Leaderboard

Had this for around 2 months now. Yet to gig it, as for the Soul band, the Dingwall 5P, is pretty much perfect for that. Got quite a few function band deps lined up for next year, so going to have a proper play around, as there is a massive amount of on board controls. So as of yet, I’m still playing around with it. Bought it off someone on here, and wasn’t cheap. Sold two MusicMans, a Framus, and loads of pedals, but it was totally worth it. 35” scale QW5 Modulus Quantum. They did two wide spacing ones- 19 and 21.5 mm. This ones the 21.5 mm. So basically their big standard 17mm 6 string neck, but with 5 strings. It’s really wide

Well, the basic carve is done, ready for final sanding: This is why I like the cabinet scraper - you wouldn't think that this hasn't been sanded at all yet. And so in terms of what's been progressed: The headstock is now at finished thickness - a really nice bit of maple, this. The heel is still presently deeper than the fretted neck, but the neck depth from the spine to the top of the fretboard is now the same, as is the overhang: A volute on a P Bass?? Heresy! (But @SpondonBassed might want to treat it as a Christmas present ) And an offcut of the radiussed fretboard is ready to be cut-and-carved and then added the other side of the nut: I don't know how much extra will be done before family duties for Christmas start taking over, but the next jobs will include cutting the nut/fitting the fretboard extension and drilling the tuner holes so that I can temporarily fit them to allow me to cut the heel to the final depth and angle.

Now down to £379 which was too hard to resist. 😎

Today there are loads of good basses for £500. I'm a big fan of the Bass Collection Nanyo SGC range - search around and you can find one for around £150 - you'll get loads of bass for your buck. There's a whole thread here where you'll find out why you should. You'll also find G&L basses in that price bracket. I'm a big fan of the SB2 - and you'll find them available for around £300. Lots of Squiers in your budget - I really rate the Standard model (PJ) - again you'll find these for around £200. Sires - there is good reason why everybody has owned one - amazing basses for under £200. If you can find a NS Spector for around £300-350 snap it up. All the above basses are miles ahead of basses that were available when I started playing back in the 80s.

Usual reaction from anyone who sees it..................

That's quite a shopping list of upgrades for such a budget bass! I'd imagine all that expense will actually make the upgrades cost more than the bass was originally bought for, or importantly would ever be worth in the future, so on that basis alone I would say don't do it.

Something from one of my band's Christmas do's last week. My ol' P sounding lovely, I reckon.

"My muting technique isn't very good, so I'm going to use flats." said no-one. Ever.

My first bass in my latter period of playing was a Fender Modern Player Jazz, in fact I had a Mk1 and a Mk2. Once set up they were sublime. I got both for £375 each. They don’t come up second hand that much, I expect because it’s a shed load of bass for little coin. I swapped out the Mk2 neck for a fretless neck, it was lush. I think they were easily the best basses I’ve owned in a bang for buck sense, by miles.

Correct. It is only limited by the maximum voltage , maximum current (amps) and the imagination of the marketing department.

@bassist_lewis, @hiram.k.hackenbacker check the 3Leaf site every day this week - there will be another bunch of B-stock Octabvre IIIs listed but they’ll go quickly.

How do you know? The knob position doesn't reveal the amp power output, nor does anything else. With a low voltage input signal the knobs could all be wide open and yet the output -10dB or more from rated output. With a high voltage input the knobs could all be at 9:00 and yet the output +6dB over rated output. I once blew a 200 watt EVM-15B with a 50 watt amp when I hooked up a pink noise generator for testing. I didn't realize that the generator was cranked, so when I turned it on the voice coil blew in less than a second.

.....but at the potential expense of all other aspects of a tone and feel that might not like or be appropriate for the music they play? I'm with WoT on this.....probably not a thing. I find that different basses want different strings (obviously that sits within our personal preference for things). I had flats on my passive P/J Lakland 44-94 for a while, it sounded fine, but wasn't right.....I couldn't tell you why. Put some roundwounds on it, boom, perfect. Similar excercise with my 1971 Precision, it had rounds on it for a little while when I first got it.....wasn't right, but some flats on it....boom, perfect. My 55-01 had rounds on it for a bit, horrible.....put some tapewounds on it, boom, perfect. To that end, I would suggest that all players, if they consider that a certain string isn't working for them, don't be all 'naaa flats/rounds are bad', just think that they might not be right for that particular bass. Si

I spent a fair wedge putting Aguilar pickups, a Babicz bridge and Kiogon loom into a Squier VM Jazz. I did it not because I was trying to build a 'super jazz' on a budget, but purely because I fancied a go at modding. I had a lot of fun doing it and I was thoroughly pleased with the results.

