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This is a thread I started a few months ago as a NBD, but as usual it's turned into something more suited to the Build Diaries section. So here it is 😁. I bought an Epiphone acoustic guitar today for a workmates daughter, and while I was chatting to the seller he said he had an old 80s bass that needed some sorting. We'd spoke about fixing up cheap old gear and he thought it would be right up my street, and I was welcome to it if I wanted it, as it was just in the way. We met at his workplace (a really cool place that makes vintage pressed number plates, full of really old machinery BTW 😎) so he didn't have it with him but he said he send some pictures. Well he just has and it's an old Kay version of the 80s Aria SB/Westone Thunder type of bass. Natural wood, neck through PJ, active electrics by the look of the switching. I've been after a bass in this style for a while and am over the moon with his offer. I'll pick it up in the week hopefully, and give him something for it anyway. Bored yet? Yes? OK, pictures then. Any info about these basses gratefully received. Plywood wings and presumably heavy as hell. I'll update when I've got it. 🙂👍

My RM800 EVO2 Musik Productiv purchase arrived this afternoon: I managed about an hour through it when I got back from work early. I really love the sound. Compared to my MarkBass head through the Super Compact, the RM800 is considerably more punchy and bright, though it is warm too. I thought the punchiness might be due to my compressor's attack/release settings so I turned it off and the punchiness remains. The Super Compact and RM800 EVO2 seems to be a match made in heaven.

Substitute those 1s with 2s and you've got it!! I shouldn't be surprised, you probably owned it at one point 😆

I've been vegan for about 4 1/2 years now. It took me about 18 months to transition from a fairly carnivorous diet, through vegetarian, to vegan. I have a good friend, who has been vegetarian all his life and vegan for about 9 years now, while I still ate meat I used to respond to his vegan FB posts or comments with stuff like "Mmmm, bacon" or "but it tastes good". But slowly, embarrassingly slowly, I began to realise my "I love animals" comments were in direct conflict with my "mmmm meat" comments, and that my responses to my mate's posts/comments were pretty disrespectful and infantile. That realisation triggered my journey to veganism.

My new cab turned up today. It turns out I accidentally ordered the Evo1 the first time around (locally) but the second cab I ordered from Muzik Produktiv is the mk2. Although they're slightly different, luckily they're the same dimensions so stack nicely. Lightweight, powerful and look great (to my eye at least). Can't wait until Wednesday practice now to put them through their paces.

For completeness on the thread, here is the Denali strap (it also has a plectrum holder at the top)

Because that actually isn’t the case. I didn’t give up eating meat because I didn’t like the taste of it. Why do people always assume that? I gave up eating meat because I could no longer reconcile the taking of an animal’s life for my pleasure, given I didn’t need it to live. And the point is, everyone seems to care, as per my earlier post.

It's a rebranded Cort, passive, loud, punchy pickups (called 'PowerSound') and no plywood anywhere. These were great quality Korean-made budget instruments from about 1980, easily up to the standard of many similar Japanese basses of the era.

Yep... but they are usually quite thin... 😉

We all do gigs that after a while just blend one into the other, but last night was an evening I'll never forget. The band has set up and were relaxing in a side room when the drummer looked through the window and shot out of his chair like a rocket. We all followed him to the front door and met Clem Cattini and his wife, Clem was the drummer of the Tornados, the group that recorded Telestar, one of the sound tracks of my childhood Clem was the complete gentleman, he signed the drummer's Ludwig drum and talked with us for ages. Clem recorded Shaking All Over, No milk today (Hermans Hermits), early Kinks tracks and dozens of other famous songs in the 60's. He introduced John Lennon to BIlly Fury when the Beatles were the Silver Beatles, the list goes on and on. It was his birthday the day before, so we sang happy birthday for him, he looked genuinely pleased. At the end of the night Clem thanked us for playing and said how much he enjoyed the band, I'll never forget how friendly he is how he just talked with us all as if he was one of the gang. He's written a book about his career which I've ordered this morning God bless you Clem, thank you for a memorable evening which I'll never forget

Just had an update from Jon. Things have progressed well since the last photo update. He’s going to send me some more images tomorrow. The neck is complete and the body has a little work to be done on the finish, but we’re almost there 😀.

