Grateful Dead Music Forum

Like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mh4zrbj2c37gw ... 1.mp3?dl=0

From the Fox Theatre last August.

Signal chain:

Series II stereo output-> F2-B, one channel per pickup-> Radial stereo DI-> Metric Halo ULN-8.

; ) Oh man, what a treat. Played with a pick, right? The D and G strings just SING. I prefer a darker fullness on the low strings, but I also use foam damping. But wow, you're really swingin' those rhythms beautifully. I hear the "Alembicized" texture, even in these stray headphones here at work, amidst distraction. Looking forward to hearing it through speakers/sub. This is marvelous, Edwin.

Fantastic. You guys are really firing on all cylinders.

Free Jazz wrote:; ) Oh man, what a treat. Played with a pick, right? The D and G strings just SING. I prefer a darker fullness on the low strings, but I also use foam damping. But wow, you're really swingin' those rhythms beautifully. I hear the "Alembicized" texture, even in these stray headphones here at work, amidst distraction. Looking forward to hearing it through speakers/sub. This is marvelous, Edwin.

Fender heavy pick and Pyramid Golds. I hear a lot of low end on the bottom strings on my home rig, but I wonder if it's not translating. Let me know if the mix sounds thin when you get it home. It's possible I should bring up the neck pickup a bit.

That's such a great track. Through a budget set of desktop speakers and subwoofer even, the mix sounds stellar. You're dialed in perfectly already. From a "lead bass" perspective viz the mix, I'd openly encourage your bass to be given even more prominence, similar to say, a Paris '74 soundboard. ; )
I'd love to hear more. I'd be really curious to hear how your rig navigates the spectrum in the intro to "Cumberland Blues" before it settles into the Root-Fives, etc. Or a bouncy "Help on the Way" jam. Your rig is DEVOTED to achieving such dynamics, and you get the All the Tone and most importantly, you have great time and "Feel."

Your Starfire sounds great and so does your playing

That's it, I'm putting Golds back on my Starfire! This is the tone I've been searching for... not sure if the DeArmond will give it to me or if it's too beat. Remind me what else is in yours right now? Still ACG or did you ever get crazy with it?

How do you like the Radial DI? One of our better soundmen recommended it last fall, haven't made the swap yet but I'm thinking I should.

Without question the best 70's era Phil I've ever heard from anyone other than Phil in the 70's!

Rusty the Scoob wrote:That's it, I'm putting Golds back on my Starfire! This is the tone I've been searching for... not sure if the DeArmond will give it to me or if it's too beat. Remind me what else is in yours right now? Still ACG or did you ever get crazy with it?

How do you like the Radial DI? One of our better soundmen recommended it last fall, haven't made the swap yet but I'm thinking I should.

Without question the best 70's era Phil I've ever heard from anyone other than Phil in the 70's!

Thanks!

It's all Alembic Series II innards, from pickups to filters. Also Alembic style hardware including the sustain block under the bridge. I'll have to post more complete pictures. I think the DeArmond can do it, with the right hardware. The pickup and preamp are probably not as important as the strings and hardware. I think the F2B helps a lot. It's the classic preamp tone.

The Radial is OK. Decent tone. I'm going to try to audition the new Grace Felix, a two channel preamp/DI. I have a Grace M103 channel strip, which is without a doubt the best DI I've used, but it's mono. My Radial is the cheap stereo one, but it still sounds pretty good and it definitely does all the right things and adds no noise. I recommend having one, even if you eventually get something better. The JDI is even better.

I run mine post F2B, so it gets the tone settings from there.

Dammit, that's at least a $500 post for me! I run my DI after the F2B to, but I keep mine in Mono mode and use each channel for a different bass or set them differently and use an A/B box. 5751 tube in one channel and a decent JJ 12AX7 in the other, they each have a nice tone but are somewhat different. I've been using just a Whirlwind IMP but thinking of upgrading to a Radial, that just sealed it for me. JDI is ordered!

And I think the Starfire needs a new bridge and strings at the very least. I'm not getting anywhere near that nice of a tone, mine's gotten kind of stiff and harsh and I haven't been using it lately. Did you find a source of Golds that comes with a decent E string?

Nice! The JDI is pretty awesome.

I think the Pyramid Gold E string is just something you need to get used to. I've been getting a medium scale set direct from the factory and they are a bit more balanced.

Got my JDI yesterday. It's heavy! Feels real solid. Working from home due to snow so I'll probably do an A/B test later with the IMP.

I can get used to the E. Bothered me some when I had them on but the other three strings were just so nice I didn't really mind.

Do you have any good pics of your bridge and/or sustain block? I found a good source for an alembic-style bridge (probably the same one you used?) but I have this two-piece Warwick bridge just sitting around with the correct string-spacing. I'm just curious how similar they are.

My hardware was built by a guy from Scandinavia named Marko, who was doing experiments in bridge design, so it was a one-off. There are a few oddities about it, but it's more or less exactly like the Alembic design. I'll try to get a picture to show up here, but for some reason we still can't upload pics to this forum.

zambiland wrote:I'll try to get a picture to show up here, but for some reason we still can't upload pics to this forum.

This isn't working for you?

forum/viewtopic.php?f=359&t=12940

TI4-1009 wrote:

zambiland wrote:I'll try to get a picture to show up here, but for some reason we still can't upload pics to this forum.

This isn't working for you?

forum/viewtopic.php?f=359&t=12940

Only because the pictures I want to post aren't hosted elsewhere. Note that my comment wasn't that I couldn't display the pictures, but that I couldn't upload them to this forum. TBH, I think that's a bit lame, but it's off topic.

Yeah, a little server space for users over say 100 posts would be nice given how cheap storage has become but the admins here do so much for us it's hard to gripe about a little thing like that!

www.imgur.com is a fantastic image host, real easy to use, no popups or ads or other BS. I have no idea if or how they make money but they provide a great service without even asking for login info.