Rikkers build, Part 4: The Bass Emerges (and "The Inlay")

Background - I commissioned a custom Olive-faced 5-string bass from Rikkers in Holland - 15 years or so after first considering a custom bass. The experience has been an education, and a great experience (I can recommend Rikkers), so I thought I'd properly document it.
The other parts:
Recap:

• Commissioning the bass: How I decided what to do
• Part 1: Choosing the components
• Part 2: Early progress - the shapes emerge
• Part 3: Ferdinand works the wood.

The Bass Emerges...

Continuing the sequence, we see the face emerge from the clamps...

The Inlay

My original plan for my input to the bass was to have a single celtic knot band at the 12th fret: we keep markers along the top, and the board itself is unmarked apart from the 12th fret. I found some great designs, including these -



I figured something around the middle of that picture would be good: done in abalone, with a bit of sparkle. Ferdinand agreed, and I sent the URL of the site across. We worked through this early on, just after settling on the materials for the build.

The build progressed nicely: we got to this stage:


And I was getting pretty excited: but then.... argh! The inlays are delayed, so we have to come up with a rapid solution (this happened a week ago last Saturday: with 2 weeks to go!!!)... so I start looking for images I can use. I measured up a different 5-string with similar spacing, and decided 40 x 15mm seems about right. We have another Facetime session, and Ferdinand tells me he knows some guys who have a computer-controlled CNC machine, and he shows me a selection of abalone which the inlay could be made out of. I'm intrigued about what might be possible, and want to keep the core idea of a celtic band.

I'm searching for celtic bands, and I find things like



which is pretty good. I filled in the shape to see how it might look, white-on-black: it wasn't bad, but still not great. And besides, with my geek hat on, I know the computer CNC guys are going to want something which isn't a JPG - they're going to want a vector format (see, I can geek!).

I hunt around and find this: Now granted, this looks pretty pixelated, but... it's an adobe illustrator file - a vector format! This could be an ideal way to get things moving quickly…



I tell Ferdinand the bottom one is preferable: I didn't twig at the time that it was a pair of infinity signs: it's a nice figure, and it scales to 15x40 well.

Anyway, I hear back from Ferdinand a couple of days later: The CNC guys were able to rout out the shape nicely, and he then engraved the piece and added black lines to give it the 3-D over/under look - and see the result!


... and when the light hits it right!!!

And after the fretting over the inlay...

And finally - she's got a full set of stainless steel frets!


These are a little more expensive - Ferdinand tells me he uses an entire set of files because they're so hard: this is exactly why I wanted to specify the materials though, longevity and a trouble-free bass!

I did a little editing on my iPad to make a backdrop out of it - you can really see the beautiful work here: the CNC guys made a fine piece, and Ferdinand's engraving has absolutely made the inlay: it's just stunning!

Finally... where the controls go?

This last show is the latest one I've got: I've seen her in one last facetime session, last friday, where Jacco (the God of Wiring, tremble in his Mighty Presence!) and I discussed how the controls would work: a great chat, where the flexibility of tone was paramount - I'm going for the switchbucker pickups, so I want to be able to get as many tones as possible. The recent work I've done on basses with OBP-3 was on basses which were modded, and already had a set layout: this meant stacked pots and blend controls.

Jacco and Ferdinand were kind enough to recommend twin volume pots for the 2 pickups: this bass has a good sized space for 5 controls!

So our final control layout is 2 above, 3 below: we have
- bridge pickup (with push/pull for passive - yay!), neck pickup as 2 separate controls
- bass, mid (with push/pull for the switchable mid on the OBP-3), treble.

That brings us up to date: My next post will be the final build blog post! See you then…

Rikkers Build, Part 3: Hand-carving the back and neck joint

Background: I've commissioned a bass from Rikkers in Holland - it's proving to be a seamless, easy and fun process (I saved the money up before I ordered, so less worry there!), so I thought it would be cool to document the experience for myself, and anyone else who wants to know what it's like. I can recommend Rikkers - I'm lucky enough to have synchronised the order with the London Bass Guitar Show so I can pick it up at the show - in a week!
Recap:

• Commissioning the bass: How I decided what to do
• Part 1: Choosing the components
• Part 2: Early progress - the shapes emerge
  

The Back of the Bodyline: Hidden, but beautiful

This video shows some of the great work which happens at Rikkers, and it was a real pleasure to get shots of the bass being carved: Ferdinand loves working wood with hand tools, and it shows!
Lots more good backdrops here... here's how we start out - the machine does a nice job, but the neck heel needs that personal touch :-)

So Ferdinand gets stuck in: Wood mallets and chisels. Nice!

And the rough-hewn shape emerges:

Now he refines things using a tiny hand-plane!

Very nice.

Now - the bodyline back has some great contours in it, which also needs some carving: more work with the chisel. Love the curve on that neck heel - done by eye and gorgeous!



And, of course, we need to level that out a little...

The end result - very nice.
Next time: The Inlay Crisis and Tantalising Shots of the bass!

Rikkers Build, Part 2: Hearing about early progress!

As I type, it's the 1st of March 2015 and I pick up the Bass in a week at the London Bass Guitar Show: I'm documenting the process for posterity, hopefully it might help anyone who thinks about getting a truly custom bass built.

In this post, I discussed how I came to realise I wanted to commission a bass - short story, I fell madly in love with a Rikkers bass at the 2014 LBGS (careful how you type that) and over the year came to realise that if I set my mind to it, I could get the cash together to commission one.

In this post, I detailed how Ferdinand Rikkers (the man himself!) gave me a great experience choosing woods - and the highly-figured Olivewood top which this bass will have.

Progress!

With enough inputs from me to get going, Ferdinand set about building the bass. I was keen to get plenty of shots: To see the component raw materials converted into the wonderful end result, and the care and attention that goes into the Bass.

The guys have great communication, using Email, iMessage, FaceTime video, regular calls and Facebook messaging - so you're always able to find out what they're up to: and they respond really quickly to incoming messages (we'll see how handy that is in the next installment...)

First, he cut out the top and the ebony for the board. This is a great shot, because it shows the bookmatched olivewood and how it'll contrast with the neck: you can really see the figuring in the top.




I think I got this a couple of days after we decided what the woods would be. As you can imagine, this basically became the desktop backdrop on every machine I have...

Cut your neck out,,,

Next I got updates showing the neck sandwich!

I like the way you can see the markings on here for the body and headstock:




And bottle jacks are evidently a great way to glue neck laminates :-)

We could use a little body...

The block's got a headstock! My first chance to see how the neck laminates look - I like the contrast - and you can see the body wings and top together...




Time to glue our wings on. How are we going to fly without wings?




It's a little like an 8-bit pixel version of the curvaceous beast it will become at this point, but the neck heel is emerging! I like this picture as it shows neck angle in comparison to the wings: interesting!

Giving it some BassFace

With apologies to the LBGS's facebook campaign ;-) How many clamps? LOTS!



And, of course, we need to glue the ebony on. You can see the curves are emerging!




Next time: The hand-tooling shots (gratuitous use of human faculties for shaping raw materials - very Zen)

Rikkers Build, Part 1: Choosing the components

A little background first - after some great success modifying basses (and having them modified) and trying one of their olive-topped 5 strings at the london bass guitar show 2014, I decided to get a similar bass built by Rikkers (based in Holland - http://http://www.rikkersgitaarbouw.nl).

Rikkers go into great detail and apply great craft to their instruments, hand-winding their own pickups - their SwitchBucker units have a great USP - microswitches on the individual coils for superb tonal flexibility. Ferdinand has been making basses for 30 years, and his entire demeanour speaks of a quiet inner satisfaction in the work he does. He's a happy man.