I was in a band booked to play Westfield College in November '75. After soundchecking, some scruffy 'erbert, in the widest Oxford Bags imaginable, came up to us and told us they were going to be playing, and that they would be using our PA!!!! Later that evening, during their set, the singer announced to those that were still in the hall, "We're The Sex Pistols... Have fun!" I remember getting the distinct feeling that he didn't really mean it! Anyway, to the point... I want to know who's going to be playing me!

My banana yellow righton strap has arrived for my banana yellow mustang and I'm very chuffed with it. I had been using an old comfort strapp with the guitar for the few days since I got it but this Righton strap is just as comfy and the colour is pretty much spot-on.

More pics in the Affiliates section.

I tend not to discuss it as I encounter so much aggression and feeble stereotyping from people.

Each to their own. You are absolutley correct that it is can be easier to tweak the sound of individual pedals on the fly, and that they'll often sound better than a multi-fx - though this is less true today than it was in the past. However - they're not necessarily far easier to use. To give a real life example, I use the Sansamp model on my Helix. I have it programmed differently within different patches though. I use it with the treble cranked but not too much drive in a patch I use for Sledgehammer. I also use it with lots of drive a general purpose patch. To acheive this with individual pedals, I'm either needing to buy the same pedal more than once - or try and adjust them mid set. With my Helix, it's just one pedal to press. There's also things like split paths, switching multiple pedals on/off at once that make life easier on a multi-effects. Yes, you can acheive this in the analogue world, just not very easily. Not to mention the fuss of patch cables and powering a bunch of individual pedals - along with the associated noise it can bring. However, what I will definitely concede is that to get the best from a multi effects is that you need to spend time with it - understanding how it works and programming it to suit your needs. The built in presets are rarely what you want. You can't just drop it in like you would an individual pedal and expect it to sound good. For this reason, a multi-effects really isn't for everyone. George

A 2982 L-2000. Wow! 😲

I should have known better than to try and post a teaser on here!

Oh there's no argument from me, standalone pedals definitely sound better than multis. However, for live work, multis are fine IMO. By the time the sound gets to the crowd, any recognisable tonal nuances are long gone I'd need half a dozen separate stomps to get the sounds I use my one teensy Zoom for, and I simply CBA to carry that much kit around when the punters won't notice the difference anyway

My usual response these days to the interminable “but it tastes good” comment is, “Babies. I bet babies taste great. Tried eating one of those? I bet they’re delicious.” It occasionally gets the point across. Where it doesn’t, there’s always the mention of sex and travel, or hospital food. 😉

I should add my mate's beliefs showed me I should change and another mate, who went from carnivore to vegan and has a couple of recipe books out now, showed me I could.

I didn’t realise they used recycled car interiors. That might explain the pair of furry dice that came attached to my strap.

The problem is often that people who don’t think it’s a serious issue can’t see why anybody else should be so passionate about it. They need to understand that if someone feels that “meat is murder” they’re likely to be passionate - and yes, sometimes belligerent - about it. After all, it really is about life or death. I have to justify my vegetarianism daily, often ridiculed - at least until my inevitable (belligerent!) reaction - or having to put up with comments like “but animals taste good” whilst being met with horror if I actually (excuse the pun) bite back. I’ve worked with so many people who complain about vegetarians / vegans “going on endlessly about it” whilst completely failing to grasp that they’re doing the exact same thing about eating meat, day in, day out, and who also completely fail to understand that ridiculing people for making moral & ethical choices is not acceptable behaviour.

Thanks to a bit of excellent serendipitous salesmanship on the part of Mr Merton I will soon be the possessor of a second RM 210T cab, unleashing thunderbolts of Ashy sound on my fandom. Not because Uncle Bulgaria's wrong, but because in one weekend I just earned enough gig fees to be able to afford it. And second bass cabilules are more important than food.

I know you like a restoration Maude and I think you will thoroughly enjoy doing this one, they are definitely gigable and the P pickup sounds really nice, my one is to my knowledge all original, if you need any pics of anything just shout 🙂

Yes, I'm three gigs in with a fourth coming up. If one didn't know better, you could easily assume there hadn't been a pandemic, or should you could easily assume there wasn't a pandemic going on still. I have to say, I have a lot more gigs in the diary for what remains of 2021 than I ever thought I would have in January.

