mcnach

Arrived home to find a note from Parcel Force. The bass is here!

Amazingly, rather than taking it back to their depot they took it to my local post office
Unlikely I'll have time tomorrow to get it... but Friday at the latest it'll be in my hands. Time to buy strings yet!

Not looking good for the maple brigade anymore:

[quote]Thank you for your message. I have been told by the warehouse that we do not have any bass guitars left with maple fingerboards.
Regards
Ilga[/quote]

I'm waiting for one of these Sue Ryder basses (and I don't even like P-basses!)
The idea for me is to put flats and possibly a foam mute at the bridge. On teh Sue Ryder trhead I saw I wasn't the only one thinking along those lines (oh, how original am I! ) and several mentioned the Rotosound black nylons. I have never tried these strings and look interesting... I was just wondering if anybody knows what length works when fitting from teh top of the bridge, as opposed as stringthrough (if it matters, I suspect it will, for the E and teh G strings).
And also about the gauge... I see the standard is 65-115, which sounds quite heavy... yet teh blurb talks about "low tension".
So what gauges do people favour here?
I tend to use 45-100/105 roundwounds on my 4-string basses.

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='1110331' date='Jan 31 2011, 10:41 PM']I can honestly say that in 30 yrs of playing in bands, the last thought on my mind when selecting a bass is, 'active/passive'! Is it playable, is it comfortable, does it sound good/bad (regardless of whether it has a battery), does it look good (honest ) ad infinitum; they all come WAY before I consider if it is 'active/passive'.[/quote]

+1000

[quote name='lettsguitars' post='1110239' date='Jan 31 2011, 09:49 PM']never needed active electronics, never will. it's just a loudness contest. used for boosting bright pickups which have less output.[/quote]


how much more misled can you get?

if you truly think it's about loudness I recommend you get out and try some active basses. They may not be for you, fine, but you'll then realise it's *not* a loudness issue.

[quote name='drewm' post='1111040' date='Feb 1 2011, 02:22 PM']Mine's white and the rosewood board looks good![/quote]


white (especially that creamy white, not snow-white) and rosewood does look great, my stratocaster is like that... but I *love* maple boards.

I asked whether they expect to have some on maple in teh future... if this bass is any good, and they get maple ones... I'm getting another one. I wanted a cheap bass to leave at my parents' place for when I visit, in Spain, and this would be perfect.



edit: got the reply. The answer is no. They are just wanting to get rid off those guitars hence the sale. Tempted to buy anotehr in any colour with maple neck just to swap... if they're any good.

Well, the white one I ordered is not available with maple board, they tell me, so rosewood it'll be.

My SUB5 came with a SD Basslines ceramic installed, and teh original pickup (alnico) separately.
The ceramic sounds really nice, but the alnico original is a bit more "mellow" and more Stingray-esque... although the ceramic one did sound really really nice too.

damn you all!

I have just ordered a white one.

I don't *need* one[1] and I don't even like P-basses.
But the thought of one with flatwounds and a mute at the bridge sounded appealing somehow.

I sent an email straight away with teh order ref stating my preference for maple fingerboard. We'll see...

[1] who says we have to *need* a bass to get one???

Basschat is bad for my economy...

[quote name='tom1946' post='1103770' date='Jan 26 2011, 02:58 PM']In several words, yes with bells on.

They rang me and told me it had arrived about 2 hours ago so I've been and picked it up.

FIT & FINISH:

It's very well made for a bass costing £200, the frets are quite well dressed and no sharp bits. The paintwork is flawless and the neck has a gorgeous grain on the back. I removed the scratchplate to have a look at the pots and the wood in the cavities, yes I would say it's Alder and the weight is about right at around 9-9.5 lbs. The 'R' cutout on the S.plate is a bit twee.

HARDWARE:

The splitcoil pickup is very powerful and although the tone & volume pots are generic they have a great natural easily controllable action to them, normally on the cheap stuff the tone is either on or off but this is very gradual across the spectrum. The volume is the same too. The bridge is a super high mass type AND strung through!!!! he tuners look good in my opinion and they do work well with no issues.
Strings are the usual cheap sh*t that are fitted for transit really.

SETUP:

I have spent about an hour setting it up to my liking, the intonation was easy and straightforward, truss rod works fine and needed very little adjustment. I have lowered the action quite a bit and it's great to play.

CONCLUSION:

This bass is far better than you have a right to expect. I would go as far as to say it's as good as any Squier that I've had. It has great potential for modding too.
For 60 quid it's a total no-brainer. Go and buy 2!!

Did I mention the gigbag? Really good it is. Also get a strap & lead !

They have a white one in stock..........[/quote]


If they had a Jazz...

low B for me.

I use a d-tuner in most of my 4-string basses, but it's not a substitute for a low B. Usually I drop to D not so much for the extra couple of notes but because the fingering makes sense when playing certain things.

That's why I would like a d-tuner in my 5-string basses too. But so far no luck... I contacted Hipshot and suggested replacing a couple of tuners for their "lite" versions and a "lite" d-tuner would work... but I wasn't given a "for sure", rather a "might", so I haven't experimented yet.

