mcnach

she has great taste in men too, apparently

But hopefully the Labellas will last years! (fingers crossed)

I'm supposed to be working on a grant so that I have a job next year, but I decided to make another coffee and distract myself a little and tell you all a story. Grab a mug, it's still warm. Last August, I bought my girlfriend a bass. She's a beginner, but very much into bass. She already had a bass, but there were a number of things she didn't like enough about it. She of course has tried all of mine, and she cannot really describe to me what it is she likes... but when she feels it, she knows. I did all I could to that bass to make it play and sound nice, but it was not quite right. From time to time she shows me pictures of basses she's seen on shop windows etc. But one day in June she shows me this one. She really liked this one. How do I know she really liked it? Because this time, she went in, and asked to try it, and played with it with other people around! She's extremely shy to play in front of anybody. She first loved the way it looked, but then... it felt great, it was very light and comfy, and she was seriously considering going back to buy it after pay day. I didn't show any interest beyond the usual, and didn't ask about the shop but I recognised it. Next opportunity I got, I went to the shop, tried the bass and bought it. Lucky for me, it was not a Wal, but a Squier P/J, Standard range. It was very nice, it just needed to be cleaned up a bit and new strings etc. She never mentioned the bass again... and I thought I had made a mistake and she really didn't want it that much. Then I smiled "cool, I like this bass, I'll keep it if she doesn't want it!" Her birthday was in August... and I gave it to her. She cried. I thought I was in trouble... especially when she yelled at me "I hate you!"... but then she laughed. She said she avoided looking into that shop until she got paid, just in case it was gone. After she got paid she went and... no bass. She went inside, looked around... nope, it was sold. She was very disappointed, and kicked herself for having waited... and decided to push it away from her mind because it was upsetting to have found one bass she really liked everything about and she let it pass. Ok, phew... so she liked the bass. But she didn't like the strings I put. I put some Rotosounds I had, as she had not tried those, and I figured they would do until she finds the strings she likes... and the search for new strings started seriously. We tried a few on her other bass, but she didn't seem to have much of a preference. However, this bass was different for her. She has finally decided she knows what strings she wants to try. Over the past few months I've tried various types on various basses, and she's tested them all, plus I have a few others that I've accumulated in the past couple of years... and she has decided that there was one set of strings that she really really really liked above anything else. Labella white nylon tapewound strings, which is incidentally my most expensive set. It couldn't be the £11 Warwick red label ones, could it!? But it was a good choice. What a difference did they make!!! The bass sounded nice before, but she loves it now, and how it plays... and as a result she's playing the thing constantly now. Strings... so often overlooked, yet so important. Now I'll have to buy myself another set. I hope she doesn't think of trying the same strings on her other bass now

The original plastic covers have the larger 'ears', yes, and buying a set on eBay with the smaller ears solves that... and they are available in a variety of colours! But they are also taller. The polepieces are longer than normal. Not crazy long, but they are longer. As I said, I didn't have to remove wood or anything in the basses I've used them on (3 basses by now), but you may have to use less foam... and if the routing happens to be shallow to start with I can understand how in some rare cases it may need a little work with a chisel. It's a bit like the J-Retro preamp. It fits most Jazz basses... but from time to time you find one where you need those extra 2-3mm or something... and it becomes annoying if you are not handy with a chisel. The vast majority are ok, more or less tight, but ok.

I didn't have to alter anything, but if you like the pickups very far from the strings you may sometimes need to do something, indeed. I put foam under the pickups, and it gets pretty compressed!

Those knobs were for an amp, in fact... but they never got used. I saw them in my box of bits and thought "why not?"

Thank you, Karl I can't sell you that pickguard, this bass likes to change dress from time to time

The top end is there if you want it. I think you'd like the Mesa D800+ That thread grows daily... you'd go crazy reading it all, but using the search function you may get to the interesting bits about the M6/M9 and walkabout amps... or simply ask again, there'll be a few willing to tell you their experiences. 'agedhorse' is the guy who designed the Subway amps... look out for him and yeah... lots of fanatics

I'm also a fan of the ports facing down. The bottom end is still there, but feels tighter.

