mcnach

It is faster and easier with a pick... if you are used to a pick and not fingers. When I started playing bass I had played guitar for years and pick just came naturally to me. I liked the sound with fingers more, and I tried playing with fingers, but it was clumsy and I'd get tired... But, like everything, once you get used to it, it just works and right now I'm much better with fingers. My choice of fingers is based solely on the fact that I prefer the sound and the control I have over the strings when using fingers.

Thank you :D !!!

well, you need to have a decent instrument you can play at home while your gigging one is at the cleaners'...

Do you really think it is a problem? In the UK? US? China? Malaysia? Are we really concerned about CDs lasting *forever*? I thought we were talking about reasonable lifetimes. I think by now CDs have been shown to be pretty durable all over the world.

really? I have 4-5 overdrive pedals... because they all do different things. Well, except the SA Aftershock, that one does EVERYTHING :p but yeah, I have different flavours to choose from. Just like the preamp in your amp and on your bass (or any other amp) is probably different. So that's one reason you may want to mostly use the preamp on your bass, because you like, or are used to, how that particular preamp responds. I used to play with an amp with 4 semiparametric controls. I could get pretty much anything out of it, I still prefer the controls of my Stingray (familiarity, for the most part, perhaps). But I think the major reason people like onboard preamps is the ability to slightly tweak things directly from the bass. It's not better, or worse, but some people like that. It seems strange to me to suggest that people use their onboard preamps because their amplifier is not very good :D

You mean physically? My experience disagrees quite strongly... my CDs back to the 80s are all ok. Scratch damage has happened through carelessness... but even that is easy to fix. So, what do you mean they don't last?

how do you get to that? If you have two overdrives, is it because the first one you bought is not good enough?

well... I'm going to be using a bass just like the one in the OP at one of my next gigs (my girlfriend's bass, she wants me to use it live)... I bet that because of this thread NOW it'll fail (don't think so I'll report back)

Ha! Yes, I guess we all find whatever works for us and stick to it. I like the semiparametric mids on the bass because once I adjust the basic sound, all I do is add or remove a bit of mids depending on what I'm playing... If I want to cut through a bit more... turn mids up a bit and sweep to get the right spot. If I have something a bit more 'slappy' I back off he mids a tiny bit... etc. I tend to play either a Precision or a Stingray, single pickup basses. If I have two pickups I start tweaking things too much

I didn't know The Bureau... thanks for that! I play occasionally with the trombone player from the Dexys, he's our 5th member although he only plays a few gigs each year with us. I didn't know the Dexys either until I met him (apart from the obvious Come on Eileen...). Anyway... thanks for the Bureau, that's really what I wanted to say but I get distracted a lot

that sounds like a good idea. Generally it's mostly the mids where I want to adjust things on my bass, and the passive tone control is a good way to get me a "starting point" in my general sound. I rarely touch bass or treble on most onboard preamps. I've long toyed with the idea of combining a passive tone control (for treble rolloff) with the mids-sweep module from John East as a simple two knob solution. In fact, you could mount volume and passive tone in a dual pot, and mids/sweep on another... Useful for Precisions and the like.

I can't imagine it's that big of a deal... they sell Squier instruments by the thousands, and how many had their neck come off? As for the Maruszczyk... I was not impressed. I could not believe they would aim to save a few pennies that way. I was trying to undo one of the screws, and it was very tight... so I made sure I had the right head screwdriver so that I would not damage it... applied force... nothing... a bit more... and it started to move. Only it was the metal starting to shear. Cheese, I tell you, that screw was made of cheese

It's a tough call!!! If you ask me at different times I may give you different answers... but The Cat Empire will be in the list. They formed in 1999. Not sure which 4 bands I'd choose to be my top ones, I'd need a lot of sleepless nights to be able to choose :p but The Cat Empire and Muse would be in my 'greats' list, no question, together with much older stuff like Jethro Tull and AC/DC. I'm an eclectic type...

That's the thing... owner of multiple Squiers over the years and never a problem with their screws (touch... wood? steel? ) (Yet my first Maruszczyk... the pickup mounting screws were made of cheese)

My 4 bands of all time include at least one post 2000, and probably two of them will be post 1995... And I'm not a millenial exactly

Maybe. But from that list, I'd definitely put down Muse as one of the 'greats' of the current era. Some bands I like more and some I like less, and a few I consider special for their time. Muse are one of them. I think we tend to admire 'greatness' more in bands that we grew up with, perhaps because we 'discovered' music with them, and later bands do not impress us as much.

It's not a VM.

debatable... what you call greats may not look that great to others.

I bought one of those, same colour too (but original whiteish pickguard) last year [*] Really nice. It was incredibly light too. Good buy! [*] actually it wasn't for me. My girlfriend plays bass a bit and she's been looking for another bass as the one she had just wasn't what she liked. One day she told me she had seen a beautiful bass on the window of a second hand shop, went in and tried it, and she fell in love: it was very light, it played very nicely, sounded good... So she was a bit short of cash at the time, but she hoped to go in a week or so and buy it. She had taken pictures. I just made some appreciative noises without looking too impressed... but I thought I knew where the shop was, so next day I went on the hunt. I found it, tried it and bought it... then kept it for nearly 2 months until her birthday

Not at all. And he strikes me as someone who overestimates his own importance/contribution...

I PM'd you, but here's the link in case anybody else is interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bdmqmd23864g6xn/scan2-240 - thumbrest.tif?dl=1 I had good results with them cut from a 4mm thick black acrylic sheet. I smoothened the edges a bit with some fine sandpaper... and that was it.

Unfortunately I cannot help you there, I've never recorded with mine. There's some noticeable hiss on mine at low volume. It doesn't matter out on the street, you can't hear it... but if it's in your recordings because the preamp is what's hissy it can be a bit of a bummer. I wonder if you can process the signal to tame it afterwards. There's a number of hiss-reducing methods developed during the tape era, maybe some of those can help. Maybe even sampling the hiss on its own and phase-invert it then add it to the original? It won't work perfectly as noise is random, but if it is on a relatively narrow frequency band, it might be useful? (I have never tried). The short answer is no, I don't know how you could improve it at source. Recording was never something I was interested in from this box.

I am the same, I like to have a thumbrest where a Stingray pickup would be. I add them to Precisions and even to Jazz basses. I once bought an OLP Stingray copy that had a metal piece glued on the pickguard as a thumbrest where a Precision pickup would be. I removed it but kept it... and ended up using it on another bass: It is held in place with strong double sided sticky tape. It's solid, but not so solid that you cannot remove it if you try gently but with persuasion, and the sticky residue that's left behind is easy to remove and leaves no mark (on poly finishes at least! If yours is nitrocellulose I am not sure this would work well). A while ago, we had a thread about this kind of thing and the idea became popular enough that some BC member with access to the right machinery took orders and produced a bunch of them in black acrylic based on a scan of mine. Another BC member also made me a handful in aluminium. I do not have any spare ones anymore. I use them on various basses and have given away the rest, but it's a simple idea that definitely works for me (and a few others too). I can send you the scan if you want an exact copy and know where to have it made... but you could probably make one from a small piece of acrylic and files/sanding. At least that's my plan for when I end up needing another! Other shapes work, of course, but I liked this one as it is so that's why we copied it. I have no idea what the original bit was initially. It seems made or some kind of steel. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a thumbrest... but it has a really good comfy shape for one. It's only about 3-4mm tall, which is perfect. Here's my Classic 50 Precision with a black acrylic one:

Yup.

Oh yes! I've just done the same to my white Precision fretless... I like it