We (headsticks) played Beautiful Days festival this weekend, the big top on Friday, then Bimble Inn on Saturday. Both were ace gigs. I'm on drums but out bassist is awesome. Standard American P

Mostly good now. With a 470R cathode resistor, plate dissipation is now just over 46% of max. This is somewhat on the cool side but I'm not hearing any crossover distortion. I'm going to order some 330R and 390R 10W resistors in case I need to warm it up a bit. Having read that current production rectifier valves don't cope as well as they might with reverse voltages, I tried installing some SS diodes in series to protect the GZ34, but the amp didn't seem to like that so I took them out again. Still might try a choke in place of the first dropping resistor, and/or a small dropping resistor before the first node... Here's some nice pictures of the completed amp with its BF playmate.

It’s good that there are options now.

FFS! Martin and I go back about 10 years!! We bought and sold each other so much gear it was a borderline joke. When we had our youngest in hospital (Martin was a hospital Porter), he was there - and brought his left field humour to keep us going - he checked in with Jen and I as well as saying hello to family and the kids. “I’m yer dads mate…I buy all the bass stuff he regrets” 😂 What a bloody awful shame. gutted.

Review model purchased August 2021 for £428.00 Fit and finish 4/5 Tone 4/5 Playability 5/5 Value for money 5/5 Introduction Multicourse 8-string basses are a relatively rare beast and tend to attract a premium price for something you might not use every day, so you might be tempted to go for one of the lower priced offerings, but with perhaps some trepidation as to quality. To add insult, comprehensive reviews for any of the multi-course basses that are on offer tend to be relatively non-existent, and those that are out there tend to dwell on the novelty of having 8 strings rather than the usefulness as an instrument for the specific bass being reviewed. I intend to put that right for at least one possible solution to your 8-string needs (or wants), introducing the Ltd B-208SM. For those not in the know, Ltd are a lower-cost far-eastern subsidiary of ESP guitars, a company perhaps best known for producing higher-end pointy guitars aimed at the rock and metal market. Think Sterling to Musicman, Tribute to G&L or Squier to Fender (although comparing this to a Squier in terms of quality might be a little unfair to Ltd). The bass being reviewed was purchased for £428.00 including UK VAT, with a fast and fantastically hassle-free post-Brexit transaction from Thomann in Germany, who handle payment of VAT, shipping and clearance without you having to do a thing, so it feels just like it did when we were still in the EU. However, you’ll see these for sale for as much as £699.00 in the UK. First impressions It’s a good-looking bass which follows “modern” design cues. The body is made from 3 pieces of ash which are fairly well matched for grain and colour. The rear of the bass has a very modest tummy cut which still manages to take away the majority of discomfort but may not accommodate the larger beer belly quite so well as a Fender contour body. The body has a Gibson-esque carved top, which also serves as a modest forearm contour, and is finished off with a rather stunning spalted maple laminate which also has a fair bit of flame to it. It has a Fender-style body shape, but is a little smaller than a standard Fender, with a lower cut-out well shaped to accommodate access to the highest frets on the 24 fret neck, and an upper bout which extends to above the 13th fret to provide a comfortable playing position while minimising neck dive by sensible forward placement of the strap button. The neck joint is set deep into the body and is firmly secured with six bolts set into individual ferrules rather than a traditional neck plate, and the body has a nice, rounded contour where the neck meets the body. The neck itself is of 5-piece construction, made from maple with two attractive skunk stripes of jotoba that extend to the top of the headstock. The fretboard is also jotaba, which is a dense hardwood with properties reportedly somewhere between rosewood and ebony. Mine has an extremely tight grain and could easily be mistaken for ebony. The fretboard jotoba is almost black as opposed to the reddish-brown skunk stripes, so there is some question as to whether it has been dyed, or if this is a natural variation in the colour of the wood. The headstock is quite small considering that this is an 8-string bass, which can only be beneficial when countering neck dive that is always going to be a problem when you have so many tuners to deal with. The headstock is provided with another piece of spalted maple laminate to match the body. Everything is finished off with a very thin satin finish which resembles an oil finish. Although the body is a little smaller than a Fender, it feels quite satisfyingly solid and chunky and with fairly hard edges, not unlike a Les Paul. This is not a lightweight bass by any means, but this is perhaps needed to offset neck dive due to the weight of extra hardware at the headstock end. Mine weighs in at 4.4 kg. The bass arrived with the action set high, the strings slack and the intonation not adjusted properly at all. The neck relief was set perfectly out of the box and did not change significantly when I tuned the bass up, so there is obviously a pretty heavy duty trussrod arrangement going on in there. After an hour or two of tweaking, I managed to get the bass playing very well with perfect intonation on all the strings and a nice low action. Fit and finish is generally good, perhaps what you would expect from a slightly higher-end bass. The neck and bridge are perfectly aligned, the routing is neat and tidy. However, there are a couple of very small niggles: You could get a cigarette paper down the front of the neck pocket either side of the neck, and one of the neck joint bolt ferrules is sitting slightly proud (about 0.5mm). Also, the area where the heel of the neck transitions into the neck profile could have been a little tidier. Hardware All of the hardware is finished with a kind of smoked gunmetal chrome which I rather like. The hardware seems to be of pretty decent quality, with Gotoh-style enclosed bass and guitar tuners being used for the bass and octave strings respectively. The tuning feels smooth and accurate and tuning stability is excellent – none of the problems that I had with my old 12-string acoustic guitar at all, you can tune this up once at the start of a playing session, and you are good to go. The side-mounted jack socket has a very satisfying and secure clunk when plugging in. The bridge is a tune-o-matic style with individual saddles that allow intonation adjustment for each string, and this is something that you definitely DO need, and which should put this bass above some other offerings in a similar price range in your wishlist