mcnach

I remember this... Had I known it was for sale again, I would have been very very very tempted. What a beautiful bass. I love those single coil Precisions.

I onced played an 'illegal festival', it is a famous protest site where people moved in and lived in tents and on the trees to protect the little wooded area from being mowed down in order to build a motorway. I don't think the motorway plans exist anymore, but they're still there. Anyway... it was their 10th anniversary and someone from the site saw us playing in town and thought we'd be a good band to have playing there. It sounded like fun, we were not going to be paid but all equipment was provided and seemed like it could be an experience, so we went for it. Although it is far from any populated area, the police showed up. They were calm, it looked like they were just asked to show up so that they're seen to have some kind of presence. A lot of people were off their heads on various substances but the atmosphere was good. However, one of the organisers got really nervous. While we were playing he came onstage, right behind me, and asked me to turn down. He was very agitated, and only asking ME to turn down. I pointed at the amp I was using: a tiny 30W Gorilla practice combo. There was a cable from its line-out to their desk. I said to that if I there was too much bass, it was not because of my amp onstage that I could not even hear, and that he should talk to his guys controlling the desk. He was having none of it, I shrugged and turn back to carry on playing and he went away. But he came back, being even more agitated and borderline aggressive. So I unplugged and walked off, followed by the rest of the band. You can't argue with idiots, they're generally far too experienced. With regards to being asked to turn down because the onstage volume interferes with the mix, which can happen in small bars especially, I find that generally all they need is for me to turn down the bass EQ. In fact, since I've been using a Mesa D800+ with built-in adjustable HPF, I often just turn up the HPF to remove the lowest lows, and that does the trick. It means I may not sound 'meaty' onstage, but I can hear myself very well, and the soundguy gets control of the low end as he wanted.

Thank you! Your description makes it sound very attractive. I have the Original on my Precision and it's got plenty of upper mids while I'd wish it were more low-mid prominent... I think the CS62 might be something I should try.

I should have qualified my statement, as it reads like a throwaway comment to upset someone, sorry. What I mean is that I often hear people talking badly about successful bands, whether it's REM, or U2, I don't care, and I think I detect an extra level of bitterness that I don't see applied to other bands that didn't make it that big, even when -in my opinion, of course- they lack qualities that the more successful ones got. It's difficult because we quickly get into personal taste. However, while nobody in U2 could be called a 'virtuoso', I think it's at least disingenuous to claim that they can't play their instruments or that they are not 'good enough'. They do what they do pretty well, I think, even if it's not my thing.

That's my experience too, but to what extent and where in the spectrum exactly is the 'scoop' varies with pickups and *relative pickup heights*. I rarely like a bridge J on its own, unless it's one of the 'meatier' types, and even then I'm generally not convinced as it sounds far thinner than any other position, which is why I favour a humbucker in series at the bridge. Anyway, on a Jazz or PJ, I tend to set the neck pickup first, and then adjust the bridge pickup so that when both are blended I like the sound. By bringing the bridge pickup a bit closer or farther from the strings you can affect a lot the mid-scoop character. The effect is more pronounced on some basses than others, but you can almost always find a "too hollow" setting where the bass just gets lost in the mix, and then start bringing it closer to the strings to get the mids back. So, if you don't care much for the bridge pickup alone you could try that. It's not that the bridge becomes unusable, not at all, in fact it often sounds pretty good alone, but I just don't try to ensure it balances volume-wise with the neck one.

Nice clips, @krispn I love that bass

so much bitterness... it's hilarious.

Has anyone used both pickups? I see them being confused sometimes. How would you describe the difference between them?

Still with me... this bass has changed a bit over the time I've owned it... originally:

End of an era. Many gigs played, photographs with it included in my band's second album (even if I didn't record with it)... and this bass is no longer mine: I sold it last night. I'll miss it. But it was not getting much use these days and I decided to sell 2-3 instruments in order to pay for my new Sandberg VM4... and this one was sold before the others.

when I first heard of it I thought "what's the point?" But then I remembered the time we broke down and spend some time trying to tell someone on the phone where we were. This was not even a remote location. I got the coordinates using a GPS app, and that did the trick... but it's very easy to make a little mistake that would take someone far away from where you are. Three words? Awesome. And that's why I'll never be a millionaire inventor: I just don't recognise a good idea fast enough

... Bye bye Precision. I sold it yesterday I suspect it's one of those basses I'll look back in time and think "I wish I still had it"... because although I was not using it much these days, everytime I did it was "oh yes... I like it" Hmmm.

