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The Short-Scale Six-String Club—for the original six-string basses!

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#662
Showdown said:
They come with RW, but LaBella makes flats that fit. I haven't tried them.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Click to expand...

So even though the LaBella flats are advertised as B to c, you can still tune them from E to e on a Hellcat VI or other 30" scale length bass? And just curious, was the Fender Bass VI intended to go B to c (or E to e, or something else)?
 
#663
MIJ-VI said:
Hi iamthebassman.

How are the flats? :bassist:
Click to expand...

I love 'em! This is the sound I heard when I first played a Fender VI in a music store in the late 70s. It was yellow-ish with a tort guard, anyway, I digress. I love flats and I'd say 90% of my basses have flats, so it's nice to have them on a 6-string, my JJ Longhorn VI has rounds so I'm covered both ways. The higher strings are plenty bright enuff for lead/melody work, and the lower strings produce one of my all-time fave bass tones, what I referred to previously as 60s TV/movie soundtrack, clicky bass tone. I had to tweak the truss rod on the Gretsch a tiny bit as the Labella's have a higher tension than the Dadarrios I had on, but that's it, didn't even need to adjust intonation!
 
#664
Joe Lindley said:
So even though the LaBella flats are advertised as B to c, you can still tune them from E to e on a Hellcat VI or other 30" scale length bass? And just curious, was the Fender Bass VI intended to go B to c (or E to e, or something else)?
Click to expand...

They are E-E, at first I thought it was Elderly's mistake listing it as B-C, but then I went to the Labella site and they list the set as B-C too! Just a mistake, they are E-E.
The enigma of the original 6-string basses continues!!
 
#665
Joe Lindley said:
So even though the LaBella flats are advertised as B to c, you can still tune them from E to e on a Hellcat VI or other 30" scale length bass? And just curious, was the Fender Bass VI intended to go B to c (or E to e, or something else)?
Click to expand...

Those B to c listings for the LaBella flats on that website is a mistake. They are designed to be from E to e, as the Fender Bass VI was designed to be tuned.
 
#667
iamthebassman said:
I love 'em! This is the sound I heard when I first played a Fender VI in a music store in the late 70s. It was yellow-ish with a tort guard, anyway, I digress. I love flats and I'd say 90% of my basses have flats, so it's nice to have them on a 6-string, my JJ Longhorn VI has rounds so I'm covered both ways. The higher strings are plenty bright enuff for lead/melody work, and the lower strings produce one of my all-time fave bass tones, what I referred to previously as 60s TV/movie soundtrack, clicky bass tone. I had to tweak the truss rod on the Gretsch a tiny bit as the Labella's have a higher tension than the Dadarrios I had on, but that's it, didn't even need to adjust intonation!
Click to expand...

Cool! :bassist:

I love that "clicky bass tone" too. It's widely known as the 'tic-tac' bass sound, and it was started by Mr. Harold Bradley (the younger brother of Owen Bradley - Patsy Cline's former producer).

An example (Headphones please! :)):

Patsy Cline - She's Got You

More 'VI's wearing flats:

Elvis Presley - Little Sister.

Roy Orbison - Working for the man. (The video is below the lyrics.)
 
#670
Oh yeah...well check out how GHS thinks you should tune your Bass VI...(under the Custom Shop tab) http://www.ghsstrings.com/products.php

Actually I'm amazed they finally have the gauges right...the gauges have been wrong on their site for 6 months...I've been harassing one of their techs for awhile to get it fixed, but the tuning is still wrong... Funny story...I ordered a couple sets of GHS Custom Shop VI strings from Juststrings.com when I bought my Hellcat VI 6-ish months ago, and the strings did not fit...some bozo at the factory had opted to make the strings for a 34" bass (the part number was even wrong on the individual strings except for the upper 3 gauges, which were correct), so they of course didn't work. Both sets I bought were like this, as well as all the sets that GHS had in stock...so they had to go back to manufacture them correctly. I only recently got to try them out as I had to substitute the Fender VI strings instead (all Musician's Friend Outlet Store carries and I didn't want to leave the guitar in the shop for 6 weeks so I had to put something on them)...they actually sound really good if you like a bright sound (which I'm suspecting those with flats maybe do not...), noticeably brighter than the Fenders for sure...though maybe that is because they are freshly made?
 
#671
kslight said:
Oh yeah...well check out how GHS thinks you should tune your Bass VI...(under the Custom Shop tab) http://www.ghsstrings.com/products.php

Actually I'm amazed they finally have the gauges right...the gauges have been wrong on their site for 6 months...I've been harassing one of their techs for awhile to get it fixed, but the tuning is still wrong... Funny story...I ordered a couple sets of GHS Custom Shop VI strings from Juststrings.com when I bought my Hellcat VI 6-ish months ago, and the strings did not fit...some bozo at the factory had opted to make the strings for a 34" bass (the part number was even wrong on the individual strings except for the upper 3 gauges, which were correct), so they of course didn't work. Both sets I bought were like this, as well as all the sets that GHS had in stock...so they had to go back to manufacture them correctly. I only recently got to try them out as I had to substitute the Fender VI strings instead (all Musician's Friend Outlet Store carries and I didn't want to leave the guitar in the shop for 6 weeks so I had to put something on them)...they actually sound really good if you like a bright sound (which I'm suspecting those with flats maybe do not...), noticeably brighter than the Fenders for sure...though maybe that is because they are freshly made?
Click to expand...

