The Subtleties Of The Series I Circuit For Fretless Bass

[sonofa_lembic]

As I have amassed a few truly great fretless Alembic basses in the past decade, I have been exploring the wide array of tones out there for various fretless players and recordings.  I have been enjoying playing my 1974 Series I, and have discovered that I am able to dial in a tone similar to just about any recording I decide to practice to whether it is Jaco, Alphonso Johnson, or even the bass on What I Am by the New Bohemians.  What surprised me was how little I had to turn my tone pot in order to capture the same tonal character of the recording.  With the Series circuit, a little can go a long way, and to this day I have not been able to throw anything at it that it can't reproduce.  What has been interesting to me is how subtle the change in the frequency is in order to achieve a wide array of fretless tones from a wide variance of musicians and their recordings.  Literally turning my tone pot a 20th of its throw is all it takes to cover the subtleties of various player's tones.  Flim (Jimmy Johnson) would know better than all of us about this, and I would love to hear his take on this.

[JimmyJ]

Hey sonofa... 

Ron's design of that Series circuitry is amazing.  My main joy with it is the clean and huge sound that his hi-fi approach achieved.  To me it makes the bass sound more like an acoustic instrument than an electric.  No unmusical resonances... 

Regarding the variations that can be achieved with the controls ... I hate to disappoint you but I almost never move my pots.  For one thing, I suppose I'm never trying to emulate a particular sound.  I only make one kind of noise and my settings stay the same regardless of the musical situation.  And they are: a pickup balance slightly favoring the bridge pickup (via the trim pots), tone controls wide open, and a very slight Q-boost on the bridge pickup (at it's highest frequency).  I guess I instinctively vary my tone by moving my right hand (plucking) either closer to or further from the bridge to balance how bright it is.  Plus variations on how hard I play in any situation.

That's kind of it.  Some would say I'm not using the bass to its full potential but I've also never played another instrument that is so responsive to variations in how I'm playing it.  So this has worked for me for ... oh ... 40+ years.

Thanks for asking,
Jimmy J

[sonofa_lembic]

I get it.  I never move my controls on my gigged instruments as well, but in the studio, it is not uncommon for a "producer" to request a tone like in a particular recording, especially with all the genre music I do for music libraries.  Having to do that has forced me to be a kind of musical chameleon so that I can give the song the flavor of what it is inevitably a copy of.  I am not sure if it helps my "signature sound" in any way to basically be trying to clone others who came before, but it pays the bills.  Having that Series I circuit really is the best tool I have found for doing this type of session work, and it is the only bass that has the range to sound like anything out there.  I was just intrigued at how little movement of a tone pot it took to get such a wide variety of fretless tones.  This either speaks to the narrow limits of fretless bass tonality, or to the amazing range of the Series I circuit.  My money is on Ron's innovation with the circuit!