Leaderboard

Just picked up this beauty. New best friends with my 1999 AVRI 62 in LPB. Yum

24 fret, full access, balances perfectly, sounds great, plays like butter.

Finding that spot. About 1h of measuring to make a single srew hole (the middle one, 5 screw bridge). But you need to get it right. Actual alignment was done with sewing equipment, meaning a thin thread. To eliminate measuring problems introduced by thick strings. Here I'm just doing the final checkup that the outside strings line up nicely.

So you didn't measure nut height at the same time?

Two AVRI 62 Jazzes (82 and 99) and a 72 P bass with J width (A) neck

I damaged my Ashdown, totally my fault, sent it down to them and they repaired it free of charge and sent it back via TNT. You cant beat that for customer service. Also if you have a problem you can talk to Dave or similar who know their stuff as they design the gear and know it inside out.

Ashdown are the best in the business. 5yr warranty on their amps and they will repair anything they've ever made at really great prices. They now repair old Trace gear as well, which is a logical move. I was a long time Mark Bass user until a repair estimate north of £200 prompted me to look elsewhere.

RCF 745 FRFR. That's what I use. No conventional bass amp and cab is remotely flat despite what the marketing department might want you to believe. That all have their own unique baked-in sound. That's why you choose one brand over another - it's has a baked-in sound that you find pleasing.

You're going to be so disappointed when you get that out of the box:

They were plucked and then presented for measurement. Definitely not done in situ.

Oddly enough I was looking at getting away from the usual P/J setup as per one of my fairly recent threads however my want for a decent quality short or medium scale bass significantly narrowed my options, there were short scales with humbuckers but I really wanted something that would feel like an upgrade from the 200-300 quid basses that I have many of without costing me too much. So I brought a MIM Fender PJ Mustang bass, brought it with the intention of swapping out the J pickup for a split coil like a Model J but I was surprised to find that this is actually the best sounding P/J I have played and I think I will leave the pickups stock. The P pickup soloed is very nice sounding, fat but decently bright sounding and capable of sounding either fat and warm or bright and aggressive, I have heard this is the same P pickup Fender uses in their classic series 50's P bass. Both pickups on scoops the tone but also seems to up the treble also, a lot of P/J's become very quacky sounding with both pickups on but this sounds great lots of low end and plenty of treble with a nice dip in the mids, I suspect that with some tapewounds on this bass would sound absolutely thunderous. Pickups are definitely better than the MIM pickups I have encountered in the past Setup was decent and action is nice and low and if my technique was better I could easily drop it to be stupidly low, the hardware all feels solid , I may upgrade the tuners to Hipshot eventually but this is only because I feel the E strings on short scales benefit from a higher ratio machine head All in all pretty pleased with this Oh and this is Sonic blue btw, in person it is more an off white with a slight green tinge which does not show in pictured

'm hoping you measured your own

Years ago for a laugh at work a bunch of us got the digital micrometer and measured our ball hairs. It was amazing the difference in some!

Gnats ball hairs are 0.000001 , which are very useful for fine tuning 😁

I've had MB amps for years and aside from a "dead on delivery" F1 head many years ago they've all been rock solid. I'm also wondering if we are asking too much regarding the repair costs. Modern great sounding amps are very affordable but part of that affordability is due to the board configuration. Unfortunately loads of stuff made these days is uneconomic to repair or effectively impossible to repair because of the construction method and instead replacement of other still working bits is needed because they are all on the same board. While I'm very pleased that the EU is pushing the "Right to Repair" idea for some products it's not as simple as for others. Washing machines - lovely! Stop riveting stuff in and use screws for easy swaps etc. But for an amp? Or a GPU, or a control board in a washing machine? I'm sure MB could make a product that is easier to repair, perhaps with a modular board system to allow smaller parts of it to be replaced rather than all of it. But that will lead to a higher purchase price and it won't do anything about the labour costs. Seems to be the way of the world.

Max load capacity 150kg. Do they have a heavy duty version for Trace Elliot cabs?

OK, so just started a new topic for next year's Bash with a post confirming details of date and venue. The formula will be more of the same - including the rhubarb crumble 😋 Over and out!!

Or the Total Bastard?

I have a patch on my Helix with just an amp and speaker sim on it (the EBS one IIRC), with the tone controls for the amp up on the display so that they can be altered if required. Anyone who wants to use my (currently) unconventional rig simply plugs their bass or pedal board into the main Helix input and uses this. Since it's not a patch I use myself, it really doesn't matter how much they fiddle about with the controls. The only thing I tell them is to make a note of the settings after soundchecking if more than one band is going to using this rig. TBH I feel far more comfortable about other bassists using this then I did when I had a conventional bass rig. I also had one bassist who used my rig who didn't bother with this default patch but simply asked to use the one I had soundchecked with for my band as it sounded so good.

It was all done in the best possible taste.

-

Oh that is nice! Congrats 🥳

Or a Mega Bastard?

I'm playing with Robin this Saturday and I expect he'll be jumping on the tables and walking through the audience several times during the evening.

You may also have been measuring the level of expertise in using a micrometer, if each person did their own...

Nope. I checked!