So, it was with great anticipation I entered into the design phase of the project! Rikkers being in Holland, the guys decided to use facetime and general Apple-y tech goodness to consult: I'd already decided that I wanted the Bodyline - which I suspect is amongst the first shapes Ferdinand made when he started out. It's a great looking bass, balanced with a nice taper at the bridge and a great headstock shape. First order of business though, choosing the olive top!

Choosing the top

With enthusiasm and patience, Ferdinand showed me a huge hunk of Olive he has (part of a diminishing stock, apparently!) and proceeded to use a black outline of half the bass and a mirror (neat!) to show me potential tops: the eventual outcome would look slightly different as the wood is cut and then bookmatched.

Here's what I had to choose from:

I liked this one, it has lots of interest and a sweeping curve from the bridge end to the horns:




Ferdinand thought this one would be fun - it's got a frog in it!




This one reminded me of zebras:




And this one has very strong lines with interest on the wings:




Another interesting combination of shapes here - the bass almost has a sort of rounded triangular shape on it.




After some deliberation for a couple of days, I went with my gut instinct: the first one! The combination of sweeping curves in a V, combined with the interesting shapes on the wing pieces, had a Quality about it which drew me to it: I'm a strong believer that your initial instincts are often the best ones, particularly in visual stuff.

Neck and Wings...

Then we settled on materials for the rest of the build: I wanted a "nathan east" style sound - something modern, focussed, with plenty of scope for tonal variation (the OBP-3 Rikkers uses gives a lot here) - Ferdinand had great suggestions, and I did some research via some guitar builder websites: there's some excellent material out there on tonewoods and the kind of attack, decay etc they will give your sound. The bass is a through-neck, so the wings don't contribute a huge amount to the sound: the neck woods are the engine here. After reading about how ebony fingerboards help give a focussed tone, I decided on that (tips from Mr East there) - but what to do for the neck?

After some discussion, we went with a 5-piece laminate of hard maple, Ovangkol and Wenge: the headstock gets faced with another slice of that glorious olive wood.

Hardware and little touches...

We go for black hardware (I like the contrast) and top dot-markers on the edge of the board, but only one inlay on the front of the fingerboard: I wanted to have a single statement input into the bass. I decided to put some kind of celtic knot band at the 12th fret, in abalone so it would shine in the darkness of the ebony.

Frets are stainless steel (I hadn't realised you could make frets in stainless steel!) - a little extra as dressing them actually wears out a set of files! But the longevity will be a great thing: apparently the frets wear out strings, which is great.

In terms of playability, I went for a wide spacing: this bass is to be an all-rounder, with a leaning towards ease of thumb-work for funk!

All these items were discussed with the kind of open, friendly chat you'd want: gentle recommendations, agreement on good ideas: an exciting and engaging process!

How you pay

Rikkers take 25% up front, with the balance before delivery: in my case, this worked really well as I wanted to pick the bass up at the bass guitar show - and kicking the build off in time was crucial.

Next time: How the build progressed, and the updates I got while it was happening!

Commissioning a Bass: Engaging with a builder.

I thought it might be nice to write this one up, and I'll start from the beginning. Remember, this is a personal story: yours might be radically different. But if anything, it proves that some old adages are true...

Background: I've been modding basses recently...

If you take a look at some of the earlier posts here, you'll see I've been tinkering with the basses I already have:

• Tobias Toby Pro-6 - got a local luthier to fit an OBP-3 and GK-3B mini pickup kit (nice job, too)
• Hohner B-Bass V - fitted an OBP-3 myself (good fun)
• Self-assembly fretless (OK, the body is an Allparts one from someone else's project and it's already loaded... but hey) - giving a beautiful neck a better home

I enjoyed the mods I did, and I've been thinking about why I was tinkering: I've got some great basses, and I think the sonic deficiencies (and in the case of the poor Tobias, the bloody great strap-on bracket with a full-on GK-3B strapped to it) eventually showed themselves.

 

Maybe 10 years ago, I considered purchasing a Sei bass - their basses are just beautiful - but the ones I had always fitted what I needed to do (and I didn't have the resources to commission one). I think additionally I didn't have an appreciation back then for the different sounds which woods and electronics bring to a bass - I've now got passive Japanese basses, active Warwicks, the Tobias - and the recent quest to upgrade these opened my eyes to the potential of a truly "personal" bass from a luthier.

The London Bass Show 2014

Checking bas to the abbreviated post I made about it, and remembering (it's a diary, after all) I recall being very impressed by several bass manufacturers - Eve from Scotland make lovely basses, also caught sight of some of the exotica on sale from the US, but ultimately I appear to have fallen for Rikkers - and a particular bass too, their Olive top bodyline:

 

"tried out a Rikker bass, an utterly stunning olive top 5 string fretless with Piezo in individual bridge saddles - gorgeous tone, setup perfect, ~£2100 worth if heaven! Turns out it uses the same Aguilar OBP-3 as I'm having fitted into the Tobias, so I'm hopeful the boost and control will give me something great. The Rikkers guys talked with me for more than half an hour on the Metaphysics of Quality and how they make the guitars: they wind their own pickups, meditate and use Zen breathing, I love their approach. The basses just ooze the results of it. I will be saving up for one."

I remember walking around the show, drinking in amps (I took a Warwick with me), enjoying sitting down with a few custom made basses and playing some different styles, trying pickup combinations and tone settings.

But I really remember that olive top bass: the attention to detail, the story of how they fit the microswitches into the pickups on their switchbuckers (an inspired idea), the excellent detailing on the bass, the solidness of it: I wished I'd had more time to explore it in more detail: the grain of the wood was stunning, and it wasn't a lacquer top: I love waxing basses to clean them: oil and wax gives a feel from the moment you pick up the bass: before you strap it on, it already tells you something from that touch.

Their calm, happy stand actually felt like an oasis (apart from when some guy spent 15 minutes cranking out the worst slap I've ever heard on a P-bass!) - I spent 10 mins just watching the video of them using hand tools, and wrapping wire for pickups.

The upshot.

Around September / October / November 2014, I worked hard to accumulate some cash and decided I had enough to commission a bass: I had no problem deciding where to go - as much as the bass itself, the approach taken by the Rikkers guys just oozed attention to detail. So I got in touch with them and we set up a meeting to talk about what was possible...

Next time, I'll talk about what we talked about. Until then!

Funny thing - I grabbed brochures from other places, but the only "selfie" from the show is me, with that olive top bass.

A Hohner B-Bass: resurrected (and some lessons for everyone!)

Well, the work was well worth it. And I've got several excellent lessons to dispense - this being my first electronics rewire.

First things first, here's the result, with the OBP-3 fitted.




So, left to right - we have:

• Stacked volumes for the pickups
• Push/Pull switched mid
• Stacked bass/treble
• (working!) active/passive switch
• (currently not working) LED for actives on
• New slot-in bridge, replacing the old string-through one.

The basic idea was that the bass wouldn't need any new holes drilled in it for pots: I wanted the OBP-3 as flexible as possible as well. Definite requirement to stack volumes!

As detailed before, the existing volumes (the pickups are passive J-type) were 500KOhm - as luck has it, this is the same as the stacked pots for Jazz basses.

However: the pots are stumpy, being designed for mounting on a J-Bass control bridge. This meant I needed to take a couple of mm off the inside of the control cavity, but I realised that careful routing of a rectangle using a DREMMEL would hold the pot in place as well, by the metal bracket on the top. Problem solved, it's solid with no washers required and without any risk to the top of the bass.

Everything else was reasonably simple - the wiring for a stacked pot with active/passive switch isn't in the Aguilar documentation though, so a melding of 2 diagrams was required, which acknowledges that the pickup signal output from the pots needed to be wired into into the switch where the line that would have been the volume control went.

Found that out using Basschat UK - they rock, btw!

