neepheid

Maybe - but the hole pattern is wrong - the Sterling bridge has three holes along the bottom and two on the outside edges of the plate. The three in the middle *might* line up OK, but even if that happens you'd have two redundant holes in the plate left and right, and you'd either have to ignore them and hope that three screws is enough, or drill new holes for the first and fifth holes. Definitely not a direct replacement.

Yes, they've got modified cattle prods in the ear pieces, but shhh, don't tell anyone!

I bring headphones to the bashes and they will be made available at all times on both my rigs.

Well, I had it to a band rehearsal the other night and I forgot to mention another source of cost saving in my initial blurb - absolutely zero shielding, not even shielding paint. Needless to say it did not like being in the rehearsal room very much (but the noise gate in my Spectracomp made it bearable when I wasn't touching the strings). No matter, not much cavity to shield! Also, the knob arrived... Looks even better in person - the black knob with silver highlight complements the pickup beautifully. Really pleased with it!

Our horn players are fully integrated into the band. When not playing, the bone player does BVs (and occasionally sings lead), and the sax player dances. I feel like I need to point out that I'm talking about The Inevitable Teaspoons, which is an originals band. We have no guitars, it's all keyboard driven, horn laden nonsense that we play so there isn't a lot of downtime for the horn players. We've only had one bone player and two sax players (the original one quit on medical grounds). I have a sneaky suspicion that the mercenary horn players alluded to above are the preserve of the covers band world?

As a practical user of the BSW, I have barely scratched the surface of it, but I'm always in mode 7 (OctaSub) - there's a super squelchy synth sound which I use in half of one song, and in a few songs I use the suboctave it provides on its own ("control" knob set appropriately, "range" knob off - that's the synth) because it's a pretty damn good suboctave.

Ahh, so reverse peer pressure telling you not to get/use something?

I guess the only major faux pas I can think of is my first bass - because I was too green to think for myself. Bought an Epiphone EB-3 "because Jack Bruce (kinda) plays one". Little did I know that the body shape was doing much of the heavy lifting when it came to direct comparisons between an Epiphone EB-3 and a Gibson EB-3. Needless to say, I don't have it any more. However, it did lead me down a Gibson/Epiphone path of lifting two fingers to conventional norms and wisdom in bass, so I do have that to thank it for. I've never bassed "properly" since! Everything else has been my fuelled by my own personal curiosity - I don't give a flying monkey's toss about herdthink/peer pressure/received wisdom. I trust my own eyes and my own ears.

Huh, just you wait until the knob I have ordered arrives - Joe Dart will have nothing on me...

Nah, I'm not fussed for the tele headstock where it doesn't belong, but thank you for that document - it will come in very handy for me on one of my projects - got an idea of what to do to the front of the headstock, it's pretty regular F shaped so this'll help me lay out my ideas in Inkscape - cheers!

HA, Bax came through!

Well, this is a NBD thread I honestly didn't expect to make. Some of you might know that back in September 2024, I set myself a challenge - to achieve a "giggable" bass in a £150 budget - new parts only, ignoring postage costs. The core component of this challenge was a bass I spied and really liked the look of - the Fazley Hot Rod - a no-nonsense, pickguardless FSO, reverse P, volume only. Bax are the only vendors of these as far as I could see so even though they were out of stock and on back order, I laid down £84 for the bass. Yes. £84. Unfortunately, most people know the story now - Bax went bankrupt in early 2025. Womp womp. And you know how it is with companies going bust - the customers are at the back of the queue when it comes to making things right, so honestly I had written it off. But, Bax coughed back into life after being bought over. Then I started getting emails suggesting that they would be honouring past orders. I was sceptical, but I played along, answered any questions I was asked (confirming the order details, and a bit later on asking if I still wanted to wait, or take store credit). I opted to wait and have the order fulfilled as originally intended. Well, would you believe it? Look what arrived this morning... I tell you something for nothing - there's a lot of bass here for £84 (well back in September last year they were, they're £94 now - oh no!). It's the neck which surprised me the most - absolutely no raggedy fret ends, and even a very slight attempt to roll the edges of the fretboard. No swarf in the nut. Tuners are serviceable - not the smoothest turning but no play in the gears. Bridge is a BBOT - it works, nothng more. The only places I could see where money had been saved are in the finish - it's a bit uneven in places (but you have to look closely in the light to see the unevenness) and then the pickup. The stock pickup is comically low in output - I was giving it a test in my Tascam Bass Trainer and with the input level set to 10 (the maximum) the Fazley was barely getting to half way on the input monitor! Of course, the stock strings are hot garbage, thin, rougher than Rotos and went straight in the bin. In probably the quickest time from receiving a bass to replacing the pickup (about an hour and a half) I had the stock strings in the bin, the fretboard oiled (because it looked as dry as a camel's hoof) and the stock pickup out and a Tonerider Duke in there. What a difference! Much better output. The stock strings weren't giving the truss rod much to do - after I put my beloved D'addario XL nickel rounds on it, the neck was a banana and I had to tighten the truss rod three quarter turns! Further tweaking may be required, but I gave it a quick and dirty setup and now it's playing great. So that means so far I've spent £119 (£84 bass and £35 pickup), leaving £31 in the budget. I was expecting to have to change the bridge and/or the tuners, but in all honesty they have been unobtrusive and perfectly serviceable. Which leaves more room in the budget for some silliness/extra credit. I think I will fit one of my preferred Sire/Reverend style 3 string retainers, and I will fit a silly knob - which was the plan originally, but I stole the one I ordered and put it on the Epiphone Em-bassy (which I got when I was sure that this one would never materialise). EDIT - because people like to know - this particular bass weighs 3.6kg - or a smidge under 8lbs.

