Russ

Didn't I sell it to you back in 2005? It's a stunningly good bass, and I should never have let it go, really. I think I was the third or fourth owner of it at that point, at least it's found somewhere stable to live!

Yep, that's an Original. A proper old one too, since it has the brass nameplate in front of the bridge. Thinking probably 1994-1995 or so? Seis age spectacularly well - mine is 22 years old and plays better than it ever has. What electronics are in it? I'm guessing the Schack circuit he used to put into almost everything? As for getting the top fixed - get it over to Martin. He'll sort it right out. I had him "rejuvenate" mine about a year and a half ago - got him to do a full setup, clean and polish, replace a few screws that had gone rusty, stick some Hipshot Ultralites on it, fix an annoying issue with the battery compartment where the wood cover had become detached from the metal plate underneath, and so on.

I've thought about getting one, mostly to tune E-C and defret, to go with my one remaining US Bongo (I had four at one point!). Fretless US Bongos are as rare as rocking horse s**t. And I had one and let it go! Might just keep an eye out for a US one at this point, I think. The ultra-hot neodymium pickups and the 4-band EQ ARE the Bongo sound and there's nothing available aftermarket (that I know of) that mimics that. Q-Tuner do MM-sized neo pickups, but I've no idea if they're based on the Bongo design or sound anything like them. And Trickfish and Noll will do you a 4-band preamp, but they won't have the frequencies of the Bongo's EQ.

He's got nerve damage in his right hand, but he's developed an interesting plucking technique to compensate using his index finger and his thumb. The guy can still play his unmentionables off.

Literally just saw this. Gutted. Probably the most quietly influential British bass player of the last 40 years. There is no bass player in the UK of a certain age who didn't implicitly know the bass parts to Fool's Gold, She Bangs The Drums or Waterfall, or that bass break from I Am The Resurrection.

The last generation of Eden cabs were light, but not featherweight. I think they were lightweight wood, but with regular speakers, not neodymium ones. I'd be expecting these ones to be similar. The original Nemesis range were proper featherweights, I'd have liked to see them go back in that direction, but as long as these ones aren't backbreakers, I'm sure they'll be fine. Just get the cabs with the fewest number of speakers (the 1x15", or the 2x12" or 2x10").

I was running it into a Barefaced Big Twin 2, mostly using my pair of Maruszczyk Frog 6-strings. I’ve been using an Ashdown RM-800 as my primary head for some time, so that was my benchmark in terms of tone, volume, etc. Agedhorse made some suggestions earlier in this thread about how to use the EQ (which works additively, effectively as volume controls for certain frequencies), but, even with that, I couldn’t get the gain up past about 10 o’clock without the whole thing fuzzing up. I like some hair on my tone, but I also like to be able to not have it. And using the EQ controls in the manner they were intended to be used did make things louder, but not sufficiently so for me. I owned a Bass 400+ back in the day too, and I don’t recall ever having issues with getting a clean tone with that, with it only getting furry when you hit it hard, and in a pleasant, “creamy” sort of way. If you cranked the input gain it would fuzz out, but only towards the extreme end of the gain knob. I’m not giving up on Mesa though. Probably going to revisit the WD-800 at some point - I had one for a while and liked it a lot, but couldn’t justify holding onto two heads at the time.

I returned mine in the end. Just couldn’t get it to sound the way I wanted it to. Even with minimal gain, minimal EQ, etc, the sound was a little too “hairy” for my taste. It was hard to get something that sounded reasonably clean, at volume - I wanted loud, with just a hint of hairiness, and I struggled to get it. But, of course, that’s an entirely subjective perspective - you may be looking for precisely that sort of sound.

I've actually been playing my RBJ-67 a fair bit lately. Those pickups with the beefy, MM-like polepieces combined with the East J-Retro I put in it generates a tone with some serious ⚽️🔒🔒. I think it actually sounds better than some of the so-called super-Js I've owned in the past - it's bigger-sounding and easier to play than the Sadowsky I owned about 15 years back! All that's really wrong with it is that it weighs a f**king ton and my quinquagenarian back does not approve.

Love it. They look like Nordstrand BigBladeMan pickups. Those things rip - got a set in my Spector.

In terms of “official” endorsers, yep, there aren’t many. But you do see quite a lot of them out there being played by some reasonably well-known players - another couple who sprang to mind were James LoMenzo (currently with Megadeth) and Tony Kanal (No Doubt). The only endorsed Yamaha player I can think of who moved onto another brand was John Myung - the rest of them have stuck with the brand forever. You’re right about the guitar side of things though - there really aren’t many. But again, the YouTube generation are filling the gaps, people like Matteo Mancuso. The Pacifica was always the single best inexpensive Strat-a-like available, but there’s a lot more competition now. Yamaha make a LOT of instruments and I guess they have to focus on where they do best - for them, that means brass instruments, keyboards and pianos (they obviously have their own range, and they own Bösendorfer - probably the most prestigious and expensive pianos in the world!). Let’s not forget they are also the current owners of Ampeg and Line 6.

Yep, Richlite is basically layered paper infused with resin. So is ebonol. They're very stable though, and do sound suitably "woody".

I'm not going to be able to make it, alas. Too much going on around here to be able to take off (literally) for a weekend back in Blighty. Maybe next year.

Well, our very own @Kiwi is doing his graphite neck thing, there's Klos, who are making Modulus-esque basses and replacement necks, Modulus and Zon are still going in the US, and the Germans like Bogart and Clover are still offering graphite necks on their instruments. Supposedly Mike from Zoot will soon be joining the graphite club. In terms of using alternative materials, there's also Aristides out of the Netherlands, who make guitars and basses out of something they call Arium. No idea what's in it, it's some kind of reinforced resin.

On the skinny-stringed side of things, Matteo Mancuso has been a pretty visible Yamaha user over the past couple of years. If you've never checked him out, he's astonishing. Probably the best young guitarist out there today.