Another vote for Yamaha... I've had loads, from a BB3000S down to my current RBX460. £170, and it's a cracker with a good setup and flats. Even an RBX170 I found for a friends son was a belter and under a ton on fleabay. Anything from Yamaha or Ibanez can stand up against gear twice the price. I love to find good quality affordable gear, and as long as it's set up correctly and sounds how you want it to, it's a bass for life. I'd rather have a few sub £500 basses to chose from than a couple of expensive ones.

Got to agree. That body shape is minging.

There is a queue… every single person in the queue “I KNOW HIM SO WELL!”

I bought a Squier CV Jazz in Olympic White in 2009 for £250 new. I still have it. I very much doubt it would fetch more than £250 now. Which is fine, I’ve modded it incessantly and I have spent probably a thousand hours on it when I was at music school. It has served its need well. IMO there are better ways to speculate with your money. I don’t think the CV’s will appreciate the way the JV’s did. The supply of CV’s is considerably higher.

G&L Tribute, whatever your poison is (Precision-a-like, Jazz-a-like or one of G&L's own take on things)

Sealed designs are simple compared to ported. The advantage to sealed is that they're hard to mess up, so long as the drivers used have the right specs for sealed. It just so happens that the right specs for sealed are high Qts, which are what's usually found with inexpensive drivers, so if you're going to use an inexpensive driver just stick it in a sealed box and you're good to go. Ported cabs work best with lower Qts drivers, which also tend to be more expensive, so if you have a more expensive drive it probably needs to be in a well designed ported box for best results. Ported goes lower than sealed when done right. What you don't want to do is to put an inexpensive high Qts driver in a badly designed ported box, as the result will usually be a boom box. When you hear people complain about ported speakers being boomy it's usually because they had a cheap driver in a bad box. Like most generalizations it's not true. The Ampeg SVT, for instance, was made sealed because that's what gave the best results with the high Qts drivers that they used. They could have made it ported and probably would have if they were able to find low Qts 32 ohm drivers, but none were to be had in 1969. Damping factor is a non-factor other than in extreme cases that are very rarely seen. http://www.cartchunk.org/audiotopics/DampingFactor.pdf

Here's my pedal board! I feel a bit inadequate 😔

I assumed they just did a 50/50 split between Kings of Leon and Wilson Picket and figured they had it mostly sorted.

I'm on the fence... As a rule I'm not really a Fender fan but have heard good things about the Aerodyne, and I do like a PJ. Even though I own a BB615 I'm not really a big fan of the BB shape and will probably move it on at some point. If I was in your position and had to keep one/ sell the other.....I'd probably start a poll and ask everybody else.... Oh yeah...you did.

There's a couple of fairly reliable blokes I use. I could have a word if you like... oh, whoops, please ignore.

Vintage V1004SP and V1004DX (replace the 4 with a 5 for the 5er obviously) great basses with through necks and spalted or greatly figured tops which vary a fair bit between examples. Was a stunning 5er in my local Money Traders a few years ago for £250, the top looked like it belonged on a £2k bass it was so striking, like a Marleux for paper round money. A 4 and a 5 on eBay at the moment for low money, tops are nice but not amazing though: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/324941670573?hash=item4ba80868ad:g:mXAAAOSwll5hudQP https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334242615066?hash=item4dd2698f1a:g:pyQAAOSwvhthq5t1

Tee-totaller Silvia's facial expression is a picture at 28 seconds 🤣

Yeah they are my own builds, the dod clone has a few mods to it.

I was that fast to press buy, I beat the internet 😂

Like the one @ped is selling?

