TRBboy

Okay, I see your black scratchplate and raise you..... Cream pickup covers!!! 😮😃🤯 (apologies, looks very yellow in my cellar /music room!)

Damn..... Beaten to it! There's another tweak coming though.... 😉

Well, met up with @franzbassistthis morning to pick up the Player, and what a lovely bass it is! The quality and feel remind me more of my old US Std Jazz than the old Mex standard series. Nice weight, very resonant, very playable, sounds like a P should, LOVELY neck! Very happy. Great gigbag too! I can see what people mean about slightly rough feeling fret edges on these, so I'll round them off a bit at some point - it's not like it's awful though. I'm planning on customising it a little this week, will share pics once done. Thanks again for your help all, and thanks Gareth for a lovely bass! 😊👍

Hi folks! Thanks for all the help. So, after much deliberation, I am picking up a buttercream player P on Saturday morning, can't wait! I think the neck feel and fretboard radius will suit me better if I'm honest. Just to make sure I'm doing the right thing, I took my old squier P to rehearsal last night. This was my first bass from about 1994, and is one of the Korean ones with a plywood body - nevertheless it rocked! Thoroughly enjoyed it, and the P sound really worked well in the band mix, so I'm confident the Player will be even better (hopefully much easier to play too 😂)

Hey folks! Just wondered if anyone knows where one of these can be purchased in the UK? Can't seem to find any. Thanks!

Thanks Lozz, that's helpful. The feel was definitely a big part of it! It was in GG in Birmingham years ago I tried the Classic 50's, and literally couldn't stop playing it! If I'd had the money I would've walked out with it there and then.

So beautiful! 😍 Care to expand on your comment? Do you mean that the Player Series is not near the quality of the Vintera, or just you haven't looked at them because you prefer a vintage vibe?

Thanks man, I may just have to do that! Plus that seafoam green looks incredible 😍 although the player series are great too and less money 🤷🏻‍♂️ difficult decisions..... .... I think the Vintera I was eyeing up had sold tonight though... 😒

Very nice mate, looks awesome! 😊👌

Hey folks, hope you're all good! 👋😊 Haven't been here for a long while, had a lot of other stuff going on. Anyways.... I currently have a P shaped itch that needs scratching, and I'm after some input from those that have tried both the basses in the title. My favourite ever P I've played was the old Classic 50's Precision, just felt and sounded amazing to me and I couldn't put it down. I have also had a player series Jaguar which I thought was great, but sold on due to not quite gelling with the ergos. So, I'm currently eyeing up both the Vintera and player. I'm not going to have chance to go and try them so will be buying blind and probably used. If anyone could share their experiences and differences between the two, that would be great. Thanks for your help! 😊👍

Not a BB I know, but we were talking about them a while ago; just spotted an attitude standard 5 for sale on ebay, £600 though!

Horses for courses really, I much preferred the tone and response of my 435 vs the 41x/42x series pickups. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Yes got it the other day, and I think the spacing is 18mm not 19mm, according to my measuring anyway. Its a great bridge for the money, but I did have flashbacks to one of last basses I had with a BBOT, and the saddles wandering a bit and I kept having to pull them back in. So.... I have ordered the Gotoh bridge, and will likely send the Wilkinson back. I'm hoping it turns up so that I can compare them quickly. The Wilkinson definitely seems a great bridge for the money though!

I've never got on with the sandberg strings, always change them pretty much straight away.

I'm 38, and I feel both completely out of touch and overwhelmed by choice simultaneously! In my younger days, I'd go into a record shop, find a genre I like, have a rummage through and walk out with a couple of CDs to listen to. Most were good, some were not! But crucially, I had a large circle of friends, with numerous overlapping circles, and the recommendations would filter through. THAT is how I found a lot of good music I wouldn't have known about otherwise. As you get older, your friend groups get smaller, and generally most of my friends aren't as passionate and focused on discovering music as they used to be. Not to mention or of touch with the latest goings on. There's so much music out there, but it's difficult to know where to look sometimes to try and find something you really connect with. A good example with me is Hip Hop. I was/am a huge hip hop fan, and the glory days for me are mid-late 90's to very early 2000's. But currently, I feel like I have no idea where to find something that is in a similar vein. Hip hop, R&B, pop, EDM even to a certain extent all seem to have merged to form a bland, predictable, watered down version of the things I used to love... I do sound like a bitter old fart now, and I'm digressing! One of my favourite things to do is to put a song I like on YouTube with 'auto-play' turned on, and I've actually discovered quite a few good tunes this way! On another note, and contrary to what a lot of people say, I really think that pop music is in a great place at the moment. There are a lot of genuinely good artists, a lot of artists doing new /different things, and generally a lot less manufactured/plastic /gimmicky stuff than there was 20-30 years ago.