Well, I'd snap this one up for £350!

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120676974294&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:GB:1123"]black MM SUB4 on eBay[/url]

no connection with the seller at all, if I had the "toy tokens" right now, I'd buy it to refinish it in white

[quote name='markstuk' post='1103294' date='Jan 26 2011, 10:40 AM']+111

A friend of mine (really, no not me) managed recently to plug his 4x8 speaker cable into his fx return, the cab went microphonic, fed back through his 1x15 and buggered his amp...

Cheers

Mark[/quote]



eh???

me no comprendo

[quote name='BigRedX' post='1065497' date='Dec 21 2010, 11:19 AM']An interesting story regarding this:

Some years ago the band I was in at the time did a gig where the headlining band that had a really good bassist with some impressive technical "chops" (who played a 4-string Fender Jazz). He look mightily impressed when I pulled out my Gus 5-string at the sound check.

He seemed considerably less impressed after hearing our set in which I mostly played fairly simple stuff and didn't once use the B string. In answer to his questions about this I told him that while this particular band didn't require notes below E (TBH most of the time I didn't even get below A), but the Gus had the right sound for the band, was the most comfortable bass to play and looked great, and I wasn't going to leave it at home and play something less good simply because the Gus had an extra string that for this band I wasn't going to be using.

I don't think he really got it...[/quote]


Funny that you can play a 4-string bass, and nobody says a thing if you only use 3 strings... or even just 2!!!
But try that on a 5 and youre accused of being a poser

On the other hand, they people who have that attitude rarely overlaps with the group of people whose opinions matter to me, so I'm cool with that.
I don't use one string? Big deal. You don't seem to use your c**k that much yet it's still there in case you get lucky, isn't it?

I've owned a number of 5-string basses, and let them go fast.
But this last time I'm sticking to them.

I started out on 4, and 5 felt sufficiently alien to put me off as it felt too much like going back to school when relatively few songs *needed* a 5-string.
I do use a Hipshot D-tuner thingy extensively, and that was it.

But I found a great 5-stringer that just felt right (G&L L2500 Tribute) and for teh past 3 weeks I've barely played anything other than the G&L and a SUB5. At some point things started to "click" naturally, and although muting correctly is still not quite right, I can play on them anything I play on a 4-string comfortably enough.
Personally, I just needed to find a bass that felt nice enough and sounded distinct enough (the SUB5 sounds great, but I could get that with my SR4, however the G&L was unique) and to force myself to just play 5-strings. I'm going to stick to 5-strings as much as possible for a while, because I imagine once it's in my fingr memory, I can switch easily between 4 and 5.

But, why play a 5?
It's not the extra lower notes, although that *is* nice too. When you get a growling C or D in the right place... it feels good.
Most of all, it makes fingerings a lot easier for many songs because you can transpose the same shapes all over the place to get the lower notes you'd have to go all the way up the neck on a 4-string. That's a big plus.
With a bit of perseverance, a 5-string feels familiar and comfortable, and you can ignore the B-string if you want to, knowing you can use it if you feel like it, so I was considering whether one day I'd just move to 5-strings exclusively. Then I found a reason that will keep me attached to my 4-strings, beyond the fact that I love certain 4-string basses and all that: drop D-tuner.

Some songs sound right with a D-tuner, and while you can play many of them witha 5-string, some are not quite the same.
Ever played RHCP's "Naked in the rain" on a 5-string? It's doable, of course... but it doesn't sound right to me. I could get away with it easily live, but I'd rather used a drop-D tuned 4-string bass for that.
I would like to fit a d-tuner on the E-string of one of my 5-string basses, to cover all bases and keep fingerings I already am so familiar with etc... but the won't fit the lever gets in the way of the B tuner.

Anyway, that's my take.

I'm relatively new to 5-strings, after trying on and off over 3 years... I finally caught the bug, but I will not go off my 4-string basses I don't think, and whilst a 5-string is a necessity very occasionally (at least with the music I play) it is a really good tool to have. Besides what I personally play, there's TONS of 5-string bass music out there... I want to be able to play comfortably on one, since they're so common nowadays. Restricting myself to 4 only seems a bit dangerous: better to be a mediocre player on 4 & 5 strings than being a mediocre player of only 4 strings

[quote name='BurritoBass' post='1102464' date='Jan 25 2011, 06:04 PM']Sounds like a silly internet rumour to me[/quote]

+666

[quote name='Simmo' post='1100700' date='Jan 24 2011, 12:55 PM']Took delivery of a new OLP (mm3?) Stingray 5 copy, first ever 5 so was skeptical but i have always wanted a 5 string so just went for it link below is to some stock photos (same colour as mine), will try and get my own up, but, lost the cable from my phone to pc, so may take a little while! i may have to borrow the missus' camera

[url="http://www.knightonmusiccentre.com/bass-guitars/olp-musicman-5-string-bass/prod_86.html"]http://www.knightonmusiccentre.com/bass-gu...ss/prod_86.html[/url]

Tell me if the link does not work

Took it out of the box, tuned it up, and it plays great! neck is alot bigger than my previous 4 strings obviously, but its a comfortable fatness if you know what i mean

sounds great too! I am thinking about doing the pickup and circuit mods, but when im more confident and better off with money plus i want a black pickguard to stick on it!

sorry about any spelling errors, im eager to get back to playing!

