Leaderboard

Manucturers - create and maintain a Legacy page on your website, with the history of your equipment, by model, and schematics for repairers to refer to.

I didn't know either! Had to write them down; 25 basses with one more on order, 1 six string classical, 1 six string acoustic. As this seems a bit excessive I'm definitely considering shifting one of the 6 strings.

Perfect Day - Lou Reed

All amp manufacturers - PUT THE POWER BUTTON ON THE FRONT WHERE WE CAN FIND IT!!!

Personally I would be looking to replace him, life is too short to put up with rude unhelpful and unwilling people. If you find a half decent vocalist you should be up and running after a couple of rehearsals if you give them a detailed list of what needs to be sung. Even more so if you allow them a music stand, it’s not like you are asking them to remember a long set of lyrics. I went to my first rehearsal in ages last night, and I was asked to try some new songs which I had never sung before and wasn’t familiar with. 2 listens to the songs while everyone had a loo break and I was pretty much able to get through them problem free with lyrics on my phone. My point is that you can achieve a lot with a positive attitude and some willing, so try and find someone like that.

For those bass manufacturers who don’t already……………. Install Luminlay (glow in the dark) side markers in the neck of the instrument, especially fretless.

It appears that Rickenbacker is about to do just that !

You must have the Modulus Quantum then. I play the Westone Quantum, and all the notes are right and wrong at the same time when someone listens to them. The audience is wrong though; the notes are right ...

Quantum bass. The notes I play are right and wrong at the same time unless someone listens to them.

2 months later... ta-daaaaaa

Epiphone - Put out high quality, authentic, affordable reissues of Grabber/Ripper & G3 basses, like you did with the Tbird Vintage Pro. Spector - Make the Euro X a standard model (& reverse X). Make 'metallic purple' a standard colour on Euro models. Change all necks to Kramer dimensions and round off the body shape at the base (as per old look). Stop chasing the 'look at me' instagrammers for promotion. Reward your most loyal customers/users Jackson - stop with the horrific 'PJ meets Ricky' stylings and get back to making proper active thru neck PJ loaded rock 'monsters' again! Rickenbacker - sort your attitude, your QC and your pricing. Get a Euro factory to make a competitively priced version of your most popular model. Darkglass..... enough already! Gallien-Krueger - Reissue authentic sounding 400RB/800RB heads in smaller housing like the Legacy heads. Fender - make a collection of 70's P & PJ Precision basses with Jazz necks, bound & blocked. Choice of classic body colours and maple/rosewood boards.

If anyone is putting up a new bass brand, please do not use shapes of 1950's anymore. Enough is enough. Light weight is one the best "inventions" of the last few decades. Vigier & Status & Pedulla - wish you were here. Glockenklang - keep up the good work.

When you have an interest in doom metal and have two daughters under the age of 4, it is quite isolating to hear cries of 'not daddy's music!' when I reach for my phone in the vicinity of the bluetooth speaker in the kitchen. However, in my daughters' defence, there are some truly banging My Little Pony tracks.

OK, I am beyond excited about this!

Hopefully not sounding like a boast, I was surprised myself!! Just started playing the bass and I had to do some setup on mine as it was mail ordered. All I did was watch a few videos online and it all seemed simple. Full disclosure - I am a very handy DIYer (just built the staircase in my house) and good with tools, I’ve also resorted vintage push bikes in the past, and have an electronics background so none of the guitar setup stuff seemed difficult at all. Anyway, I was hanging out with a friend who owns 20ish basses and has been playing for 45 years and he said he had loads of fret buzz on a MM stingray 5 and it didn’t sound right anyway. He said he had never adjusted his own instruments so I said I could try what I had learnt on the MM - he said he hadn’t played it for years so it was worth a try. He gave me a set of strings and I took the MM home. Stripped it down, restored the chrome, cleaned the fretboard up, compound polished the body etc. Checked the electronics, put new strings on, set the truss rod and sorted out the intonation as well. He came to pick it up and when he tried it out (he is an AMAZING player) he was so pleased at the job I had done. I was genuinely surprised - I had been SO worried. He said he’d use it at a gig at the weekend he was so pleased. I’ve since learned that quite a few people don’t know how to set up their instruments - or at least the people I know - is this true of other bass players? I really enjoyed doing what I did and want to help other people out. I’ve looked at the specialist tools you can get to do more advanced stuff and it doesn’t seem too pricey and the work doesn’t look too difficult. Am I kidding myself about being able to do this?

Me And Miss Jones ～ Billy Paul

Eyup Mick, My first reaction is let this guy get away to re-form with ex-drummer and find yourselves a singer who's up for working as a band. Painfully more work short term, but most likely less pain long term, fingers crossed!

