Leaderboard

I've posted photos of my pedalboards relatively regularly over the last three months as I've been waiting for a shoulder injury to heal. As of a week ago, all of the boards I own are now fully assembled so I hope you'll permit me another group shot. As you'll see (although a lot of you know already), I am somewhat obsessed by pedals. They are my main interest and I enjoy the process of putting boards together and trying out new pedals. I'll never have more boards assembled at once than I do now (because why would anyone) so I wanted to take a photo for posterity. I've been playing cleaner preamps of late so I intend to assemble a much heavier board soon to sit alongside my main board (in the bottom left), which will involve disassembling three or four of the others. I'd also like at some point to put together Moose and Magic/Dunwich boards so I may take the opportunity after disassembling some of the others. Overall though, my intention now is to start downsizing the number of boards, pedals and power supplies, with a few of my pedals starting to appear in the classifieds already. I'm always keen to chat about pedals and frequently scour the effects thread, but please feel free to chat to me about pedals by message too! From top left to bottom right: Sci-fi > European > Iron Ether > EAE > Minis > Broughton > Grab-and-Go > 3 Leaf Audio > Clean Signal > Main > Practice Compared to my earlier group shot (29 February, I think), I've added the Main board (I was waiting on the DLA-2A), Sci-fi board (I was waiting on a couple of pedals and will be rejigging that slightly soon) and Grab-and-go board, rejigged my 3 Leaf board (to add the LBB), and reassembled my mini board.

Full refund from PayPal received today. Unbelievably the seller messaged me and said he couldn't contact me before, because he (or she) had lost their phone while on holiday. Yes, of course. I left them scathing feedback and blocked them. Bought a nice Ibanez instead. Result.

Get in line

My '84 Westone Thunder III - owned from new in '85 but modded in 2018 with Bartolini pickups and 3 band active electronics.

I've often thought of this. In my experience everyone would do this.... 1. Buy one high end bass. Love it. 1.5 start lusting after 15 Harley Bentons. 2. Sell high end bass. Buy 15 Harley Bentons. Love them. 2.5 start lusting over one high end bass. 3. Sell Harley Bentons and buy one high end bass. ~~~~~~~~ 99. Sell Harley bentons and buy high end bass. 99.5 start lusting after one high end bass. ~~~~~~ I love my Harley bentons. I love how it's almost impossible to lose money on them. I love that you don't have to look after them that much or worry about them at a gig. I love how you can try all different variations of bass guitar without breaking the bank. They also sound great, look great and play great. Nothing stops my lusting after a high end bass again though.....

This made me laugh; less than 1% discount is considered a sale!

I'm a real sucker for peer pressure @lidl e! Current config is below. Highlights include a scrap plywood board from the shed, and an OC2 I got given 25 years ago by a mate who didn't know what to make of it. All sized to fit in an old flight case I had lying around. One day I'll route out a bit of the underside to fit the power supply underneath...

The quick answer is no, I don't make regular use of all of the boards but I play each as often as I can, they do all get used (even if not often) and I've tried to arrange them as sensibly as possible so that they are actually all useful and workable boards in their own right. I mainly use either my Noble board, practice board (bottom right) or, more recently, main board (bottom left). The practice board, minis board and Broughton boards have also been used to jam with too and the European board is getting an outing soon. The Broughton, European and minis boards are concept boards but are fully featured (compressor, octave, drive, fuzz, distortion, envelope, modulation) and can easily be used as full pedalboards. The 3 Leaf board too is an excellent board for synth tones and for general fat tone as the Vulcan and Enabler are fantastic bits of kit. The EAE board is more limited in comparison but it has a delay and reverb so I spend a decent amount of time with that board and a pair of headphones. The Iron Ether board is the most challenging to get regular use from but, after moving, it seemed a shame to keep them in boxes and I had a spare pedalboard lying around. Even that board sounds surprisingly good though as it has octave, fuzz, envelope, chorus and modulation on it. The sci-fi board is a pet project and, again, is fully featured (with a delay coming soon to round out the pedal-types I typically use). I see a lot of boards out there on Instagram and the like that look great but, I suspect, would sound pretty terrible. I've tried hard to make these useful. If I didn't have a big board like the bottom left or right board, I wouldn't make one-manufacturer boards. There's definitely an aesthetic/collector element to the concept boards but I'm fine with that: I spent a long time getting the pedals together and some of them are works of art so I'd rather display them on a board I can use than keep them in a box. The boards are totally overkill and, if I could keep one, it would be the bottom left board or the Noble board.

