vibrato problem - the bisonic bends (+bridgework!)

hieronymous

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I've been playing my Starfire I bass again lately (first introduced in this thread). There was an issue with the pickup height, but I stopped playing it for a while because A) I went to Japan for a few weeks, and B) I picked up an early-'70s Gibson Les Paul Triumph Bass that was getting most of my attention. But last week my wife bought me a guitar pick made from woolly mammoth tusk (?!) and the Starfire seemed to be the bass that would be most appropriate to use it on.

So I've been playing it acoustically, and it plays great! The pickup height isn't an issue when I play with a pick. But then I remembered - another issue I was having with this bass was that the sound would drop out when I played with vibrato.

To make a long story short, I decided to make a recording to demonstrate the problem. Then I decided, why not go all the way and make a video?! So I did. And I learned a lot. I was able to see from a different angle how the string is aligned with the pickup, and that when I pull on the string, I'm pulling it pretty far from the pole - more than I expected!

So here's the video:

bisonic bass bends

I had fun with it - the first 30 seconds are just the mic on the camera. I flub a fill, then switch from the camera mic to the direct signal I recorded. Then I start messing with the bends to show how the volume drops out. The direct signal is going through an Alembic SF-2 Superfilter and Custom Audio Japan tube compressor, into an MBox and recorded into ProTools. Oh, and I'm using the mammoth pick!
 

krysh

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

hmm very nice, thanks for the movie hieronymous, but I don't find the dropouts this significant.
in fact to me it sounds normal :shock: or is something wrong with me?
which strings did you use? maybe different strings (flatwound steel - are there any? don't know about flatwounds)
could easily solve the problem.
because mechanically the pickup is close to the neck and it is a shortscale the strings are bended up to almost 1 cm beside the pole pieces, which usually should resolve in less audio output. maybe more mgnet sensitive strings could help?

:?: :?: :?: :roll:

but anyway, the sfb sounds great. :)
or is it the mamooth-pick :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
 

gilded

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

I don't think it sounds significant either. It certainly doesn't sound unmusical, at least on the vid.
I wouldn't let it bother you a lot. Enjoyed your playing, too.

Your strings do look really close to the pickup, though. Some of the first ear SF Bass wooden pickup rings are pretty tall. I think you can buy a plastic one from Fred Hammon for just a few $$.
 

fronobulax

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

I don't hear anything unusual or objectionable. Probably my playback equipment, but from where I sit it ain't broke so don't need to be fixed.

That said, however since you have the harp bridge you might look at the saddle positions and see if a left/right shift gives you an alignment over the pole pieces that works better for you. Things were obscured in the video it looked like there might have been some skewing.

Sadie - nice cat. Burmese?
 
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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

I see what you mean about the sound dropping out a bit as the string moves out from above the pole piece. Out of curiousity, I soloed the neck pickup (Dark Star) on my JS2, and it behaves in the exact same manner as yours. Must just be the nature of those pickups. It doesn't sound bad, by any means, but I can see how you'd notice it. My old Ovation Magnum-I does an extreme version of this - where the note literally drops out altogether as you bend the string. I guess the magnetic field of some pickups is just more narrow and focused than others(?)

Love that tone!! The bass sounds great when tusk'd! :)
 

hieronymous

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

Thanks friends. This has been a great experience. I've been able to see how much I take for granted and how strong my preconceptions are.

Videotaping myself was fun (not in a Paris Hilton way of course!) - it was great to see my playing from a different perspective. It also let me see how the E & A strings are positioned over the pole-pieces, as Fronobulax pointed out. But I don't think my bridge allows for left/right adjustment? Hmm, that might be the next project.

I also realized that maybe I don't need to incorporate so much vibrato on this bass. It was actually kind of difficult to do and wasn't coming naturally when I was playing this time around. I had to force myself to do it. But I definitely notice the drop-outs - I had a similar experience with a Lollar horseshoe on an early-'70s Rickenbacker 4000 - the fact that it was also a single-pickup bass says a lot. That pickup was extremely low output, and even though long-scale, it was very noticable. (Thanks krysh for the insight into the effect that this bass being shortscale has.) chromium - do the dropouts on your Magnum bother you? Do you have to adjust your playing when you use that bass?