The bridge was an easy mount: slightly wider than the existing one, so careful measurements have me good pencil lines to get the positioning right: luckily the new bridge has a 5 hole arrangement where the old one was 4, so new holes exactly in between the old ones. New bridge has good tone, the low B is spectacular, a great improvement and tight as you like: I'd recommend the upgrade to anyone. It was a Göldo from Thomann, available from https://www.thomann.de/gb/goeldo_bass_bruecke_5_chrome_hw55b.htm and only €27!!

The knobs - however - hard work. The stacked pot needed a set from Allparts: £12! This is for 8mm/4mm and fits the hideous imperial pot size. The mid is a pot from my Tobias: the stacked bass/treble needed an "alpha" fit pot - now, be VERY CAREFUL WHEN FITTING KNOBS WITH GRUB SCREWS TO POTS WITH SPLIT SHAFTS!!

I wound up rebuilding the pot head using some mild steel and superglue to fill the split back up, then put the other half back on and filed the thing back into a good shape to take the knob. It's a good permanent repair and thankfully the knob is straight. By eye, no less!

Results? She plays excellently - always did - but now even the passive tone is better (new pots). With the OBP turned on I've got great capacity to dial up excellent tones: the bass can now produce that excellent Nathan East type tone from "get lucky", which it really couldn't before. The old preamp was all bass, very little treble.

I'll be playing her more in future: she's giggable again!

Bloody CTS split volume pots!!

Tip: if you're upgrading a Hohner B-Bass V with an OBP3 and decide to put a 500K dual stacked pot in two put the two previous knobs onto one, BE PREPARED FOR SOME DREMMEL ROUTING WORK.

Fortunately, this will hold the new split pot in place without needing a grab washer! Win!

Ah, the fun of ripping an old friends guts out to replace em hehe





Speaking of ripped out guts... Old preamp.





And, 20 years newer, OBP-3, already wired for max versatility:





It's a bassist's DIY heaven!

Rebirth of.... 2 BASSES??

We live in interesting times! No sooner have I had my Toby Pro-6 supercharged with an OBP-3 and MIDI, than I rediscover a couple of old gems I haven't played much recently.

1. My 4-string fretless - my "bastard bass" of the body from my original Hohner 4-string from 1988, which I heavily modded using various wood planes and repainted myself. It's an ugly bastard, but the fretless neck is beautiful - a solid slab of ebony.

2. My Hohner B-Bass V, a nice to play 5 string with a crap preamp, which consequently sounds dull, muffled and crap compared to all the other basses I have, despite playing beautifully and being great for slap, tap and fingerstyle with heavier strings on it than I generally use. This thing saw 3 months of action in Andorra and played great, it just doesn't sound good compared to modern active basses. It's got passive pickups and a tiny built-in preamp with basic bass/treble.

So, in reverse order...
For the B-Bass V:
I scored an OBP-3, complete with exactly the wiring I needed already fitted (it was plucked from another bass) for about £60 delivered - steal, complete with push/pull pot for MID switch AND bass/treble stack. Win!

Next I ordered up a new slot-in bridge from Thomann, which I've got, and a CTS stacked 500K/500K pot (a la Jazz bass) to bring the 2 pickup volumes onto 1 pot. I thought about MEC-warwick style blend-and-volume but wanted to keep the costs down a little. So we'll go from vol - vol - stacked bass/treble to vol/vol - treble with push/pull - stacked bass-treble!

So far I've got the pickup volumes wired up, then realised I - gulp - have a little shaving to do inside the control cavity as the CTS pots are really meant to attach to the control plate on a Jazz bass. Arse! Well, I think I can safely manage that, there's a good 6-7mm of wood on the top, and I only need 2mm off (I'll have to shave the whole pot top face, mind - eek!).

Sourcing the control knobs is a PAIN! The "Alpha" sized pot already attached to the OBP-3's bass/treble is 6mm/8mm shaft size, piece of cake to pick up a good looking slightly domed stacked knob. Single knob for the treble, no worries. But the stacked knob for the CTS pot is a real PITA, expensive and not carried in many places in the UK. Consequently, I pay under £5 for the Alpha sized one and £12 for the CTS one at Allparts! Jeez...

And that Fretless 4-string neck? Well, when I took it off the old bass body I found this, which is lovely of me to leave on there -





So apparently I've decided that 20 years mounted on a crap body is long enough. I'm tempted to leave myself another Easter egg comment in CD marker pen this time with the new date on!

The body was an absolute steal on eBay: a complete, loaded Allparts 3-piece alder in 3-tone sunburst, with fender covers and neckplate, all for £116 shipped (eek!) - it's immaculate too, after a little neck adjustment (which I have to complete - you can see the strings aren't straight yet) I got this rather beautiful creature:





My word, retro-tastic! I'm going to need to do a fair amount of head-scratching to get the neck to work well, but the outcome will be a lovely bass.

Wish me luck, it's fun and games at Basexperience tower...

OH MY GOD, THE TOBIAS RESURRECTION IS NEARLY COMPLETE!

Ladies and gentlemen, the upgraded Toby Pro-6 has landed... and she's a beauty!


To stress - I haven't actually held her yet (it's been 6 months since I did that!!!) but this picture from Julian Mullen shows the job - and trust me, this is stunning in comparison to the huge black metal jig that was attached to the rear end previously.
What you see here is a 10 year old Tobias Toby Pro-6, which is a great sounding bass, but it's been upgraded with:

• Internal GK-3B Kit (the only control "mod" on the front is the switch for the MIDI pickup)


• 9V OBP-3 kit


• Stacked knobs up the wazoo to incorporate both a 3-band EQ, pickup blend AND the GK volume control


• An excellent new Hipshot brass bridge - made to order and which got stuck in the US during the massive winter storms they had (in Florida, no less)!

Bridge and MIDI pickup in full view - the hipshot gives me lovely fast string changes and more mass than the old one did. The MIDI pickup is finally properly installed instead of being a jerry-rigged adhesive job (I do still have the old GK-3K, it's currently attached to a 4-string Aria Pro II). Beautiful!


My new socket-wonderment! I still have good ol' analogue out with the OBP-3 giving me far more headroom than before - the stock preamp was really, really quiet compared to the Warwicks I have, and I like a bit of grit when I dig in!


And finally... one very crowded engine bay!
I am literally slavering with anticipation to see what this beast has become: I'll be getting over to www.bassgear.co.uk in Twyford with the GR55 and the right cables in tow to check out and get some tinkering in. Julian will be on hand to iron out any glitches, and then she'll come home, for the first time in nearly half a year.
It's been a long haul, but it looks like we're nearly there. Don't regret a thing!

The mystery of the dead 10" driver (Warwick Neo can, celestion driver)

Aha - I've been a little paranoid about the Neo magnets in my cab dying on me since I had a long hat with David Eden at the Bass show 2014 in London.

One of my drivers failed a couple of years ago, in a Neo Warwick 4x10 cab. I was lucky enough to bag a replacement celestion matched to the originals at pre-raise prices, which was cool.

Anyway, I wanted to see if I could use the magnet for something else, thinking the coil must have died, so I dug out the old speaker and (with some glee) ripped it open today.




Here's the driver. Seems fine, but the cone travel is "crunchy". You can feel it.




Cone out...





Bingo. The nickel plating was lost on the front of the magnet, allowing the elements to corrode it: hence the filings you can see on top, and the "crunchy feel" when gently pushing the cone in and out.

Keep at eye out for this if you've lost a driver, or it's failing: mine sounded buzzy for a while.

The good news is, according to posts I've read, Neo drivers don't fade if they've got good anti-corrosion in place and decent heat sinks. These drivers have good fins on the back: the other 3 are fine, and the new one is too.

An interesting morning!

