mcnach

That, I like

Still less than half the price of an USA one. Prices have gone up all round! Before you say no to MIM, try them. They have improved a LOT from what they used to be 10-15 years ago. A good P bass for £600-700? In 2020? That doesn't sound bad at all.

When I found he plays with Dare now I was very surprised, as I can't see him playing much slap there. And he doesn't. He's a pretty good bass player, he's just unfortunately better known for his emulation of a typewriter with a bass.

Pots are not the best, standard tuners and bridge I can see they're not top dollar items, but they do the job (only had one with standard hardware, basses 2 and 3 I specified different hardware). I really have no issue at all with any of these... but screws... ugh.

There are places to cut down costs, and places where you don't. It's not a multimillion instrument operation, the savings are not that significant. Hell, charge me an extra tenner and use screws that are not an alloy of iron and cheese. I enjoyed my three Maruszczyks (now down to just one), and those screws were insanely bad. I broke off a pickup mounting screw without much effort: I started applying force and it was hard, then gently started to give way... only it wasn't being unscrewed, it was the screw being twisted, and it quickly sheared off leaving me to remove the bit of screw with a lot of swearing. Really, Maruszczyk, you make some really cool instruments, don't spoil it for the sake of a few pennies.

oh yes, do it with the pickup covers off. I am not sure the covers will melt but it is a lot easier to do a tidy job if you remove them prior to coating them. I used the 60-second (Rimmel?) one, and just applied 3-4 thin coats. It stayed put for a few years (I no longer have that bass)

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.