musings about tech & miscellanea
Music
Two-handed bass tapping on The Stick – Greg Howard
Feb 6th
From a really great guy and phenomenal Stickist, Greg Howard, a casual unedited demo lesson on how to play two-handed bass in the inverted 5ths bass tuning on the Chapman Stick. Check him out at GregHoward.com.
The NS/Stick
Feb 6th
I’m really tempted to pick up a NS/Stick, co-created by Emmett Chapman and Nedsteinberger. The NS/Stick is an 8-string bass set up for tapping like a Chapman Stick, but due to many engineering features, it can also be plucked like a regular bass. More info at http://nsstickist.com/.
Here’s Don Schiff on the NS/Stick.
Chapman Stick Rigs
Feb 6th
I picked up a Chapman Stick from Emmett Chapman some years ago. Here’s the rig I started out with; a small cheap Crate 2 channel amp. 2 channels were necessary since the Stick is stereo, separate pickups for the bass and melody strings. This didn’t last very long since the amp sounded terrible. I think it was only 40 watts and had a little speaker. Didn’t do the bass strings any justice.
Well, as with most Stick players, I got GAS (gear acquisition syndrome), and ended up with a 160 watt SWR bass amp with a couple of 15” woofers and piezo mid/tweeters to give the Stick the full sound especially from the bass strings, a Rane SP13 preamp designed specifically for the Stick, and Boss VF1 and SE-70 processors for the bass and melody strings, respectively.
Later on I got rid of the SWR Workingman’s 15 bass amp, replaced it with a similar SWR head unit (160 watts) and have the bottom 15” speaker cab plugged into that. Same sound in a smaller configuration. I wish I had more time to spend on the Stick…
Chapman Stick
Feb 6th
Here are some great clips of Chapman Stick musicians. More info on the Chapman Stick at http://www.Stickist.com.

