Lunch Report For Tuesday, November 5, 2013

PART I

My computer died, so I'm doing this on my Samsung III. Got a new Dell, but haven't set it up yet.

Lunch will be sometime after my exercise session, probably a ham sandwich. I've been trying to lose weight, and I've lost 50 since January. I have a head cold so didn't go last week, and I'm anxious to get back into it. I noticed a difference right away.

WHAT DO YOU DO TO KEEP IN SHAPE?

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I'm old and set in my ways, lol. For the most part, I know what I like and I don't buy too much to experiment with. One example my favorite capo, the Shubb; I have several. Another is picks; I've been using basically the same brand, size, material, etc., since the early 1990's. However, lately I've discovered two new picks that have promise. One is the new clear acrylic V-Pick. They are thick, come in many shapes and sizes, and produce a nice balanced tone. The other one I like is the Tusq pick by Graph-Tech. The feel is similar to my favorite Tortex or Ultex 1.14mm, but with a slightly brighter tone. I'm liking the ivory one, in the standard Fender 351 shape.

ARE YOU SET, OR DO YOU LIKE TO EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT THINGS? Please elaborate. Found any cool new accessories lately?

Bill
(continues....)

PART II....

Seeing a lot of cool G&L basses on the board last few weeks. I'm not a bass player but I do have an early '90's Precision "Lyte". So, a couple of questions for the low-enders.

I see a lot of pedals for bassists. Chorus, Fuzz, Compressor, Envelope Filter, etc. But I don't recall seeing anyone use them.

DO YOU USE EFFECTS ON YOUR BASS?

I know most of you love Leo's MFD pickups for bass. This question is for other brands of basses.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PICKUP AND CONFIGURATION FOR BASS? (Other than MFD.) One pickup? Double? P-J? Hums or single-coils? Active or passive?

That's all. Have a good day!

Bill

reply: pt. 1

I've got a few 'experimental' picks


My new fave is the heavy Juratex COOL picks...similar material to the Clayton (large triangular one pictured below) .



I like the old nickel on a string.

Green Tortex and black Dunlops have been a staple in my watch pocket for decades.

What size V-pick did you get?

...I hear ya about the exercise , I feel so much better after a long bike ride. Hanging sheetrock is ok activity, but not so scenic : )


congrats on your progress,

WHAT DO YOU DO TO KEEP IN SHAPE?

Working on cars for a living keeps me moving. I usually walk a few miles a week in the evenings. I use to ride a bike some, but I quit riding it when I bought my first ATV 12 years ago.

ARE YOU SET, OR DO YOU LIKE TO EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT THINGS? Please elaborate. Found any cool new accessories lately?

I use to be set in my ways, but I've been doing some experimenting over the past few years. I use three different picks now instead of just the Cool, Ultra .88 mm pick I've used for years. I use the Cool pick for electric guitars. I use a Planet Waves .70 mm blue pick with my Heritage H-535. I use a Jim Dunlop .73 mm nylon pick for acoustic playing. The coolest accessorie I've bought in the last couple of years is a Snark tuner. It's inexpensive and works well!

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PICKUP AND CONFIGURATION FOR BASS? (Other than MFD.) One pickup? Double? P-J? Hums or single-coils? Active or passive?

I'm not a bass player but I have a G&L, JB-2. I like the jazz bass double single coil pickups. I have Sadowsky noiseless pickups in it.

I try to do something every day, just came back from the gym where I did stretching and 30 hard minutes on the elliptical.

I have arthritis and its getting worse so I have to keep working out, bad knees and bad back and all. Its tough, I love to eat and drink as well, so its a real balance.

Last week I did 3 workouts, 2 golf games and 2 tennis matches. I'm pooped and stiff and sore and wonder why I'm 40 pounds overweight, lol. Gearing up for ski season this winter have a trip booked. Hopefully I can keep up.

Getting old sucks, but it beats the alternative. I once heard a motivational speaker, he was wonderful, but he started out his talk with: "You know, you are going to get old, then get sick and then die!" Pregnant pause……then he says, would you have it any other way, die first, get sick first???? No, so live with it and move on, ha….

I love to experiment with picks, guitars, etc but I always go back to my V-Picks. My favourite is the tradition in various thicknesses and my number 1 is a blue tradition, about 1.5…

I have two acoustic guitars and they are both great. Finally got them properly setup with low action and while I never enjoyed playing an acoustic, these two have me picking them up first, all the time. That's cool and new for me, so I'm liking it…Just no string bending…..

