Posted on

The pickup test bass

Pickups that are mounted under the bridge foot are quite easy to try out quickly on your own bass. It is more difficult to try out pickups for which the bridge has been modified or where the pickup has to be adapted to the bridge. In order to give our customers an impression of the sound character of these pickups, we have mounted them all on one bass. We also made recordings with this bass – that was in 2011, so it’s been a while, but in principle the recordings are still up to date. That’s why they get their own blog post here on our new website.

The pickup signals went directly into the mixing console (sometimes with a Lehle Sunday Driver XLR connected upstream for impedance matching). No tone control or effects, just the dry pickup sound. For a CD recording, the sound would certainly have been further optimized and the respective characteristics of the pickups would have been taken into account with adapted EQ settings – I deliberately refrained from doing this here. The pickups certainly sound different on stage: The amp and speakers color the sound, and of course the room acoustics also play a role. These recordings therefore do not reflect how a pickup sounds when amplified by an amp on stage.

www.soundcloud.com/landomusic

Posted on

Soundpost with cap

I discovered this remarkable soundpost in the bass of a music school:
It is actually a little too short. Instead of a new soundpost, however, the last workshop decided to add something extra. So this soundpost was given a maple cap.

This is rare and remarkable because the cost of a soundpost lies less in the material and more in the working time. The careful adjustment of a soundpost is very time-consuming. It is not really worth it to glue something onto an old soundpost and then adjust it again.

Posted on

metal work

During its use at the German Jazz Festival, the tuning machines of this bass of the Frankfurt Radio Big Band broke. Jeffrey Meinel from Rubner in Markneukirchen was able to repair it, so that it did not have to be replaced by a new one. After the autumn holidays of the Big Band, the bass could be used again.