I missed your post yesterday. That sounds really nice. I hope it was fun.

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Marky

Remember the music is not in the guitar

Poor fella. I feel sorry for you. I hope you make it.

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Marky

Remember the music is not in the guitar

I'm debating on putting on the Fender rounds that I took off my Precision Bass, and putting them on the Peavey Zodiac bass. Maybe, the lighter gauge might alleviate that strange buzz on the A string that the Peavey has, or maybe I can try to tweak the neck some more.

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Nope! I didn’t make it. Mrs. FSB made it.
FSB

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Hello, big guitar. Meet my little fingers.

I'm getting ready in a few minutes to take the dogs out for the evening.

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"Electric Lady"

Sounds like a good reason for evening wear. A good toque would work.
FSB

I love dogs, and they have cool toys today. They can train you to do just about anything. Throw a frisbee, chase a ball; but. I refused to howl at the moon.

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Hello, big guitar. Meet my little fingers.

I went ahead and changed the strings on the Peavey, so now it has the ones that were previously on the Squier Precision Bass. The good news is it somehow managed to fix that buzz on the A string, and I didn't have to mess with the neck at all. The bad news is there is some sort of grounding issue with it, where you hear this extra hum, unless you touch the plate where the knobs are. Well, if it isn't one thing, it's another.

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That’s one of those weird Gremlins that can rear it’s ugly head. I hate those when something gets fixed and another problem presents itself. Sorry to hear that it happened to you, Paul.

I have an older home that is grounded correctly for 3/4 of it, and an intermittent ground loop that every so often (but seldom) decides to cause a problem. The wiring is up to code as checked by electricians though. I thought a hum in a subwoofer was at the speaker until I flicked a light switch which makes me think it could be elsewhere, but maybe not. The frustrating thing is moving the sub can often kill the hum so it’s a minor annoyance. I’d change it but I like the overall sound without the hum. I’ve had it elsewhere both in older homes so I’ve become oblivious to it.
In your case, hopefully, the ground should be a problem easily solved although it could be inconvenient.

As for your strings, I don’t recall, have you changed to another type of string set before this one or is it possible the winding somehow presented the former A string buzz?

Cheers!
FSB

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Hello, big guitar. Meet my little fingers.

You want to talk electrical, the house I'm living in was built in 1882, and there's some outlets on the 1st floor that are probably from the early 1900's. Not many, just a couple. They are completely different than what you'd see with typical American outlets, with the two roundish inputs with the two prong, or three if you have more modern, grounded plugs, inside the rectangular plate.

It still has a rectangular plate, but instead of the two inputs, there's a singular, fully round input in the center of the plate, that's slightly larger, but still has the two prong flat inserts. The funny thing, is I think some of them more or less still work, although a lot of them, even the more "modern" outlets (not ones that are 3 prongs, so probably at least 40 years old, or a lot longer) are worn out. I mean if you plug something in to them, it's a very loose fit, and doesn't connect to well to power it, unless you move it around. There are some other outlets that are modern, and there was electric work done so we could actually run an AC in our attic level bedroom in the summer.

You can usually get by with fans, since we are a 1/4 mile from the beach, and technically on an island off the Atlantic, so it's not as bad, as say Florida is, but since heat rises, it can get up to 110 degrees in that attic, which it had, before we even had AC put in, and that wasn't safe to sleep in, even though we had 4 fans running. Although, this past year wasn't hot at all, but I think there was a heat wave that year.

Basically, the whole electrical system is kind of Micky Mouse, but I think the reason for that, was I think this place was converted into some sort of rooming house, maybe back in the 70's, or earlier, and it's been chopped up and put back together, until it was redone the last time, before I came up here. All kinds of strange things, including that I heard a rumor that where my office is, was some sort of elevator shaft. There are a bunch of old , push button light switches that don't do anything, but probably did at one point, and a couple of this round things sticking out of the wall, which were for gas lamps (1882, after all.) Some of the sconce lamps on the walls, I suspect were converted from gas, since they look identical to those things that are capped off. That's just a few things that are strange around here. I'd love to see the original blue prints to this place, to see how much it's been messed with over the past 135 years.

I don't own the house (if I had the money this place cost, I certainly wouldn't be buying Squiers ,) but it's actually my girlfriend's mom and stepdad's summer place. They've let us live here and just kind of watch over stuff, but most of the time, they don't put much effort into the place, unless there's something major that can't be avoided (which there has been, believe me, ) so a lot of things don't get dealt with, like said electric. It's basically their summer party place, which was Newport originally was with the mansions, and all of that. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.

