Thanks for that Greg, I think most of my muting comes from my fretting fingers mainly and occasionally thumb round the neck if i'm on a 4 string. My right hand thumb moves vertically to mute on 5 stringers and strangely my right hand little finger rests on the underside of the B string when not playing that string and the rest of my hand kinds of pivots around it. Bad technique i'm sure. That happened unconsciously with my first Alembic and i haven't tried to un learn it yet.
But for certain i'm noticing more since i've been playing with the filters more open than previously. Also i'm enjoying and playing the Elan much more with rounds than flats.

Doesn't have much of anything to do with your original issue Jazzy, but tangent to your post above^. 

One of the technical things about playing bass guitar in bluegrass and string bands goes beyond the visual, cultural, and yes, traditional idea that it should be an upright bass in that role. Bass guitars just plain don't sound like upright basses, but there are techniques you can employ to help emulate them. And I believe, well... I know, it comes easier if you already play them. That's how your brain wants to hear bass in that space anyway, so your hands go to work making it happen. I don't know how much of it is a conscious set of decisions, but one of them is definitely right-hand/left-hand string muting to prevent or allow notes to sustain a fairly precise amount of time. 

See, in my gig, there is no kick-drum and snare. There's a guitar strum and mandolin chop to fill out a rhythm section, but the bass is the root and the timekeeper. So the length of those notes matters a lot. Learning to control them is a key component whether playing the upright or the bass guitar. It's also why I struggle so with other music... playing with a drummer instead of the band following me is hard to process. It happens, but slower. 

Been liking an F2-B  for a while now. With our dollar the way it and our taxes, that price is good for me.
Anyway I message the seller yesterday to see whether they would consider shipping the the F2-B but It's pickup only. Unfortunately don't know anyone that's close to the seller.

Yes indeed, gig-ready rig there. 😎

Trogly's review of the new Silent System on a Strat, including a complete tear-down and play through.

I guess it's okay to reveal the story... it's actually my old bass, about to be Gary's.



He saw, and played it a couple years ago at the Mothership and asked me about it. I had sold it to another Club Member after having the electronics RF upgrades done, CVQ's replacing the Q-switches, and having new pickups installed to replace the broken originals. That bass though, still had problems. The short of it was, the guy I sold it to returned it to Alembic, I refunded him, and it went back to the repair queue... with someone else's name on the case. Oops. It ain't my nature to hassle. Time goes by... when it finally gets discovered and winds up back on Ron's workbench, he discovers some very odd problems. It takes quite a while to find and fix intermittent trouble. What Mica told me he found at fault was a solder joint, a crimp, and a trimpot... none of which were totally failed. They required a lot of testing and re-testing to locate. I think the way he put it in a note was; "unusual, unexpected, and surprising." Take from that what you will - I believe it. The main thing is, it got fixed. These things require patience. After all this time and effort you'd think I'd just be happy to have the bass back... and I would have. 

Retirement from public service, the need to pay off the mortgage on my home, starting up a business, and serious health issues, all these events conspired to make me drastically reduce the size of my instrument collection. Eight Alembics have passed through my hands and I enjoyed every single one, including this one for the year or so I had it. I'm just as happy it's going to another Club Member now, having done my part to make it the best it can be. I have kept only the Persuader 5-string I started with and the Custom fretless it inspired.

So hopefully Gary has a safe Road Trip to Rohnert Park with "Goliath" there, and gets his glitchy switch issue sorted. While there, he gets to pick up a new/old Series bass [80-1684] and pending approval, it's all his... we'll square up later. I've already sent the old power supply and a set of red canare cables I had made up by Butch at Bayou Cables, and even the road case it came in that had been taking up space in my shop for ages. (I bought a new G&G hardshell case for it years ago.) That should be the whole set reunited there.

Quote from: JimmyJ on October 08, 2026, 09:27:29 AM

Quote from: Barend on October 07, 2026, 01:22:26 AMCan the 5-pin and the jack out be used at the same time on the non-series basses? Like two mono outputs sending the total output each to a different amp? Like I can do on my Wal bass? or does one shut off when the other is used?

