TV show themes are awesome. They are songs, after all. Short ones, but good ones. These are the top 5 television show themes every bass player should know that prominently features the bass guitar being heard. 5. NIGHT COURT The moment you heard that two-note octave slap, you knew what was on TV. A funky, … Read more
Push/pull knobs made of metal presents a potential problem in that static can be transferred and be part of the signal. In other words, when touching the knob you won’t hear any static noises, but when turning, you may hear a static scratching noise. The first reaction by many when they hear this scratching noise … Read more
This week’s Bass of the Week is a Les Paul 5-string which Guillermo Armenteros (the owner) calls the “Armenteros Les Paul 5”. Here’s the story on the bass according to the owner: The Bass is called the Armenteros Les Paul 5 and my second 5 string commissioned build from a local luthier and friend in … Read more
A pickup can produce popping noises from human touch if the magnets or pole pieces aren’t grounded correctly, or not grounded well enough. One solution to this is to, and I’m directly quoting here, “apply conductive copper foil with conductive adhesive against the bottom of the pickups and run a new wire to ground.” That … Read more
It’s time for a trip into the land of the weird. Well, maybe not weird but nonetheless a very interesting phenomenon that happens with certain bass players. Certain players, should they pick up a bass that uses a pick guard (or scratch plate if you’re living across the pond) encounter scratching noises that come through … Read more
If you’ve played bass for any length of time, you have no doubt heard the phrase, “real bass players don’t use a pick.” I don’t know what anyone means by “real bass player”. If you’re a person that picks up a bass guitar and plays it regularly, then you’re a bass player. And of course … Read more
There are a lot of terms thrown out there when it comes to the parts of a guitar be it a bass guitar or not. For example, Fender calls the portion after the nut the pegboard, while in Gibson vernacular it’s called a headstock. Personally, I call it a headstock. The distinction between fingerboard and … Read more
This week’s BotW comes from Don, who sent us photos of his pristine-clean ’58 P-Bass. Don writes: This P-Bass, build date 11-58, came to me in the late 60’s with basically no finish. I continued to strip her down to bare wood. Completely removed all components, cleaned them as best I could, keeping all of … Read more
To “relic” an instrument basically means to make it purposely look old and very-well-used. There are varying degrees of “relic’ing” (pronounced “rell-ih-king”), and the Fender Jazz Bass above is one of the more extreme examples as the body was burned on purpose to give it its final look. Builders have come up with some fairly … Read more
If one were to state the generations of bass amplification, this is what they are in a nutshell: Tube-type amplification: First generation Solid-state amplification: Second generation Digital amplification: Third generation To be even more specific, tube-type was the dominant amplification method up until the 1970s, solid-state was and still is the dominant amplification type, and … Read more
