Ed_S

It's entirely possible! When I got it, I assumed that EMG must have dropped the -HZ branding from the pickup covers to try and stop people from seeing them as a compromise instead of a choice. Looking at it the other day I just assumed that the dealer had sent me one of these instead of the basic model since that product picture might as well be my bass 🙂 Either way, they're both great and they have a sound very much of their own. I would rather like one of the satin blue MMs with the maple board, but I've resisted thus far...

This thread has reminded me to get my Rebops out (sounds rude..) and give them a play! Sadly, they're a classic tale of instruments bought for a project that looked really promising but ultimately went nowhere. They were both bought in early-to-mid 2017 as being "Rebop 5 Dlx" models, but the more I look into it I can't find the Aguilar DCB G4 pickups on the cherry red one ever coming as standard, but it was second hand so maybe it shipped with EMG HZs and had them swapped out by the previous owner? Also the pickups on the black stain one which was ordered new are proper active EMGs instead of HZs so does that make it a '40CS' model that I didn't actually order? Don't get me wrong, I don't really care at this point - they're great fun to play when I remember to dig them out and I have no specific plans to move them on - it'd just be interesting to know what I actually ended up with!

Aesthetically I find basses a bit like motorbikes in the sense that some bikes look great just on the stand and others need the rider sat on them for the shape to properly come to life. I really enjoy a good P bass, but I find it much less boring to look at one in a picture where somebody's playing it than I do when I'm looking at a picture of one sat waiting to be played. It could even be the epitome of 'not for me' like a fretless in sunburst with a tort guard and gold hardware, and I'd still be more interested if somebody was playing it.

The ABM1000 is one of my favourite amps anyway, but I particularly enjoy running it through my generation two Super Twelve. I can’t imagine the current BF cabs being any less capable! I had an ABM500-III and an ABM600-IV, and whilst they’re both long gone they left me with the impression that the 500 would benefit greatly from a cab that was easy for it to drive, and the 600 could drive most cabs well but wouldn’t overly tax anything half-decent. The 1000 really needs something that it can give a good kicking without upsetting it, and whilst I’ve seen criticism of BF cabs in terms of handles, feet, tolex glue, general aesthetics etc. I’ve not seen many say they have poor power handling!

Yeah, that's the one. As it's been a year and a half since I made the comment above, I'll add that the RM800 eventually departed as well, but I still have the ABM1000.

I reckon that'd look great in dark metallic purple. Pearl guard, chrome hardware... and purple.

That is rather nice! I actually wanted one of those myself, but when I called my local shop and they contacted the UK distributor it transpired that it's a model only available in North America despite being advertised globally. I ended up getting a really great deal on a 506e instead and whilst the brown finish doesn't thrill me and may damage easily, as a bass it's still got a lot going for it; a great feeling neck, good fretwork, the first Bartolini electronics I've ever actually liked the sound of ...and it cost less than half of what I was prepared to pay for the 876. Mine weighs 3.88kg (which google tells me is 8.5 pounds) so yeah, about a pound lighter.

We’re an originals-only melodic metal band, so the kind of venue we play usually has rather blurred lines between roles for promoters, sound guys, bar staff ..and punters 🙂 Completely agree with you - I’d much prefer to finish a gig on my cheap little Ibanez that I set up than end up borrowing even an impressive multi-thousand-pound thing from somebody else that just feels wrong. Plus not everybody has the same hygiene standards when it comes to instruments!! And yeah, absolutely - if your main plan, let alone your backup, sounds anything like “it’ll be alright - somebody there will have one we can borrow”, then you’re probably not taking it seriously enough for my liking.

I never used to take a spare bass to any but the biggest gigs - just a set of pre-cut-and-stretched strings and the usual cables, batteries and fuses. I've had various cables, a DI box and an amp head go bad on me during a gig, though, and I got to thinking that all those pieces of kit were well looked after, appeared to be fine when I checked them over before setting off and worked fine last time I used them... but they still failed. These days I always take a backup bass and spares for anything I can't make do without, but that's essentially just the bass, strap, tuner, cable and DI box, so the whole kit fits in the front of the backup bass gig bag and sits at the side of the stage hoping never to be opened. I should probably check the backup kit a little more often than I do, if anything. One interesting thing I've noticed is the response from many venue sound guys when something goes wrong; they rarely seem to stop to ask whether we have spares - they just turn and jet off round the venue, feverishly looking for members of other bands to try and borrow stuff from. Either our band looks especially disorganised in some way, or band members carrying spares is very much the exception rather than the rule in their experience!

