LukeFRC

Best pups I ever tried were nordies... I would say go passive first and then if you gig it and find you need a preamp... Well do that, j retro or something. Nice bass too was that on here, photos help!😀

[quote name='roman_sub' timestamp='1455535242' post='2979876'] Thanks for explaining! I also have a love-hate feeling with the old MEC preamps. Anyway, seriously nice Thumb! [/quote] Cheers

[quote name='RandomBass' timestamp='1455571315' post='2980405'] Ive had a few TE heads, the Series 6 being the pinnacle for me. SM's also great due to their simplicity. I'm probably the only person who never really gelled with the SMX. [/quote] What sound wise is the difference between the series? I used to use a 1x15 combo, no idea what series - but the 7 band EQ at church - and admittedly I didn't spend long fiddling but it was a very 80's sound with my active pupped Warwick. Now I'm thinking it wasn't the greatest cab ever but I'm intreaged to try trace stuff again (that twin valve combo for sale looks awesome) Sound wise what would I be expecting from the different series?

[quote name='Nostromo' timestamp='1455526072' post='2979728'] Re the BRIWAX . . . . which one do you recommend for cleaning up a Bass ? . . . . they seem to market loads of different products . . . most of which don't look like they'd be suitable for polishing up a bass ? . . . however one's called "Briwax Sheradale" . . . . is that the stuff ?. . . . or is it just the Briwax original . . . which seems to be coloured ? Beyond that and re the original post . . . . I'd say Beeswax = Good for wood . . . . Olive Oil = Not so good . . . . ? [/quote] I use the original which you can get in clear...

[quote name='roman_sub' timestamp='1455491571' post='2979637'] Luke, what do the pickup switches do? humbucker/series/eq? Lovely old-school Thumb by the way [/quote] So you know active pups have preamps in them... it kinda affects the roll of of the top end... different combinations have different roll offs. TBH it's not that great! The two band preamp on it is one of the earliest MEC ones - apparently a straight copy of the EMG ones of the time and it's not amazing by today's standards.

[quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1455412931' post='2978979'] I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic but capacitor type/construction has zero effect on tone. [/quote] "[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif][size=4]as you may discover, there is a great deal of snake oil used in the audiophile capacitor industry." [/size][/font][/color]http://sound.westhost.com/articles/capacitors.htm

I've always found pure beeswax based waxes get a little sticky underhand. Ones with Carnubra in seem to dry harder. For the price of a tin of Briwax that will last you 10 years of waxing warwicks and you *know* works I don't know what the benefit would be of making your own...

my two....

[quote name='Dazed' timestamp='1455395512' post='2978841'] Where's the blue streamer? ......... And the wife? [/quote] sold in post 3. I didn't get on with the sound at all... the natural one from the same year was so different sonically! EDIT: That's obviously about old bluey. The wife's still here - she actually bought me the thumb bass for my birthday- it's useful having someone fluent in German about to import basses from Germany

I think I had the same metal musicman type bridge that you have on my build... is it the one with the insets for the 2 side bolts? If so it's not bad but the 3 screws you get with it are made of butter. Get different screws to install it! (I learned the hard way)

So as I said earlier I went to sell the GK combo to a guy local to me (and basschatter) who runs a studio here in leeds. He let me play a load of his amps and cabs and basses (his 1977 Stingray was amazing and why I built the pink one)... I went to sell him an amp and ended up giving him twice as much and walking away with this... it makes basses sound how I want basses to sound. It's a B15 for the 21st century and it's probably unsurpassable! A wrongly labled eBay add meant I picked up a 1950's Phillips valve for about £3 that currently sits in her and is a step up from the stock Mesa valve. Oh and after I sold the electric guitar I missed having something to strum... I set myself a budget and took a punt on something without labels on eBay - purely based on the photo that showed some quite nice wood that looked like ebony. Worst case scenario I wasted my budget on some pile of crap guitar.... What I ended up with is a copy of an early scalloped braced Martin 00, all hand made by a fella called [font="Arial, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif"][color="#000000"]Steve Evans who later created the Boltona resonator company... it's got mahogany body a very wide neck, ebony board and oddly a V shaped neck. It's stunning sounding and really sings - never played another guitar like it. [/color][/font] [font="Arial, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif"][color="#000000"][/color][/font] [color=#000000][font=Arial, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]oh and if anyone is interested it's a Fujifilm XT1, XF18-55 lens with the vivid film sim on... [/font][/color]

And a little bit special this one... it's also lightweight... and a very very early BB1200. It doesn't get played as much as it deserves but you know when you have a really nice instrument and it just plays and feels like the really expensive basses you've played... Ok if someone wanted to swap for a fodera I probably would but it's another instrument I'm lucky to get to play.