No, sadly we don't have facility to run individual monitor mixes, so we all just hear the same thing.

I would sing better with IEMs if I could only hear myself, but hearing the other two really clearly in my ears whilst I'm trying to sing is just incredibly off-putting

Lead guitarist /singer has a Laney 100w valve head into a Marshall 4x12, rhythm guitarist has a laney 50w valve combo. It's the lead guitarist that's the biggest issue really, however because the rhythm guitarists amp is lower to the ground, he can't hear it as well, and it can be bloody loud out front. We do have a cheapo IEM setup that we bought for vocals really, but in recent times the guitarists have been micing their amps through it too. However, they seem to ditch the headphones after a few songs, so not sure how much help this is! 😂 I stopped using the IEMs because hearing the other two singing clearly really put me off when I was trying to sing too! Prefer my earplugs because I can hear my vocals on my head better (if you know what I mean).

These statements from you guys really highlight to me how much of a problem we've got in my band..... Our drummer is loud, but at most of our gigs he's virtually drowned out by the guitars. I usually stand out front at soundcheck and tell the guitarists to turn down, which they do, but then I see the lead guitarist tweaking his volume throughout the set. The guitar amps really seem to cut through and carry across the venue, but they can sound quiet on stage, so they should trust my feedback at soundcheck and leave them as they are. This all then puts me in a difficult position, because I'm torn between turning up to hear myself with the guitarists, or leaving the volume down to give the drummer a chance. We do mic the kick drum sometimes, but as we're only running a pair of mid-tops for vocals it doesn't really work very well. All this, combined with the fact I've worn earplugs for years now because it's just too loud for me should tell me all I need to know! Need a review of things when we get gigging again.....

Thanks for the help Andy, I think I'm leaning more towards the Gotohs now, from what I've just been reading it sounds as though the licensed ultralites aren't really much lighter than them anyway! And they're still much lighter than traditional elephant ear tuners by some considerable amount. Makes me wish I'd give for a Gotoh bridge after all now.... But I guess it doesn't have to be all 'matchy-matchy', I'm sure the Wilkinson bridge will be fine. 😅😬

Thanks, will do! 😊👍

Hey everybody! One of the last things on my shopping list is tuners. Now, I've been agonising and going back and forth over this for weeks! Let me just say it's a 5 string before I forget! So at the one end of the scale we have standard, cheap Y tuners for about £20-£25 a set, in the middle we have something like Gotoh GB707's for about £55, and at the top end for between £80-120 we have something like hipshot Ultralite or Gotoh Res-o-lites. Now personally, I've very rarely found any tuners to be crap apart from on the very cheapest of cheap basses. My Yamaha BBN5 has bog standard Y tuners, and they're absolutely fine. However, I do know from experience that better tuners do feel nicer and are a bit more stable. I'm not trying to be cheapy-cheap on this build, but equally I'm certainly not filling it with ultra high end kit 'just because'. I'm going for functionality and reliability at a decent price. Weight doesn't come into it too much for me after looking at all the info, the cheap Y tuners are almost as light as ultralites, and the Gotoh 707's aren't significantly more. I find some cheap ones at DV247 which are listed as 'Goldo' brand, but actually have the Kluson logo on the casing - I'd always considered Kluson to be a reputable brand but not sure as these are only £25! But.... I STILL can't decide what to go for, and I'm notoriously indecisive! Help!

Superb, thanks very much 😊

I know what you're saying, but although this frustrates me, it's not enough to walk away. I'm in the fortunate position to be in a band where we were all great friends long before we were in a band together, the dynamic is great and everyone's very good at what they do. We sound great and have a great time! We've been together around 10 years now, all played in various other bands before that, and there's been side projects etc, but this is the main event. So although I feel we could manage our sound better, it's not so bad that it's unbearable, and ultimately some things are more important. 😊

That's exactly the problem, my guys just don't see the issue. And my lead guitarist /singer has a 100w valve head and 4x12 and wants to crank it up! Damn thing produces more bass frequencies than I do.... 😅