A quick update on the Toby Pro-6 rebuild... it's started!! Control positions under review...

I have confirmation, the bass is being actively worked on! Current plan is to fit the new bridge and the OBP-3 preamp and controls (we're putting all the pickup blend / EQ controls across 3 of the current 4 pots) - with 18v, naturally - and then we meet up to finalise where the MIDI controls go.

I supplied the guys with a quick picture detailing what I have in mind -





You can see the general idea - incidentally, this pic is of a 5-string, mine is a 6, but the rather glorious grain on this bass is very like mine.

I think the control positions should do nicely - the idea is that the audio controls are located within easier reach than the MIDI ones, as the GR55 will do volume duties with the expression pedal under normal circumstances: the centre-detented pickup blend is right there easiest to get at, the bass is right underneath it, and treble/mid are stacked in front, which feels logical.

The tricky bit (and something Julian Mullen has ideas about) is mounting the supplied patch up / patch down switched on the lower bout of the bass; I don't want them on the surface, it wouldn't help the look of the bass at all and they'd probably get pressed by accident: much more sense to put them out of harm's way. The thing is the bass has a very curved profile: you can see it from this picture. The buttons have a fair diameter and they're flat.

I'll be interested to meet with the guys from Bass Gear and Julian over at twyford - I'm hoping the bass will be there (I haven't seen it in 3 months now!!) and Julian will relay his interesting idea.

My thoughts revolve around using buttons with small tops which have a curved top profile, or perhaps using buttons which don't have tops and carefully forming wood tops for them which keep the silhouette of the bass as it is, which giving positive tactile feel switches for pushing patch up/down.

Keep it here to find out how this plays out... looks like I will have the thing for summer though, and considering I started looking into this last october (!) I think this is a story worth following.

In other news, I finally managed to make a semi-permanent (i.e. reversible) mounting of the GK3 I already have onto my old Aria Pro-II: I managed to get the perfect height adjustment using the supplied plastic bars for the pickup, but the slight curvature of the bass top at the ends meant I had to play a little fast and loose and the pickup wouldn't stay stuck. Cue a couple of blobs from the hot glue gun... it's on solid now!

I then spent about an hour and a half getting to know how to create patches for the Roland GR55 with mapped expression pedal settings and CTL pedal mappings to various effects - I even stumbled on the rather excellent effects routing options which are beautifully rendered graphically on the LED display.

End result? A wicked patch with rhodes piano, pitch shifted an octave up, with tremolo, and to my ear what sounds like a great approximation of the piano sound in "riders on the storm". Even the chords sound authentic. I adore rhodes, it's the most organically expressive keyboard instrument I can think of.

TTFN lowenders

Andy

IOS / Android and "battery drainitis": some thoughts.

I'll divert away from my fascinating story of Tobias Bass Guitar renovation for a moment, if I may.



I'm an iOS user: there are a few reasons why. I use it because:

• it's simple to use


• upgrades are regular and I don't have to rely on networks


• applecare is pretty good


• the operating system curtail(ed) the worst excesses of bad programming by bad apps

I use iOS despite being a programmer, and a repairer of tools, systems and mobiles: I've worked in and around mobile software for more than 10 years, most of that as a system test engineer. I have an android phone and an android tablet which I do upgrades/updates to, I've rooted both and have fun with them. But I don't use them as my main devices (I have an iPhone and an iPad and have for several years now). Why?



Well, until recently it was because iOS stubbornly refused to give app developers more power / freedom. This results in a platform which is better for "less savvy" (and for me, lazier) users.



I know Android does work to apps which aren't running, and can free memory, etc, but the multitasking in Android, plus the low level access to system devices, plus Google's apparent disdain for looking after the platform ("throw it at the OEMs and they will come" appears to have been the mantra) has, I think, resulted in an entire OS platform which is "on the back foot" from the point of view of most of the points above. Google are working hard on those points on several fronts.



But I digress. This is about "battery drainitis", something which is prevalent in both Android AND iOS (particularly post-iOS7). Admittedly that Android link is specific to the Camera app, but I've got something to suggest which might help both platforms.



What we need (surprisingly) is Clippit, the hated paperclip from early office versions!



I've been sending tweets out to people who complain that ios7.1 has led to poor battery life, suggesting they upgrade their iPhones again using iTunes (I'm a sceptic on OTA, I think rewriting the OS from scratch just helps to avoid issues with "patching" OSs - I may be wrong there), but I've had an idea for a system-level application which all smartphone OSs which indulge app designers to use onboard devices (think camera, GPS, 3G, Wifi, accelerometer, etc etc).



We need a system battery monitor alerting application. This isn't the same as the Android app which can tell you what application/service is drawing current, it's in addition to it. iOS needs that battery monitoring app, by the way, Apple.



What the alert does is tell you if your phone is losing battery in an "abnormal" way. Say it's sat at idle on your desk, or you're asleep - if your phone loses battery while doing nothing else, and background processes are causing this, and it looks like you didn't intend it to happen (say, using some form of opt-in to say you don't mind an app using a lot of battery power), then the alert will put a notification in place to say that it has seen abnormal battery drain, and point out the culprit.



If your OS platform supports clamping down on apps which appear to ask too much (iOS's "background app refresh" setting, for instance - possibly the worst named settings option I have ever seen, by the way), then a wizard-style app could be launched to help tell you how to maximise your battery life wrt apps which run in the background.



This would certainly help out people who just never seem to read the endless array of advice like this - it simply doesn't occur to people to just google for it... which isn't a sin, but the device itself could help out.



It's just an idea, but something I wanted to explore a little.

The Toby Ressurection - BEGINS (all parts are confirmed with the Luthier!)

Just got word from the guys at www.bassgear.co.uk - Julian Mullen now has all the components for the great Tobias Toby Pro-6 refit.

To recap, this all started as an idea last year (during november time) when I decided that after 10 years of faithful service the Toby deserved a kick up the arse. It's a good bass, but had some points of improvement:

1. Quiet - the pickups sound pretty good, but the preamp is really quiet, and not that flexible.
2. MIDI - I had strapped the metal frame GK-3B mounting kit on the bass, and decided it would be excellent to have all MIDI support onboard.

By carefully selecting the control configuration (and ignoring the red LED on the GK kit) we're keeping the 4-pot configuration and adding a single switch on the top (which will be the 3-way for the MIDI controller). Patch up and down buttons will be discreetly mounted on the lower side of the bass, and the MIDI volume will take one of the pots while the 3-band EQ, mid-shift control and pickup volumes will all be taken care of across 3 pots.

Preamp will be an Aguilar OBP-3 (what else? It's in so many basses and does a great job) running at 18V (Julian has to rout out a new cavity for the battery anyway, so why not go 18V for the hell of it).

Really looking forward to pictures of the operation - it's a good bass, but really needs this upgrade. Folded in will be a damn good fret dressing to get rid of any buzz and a set up job to get the action down.

Watch this space - if I get any pictures from Julian they'll be up here ASAP!

London Bass Guitar Show - abbreviated highlights!

