Enlarged Balls (String question)

[morgantician]

I'm restringing my bass for a new band and I've got a conundrum. This new thing has some extreme down tuning. So much so I have to rethink a lot of how I approach my playing and amplification because it's treading more into sub-bass territory.

So, my new 4th and 3rd strings are big. Specifically, they're a .222 and .185. Big. I have to modify my bridge and nut accordingly. The nut shouldn't be a problem but here's the issue with the bridge...the string is bigger than the ball at the end. Yeah, minor engineering flaw. So, I need to enlarge that ball end to hold my string in place. Any novel ideas on what to stick through there (is the usual cylinder style string ball end, but bigger) to get a sturdy hold on the back of the bridge?

By the way, this is a top loading bridge on a P-bass, incase that's important.

[Metal and Beer]

Can you cut a length o' coat hangar to run through the ball holes? *



* That's what she said

[morgantician]

Yeah, not a bad idea.

Let me correct myself - the bridge is top loading (as in not thru body) but is not slotted for string install (the string is threaded through the hole on the back of the bridge).

[Mr. Foxen]

With the bent tin bridge, should be able to file the hole bigger.

If you custom ordered strings like that, I'd send them back as retarded, and order some that are made for high tension without being super massive, and probably taper wound so the ball end is sensible. You can have high tension strings in normal gauges, just use different cores, tell them a tuning, scale and feel you want and they should be able to do it. Only thing is if some idiot tries to tune it to standard.

[ryansummit]

Can you cut a length o' coat hangar to run through the ball holes? *



* That's what she said

one of the holes was big on my teisco bridge, i used a piece of clipped off string
fattest guage that would fit in the hole, kinked it on both sides of hole
definately jerry(jury?) rigged but it held

*quoted to condense sexy talk

[Hemisaurus]

You could use a split pin through the ball end, a lot of farm stuff uses them, they're pretty common in rural supply stores in lots of sizes.

Foxen's comment about the string should be tapered and the bridge top loading makes the most sense though.

Maybe you could mod the bridge if replacement isn't an option?



http://www.guitarfetish.com/Oversized-Top-Mount-Bass-Bridge-SUSTAIN-Chrome_p_578.html

[morgantician]

I ended up just widening the hole a smidge and was able to pass the string through and the ball end still catch. It looked like it wouldn't work before I tried though. Crisis averted!

[clockwork green]

Where can you even get strings like that? The biggest I can ever find is a .135.

[Hemisaurus]

So the ball was bigger than the string after all? 

Where did you get the strings, out of interest, and what brand are they?

[Mr. Foxen]

I got my funny strings from here: http://www.newtonestrings.com/

[clockwork green]

The biggest I see on there is a .140...are you using piano wire?

[Jake]

I'd like to see a pic of those monsters and the balls on the end.

(and the big strings you bought too)

[Mr. Foxen]

The biggest I see on there is a .140...are you using piano wire?

You order a size and they make it. Or order a tuning, scale and tension, and the make it.

These are the biggest I've had made, by a guy local to my dad, but they are for acoustic:

[giantchris]

you get that kinda huge gauge from http://circlekstrings.com/store/index.html ?

Out of curiousity what kinda speaker cab you running I'd probably try to run one of those 2 or 3 way cabs with the lower voiced 15" if I was using mega strings like that.

[Hemisaurus]

Huh, circle k have a tension chart, if you're tuning in standard intervals, you're second string will be much tighter than your first. Of course different mfgs will recommend different things.

http://circlekstrings.com/CKSIMAGES/CircleKtensionChart.pdf

Dropping to C or C# you're at 16 - 17 Hz way below what most speaker cabs are capable of, and a lot of power amps put in 30Hz filters to cut out wasted power, so you may have to watch for that, though most of what you hear will be the harmonics anyway, and not the fundamental, but even the second harmonic will be at the low end of a lot of equipment capabilities.

Also any pedals might suddenly become amazingly tone-sucky

If you factor in an equal loudness curve, a 20Hz tone needs to be at least 30dB louder than a 100Hz tone at around 100dB to sound the same, as you get quieter, the difference becomes much greater, each 10dB is 10x the power, so that's going to be one heck of a big amp

[Mr. Foxen]

Stuff below about 50hz is pretty irrelevant to actual bass tone. If you play bass through anything but extremely specialist valve amps they are going to be high passed by the output transformer. Those strings went on an acoustic bass tuned to 15hz B and it was plenty audible and bassy and there's no way the fundamental and lower harmonics were well represented. You can brick wall high pass at 30hz and never know it because cabs that go that low pretty much don't exist. 100hz high pass into an 8x10 and what you mostly notice is how much cleaner the tone it without speakers struggling, and miss a little bit of the lows you feel on you skin, but no odds to the ears. Everything you hear is in the harmonics. Those tone tests o youtube that claim two digit hz numbers, you can hear them, but youtube doesn't go that low, that's just your ear implying it from harmonics.

[Hemisaurus]

There's this thing called solid-state, got popular in the 70's H&H S500D goes all the way down to DC, we used to use them as lab amps for testing coils

Yep even my folded horn EV peters out in the low 30Hz range.

When all is said and done though, I wouldn't recommend deliberately filtering out anything except that which could damage your speakers, like Rupert Neve who will demonstrate though you may not be able to hear 40KHz, you can hear the difference it makes, the same is true with low frequency, people talk about feeling it, but I think it's more than that. You can run your own tests if you have a filter, or a crossover. Just play a low note and sweep the crossover, there comes a point where you don't hear any difference, but you sort of know the difference is there.

Anyway hence me saying watch for any filtering your power amp, pedal, or low quality valve device, may have put in the signal path

Oh, and read the Graham Holliman patent, and consider building one

[Hemisaurus]

Huh, upon looking for the Holliman Patent, came across this on wikipedia, sounds like just the effect you're going for.

Infrasonic 17 Hz tone experiment
The presence of the tone resulted in a significant number (22%) of respondents reporting anxiety, uneasiness, extreme sorrow, nervous feelings of revulsion or fear, chills down the spine and feelings of pressure on the chest.[30][31] In presenting the evidence to British Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Richard Wiseman said, "These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound. Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost—our findings support these ideas."[29]

[Mr. Foxen]

High pass filtering is recommended for every Eminence driver I've looked at. And its part of all PA installs. Once you start checking actual low frequency output and power handling of bass cabs, you start to realise how far out most people's idea of low end is.

[Hemisaurus]

All true, hence me saying to look out for it

[Jake]

I should rewrite all of my riffs to be played outside of the spectrum of human hearing.

"Thank you! That last song was called, The Subduction of the Pacific Plate into the North American Plate. It was written in the key of Fault Line. Good night everyone!"

[Hemisaurus]

Concerto for sixteen dog whistles

[Mr. Foxen]

I should rewrite all of my riffs to be played outside of the spectrum of human hearing.

"Thank you! That last song was called, The Subduction of the Pacific Plate into the North American Plate. It was written in the key of Fault Line. Good night everyone!"

Let me know if you want to borrow my octobass.

[Hemisaurus]

Be careful playing on the coast, you may cause whales to beach

[morgantician]

Since it was asked, I did get the strings from Circle K. Great company.

The band will be tuning an octave below B standard. Pretty insane and weird. Yes it's impractical. Yes dthe strings are gigantic. Yes there's plenty to consider in amping and setup to make those low notes as audible as possible. It'll be a lot of trial and error starting out for me to try to get the most of this crazy tuning. It's an existing, established band so I'm just adapting to how they do things. It's out of my comfort zone, which makes it exciting. Kinda throwing the rule book away on this one.