Oh, and I'm glad that gilded could see how close the strings are to the pickup. I think I'm going to leave it as-is for now, but at some point in the future I might look into getting a new pickup-ring for it.

Finally, Sadie is "just" a short-haired black cat. She has some really distinctive features, though, including a very high pitched voice and a tendency to drop her catnip toys in her water dish...
 
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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

hieronymous said:
chromium - do the dropouts on your Magnum bother you? Do you have to adjust your playing when you use that bass?

I haven't found it to be much of a problem - but I kinda had to plan around it when choosing the strings. I currently have it strung up with some high-ish tension GHS flats. That, combined with the fact that it is long scale probably helps. It's also a very rigid structure - what with all the graphite in the neck. Seems like even when I dig in over the neck pickup, the strings seem to stay within bounds of the pole pieces pretty well. Intentional bends up high on the neck, however, are not happenin' on that bass! ...unless I want to exploit that fade-to-black effect, which might be cool for something.

mag1-2.jpg
 

fronobulax

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

hieronymous said:
[snip] But I don't think my bridge allows for left/right adjustment? Hmm, that might be the next project.
[snip]
Finally, Sadie is "just" a short-haired black cat. She has some really distinctive features, though, including a very high pitched voice and a tendency to drop her catnip toys in her water dish...

I don't think it is an intentional adjustment but...

Unless your bridge saddles are unlike any other that I have seen they have a groove on the bottom (where they rest on the bridge). That groove rests on a metal tongue that is part of the bridge and incidentally what moves towards and away from the neck when you do fine tuning. There is nothing that holds the saddle in place on the tongue except pressure from the string. If you loosen the string you should be able to slide the saddles left and right. Whether that is a useful adjustment depends upon a whole lot of factors. I've heard of people who trim the saddles so that they get the string spacing they want and things line up with the PUs.

200%26_09_05_Guild%20008.jpg

The saddles are just a bit to the left of where symmetry would put them but the E string pole piece is right on at the cost of everything else being a bit to the right. Probably should do something about that...

I have this tendency to see Burmese cats everywhere :) My cat will sleep in a guitar case if I let him. He "hunts" rubber bands and twist ties and drops them in his food dish. I wonder if that, as well as dropping catnip toys in the water dish, is a link between domesticated playing and the Might Hunter?
 

danerectal

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

Is it possible your middle saddles are flipped front to back? That could change the position of the string slot.
 

hieronymous

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

Sadie hasn't slept in any of my cases, but she has investigated the case for the Starfire:
sadieguildcasetx2.jpg


So I tried the saddle adjustment thing, but the saddles on mine are stuck on there pretty tight. Or maybe somebody glued them on at some point? Anyway, I think I'm going to leave them as is. As long as I don't wiggle the note too much, it doesn't really affect the sound. I'm gonna make another video soon, this time maybe with drums...
 

hieronymous

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

Joe, I just downloaded some of your tunes from your webpage - the Ovation sounds great!
 

fronobulax

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

danerectal said:
Is it possible your middle saddles are flipped front to back? That could change the position of the string slot.

Me? As far as I can tell the saddles are symmetric and there is no way to distinguish front from back.

It does sound as if some saddles fit more tightly on the tongue than others OR that there have been some post-factory applications of glue.
 

danerectal

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

What I meant is that if the string slot is not in the dead center of the saddle, the front to back orientation could very well affect the position of the string over the polepieces. On the rosewood saddles I've seen, they were symmetrical front to back, but the strings weren't perfectly centered on the saddle. On Dreamlanders JSII, it made a world of difference to fiddle with the positions and orientation of each saddle. If they are glued you might not have the same freedom of adjustment.
 

fronobulax

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

danerectal said:
What I meant is that if the string slot is not in the dead center of the saddle, the front to back orientation could very well affect the position of the string over the polepieces. On the rosewood saddles I've seen, they were symmetrical front to back, but the strings weren't perfectly centered on the saddle. On Dreamlanders JSII, it made a world of difference to fiddle with the positions and orientation of each saddle. If they are glued you might not have the same freedom of adjustment.