My first LBGS. And I'm impressed! Went in on the Saturday, and:

- saw Lee Sklar, always nice to catch someone you aspire to be later in life - a true laid back Californian player, you can see why he gets so much work, he loves his craft and is obviously so easy to get along with. And has a good philosophical view on his work.
- saw Frank Bello, massively enthusiastic player (get a new iPod, Frank!). Huge smiles as he cranked out Anthrax classics, and the way he plays Rush had me in stitches!
- totally failed to recognise Jeff Berlin at the Cort stand - he was inviting bass players to try the setup on a bass (which was ultra-low) - lovely fellow, I thought he was a stand-guy. The player before me nodded appreciatively, Jeff offered me the bass, I sat down, played some of Midnight (arranged for bass, it's a 2-handed tap piece by Joe Satriani) and said it was ideal for that and that my Aria is similarly set up. Then I dug in a little and said that the E was too low and had buzz - "what if you play really gently so you can hear every note", says Jeff - "nah, it's still too low", says I. At this point one or two eyebrows are raised in the amassed audience. I gave him the bass back and someone asked "what are you going to do now?" And he said "raise the action on the E!" Hehe
- changed strings at the show just outside the auditorium entrance haha
- tried out Gallien-Kruger, Eden and Warwick amps with the Warwick I brought along for the job
- tried out a Rikker bass, an utterly stunning olive top 5 string fretless with Piezo in individual bridge saddles - gorgeous tone, setup perfect, ~£2100 worth if heaven! Turns out it uses the same Aguilar OBP-3 as I'm having fitted into the Tobias, so I'm hopeful the boost and control will give me something great. The rikker guys talked with me for more than half an hour on the Metaphysics of Quality and how they make the guitars: they wind their own pickups, meditate and use zen breathing, I love their approach. The basses just ooze the results of it. I will be saving up for one.

Also met several bassists and chatted - including one who spotted my bass in earl's court tube and told me there was a train running to Olympia, which was massively appreciated!

And I got to see Paul Turner and shuffler, whose groove and infectious smiles are exactly what you want to see in a band. They love their little side project!

On my way to London Bass Guitar Show 2014. Thoughts.

Platform has 2 teenage girls who will develop tech neck with their mobile use. Continuous selfies abound. Passenger on my iPod. Discover headphones that came with the iphone 5 sound great with the iPod classic. Reflect on intellectual irony and age-specificity of blogging about teenagers spending all their time faceborking selfies.

And also, bass is with me. 10 minutes of quiet before the train, in the brittle but bright march 1st Sun. Strings to buy. Gear to try. First time in years!

See you there. That's my train.

An update on the Tobias Rebirth - plus London Bass Guitar Show 2014

Well, the Toby gets ever closer... the bridge (recap: it's a Hipshot 6 string solid brass bridge, painted black to match the existing hardware: a Type B) got held up in the US extreme cold weather, and ended up in Florida(!) - Barrie at Bass Gear is chasing it up.

I like to think that a little bit of my Bass decided to fly south for the winter, but in reality when I get this bass it's going to be after nearly 5 months of trying to find someone who would do it, and then finding someone who would do it, and then having trouble sourcing components (first the Roland GK3B kit, then the bridge).

I've also got my Saturday 1st March ticket for the London Bass Guitar Show - http://www.londonbassguitarshow.com - first music show I've been to in years: I plan to take a 4 string, maybe the Aria (which now has the GK3B attached to it) or possibly the Warwick Ltd Ed 2004.

Any bass people heading that way - drop me a line, we'll meet up! Looking forward to seeing the Bass Gear stand, and the BassChat guys, as well as trying out a bit of gear. If I took the Aria I could try out some new Roland synth gear, I guess... ;-)

I've reached the point where I'm not really that worried about tiny increments in tone which a lot of people think they're getting when they try out new gear: your ears will get tired really quick trying amps side by side. I think you need time with a piece of equipment to get to know it, to find out what it will do, and if it works well with your fingers and basses. The old Warwick Pro IX head I use has headroom in spades - no worries there - and I think the only gear envy I have is for the Breeze lads who have a Trace Elliot V4 15 inch combo, which is an utter beast. Weighs about 20 tons, but that thing has the hugest tone ever created - played it for 3 months in Andorra with my 2x10 trace cab (as was - traded it in now). I'd love a V4 head (or even - gulp - a V8) but those things are like rocking horse sh*t now.

We'll see what interesting new gear there is on Saturday, I guess! Lots of pics to come.

Recycling - a GK3B! Updates on the Toby rebirth, and Sheds: A studio phenomenon

Good times in 2014, as predicted!

GK3B recycling

First - I've retrofitted the GK3B to my 4-string 80s Aria Pro-II Integra - the only other bass I have which it will fit (all the others either have arched tops behind the back pickup, or pickups which are too close to the bridge, or both...).

This, as it turns out, is an excellent choice, as I keep this bass set up with extreme low action and very light (read 30-50-70-90) strings - this means the bass is a supremely expressive beast, good for tap, slap, and string bending. In fact, the strings are so light I have to adjust to using it if I've been using the other basses for a while.

I kicked myself into getting it done for a musical collab which is starting up with a friend of mine who works exclusively on synths, and I figured he'd love what the GR-55 can do... but as you know, the Tobias is away getting a GK kit fitted internally, so I've got nothing to drive the GR-55 with. Fortunately I carefully removed the externally mounted GK-3B before I handed the bass over!

The result is actually pretty good - the bass is in metallic white, with black hardware, so it's a great match -





The bass has a curved front with a flat central stripe, top to bottom, so the pickup fits nicely (managed to get the heights perfect with a little adjustment) but the controller still needs the full metal jacket on there as it won't mount anywhere else - the bass also has small wings (but it's still an angel).

Put a new named profile in for the Aria on the GR-55, some tiny tweaks to sensitivity for the strings, and it's go go go - and the expressive nature of the bass comes through straight away, the more organic and squidgy synth noises can do some really weird stuff, and sounds which feed back can actually move through different harmonics!

The Toby Rebirth
We're just waiting for the bridge - custom manufacture, brass with black coating. I'm expecting good things of this hipshot, apart form anything else the Toby will finally fall in-line with most of my other basses (including the aria) in having quick-string changing capabilities. We don't do it that often, bassists, but I think we all agree that changing strings is a lot less painful when you don't have to unwind the strings at the top.

Also - I recycle my strings (yeah, I'm tight) by cleaning them in a meths bath - and if you don't have to unwind the strings, it makes a massive difference to how long they'll last as you don't stress the metal in the top of the string where it winds onto the tuners.

The experience of playing the aria with the pickup just whetted my appetite for getting further into editing patches and sounds on the GR-55. That thing has some excellent sounds....

SHEDS...
Great day yesterday. A friend down Guildford way who writes cool electronic stuff and I decided to get together for the first time to lay some bass down on some tracks he's kicked around: we got some good sounds. I took a decent amount of kit down with me too - I figured we could hunt for noises to suit his stuff, and man, was I right.

Kit that went with me included:
- Aria, now GK-3B equipped
- a 5-string fretless
- The Ashbory rubber stringed bass (great for sub-dub type bass)
- A regular acoustic guitar (I can pick out arpeggios pretty well, for Massive attack style backing and ambience)
- Bass PODxt plus floorboard
- GR-55 synth
- Warwick CCL combo for monitoring

Great afternoon and evening, 4 or 5 hours of creativity - pure play, exactly the kind of stuff which keeps all musicians energised. It turns out his electronic influences are exactly the kind of music I'm interesting in working on using live bass: Massive Attack style stuff with a lot of emotional energy.

And his studio is in a shed at the end of his garden - a BIG shed with plenty of power. It's a sweet place - heaters, good lighting, his studio gear is nice and simple and his monitors are excellent. The place was big enough to set up the gear, guitar stands etc and be able to stride about, pacing while trying out sounds, etc.

All in all, good times: I'm thinking I need to get the GK-3 pickup I've had lying about onto the Strat: 1 guitar and 2 basses all MIDI equipped? Interesting times.

Electric Bass String Cleaning: or, how I saved a fortune

This post will save you money, I guarantee it. Early on in my bass playing life, when I had paltry sums to buy strings with, I used to boil them to remove the skin, oil and cack which causes them to go flat. I've always liked zingy (played in, mind) strings - plenty of top end, good mids and rounded lows. I'm not a massive fan of the flat dull thud which some people regard as fine - not my thing, and my opinion mind, don't be offended if you're happiest playing 10 year old strings to get that tone from the 70s ;-)

Boiling worked, I even added washing up liquid at one stage - but, of course, you're effectively promoting chemical reactions. Water acts as a mild acid of sorts, and promotes rust in the steel of the strings - particularly, I noted, in the cores of the strings I was using at the time (rotosound Geddy Lee style PSDs I recall).