It's interesting to think about what relief (concave) does. For a given amount of action at the twelfth fret, relief makes minimal impact on the frets near the 12th fret. As you move along the neck towards the nut, the action reduces more slowly than with a flat neck. This reduces buzzing on the lower notes and compensates for the longer the causing greater excursion (the amount the string moves back and forth). As you move beyond the twelfth fret, the action reduces more rapidly than with a flat fretboard. However, the extra stiffness around the neck joint makes this a less significant amount and the rapidly reducing excursion of the strings means this shouldn't be a big issue. Buzzing occurs when either the next fret (or rarely the next but one) is high, or a fret is low. The differences are often on the scale of a thousandth of an inch or even less. Assuming that the frets are decently levelled, buzzing on the higher notes usually means that there is too much neck relief (or there's a 'ski jump' as mentioned earlier). This is particularly likely if buzzing happens in multiple places. Similarly, buzzing on low notes (not open strings, which is a poorly cut nut) means too little or convex neck relief. One way of getting very low action is to set up the bass, then add a little more truss rod tension which will reduce the action by a 'smidgin' but barely affect the string angles on the highest frets. If this does cause a buzz on low notes, put the relief back on. In most cases it will be OK or a little buzz close higher than the 12th fret. In this case you may need to slightly raise one or two saddles, but should still end up with lower action than before.

Massive fan of Larry and Travis.

Wild honey pie. ‘Never done a stadium tour’ mob

Just bought my first P bass in about 40yrs and loving it. (2nd hand) I've set the neck to be very slightly concave and string height down from quite high when i bought it to 2mm. It sounds fine at home and will be taking to rehearsal on Sun where i will try it with a bit more aggression and tweak the height appropriately. When i get a bass i normally start at 2.5mm string height and slowly tweak it down to where it sounds ok with no fret buzz and no bottoming out when playing above 12th fret. As a comparison my Jazz was down approx 1.7mm and it was great at home. When i gigged it i found it was overly buzzing and raised that to 2mm and gigged again and it was fine. My Sandberg VM4 is very low at 1.5mm and has quite a straight neck. I dont tend to play this bass as hard as my Fenders (i cant explain why not......i dont really know) Dave

Wild Horses ～ "A blues cover band"

I've gigged in many bands for Monica since the 80's. She's been running these great weekends for over 20 years. We all love her. Take your bass and join in Robin Bibi's jam nights.

Pedal order, Mini Ego (compressor) - Quint Machine (octaver) - Bass Clone (chorus) - Carbon Copy Mini (delay) - VT Bass (preamp.) The Carbon Copy only gets used sparingly whilst the others are always on effects. I just switched out the old patch cables for some nice EBS gold flat patch cables so I could use a smaller board but then I worry I'll find something new to add and then not have enough room.

The seller is bilingual. He speaks English, and bollocks!

Things like the Stewmac neck jig pull the neck straight to level frets even though the truss rod is left at normal tension. I don’t have a jig, but I used a fret rocker to prove to myself that the problem was only there if the neck was curved, the truss rod tension wasn’t a factor. A plek machine should be able to level with the truss rod at full tension and the neck curved though, that would be the best result. I’d have bought a new neck for my cheap mim bass though if I wanted to keep it, it’s value didn’t warrant a pro luthier or machine attention.

Get yourself a s/h Barefaced Compact.

A fair bit of faffing about with new pedals lately, a couple might get changed but most are staying put: This is the signal order (although there are 2x loops that can have their order reversed) EHX Switchblade Pro: Very useful, only issue is it's a bit too easy to confuse which loop is which and what order they are in. Aguilar Octamizer: This is the 2nd time I've owned one. I've been through a lot of Octave pedals and this is my favourite. MXR M87: My favourite envelope filter for responsive quick stuff. Still on the lookout for a down-sweeping more synthy filter too though. EBS DPhaser: Versatile and sounds good but I only subtle use low resonance 4 pole settings so am tempted to see how something like the MXR Phase 45 script compares. EBS Black Haze: A nice heavy fuzzy sounding distortion, I have it for sale though as its more high-gain than I want (but with 'drive' set at minimum and a clean blend via the switchblade and some EQing and it sounds how I want it to - ideally I want something that does that without me having to change all those other settings each time though). MXR Brown Acid: I've tried quite a few fuzzes and this is my favourite. Zoom B1-four: Great value, not quite good enough sounds or control to have replaced any of my other pedals (other than tuner) but it covers chorus and synth (90% of what I use it for). I'm selling it to replace with a Zoom MS-60B as that does what I need in a smaller size and can apparently scroll through presents with the footswitch but I'm reconsidering as I think the one-way scroll through might be a pain. Or, it'd cost more but in place of a Zoom I could possibly squeeze in individual tuner, chorus and synth pedals. Broughton Fliptop: Nice sounding preamp that fattens things up and can do light overdrive, the cab sim control is decent too. FEA Opti-FET Compressor: I really like this, it somehow takes the edge off harsh effects while also making everything more punchy. Tech 21 QStrip: Bought impulsively (I think a few on Basschat have owned this very one!) and it ended up replacing my recently bought Laney Digbeth Preamp that was just within the return time. The Laney is good but I preferred the additional EQ of the Q Strip and like to have my preamp/overdrive as separate pedals.

Latest from Alan today, Neck ready for mounting.

Getting closer. It’s a Raven by the way.

Gerry McAvoy - played with a pick and everything!