mcnach

It turns out it's me who can't count... I read it as 8 basses sent for sale, and 7 out of the 9 sold within x weeks... I missed that it was 8 basses PLUS 1 amp, so sum =9. It wasn't a great joke to start with, but now it's also meaningless... And I had to explain it!!! Time to get my coat...

I hope both of you can count better than that...

I think people have lost the plot as to how much they'd pay...

Re: "vintage" Well, it's been 47 years and a bit since the Stingray was released into the wild...

Ooooh, I like your thinking!

This. As a part of an arrangement where various band members' skills are reshuffled to achieve a goal, why not. As a 'fun thing' that she wants to do... Don't even open that door a crack. It'll be hard to close it.

She can want from here until the moon. It doesn't mean she'll get it Obviously I don't know your band's dynamics. In any of mine if someone wanted to play bass on a song, really wanted it, sure, we're the accommodating type. But she sounds like she wants to do more than that. What does the rest of the band say?

Those MM pickups sound just fine without a preamp, despite what many say (makes me wonder if they tried them). You just won't have the tonal diversity that the preamp's built in EQ will give you. My 2002 EBMM Stingray has now a bypass switch, so I can play it passively (just a little 'get me home' switch, in case I mess up my battery replacement schedule). Plenty of output (of course, if you normally boost the crap out of the preamp controls, it'll be a bit quieter than that!) and if at the right spot for a Stingray, it has plenty of Stingrayness (just one of the many flavours available if you had the preamp too). If it's not at the Stingray position, then it'll never sound like a Stingray anyway, but it'll sound good.

Hmm, looking at the relative dimensions of the pickup and polepiece arrangement... it looks like it'll be 16mm spacing. Boooh. I guess it won't tempt me anymore, then.

Yes, but at least Sire seemed to put the MM pickup at the 'right' spot I had a Lakland 55-02 because I could not find a xx-76. These days I don't mind the string spacing being <19mm (in fact, 17.5 or 18mm seem perfect for me now). If they don't weigh as much as Pluto and the neck profile feels good, I can see one of these in my collection. I have a Ray35 but it's really heavy. The Hogmanay gig is going to be tiring.

What is it? I've been thinking a few minutes but I don't get it

Not a fan of the Sire headstock, but despite that I thought the Z3/Z7 basses looked pretty good if you remove the oval scratchplate. This one would tempt me, and the one in 'rosegold' too, yum.

I use those in a few of my basses. They work really well.

I'd add a vote for Reaper. It can do a lot, but if you just want basic functions they're generally pretty intuitive and there's a few great tutorial videos on youtube. I'd like to add also this thing called n-track. I used that back in the 90s! They're still going and of course grew with the times. I used it a couple of years ago when I wanted to use a tablet/mobile phone to do some recording while on the move, there's android, mac and windows versions. It's probably the simplest but still nice to use multitrack recording software I've come across. https://ntrack.com/features.php

The Ray34/35 are pretty cool, but they've gone up in price a lot recently. The Ray35 I've got was £1300... not that long ago this was EBMM money, but those have gone stratospheric... The pickups/electronics are not the same as the USA ones, by the way, but they're pretty decent.

Completely opposite experience here, that thing always sounded right to me without fuss. Playing rock, funk, ska and reggae...

I wouldn't be that fast. I've had my account blocked for having the audacity to try to pay for a bass in the UK while on holidays in Spain. It took a while to straighten it out.

Check out the Gator mixer gig bags. They're sturdy and come in a range of sizes. I used them for a MarkBass LM3 among others, fitted really well with enough room for the cables, and they have a pocket for smaller acessories too.

tough crowd! 😄

Mine (now fretless) is still going strong!

oooh, that's an interesting idea! Especially the bit about driving observers crazy

That's what I would do. (That's what I do with a Nux MP2 AmpPlug thingy, as I don't like it sticking out on my bass)

The one piece saddles can 'easily' be cut to allow each saddle to be independedn from the others. I haven't done it but the videos look easy if a bit fiddly, indeed. It involves lifting the saddles and carefully cutting the thin plastic between saddles. The good news is that those one piece saddles with the piezo sensor are pretty cheap, so not too scary to do.

Feedback is a good point. I have used both the solid body and hollow body basses at band practice, and I did have some trouble with the hollow body one. Nothing too serious, I just had to avoid a couple of orientations in the room, but yes it can happen. The more rigid the top the less of an issue it would be, so I imagine it will vary from bass to bass. No issues with the solid body, of course.

It's easy to find strings for both scale lengths, and different kinds too. I find the 20" harder to play (I have a 20" and a 23" both fretless) in tune, the fingerboard is tiiiiny when you come from a regular scale bass, but both require a bit of concentration for a while until you sort of 'internalise' the intervals on the neck. The hollow body doesn't really add that much to the sound, and it's still very quiet. I'd get a solid body. I really like my GoldTone 23" fretless one. The 2-band onboard EQ is decent and while still small it doesn't feel like I'm a giant when I play it. I first bought a 20" Batking fretless, just to try. It was cheap (around £100) and looked nice so I figured if I ended up not playing it at least it would look nice on the wall I enjoyed playing it, tuning is far more stable than the old silicone strings on the Ashborys used to be, but it still requires retuning frequently initially until it settles. Then I got the 23" fretless GoldTone after hesitating for a while, as it seemed a lot extra money for something that would likely do the same job as the Batking. Soundwise it's not very different with the stock strings, although the GoldTone still sounds a bit nicer and less boomy, you can make a pseudo acoustic type of sound, or soemthing that in the mix would not sound far off an electric bass with flats. But the playability is much nicer, with those extra 3" really helping me find the right notes where I expect them to be. Another thing I liked about the GoldTone (and possibly many other solid bodies) is that they make other strings (nylon wrapped in steel?) that sound more like a 'normal' bass, if you get bored of the other kinds, but I haven't tried them. Check them out on YouTube, there's a few demos of different strings. IN short: I'd get a solid body and preferably 23". I'd also favour fretless, as intonation can be tricky to set right with some strings and fretless allows you to adjust easily.