Real nice guy from the conversations I've had with him here on TB, but don't know him personally... Has he gone MIA?? Previous health concerns??
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@Tony CC
Did you contact Bartolini about replacement electronics? Depending on how old your bass is, they can supply you with new pickups and preamp. I know they can sell you the latest version of Mike's soapbar pickups and steer you to a comparable preamp. They will only sell them to Pedulla owners. You would just need to supply proof that you own a Pedulla bass. I was in a similar situation as I was planning a new Pedulla build when Mike retired. I will treasure my 3 current Pedullas but for new basses, I like Roscoes.
Did you contact Bartolini about replacement electronics? Depending on how old your bass is, they can supply you with new pickups and preamp. I know they can sell you the latest version of Mike's soapbar pickups and steer you to a comparable preamp. They will only sell them to Pedulla owners. You would just need to supply proof that you own a Pedulla bass. I was in a similar situation as I was planning a new Pedulla build when Mike retired. I will treasure my 3 current Pedullas but for new basses, I like Roscoes.
@bgartist
I did think about it, and now wish I had gone that route, but ended up going with the Aguilar stuff after some research and many hours on youtube listening to samples. It's not just the electronics though, the amount of buzz that I am getting from the fretboard now is starting to annoy me and also drawing notice from engineers and other players. As much as I love my Pedulla, I don't want to be on this maintenance and road forever and since it's no longer replaceable, I'm concerned about taking it out of the house anymore anyway.
Thanks for the tip on the Roscoe, they look great and are in my price range, so I will keep my eye out for one to try.
I did think about it, and now wish I had gone that route, but ended up going with the Aguilar stuff after some research and many hours on youtube listening to samples. It's not just the electronics though, the amount of buzz that I am getting from the fretboard now is starting to annoy me and also drawing notice from engineers and other players. As much as I love my Pedulla, I don't want to be on this maintenance and road forever and since it's no longer replaceable, I'm concerned about taking it out of the house anymore anyway.
Thanks for the tip on the Roscoe, they look great and are in my price range, so I will keep my eye out for one to try.
@Merlino ...Wonderful bass sound and playing from your pedulla! Is it recorded direct to the board and nickel strings (my guess). I didn't hear any reverb or compression.
Thanks for posting
@fivestringdan Yes, it could stand to be refretted, or at a minimum, redressed, there is visible fret wear. I did just have it PLEKed a couple months ago and the neck as a whole is in really good shape. I do believe I have already made the decision to retire my Thunderbass to a revered place in my home for personal use. I was just interested in hearing from other Pedulla owners about new options with similar neck profiles/playability etc. that they may have come across. If I ask anywhere else, someone will tell me to get a P bass, lol.
I was in the middle of a deal with getting black Pedulla hardware (which I've done before with him), sent him money. All seemed well until he stopped responding. Last post on TB is also a few weeks ago. He's not the youngest member around here, so I'm worrying something bad happened.
Ugh.... not good... pretty reputable guy on this page; he's not the guy (to my knowledge) to scam anyone... hope everything is OK and hope you get your parts!!!
There's a well known bass player in Boston, Dave Buddha, who played Pedulla for MANY years. I just saw that he's playing Roscoe basses now. As a former Roscoe player I can say it's a natural transition if you want a bass from a company that is still in business.
Any great tech should be able to figure out a fret buzzing issue. Just find someone with a great reputation and hand it to them to assess.
Any great tech should be able to figure out a fret buzzing issue. Just find someone with a great reputation and hand it to them to assess.
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Thanks @emjazz That's a couple of times now that I have heard Roscoe mentioned and I am looking forward to checking one out, just not seeing them anywhere in the Atlanta area.
Take a look at the Roscoe Club thread. There’s a couple of friendly members in the ATL that have several and would probably give you a test run.
A few months ago i took the Bartoloni pickups out of my 1994 Pedulla Thunderbuzz 6 string and put in a set of Nordstrand Zen Blades in a passive setup (push-pull for series/parallel wiring and a per pickup volume, and a switch to go between 3 capacitors for tone). Was a decent setup, but after commenting in this thread about wanting a filter based preamp @Skelf (Alan from AC Guitars) pinged me and said they were again selling the EQ01 filter based pre - a paypal and a month-ish later i got the kit and installed it in my Pedulla.
It is like nothing else out there unless you have a Alembic SuperFilter (which i did and sold, sadly) - each pickup has its own low pass filter with boost/cut and frequency, there is a overall volume and balance, and a high pass filter again with boost/cut and freq controls. The preamp is really well built with good instructions and pretty easy to install (I had a side 1/4" jack that i had to use instead of the front one, but that was the only soldering i had to do, but i did have to enlarge the switch hole to take the 4th pot stack). It does take a bit to wrap your head around how the filters work, but once you figure it out it really opens up a huge palette of sounds that a normal preamp just can't do.
example - I've been trying to get more mwah out of this fretless - it has a natural finish neck (not poly/epoxy) so there is much more of a wood tone that naturally happens. If i want mwah i find the freq on the bridge pickup that brings it out, boost it and instant mwah. I want a dub sound? just neck pickup and low pass filter set pretty low. Bringing out harmonics is as easy as boosting bridge higher freq.
