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Some Tech Talk |
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So, you always thought you had these ideas about designing your dream bass. You’re brimming with concepts which, you’re sure, will revolutionise the bass playing world once unleashed. If only they would make a body with a bit more curvature here, a bit sharper there. If only they would make the neck with such a profile. If only they would make the bridge with this type of height adjustment. If only they would use these colours and patterns for painting. If only those near-sighted manufacturers would open their eyes to your ideas, you would revolutionise their markets for them. Bassists would flock to shops to put their names on waiting lists for the new YamWarBerger Zap Mk I. Of course, along with the royalties payable to you, there would also be this endorsement deal on all those delicious cabinets, heads and outboard gear. You already start experimenting with variations of how you sign your name, because your silkscreened signature will grace the headstocks of the YamWarBerger Signature Series…….. So sorry, friend. Whatever your idea is, it’s probably been done before. Ever since 1951 when Leo’s first Telecaster-style Precision bass hit the streets, design concepts have come and gone. The better ones have been absorbed into the industry. Some good ideas have been put aside, simply due to high cost implications. Weirdos have come and gone (I mean basses, not people. The people are still with us). These weirdos epitomised, at the time, revolutionary ideas of their designers. Some of these ideas were supported by large manufacturers, who invested money in setting up production lines of these instruments. However, PNSP (Player Natural Selection Process) saw to it that the concepts with merit became standard issue, while the rest became relegated to the category of “collectable”. Fender’s Bass V and Bass VI are examples that spring to mind, and some memory-searching will reveal many more. At our last meeting Llewellyn’s Warwicks, and memories of Victor’s Yamaha collection we saw the previous month, set me thinking. Beneath all those fine instruments there lurked a well-disguised J-bass or P-bass. Let me explain it this way: take one J-bass. Make the neck and fingerboard out of Wenge or Ovangkol (no, those are African hardwoods, Martha). Make the body out of maple. Voice the pickups to be ever so slightly darker sounding. Voila! You have a bass that sounds 95% like a Warwick Corvette. Now, replace the nickel alloy frets with bronze alloy ones, and fit a heavyweight bridge for some added attack and sustain. Presto ! 99% Corvette! Let’s do it the other way round: start with a P bass. Don’t change the woods, but add another P-type split pickup near the bridge. Put a rectangular cover over each pickup. Add a preamp with a tone-shaping preset or two. What do you have? Instant Yamaha BB Series territory. Don’t get me wrong. I would have loved to take the TRB-6 home to give it some permanent TLC. That juicy-looking semi-hollow Warwick Infinity was just crying out my name for the whole evening. The point I am trying to make is that there has been very little real, usable innovation in the bass guitar industry in the last 50 years. A couple do spring to mind: onboard preamps, 5-strings, 6-strings, 7-strings (etc), carbon graphite necks and bodies in various combinations, graphite stiffening in necks, variable scale length in the form of the fanned fretboard, and the Lightwave pickup system (which I know very little about). I’m not quite sure whether particular pickup combinations or introduction of 35” scale length may be regarded as innovations, I will have to sleep on those. Note that body outline and headstock shape changes are NOT innovations. Glitzy paint schemes are NOT innovations. The underlying secret here is that it is the specific combination of characteristics that gives a bass its voice. Now for a statement that borders on heresy, for which I run the risk of being stoned to death. Looking at top-of-the-line instruments, what do the following have in common: Ken Smith, Pedulla, Lakland, Alembic, Yamaha (Japan), Fender (American), Warwick, Music Man, MTD, Tobias, Roscoe …..let’s stop the list here. Except for the woods and electronics, these basses are all very, very similar under the skin. And yet, players will state that each one sounds and plays differently. Why? It is the combination of characteristics that provides the individual voicings. The basses look the way they look because, simply put, they use “tried and true” concepts that work – PNSP in action. What is my motivation for writing this commentary? Perhaps it is to warn you: if somebody, be it a custom manufacturer, mass producer or friend, comes to you with the sales pitch “This bass is gonna blow you away with its new design concept!” be very weary. It may well be exactly that: just sales pitch. I’ll close off with a tip on getting more mileage out of your strings. This was born out of necessity, because I sweat like a pig in summer and I have the uncanny ability to make a set of brand new stainless steels sound like flatwounds within a week. The rule is DO NOT BOIL YOUR STRINGS. They will sound different afterwards. The high heat in the boiling process seems to do something to the integrity of the string windings around the core (my opinion), giving rise to strange harmonics and wolf tones. The easier way: remove the dirty strings, coil them into a bundle, place into a suitable container and cover with lacquer thinners (the stuff you buy at a hardware store). Leave for at least two days to give the thinners time to eat and soften all the gunk in the strings. Remove from the thinners, and swish in methylated spirits to remove last traces of thinners. Leave strings to dry out for a couple of hours. Install, and be surprised. This method works well if you have two sets of strings for your bass: while the one set is being cleaned, you install the other set which has been cleaned previously. This to-and-fro string swopping can continue as long as your thinners lasts. A warning: be careful, thinners is strong stuff. It can damage the finish on some instruments and people. Totsiens Jo |