Keep in shape ?
Because of my chronic heart disease I HAVE to do some endurance sport at least 4times/week, so I run whenever I can and I ride my bike to go working (14km/day), I hate swimming. Lately I've tried some abdominal muscles exercises.

I've played with dunlop Jazz II picks for 6 years now, and my last weborder provided me, by mistake, with some Jazz III (the tip differs), so I tried it, and loved it !!
I must say I'm pretty set as far as picks and strings go, I know what I want, and I know how to achieve it with the material I'm using, so I see no reason to change, but I'm not tensed about changing.

Nice surprise to see an early report this morning! Kudos on the weight loss and keep it up, as you have probably noticed, you do feel better. Hope the cold clears up, this is the time of the year when crud shows up.

WHAT DO YOU DO TO KEEP IN SHAPE?

I have always been lucky and have not had a serious weight issue. I am a bit overweight but my metabolism seems to keep my weight constant from year to year. I like to walk for exercise and recently I have been walking less due to a worn out knee. I am busy most of the time and do a lot of physical things which helps. As they say, I am in pretty good shape for the shape I am in!

ARE YOU SET, OR DO YOU LIKE TO EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT THINGS? Please elaborate. Found any cool new accessories lately?

Good question Bill. I am a creature of habit but really like to try new things. I have several pedals and have tried them all but never keep at it. I am a cover musician so I tend to do what works well and stay with that. I have tried some different picks and intend to do more of that. I am developing my fingerpicking style but need free time to do it and that has become scarce. I am probably my own worst enemy when it comes to free time. I had wanted to do another CD this winter of my own material but time is becoming scarce. I was just going through our band schedule last night and several places have booked us through 2014. It is almost becoming a job but is still fun. My next experiment will be trying the WR bridge pickup in the -3. I played it the other night and noticed the bridge pickup is higher that the others but still has lower output. This should solve that as Will commented on this recently as his reasoning for a higher out pickup.

DO YOU USE EFFECTS ON YOUR BASS?

No I do not use effects on my bass. I set the amp and guitar controls for the space I am in and change tone by using a different picking position on the bass.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PICKUP AND CONFIGURATION FOR BASS? (Other than MFD.) One pickup? Double? P-J? Hums or single-coils? Active or passive?

I have owned a couple of Fender American Deluxe Jazz bases and no longer own them. I do like the MFDs but believe that it doesn't take two pickups to do the job. The Pink Lady is a good example of that with a single humbucker. I also had two humbucker Stingray 5 and saw no advantage in that for what I do. The Carvin has two humbuckers and a piezo but would probably do well with a single pickup. I guess it gets down to what style of music you are playing.

Computer problems are a fact of life. I will get a new one when the price comes down on the solid state storage, no hard drive model. Hard drives are a guaranteed problem at some point. Hope you recover with out too much difficulty. -- Darwin

Haven't thought about lunch yet but I just made some oatmeal with some " nutricleanse " added to it. It seems to be working. What do I do to keep in shape? When I'm not lazy I hit the gym 4 to 5 times a week. I do alternating weight training routines with a day rest between them. I do cardio on the off days or sometimes after the weights. I have been about the same weight for the last 15 years.

I like to try new things in general. As far as guitar equipment goes I use the same picks, buy the same strings ( for the most part ). I have been trying to learn different songs that I would normally not listen to. It has done nothing but help, as there are always things to learn and ways to improve ( Heart of Glass by Blondie, has a great bassline for example ). I have become less interested in equipment and gadgets these days and more interested in playing and improving.

I don't use any effects for my basses. There is a Catalinbread pedal called the SFT that I would be interested in. The demos for it are great and it is just as good for guitar. So versatility is good.

I have a P-bass and a J-bass. The J has been in the case since I bought the P. The P is a 2012 American standard with a maple neck that is smooth as silk. I would still call myself a novice bass player but I do prefer the P-bass. I like the single pickup and the simple controls. That being said, I like the look of L-2000 basses so I could live with 2.

WHAT DO YOU DO TO KEEP IN SHAPE?

I am trying to ride a bike more frequently. I like bike riding because its easier on my knees than running. The problem is just getting the time to do it.

DO YOU USE EFFECTS ON YOUR BASS?

I work hard at getting a good bass sound for whatever room I play in so I don't like messing it up with effects, so no I don't.
I will use a sonic maximizer and I have one in one of my amp configurations but i don't really consider that an effect, it is more of a tone enhancement.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PICKUP AND CONFIGURATION FOR BASS?

