An SF-2 is quite a different beast than an F-2B.

Bill, tgo

And you can just imagine what they're like.......

Peter

Colin Hodgkinson (1945)

Peter

In my opinion there's no wrong technique.  Whatever works for you is right!  There's no need to "unlearn" anything unless it stops working.    Whatever you do to get the notes to speak the way you want - that's the way to go. 

But Greg has brought to light an important thing about playing bass; the length of the note!  It took me a while to understand that in many musical situations the moment where you STOP the note is almost as important as where you start it.  That can help the groove in a big way. 

Playing bass in a Bluegrass band with no drummer is a big job because you're driving the time.  The traditional upright has a very fast decay so that percussive "thump" is almost as important as the pitch when there's no kick drum helping out.  As Greg said, it makes sense in that situation to provide a more muted emulation of that relatively short driving sound.  But the beauty of it is that we have the option to occasionally play long notes - without reaching for a bow.

I also realized at some point that the great pop-music bassists I was listening to would often stop the note on the backbeat.  A full 1/4-note on the downbeat, stopped with the snare on beat-2, followed by an 1/8th note pickup to a full 1/4-note on beat 3, stopped on beat-4, etc...  That seems so simple but that "space" is the DEAL. 

Jazzy I love hearing that you use your right-hand little finger to mute the B-string.  These are the detailed techniques we develop as we need them and they are what set us all apart.  Great stuff!

Jimmy J

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.