Starfire tinkering continued

mellowgerman

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Looks great! Thanks for all the explanations.

Does DR make the Legends in short scale?

They do indeed! Only one set offered, I believe. To put them on a Guild with a harp bridge, you typically have to trim the silks at the headstock by 0.5-1" to get them to clear the nut, but that's a quick and easy task with a razor or xacto knife. I would describe the tension as medium. They're super silky smooth to the touch and very shiny (almost hard to see the windings). The tone is definitely old school and thumpy. I liked the Legends on my red '70 but prefer the Maximas there. That said, the Legends sound totally killer on the sunburst '67.
Here's a link to the short scale Legends:
 

hieronymous

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They do indeed! Only one set offered, I believe. To put them on a Guild with a harp bridge, you typically have to trim the silks at the headstock by 0.5-1" to get them to clear the nut, but that's a quick and easy task with a razor or xacto knife. I would describe the tension as medium. They're super silky smooth to the touch and very shiny (almost hard to see the windings). The tone is definitely old school and thumpy. I liked the Legends on my red '70 but prefer the Maximas there. That said, the Legends sound totally killer on the sunburst '67.
Here's a link to the short scale Legends:
Thanks! I tried the Legends on a P-Bass several years ago - didn't feel strongly about them either way. I'm kind of OCD about "adjusting" strings like that (cutting off the silks) but I might consider them in the future for my Les Paul Triumph. I still have a spare set of GHS Precision Flats for that though, so this would be way down the line...
 

mellowgerman

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Double trouble! Took em both for a spin back to back yesterday. Orange to apple. Wonderful how different they are both in sound and feel, but equally fun, useful, and four-dimensionally versatile! Truly a great pair.

IMG_20210820_174603323~2.jpg
 

lungimsam

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Would love to hear some sound clips!!
Also, thanks for the info on series and parallel.
 

mellowgerman

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Thanks! They're oddballs for sure, but so much fun. Hopefully someday in the near future I'll get around to making a comparison video or something of the sort. I will say though it is a bit of a daunting task because there are SO MANY possible tones between the two of them. Might end up being a full feature-length documentary o_O
 

Mungi

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Anybody care for white chocolate?

sfb67.jpg
Wow! How did you wire that? Separate or all together? Do you have the impedance selector switch? I have two of those pups somewhere for a project that never happened. Have a Gibson Triumph pup too.
 
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mellowgerman

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Wow! How did you wire that? Seperate or all together? Do you have the impedance selector switch? I have two of those pups somewhere for a project that never happened. Have a Gibson Triumph pup too.


WARNING: LONGWINDED ANSWER WITH BACKGROUND INFO (and other rambling) --

The initial thought experiment happened because I'm not a fan of bridge pickups that are super close to the bridge. When this bass came into my possession back in 2014, it already had a pickup cavity routed in that extreme bridge position (for a Bartolini GB pickup, which now resides in my Hagstrom Swede bass). Anyway, for this same extreme-bridge-position-issue reason, I was really only using the North coil of the bridge pickup -- even though I had wired up a 4 way mode selector switch for each pickup, offering North, Series, Parallel, and South. That coil in combination with the South coil of the neck pickup has a fantastic, near-classic-dual-Bisonic Starfire tone. On a sidenote, I like ALL 4 settings when it comes to the neck pickup (solo'd or blended with the other pickup) and like to switch between them depending on the song we're playing. In any case, that big ol' space in the middle there, made me really want to do a little more experimenting, with a middle/bridge-ish position pickup.

I had two Casady pickups and one transformer&switch harness in the parts bin. Recently I feel like I optimized my Newport bass with the single black Casady pickup in the middle position, coupled with the JTEX Distiller filter preamp. It has enough boost on tap to not require the step-up transformer. Though it's not a huge signal, it makes up for the lack of BOOM, with amazing clarity and articulation. I think it will shine in the studio especially, but with a little bump of the pre-gain on the amp, it's a killer in a band setting too.
So that said, I was left with one Casady pickup and the transformer&switch harness! Those are now in this Starfire. I just replaced the bridge pickup's 4 way mode selector switch with a pan pot. This lets me blend between the Casady pickup and and the North coil of the bridge pickup.

THEN! There's a master 4 way selector which lets me combine the pan pot signal with whatever is coming out of the neck pickup's 4 way mode selector switch. The master switch offers the following:

- signal from 4 way neck mode switch
- signal from pan pot
- both in parallel
- both in series

The signal from the master switch then goes to the master volume control, which is further sculped by way of a 12-position varitone with separate contour control and the mini-toggle, which activates a super deep .1uF cap for a heavy dub reggae kind of tone.

