neepheid

This is the place to put any extensive tinkering, building, repairing or restoring. I'm always interested in seeing stuff coming back to life.

My opinion is to save up and get a Squier. Better quality - I haven't heard many bad things said about the newest Squier output (Vintage Modified and Classic Vibe ranges). The trouble with buying a cheap, old bass is that cheap old basses in the past were (on average) a lot cheaper/nastier than the cheap basses of today. It might be a diamond in the rough, but there's a good chance it'll just be rough. For your first bass, you want something which is easy to play/look after/use, otherwise you'll be put off trying to work around all the problems.

[quote name='Johnston' post='1089299' date='Jan 14 2011, 01:25 PM']Isn't there something about Gibsons being really hard to date by the serial number. Something about them not actually going in any sort of sequential order?? Or is that only the real vintage stuff? Besides that if I went to another country and bought a high end instrument I would be pretty keen to check the authenticity of it before leaving the country and going home half way across the globe.[/quote] The current, sane system began in late 1977. There was a brief attempt at sanity from 1975-77, before then there's not a lot of rhyme and reason to it, serial numbers can mean a few things and you need something like pot codes or body/neck date stamps to make sense of it.

Tell him to prove it, take you to court or poke it. Don't send any refund unless you get the guitar back first. Oh, and if he gets arsey, make some kind of reference to the Falkland Islands, always a crowd pleaser. That last piece of advice might have been a joke.

[quote name='mcnach' post='1089033' date='Jan 14 2011, 10:37 AM']27 switching options... (where's the emoticon for an imploding head? I have been playing guitar for many more years than I'd admit, and I got into modifying the electronics early on. I learnt to solder when I was a kid, as my dad was often soldering stuff at home, so it was fun to get new sounds simply by changing a few cheap components and combining pickups. The thing is that at the end of the day, most options are subtle variants. Yes, sound A and sound B are different... but in a live situation they are not different enough and a simple change in EQ (for example) is more effective. And even recording, you are able to achieve enough variations from the preamp alone and/or postprocessing. 27 switching options playing live seems like a huge headache and in *my* experience, it all comes down to a handful of tones that I would really use. The geek in me worked out ways to separate coils in humbuckers and combine them in weird ways... a Strat with HSH configuration provided a lot of entertainment! But not every sound was distinct enough to warrant a "preset", and navigation among all the options to find the handful of sounds *I* wanted was complicated. Different people, different tastes! I'm not saying you're wrong at all, whatever works for you. I want simplicity, I want to play without having to think too much about switching. That's why I also prefer my basic pedalboard with individual boxes to a multiFX even if a multiFX can give me lots of other sounds: I feel more "in control" when I see the individual function leds and where the knobs are.[/quote] Most of what I said was not particularly serious, in reality in the live situation I find a setting that I can hear above the band in the room I'm in and leave it. I just like having options, even if I never use them. Put it another way - this was my calculator through secondary school and university - I mostly used it to add stuff and do a bit of trig and base functions. I probably used about a tenth of its capabilities. On the plus side no-one asked to borrow it I'm with you on multiFX though - I can't be bothered trying to work it all out.

Too many options? Not enough options in my opinion. That's why I had the single coil option added to the middle switch on my L-2000. That means I have 27 switching options where you only have 18. That means mine is betterer It's probably the computer geek coming out in me but I love basses with unusual switching options. All my basses have at least 1 switch on them. In addition to the semi-mad L-2000 (I say semi-mad because I haven't done the final mod which allows you to choose inner or outer single coils - mine is inner only) I added the selector switch to my Epi Les Paul bass, the G-3 has a pickup selector, the Hodad has 7 combinations of 3 pickups and the Victory has pickup selector and a passive/active/active with mid notch. There's something satisfying about flicking a switch and something tangible happening. You can take your blend pot and poke it

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1088669' date='Jan 13 2011, 10:06 PM']How many more times am I going to say on here that G&Ls DO NOT do Musicman. It's impossible - the pups are wrong and the eq is just "hell no".[/quote] Set up a keyboard macro, mannie, it's going to be a long haul.

Won't needle nose pliers get in there? Don't try and hammer a slot in the top of the screw, it'll take ages and you run the risk of driving the screw into the hole, stripping the threads that were cut in the wood meaning the replacement screw if it's the same size will have nothing to bite into/follow. Or worse, you could miss, or whatever you're using to try and make a slot could bounce out then take a gouge out of your bass Hacksaw. If you are changing the strap button anyway then you could saw through the lot if the screw hasn't cleared the strap button enough to get the saw onto it. Dremel or equivalent with cutting wheel would be even easier. Alternatively you could drill the head off the screw, remove the strap button then use the pliers on the length of screw that did make it out of there or cut a slot in it if there's enough left.

