Jimmy "Flim" Johnson

[eddievig]

Hello all,
Wow...Many thanks for all of the responses and suggestions! I knew I could depend on this team for good advice, and can assure you that it will all be used. I'm not from the "no pain, no gain" school, especially not where this is concerned.
 Much appreciated and all the best,
Ed V

[pauldo]

Dave’s post covers a lot of good ideas.   I commit to daily exercise, it takes a conscious effort to not make excuses for not doing it.   Simple low impact routine for a short amount of time.   That regular and purposeful movement won’t win any body building awards but (knock on wood), my back appreciates it greatly.

In addition there was/is a member here who developed an ingenious designed system that transfer the weight of an instrument to the hips. 

Hover Harness LLC. Richard Foster.  This is all I could find on it.
https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.hover_harness_llc.ba651557853d1373c02ec0d90dde2f4f.html

[edwardofhuncote]

I have one of Rich's Hover Harnesses, if you'd like to try one Eddie. It works great for getting the weight off a lower back, but it did not help my issue, and I found it to be a little awkward, in that it offset the bass from me. It was certainly a great alternative. Mostly my spine is messed-up closer to my head than the other end. Ironic.   


No idea how to go about overseas postage, but email me at the little envelope, or message me here if you can, and we'll figure out how. (if you'd like to try it that is...)

*not sure why I thought you were in the U.K. … sorry 'bout that. Louisiana ain't no trouble. I could drive it to ya' in a day.

[jazzyvee]

Gregory,

My fretless basses are oddballs - graphite necks, ebony fingerboards and combined bridge/tailpieces mounted on giant blocks...  What can I say, it was an experimental time.  Ha!  Close-up of the main bass below. 

As you can see, on these basses I use a piano-string style bare-core set which used to be called "SuperWound" by RotoSound and has become available again under the name "PSD Bass 99".  These come with adjustable ball-ends so you can fit them to any bridge.  They are straight-ahead steel round-wound strings and would probably sound pretty bright and brash on a fretted bass - and might chew up the frets...

But because I have no frets and there's only a small pivot point over the bridge (plus the fact that I don't play fretless as often), these strings last forever.  Where I've bought maybe thousands of sets of Boomers over the last 40 years, I've probably only bought half a dozen sets of these since I got the 1st fretless in 1980.  In fact, I've boiled these strings a few times to bring them back to life.  HA!

Cheers,
Jimmy J

My SC Deluxe needs re-stringing and I have found set of Rotosound exposed core strings that I think came with the bass when I bought it new from the UK Dealer. So they are about 21 yrs old but unopened.
Are there likely to be any issues with using strings that old, also with the exposed core i guess I will have to lift the bridge slightly to cater for the strings sitting lower in the saddles. But, would I need to adjust the truss rods also?
Also are rotosounds really as good at eating frets like I have read on line in the past?

[JimmyJ]

Hey Jazzyvee,

I don't expect the age of that set matters as long as they aren't rusted.  No harm in trying them.  As for the bridge height, we're really only talking about 1/2 the diameter of a string so you may not even notice.  Or maybe a 1/2 turn up on the bass side of the bridge?  And since string brands and types all seem to have differing tensions, there's always a possibility you'll need to have a conversation with the truss rod.  As far as fret wear, any steel wound strings will beat up frets faster than nickel-coated.  But it also depends on how hard you play.

One other thing I do, which I've probably mentioned here before, is something I learned this from my dad who played bass and also rebuilt pianos.  When he would restring a grand he would put a twist into the bass strings in the direction that the outer winding was wound in an effort to keep that winding tight and avoid any rattles.  Our electric bass strings can sometimes present this "internal" rattle and it can often be eliminated by twisting it like that.  I'm in the habit of doing that when I put on a new set of Boomers.  I have odd quick-release tailpieces which makes this easier, but before pulling the string up to pitch I will pop it off the tailpiece and give it a counter-clockwise twist.  Except for some reason I have better luck with a clockwise twist of the E-string - maybe because these lower strings are compound windings?  It's not something that needs to be done but if you ever encounter a new string that comes with a built-in rattle, this can often solve the problem. 

Let us know if you like those!

Jimmy J

[edwardofhuncote]

That's an interesting tip on the twist, Jimmy J. I'll have to try it sometime on one. I will throw out there though, this really messes with things on a flatwound string, especially when strung on a fretless bass. I have accidentally twisted one... an A string if I remember right, resulting in a string that must have been some degree of a helix shape over its length. Man that was weird.

