Resonance control III

Perfect combo, lamb with mint sauce

You know, the best sermons relate to daily life and lively delivery. The worst one, bash, bash, bash all the way. You should have done this, you should have done that.... A long and boring sermon is a torture. Give me a break. Writing style is no different. Business reports or any kind of reports, utterly boring.

After my first sweet success with Gaboon ebony, little did I know that the addiction was unstoppable. Gaboon ebony treated the mid and highs so magically, just like a grilled lamb with mint sauce, a heavenly gastronomical. The bass, the meat of music, is yearning for attention. How to cook the bass? The some sort of perfectionist nature in me is relentless. I could be so hard on myself, sometimes. No pain, no gain, results are my best consolations. Nuts do crazy things.

The banker looks exactly like the above when in awe

Not that my bass is lacklustre, American made speakers never short of bass anyway if anything else. Bass is the single element that make people go oh and ah on first encounter. We see audio exhibitors blast the speakers to the roof to attract visitors. Most people love bass, especially uncles. Nobody would complain about clean bass, I do encountered some who can live without bass.

Big boys and Average Joe

Bass is the most prominent element in audio that separates the big boys and Average Joe. Walloping bass costs money, clean bass costs a lot more. Average Joe gets puny bass, not louder than elephant fart. So, I get to hide when seeing big boys because my pity system is laughable. Their speaker cable alone costs more than my whole system. No competition! Remember the story about anaconda taking a pee? You have not seen the world yet.

Diffuser is not that all effective to curb excessive bass, but anyway, I never like diffuser. The banker brought down the diffuser and it serves a good washing board. People use bass trap and as the name implied, its working principal is similar to fish trap. What goes in never comes out.

Alternatively, I took the Macassar ebony route.

What is more credible than referring to guitar makers on their findings of Macassar ebony? The smartest way in life is to learn from people's mistakes and experiences without having to bear the cost. The downside is, you will always be a follower. China is the champ in this regard, they copy everything on earth. Everything has a price, I'm a happy value camper. Innovative companies charge you through your nose for their innovations, so called big capital R and D. The flat screen TV is an excellent example. The prices were steep when the first flat screen TV launched, the prices of flat screen TV dropped over time thanks to economies of scale, with even better specs. Hybrid car is the next big thing.

Taylorguitars.com has written a comprehensive research on tone woods. Below is what they say about Macassar ebony.

"Origin: Indonesia
Used On: Limited Editions, Custom Guitars

Another dense hardwood, Macassar boasts a lot of presence and is typically clear and loud with a broad dynamic range. It seems to be a wood that is uniquely responsive to different playing styles. It has a strong bass and lower mids; clear and transparent highs that respond like an accelerator pedal as you move your right hand closer to the bridge and dig in a bit; and a slightly scooped midrange.

Macassar likes to be played hard, and tends to take a slightly longer period of playing time to open up. When it's used with a softer top wood like cedar or redwood, it makes a balanced instrument. When topped with Adirondack spruce it becomes an all-out cannon. Some players tend to pull more brightness out of the wood; others, like Bob Taylor, tap into its darker side.

"To me, Macassar has a great 'low-fi,' old Gibson vibe," Bob says. "It's dark, it's dense, it's heavy. It's killer for a very manly, old school strum. We put a super clear 'finishing salt' on its tonal flavor using our style of construction to brighten it up, but to my ear the tonal beauty of this wood is the low-fi vibe. I love the sound. I bought one."

Goes Well With: Old-school strummers and players with a heavy picking hand who like a thick old school sound; players who struggle to get enough brightness and articulation from traditional woods."

Here's what Mangore.com on Macassar ebony

"Deep clean basses and great sustain preferred to Brazilian rosewood by many guitarists and builders. It is sober and generates a full, round sound. It projects very well and the figuring can be quite striking. In the same league with Brazilian rose, African Blackwood and Maple... Some of the most striking instruments are made with this Indian species. If you love dark looking  instruments, this is definitely the wood for you."

A long waited parcel finally arrived at my door step, 15 pieces of Macassar ebony from Indonesia in total. Beautiful tiger stripe grain, precisely machine cut. Ebony is one heck of hard wood, not worth the effort cutting yourself. Pound per pound, Macassar ebony is cheaper than Gaboon ebony, by 30%. Wasting no time, Macassar ebony blocks are up.

Gaboon ebony on top, Macassar ebony at the bottom

Faber Castle's Blue Tack is a handy product, affixing these blocks to the walls was a breeze. Blue Tack allows sufficient tack to hold the blocks in place and readjust later if necessary. As Macassar ebony is known to reproduce clean bass, hence it is logical to place them at lower height. Don't shoot me! I never said that the above configurations yields optimum results. This would be an outright irresponsible claim.

Honeymoon, this guy does not know what he is getting in to...

And so, my inquisitiveness got the best of me. Trying out them at different height to determine if these Macassar ebony works or was it merely a mind game. You all know that our mind can trick us, we all tend to get super excited with new stuff regardless how they perform. You are transported to honeymoon state of mind, everything is rosy. When your little brother is straight, you just couldn't think straight! Reality only kicks later. That's why I make it a point to allow second opinions.

Nice clean bass

Let's get to the result, Macassar ebony responds to localization. Macassar ebony cleans up my bass. No, it does not produce bigger bass. In contrary, the bass is powerful, taut and tuneful. At times, you get to think that the bass loudness reduced (less smearing), it is a blessing in disguise. Quite amazingly, it hold up the wholesome bass and adds dimensionality to it.

Blue sky

Imagine this, countryside blue sky. When too much mid bass, it becomes too much of a good thing, it becomes dull. Bass kind of intrude the midrange and screw things up, it smears the midrange. Yuk! The damn thing is you never know until you experience it. Nat King Cole does not sound like thick chocolate, Chai Qin vocal is not smooth. Go listen to vocal from a pair of good bookshelf speakers, you get what I mean. The Brits opine that it is technically much easier to build a two way speaker than a three way speaker. They are dead right. Even a probably designed three way speaker, an untreated room will mess it all up.

I always have a soft spot for Nordic jazz, a breeze of clean and fresh air from Nordic. The originator of minimalist. Lighter, simpler arrangement, not over improvised, but most of all, sung by white folks, not Afro American. Afro American sometimes try too hard woo us by changing the song to theirs, they went overboard.

Sofia Pettersson has a unique voice, a little nasal "girl to woman" voice. She reminds me of Ricky Lee Jones. Slow Down is a cool pop jazz cover version. Her rendition of 59th Street Bridge Song is refreshing.

The gut strings are made of these nasty cow intestines 

The double bass intro, wow, not lean nor exaggerated, Macassar ebony replicates the elasticity and chewy of the gut strings, the reverberations is fascinating. Now, the piano, double bass and drums seem detached from the mid. As a result, the mid opens up, this is an early Christmas for me. The bass is fertile and the locality seems lower too.

Guys, listen to her version of Hallelujah. This song is written by the poetic Leonard Cohen, widely covered, almost 200 artists in various languages. Leonard speech like tempo has a way of drawing you into his music. The thing is very hard to mess up this melodic song. Sofia is definitely one of the better ones.

I do realise my outspoken will self abducted into the SKL hall of fame. What the heck! My findings are not for sake of wooing readership. I don't make money from my blog but self esteem.

Friends were shook by my bass corresponding to my hardware and room size. My bass makes me proud! Not in the way that they will rock your boat but in a civilised manner, the punch have got inner strength. I'll be totally honest, I do keep a small bass secret recipe.