LukeFRC

Thanks - you’ve now got me wanting to either buy one of them things, or work entirely in Pantone inks!

That looks good. With my work computer I bother about that, but not used anything like that - looks really neat solution. this was done on my personal laptop so colour calibration could be way off - but if you see how quickly I did the reflections and shadows accuracy wasn’t really the aim. Half the problem is that my monitor could be calibrated but there’s such a range of setups for the source images I’m grabbing off line to act as a sample!

ps open it in acrobat on a desktop... - should have learned the HTML option!

my current fave...

there's a bug - something is making the button for black disappear... hold on I'll fix it done!

MY D.I.Y. Jazz BASS CONFIGORATOR! Last year I got my first ever 5 string. I don't know if I'm actually loving the bass, but it looks beautiful in a lovely metallic red. I'm cooped up, and doing the thing we all do where we we imagine what we would get instead... or if I refinished my main bass to look nicer. So we all love a good configurator don't we? Two of the best are Maruszczyk and Sandberg where you can play to your hearts content. They are great. The only problem I have is some of the colours are, well not what I want to see... They obviously are making and selling basses and showing the colours they have. I read something @wateroftyne put on facebook was how he get a Limelight precision and asked them for this lovely aged Lake placid blue... which is a lot softer than his brighter Maruszczyk... This is what I wanted to see - find a way to mock up my bass with a range of bright custom colours... including "new and aged tones." Originally starting with something a bit cartoon like I found the photo of MY bass the shop had used... so used that as a base... its a Metro Will Lee So I started at ManchesterGuitarTech's supply of paints (ie what's available) and then armed with the internet looked up a whole load of Fender custom colours from the 60's, then a few more whacky 50's colours too. (and thanks to @gareth writing something about it, the 1981 international range too) - I can't promise any of the colours are "accurate", and some of them ended up being tweaked multiple times based on internet trawls of dozens of finished guitars... At the end I've stuck in an aged dark Lake placid blue that I had seen Sadowsky use on @AndyTravis's Metro PJ, a couple of G&L colours (one I own in a transparent colour, and one I love), and some glitter metal flake, cos who doesn't love metal flake? They are all my quick bodge together on photoshop. I really haven't spent long on these so some of the shadows look a bit odd on some colours. I've got a couple of pick guards... so I stuck them in, plus a few more for the craic... and then stuck some filters on to badly mimic different neck woods... and then bodged a painted headstock... So hopefully fun to play with.. I think there's somewhere like 2,500 different combos available! The other reason I wanted to do this was to learn the switching technique for a PDF. HTML is a better way to do it like Maruszczyk have, but I'm not a web dev and it would have taken me more than a couple of evenings looking up vintage Fenders... Enjoy. Feed back any glaring mistakes or colours that are way way off.... v1.1 - bug fix on "black" button disappearing when you clicked on desert sand NEEDS TO BE DOWNLOADED AND OPENED IN ACROBAT Bass_config_SadowskyWL_v1.1.pdf

I prefer @skej21 over @stewblack

Check that before buying one. From my understanding the control ability will work with the newer Variax but not the older generation of which the bass is part of

Thing is I think the bass is too old to talk to helix. So you’re on hd500

I would be interested in how well something like the variax works live for bass... does the pa eq need to change for every song?

In sound or looks or both?

If it helps you.... you can't without modelling like the Verix thing... Much of the sound is down to the pickup placement.... There's not space to put a P and a MM on the same body. The MM and the back pup of a Jazz also clash. Delano hybrid system is designed to do Jazz and MM sounds (look at Clover basses) ... but the MM pickup will be in the right place for a jazz tone, or a right place for a MM tone. My 55-94 gets kinda close ish... but it's precision, MM and jazz ballpark more than anything else... the preamp also makes a difference. Live it might get close enough to a P tone to get away with it, but not recording.

How versatile do you need? and if you are going for a known sound, how close does it need to be? a couple of years back I scratched an itch and built myself a versatile bass, two pickups, one in MM spot, the other kinda as close to the p spot, series/single/paralell on each pup, loads of switching options for blend and then a 2 band MM preamp... it was great and could do most things... but versatility got in the way for simplicity of playing for me. I would probably tend more towards having at least two basses, or if you don’t need super accurate something like the Lakland 55-94 I’ve got gets in the ballpark of a fair few sounds and weighs a lot less than the T40 I used to have

What have we told you about spending too much time on Talkbass!