To be fair here are some con's:
- boosting high freq on treble stack can lead to noise, but that seems inherent to any treble boost.
- you can't bypass the filters, so if you just want straight pickup sound you can't do it.
- Its not a bass you can just pick up and play - u have to think about what sound you want and play with the filters until you get it - its not really a con but something to be aware of.
- there is a option of having a separate tone control as well - i could see that being pretty handy, the high pass kinda does that but not as good as having a dedicated tone knob. Unfort i dont really have room for it.
I would def recommend this AC Guitars BASS-EQ-01 preamp to anyone looking to get a wide variety of tones out of your bass - its really well made, it is incredibly versatile, and outside of some alembic and WAL pre's there is nothing like it out there - esp nothing you can buy.
-ts
It is like nothing else out there unless you have a Alembic SuperFilter (which i did and sold, sadly) - each pickup has its own low pass filter with boost/cut and frequency, there is a overall volume and balance, and a high pass filter again with boost/cut and freq controls. The preamp is really well built with good instructions and pretty easy to install (I had a side 1/4" jack that i had to use instead of the front one, but that was the only soldering i had to do, but i did have to enlarge the switch hole to take the 4th pot stack). It does take a bit to wrap your head around how the filters work, but once you figure it out it really opens up a huge palette of sounds that a normal preamp just can't do.
example - I've been trying to get more mwah out of this fretless - it has a natural finish neck (not poly/epoxy) so there is much more of a wood tone that naturally happens. If i want mwah i find the freq on the bridge pickup that brings it out, boost it and instant mwah. I want a dub sound? just neck pickup and low pass filter set pretty low. Bringing out harmonics is as easy as boosting bridge higher freq.
To be fair here are some con's:
- boosting high freq on treble stack can lead to noise, but that seems inherent to any treble boost.
- you can't bypass the filters, so if you just want straight pickup sound you can't do it.
- Its not a bass you can just pick up and play - u have to think about what sound you want and play with the filters until you get it - its not really a con but something to be aware of.
- there is a option of having a separate tone control as well - i could see that being pretty handy, the high pass kinda does that but not as good as having a dedicated tone knob. Unfort i dont really have room for it.
I would def recommend this AC Guitars BASS-EQ-01 preamp to anyone looking to get a wide variety of tones out of your bass - its really well made, it is incredibly versatile, and outside of some alembic and WAL pre's there is nothing like it out there - esp nothing you can buy.
-ts
If you want to get as close as you can to bypassing the filters have them fully open. Wont remove them but that is where they have the least effect on what would be the basic sound of the bass.
Not sure if they've changed at all, but the con for me was that you couldn't tailor your sound in the mids or highs with the filters, and then add low end as well. You have to choose which single frequency to boost. I always thought that that pre with an added low boost would be brilliant.
It’s looking like a dream may come true for me in the next few weeks!
I owned a Pentabuzz for a couple years, quite a while back. But, I never became that great of a fretless player. I started wanting an MVP at that time, but timing and money never worked out for me. I’ve since switched to 4 strings about 8 years ago. When Mike retired, I knew my chances of owning an MVP4 were growing slimmer. Well, the stars seem to have aligned for me! I’ll post again when the bass gets here. There’s no other bass that I want more!
I owned a Pentabuzz for a couple years, quite a while back. But, I never became that great of a fretless player. I started wanting an MVP at that time, but timing and money never worked out for me. I’ve since switched to 4 strings about 8 years ago. When Mike retired, I knew my chances of owning an MVP4 were growing slimmer. Well, the stars seem to have aligned for me! I’ll post again when the bass gets here. There’s no other bass that I want more!
Hello Pedulla buzz fretless owners,
Can I ask how much relief you use on your setups. Is your neck completely flat or is there some very slight relief? I am setting up my buzz now and was wondering how flat I should go without fretting out. On my fretted and jazz fretless basses I use about a credit card of space (or thin pick) for relief. Are you able to get the famous buzz with slight relief. I am trying to get a lot of buzz on this bass. Any suggestions are welcome.
Can I ask how much relief you use on your setups. Is your neck completely flat or is there some very slight relief? I am setting up my buzz now and was wondering how flat I should go without fretting out. On my fretted and jazz fretless basses I use about a credit card of space (or thin pick) for relief. Are you able to get the famous buzz with slight relief. I am trying to get a lot of buzz on this bass. Any suggestions are welcome.
I probably have about a guitar pick width gap when fretting the 1st and 12th fret
