mcnach

Yes, it works, it's easy to remove too in the future and it doesn't damage anything (just be sensible). I still prefer to ground the polepieces first, if feasible.

why?

nail polish works very well, and you get a choice of colours However, I'd try to fix the problem first without nail polish: you need to ground the polepieces. If they're accessible from under the pickup, all you have to do is join them (conductive copper tape works, for example) and then join that wire/tape to ground. Then the polepieces will not make noise when you touch them. If that's complicated... then yes, nail polish is an easy solution. I have done it in the past.

It's a very nice preamp, if you like Stingray preamps. I'd go for the 3-knob 3-band version 'though. The semiparametric mids module is very cool. You may not touch it much, but when you need it it's like having the 7th of Cavalry coming to the rescue

It does look slightly off, and I am positive you can readjust by reseating the neck in the pocket... but for such a small difference, personally I would not bother. Of course, if it bothers you, and that's what matters then you can always reseat it yourself. It's easy.

Oh the glamour, eh?

That's good! I remember they had a period when lead times were a bit longer and they were moving to another wrkshop etc. I thought they were getting busier and that it was the end of the 10-week wait. It looks like it's still very similar.

I would love for all my gigs to go like that, where do I sign??? I'm talking about the extra £100. I'm not a stranger to finishing later than planned, but it would generally be £100 to share, not per person... and I tend to play in bands with anything between 6-10 members, so yeah, the extra £10-15 are really really useful. I might splash on the way back and buy a hot chocolate with EXTRA cream on top and marshmallows on some road services stop...

I get a strong sense of deja-vu That's where I was a year ago! First it was looking at those 48s and playing with the configurator. Then it was going to a shop where I knew they had a couple. Next thing I knew, I had ordered a VM4 😛

I liked that band a lot more when I could not understand English...

ah, the sound of a cutlery drawer being dropped down the stairs...

But this only ensures frets are of an even height, not that they're level. You're taking a big risk assuming the fingerboard is even. It looks like in your case it was even enough and your approach worked. Pretty ingenious with the file, I liked that . However, fingerboards are not necessarily even, not to the kind of tolerances we'd like to ensure frets are levelled, as anyone who has ever done a fretless conversion will probably have experienced. So be careful with this approach!

A kilt, however...

Trust me, I'm no Thunderthumbs, I could not show off if I tried! I just know enough to get away with it when required I was in a RHCP tribute band a while ago. I could play everything we wanted to. Some of the older stuff required more practice but most patterns are pretty simple, just played fast. It is far more difficult for me to come up with my own parts/patterns and not sound like a cliche.

Nice! What a band!

Admittedly, it may just be based on a couple of individuals I've come across that somehow left an impression in me. They were most definitely insecure and envious. I think it's mostly how it gets abused, much more than anything else. There was a song with one of my bands that I was always a bit ashamed to play. It is our own song. When we were jamming it one day, for a bit of fun, we added a new outro section and I slapped on it. I did nothing much beyond straight root/octave patterns, but the band thought it was fun and they asked me to play that for the future. That's ok, but the singer often pointed to me when it came to that part as "look at him now!" as if it were something special... and everytime it happened I just wanted it over. Yeah, it went down well, but I didn't like being put in a place where it looked like I was trying to impress... Eventually we dropped that part as it would easily take 3-4 minutes and we'd rather play a new song instead. I think right now there's just one song left that I slap on for the choruses, but that one is cool (I think), nothing flashy or anything, just adds the right change in dynamics.

I think part of it may be that it's an easy technique to do badly, yet it retains this aura of "wow, amazing" around it for those who don't play. So it can grate a bit, both the mediocre playing and the undeserved "adulation". Another thing I've noticed is that it looks as though the most vociferous anti-slap opinions, in forums, come from people who can't or won't slap, so there may be an element of subliminal envy (not that there's anything to be envious at all, if you wanted to you would be able to slap, no question...) But perhaps, the biggest factor is that it's a technique that's prone to be abused. There's a tendency to shoehorn slap patterns at speed when -to me- it doesn't really fit the song. There are times for fast and furious slap, and times for slow and tasteful slap. If all you do is repeat fast slap patterns from the beginning till the end it's all very yawn-inducing. A bit like 'guitar shredding' in the 80-90s. When guitar gymnastics take precedence over *music* then it's going to get a bit tedious after a while. When Yngwie Malmsteen released his first album I loved it. I still do. Very tasteful even when he goes into a million notes per second mode. Fast forward a few albums later and it just seems a compilation of cliches, with a few great tracks interspersed with derivative filler.