[David Houck]

Interesting indeed.  Wondering if that would work with half-rounds?  Usually, if one of the low strings is rattling on my bass it means that the humidity has increased and I need to loosen the bass side truss rod.

[pauldo]

Interesting x 3

Is that counter-clockwise as you look at the bridge towards the headstock?

[JimmyJ]

This could be junk science but it has stopped certain string rattles for me.  Counter-clockwise looking at the ball-end of the string at the tailpiece - for my GHS Boomers.  It should be the direction of "tightening" the outside winding which you can see in some strings. Why my E-strings sometime benefit from a twist in the other direction kinda puts a question-mark on my whole theory, but there you have it.  If you search "bass piano string twist" you'll see where I got the idea.  That said, I think piano strings may not be compound windings like some of ours.  They may just be one giant copper wire wound around a solid core...  Anyway, that's my story.  If you have a rattler there's no harm in trying this method!  Just maybe not on fretless flatwounds.     

Jimmy J   

[keith_h]

This popped up not too long ago on YouTube. Jimmy is even using an amp. 

 

[JimmyJ]

Great fun playing with those two monsters.  I'm using my old Walter Woods with two 12" EV Thiele boxes, but I'm also in the PA.  That's my usual club rig.

I'm so old that I'm still surprised when somebody posts an entire live show that they bought a ticket for and recorded on their phone.  They didn't ask permission, don't own the performance, and have no rights to distribute the music.  But at least this person doesn't monetize his YouTube channel.  I saw another who posted clips from the same show and he has his own Patreon page where you have to pay him to unlock more of his illicitly recorded videos.  Modern day bootleggin'.  But I digress... I forget that music is free now.

I had a great weekend with these guys!
Jimmy J

[edwardofhuncote]

Jimmy J., I was sitting here this morning with my bass, thinking about what you were saying in the thread about Leland Sklar over there, how he had influenced your playing, and [paraphrasing] how he always supported the song but managed to sign the part with something subtle... 

I reckon you had to have studied him pretty darn close for a few
things anyway, and not that everything needed to be a note-for-note transposition, but I gotta' think some of those signatures show up in your night job on purpose. For instance, "Whenever I See Your Smiling Face". I've heard it a thousand times on the radio, and heard you play it live, spot-on, with bonus cool stuff that I assumed was just part of the show. After all this time, the Lee Sklar influence is pretty much incorporated into 'your style' (hate how that sounds...) your 'bass vocabulary'... is that about right?

Do you have little signatures, (mine are more like punctuation marks) you can point to? Or is it dependent on which gig?

Just been wondering. I seem to spend more time thinking about bass than playing the frazzlin' thing lately. All in good time.

[JimmyJ]

Well yes for sure, he wrote most of the JT book so those historic parts need to be honored.  In those spots in the music where Lee did something cool I will also try to do something cool.  These moments come out as my own thing simply because we're two different guys.  He sure did a great job of picking the spots though.  That was a big part of the lesson when listening to him play - he knows when to move and when to lay low.

It was interesting to hear him talk about how his melodic style developed. We're all just the sum of everything we've heard or played.  Because my melodic input came from playing clarinet it's not exactly the same as Leland's.  So the results may be similar but they're bound to be a bit different.

Ironically, an article about Leland in the Minneapolis newspaper way back in the mid-70's may have influenced me to move to CA.  Who would have ever thought......

Jimmy J

[keith_h]

I'm sorry I didn't mean to upset you. I thought it was interesting as it is not a style of music I run across you playing in other videos or recordings.

[JimmyJ]

No Keith, no worries, excuse my momentary rant.  I just come from a different time with regards to intellectual property.  On the other hand, the Dead had an amazing way of dealing with all that by encouraging the recording of their shows.  Gotta love that!

This gig was indeed unusual if rather obscure musically.  I always enjoy playing with Landau and this was an extra rare opportunity to play with Gary Husband who lives in London.  Both of those characters have unique voices on their instruments and Gary even has a second strong voice on keyboards - he's just ridiculous.  So while my initial reaction to somebody posting an entire show is "what the ... are you thinking?" in the end I'm usually happy there's an archive of what happened.  So I'll calm down, I promise.

Jimmy J