Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

My little studio is actually the converted wheelhouse of my sailboat (on which I also live). About 7' x 7' with guitars, amps, computers all mitered in like a chinese puzzle. No drums set yet . No complaints about size, as I'm well used to the liveaboard experience, but the room is harmonically pre-loaded. My tuner says I'm fine but to the ear my bass sounds up to a half step sharp if I give it any volume at all. Aside from using headphones, is there something I can do to "tune" the room or inhibit those perceived tones that are driving me crazy?

Just curious if any of the chainplates are located anywhere near your room? I usually tell people with boat problems that they need new sails, but other than looking spiffy and maybe picking up an extra knot or two that probably wouldn't help here...... Perhaps there is more to "tuning the rig" than meets the eye.

Yeah, Todd, She's a ketch rig so there are chainplates everywhere. Do you think the actual stays and shrouds are what I'm hearing? Think they could build some vintage Grovers for my standing tackle? Maybe I could switch to flatwound rigging wire for less harmonics, I dunno... The hull is ferrocement about an inch thich with two inches of insulation and oak ceiling (for those lubbers, the ceiling is the walls. Don't ask me...) over that. My Bose 901's sound great in here even at high volume, but the live bass seems to set the room in some kind of off-kilter sympathetic vibe: the louder, the more perceived variance from desired pitch.
In a recording tutorial I learned how every space vibrates like a string in sympathy and you need to interrupt the space with baffles, walls that are not square to each other, etc. to disrupt the loading. The room is well baffled with all the gear, and the windshield is angled. I don't know if covering all the wood would help; I doubt it.
Could the water be doing it? When my head is underwater in the tub, everything sounds wierd. Maybe I'm hearing my audio repeated & distorted as it leaves the boat on its way to kill fish.

I have no clue whether the problem is actually the small room or something else, but when you think about it..... a hollow box with a stick resting against it and connected by one or more tensioned wires from the top of the stick down to the "box" is essentially what a sailboat is.....and it's also what a washtub bass is. In your case, your washtub bass is the deluxe, double-necked version. Every tensioned wire between the masthead and the hull on a sailboat should certainly have a frequency, the same way a guitar string does, but they would generally be very low notes and the hull likely doesn't have a lot of sustain. The boat would probably look pretty cool with half a dozen 25 lb. giant Grovers spaced along each side. Does it by chance have a bowsprit like this stink-potter?

This pic just confirms what I always say about power-boat owners That boat looks kinda squirrelly, wonder if it's got a keel. But it does bring a whole new meaning to rock 'n' roll.

I really don't know what is doing it, though. I'll see if anyone else wants a stab at it...