If the RS210 tempts you... see if you can try a Barefaced Two10. Much better cab, in my opinion, and not that far off in price. Lighter too. The RS210 was not terribly heavy (20Kg?) but the handle was of a design that always seemed to dig into my hand, and when you lift it with one arm, it tilts as it's not balanced with regards to the handle position... shins hit often

The BC212 is light, but it just sounds ok, not great. It's not terribly efficient either, so, especially if you use only one cab, you might be tempted to push it harder than it can take... It's designed with a budget in mind and it shows. I had one at the same time as an RS210 (the RS212 I wanted to add was much more expensive than the BC212) and I regretted it. Resist the temptation, what looks like saving money, in the end it isn't.

There's lots of recordings, but nothing of decent quality with the Mesa D800+, I'm afraid, just mobile phone stuff. For RATM, on the facebook page there's a section with videos, two or three are long enough... but it wasn't the Mesa, and what you get is the FOH sound anyway. If you are just interested in the type of sound... there are a couple of live recordings with marginally better sound. This is 4-5 years old, using a L2000 and the TC Electronic gear: And this is just as old, but it sounds better although we were not very good ... That's the Stingray (actually, no, it's the EBMM SUB, pickup wired in series) into the desk using the DI on the TC RH450... I think this one may give you a better idea of the sound I go for. Sorry I cannot help more than this... There are some Urang Matang clips with the Mesa, but again, mobile phone stuff.

It depends entirely on the production. Vinyl? it doesn't even have the lows as they've been removed and then added by your preamp (RIAA EQ curves)... A well produced vinyl and a well produced CD are both glorious. I'd personally take the CD (portability, resistance to damage -no immunity, but a lot more resistant-), but I loved the artwork on vinyl records... I have bought albums as a teenager sometimes based on the artwork alone!

It definitely sounds different, slightly... but it's another flavour of the same sound, to my ears, and not worth worrying about. I've had both and in the end I always preferred the 60s placement, as the bridge alone in the 70s position was too thin for me.

ha ha! sorry about that! Your description of the Streamliner sounds like what I would say. It didn't lack lows and the preamp section add some nice warmth... but it felt lacking in weight somewhat. Like you, I used to own a CMD121P combo to which I occasionally added an extra cab, and it never let me down even if it didn't always make me smile. It's what made me get my first LM3 head. I have not tried the other Mesa heads, but the D800/D800+ have some 'quality' that I don't find in other compact heads. When testing it against an LM3 I could not put my finger on it... but after I bought the D800+ and used it for a bit, I am very happy I did. I have used it a lot with Urang Matang, without PA support, in mid-size bars, beer gardens etc, and it has always behaved (with the pair of Two10) brilliantly. Getting a fat, well defined, with serious low mids and no 'boom' has always been easy. I generally play a Stingray... I love my mids, but I want a strong low end too. No problem. The voicing knob on the D800 changes the character of these amps a lot. I thought it would be some kind of contour control, but it isn't. With it fully anticlockwise you approach Markbass LM3 territory. As you turn clockwise the knob, it becomes more... 'organic'. I tend to have it around 9-10 o'clock... It doesn't one inherent voice, it covers quite a lot of ground. If weight is a consideration, you should definitely try one of those (D800+ in particular) before going for the bigger ones, and see what you think. Over on TalkBass there's a long thread on the Mesa Subway range. There's a few people who own/ed the M6 or M9 and they generally like the D800. Some say they still prefer their M6/M9 while others say that tweaking this that way gets you in M6/M9 territory and they love it. I don't know personally. The designer participates in that thread and had some comments about how to get that sort of character out of the D800... worth checking, but it's a LONG thread

I bought this bass a few years ago for not much. It wasn't bad sounding at all, it was VERY light, the neck was comfy, it was cheap... it was the ideal bass to take busking where it's more likely to get the odd knock. I have ended up replacing the pickup (first an Entwistle neodymium PBXN, and yesterday a Fender Original) and the neck (I'm a sucker for maple, and the right neck came up with glossy lacquer... similar profile...)... so how much this reflects the original bass is debatable but I love this thing. I've used it as my bass to try strings on, and finally I strung it with my usual DR Fat Beams (same as in my Classic 50s Precision)... I can't wait until the initial zing dies off (I hate new strings). Anyway... I thought I'd use a slow Sunday to post a few pictures of this beast... just because. The alternative is reading a paper I need for work tomorrow and, I really don't feel like doing that I can't find pictures of the bass how it was when I bought it... so that's a picture of an identical one I found online. Then I replaced the pickup. That's an Entwistle PBXN, with replacement white covers... and I put a white pickguard on it: And I found a maple neck for it... and a mint green pickguard too: A sticker with my main band's logo now covers the black star, and changed the knobs, because if I don't change things in this bass from time to time it feels wrong Yesterday I changed the strings and installed the Fender pickup... I like the routing on these basses. If you can ignore the pickguard screw holes, it looks pretty cool: And this is what it looks like now... the original pickguard returns, and changed the knobs once more... I adjusted the action and this thing plays so smoothly now... I just now have to use it regularly to kill the 'new string zing' I dislike, and see how it compares to my Classic 50s... I was toying with the idea of selling the Mike Dirnt (downsizing!) as it's redundant, but I'd get so little for it that I might just keep it. Hmmm, Labella white nylon tapewound strings could make this bass glorious!