Holy pedal board, Batman! Looks awesome, and a lot of pretty awesome pedals in between too, but do you actually make use all these boards, and in that case how? Also I don't quite get the concept of concept boards, that is the couple of your boards with all same type of pedals on, as in all same brand or all mini pedals, I mean it looks great, sure, but does this actually work optimally/satisfactory in practice/reality? Seems to me that it would be more of an aesthetics based thing than an actual practical/tone/needs based one.

I thought it was fixed, it's a bit strange what's up with it. Still, I can fill in other parts of the Cort Space versus Ibanez EHB1265MS comparison. Headstocks both use clamping screws, meaning double ball ends aren't used. Necks have very similar profiles - see picture above. EHB uses Bart BH2 pickups as standard (mine has Aguilar DCBs) and standard Ibanez 3-band preamp with stacked treble/bass, sweepable mids with stacked control and active/passive toggle switch Space uses Bart MK-1 pickups and standard Cort 3-band preamp with separate treble, mid, and bass, and active/passive switch with push-pull on the volume control EHB has a scalloped body to allow access to the tuners. Saddle height is adjusted by hex head screws on each side of the saddle. Intonation is adjusted by releasing a clamp screw on the bridge saddle and adjusting the position with a screw on the tuner. Space has a recess for the tuners which makes access slightly easier. Saddle height is adjusted by hex head grub screws on each side of the saddle insert. Intonation is adjusted by sliding the bridge saddle after releasing the grub screw just behind the insert, then tightening the grub screw up again. I'll do some sound samples when the pickups are sorted.

I'd prefer a single better quality bass, however I'm of the view that anyone gigging ought to have spares so that would force me to the Harley Bentons.

Cheers! Matching headstock as well..

NBD My black/Tort Mustang-a-like turned up yesterday. Very pleased with the purchase, all the previous comments and reviews by Lowend Lobster & Bassthe World are spot on. Excellent fit & finish, light weight, lovely roasted bound neck and great balance on a strap. The improvements of the tuners and 3-position Pup selector switch are just right and the Pups are loud and mid forward. Great P tones and the high gain bridge Pup adds just the right amount of honk to replicate a Jazz tone. I missed these the first time round but fate provided the opportunity to buy one of the later runs with the improvements that I would probably have done if I had purchased one from the first batch. I bought this as an upgrade platform to follow @pedand @Andyjr1515 lead with the mods to the '66 Mustang by adding a Gemini TBird Pup and swapping out the bridge Pup for a Warman Twin rail humbucker ( yet to be decided). Interestingly the 'P' Pup is exactly positioned in the short scale sweet spot, 10ins from the 12th fret, so the Genini TBird Pup should sound full and rich. Great value for money, JMJ on a shoe string( how do they do it?????)

You’ll need to sign up to Jim’s pedal lessons and do the dual lock and Velcro accelerator course then! (v small squares, very neatly done)

Oh I bloody hope this becomes a real thing that I can buy.

NBD Very nice, early 90s MIJ, quality thing. Surprisingly light, ash, passive, really great tone via an old set of Roto flats. I spent an hour polishing the frets, not much else to do with it, cracking bass.

I dunno if ‘New Preamp Day’ is a thing but it is for me! Cranborne Audio Camden EC1! Loving it, really cool.

Of the two choices I’d rather have one awesome bass rather than lots of low end ones, but currently my stable is 3 mid-value instruments, all built to do 3 different jobs.

Last night's board Least number of pedals ever for me. The volume pedal is because I never managed to properly balance the levels of my C4 patches. The tuner isn't an effect so really I went out with just one pedal.

Was the Vigier modded to be invisible?

Here’s my Mustang and my Vigier. Both extensively modified; bought in a pre modified state which game me licence to do the mods to my taste without having to carve up a mint instrument.

Just when I thought my board was becoming worthy of posting on this thread @admiralchew blows it out of the water! Impressive boards and cool to see them all together. I'd not thought about pedalboards as a hobby in their own right but it makes sense when you see stuff like this. Think I might wait a while before I put my meagre efforts out there.

I'll keep an eye out and try to figure out the logistics! I've met a few folks on here in person but it would be good to meet more. That's really nice to hear, thanks! Hopefully they're not used as an example of what happens when a person is still dealing with the remnants of 20+ years of obsessive compulsive disorder. Always happy to oblige with more pedal pictures if it helps get you over the line. Haha, thanks. I've got boxes and packing peanuts galore here. You've got some properly good stuff already though!

Well, speaking as someone who owns several reasonably high end basses, and a ton of Harley Bentons too, I can honestly say the quality of the HBs is so good why not own as many of them as you can fit in your room? I have and appreciate gorgeous basses which cost plenty and I often choose to gig a Harley over them. Price seems almost entirely irrelevant these days.