Oh forgot to mention yesterday, I also fitted the string retainer/tree. I really like this Sire/Reverend style 3 string retainer - super compact, at the cost of the D string being captive through the middle and not quick release. I'll take that for the compact, minimalist look though.

Brain stuck in importing mode, had the "25%" rule of thumb in my head, whoops!

Well, today was a landmark in the project - the neck's on! Thanks again to the Mechanical Engineering Workshop at my work, as a drill press is not one of the things I own. Of course, it's never easy and there was a small miscalculation regarding screw length... Thankfully an easy fix, the chip wasn't lost and it was a simple fix - push some glue in the void, then clamp it down with a caul covered in tape to prevent the glue adhering it to the fingerboard. A bit of sanding afterwards and it was like it never happened. So I put some old strings on it, just to see how things were. On the plus side, the strings align with the neck nicely. I have some work to do though. Even with that 2mm plate I glued into the bottom of the neck pocket and a 0.6mm shim, the action can't quite get low enough with all the saddles on the deck. Have ordered those "whole neck pocket" shims off Amazon (the ones which actually get good reviews) which will hopefully arrive on Friday. Also I have a bit of work to with regard to pole piece alignment. I enlarged the two cutouts for the mounting lugs on the left of the hole and managed to eke out a mm or so. There is still some finessing to do and then I might be able to eke out another mm and I think that'll be as good as it'll get. Anyway, a big step forward. Oh, and the bridge pickup is ordered. To get the one I want - https://roswellpickups.com/product/jm4-bridge/ - I had to order it from a dealer in South Korea of all places. So I don't expect to see that particularly soon. I have a spare pickup I could pop in there in the meantime, so it won't slow me up.

Sales tax varies by state, some states have none. None of them are anywhere near our 20% VAT. There is no US-wide sales tax. "The five states with the highest average combined state and local sales tax rates are Louisiana (9.56 percent), Tennessee (9.55 percent), Arkansas (9.45 percent), Washington (9.38 percent), and Alabama (9.29 percent)." - from https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/2024-sales-taxes/

The point is (been made by a couple of people now) that the L-2000/ASAT should already have one, if it's wired properly. Don't need to fit anything, just fix what's already there.

That is at odds with my experience - admittedly with a Tribute L-2000 - it would play fine in passive mode even with the battery removed, never mind dead. In that case, the active or active with treble boost settings on the switch became an effective kill switch.

Negative, captain...

Oh don't worry, there'll be a skill swap soon - guy who helped me with the long drill and the cleaning out of the neck pocket on my other bass project is needing a laptop for his daughter, so I'm gonna sort him out with something.

Funny you should mention that... Straight DI - tone 100%.mp3 In order: T-40 pickup (series), T-40 pickup (single coil), both pickups (T-40 series), both pickups (T-40 single), original bridge pickup. All 100% tone control open. TC Electronic BH250, pre EQ DI, straight to interface.

Eh, maybe one day, but only if one of the tuners currently on it die - they are a bit cheap and a bit wobbly when the string tension is taken off. They're also tiny - so if I do come to replace them, I'll need to ream out the holes anyway...

It's done! I went to the Mech Engineering Workshop at work today, because I needed some help to get a hole through from the new pickup route to the cavity. Yes, they had a sufficiently long drill bit to be able to enter from the neck pocket and drill through, into the new route then onwards and into the bridge pickup route... Bridge pickup is foam suspended, so the foam will simply deform around the chunky multicore wire. After that, it was pretty much just a case of wiring it all up. Except it wasn't - because there were a few wrinkles in the plan (isn't there always?). First thing I learned is that the T-40 pickup, while splittable, doesn't give you access to all four ends of the coils - it only has three wires plus a shield coming out of it, so all you can do is series/single by shunting one coil to ground. So I had to change from a three way mini toggle to a two way. Then gotcha 2 happened - the new switch had less of a threaded section on it than the previous switch, so out comes the drill again with the forstner bit to remove a little more control cavity to make the new switch poke through the top of the guitar enough. With those little issues out of the way it was just a case of wiring it up... Quick tap test on the pickups made me suspect that the pickups were out of phase when both engaged, so I swapped the wires of easiest one (the bridge pickup). Then I tested it for real. IT WORKED! I am delighted with this mod - I've had to learn a lot of new things, and I hope to never have to route an already finished bass ever again

Thanks for the detailed explanations. Looking forward to seeing progress. Following.