Bitsa Stingray Handmade body and neck, hacked and bodged by me, and almost finished... shell pink all the way!

Remember that lovely old JV Squier? well after the pickup swap and after Alpher sorting the Streamer out it got less and less play time. To be honest I would have preferred a beat up version that played well than a near pristine collectable example... so I started thinking about what I liked and if there was anything that would make me want to trade it... It's a 1985 Warwick thumb. It would be a JD thumb except it was the closest to a custom shop they did then and ended up with the active seymore duncan pups and the solid mother of pearl trc .... and it sounds great and is fun to play. Also under 9lb which is nice. Do I miss a P bass - yeah but do I think I got a great upgrade?

My lovely 1991 Streamer Stage One. Lightest Warwick I've played, and sounds awesome. A fret dress by Alpher Basses transformed this into one of the most amazing basses to play. The machine gun MEC pups got swapped for some nice Bartolini, and after saving multiple times I installed a ACG EQ-01 filter preamp. After all these years It's still my first choice...

this was a lot more portable and one of the amps I've wanted for a long time. And I got one! And hated it. Plugging my active basses into the effects return and it sounded great, I just didn't get on with the preamp at all. Probably the only bit of kit on here I didn't enjoy owning. I wanted to like it... Luckily my old friend Warwickhunt liked Thunderfunk and had sold his one stupidly so we traded for his GK rb1001 210 combo. Nice combo. Some good sounds esp if you whacked the volume up loud and used the gain to control the volume. Then we were about to move house and one less big lump to move meant it got advertised for sale - we'll get to that in a bit... We're now unto date. there might be a few things I've missed off as I didn't take photos of them - but onto the new photos!

amps... Teacup Puma 1000 and M210 awesome amp, hopeless cab. Had them for years. If I still had the amp I would be very happy. However the cab was the opposite of a well engineered cab... This got sold and replaced with a Roland D-bass 210 which as cheap and very very very good - alas it was about an inch too wide for our wee flats stairway and two inches too tall for the back of a saxo... Then this happened.... Warwick Hellborg preamp into Ashdown APM1000 into ACME b2 Individually great parts... amazing preamp , honestly try one some time. I used it with the EQ off much of the time and it just made me smile. Ashdown amp was cheap... and powerful and weighed a ton. It's about 88cm deep too... ACME b2 - is one of the most amazing wee cabs ever, it needs a fair bit of power but it's just so well engineered. Did some interesting head to head comparisons with the B2 and Barefaced and Fearful cabs. This sounded the best, super deep, super low and so natural sounding. The Gen 2 Barefaced Big baby did come close and i would like to hear the BB2... The problem was that especially with that poweramp it was an incredibly unportable setup....

Kramer Focus 7000 .... not an awful bass, a bit like the Vision japanese thing from earlier. The owner talked about this and how someone had stuck an original raised pole piece JV pickup in it. Owning a JV P bass with a non original pickup I messaged him offering to buy/trade the pickup... no game. A year or two later I buy the whole bass for about the same as I had offered for just the pickup, switch the pickups and sell it on for almost the same price with the SD pickup in it. Bit of an odd situation to be honest. The JV sounded awesome with the JV pickup in it - so so so vintage sounding - but to be honest I missed the more middy growl that the SD pickup had given me.

The takamine got traded for a Yamaha BB300 and a Japanese Squier Jazz from 92-93 (sans badass -this must be the seller's photo) - Yamaha was the better bass but got sold... The Squier became this.... the "tomato soup bass" according to the wife. Great bass, ended up with a different solid alder body, great Squier ceramic pups, sounded awesome - no idea what happened to it - must have sold it

I'm not sure what order these all happened in so hold on... Yamaha SG400 no joke found in my aunt's bin! She mistook it for a playstation controller for rock star and was chucking it. Missing it's back plate so I made one and put some switches in for the coil taps. Played great - when I realised that two guitars I couldn't play were a bit of a waste I traded the Takamine and kept this. Turned out to be a mistake as I still didn't play the thing ... so sold it.

[size=6][b]Hello Welcome to 2016![/b][/size] so I recently got a nice camera - which I was playing with and thought it would be nice to document music making machines I currently have... But first a wee delve through my photo bucket and everything that happened in the last 4 years or so....

some lovely basses! you going to tell us about Warmoth?

[quote name='Cameronj279' timestamp='1455188653' post='2976776'] I know this is the Warwick thread but that Mayones is gorgeous! [/quote] its like the love child of a sexual encounter between a Warwick and an ibanez