JS II bass; what's the best amp/pickup combination?

gilded

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Hi,

New guy with a question about an Old bass, a JS II fretless.

In '74 or '75, I was really digging the idea of a fretless bass. The reality of no frets and a 34" scale, like on a Fender fretless, seemed rather daunting, so I found a Guild JS II fretless bass, short scale version. It was a fun bass, but the amplified sound was pretty non-descript.

It was an age of experiment, and I hung out at a guitar repair shop in NYC. The guys built me an ebony bridge in place of the Hagstrom Clamshell bridge (we borrowed the idea from D'Aquisto). It was just a big, flat slug of ebony and was held by string pressure, directly to the top.

As soon as we did the bridge mod, the JS II came alive, but only when it was unamplified!!

You could hear this cool fretless sound, plus those low bass notes would just come springing out of the body.

In fact, there was so much energy that I used to open the door of the stove in my small NYC apartment and then touch the body of the bass to the side of the stove. The bass notes would resonate through the stove and big fat sounds would come out! If I could only have taken the stove to the Gig, too!

Here's the bad part. With either bridge set-up, I could never, ever get the bass to sound good through an amp. I can't even remember what I used for amps, probably the usual '70's suspects; Peaveys, Fenders, everything except Ampeg and Acoustic amps (too big for NYC).

The way it worked, whatever amp I was using would sound fine with a Fender bass and non-descript with the Guild.

Eventually, I decided it was the Guild Humbucking Pickup. I moved on from fretless at the same time, since I had a hard time cutting through a five-piece band without the clarity of frets.

Anyway, a mere 32 years later, I want a JS II fretless again. I know a little more about sound and pickups than I did then, but I wanna know if anybody has any suggestions about what a good amp would be for the JS II, or a good pickup replacement, or a different capacitor for the harness, the right strings to work with the pickup, etc.

Anybody got any ideas? I sure would appreciate it!
 

capnjuan

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Hi Gilded; sounds like a math problem with too many variables; bridge, frets, no frets, p/u's, tone caps, and amp but will take a shot at the amp.

This is just a suggestion but you might want to consider a vintage, tube-driven Guild bass amp (surprised?). In the mid/late 60s, Guild apparently had more success selling its bass amps than its R&R, tube-driven combo amps. The T1 and T1 RVT combos seem to have been 'purpose built' to support Guild's successful lines of jazz-oriented instruments; each has about 15 watts output. By design, these combos were tilted away from 'distortion' towards 'clean'; it's hard to make them break up even at increased volumes. By contrast, the Thunderbird combo with its 7591s / 50 watt output, was apparently intended to be an R&R amp.

I'm neither a jazz or bass player but if I was, I don't think I'd want alot of distortion in the output. Guild made at least 3 versions of bass tube amps; 2, 3, and 4 tubes-in-the preamp models; I have schematics for the 3 and 4 tube models; w/ 7591s, all have 50-odd watt output. The extra pre-amp tubes, in addition to providing more gain, support commerically desireable features like a 'bright' switch and a second channel. More 'heads' are seen on eBay than combos at $200 - $400 or so. In short, later Guild tube amps generally do 'clean' very well and Guild successfully competed in the bass amp market; there must have been a lot of people who liked them.

These amps will have the shortcomings of any vintage tube amp like limited 'headroom' and the lack of switchable tone variety but what they might lack in features is offset, IMO, by their tone .... after all, nothing's free. Properly maintained, tube amps are no less reliable than a solid state amp and finding someone to mess with a 35 year old tube amp isn't any more difficult than finding someone to mess with a 35 year old ss amp.

Or.....you could mic the stove!!!

Welcome, Good luck, and let all of us know how you make out.

cj
 

gilded

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I thought about micing the stove, believe me.

I thank you for the input on the Guild amps. It's certainly worth trying.

A friend of mine has an Thunder 1 RVT with Guild tubes in it that is very clean. It's way cool for clean guitar. You can get it to distort a bit, but you have to turn it way up. I think you'd have to mike it if you were playing with
a band, unless you used a stove for an extension cab.......
 

fronobulax

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gilded said:
[snip]The way it worked, whatever amp I was using would sound fine with a Fender bass and non-descript with the Guild

I think a lot depends upon what kind of sound you want. The stock Guild humbuckers do produce a sound lots of people think of as muddy or boomy or indistinct but sometimes that's not always bad.

With the amp and settings being identical my '67 Starfire I has much more edge to the sound than my '71 JS II. Indeed, with the SF if I let my mind wander away from reality I can hear Jack Casady on Bless Its Pointed Little Head. Some of the difference is strings - rounds on the SF and flats on the JS but some of it is the pickup. Fred Harmon makes the DarkStar pickup which is supposed to capture the extended frequency response of the late '60's Guild pickups. A number of people who are unhappy with the stock JS sound swap out the Guild PUs for Dark Stars. I personally have not done so because as far as I can tell a JS with Dark Stars will sound pretty much like my SF but I am still tempted.

You might want to pose the question here. Several posters have JS's and some have DarkStars on them.

P.S. I've never played a fretless so my comments may or may not apply.
 

gilded

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Thanks,

I had just finished a search on Google about JS II basses.
in which someone mentioned the Hammon Darkstar pickup in connection
with Guilds when I saw the last post.

I went to the Hammon site and listened to the pickups. They sounded pretty good! Think I need to explore that a bit.
 
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