Virtual bandmates... uf, THAT sometimes sounds very very appealing!

Isn't it largely because we're a conservative bunch? Metal bodies (aluminium)... feel cold. Plastic bodies (perspex/acrylic) are heavy... and wood is still cheap, so not much of an incentive for companies to switch materials, I suppose.

It isn't... I'm off to play a little with my beautiful sounding Squier Jazz... oh, what wood? It's some kind of plywood material for the body. It crumbles when you try to enlarge the pickup cavity... but it sounded and felt better than either of the three ash-bodied 75RI Fenders I used to own

beautiful!

True, I liked that a lot, as at the time I was often letting others play through it: channel 3. Channels 1 and 2 were mine

Yup... but when you're starting out all you hear is watts this and watts that... and if you have a 300W combo that doesn't quite cut it, you think "ah, this other one is 500W so it'll be plenty"... I had an Ashdown MAG250 head early on, and I used to look at a Peavey 450W head with envy. I didn't really thought much about the fact that my Ashdown was put through a 115 cab, while the Peavey in the rehearsal room was going through a 410 *and* a 115

No problem, just PM if/when you feel like it Urang Matang... ha! That is a fun band to play with. None of the recordings is me, however. I was briefly in the initial incarnation of the band, before they had a name... a month or so in, the drummer (my friend who brought me in) had some family issues and we stopped. That was early 2010. Then I got busy with other bands, and they eventually reformed with someone else. Fast forward to summer 2016... their bass player can't continue and they have like 10-12 gigs over the next 3 months, and they contact me. And what was a temporary situation became permanent. We were supposed to work on new material and be recording this year but there are... "internal disagreements" and we may be reaching the end. But... anyway, long story about nothing, sorry! Thanks for listening! Back on track: why did I choose Mesa? I had borrowed a D800 a while back and compared it to my Streamliner 900 and Little Mark III... I liked it better than the other two. It felt "bigger" in a way that the other amps did not, hard to describe... but the LM3 was good enough so I did not feel I needed another amp. The Streamliner was my backup, but then I sold it and decided to get a second LM3: they're reasonably common and cheap used. However, meanwhile I got seduced by the Barefaced Two10, and got a couple of them, the 4ohm version. My plan was then to get that second LM3, and I could use them as master/slave when I needed more power for both cabs. That would be the cheaper option. But I saw the D800+ had now a bright switch that allegedly 'fixed' its dark character that some commented on (including myself), a semiparametric EQ for low and high mids, and more interestingly: an adjustable HPF. It is ok for 2ohm... so I decided to have a go, knowing I could return it if I didn't like it. But I liked it, a lot. And that's my story. I'm full of boring long stories today

@dmccombe7 If you're in Biggar, we're not that far. I have a couple of BF Two10 and a Mesa D800+, if you want to meet sometime and have a little taste, maybe also in combination with your existing amp/cabs if you like. I used to have a pair of BF BigBaby 2, which unfortunately can't be compared directly, but I have a reasonable recollection of what they were like. The cab that @wateroftyne was using is a TKS S212, if I'm not mistaken? I still own two TKS S112 that I could bring too if interested. Their bottom end is very tight and precise, some say a bit lacking by default, but you can add a bit of bass EQ from your amp and they respond gloriously. They are very very light. The reason I got the Two10s was that I was a bit afraid of pushing the S112s too hard, and I could get a sufficiently similar sound from the Two10, but the Two10 has the bottom end by default and can take a lot more... But the TKS S112/S212 are beautiful sounding cabs. I used to have a pair of TKS 1126 that were monsters. Very clean, very big sounding.

!!!