharing your experiences - it sounds very promising!
You say "instrument has a much fuller sound now, much stronger bass" and "The arco/pizz selector works fine, although the differences between the two settings are not as apparent." They could both be good things, but for the second observation it depends ...
So in the original setup, arco has much more bass than pizz, and pizz sounds more compressed (less dynamic) than arco. Now with the preamps, does the arco sound more compressed, or does the pizz sound more dynamic and with stronger bass? Or even both?
If adding the preamp means that the arco setting turns into a compressed sound like the original pizz, then it's not for me.
Looking forward to your reply!
Thanks for sharing your experiences - it sounds very promising!
You say "instrument has a much fuller sound now, much stronger bass" and "The arco/pizz selector works fine, although the differences between the two settings are not as apparent." They could both be good things, but for the second observation it depends ...
So in the original setup, arco has much more bass than pizz, and pizz sounds more compressed (less dynamic) than arco. Now with the preamps, does the arco sound more compressed, or does the pizz sound more dynamic and with stronger bass? Or even both?
If adding the preamp means that the arco setting turns into a compressed sound like the original pizz, then it's not for me.
Looking forward to your reply!
frede said:
Yes, it's one of the first thing I did...I just can't get my fingers up under those strings like I can on the UB.
Actually, the pizz sounds more like the arco now, with much stronger bass. You still have to swtich the selector to arco for bowing. The pizz setting doesn't sound so great for that.
This is still a work in progress for me. There is a capacitor on the DPDT switch that shunts one wire from the G/D pickup to ground. I'm pretty certain that this cap will have to be swapped for a different value to account for the change in impedance. I'm still a bit unclear on exactly why the two run out of phase in one mode. I'm pulling out my scope this weekend to see if I can make sense of that. Once I get a handle on that, I should be able to come up with a reasonable shunt capacitor to return the two settings to their native state.
Can anyone comment on the playability and sound of the wav arco-wise? I guess I don't really expect it to sound 'real' but is the tonal character at least similar?
My main issue right now, as far as playability, is the lack of a heel. Although I'm a piss poor player I'm 'trained' so I would like something that is going to be familiar to the techniques I slaved away in the practice rooms to accomplish.
I'm really not in a position to afford an UR that I'm going to be truly happy with so I was thinking of maybe getting the wav for now. It would also be nice since I live in an apartment.
The wav4 does okay with arco. It's certainly better to be able to practice at night on the wav4 while my young child sleeps than to not be able to practice at all.
One thing of note is that I'm playing thru a good piezo pre (LR Baggs Para DI) into a mackie mixer and listening via headphones.
regarding the heel, I'm finding that I don't miss it as much as I thought I was. I've been working 2-octave scales on one string (eg G-major up and down the G string) and am getting used to knowing how/when to make the transition to thumb position without having the heel as a cue.
Okay great!
If you're not really missing the sound of the old pizz setting, then I'm not sure why you would bother with the capacitor at all - except of course in the pursuit of greater knowledge.
Wow, pretty impressive thread. It's always a pleasure checking in at TB.
FWIW I just ordered a WAV4 from my local music store... not an easy task in Northern Minnesota. I also ordered an inexpensive German style bow (Domenico) from Ken Smith and a set of Helicore Medium Hybrid strings from NS. Being somewhat mechanical I think I'll be able to apply a fix or two to the stand. Wish me luck.
I did pick up a bit of Bass Snobery already. I got the "If you wanted an upright, why didn't you just buy one?" Finances, durability (with temp and humidity fluctuations), and ease of transport all came into play. Yes, someday I may step up to the plate, but for now I'm really looking forward to this purchase. I just hope I can live up to it.
FWIW I just ordered a WAV4 from my local music store... not an easy task in Northern Minnesota. I also ordered an inexpensive German style bow (Domenico) from Ken Smith and a set of Helicore Medium Hybrid strings from NS. Being somewhat mechanical I think I'll be able to apply a fix or two to the stand. Wish me luck.
I did pick up a bit of Bass Snobery already. I got the "If you wanted an upright, why didn't you just buy one?" Finances, durability (with temp and humidity fluctuations), and ease of transport all came into play. Yes, someday I may step up to the plate, but for now I'm really looking forward to this purchase. I just hope I can live up to it.
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