No worries - in case it's of any interest to anyone else reading this thread later, it's just a Wilkinson 'WBBC' - still very affordable but so much better than what came on it. Like I said, though, just be careful because I've seen pictures of newer TMB-30s with Ibanez B10 bridges on them and the holes for fitting those are different. If you have an older one like mine with 5 screws down the back of the bridge and none at the front, then just about any 5-hole bridge marketed as a direct drop-in upgrade for the basic fender/squier-style bridge should fit fine, though of course it's always worth checking the manufacturer's specs to be certain. If you have a newer one with 4 offset screws down the back of the bridge (one to the right of each string) and two more at the front, then I think the Ibanez B100 would be a drop-in upgrade but I'm not entirely sure what your 3rd party options are - if any - for using the same holes in the body. Of course you can fill, drill and fit anything you like, but if you were wanting to upgrade just for playing comfort and function rather than aesthetics, I'd be very tempted to leave it as-is because the B10 is already a perfectly comfortable and adjustable bridge, in my own experience at least.

Not a massively useful reply - apologies in advance - but.. I have one stored away under the bed for those midlife crisis moments where I wonder whether I could put up with the weight and inconvenience of valves for the sake of the sound. I just take it out and cart it up the many flights of stairs at our rehearsal studio, enjoy it for a couple of hours, bring it down again (usually nearly setting myself on fire with the latent heat of the tubes...) and invariably put it away for another 6-12 months and carry on using whatever car-stereo-size flavour of the month is shiny! Don’t get me wrong, it sounds great and it’s very versatile, and I’d say that having played through a friend’s AD200 with 4x10 and 1x15 at a decent size gig, I’d expect the VB-2 to be just as loud through the same cabs. The AD might be a bit ‘warmer’ and more bass-heavy sounding by default from memory, but I honestly didn’t do much more than plug in and turn up. The EQ on the VB is comprehensive so could very likely replicate that more classic vibe, though it’s not a tone I use so I’ve never actually asked it to. I’ve only ever played mine through my Markbass 4x10 with quite a mid-present clean tone, and that’s plenty loud enough to get over a metal band; a decent 6x10 should give you one hell of a noise! But it’s a pain in the behind to carry and will try to burn you after it’s been on a while. Just saying.

Could work... I was given the Talman as a gift so decided to throw a little of my own cash and pimp it up a bit with a better bridge (mine’s a 2017 and had a really cheap BBOT with sharp bits stuck out - I’ve noticed the newer ones come with a better bridge from the factory), some decent pickups and a complete rewire with better parts. Never occurred to me to change the guard, though.

I had the original Fly 3 guitar version which was fine for its intended use and surprisingly quite passable for bass on the clean channel at sensible volume. When it fell out of use for guitar I decided I’d swap it for the bass version so I could maybe get some more volume - that turned out to be a mistake as it was just farty and distorted at pretty much all settings and volumes; I was much better off with the guitar version. Maybe the bass one was broken.. who knows - I pulled a mildly disgusted face at it, pulled the batteries out, stuck it in a cupboard somewhere and haven’t seen it since. Smallest amp I’ve got that’s any use to me is a Markbass 801, which is great, but of course several orders of magnitude larger, more powerful and more expensive than the Fly, so not much of a fair comparison.

I put one together to keep at our rehearsal studio - the idea being to have something good enough to play weekly but not so good that if I turned up to find out the storeroom had been cleaned out one night I’d be overly upset. Turned out alright - found a mighty mite rosewood on maple neck that somebody had only used to practice applying dodgy F decals and lacquer (not a horrendous job but not fooling anyone!), a white Fender mex-spare-part P body still in the box, Wilkinson tuners, Quarter Pounder pickup, BadAss II bridge, dark tort guard off a Squier CV, CTS/Switchcraft/Sprague parts to build the loom and all the rest of the bits like neck plate, knobs and string tree just Fender spares. I shopped around so it all owes me just shy of £400 for what amounts to a quite pimped up mex standard. It doesn’t seem to care about being in storage at all sorts of crazy temperatures, I play it every week; it’s comfy and sounds right. Mission accomplished apart from the bit where I wouldn’t be annoyed if it got pinched.. I’d be bloody livid!

