neepheid

Are shock absorbers and springs extra?

Mmm, stripey.

If it had zero moisture content, would it not be dust?

Ooh, are we all showing off our stripes?

I think all basses should have 21 frets, minimum. Don't get me wrong, I'm rarely up the dusty end, but at least resolve the highest octave with a final E! 20 just seems like an arbitrary choice to me, but because the Fender P had 20 frets from the get-go, it follows on that a lot of basses have 20. Why though? Never made any sense to me.

SORTED I took the new, but dodgy pot out and put in one of the known working OG ones and now the bass is silent when requested. While there's a slight chance I got sold a dodgy pot, more likely story is that I cooked it or did it a mischief while wiring it - either a mechanical mishap when I was bending the terminal back to the pot casing, or heat damage when soldering on the pot casing. Thanks for arresting my slide into madness, @Stub Mandrel

Last night at Wilsons, Aberdeen with Nine Lives. Weird gig, definitely a game of two halves. First half was rank rotten - sound in the room was awful - could barely get the vocals loud enough without feeding back, started five mins late because of all the mucking about (not Axl Rose levels of lateness, but it still bugs me). It was passable out front, and people could clearly hear the words because I could see them mouthing along, but there was very little coming back making it hard to hear where we were in a song. No room for monitors in this pub, we basically had to rely upon reflected sound. So spooked I was that I didn't change basses at half time - I didn't want to introduce another variable to an already tenuous situation. But we sorted it. The table nearest the right PA speaker emptied at half time, so we took the opportunity to move it forward, not much - couple of feet maybe, but what a difference it made - it opened up the possibility of increasing the gain of the singer's vox without feeding back and made for a much better sounding second half. It got busy too, and it was much more fun. Went for a couple of walkabouts in the crowd which went down well. Lesson learned - kick people out of the way if you have to to get your PA far enough in front of the band. So, it was the BB1200 for the whole night, into the usual Markbass rig. Footwear - Vans calf hair checkerboard slipons. Hmm, quite colour coordinated last night, just realised.

Thanks for the diagram read, one feels like one is going a bit round the twist at times like these. I think the next step is to replace the alleged dodgy pot. I don't have any more hanging around so I'll re-use one of the OG pots. I marked the one which was leaking signal last time, so at least that one won't wind up back in the bass!

As some of you might know, I recently acquired a Greco LGB-700 - a mad three pickup Les Paul shaped confection. Its controls are very simple, three volumes, that's it. When I received it, I learned that it had an issue that it wouldn't completely shut up when all the pickups were turned down to zero. I had a look inside and couldn't see anything obvious like a wire come off somewhere. Did some screwdriver tapping and determined that it was the bridge pickup which was continuing to make sound at "zero" volume. So I figured it was a dodgy pot. I tried some Super 10 in there and that didn't fix it so I decided to rewire. I decided to replace all the pots - figured I might as well while I'm in there. To cut a long story short, I wired it up exactly the same way as I found it with new pots. And it still doesn't shut up! All I've managed to achieve is move the problem - now it's the neck pickup which is leaking a weak signal to the amp with everything turned down. WTF? Before I do something drastic, can anyone here tell me what I'm doing wrong here? Here's my wiring diagram, but it's pretty simple - each volume output is daisychained to the next. Have I just been super unlucky? Did I cook a pot when I was soldering? Any ideas?

Well, I think I'll be shuffling over to the Tech forum now. I've just rewired it, and all I've succeded in doing is moving the problem from the bridge pickup to the neck pickup. It still won't completely shut up when all the volumes are at zero - some weak signal comes through, but from the neck pickup this time. FFS!

Looks good! But I thought EBMM had the 3+1 tuner arrangement on lockdown?

Does the preamp have a trim pot? Some do, like my Sire Z7, which controls the overall output of the preamp.

Some of us like to do fade ins using the volume knob, and it's a heck of a lot easier to fade up to 100% than it is to fade up to some other amount. No I won't buy a volume pedal!

The Internet, in microcosm, basically.

Yes, but if you spread that force over a wider area, the pressure is reduced. P=F/A. Force doesn't go into your body, pressure is applied to your body. It explains why knives cut through substrates better than a length of 4"x2" wood or a concrete block with the same force applied (in this case, gravity). And that's quite enough high school physics for one day!

Should have foreseen a scamp such as yourself and included the text "Parker pen for scale", d'oh!

Because they're expensive and I'm a tightwad. You asked...

Unrelated to your efforts, but I would love to have a go on a Westone Rail, just for the experience.

Great success! Bass now silent, unless I don't want it to be. Pots arrived, but got band rehearsal tonight so will have to wait until tomorrow.

Next up for Nine Lives is one of our favourite haunts, Wilsons in Aberdeen on Saturday.

These are not "bargains" as you painted them in your original post. Maybe things even out at the top end but his low cost stuff is horribly overpriced. If you can't understand why people might call you out on this, then with the greatest respect, you need to give your head a wobble instead of lashing out at your fellow BCers.

I'm no expert, and it's zero help to your quest to procure such a bass but if you can't find many examples of a recently issued bass in the second hand market, I think that's a good sign that they're decent basses. People clearly holding onto them.

I'm guessing that's the entire current state of the market for these type of basses. I'm not saying I know everything, but put it this way - today I learned that these basses even existed I don't care about any of that, I don't personally know any of the people involved. All I see is the numbers.