I translated my review! The design of this bass is almost seventy years old. In fact, if you count its predecessor too (and the difference between those two is marginal) it’s óver seventy years ago Leo Fender released his Fender Precision Bass design, and almost three quarters of a century later it’s still a big hit. But if you look at this particular bass closely, it’s basically a very expensive wooden board with strings, right? The American Vintage series is a series that Fender has been making for many years now, under different names, but always with reissues of a particular iconic year. They make instruments that should look and feel like they were built forty, fifty or sixty years ago. This Precision is no exception. The classic single coil pickup (replaced in 1957 by the famous split coil), a one piece maple neck and not much else on it. Still this design has a certain something. It is of course a classic design, like the Fiat Panda or a Chesterfield couch, but apart from that, it’s a very balanced design that above all is supposed to be functional and simple. Right, enough nostalgia about days of the past. This is a bass that was designed a long time ago, but this particular instrument is brand new and has to conform itself to the demands of the modern day and age. Is this almost 2500 costing bass fit for today’s stage? Well, for a start you have to have pretty big hands, especially on the left. The neck isn’t just made from one piece of maple, it feels like Fender has used an entire maple tree for it. It improves the stability of course, but it’s going to be a (literal) handful for people with small hands, or for those who are used to thinner necks. Let’s just call it an acquired taste. Apart from the chunky neck the first thing that strikes me is the way this bass is built: it’s flawless. The see-through blond finish is perfect, the frets are great, the hardware works excellently (warning: the tuners turn the other way!) and the setup from the factory is also very comfortable. There are periods in Fender history where the quality control was so-so, but those days are long gone and this bass is a perfect example of that. This bass is equipped with flatwound strings as standard, which I think is absolutely required: that’s the way it was designed, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Funny feature too: on the original basses from 1954, the bridge saddles were made of some kind of pressed fiber as a successor of bakelite, and on this reissue Fender has put “fiber” saddles too. No clue as to what this fiber consists of, but it certainly looks the part. A Precision bass must sound like “grunt”. Well, this bass certainly does that. It doesn’t matter which amp you use, “grunt” is what you get. Most people know the classic grunt from a split coil Precision like on old Motown records, but this grunt is different. It has less low end and it sounds a bit rougher, possibly partly because of the higher output than a split coil Precision. It feels and sounds like there’s already a bit of overdrive on your sound. Is that an issue? Not at all, on the contrary: you get this rootsy kind of sound that fits perfectly with the image of this bass. Let’s go back to that neck. As said, it’s pretty chunky. I don’t want to imply that that makes it uncomfortable to play, not at all. Playing this bass for an hour is an absolute joy. The balance is great, the neck isn’t very inviting to play fast licks (but let’s be honest: with a sound and feel like this, you don’t want to play fast anyway) and before you know it you’ve been playing the entire Motown and Stax repertoire. And when you’re finished doing that, grab your pick and play all Carol Kaye songs you know. But it’s 2022 now and I feel I’m getting nostalgic again. So out with the old, in with the new! Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, Tame Impala, the whole shebang. And lo and behold, even with the most recent and modern music, this bass shines. A nice, balanced sound with which you can do anything you like. Well, as long as it contains “grunt”. So yes, this is a wooden board with strings. And that’s exactly what makes it successful: you can do everything with it, because it doesn’t force you to do anything in a specific genre. A Precision always fits, and this American Vintage Precision is no exception. It isn’t cheap, but you could do all your gigs with it. As long as it contains “grunt”.

Has a Silver faced lining?

FIXED

G&L : lose the “batwing/bottle opener” headstock on all models.

Don't we, as musicians, listen to more diverse stuff? I'm done with rock as a genre, especially the stuff that's drilled into your head by radio stations which is why I enjoy the "what are you listening to now " thread and many of the videos @bubinga5 posts. Opens my ears to new music and quite often my wallet to amazon.

Sorry to hear this happened - disgusting behaviour. I live in Cardiff so will keep an eye out for you. I would check Cash Converters on Cowbridge Road East and ‘Deals’ on City Road.

I liked my '65 Bassman amp well enough, but the speaker was gosh awful. I'll forever be thankful to Leo Fender for that, as it's what prompted me to study loudspeaker design, which eventually became my profession. 😉 If I was going to do a total rebuild of a Bassman I'd ditch the Fender tone stack, which was fine for guitar but not for bass, in favor of the Ampeg B-15 design.

Is it just me that can’t get on with the look of them?

Eleanor Rigsby - Beatles

don't sack the singer till you've got another one lined up, being in a band is a minefield, finding people you can sort off get along with and have similar musical tastes is very difficult.

Hi Beams on order. Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Plenty there if the DRs don't work out.

In case anyone after one, Andy Baxter has a s/h Wimbish just arrived with maple board https://www.andybaxterbass.com/products/2021-spector-euro-4-lx-doug-wimbish-bahama-blue-limited-edition

Hark the Herald Angels Sing - Trad

Definitely use the manual! I spent the first year of owning my FI V1 just fiddling with presets and asking questions in here.. but as QM rightfully said to me previously, the manual has it all. Also be sure to check out the patch directory through the editor/manager software. Some great sounds made by QM and other users.

Triumph of the good city. JJB

Rickenbacker - make a proper 4005 you bloody clowns.

No Egrets - Edith Piaf

Finally got around to doing the 3.5 firmware update yesterday evening. Failed twice before it finally installed which was a bit nerve-wracking. I did notice that post-update the patch selection on the Helix seemed a bit sluggish when connected to my Mac with HX Edit open to the point where a couple of times I thought I hadn't pressed to relevant foot swtich properly. As I was refining the patches for a couple of new songs I needed to have the program open, but I've never noticed this previously. Hopefully I'll have a chance to see how it behaves on it own later today.

These days the size of the driver(s) is about the least important factor in determining how a cab will sound. Remember you get plenty of bass out of your headphones and HiFi speakers.

All bass manufacturers, add a small anti gravity device to all basses. One that can lift about 8lbs.

Ooh, very Schrödinger. Bass ownership as a waveform? Interesting concept. I must try that out the next time a box appears/doesn't appear.