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Any local bands whose sound you think is good? How about (having agreed as a band) to ask their sound engineer to come to couple of gigs and mix for you to set a new template that you can then take forward? It would be worth paying someone good to help you overcome this hurdle.

Is that one of those 3" Couch straps?

Mumbai Bicycle Club

I have got hold of the neodymium magnets, installed them, wired up the pickup to the bass and ran through my bands current set list. Here's what I can advise of: To start with, I should describe what this pickup is like prior to modding, for those who are unaware. It is a pretty typical soapbar sounding thing, if more on the obnoxious rather than smooth sounding side of things. For the design, I'd expect it to have a resonant peak somewhere about 3-5khz, but it also had a prominent lower midrange. However, rather than help solidify the bass frequencies, it was always problematic for me to tame those frequencies to where they were useful and not obtrusive. And to get this out of the way... don't do this at home unless you've got a pickup you're prepared to potentially destroy. Maybe getting some magnets and just slapping them on the bottom of the pickup would give an idea of how a stronger magnets will change the sound, in a non-permanent fashion. If you really love the sound, proceed at your own risk to make the mod permanent. The magnets installed were "N38" grade. What strength that is compared to what is used in a Dingwall pickup, or compared to a standard Ceramic C8, I don't know. But what I can say is that it is a crazy-strong magnet. I had to slide them apart upon arrival as the pull was too strong to pull them apart in opposite directions. I think it's also fair to say that this pickup design is clearly not suited to magnets this strong, as the string pull is tremendous. The pickup was installed into a bass with the following signal path: Pickup > series/parallel switch (set to series) > preamp bypass switch (set to bypass)> volume control > output jack. Initially I set the pickup height to 2.5mm below the bottom of the G string when fretted at the 24th fret. However I soon doubled this, and found no detrimental affects to the tonality. What my ears tell me: -The lower mid hump is gone. -It is still a very mid-forward pickup, but that midrange is now somewhere around 650hz and above. And those frequencies really dominate the sound. It's not a "cocked wah" type sound, the Q is too broad for that. With an amp's EQ flat, and -boosting the bass a little bit, it gives a sound that would be good for a bass solo. In terms of the 7 bad system dwarves, we've got a lot of Honky and Barky here. -The 30hz and 12khz sliders on my EQ pedal now sound like they actually do something. There's not a whole lot of audio information to be heard in there, but previously there was none. In short, it's an improvement because the problems it throws up are not as troublesome as the ones it has removed. I find it easier to get the sounds I'm looking for now.

I wonder whether they are specially bred toneworms?

Looking forward to this evening… asked by some chums to play bass on Kayleigh/Lavender by Marillion and Thin Lizzy’s Dancing in the Moonlight. Should be fun!

Daryl Hall & John Oatmilk

Old (and forgot to sling their boots) Order

Wow. I really hate it. That looks especially awful. I do love the FSO look with the big round overs on the edges, though. Imagine how nice that would look finished in candy ANYTHING without all the worm holes in it. Also, £7,300 is a crazy price for a P Bass. There's nothing you can do to a P Bass to justify that kind of price tag to me.

Bacci make some genuinely interesting instruments. I really like the look and concept of these https://www.andertons.co.uk/bacci-guitars-leonardo-dual-outputddsatin-bosco-roasted-maple28-scale-celeste-radiance/ For the uninitiated it's a baritone guitar with a separate pickup for the lowest three strings which opens up various options like putting them through a bass amp or a synth pedal while the other pickups send the signal from all six strings into another amp. If nothing else, it's a bit different. The bass in the OP, on the other hand, is just a very expensive P bass.

The Mamas, Papas and Childfree by choice

In the language of basschat, that means "Buy another five string, but make sure it's a better one next time."

We used to have a guy do our sound at big gigs, had his own PA hire and sound engineering company. He was a drummer and every mix was drum heavy, not by any extreme measure but noticeable and it got on my nerves. Our guitarist at the time used to do a few jobs for him when he was unavailable and some of those bands would request him instead as they preferred his stage and FoH mix which was always really well balanced (to my ears anyway). A bit like there always being one punter who will tell you something is too loud and another who will tell you the same thing is too quiet.

Not at all, as a band we're all happy. I think the point you're possibly overlooking is that nothing in this is about an identifiable and quantifiable 'best/ideal/optimal sound', it's about how expectations differ among people, and how those expectations affect perception and emotion. It sounds like the rest of your band might have agreed with you in principle, but don't share your expectations that it shouldn't happen, so they aren't worried when it does happen again. Re my bunch, we don't have any problem with our guitarist simply because we don't expect him to turn down, it's him (and there are plenty of singers, key's players, drummers, and bassists who are just the same who nonetheless get on with their bands without friction), and apart from a few of the type of musos who like to scratch their chins at a gig and then come straight up to you at the break and offer some well intentioned feedback, neither does anyone else. So there's no tearing out of hair needed. Is it ideal? No. Is it good enough? Yes.