LukeFRC

I've made it a bit easier now with a multiple choice options...

Good point... I've made it a bit simpler above with a multiple choice. Not sure I want to say exactly what the 4 basses are as it's more interesting to know what people ears are telling them rather then their eyes. I mean their ears are probably telling them I need to practice way more and don;'t know how to record... but I wouldn't disagree with that!

The better test would be sticking some fender pickups and passive loom in a Sadowsky - and then Sadowsky pickups in a fender... but even then there’s so many variables that it would be a slightly pointless exercise. ive played Sadowsky I’ve loved and ones I haven’t. Ones that sound pants if you turn off the preamp, and ones that still sound great. ive found an even bigger range of good to great in Fenders too. If I were building a bitsa jazz and wanted it to sound like a fender I would be getting a BBOT bridge and warm sounding pickups. If I wanted to get closer to Sadowsky sound I would be using inset bolts to get a really tight neck joint and a heavy bridge. I would get some clean clear pickups like nordstrands that have a well defined high mid. I recorded all my basses on the thread I made last night - can you tell which is the Sadowsky?

Answers Clip 1 Green : Lakland 55-94 (Neck and rear coil of bridge, wearing new Lakland Nickels) Clip 2 Orange: Sadowsky Will Lee (Both pickups, tone down a bit a slight bass boost, wearing very old Sadowsky blue labels I think) Clip 3 Blue: Lakland 55-94 (Neck pickup, wearing new Lakland Nickels) Clip 4 Red: G&L L1000 (wearing Chromes) Clip 5 Grey: Warwick Streamer Stage 1 (I think both pickups and wearing newish DR Fatbeams I think) Clip 6 Oatmeal: Lakland 55-94 (Bridge pup in humbucker mode, wearing new Lakland Nickels)

Just for fun I made a wee comparison... Six clips... but only four basses. Two of the clips are the same bass again but with a different settings and hand positions, just to make it a little bit harder. Can you guess what they are? Explanation: We're all shut inside and I realised my HX Stomp is an audio interface and it would be worth trying out. I've never really recorded anything before into my laptop... Setup is Bass>HX stomp> Garageband.... I was struggling with gain levels a bit so took a feed from the Stomp into a mixer and had bass and the drum track into it... goodness knows how bad my timing actually is. Drum loop is one of the prebuilt Garageband ones because hearing bass outside the context of a band isn't that interesting. Plus my timing is bad enough with a drum track! I have no idea what I'm playing! It's something I came up with that covers all four strings. I mess it up quite a bit. I've never claimed to be a good player!! It was late, "oh iMovie will be easier than Premier pro" I thought... How wrong was I. I do claim to be a professional graphic designer so ignore the visuals iMovie made... I should have used comic sans and pretended it's ironic... All basses have completely different strings and controls are set "how I would play them live" rather than any nominal "flat" setting. It's not scientific sorry. I tend to have any preamps that some of the basses may or may not have flat, or tiny bits of boost or cut anyway. I tried to equalise volume as best I could in Garageband... Everything is flat in Garageband except one that had crazy top end I tamed slightly The HX stomp is as flat as it can be with no blocks whatsoever used. I made this for fun. Also to start thinking about if I need so many basses. the DIY bitsa of my own design in my profile picture got sold, so they are all basses that have been either mass produced or small scale production built and would have been available at a decent large music shop when they were released... nothing super boutique. Sorry again for my playing.

Gareth - you’ve got ond of the best taste in basses on this site, and I’m lucky to have been able to have bought that L1000 if you... can you elaborate a bit? Fender could be anything from custom shop all the way down to made in China.

This thread reads like everyone has spent too long cooped up inside!

Yeah but if you do it as the seller you just pass that cost onto the buyer anyway. “How much will it cost to send to France” means you get a price and it’s up to the buyer if they want to pay or not. I would much rather say “the bass is £x postage is £y” and know it’s going to get there fully insured than have someone try and save £10-20 and end up disappointed- esp as the first thing the courier company will do is try and blame the sellers packaging! obviously meeting up is far better (maybe not at the moment) - one sale I did I ended up driving 100miles plus round trip to meet a fella at a service station, he could see the bass, have a go and confirm to himself he wanted it.

@Clarky the odd thing is that if I am arranging postage and the courier is going to loose it then it’s easier I think if I’m the seller. - i will have packaged the item and can vouch for it. And take photos before it’s picked up. - I will have selected the courier, usually ups via inter parcel.... I’ve chosen to avoid Hermes - I will have chosen the insurance- that means I can vouch to the seller that they Will either get their item or 100% of their money back. - I can sort pick up myself, sometimes using that shop drop off option. All at my convenience - I can decide risks of sending it to certain countries, and fill out any custom declarations that are my duty anyway. Generally I am happy posting in EU countries, outside the EU I need convincing on. But it’s so much simpler and easier to do all of this for myself and if anything goes wrong I can fix it simply as I’ve got all the details.

Only if everyone is a concenting adult

Have a look at the studio SVT patch too (on that site)

Have you got a gate on the input? also go here for a starting point on the amp models. http://drtonelab.com/lab/balanced-eq/ even if it’s too clean and flat sounding you are at least tweaking from that place!

In my hunt I found that there seemed to be high end professional headphones (studio/radio etc) ... and then the much more expensive prosumer market. And some of them favoured in both. Kinda like the good precision bass or the Ritter for recording your next record. Obv different reasons people are buying them

Are these alive yet?

There’s two things going on there though - one is a p will sit in a mix a lot easier - so without much eq on the recording will probably sound nicer. the second is if you’ve been chasing the idea of the bass you want rather than the sound. A few years ago I had 100% active thru necks, my main bass with a cool ACG preamp. All good till I took a punt on a bass I had been recommended “buy if you find one” by a flat mate years ago. Roll forward 2 years and most my basses are bolt on basses with a fender type sound. Maybe the idea of the stunning graphite and sparkle finish flea bass is better than the actual sounds you want to make with it

you know if you sell them and just use whatever one you’re thinking of that in six months or a year you’re going to want to buy more basses again?

For recording I've taken a wire, wound it around a part of the bridge so it stays fixed. I've then taped it to my upper arm with electrical tape. Not the most elegant solution but it worked!

some of that flea playing is immense though - and to my ears it sounds pretty good