I get bored just playing one bass. I'd need a few. It's a shame they don't make a multi scale... I think this selection would see me right in about any given situation though. Could probably get rid of the blue jazz but it looked nice. I have no doubt that they'd hold up to gigging. Not too sure my wife would be that happy with the arrangement though! 😅

Let's see... according to Thomann, the cheapest Music Man is £2,666; the cheapest MIA Fender is £1,369; and the cheapest Rickenbacker is £2,222. The Harley Benton equivalents are £162, £111, and £195 respectively. So I'll take the Music Man please, and then sell it for sixteen Harley Bentons 😆 In all seriousness, if someone gave me £2,666 that could only be spent on basses, I'd be looking for two to five that cover different sonic territory (P with flats, MM, fretless, etc)

Regards customer service, we're talking about more than thirty years ago, pre-internet ect. Transatlantic communication was a lot more difficult and a lot more expensive. I think the issue with Alembic basses inherent complexity is essentially that of durability. Despite the undoubted quality there's a lot to go wrong or wear out. When it does sometimes only Alembic can fix it properly if you want your bass to stay at factory spec. I suppose it just depends on how careful you are and what kind of use the bass is getting. The proprietary electronics and overall design are by their very nature esoteric and if you want a full-tilt Alembic that's part of the deal. FWIW, Wal basses are similar in certain respects regarding serviceability. That's a whole other thread.

Why does it have to be binary? I have examples of both in my stable, and I enjoy them all, otherwise I wouldn't own them.

By law any website trading in goods in the Uk must display or confirm a contact address sounds dodgy stay clear.

If it's any consolation, when I finally got a Series 1 Point, I found it too heavy, too unwieldy, and a real stretch to low F. I barely had it a year. Snap! sold mine after 6 months. No regrets. Replaced by a Ken Smith which got the ergonomics right

I don't understand that mentality of not having a spare, everybody knows it's just a thinly veiled ruse to buy another bass.

Yes, I agree @Paul S - my Dano could do with a forearm contour, but it's not a really sharp edge, at least. Glad you're enjoying your new Dano. As you say, they really do seem to cut through the mix. Perhaps a different sound to my P bass, or my P/J Mustang - but the Dano sits nicely in the mix, and the tone is lovely. I'm gigging mine tonight, for the first time since fitting the LaBella flats - so I'll see if the tone is as good as it is with the round wound strings.

Had a 5 string Essence bought and sold here. Amazing build quality but poor balance & ergonomics. Having the bridge so far towards neck with a small body made the reach to 1st fret even while sitting an effort.

I think that's very fair. Basschat, or perhaps more accurately "Bass-gear chat" would be closer to the mark, has a massive focus on kit rather than actually playing bass / improving technique. Let's be honest, 95% of BC'ers (me included) are gear nerds! That's not true of the majority of musos, so I guess it's a case of playing to our strengths and interests?

The Hulla band organises and plays a festival each year and since I joined them I've put together a band to play a support slot at each gig. This year, it's with three of the main Hulla band members (drums, the dep bassist and the guitarist). The drummer and I are the only 'experienced' musicians - that's not to say the others aren't good, but they only play at Hulla rehearsals and gigs, so they have less stage experience and confidence. We've had five practices at which we learnt 17 songs and now we've slimmed the setlist down to 12. Last night we had the first full run through with our Hulla sound man in the critical friend role and a GoPro in the 'camera never lies' role 😃. We managed to squeeze two complete run throughs in and the inexperience showed through with big, silent gaps between the songs and messy starts and finishes in the first version. I could feel the frustration as each little error contributed to the next and there was no enthusiasm in the playing. We finished and took a break to talk it through. Fortunately, everyone was aware of their own problems and it was a pretty open discussion. The sound man had some suggestions as well (I was singing in too high a register for one song, for example) so we played through the set again with these in mind. It was like a different band had taken the stage. It was tighter and after the first couple of songs, the mood was noticeably better and this translated into the playing. We ended on a high. There is still work to do - mainly starts and change overs (there's an instrument swap midway through the set) but it was a great way to end a rehearsal.

Rehearsal last night with the covers band. We have a full line up now, but the singer wasn't there as he has the lurgy, so we ran through stuff with the new guitarist. I got bitten by a mozzy! 😡

Panic over. I was being dim. Found it on TalkBass, hadn't logged in for over 10+ years! Attached year if anyone else is interested. FI_communication_3f.txt

Was that you I had a (very) brief chat with at the merch table? Would have liked to chat a bit more but the table was really busy, looked like a tornado had tripped through afterwards! I did however make a mental note to tidy up my playing in the second half as there was a fellow doghouse man in the venue 😃

This might be the solution...