- Simmo[/quote]


Looks sweet

real pictures please, I love my OLPs!

[quote name='dub' post='1100542' date='Jan 24 2011, 10:50 AM']Could someone with a g+l L2500 or L2500 tribute tell me the length and width of the pickups and the the distance between the screw mounting holes.
I'm wondering if they are the same as an EB Musicman Stringray 5 pickup?[/quote]

I don't have my basses with me right here... but the answer is no. They're not the same.
The G&L pickups are shorter.
If it really matters I can get actual measurements + picture (I have a loose SR5 replacement pickup laying around) tonight

I have two hard cases, for those rare occasion when I need to take a bass (or two) somewhere and I'm concerned about transit. I normally use a gigbag (I have 3 decent ones, Warwick Rockbags, the ones wioth lots of padding and big shoulder straps and pockets) to carry bass plus cables and maybe a tuner if I'm not taking my pedalboard.

At home... the last bass I used for gig/rehearsal may stay in the gigbag, the rest are on a 7-guitar Warwick Rockstand, some against the wall in a corner (direct;y behind the Rockstand, so protected from knocks) and a couple on individual stands.

[quote name='jimmyb625' post='1097187' date='Jan 21 2011, 10:23 AM']The wiring traces internally will take different routes depending on which selection is made (unless of course EBMM have also developed a way to have two objects simultaneously occupying the same physical space). Changing the routing will change the circuit response of the coil and the resonant frequency of it, so coil 1 in configuration A will have a different repsonse to configuration B.[/quote]

Are you serious?

Pose that issue to a physicist, and your paragraph above will make sense and can produce some numbers. Absolutely.

Now, in real life... we're talking about an electric bass here. Not going to judge differences with an oscilloscope, but with a pair of ears listening to the air that one or several paper cones move, at the end of a chain of various low tech electronic devices.

Are you serious?

In my opinion (and yes, *just* an opinion), any sound difference that is not of the same magnitude as the differences perceived when using a tone control, for instance, or a pickup selector switch (bridge & neck, very different tones), is a difference that can be safely ignored.

Changed my mind... the narrow nut makes it a no-goer for me. Ever.

It sure looks pretty and I'd consider modifying the electronics to get it to "Stingrayness" if one day I found one used and at a good price... but narrow necks are not for me.

Still, it's not like I need more basses, and if I want to play around with modifications... I have 3 OLPs, two of which are still passive and asking for attention

[quote name='dlloyd' post='1098411' date='Jan 22 2011, 10:06 AM']With the SUB, you're getting a lot of what makes a real Stingray. They saved some money on a number of areas:
[...]
* the electronics... while the pickup is the same as on a Stingray (I believe), the preamp uses less expensive components than on a Stingray
[...]
The sound is pretty much spot on. I have a vague recollection that the output on the SUBs I've played was slightly less than on a Stingray, but I may be thinking of a passive SUB.
[...]
I know what I would go for if I was after a Stingray on a budget.[/quote]


The preamp on my SUB5 looks pretty much the same as the preamp on my 2002 2EQ Stingray. Cheaper components? I mean... *all* of the components are dead cheap! You can build a copy of that preamp for around £20-25 in all... and that's buying single components and with postage charges... There was a thread at talkbass where someone had made the circuit boards (facilitating building the preamp no end) and giving them for the price of a beer... I got one
Anyway, I doubt they'd change anything on the preamp, as it'd cost more to have two separate assemblies than just using one of the preamps they were already building, since they must cost them pennies to make.
Soundwise, I can confirm that the 2002 Stingray 2EQ and the 2004 SUB5 2EQ preamps sound identical to this pair of ears.

Output: again, I see no sustantial difference, other than what can be accounted for by different string-pickup heights, really.

Stingray on a budget? SUB all the way, indeed.
OLPs are nice, and can get very nice, but you do need to modify them... and the SUB is still more Stingray-ish (shut up, Pete )

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' post='1098173' date='Jan 21 2011, 10:30 PM']You must have upgraded to a Sub snob Jose! Oh no.[/quote]

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' post='1097903' date='Jan 21 2011, 06:16 PM']I am staying well away this time it's more Jose' territory [/quote]

I just realised I didn't even mention OLP in my reply

[quote name='dave_bass5' post='1097443' date='Jan 21 2011, 01:14 PM']Well im definitely getting the Sunburst but not sure if i prefer the maple or RW neck, so you never know ;-)[/quote]


If you get the sunburst and want a rw board... do announce it here, I'd be even more tempted for the green one if I knew I could get a maple board to swap

(I forgot to add: if I bought, I'd buy used, I don't feel like paying £600 for a Ray34 represents a good investment)