More recently, I've used Warwick black labels since the warwicks I have came with them, and they seem like a great compromise between cost, sound and longevity, and I hunted for a better (read: lazier and more effective) way to clean strings.

METHS!

I can recommend this: the meths does less harm to the strings (they certainly seem to survive better), it actively stops water (we used to add it to petrol tanks to soak up water and improve running in cars with carbs), and it does an excellent job of removing the oils and skin grease from the windings of the roundwounds.

I use an old sweet jar, with extra sealing inside the lid to ensure there's no evaporation. Big neck (you need to get the strings in there), and buy enough meths to fill the jar. I found it in B&Q, available in smallish bottles. Don't worry if it's pricey, the meths will very quickly pay for itself.

All you have to do is wrap the strings up in a small enough loop to get them in the jar, make sure they're under the meths, stick the lid on and leave them for as long as you want. I've left strings in there for months(!) and they've been great.

When drying, make sure you do it somewhere ventilated - the meths will stink the place out while it evaporates from the strings - but it won't take that long.

I can get 3 or even 4 uses out of a set of Warwick black labels: that's a serious saving on a 6-string bass.

Let me know if this helped you via the usual buttons - like it on facebook, or RT on twitter. If you use it, why not say you found this useful on Google+? ;-)

I've picked a great New Years resolution... by accident!

While chatting with someone a few evenings ago, they asked me about New Years resolutions, and without thinking, I replied "to fear less".

I've adopted it now, it's great - short, specific but sweeping and punchy enough that I'll remember it.

Every time I mention it to someone they ask me what I'm afraid of - to which I reply - "everything!". I'm a bass player, the choice of instrument was probably a reflection of the lack of self confidence in an 18 year old who didn't want to overdo it.

I've pushed bass into places a lot of people don't go: this year I intend to lever the newly refurbished Toby and make some truly odd noises. I've started editing video already, finding the time to get to grips with (of all things) windows movie maker 2012, which - gasp - turns out to be very good!

Here's to 2014 - to anybody reading this, join me in fearing less, loving more and living well.

CLEARING OUT / REBUILDING YOUR STUDIO.... gulp (anyone else done it?)

I'm about to embark on a comprehensive 2014 studio cleanup - and we're talking top to bottom here. The room isn't huge, so a lot of built up stuff has got to got, to make room for an electric drum kit I haven't had set up for several years: I want to get back into some Zen-like co-ordination drumming again.

To do this, I'm actually going to:

1. Pack the studio into boxes as if I was moving house, categorising the contents according to what they are and cataloguing everything
2. Set up the drum kit
3. Reverse engineer the rest of the studio around this, removing everything which isn't studio related.

At the end of the day, there's a lot of other stuff in there which isn't core studio stuff. I'll get some cable clips and guitar hangers for the walls too: really trick it out.

Anyone else attacked this task and won?

Tobias 2014, further developments - the tale of the Bridge...

It's great news - the bridge from Hipshot looked like it was going to cost £80 to ship(!) - but Barrie from BassGear was on the case and secured it as a custom build: brass Type B Hipshot with all the quick release goodness I've got on the other basses (warwick and aria pro II) for £135 - brass and painted black. Sweet!

I'm itching for the bass back with all the goodies onboard: the GR55 doesn't have anything to power it at the moment (I'm thinking I might fit the pickup I have to one of the other basses!), and those modelled bass sounds are calling me to play some Rush... some freebird... some original material!

The bass is going to be a real monster when it's finished. I'm hoping it'll be tap-friendly as well: I have a lot of old tap pieces (I arranged Day At The Beach for bass, also Midnight (both satriani tracks) and learned a few Stu Hamm solos years ago - these usually get practised when I use the Aria as it's strung really light and the bass itself is stupidly playable (it's on 30-50-70-90, a la Mark King!) - thin strings, low action, pro setup did that for that bass.

The 5 string gets 20-40-60-80-100-130 (I like a decent wedge on the B) - Warwick black labels. Great strings, they come up beautifully after a week in Meths!

Toby’s Rebirth: the bridge to 2014

Puns aplenty in this Bass blog… yep, as I mentioned, my 2000s era Tobias Toby Pro-6 is having a makeover – MIDI, Aguilar preamp, the lot – and fortunately Julian the Luthier has been up to his eyeballs in work, so I got the chance to realise that one of the other aspects of the bass I wanted to get right was the bridge.

The original bridge is workmanlike, but I’d really like it to have quick-release ball-end design – like the Warwicks and the old Aria Pro-II – so I can change strings quickly and easily, and indulge the economic side of my personality by not having to unwind (and therefore stress) the ends of the strings. See, I like to leave my used strings in a big vat of meths I keep for the job – leave them there for a couple of weeks, and they come out like new: no rust (no water!), and no skin / oil in them either (this is what makes strings go dead). This means I can keep using the same very reasonably priced Warwick black labels strings up to 5 times (and I do, on the Warwicks) – if the 6 string had the same design of bridge, it’d make life a lot easier, and this is supposed to be about giving an old friend a new start.

So, after some great suggestions from Barrie at Bass Gear in Twyford - http://store.hipshotproducts.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=348 looks good in Black: the curves of this bridge should work really well with the bass, and they do a lot of different string spacings, plus there’s a great PDF I could send direct to Julian of the mm-dimensions of the bridges.

I see this refit as a new birth for the bass, a new start – not a new relationship with a bespoke bass (I had considered that already), but a fantastic new lease of life – even when I removed the black clamp holding the GK-3B from the bass, it suddenly looked… well, nicer. I can’t wait to see it with the MIDI pickup fitted properly, all the electronics internal, and the original jack socket AND the 11-pin GK socket available, with the 2 patch change buttons on the lower side.

It also gives me a chance to get the bass set up from the outset as a MIDI bass – fix the fret level problems (they’re not huge, but they are tedious) – get it really humming as a fingerstyle and tap-based instrument. I’ve got other basses to slap, this one is intended to give me the ultimate fingerstyle funk/rock/synth platform to launch into 2014. I think it’ll make a real difference to pick the bass out of the case, set up the GR55 and look really pro.

Anyone out there ever done similar?

The Great Tobias Toby Pro-6 Makeover BEGINS! (3 months late!)

The prologue

Way back in the mists of time (2003), Andy bought a Toby Pro-6 – a fine, very reasonably priced 6 string bass. He used it for many years, on many projects, and many bands – including the epic 15,0000 crowd gig with Janeiro in 2005 – and it’s been in use for 10 years. Over time, it’s picked up a few idiosyncracies – including a GK-3B, bracketed on with the pickup glued in place using the nifty shims Roland supply.

Bless em, the Internet Archive wayback machine even still has the Musicyo site on it!

https://web.archive.org/web/20040210040239/http://www.musicyo.com/product_specs.asp?pf_id=336

It’s got a good sound, but… it’s always been a bit quiet. I cranked it as high as I could get it - I used to use the Bass POD to boost it further, then when I got the GK3B and GR20 I ran it with the output volume turned up, which made a big difference (and told me the pickups had a pretty good intrinsic tone).

Then I got the GR55 – about 3 months ago. That unit is excellent. My eyes were opened to a world of lower latency, and the modelling… I play the toby, and a vintage precision comes out. Now it’s a rickenbacker. Outrageous. But…

the bass is now in need to upgrade. D’oh, it’s G.A.S. (gear aquisition syndrome, if you haven’t heard of it). I thought I was past that… but there it is, the old familiar feeling.