Same thing happened to me. Took 'em off right away.
 
#673
guitfiddle0409 said:
If I want to imitate Chris Squire it sometimes sounds more like him on the Bass VI (with roundwounds) than it does on my Rick 4003! Go figure...
Click to expand...

Similar to the 'strangle switch' cap (.0033 mfd) in the Fender VI, the Ric 4001 has a .0047 cap (a high-pass filter) wired to its bridge pickup which makes it sound very treble-y (and weak).

I expect that this design was intended to accentuate the tonal difference between the 4001's neck and bridge pickups for use with 'Ric-O-Sound' (stereo output).
 
#674
Here's a question for you Hellcat VI owners:

Are the coils in its mini-humbucking pickups wired in series, like most humbucking guitar pickups are (to boost their output--at the expense of some high end clarity)?

Or are they wired in parallel (giving the clearest highs--at the expense of some output)?
 
#675
MIJ-VI said:
Cool! :bassist:

I love that "clicky bass tone" too. It's widely known as the 'tic-tac' bass sound, and it was started by Mr. Harold Bradley (the younger brother of Owen Bradley - Patsy Cline's former producer).

An example (Headphones please! :)):

Patsy Cline - She's Got You

More 'VI's wearing flats:

Elvis Presley - Little Sister.

Roy Orbison - Working for the man. (The video is below the lyrics.)
Click to expand...

So the "tic-tac" sound is a standup bass played by one guy and another guy playing flats with a pick? That's what I hear in "She's Got You" and "Little Sister." So you need 2 bass players in the band for shows :bassist::bassist:
 
#677
Came across two different paintings of The Beatles playing Hey Jude on the Frost show, with GH on VI.
the-beatles-play-hey-jude-for-the-f.jpg

ec-beatles_heyjude.jpg

beatles.jpg
 
#678
MIJ-VI said:
Here's a question for you Hellcat VI owners:

Are the coils in its mini-humbucking pickups wired in series, like most humbucking guitar pickups are (to boost their output--at the expense of some high end clarity)?

Or are they wired in parallel (giving the clearest highs--at the expense of some output)?
Click to expand...

Pretty sure they're in series. The untapped sound is hotter, darker, and thicker than the split sound. They're just very underwound for humbuckers. You could probably rewire them for parallel mode, but the output is already low enough that I don't know if it'd be worth it.

I'm really not sure why they chose mini-humbuckers in the first place (since AFAIK no other six-string bass uses them), except that they'd been using them on the 25.5" version of the Hellcat so it may have just been easier not to change them. Robert Smith seems to be experimenting with different pickups on his custom Schecter Ultra VI's (two full-size humbuckers or three Filter-Tron-style), so it's also possible that he's gone off the single coil sound (for noise reasons, maybe), but given that the Cure's sound has gone to **** lately IMO, I'm not inclined to go in that direction myself.
 
#679
Pretty sure they're in series. The untapped sound is hotter, darker, and thicker than the split sound. They're just very underwound for humbuckers. You could probably rewire them for parallel mode, but the output is already low enough that I don't know if it'd be worth it.

I'm really not sure why they chose mini-humbuckers in the first place (since AFAIK no other six-string bass uses them), except that they'd been using them on the 25.5" version of the Hellcat so it may have just been easier not to change them. Robert Smith seems to be experimenting with different pickups on his custom Schecter Ultra VI's (two full-size humbuckers or three Filter-Tron-style), so it's also possible that he's gone off the single coil sound (for noise reasons, maybe), but given that the Cure's sound has gone to **** lately IMO, I'm not inclined to go in that direction myself.
Click to expand...

I second that the pickups are noticeably quieter than my other humbucker equipped guitars...

I don't know that it explains the use of minis...but after talking to Seymour Duncan about replacement pickups apparently the "Duncan Designed" pickups used in the Hellcat VI were actually designed specifically for that guitar...I don't really buy that but they aren't all that bad really. They probably got a better price buying a lot of them for the regular Hellcat and figured they had to do something with the rest of them as the metal crowd wouldn't have much of a use for them. If I had to guess I would say they use minis to stand out from the crowd...most VI's (except the Gretsch 5265) that I am aware of don't use humbuckers, so they thought that for live players that would be seen as an advantage (either for first-time VI owners or established Fender VI owners buying the Schecter as an affordable second) in terms of cutting out noise. But they also are configured to approximate the VI sound if you were required to use the guitar to cut out hum...and the coil split mode is there if you aren't worried about hum, which to my ears improves the sound for certain things.

In my opinion they aren't bad enough to change out...then again I've never owned a guitar where I thought the pickups were the lowest common denominator in my sound.



BTW, why is the Robert Smith signature guitar not a VI...always wondered that myself? And why's he have to go off all cheeky-like and get his OWN VI based on his signature model that no one else can buy? Mighty sneaky of him... I'd totally buy a flat black 3-pickup Robert Smith VI... Can't say I'm all that big of a fan of The Cure's music of the last decade or so, but I do think his guitar looks nice.
 
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