Strings

The Stagg EUB comes with a set of pretty basic steel core strings. For pizzicato they are not that bad. They have pretty low tension and play nice. Under the bow they are not that good. On my new Stagg the quality of the strings was ok but on the old Stagg the strings itself were not completely even making them even harder to bow.

Strings are one of the most personal things on a bass. Some prefer bright and some prefer dark sounding strings. High tension versus low(er) tension is also a matter of taste as is steelcore versus synthetic core… I personally like my basses to sound dark and mellow and the strings should have not too much tension and be bowable. I tried several sets on the Staggs:

Stock strings
As I said these are pretty basic. They do not feel very flexible when off the bass but when on the bass they play pretty nice. They sound not very deep and kind of metallic (which is not strange being steel core strings). They are pretty cheap (about 30 euro) and certainly not the worst string on the market. In fact I think they offer a very decent price-quality ratio.

Spirocore medium
I also tried the well known and loved Spiros (medium) on the Stagg. Firstly, I do NOT like Spiro’s. I think the tension is too high and the sustain way too long. But I thought I would give them a shot on the Stagg. I tried them on the old Stagg and to be honest I was kind of afraid the headstock would not take the tension!!

On the Stagg the strings felt even tighter than on my acoustic double bass. The sound was better however than the stock Stagg strings but also typical Spiro so not to my tasting. Maybe the the low tension Spiros would give a better sound and feel on the Stagg. I quickly took them off again and sold them to another bassist.

Presto Balance Orchestra
After a lot of searching on the web and Talkbass I decided to give a set of Presto Balance Orchestra strings a try. Especially after I got them cheap (used for a short while by a guy on a quest for the perfect string). These strings are also steel core just like the Stagg and Spiros but should be a lot easier under the bow.

Well, I did not like them. The sound was nicer, darker than the Spiros except the A string that sounded really metallic and quite different from the other strings. I found the Prestos quite horrible to bow. I am a beginner on the bow but I could get a much better sound from the Spiros than from the Prestos! So off they went. They are for sale.

Evah Pirazzi Weich
The last set I tried was a set of used Evah Pirazzi Weich I bought online. I have a set of Pirazzis on my acoustic double bass and I really like them. But they are pretty expensive, almost as much as the black Stagg bass was! But when I could buy a used set at a reasonable price I decided to take the plunge.

Well, it felt like coming home! A beautiful dark sound, not too much tension and easy to bow. All things I like in a string. This set is a keeper, that is one thing I know for sure! After I decided to keep the string I cut them to the right length as Pirazzis are always pretty long. The headstock now looks nice and tidy.

A trip to the luthier

After most of the work was done I took the bass to the well known Dutch luthier Lucas Suringar. He is also selling the new Stagg RDL bass as I mentioned before in this posting. The one thing I did not trust myself with was planing the rosewood fingerboard… As he has a lot of experience with the Stagg EUB I was more than happy to drive quite a bit further to visit him. And it is always fun to chat with him and other customers while waiting for the work to be finished.

He took off the strings and removed quite a lot from the fingerboard. The planing revealed some lighter spots on the board but I think this only adds character to it. And after re-oiling the board it was a lot less visible anyhow.

In order to be able to plane the board Lucas removed the top nut. On most Staggs this is glued into place and removing it almost certainly will damage the epoxy on the headstock. As it did on my bass too 😦  But I was able to recover the paint flakes and I have glued them back in place at home and the damage is hardly visible. Strangely enough the top nut on my black Stagg was not glued on at all, something he had not seen before on any of the Staggs he had worked on so far.

The nut itself was also modified. On a stock Stagg the string spacing is not correct (too large). This should be 10 mm heart to heart. So three of the four slots were filled with a mixture of super glue and ebony sawdust and some new slots were cut. A quick re-oiling with some linseed oil finished the job.

After all work was done the Stagg played a lot better. No more buzzing! Top job and also at a very reasonable price (about 30-50% less than other quotes I got)!