like the Hagstrom H8-II which does not. However, setting the intonation is a right pain with the intonation screws located in front of the bridge, so your screwdriver is hampered by the bridge pickup. Patience, a long narrow screwdriver of the correct size and something to protect the finish in case of slips is essential. Luckily, this is not something that you will need to repeat too often. The bridge does not have individual saddle height adjustment for either the bass strings or the octave strings, however, the bridge saddles follow the 400mm radius of the neck, so if everything is setup properly this should not be a problem. Indeed, out of the box, I adjusted the action to 2.25 mm on the E string at the 12th fret before any significant fret buzzing occurred, which should be low enough for most people. The bridge and tailpiece are both cast metal, possibly aluminium, and look to be of decent quality. The height adjustment screws are plated the same as the rest of the hardware and feel hard and resistant to damage from a screwdriver, with a nice smooth action. The bridge is not affixed to the surface of the body like a normal tune-o-matic, it slots into a routing to allow lower action, which is very neat and so tight to the bridge as to be almost invisible. I have read people expressing concern about a lack of individual height adjustment for the octave strings. This is NOT an issue on any 8-string bass that I can think of. As the bass strings have a larger diameter than the octave strings, your fingers will always come into contact with these first, so having a lower action for the octave strings is irrelevant unless you wish to use a highly modified setup and technique. In fact, in my opinion this would make the bass harder to play as you would struggle to feel the location of the octave strings when you fingered a note, not to mention more complicated to set up. In use The neck has a fast “Thin U” shaped profile which feels neither particularly thick nor thin to me. It’s certainly easy to play and not a “table leg” considering the extra tension that it has to deal with. Like the body, it’s finished off with what feels like a very thin satin lacquer or oil, nothing at all like the thick, sticky poly finishes you get on many budget far eastern guitars, giving an overall feel of quality to the instrument. The frets are nicely dressed and there are no sharp edges or raised frets, which was an extremely welcome surprise in this price range. This is easily equal to something coming out of an expensive USA factory, and I found myself having to make no adjustments at all to the fretwork. The fretboard has a shallow 400 mm radius which would seem suitable for a bass with multiple courses of strings. Nut width is 45 mm, which is just a little more than a precision bass, and which makes the neck feel easy to play. It feels like the sweet spot between being so wide as to be cumbersome, and so narrow as to have problems fouling adjacent string courses which might be a problem on the Warwick Rockbass 8-string for example, which has a more Jazz-like nut width. String spacing is a standard 18 mm from centre to centre of each course at the bridge. There are two 4” EMG-style 5-string soap-bar pickups with the words “ESP designed” printed on them, while most real ESP basses would actually be found wearing EMGs. For electronics, the bass is equipped with larger volume and blend knobs, and three smaller knobs to adjust the onboard 3-band active EQ, which is reversed in order – bass, middle, treble. All the knobs have a smooth action with a little turning resistance, and feel of high quality, like you’d expect from CTS for example. All of the knobs bar the volume also have a centre detent. The preamp is nice and quiet with no noticeable hiss. There is no active/passive switching or mid sweep, so this is a simple setup to use, but you will need to bring a spare battery to gigs – and a screwdriver…. the battery cover is screwed on, which seems a poor decision considering the availability of modern clip-on battery covers. In use, I found the pickups and preamp to be of low output, not much more than my Fralin-equipped passive jazz bass. The preamp is very practical in its range of adjustment, and it’s hard to find an unusable tone setting. I have read comments where people, who perhaps confuse output with tone, have complained about the pickup/preamp combination, but I disagree. It reminds me somewhat of the low output transparent sound that you find on MEC equipped Warwick basses, which to me seems like a good choice where you have to differentiate between the bass and octave strings. The sound also manages to avoid being too jangly or treble biased, you can easily dial in enough bass to remind you that this is indeed a bass guitar. I’m not aware of the precise range of the all-important mid-frequencies that have been chosen, but there is a nice clear hi-fi modern tone which avoids sounding overtly coloured by the preamp or at all honky or muddy. Pickups and tone are of course highly subjective, but to put it into perspective, I have a set of 4” EMG-X pickups and an EMG preamp that I could drop straight into this bass, but I will not be doing so. There is a little neck dive when sitting, and you find yourself naturally applying slight downwards pressure with your right forearm to counter this. However, I didn’t really notice this at all after a few minutes playing, so it’s not really a problem. Standing using a 7 cm wide suede strap, there is no neck dive at all. Overall, this bass sings nicely both with fingers and a pick, and it’s insanely fun to play – I can’t put it down and I’m finding a lot of inspiration in it. Not only do you get that nice clear octave sound when fingering notes, but you can strum it and play broken chords to great effect too. Conclusion This is my first Ltd bass, and I’m surprised that they don’t get more love on the forums. Although this bass has been manufactured in Indonesia, it has clearly been very carefully designed by ESP to fulfil its function, and it does that very well. The fit, finish and playability are on the whole what you’d expect from a more expensive bass. Add to that the additional provision of durable specialist hardware required for a usable 8-string bass, and this begins to put other “budget” offerings such as G&L Tribute, Sterling and Squier to shame. I bought this bass because I needed it, and I will be taking it on the road with confidence. I also frequently modify my basses so that I can get the tone and playability that I need. Not so this bass, it will remain in its standard configuration. Most players only play multi-course basses for a few songs in the set at least, or perhaps as something fun to play at home. In this case, I have to ask you, do you need anything more? Unless you intend to use an 8-string as your main instrument, or have cash to spare, I heartily recommend this one. It’s a usable instrument and in my opinion, very good value for money.