Night Femur - The Bee Gees

First impressions. + very decent price €129 / £109 + the box is on the heavy side in a good way + size if the unit is decent, it does a lot, and there's space enough to tweak it + the bar on top of the footswitch is necessary + nothing special with the sound, i.e. transparent in band context + accurate and powerful, yesterday I cut the lowest end (30 Hz, high Q, -10 dB), and boosted the low end (80 Hz, middle Q, +6 dB) with success +/- consumes 96 mA (ON) +/- can be used with a battery, but not long (see previous) +/- ON/OFF can be seen from the sliders: blue is ON - overall level adjustment needs a Stompshield - the Q pots are completely black: I used a silver paint pen to get the tiny notches visible - if the unit loses power while ON, it becomes dead quiet: there's no relay in the signal path Have to try extreme adjustments to understand noise levels and so on. I just love the possibilities of parametric eqs. tce 1140 may leave this house...

Yeah, the "basic" guitar and bass models, i.e. Tele and Precision didn't get them. Strats got them in 71 and Jazz Basses got them in mid-late 74, along with the three-bolt "micro-tilt" neck plate. The only exceptions were the Telecaster Deluxe and Custom AFAIK.

Good taste. Cramps

New things have been accidentally bought, @jimbobothy showed me how the pros use dual lock, and I had enough patch cables… tuner - oc10 - C4 - H9 - iron man - Omnicomp - L4 preamp - shallow water clone - Anadime - H9 - colourbox New are the valeton oc10 which is just amazing (and was an accident buying) and the H9max which can do so much and pushed the zoom ms70cdr off the board… lots of crossover with the C4 so we will see how that goes

To be honest, I am quite late for the New Bass Day. It's not new. I bought it weeks ago. But I did not know what to think until last week. Unlike many here, I am not necessarily a fan of Harley Benton. The ones I had, I sold, as their quirks (eg ridiculous weigh) more than offset the positives. And looking at comments on other basses, I am uninterested in most of their offering. But when this semihollow short scale came for sale here on Basschat, I could not resist the temptation to give it a go. At first, I thought it was another quirky bass, good "for the money" but not to be used in practice. The strings do not align with the pole pieces, and the output from the E was weak. In desperation, after trying three different sets of strings, I tried to align the E exactly with the pole piece, even though this leaves the G quite far away from it. Oddly this solved the problem completely. The E is nice and clear. And the G... is also nice and clear for some reason! I am confused, but happy. I am left with a bass that sounds good, has a good neck, good fretwork, and oddly stays in tune more than most cheap basses I have had. I was quite worried because the floating bridge but it is nothing to worry about. Losen the strings, move it, tune. Done. All doable, if my tuner is to be trusted. Despite the problem with the E, I have mostly been playing this bass since I bough it. I have discovered the magic of a semihollow. Getting enough volume to play over tracks even when I cannot be bothered to plug in to the amp. The strong initial attack and limited sustain. The short-scale string tension and thumpy sound, but in a long-scale body that does not make me feel cramped. The low weigh. And there is something to be said for a neck pickup in that position, though I am not sure it beats the P/Mustang position Just great!

Air this eve at the Royal Albert Hall... Moon Safari 25 yrs and 20 yrs Aniversary with Mrs Plug... Currently pre-gig Dinner and Drinks in the Zetland Arms.... you Sexy Boy!...

All my basses are heavily modded, put together by parts or built from scratch. I do have two very old ibanezes that are stock that i am selling. Everything else though is heavily modded. Here's a few. Built from scratch with a buddy Refinished in nitro, new pickuos, new bridge built both from parts. Ledt is warmoth nody with 2tek bridge and moses graphite neck with Batolinis, right is mostly fender parts, schaller tuners, lollar pickups Built entirely from scratch. Friend built the neck Defretted, put in bartolinis and a bart harness

Finally getting my Japanese Sadowsky Modern fitted with the three pickups- sort of Dingwall-esq now I suppose. Got the impression over on Talkbass that this was heresy, but there you go. It’s moving the front pickup slightly forward a few mm’s to get the middle one in. So will give me pretty much the positions of a rear jazz, MM and P. Geting a 5 way rotary strat type selector, rather than one of the Dingwall 5 ways- with don’t give the option of the middle on it’s own. So will be - rear, rear+middle, middle, middle+front, front - ala strat. Looking forward to getting it back, as really missed gigging it. Paul