It's a beast, but has the most versatile passive tone palette I've created thus far.


Mungi, regarding your pickups in the parts bin: if you're thinking about doing a 2-pickup bass with the Casady pickups, you will only need one transformer, but I found these pickups to not be ideal in the neck position (via my Newport bass experiment). The E string was noticeably weaker than the other 3. I even tried flipping it around, since in standard operation there's an additional off-center magnet underneath the higher strings for a boost in output, but even with that magnet underneath the E sounded a bit weak. So if I was going to do a dual Casady pickup bass, I'd go more in the direction of Fender Jazz bass pickup positions. I wonder how the Gibson Triumph pickup would work with the Casady pickup... since those had 3 separate leads to tap the pickup(if I remember correctly), unlike the Casady which just has one signal coming out of the pickup and 3 coming out of the transformer.
 
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hieronymous

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And Massachusetts!
Wicked pissah!
I hate to quibble with gilded, but I don't think it is cool. I think it is awesomely cool! Or maybe Wicked Cool, as folks up in Maine night say ....
Wicked pissah! (I grew up in Mass., didn't get the accent, but still a Masshole behind the wheel sometimes...)
 

RVBASS

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That’s a crazy looking tailpiece, hope those string ends don’t slip off! :)
 

mellowgerman

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That’s a crazy looking tailpiece, hope those string ends don’t slip off! :)

1633001231214.png

Here's a better shot of the same bridge in gold. One of my favorite Hipshot designs, unfortunately no longer in production. It used to be available in the narrow .669" spacing. Super easy to string up thanks to that slot in the top. Once the strings are under full tension they're goin' nowhere. The ball end actually has to be pulled back behind that ledge as only the string itself will fit through the slot.
 
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mellowgerman

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Took her out for a little live action yesterday evening. Very pleased with how the tones sit in the mix! For blended tones I'm loving the Casady + North coil of the Neck pickup. Also works well with North coil of bridge pickup + Casady + South coil of neck pickup. Either way, blending works best on the 50 ohm impedance setting of the 3way switch. Going up to 250 or 500 starts to make things a bit muddy, especially when blending with both neck and bridge or either in a dual coil format.

Screenshot 2021-09-30 13.11.48.png
 

mgod

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Somewhere around here I have a pair of Hi-A quad pickups that Bill Bartolini made for me custom when I was 18 but I never put them in a bass. They'll probably turn up when I'm gone.
 

Happy Face

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Somewhere around here I have a pair of Hi-A quad pickups that Bill Bartolini made for me custom when I was 18 but I never put them in a bass. They'll probably turn up when I'm gone.

Your estate administrator would have his or her hands full! You'd better hang in there, simply out of courtesy.
 

mgod

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Your estate administrator would have his or her hands full! You'd better hang in there, simply out of courtesy.
Well, that's a good point. I ought to find them fairly soon and label them as quad and one-off.
 

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mellowgerman

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Well, that's a good point. I ought to find them fairly soon and label them as quad and one-off.

Awesome! I've heard of Bartolini Quads but never saw or heard one in person. I've become quite a Bartolini fan in the last few years. Really love the GB humbucker they made as a replacement for Guild humbuckers. I have one in my Hagstrom Swede and the solo'd tone of it (in both humbucker and single coil mode) is to die for!
 

edwin

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I don’t know how new Pyramid Golds compare to those in the 70s, but I will say that they are very different sounding than TIs (to my ears anyway).

I use Pyramid Gold flats on all of my basses, they have a distinct thud like no other strings I’ve tried, very 70s Lesh sounding, or Jamerson Motown sound, both of which I love. I also find them good for jazz and EQing an upright bass sound (especially on a fretless).

I play Alembics and Guild Starfires. I’ve gone back and forth many times, and when I compare Pyramid Golds to TI Jazz Flats, I find the TIs to have a metallic quality. I prefer the Pyramid thud. :)

So that’s what my ears hear.
I agree with this. I was using TI's until I realized that you could still get Pyramids (and if you do, get them direct from the factory as they have a medium scale which fits the Starfire bass perfectly without having to cut the silks at the nut end). The difference I found was that the TI's have a sort of clangorous tone where the harmonics don't seem to line up all that well. The Pyramids have a much smoother and deeper tone and retain the weight of the tone on the G string when you go high on the neck. OTOH, the Pyramids are less consistent, both across the fingerboard and from set to set, but I'm embracing that as a feature and not a bug.

Going back to the original topic, my Starfire had Dark Stars with the AGC preamp for quite a while, until I moved over to Alembic parts. It has seen many iterations, resulting in lots of holes in it, but that's just part of its beauty.
 

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