I bought the yellow strap with a black go-faster stripe as it goes with my yellow mustang and is comfy. I'm not sure yet whether it is actually vegan as it has so far refused to eat anything I have offered it.

@NJE You were enquiring about my Proton, so i'd suggest the Discombobulator... I've used one a bunch and it's got a similar wah-like feel!

Fixed.

I would tend to agree to a certain extent and am certainly not a preachy type (42 years veggie, latterly vegan). But if it comes up in conversation I might just add 'but the animals don't have the choice to die or not'.

Now that's fighting talk! Last time I saw a clip of Kiss doing I Was Made For Loving You, Stanley looked dreadful and his voice was terrible, just as bad as Dave. Add to that, the band was poor - not up to scratch at all. Whatever band Roth chucked together to back him would be streets ahead. Kiss really should have given up the ghost about the time that they put the makeup back on, at least in terms of any musical or 'artistic' criteria. To be fair, I think that you might be missing the point of the thread, which was that both of them should have thrown in the towel years ago.

I was watching a roots radics live video and they did this, nice tune

You’re not wrong… good to hear it wasn’t just me that struggled to get the board out… man it’s really wedged in there!

The Source Audio Spectrum is amazing. Well worth an audition.

You're ok there - it's a jazz band 😉

I've said it too many times before, but my first bass was a Kay - it was one of their Rick copies, and it was absolutely awful. But when I first saw one of these, back in around 1980 / 81? - I could tell immediately that these basses were way way better quality than my old Kay. In fact, there were quite a few around for sale back then, and I often pondered getting one, but never did. Since my return to playing, I have occasionally thought about getting one of these. I always liked the look of them - the shape, the colours of the different wood types, the through neck construction, and brass hardware. It all looks rather lovely. Looks like you have a real bargain there - nice

There were people so I came home again.

Hi Marc, I know you didn’t ask me but I can answer that question, yes the original strings are perfect for bowing, and a bow is great for a long last note. On TinyDs question about ‘digging in’ I find that with the original strings that is perfectly doable. This is because of the individual bridges and aerosilk pickups, I think. Cheers Jimmy