I love the MFD's on an L-2000 but recently I have been experimenting with my Jazz basses. I have one that I just purchased that has a great Ash body and I have been swapping out the pickups that I have collected over the years. It currently has a set of Schaller pickups in it and I am very pleased with the sound of the bass. It is just fun to play with the different parts of a bass to see what difference each component makes.

WHAT DO YOU DO TO KEEP IN SHAPE?

Unfortunately not enough these days. Last summer I got really active coaching my son's youth rugby team, but since the season ended I haven't been able to find the time to fit a good exercise routing in.

ARE YOU SET, OR DO YOU LIKE TO EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT THINGS? Please elaborate. Found any cool new accessories lately?

I've been using Tortex picks for about 15 years now. I go back and forth between gauges, but overall I've been happy. I do need to try drilling holes through a couple to see if it's an improvement. My real experimentation lately has been with bass strings. I'm at the point where there are a couple of sets I love, so I've been up in the air over putting them on all of my basses, or continuing to experiment.

DO YOU USE EFFECTS ON YOUR BASS?

IME, it is hard to make most effects sound good on bass. Since I found my B-15, I have had absolutely no desire to use any effects - the amp is perfect on its own. The couple of effects I've liked with my other bass amp are:

- Carl Martin Compressor/Limiter - An entirely different effect on bass than on guitar. If it's dialed in carefully, it will give every note a full sound from attack to decay...almost like a '63 B-15...

- Moogerfooger MF-101 Lowpass Filter - The fundamental gets through, while you filter out whatever top-end noise you don't want. It's an awesome envelope filter too.

- Way Huge Swollen Pickle - I did a lot of searching for good bass overdrive/distortion, and this is the best I found. It doesn't filter out the fundamental tone like others do.

- Moogerfooger MF-102 Ring Modulator - I have no use for ring modulation, but this is an excellent tremolo. It also can feed the MF-101 and turn it into a pulsing auto-wah.

I'm usually not much into chorus or flanging, but the Moogerfooger MF-108M Cluster Flux seems to do a really good job at both. It's pricey, but you'd need at least three high-end pedals to cover its basic functions.

I haven't tried my Sonic Stomp on bass yet. It sounds great between my guitars and the Blues Jr., but on bass my goal is usually to make the high end of the signal go away. I expect the Sonic Stomp would do just the opposite.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PICKUP AND CONFIGURATION FOR BASS? (Other than MFD.) One pickup? Double? P-J? Hums or single-coils? Active or passive?

That's a tough one. I'm looking forward to putting the original Schaller alnico back in my '86 SB-1, but haven't done it yet. My non-G&L basses are both Jazz types. One is a mid-70s Jazz with DiMarzio pickups that I bought used in '81. That one has served me well and covered a lot of ground in thirty-plus years. The other one is a 2003 PRS Electric Bass. It's an active J-type, and sounds really good to me.

Ken

PART II....
DO YOU USE EFFECTS ON YOUR BASS?

I'll blend in the smallest amount of reverb with the MX-400.


There are a few tunes in my last band that I used the Mean channel on the trio (first volume pegged)
with a Morley power wah . It a wonderfully agressive and colorful sound with all the bottom end you could desire.

The Alembic SuperFilter SF-2 is an amazing toneshaper , It's similar to a parametric with blend controls, only that it keeps the phase relationship between the dry and wet signals . You don't lose the punch and clarity that can be elusive with other units.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PICKUP AND CONFIGURATION FOR BASS? (Other than MFD.)

Gotta be the Alembic Series l and ll config. , maybe someday I'll have another.
Their non-series electronics are quite nice too, not as compressed as EMG's ...which are ok at times too.
Here's the Exploiter(non-sereis guts)-

One is the new clear acrylic V-Pick.

Which size did you get ?

I have two. Both are similar to the standard Fender 351; one is slightly larger, the other is slightly smaller, nice pointy end. I got the smaller one with my admission fee into last September's Seattle Guitar Show, along with a set of D'Addario J-17 acoustic strings. Both are thick...I'm guessing close to 2mm...basically a shingle, lol!

I'm surprised that I'm able to hang onto them, I thought they would be slick.

I like them but I doubt I would gig with one. The Tusq ones would be good to gig with though. My normal pick would be Dunlop Tortex, Gator or Ultex in 1.14mm.

Thanks to all for the great responses.

Bill