About a month ago I happened on a GR LaSiDo (Godin) Z1 fretless bass for sale in great condition and, liking slightly different stuff anyway, I bought it.
It arrived safely and especially considering its age it’s in great condition - however, the first thing that I noticed upon trying it was that the output from the E string was a bit lower than the others. No problem, the Zeta preamp has balance trimpots to deal with just that issue......
So, I took off the control cavity cover and no Zeta preamp - instead it has had, at some time a John East SPM -02 two band preamp fitted, with the piezo saddles connected to it in parallel. To be fair, it’s a very tidy job and if it wasn’t for the volume imbalance I’d have been happy enough with it.
I contacted the guy I bought it from and he said (and I believe him) that he’d never been into the control cavity - all he’d ever done was fit new batteries and change strings from time to time while recording three albums with it, with his band, The Indigo Kings.
So I contacted John East, who doesn’t make a piezo preamp/buffer stage with trimpots but he did suggest using a Richter PPX - he reckoned it would play well with his preamp.
I bought one, connected it all up and, of course, I can set relative string outputs just fine.
What’s puzzling me now, however is a different top end tone between strings - the E and A seem to have more output around what sounds like 18kHz (at a guess) whereas the D and G sound less crisp but warmer. It’s not a string issue - you can hear the difference if you just lightly scratch the piezo saddles.
I can’t remember noticing this in the original (to me) configuration...
It’s not unlivable with, but once you hear something you can’t unhear it.
Maybe someone out there can throw some light on this, I apologise for this long post.
Cheers,
Andy.
PS - it is a spectacularly nice bass to play, especially after a little bit of levelling beam work on the fingerboard - which is why I’m trying to get it to be the best it can be.
It arrived safely and especially considering its age it’s in great condition - however, the first thing that I noticed upon trying it was that the output from the E string was a bit lower than the others. No problem, the Zeta preamp has balance trimpots to deal with just that issue......
So, I took off the control cavity cover and no Zeta preamp - instead it has had, at some time a John East SPM -02 two band preamp fitted, with the piezo saddles connected to it in parallel. To be fair, it’s a very tidy job and if it wasn’t for the volume imbalance I’d have been happy enough with it.
I contacted the guy I bought it from and he said (and I believe him) that he’d never been into the control cavity - all he’d ever done was fit new batteries and change strings from time to time while recording three albums with it, with his band, The Indigo Kings.
So I contacted John East, who doesn’t make a piezo preamp/buffer stage with trimpots but he did suggest using a Richter PPX - he reckoned it would play well with his preamp.
I bought one, connected it all up and, of course, I can set relative string outputs just fine.
What’s puzzling me now, however is a different top end tone between strings - the E and A seem to have more output around what sounds like 18kHz (at a guess) whereas the D and G sound less crisp but warmer. It’s not a string issue - you can hear the difference if you just lightly scratch the piezo saddles.
I can’t remember noticing this in the original (to me) configuration...
It’s not unlivable with, but once you hear something you can’t unhear it.
Maybe someone out there can throw some light on this, I apologise for this long post.
Cheers,
Andy.
PS - it is a spectacularly nice bass to play, especially after a little bit of levelling beam work on the fingerboard - which is why I’m trying to get it to be the best it can be.