Electronics

The Stagg comes with an active pre-amp powered by a 9V battery. So far these seem to have eternal life, even when it is of some obscure brand. But I have also read reports online that claim very short battery life. So just to be sure I have put a spare in the gigbag…

On both my Staggs the electronics work pretty well. The headphone out is really handy when practicing late at night and the MP3 in is nice for playing along your favourite tracks. The Stagg has two piezos (one under each bridge foot) that have an adjustable potmeter. A small adjustment can have a great effect on the sound so be careful!

The very first thing I did on my black Stagg was shielding the electronics. The Stagg company did not bother with this and it is easily done by yourself. You just need some aluminium or copper tape, a sharp pen knife and some time. I did not think of this myself but found a complete tutorial online: see it for yourself on Flickr. Thanks for sharing your pictures mateybass!

I followed the tutorial picture by picture. I did try the foam under the piezos on the black Stagg but did not hear any difference in sound whatsoever. The endpin rattle I have solved another way. You can read about that here and here.

Below a few pictures of the shielded endpin cavity. The pre-amp cavity looks the same.

The shielded endpin cavity

The rubber ball is for attaching a body support for playing while sitting

The cables that are just visible lead to the piezo pickups

Both looped piezo pickups that work much better than the straight ones on the old Stagg

The end of the pin in the shielded electronics cavity

 

Gigbag

The Stagg EUB is delivered including a gigbag which is very nice!. There is also a hard case available but as I am only a beginning bassist (playing mostly at home) I have not bothered to have a look at it. The gigbag has a few faults. As I have had an old one with my black Stagg and a new one with the honey Stagg I now know the following things:

Zippers
The zippers are not of the best quality, to say the least… On the black Staggs bag they were all broken! Online I also read of the very poor quality of the zippers.I hope they will last a bit longer on the new bag, I will be extra careful with them… At least they look a bit nicer 😉

 EDIT: July 21st 2014
On zipping up the new bag to take the new Stagg with me to the campsite the zippers broke on their very first use! The steel pieces are simply not strong enough… The wire is pressed into shape but on the press spot it is very weak. I replaced them with two keyrings, a simple modification the works really well!

Stitching
The stitching is not very good at some points. In my case the outside bow pocket and the inside pockets for the body-support all had loose stitching

Hole
However, the main culprit is the material used for the endpin side end of the bag.

Due to the rather sharp endpin and small rubber tip in combination with the poor material used, the endpin will be coming through sooner or later… My black Staggs bag had a hole and I have found a few images online too (like the picture on the left, mine looked very similar).

The remedy is very simple. In both bags I cut the lining on the inside of the endpiece so that I could slide in a round piece of 5mm thick rubber (about the size of a CD) between the endpiece and the lining. After that it is just a question of sewing the lining back together and the problem is solved!

On the new bag I found the lining material to be very thin and vulnerable so I decided it would be wise to sew an extra circular piece of artificial leather over the lining. I was lucky to have some lying around from a few motorcycle buddy seats I had made a new cover for. It did get on a bit wrinkled but with the bag turned the right way around this is not visible.

Now at least I know it will last a lot longer! Perhaps also because of the larger diameter rubber tip on the endpin…

 

Headwork

The new version of the Stagg EUB has a much improved headstock design. The old design was rather weak and you’ll find a lot of reports of breaking headstocks online if you search for it. The new design (on the left in the picture) is much stronger and, in my opinion, looks better too.

The tuners were changed too: the old Stagg had tuners with a hole for the string where the new tuners are slotted like on most bass guitars. The rest of the tuners looks the same but somehow the new ones seem better. Overall they look pretty cheap but they work just fine and hold their tuning well.

Did I do some work on the tuners? Of course, otherwise you would not be reading this post! On both basses I did two things:

• I changed the fixing screws for larger diameter ones. This prevents the whole tuner from moving around
• I glued the ferrules into place. On the old Stagg all ferrules were loose in the, badly drilled, holes and on the new Stagg this was not much better

On the old Stagg I also took off the pressed on tuner grips and soldered them back on as those where buzzing very annoyingly while playing. On the new Stagg the grips seem to be a lot tighter so I have not done anything about that yet.

Below a few more pictures.

The headstock strung with Pirazzi strings

I used to larger diameter screws to eliminate movement

The ferrules were glued into place as they easily come loose