This. They feel like flats, but sound like roundwounds that have mellowed down a bit, just a bit, losing the initial zing of the fresh strings. They're much much more like roundwounds than half-rounds or groundwounds or pressurewounds (same thing, different brand nomenclature). It sounds like Cobalt Flats are really the ones you want, OP.

I don't think so, no. If you wire each pickup in parallel, they sound much like a standard single coil J pickup with plenty of top end. I should install a parallel/series switch for each pickup. The bridge pickup alone, in series, is beautifully fat.

For me, whether a bass is cheaper or not has no bearing on whether I'd choose more or less expensive pickups. Why restrict yourself to cheaper? I look at the overall cost, instead. If the total cost is reasonable for the results I get, then it works. £200 worth of pickups on a £40 bass is a bargain if the result is good: a good bass for £240! [1] Of course, price alone is not a good indication of the result you'll get. [1] My real life example was a £40 Westfield Jazz plus a £200 J-Retro preamp. I left the pickups alone because again, I liked the stock ones. That was a beast of a bass. Totally worth it.

I had one, in surf green... I actually loved the pickups it came with. I was prepared to replace them, I already had a couple of different sets in my drawer (Model J and Area J sets from DiMarzio) but I left the originals on. Strong output and vintage tone don't go hand in hand, generally. I like the Area J because they sound very 'traditional J', yet they're humbucking, so no hum when soloing one pickup. They're not particularly high output (I wire them in parallel, but you can wire them individually in series for a higher output, but less of a traditional sound). Why do you want a high output pickup? Volume, you can always adjust. I'd choose a pickup based on their sound first. Personally, I would leave them, if they're anything like the ones I had. What don't you like about them?

Purple and maple has always been one of my favourite combinations, yet I never owned anything in that combination. This was purely a fluke. I'm more of a strat kind of person, but now that I've been playing more I started missing the dual humbucker vibe. Then, just as I sell my car, I happened across that guitar... it was a sign! I showed it to my girlfriend, I was hoping she would be the voice of reason saying "look, you've already got a guitar, you don't really really need one, keep the money, be sensible, the future is uncertain..." but she was like "hey, isn't that JUST what you wanted? That seems pretty rare, if you don't buy it now later on you'll regret it and you won't b able to find another... and you know, you can always sell it later, I mean, that money is just going to sit on the bank account doing nothing, right?". I love her. I like the PRS design. When thinking electric guitars, most thing Stratocaster and Les Paul, with other different shapes taking a distant third place. I like how PRS came up with a kind of hybrid that retains the vibe from each while having its own thing going on. This one has a roasted maple neck, which is a bit darker than it looks in the pictures (I should have adjusted the colour balance), it's more of a caramel colour. To give you an idea, the pickup covers are cream, while in this picture they seem to have a bit of a greenish tinge, so try to mentally adjust And a 'tremolo' arm that is easy to adjust and stays in place. Now I need to go practice to justify this I've been mostly using it to put down some quite simple reggae ideas for one of my bands... but I'm reconnecting with my younger hair metal days soloing all over those ideas, high gain overdrive... and I cannot play fast any more, not without my fingers getting into a bunch. But little by little it's coming back... Very soon I'll be as bad a rawk guitarist as I used to be in the 90s

Been there... Not Istanbul, the amazing surcharge for a slightly heavier than allowed luggage. I remember looking around at a few... rotund people around me, and thinking that surely they should make a combined passenger+luggage allowance. I'm half the weight of some of those people on the flight, yet I have to pay something like £45 for an additional 3Kg? Some of those people have just gained 3Kg at their breakfast alone!