Got it. According to my eyeball the slots are centered but we may be in an area where a more precise measurement would be appropriate. I've also heard of folks who shaved the sides off the saddles to get narrower string spacing but I don't recall the results. This is one of those times having a single PU is a benefit because, looking at my JS II I know I'm going to go crazy if I ever try to get everything to line up :)
 
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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

hieronymous said:
Joe, I just downloaded some of your tunes from your webpage - the Ovation sounds great!

Thanks, Harry. The flats really changed the whole persona of that bass. It can get very bright with rounds (I had DR Hibeams on it previously), and despite what people say about Magnums having this monstrous dub sound, I find the neck pickup to be rather docile and well mannered, compared to a Gibson mudbucker, or even the beefy Guild Humbuckers that I had in my JS (which metered out around 33K). Kind of deceiving, since the Magnum pickup looks big enough to land aircraft on. :)

fronobulax said:
danerectal said:
looking at my JS II I know I'm going to go crazy if I ever try to get everything to line up :)

I went thru that struggle with my JS2 - trying to get the spacing and alignment over the poles just right. The original bridge saddles on mine had multiple string slots cut in them, so there were lots of different permutations to be tried! When I put Dark Stars and the "Alembicized" bridge on it, I did my due dilligence to really ensure things were gonna line up right. I did like the original bridge, though, and almost didn't go through with the conversion. The main thing that drove me to it was the fact that I would have needed a neck reset to get the action lower, and I was able to compensate for that with the new bridge.
 

hieronymous

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

Joe, can you post a pic or two of the JS 2?
 
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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

hieronymous said:
Joe, can you post a pic or two of the JS 2?

Sure! How 'bout a before and after?

Before (original, except for the toggle cap and missing pickup cans):
DSCF0003s.jpg


In-between (shows the new bridge's sustain block):
DSCF0051s.jpg


After (with my son, who did most of the major work :) )
DSCF0099s.jpg


DSCF0033s.jpg



As an aside, have you ever tried the 70s Guild pickups? I bet you'd like 'em - they'd probably sound sweet pushing the Zvex fuzz, like you do with the mudbuckers. They're very powerful, high output, a bit like the Gibson pickups but with more definition. I think they get kind of a bad rap in the forums; they're really just different animals compared to the Bisonics/Dark Stars.

This is my current strategy - when it comes time for me to move on a SF, if it happens to be a 70s SF-II, I'll probably swap the pickups around - put the DSs in that (since it is said they thrive in the semi-acoustic environment), and put the Guild-buckers back into this one. That way, I'll have both sounds covered.
 

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

chromium said:
This is my current strategy - when it comes time for me to move on a SF, if it happens to be a 70s SF-II, I'll probably swap the pickups around - put the DSs in that (since it is said they thrive in the semi-acoustic environment), and put the Guild-buckers back into this one. That way, I'll have both sounds covered.

Hmm...

What strings did you use with the Guild humbuckers on your JS? I've got flats on mine and I am hard pressed to say anything nice about the sound except that it is so indistinct that no one knows whether I play a right note or not. Admittedly the competition is a SF w/bi-sonic and rounds so my lack of enthusiasm may just be a strong preference for a sound that the current setup will never make.
 
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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

fronobulax said:
chromium said:
What strings did you use with the Guild humbuckers on your JS? I've got flats on mine and I am hard pressed to say anything nice about the sound except that it is so indistinct that no one knows whether I play a right note or not. Admittedly the competition is a SF w/bi-sonic and rounds so my lack of enthusiasm may just be a strong preference for a sound that the current setup will never make.

Keep in mind that my perspective on tone may be a bit out there! :D I'm kind of a Gibson bass nut, and I know most folks think the same of those basses - that they are muddy and insidtinct.

DSCF0034c.jpg


What I've found that works well for me with the EBs (and also the JS2, when the Guild pickups were in it) is to leverage some overdrive to add harmonic-rich content to the tone in order to get the sound to "cut" in the mix. The tube amp works real nice for this - since the distortion is so smooth and musical. The tone just melts into this torrential wave - and the distortion adds a brilliance to the sound that helps with the lack of definition. Hard to describe in words, but very addicting!! :twisted:

I love the clear-and-present sound of the DS/Bisonic too - just another color in the palette!
 

fronobulax

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Re: vibrato problem - the bisonic bends

Thanks. We obviously look for different things in tone but at least I am reassured that it is a difference of opinion as opposed to you getting something out of your JS that I'm not.
 
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