So I decided it was time for a 10 year tune-up. The whole 9 yards – fix the buzz that appeared at the 15th fret… upgrade the electronics (I started thinking about aguilar preamps)… get the GK3B fitted internally.

This was all about 3 months ago – I approached a luthier in Reading, who initially sounded enthusiastic, then went utterly silent – no response! OK… I post a message to BestBassGear on twitter, and they give me the details of… BassGear (no relation) in Twyford! These guys are much more friendly. Much more interested. And they secure the services of Julian Mullen – round about my birthday in October, we get together at BassGear HQ and talk, discussing how to fit an aguilar OBP-3, 18v of battery AND a GK-3B kit into it.

Then Roland take over a month(!) to ship it! And today… I dropped off the Toby with them! Keep tuned for how this goes – I’m truly excited that this bass, which has served me well for a long, long time, is going to get a comprehensive makeover in every department.

Work / Music Balance

While I'm not one of those rabid bloggers who thinks every last aspect of their lives is worthy of scrutiny, there is one thing I've been considering lately which definitely falls into the "mid-life (most would say tediously self-indulgent) metaphysical reassessment" cateogory.

I've recently purchased a GR-55 to go with the GK-3B on the bass, I'd been using the GR-20 on and off for years, with varying success - the tracking on the low B was always pretty suspect, but with a bit of judicious shifting you could play an octave up and get some great bass synth sounds out of it.

The GR-55 is a revelation by comparison - I've only gigged it once, but the fun I had creating sounds on it for that gig was great. The rig emerged as the bass POD and GR-55 as two sides, switched through a boss 2-way channel switcher. I used some synth sounds with modelled bass mixed in, which sounded great, but on some other tracks I wanted the regular sound of the bass - the GR-55 has a live direct feed of the unfettered bass pickup sound.

That last paragraph relates back to the title of this post. I lost myself for nearly 2 hours just... well, *playing* with settings and sounds! It was musical playtime at its' finest: directed, to try to find sounds for the songs we were playing (we did "moves like jagger" and I really wanted something like that inverted "waaaaaahp" on the original recording), but playful, with constant changes, like sculpting or painting, until I was happy enough with the solution.

Pure quality-led concentration: the best kind.

Trouble is, I'm getting that at work as well: this means I have 2 sides to my life, both of which are fulfilling and engaging - I literally have to tear myself away from work at the moment, it's great stuff.

I'm not trying to give myself the big up btw, or encourage trolls, etc. I'm going to have to schedule more playful music work - jams with Tony at PhatTone studios in Reading are a good start, had one week before last, we had a blast - some really cool funky lines, he laid some down on logic pro.

So I guess the moral is: love what you do, love your music: I appreciate I won't make anything like the money I make at work doing music stuff - these days, making money from music is frankly a pipedream unless you're a clinician, teaching, etc - so it becomes a job: enjoy being able to be playful while you can. Maybe work has its uses after all.

Thunderbird == genius

No shit, sherlock… if this was algorithmic, the programmer is drunk!

Why shouldn't lunchtime be musical?

Going to work on some solo pieces for half an hour. Zen out!

Fully filled weekends

It’s been a while since I had a weekend that full. We covered nearly 26 miles on bike on the Thames path, although we did forget to cross the bridge at Sonning so the route to Henley from Reading was… interesting. The route back was great. We have a habit of doing that, we’ll set out thinking signs will tell us what we need to know, then get sort of lost.

Current slang for this between us is “is this the road to Loutro?” which I’m sure some will recognise.

I can recommend the cycling from Reading to Henley: there’s a long stretch in the countryside, it passes by some very pretty locks on the Thames (one of which has it’s own Tea Shop) and the sunbathing potential is HUGE on days like today. I can safely say that the F1 race didn’t even cross my mind.

So Saturday, I spend the morning getting ready for the evening wedding gig (the drummer from Breeze, Steve), including some great tone-hunting on both the bass POD xt and the GR-55 synth pedal I’ve just got – that thing has some serious capabilities, including on-board USB stick music file playing, your own backing tracks? Not a problem. I got back from the gig and was asleep just after 2am after winding down.

Sunday, we get up late (maybe 9am), I sort out the bikes (mechanical checks, brakes, tyres, oil chains etc) we get them on the back of the car, drive to where I work, which happens to be a short ride from the Kennet and Avon canal, which has excellent cycle paths. We then ride to Henley and back! Now utterly exhausted, body humming after the exertion. Loved it.

Roland’s GR-55: It can Save Your Gig

I had a great gig last night, but it could have been so very different. I’ve had a GK-3B pickup on my 6-string bass for a while now, and I’ve used a GR-20 synth a few times for tracks, mainly for small backing sounds and laying down backing while writing tunes. I dipped into the technology again for the first time in years and found out about the GR-55 from some posts on Twitter, mainly about a spectacular fretless bass player in the US who uses a slightly modded one as his main solo gig-machine.

Intrigued with the apparent capabilities, I was lucky enough to be able to buy one – I haven’t bought any new gear for several years now, last thing was the NEO cabs for the stack, and that was probably 7 years ago. So, suppressing GAS, I decided to try one out, properly, with the bass, and see if it was all it was cracked up to be. I was impressed enough to buy it.

My plan was to use the GR-55 on “forget you” (Cee Lo Green) to get the high-pitched glockenspiel-type stuff during the choruses, as it tracks the bass. I got something which just about worked on the GR-20, but it tracked really badly on the low B (the guys in the band pitch the track down a semitone). The GR-55 coped very well, and additionally it let me put a piano underneath as well. The UI is intuitive enough that I worked out how to get the expression pedal to act as a volume control just for the synth bits, leaving the real bass signal untouched.

Then I started to explore the signal modelling capabilities – they take the signal from the GK3B and turn it into other instruments, not MIDI triggering, so no lag. We were doing some tracks which sound great with an old P-bass, so I dialled up and EQd a really nice sounding vintage Precision. Sounded great!

So the gig comes around, and I’ve got this great rig going – I’ve got the GR-55 feeding 2 signals into a 2-way Y switch, with the single feed back to my amp. On one side is the “full” output, which contains all 4 channels (synth 1, synth 2, modelled and real bass pickup) and the other is the bass output, which is just the bass. This is going through the Bass POD XT, which I’ve got patches on for some of the other songs (auto wah, etc).

All went well in the gig, until… the battery in the bass went dead! Cue silence in one of the tracks, my sheets of patch to song are out of the window… and after some confusion about what the hell is going on, I realised I could use the P-bass patch on the GR-55 because it doesn’t use the bass pickups at all!

Bingo – I play the rest of the first set on a vintage P-bass – although without any synth effects on some tracks. The audience do not care, it’s a wedding and they’re having a great time. The guitarist (the excellent Ryan Robinson) doesn’t even notice, but the drummer does because the bass failed at the start of “living on a prayer” – ummm, I think the bass is mandatory on the start of that track…

Moral of the story – complex tech can be complex, but it can give you a great safety net!

The second set went beautifully: Nigel Parsler is an excellent drummer and Ryan Robinson nails more styles than any guitarist I’ve come across, his funk chops are great.

Weather: crap. Diagnosis: studio time.

I've done a lot of cycling recently, thanks to the better weather. Since it's turned wet and crap again, it's time to work on the... Smaller muscles. In my fingers. In the studio. Yay me!

I've always thought having a woodshed in your house was odd. Especially when the axes are all blunt.

Enough punnery!

Bass boogies

I remember years ago reading an interview with Joe Satriani who said he used to just sit and noodle, and end up coming up with what he called Satch Boogies. It's where the song of the same name came from, I think.