If anyone's looking for a Squier to mod, this one's going for £80 delivered, including a bag that seems like a pretty good deal to me. Only drawback is missing D string. [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280615880907"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...em=280615880907[/url]

I'm still fizzing about my band breaking up back in August.

You've slackened off the strings before trying to adjust it, yes?

Dunno what to tell you. Epiphone LP (not so) Standard - active only Gibson G-3 - passive only G&L Tribute L-2000 - basically passive with an active line boost which I never use Danelectro Hodad - passive only Gibson Victory Artist - fully active/passive So in my house it's passive by a nose Truth is that I'm coming to the conclusion that all the fancy pants EQ options in the world won't make a bit of difference to Johnny Punter in the audience. These days I'm buying basses purely on the basis that they intrigue me in either the way they look or the way they operate, rather than the actual tone they produce.

[quote name='eude' post='1086432' date='Jan 12 2011, 09:37 AM']The Mustang had it's own baby Precision style pickup, the Musicmaster, I ain't sure as it was under a plastic case hiding the pole pieces, but I'm pretty sure the cheapy Squier Bronco ships with a strat pickup, which is usually the first thing to go when folks start modding. Eude[/quote] Correct. The Musicmaster reused guitar pickups that Fender had lying around, the plastic cover is used to hide this fact. Here is a pic of someone in the process of swapping out the original 6 pole guitar pickup for a 4 pole bass pickup:

Replacing the bridge with something which allows lateral string adjustment per saddle would work. Direct replacements which shouldn't require modifications to your bass would be the Schaller 3-D (uses the 2 outer screw holes and the middle one) and the Hipshot A-style (Fender Mount), a Badass II with slotted saddles or a vintage Fender one with the threaded saddles. Remember to keep the original bridge - cockeyed though it seems, the vintage crowd will prefer a wonky original bridge over a functionally superior replacement.

Quite a workout! I did better than I thought I would. Enthusiasm 67% Perception 99% Emotional 6% Social 56% Curiosity 78% Scored 16/18 in Match the Beat, 7/9 at high accuracy in Tap to the Beat (one medium and one low where I got the time signature completely wrong and was tapping out something else, oops!) and 9/12 in Melody Memory (way better than I thought I'd do). The grouping thing is a bit arbitrary.

It's only been a day after you asked, calm down I can't explain why there's a braid in conjunction with an earth wire, but I'm sure there's a good reason. You'd best use the braid in conjunction with the red wire, as that's how it's clearly designed to be wired. I don't know what (if any) negative repercussions will arise from leaving the braid disconnected. If you're having difficulty getting all that into the blend board (as it only has 3 small holes - neck, bridge and a single earth) you can try soldering in a short length of solid core wire in the hole then use that as a point to solder several wires to.

It's probably an Ibanez with a Traben style bridge grafted on - you can buy these bridges on eBay. It looks like the G string is perilously close to the edge of the fingerboard at the dusty end - a sign of a bridge put on a bass with no thought given to string spacing? The rest of the bass is not pointy/twisty/deeply carved enough to be a Traben

Can't say I'm keen on the ones I've tried - roundwounds too abrasive feeling and flatwounds way, way too tense.

No thanks!

[quote name='4 Strings' post='1080408' date='Jan 6 2011, 08:33 PM']Such a great finish and colour in those earlier pics great stuff. Just a little thing, did you mask off the dates and stamps in the neck pocket? Be a shame to lose that little bit of history. No idea how you get the finish so flat and shiny no doubt lots of elbow grease but very skilfully done.[/quote] Anything that might have existed in the neck pocket was obliterated in that ill-advised dark blue. All the stamps on the neck heel have been preserved though, and that's where the tasty stuff is (date, pencil initials) Cross your fingers for an improvement in the ambient temperature up here! Matt

Very nice, if my numbers come in this weekend then I'll snag it, but other than that it's a little expensive for the Bank of Matt at the moment A small part of me wants to go for a tyre kick, but I won't do that.

[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='1080889' date='Jan 7 2011, 11:45 AM']Your hands are too big, booo!!![/quote] I think it's more a case of my technique requiring a bit more +/- leeway than Jazz necks allow

Necks are too thin! Boo!