I think it's only the battery power that is switched by the 1/4" jack, not the audio output.  So you could run both but I'm not sure you'd want to.    Two cables trailing off the end of the bass?  On the other hand, if you were to use an external PSU you could simply use that output to drive two amps.  The DS5R for example has multiple outputs front and back. 

Or - I think you can drive a couple amp channels directly from the 1/4" output by just daisy-chaining them together.  I'm sure there's a limit but that should work too.

(And remember, most non-Series instruments don't have this mod...)

Jimmy J

Would you have to remove the batteries? I imagine there would be some kind of conflict between the power from the power supply and the batteries?

Quote from: JimmyJ on October 01, 2026, 08:23:42 AMHey Jazzyvee,

Your question made me pick up the bass and experiment.  If I need to play a short note at that fret I think I automatically mute the string with my right hand.  In fact, my right hand seems to be in charge of keeping everything quiet!  But I now see it IS possible to play that note further back behind the fret - closer to the 11th-fret - then lift off without the harmonic sounding.  But my left-hand technique is not nearly accurate enough to play that way consistently without buzzing out all over the place. 

I think the full-range sound of our Alembics forces us to be better players! 

Cheers!
Jimmy J

PS: the overtone Mica hates is the 6th (I think) in the series which divides the string into 7 parts.  On your G-string, the 5th in the series is about 1/4" above the 3rd fret which sounds a high-D pitch.  If you move your finger towards the nut to about a 1/4" below that 3rd fret you will hear the nasty out-of-tune high-F.  (You may need to move your plucking hand to make these speak.)  Now you must un-hear that!!!

Hi Jimmy, thanks again for sharing your wisdom. I decided to check out some of the youtube videos which had some closer shots of your right hand technique and it seems like you are multi-tasking with your fingers having two roles they either have to pluck strings to play notes, or they have to actively damp strings either side of the ones that are being played. It seems like twice as much work and incredibly effective. Probably essential with the tight string spacing you enjoy. 👍🏾

But there's always the 'wild card' of the variability of wood particularly in acoustic instruments:

When I worked retail, we had an 'acoustic room' (really necessary after Edward VH came along and our electric room would just s-q-u-a-l-l all day long). We were a dealer for Martin and St Louis era Alvarez (and the tremendously overlooked Alvarez Yairis, THE most overlooked fine acoustics) and Yamahas for our 'starter' or student guitars (the LL's had not come along yet).

We had one $189 Yamaha FG that SMOKED everything in the room.  We had D28's and 35's and you didn't dare let those customers hear that Yamaha, they'd have just walked for the tremendous price difference.  We had other FG's that were fine, but that particular one was an absolute stand out, just the luck of the 'wood draw'.

They're just like that.  You could line up 10 brand new same model Martins, consecutive serial numbers, 10 in a row.  They'd all sound fine, but a couple maybe a little short, and 1 or 2 that would be standouts.  It was just down to this one or that one.

Quote from: JimmyJ on October 08, 2026, 09:27:29 AMOr - I think you can drive a couple amp channels directly from the 1/4" output by just daisy-chaining them together.  I'm sure there's a limit but that should work too.

(And remember, most non-Series instruments don't have this mod...)

Jimmy J

I'm not sure there is a limit, if you're talking about what i think of as daisy-chaining; instrument into amp 1, input 1 - input 2 to amp 2 input 1, etc.

I got to do monitors for the Nighthawks when we did a double bill with them, and Mark Wenner's harmonica rig was - if memory serves (and it usually does about this kind of thing) - harp > tweed Twin > brownface Twin > blackface Twin Reverb.  Worked wonderfully.
And back when we & the world were young, I saw more than one guy daisy-chain 4 Marshall stacks.

Heck, go nuts; use the 5-pin & DSR; send one p/up into a Yamaha B100-115 II, chained to a Kustom 250, to an Acoustic 360.  Send the other one DSR > Sunn Concert > tweed Bassman > Alembic pre/Yamaha power/ fEARful or AccuGroove or some such cabs.

Boy, it's fun spending his money on insane stuff!

Peter