I was sitting with the acoustic bass yesterday, which I've enjoyed a lot more since I strung it with electric strings (elite blue labels, very light) than the phosphor bronzes I had on there - the bronze strings always felt sticky, uncomfortable and I didn't like the smell (which I'm guessing is copper). I fiddled around with some shapes as usual, climbing around, but ended up doing some kind of open E boogie thing with high neck register figures in between, which turned out to be loads of fun on a sunny day.

Anyone else do this when they're not trying to overtly write or learn something? Those moments when you're just indulging in the pure playfulness of music? I need to make more time for those moments.

Upcoming wedding gig, for one of the Breeze boys! Setlist reactions…

The drummer for the band I filled in a season with in Andorra in 2007 is getting married. Apart from having a stag do in Vegas (not too shabby), he’s putting the icing on the cake by employing my fingers to put the low end into his wedding band.

I’ll be working with a couple of great guys to form part of the core band – Ryan Robinson on guitar and Nigel Parsler on drums.

Ryan stunned me with his Talkbox on “living on a prayer” when we gigged in Brackley with Steve on drums – suddenly what could be seen as something of a cheesy rock song actually took on a huge amount of energy. He’s a great player, Ryan, we share some music tastes as well.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever gigged with Nigel though, according to his bio he’s done the ACM as well so we’re guaranteed a great night.

I thought it might be interesting to list the setlist I have so far – there’s a lot of personnel changes as you can imagine, Steve has the breeze guys up and down in both sets for a sort of supergroup – and give me reactions to the tracks. A lot of them are Breeze staples. The keys are in the list, as is the persons involved, to a degree…

1st set

crazy little thing called love (jay)(D) – realised I played this first time in about 1989 with Fat Freddy’s Cat in St Andrews. I’m taking the time to go through it again and re-learn the feel, it’s a bouncy bassline and I didn’t appreciate that before. Finding fun!

shine (jay) (Eb) – Never played this, it’s the Take That tune. Thankfully the progressions are simple and the tune spent so much time advertising Morrisons that it’s earwormed enough into my long-term memory and just seems to come out of the fingers on demand. Cool, might even be able to try some vocals on it.

sweet home (jay) (D) – The original feelgood track with the original feelgood frontman, Jay

3 tracks with kelly singing – don’t know what these are yet, I’ll have to wing it on the day!

forget you (neill) (Bb) – learned this a while back for a Brackley red lion gig but we never did play it, have been learning that little funky bass breakdown to get it just so. Definitely a 6 string job, I’ve been considering the synth to give the bass a little more pop (literally)

dont stop me now neill (F) – great track, this one will be one to enjoy

billy jean neill (B) – always enjoy this one, that metronomic beat is infectious to play, always find myself bouncing from foot to foot while I play it.

 

2nd set

mustang sally (steve charlie) (C) – Steve will sing this of course. I reckon his voice is better than the bloke from the commitments

valerie  (michelle) (Eb) – I don’t have the Winehouse version lying about, I’ll just have to work on the original

sex on fire (jay) (E)  - wonder if we’ll do the start properly… I’d better polish it just in case!

moves like jagger (jay neill kelly rich) (A) – Now this one I think I will get synth bass on, I think there’s a patch on the GR somewhere which will do the job.

funky music (rich and caj) (E) – another track I’ve been playing for 20 years, but these guys get the modulations at the end right, it’s a great track when you do it right to the end!

shake your tail feather (neill) (Eb) – I’ll be channelling the Duck himself on this one. Look down on me and wink with a puff of yer pipe Mr Dunn

dont stop believing (neill) (E) – Neil sings this really well, the man’s a star – how to keyboard players do that?

bo rap (breeze) – at last, bohemian rhapsody. Another track I learned ages ago!

let it be hey jude (breeze) – or, as I coined it after seeing McCartney miming at the olympics – “I, look like , your, Nana na-na, Nana na-na, Hey Jude”

eBay tales

I've had an original line6 Bass POD for years - its seen me well for live shows for at least - what - 7 years or something? The floorboard controller for it does a great job, tuner, wah, volume, all in one.
When the PODxt came out I was interested, especially as it didn't have the annoying gap while changing patches, but the cost of a replacement system - bass PODxt plus the FBV short board - always seemed to put me off enough not to bother.
Well, fast forward to now, and there are good deals to be had on eBay! Fortunately, the gear is well built and often spends its life in studios: total cost on eBay (I was amazed to win both first time with a reasonably high max bid) was a very reasonable £170 including P&P.
I even had the chance to fix the FBV a bit - switch replacement. I can recommend Doctor Tweek on the web - fast, great communication and he's got the right parts for the job: after desoldering the old switches, easy job, completely fixed. Satisfying - an irony is that this means I now know how to fix it later, and also how solid it is.

Great new project, built new equipment for it!

New project: I've got hooked up with a truly talented, enthusiastic vocalist - She's had stuff released before.
Great energy in her songs, and a new genre for me: reggae, but with a lot of other styles thrown in. She loves her crossover - she's into loads of styles, and regularly likes to flip between them.
With that in mind, this time around I finally knuckled under and made up the monster live studio PC in a flightcase I've always wondered about... Net result, a machine which runs ableton live, with a behringer MIDI floor controller to kick off the scenes and modify tempo.
We've tested it, and it seems like it'll do the job - the drummer's got great tempo, and the gear is reliable.
All I need now is a better audio interface than the old 2x2 I'm using... Anyone got a MOTU 828 I can have?

Unsolicited Ambulance chaser claim SMS text FAIL

Look what I received:

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Sent by unregistered version of SMSCaster: FREE MSG: We have now had the £3150 compensation released by the insurer for your accident. To claim this now reply '

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Now THAT's tragic. Pathetic on sooOooooooOOOOO many levels.

When you're not funkifising

Zen-chill out growing 10ft tall tomatoes.

When you grow your own food, you feed your soul as well.


Just lashed them all up properly. Needed doing.

In other news... Fantastic new musical project starting, big bass and BIG tech.

Chicken Soup Mix 1

Chicken Soup Mix 1

Just wanted to re-share chicken soup. It's in need of some remixing at the end, I think... but I'm pretty happy with it.

Solo bass pieces and meditation.

I've had the itchiest fingers last couple of days... Went to a wedding over the weekend, which was fun, but I didn't take a bass (just a grip exerciser). Managed to tear a calf muscle dancing, which is a minor limp now (healing fast, I think).

The itchiness, though, developed into a sort of dark, sleepless yearning. I've got to play, play new things, write new things. Weird, out of character things. New sounds from research, radio 1, Maybe buy a Novation controller at some point, abandon old band concepts, shrink the personnel, programme a lot: expensive synth strings, horns, drums...

So to calm the beast, tonight was declared "dig out old tap pieces and start learning a new meditative solo piece" night. Other people's work, all, but something to still me before bed.

Satriani's "midnight" and "day at the beach" work surprisingly well on a 4 string, although the warwick's too heavily strung. The rhythm for Midnight took time to come, but the familiar alpha waves hit me and that sense of continuity, stillness, chronological nowness - it came to me, fleetingly, leaving that same beautiful feeling of being "at one" with something, anything, instead of the terrible otherness of day jobs.

New piece to learn is "Jacob's Ladder" from 100 degrees and rising, by Incognito. It's a beautiful piece, with a mainly Latin feel behind some wonderfully articulate gentle slap and fingerstyle, all light, feather-touch and playful. Things I'd rather be!

Overall, a good start, I've got the main A-E part right, along with the higher register piece which breaks it before it heads to F-B flat. It's so fast I think I need the Aria Integra, with the light 30s on it, to get the feel right. Beautiful piece, the strings towards the end are really nicely done. The whole album's got some great moments on it, they rein in the worst excesses of the strained female vocals on nearly all the tracks they appear on.

Keep playing, world. It's important.