It depends to some extent on which night you're playing. Fridays and Saturdays paid better than the Thursdays and Sunday slots we used to get to start. If you tend to bring people with you, or somehow managed to get people dancing, happy and drinking... they'll generally offer more. I've heard of a few bands getting quite a bit more than we do too... edit: a few years ago, before Stramash opened, I was involved in 4 bands that all played at Binkies. There was a 3-fold difference between the lowest and the highest paid bands, and unfortunately it didn't depend on number of band members, as the band I was playing with the most was the largest, and lowest paid..

Edinburgh - Whistle Binkies and Stramash, £300-380 depending on the band.

Maybe there is a future for humanity after all!

+1 on the Fusion. I still have a F1, which has been discontinued, but its replacement "Urban" looks pretty much as good as the F1. Plenty of room for storage, good protection, and unlike the Mono, extremely comfortable.

I own both an LM3 and a D800+. I really like both. I wish they had a baby and the result were a D800+ with a LFE and VPF controls I find the D800+ has a bigger presence and can get a powerful but defined sound more easily than with the LM3 (the variable HPF + voicing + bass EQ interaction is magic in this amp, IMO). I can get the D800+ to sound much like the LM3, but the D800+ gives me a lot more too. For that reason the D800+ is the one I use live right now. Before I got the D800+, I borrowed a D800 for a while and tested it side by side with a LM3 and a Streamliner 900 I had at the time. The D800 didn't impress me as much. It was good, but I didn't feel it was enough of an 'upgrade' from the LM3. The D800 had more 'body' but I found it a bit too dark. The D800+ fixed it with the bright switch (which I leave on permanently) and the semiparametric EQ comes very handy too, although all I ever need is some very minor tweaks.

I didn't, but when ordering my Sandberg at Guitar Guitar, there was a guy there trying both, switching from one to the other (same cab), and I was paying attention. From where I was, both sounded pretty similar if not identical, but I suspect that's because this guy was going for that particular sound. They're both supposed to be different, but they clearly have a large overlap. Of course, I was there only like for 30 minutes, so I didn't get to see what he could do with different controls, especially bringing the gain up a bit etc. I did talk to him just before I left. He had been trying to decide between them, and he felt the WD800 was nicer, but he could not make up his mind. I think it's safe to say, from that and the comments I have read elsewhere, that they both cover a lot of the same range so for a lot of people there may not be a lot of practical difference. But the WD800 is designed to get you other flavours that you don' get with the D800+, and viceversa. I'm not familiar enough with Mesa amps, but the designer was comparing them to different older ranges in that huge thread over at TB. Sorry, I realise that this doesn't really help much

I used roundwound cobalts for a while on my Stingray, and cobalt flats on an ATK300, and never found any issues like that.

I rather suspect a disconnect between what was said, what was meant, and what was received.

I loved the format on those. I still have the BEF and owned the BEF Pro and Multiwave distortion Pro. They were big, but super easy to set and enough presets easily accessible. The One series is great but for people like me who don't love scrolling through menus (that's the reason I ditched the otherwise awesome Zoom MS60-B) and like to easily tweak presets during live practices, that's not so great. However, the C4 is finally making me feel that it may be worth investing the time in getting familiar with the whole midi/neuro hub thing. I've been holding on to an EHX Bass Microsynth which has a pretty good array of cool noises that I can (by now, but it took me a while to get there) access/set quickly by tweaking knobs between songs, but the C4 is in another planet entirely.

Damn you Source Audio!!! I'm going to have to get my hands on one of these... plus the whole Neuro thingy.

The point is that predicting whether two different cabs will work well together or not is not straight forward, no matter how much you stare at the frequency response curves and try to take into account different beaming etc. If you use two of the same, you will remove that uncertainty. That's all, and that's no snake oil.

Amazing price!!! I paid about £110-120 for mine!

I have used those Isolate ones, and I liked them. They attenuate a lot, and the response is not flat, but on stage I could hear what I needed to hear pretty well. I have gone back to custom moulded ACS -17db, which allow me to feel a bit more 'connected', but I still like the Isolate ones and use them sometimes.