Slap is often the quickest way to display your lack of musicality. The difference between those who can play slap musically and those who can't is a lot bigger than finger style or pick playing

I was wondering - you couldn’t do different effects per string but a piezo equipped bass though eq, multi band compression and/or an IR - I wonder how close you could get

How complex is the modelling on them out of interest?

F bass?

Skyline and Sandberg both decent. TBH there’s aren’t very many people making really bad basses. I would have a look through the for sale forums on here and find a few things that look nice and then ask for a balanced review or comparison of them- the most important consideration really isn’t the instrument but the music you’re going to play on it- if you are wanting to play funk the “best bass” advice might be a bit different from trad jazz or djent to try and sum up the argument above... more expensive basses are generally better. But not as much better than one would like if you’ve self justified spending loads on one. The other point of view is similar to if you’re just starting out driving you want a shiney Ferrari with go faster stripes and track suspension... actually to get to your average wage work and put the dogs in the back at the weekend a Honda jazz might be a better buy.

@TJ1 - what kinda music will you be playing? On the basis it's a first bass that needs to work in a lot of possible musical scenarios, it might not be your main or first instrument, and you don't know yet how much you would be playing it... buy secondhand. a Fender precision or Jazz bass is kinda the standard for the last 80 years of music. You're not going to go wrong turning up at an audition with one of them. Neither is better than the other, pick your top ten bands you want to sound like and see what they are mostly playing... Squier are the budget range and really very good. If you don't want a Fender I wouldn't stray far from the design. Yamaha make some amazing basses, G&L and Sandberg too. Sire do some decent Jazz copies. A secondhand Yamaha BB for 250-300 would be more than adequate. Musicman make some basses that are also very good and have their own sound. Ultimately secondhand £1000- 15000 gets you into a price range that you're going into specialist basses. You could buy a secondhand Sadowsky metro, Rickenbacker, or some custom that someone's had built. I've no doubt they will be great basses but how do you know that's specialism is what you want? If you're buying new even less reason to risk your money. If you see a bass that looks good, at a decent price for sale here on bass chat then you typically might be able to pick up something really really nice - just don't be blinded by shiny things! for additional info, I've been playing a while and bought secondhand... I've got 4 basses at the moment, Sadowsky metro, Lakland USA, early G&L and a early Warwick - I hate think what they would cost to buy new today (over £10k?!) - I've also got my friends Mexican Fender at the moment as it needed a new jack fitted... set up properly with nice new strings it plays no worse and is no less an instrument than any of the others.

How similar to a Pedulla Rapture shape do you find the Shuker Uberhorn or horn shapes? Or Sei Bass Original . They are in the same ballpark to my eyes. Sei is in London, and Shuker in the north Peak District. Both good Luthiers and people someone you can trust too in terms of being an established luthiers who knows their stuff. I'm sure you've read the threads on here and Talkbass where people have got their dream custom build and had it made and it hasn't been what they expected. Sticking with established maker's and variants of their designs hopefully could cut down on the risk of it not working out. Of course if you want a 50 inch fan fret with strings on both sides of the neck or something they are less likely to be interested, but it doesn't sound like what you've planned is super crazy?

that teal one is nice

the copy from the website @DiMarco doesn't meantion Japan at all though...

I started off as I has spent a silly amount on a fuzz pedal that I didn't ever use and wanted to sell it. Figured that I should post a few time for politeness sake... Then I realised that if I sold my spare bass for £X and added a little more money to it I could afford @warwickhunt's blue Streamer.... years and dozens of basses later I guess thanks basschat for the journey and the great people who I could trust to buy and sell too... I guess I did the thing most of us have done, where we go down a rabbit hole of GAS and wanting the latest shiny thing, and then back out again to the point you realise you're just happy with what you've got, and gear the player does not make. Shout outs to: @stevie for designing an amazing bass cab, @EBS_freak for helping me find some IEM that work, @Rick's Fine '52 for the JV Squier chat years back, @Bassassin for his japanese bass knowledge @owen for his love of intricate differences between preamps that you can defiantly tell in the mix, and probably a load more folk that I've enjoyed talking to that I can't think of right now.