Have you tried doing some window shopping and seeing what you could get if you sold the affinity and combined it with what you were going to spend on upgrades? Might be worth a look, especially if you wanted to make your budget go further 2nd hand. As others have said, you won't make that much back if you sold it after upgrades and you'd be better stripping it for parts if you did come to sell it. On the other hand, if all of this made your dream bass that you couldn't afford to buy outright and you're not fussed about making your money back then go for it. However, I wouldn't bother with the reshape or refinish and would just upgrade the pups and guts for now. Maybe look at tuners and bridge after I had lived with that for a while

I love small-bodied basses. I wouldn't say that I have actively sought them out over the years but I have always enjoyed them when I've had them. The body shape that will always hold an appeal to me is the Spector NS shape. Not only is it relatively small anyway, the curved shape makes it feel even more compact and ergonomic. I cannot say for certain, but I believe that Steinberger must have given consideration to designing body shapes where there is not much 'ground' to cover for the right hand between the edge of the instrument and the strings. Some other notably small-bodied and comfortable basses I've owned include the Kubicki Ex Factor and the Pedulla Buzz shape. The Factor body is a design masterpiece so far as I am concerned. Even now, forty years later, it is nearly unparalleled from an ergonomic and packaging standpoint. The Buzz also has a very small body compared to what you might think when you look at photos of the bass. Whenever I get my Pentabuzz out of the case I'm taken aback a little by how small it really is. They're not necessarily light basses but they are small and compact and a joy to play.

Fixed it for you.

Look at the length of that head-stock... Indeed, it's all fun and games until someone has an eye out Then it's just a game: Hunt the Eye.

Just turn the bass guitar volume down?

I once had an Ibanez SR500, which I paid around £200 for, second-hand. It was a really well built bass, if you like slim necks. Superb pickups and electronics in it too, with Mk1 Bartolini pups. Albeit, the bass had a distinctly "modern" sound, if you like that sort of thing. I sold that bass for pretty much what I'd paid for it, and there were times when I'd wished I'd kept it (Done that many times lol) So a while back, I was looking for a 5 string bass, and had a couple of stipulations: I wanted it to be as lightweight as I could get (for around a £500 budget), and I wanted a slim(ish) neck, but not so slim for the string spacing to be too tight for the plucking hand - so I needed a slim neck, with a degree of tapering, to be able to get my fat fingers between strings.... Anyhow, I picked up the SR505 and it felt a lot like my old SR500. I instantly felt I could get used to it (I don't play 5'ers much - I just "noodle" at home). Again, quality build, great pups & electrics, very controllable tonally. It's also pretty lightweight for a 5'er. They tend to go very reasonably second-hand too. Mine was new, but in a sale - so I had a good few quid off IMO the SR500 and SR505 are rather underrated basses. Another recommendation from me, would be the Squier, early China-made Classic Vibe basses, if you're looking for more traditional instruments like a P or J bass. My 2008 / 2009 CV Precision is a superb bass, and there are times when I wish I'd kept my 2010/11 CV P in Fiesta Red. That said, the newer CV range made in Indonesia are pretty good too. I tried one of their earlier Jazz basses, and that was OK - but I've played a couple of the more recent ones and I think they've improved.

Well, there's one on Bass Direct for £250 right now and they aren't known for bargain basement pricing.

The early bass cabs that were open backed might not have benefited from being sealed, as they used generic musical instrument drivers which were guitar oriented anyway. Besides, they could give a good tone, they just couldn't go loud. Play just about any Beach Boys recording and you're probably hearing Carol Kaye playing through an open back Fender Super Reverb.

I'd been using my heavily modified Harley Benton 75JB for a couple of years and decided to have something special made around the hardware which is/was: US Hipshot Ultralite Tuners & Xtender on the E Fender high mass bridge EMG Jazz pickups with 2 band BTS system After watching Guy Pratt's lockdown videos, some of Guy's other basses, my enduring love for the Chilis and so on I decided on a Status Graphite Jazz neck and Warmoth body. The body is a chambered alder Dinky Jazz bass body with mahogany top, rear routed with double battery box and finished in satin Taos Turquoise. It's turned out even better than I could have hoped for. It's always a gamble putting something together without being able to see all of the components together until it's all been made and assembled but here it is:

There's still stuff to do, but visually this is pretty much there so I'll do the 'finished shots' Photographing this, with or without total cloud cover, is...er...challenging. Anyway, here's a few arty ones: And two or three in the great outdoors:

The Boss Tuner TU-3 App which is totally free for Android and Apple smartphones. https://www.boss.info/us/products/boss_tuner_app/