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Oh, I forgot to mention about the strings, since I was going on about the house and it's electric, that I had Rotosound flats on it that were on the heavy gauge side. Technically, they are .105 to .45, which isn't exactly known to be heavy gauge for bass strings, but these are either higher tension, if that's the right descriptive, or just very stiff feeling. That's why I went to a lighter gauge for them. There wasn't much give to them, and you have to kind of fight with them to move around a bit, unless you're used to that, I suppose.

Maybe that had something to do with it, I don't know. When I got the bass, it did wind up having some other neck issue, with some sort of buzzing, and I had changed the bridge with a Bad $@! 2 bridge, but then I swapped that one out with the bridge of the Squier Jazz bass (which I did some work with, also) and put those flats on it a couple of years ago. Basically, I've had the bass sitting around, more than much actual use, because whatever issue with the neck on it.

Now that seems to be more or less resolved, there's the ground issue to deal with. Isn't there some sort of hack that I could do to stop that? I notice when I touch the control plate, it stops. I remember some of the old Fenders having some sort of flat wire coming out from the bridge for grounding. I wonder if I could rig something up (without soldering, since I don't know how to do so) to have the same effect? A piece of wire wrapped around something, or whatever. If not, then I'll have to have it professionally dealt with, I guess. If that's the case, then I'd just have the whole thing gone over with set up and all of that, but that's a matter of actually having the funds to do so. I still have at least three other basses that need work with the input jacks because of shorting.

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Loved the house details. Paul. I remember those two round button light switches and have actually used them. An interesting feature of seaport cities, villages, and sites is that early adoptions of house features are found everywhere because that’s where exporting and importing came in.

Your home is similar to the one I lived in. The Royal Navy set up their Norrh Pacific base in Victoria BC in 1865 where the Hong Kong/North America trade for opium was legal until 1905.

We lived in a renovated house with period correct details including paint colours that was made into two suites on the bottom and two suites on the top floors. Originally, officers from the RN stayed there and a similar home on the other side of town held the sailors who had small beds that slid and recessed into the walls I was told by the owner. Our house still had original type rope weighted windows’ glass, a swinging door between the kitchen and dining room, 12 foot ceilings with picture rails, some original electric lighting which gave me shocks when I cleaned the original chandelier, and more including those round electrical outlets. I never did find out if those round ones worked because the building had plenty of updated electrical along with what was said to be original. We didn’t have AC. Until recently, homes on the Island didn’t need it. The climate has changed and, although not bad, some AC is now more popular.

We and our best friends shared two rental suites on the bottom floor and we used to laugh at how high the kitchen cupboards were considering how short the original owners must have been to climb up there.

I know we would appreciate that older home you talked about, Paul. I also know of the hazards that can creep up.

We had an old Moffat gas stove, but I saw nothing that would show gas lighting because natural gas hadn’t come to the island until a few decades back partly because of the ocean and partly because of earthquakes, and more. Perhaps, kerosene was used. I don’t know. I do know old houses have character. The outside of ours had a lot of detailed relief coloured masonry; but, there was damage and time related wear that needed craftsmen that came at a cost the owner overlooked.
The ground on your bass is an annoyance to be sure. Maybe, someone here can make the job easier for you, or maybe you can put something inline to help for a temporary fix.

Best,
FSB

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Hello, big guitar. Meet my little fingers.

In a while, we're going to get ready to go to Christmas Eve church service, where our daughter will be singing. When this kid sings, she makes the angels cry. Merry Christmas too all.

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"Electric Lady"

I think it would be amazing if you could get the blueprints and a detailed history of your house. It would be so cool to learn about who lived there and what conditions were like. Is there any chance that you could find those records in your Town Hall? Maybe you could Google something like, "history of (your address)". It might be worth a shot.

I wish I could offer you some advice on your electrical problem but I know very little about that. Your idea of putting some kind of ground on it and FSB's suggestion of putting something inline both seem reasonable to me. I wish you the best of luck with it.

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Marky

Remember the music is not in the guitar

I'm sure it will be wonderful. Merry Christmas, Glenn.

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Marky

Remember the music is not in the guitar

This certainly isn't the oldest house around these parts. We walk by this one house that's dated 1700, which is the oldest I've seen, with the exception of the White Horse Tavern, which was established in 1673, so far. I suspect there might have been older house that had been torn down and newer ones built over them, since I find that strange there's only one in a few block radius with later 1700's, and then going into the 1800's mixed in. For example, there's a grave yard that I can make out the headstone to where the person died in 1690, and the oldest house I spotted around there was 1720. I wouldn't think they'd just have a random graveyard with nothing else around for at least 30 years, even the house next to it is dated 1820.

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