Amps with a really nice sounding DI out which you can’t use because the DI level is controlled by the master volume. Onboard preamp knobs with no markings and no centre-detent. Basses that proudly come with a certain brand of string fitted from the factory, but the gauges they’ve used aren’t actually a set you can buy in a packet. Anything that’s clearly been specified to be a number of rack units in height and sometimes even has the threaded holes on the corners but then the rack ears aren’t actually available.

Finding this an interesting discussion given that my own preference is for instruments to be brand new and untouched since leaving the factory. If at all possible I’ll buy from somewhere that has sufficient warehouse capacity to send me one that hasn’t been fiddled with in the shop, and for anything where that doesn’t apply I’ll special order it and ask the shop not to even break the tape - just ‘shift the SKU’. It’s an approach that hasn’t failed me yet. Aside from the dirty pleasure I get from taking a new thing out of its packaging, I much prefer to see something in its original state and, if it’s a bad one, just send it back and get a good one sent; I don’t want to find out too late that it’s a bad one that’s been skilfully dressed up to look like a good one to get it out of the door. That’s just what works for me, of course - it wouldn’t do for us all to be the same. Even if retailers started working on their shop floor stock as suggested here, I can’t see them heading off to the warehouse to crack open all the boxed stock, so I reckon I’ll be ok 🙂

As an original power metal band, the kind of gigs we play mean having to make 30 mins really count. Line-check-only is the norm, so our version of settling in is a song where the drums start, one guitar comes in with the rhythm, second guitar joins in with rhythm, I come in on bass and first guitar switches to lead solo, then the whole thing goes once through the verse riff and the singer comes in at full bore. If the sound guy is any good, it’s basically a mini sound check inside the first 32 bars and then we know where we stand; if it’s sorted by that point then we’re fine for the rest of the set.. if it’s not then experience tells us it’s probably going to be a bit of a battle. At least being power metal the lyrics are apt for such situations!

Absolutely not me! I stay well out of it as I’m happy to play any of our songs in any order. I also have no idea what note most of them finish (..or start) on so I don’t have much to add to discussions about what works nicely together in that sense. The lead guitarist deals with the musical details and then the drummer has a veto if those particular three songs in a row might actually cause his Fitbit to call an ambulance. The biggest problem we have is that most of our songs are about 6 minutes long and most of our sets are half an hour, so we have to pick set lists based on the likelihood of playing everything a bit fast and keeping the banter to an absolute minimum in the time that we’ve saved! We’re actually just in the process of deliberately writing a 3ish minute song to use as padding.

An old line manager of mine did something similar - if email was Cc’d to him or he was one of multiple recipients in the To: field he’d got rules in place to just delete it. In his opinion, the only thing worth his time to read was a message you felt was important enough to send directly to him and only him. It certainly didn’t seem to hurt his career progression and he never seemed to disappear under a sea of email like the rest of us! Personally I feel free to put in reasonable default clauses like ‘if you haven’t arrived by 8pm I’ll assume you’re not coming and I’ll go out’, or ‘if you haven’t replied by Tuesday I’ll assume you’re no longer interested in buying and I’ll offer the item to the next guy’ etc. I suppose some might say that I’m being rude or confrontational in doing that, and ok.. maybe I’ll ultimately lose out every now and then, but I’d argue that I'm just protecting my time and sanity. Plus, if you were struggling to think of a nice way of letting me down... no need!

I sometimes put a Boss GEB-7 graphic equaliser pedal in front of mine to get a bit more control. A Behringer BEQ700 would be a really cheap way to give it a try and see whether that gives you what you need.

I deliberately left that bit out as there’s no ‘name and shame’ aspect to the story and no ill feeling; he’s an honest and genuine bloke and the customer service I received was always cheerful and willing... and credit to him, he did keep going until the bass was comfortably playable. Whilst the end results didn’t match the price tag in my personal opinion (and experience of other production instruments up to the same value), for many happy owners they obviously do, so I’ll just stick to buying what I can inspect before handing over my cash from now on - a costly lesson, but I guess some are!

I’m currently playing with blending Sansamp VT-RM and RPM rack units for a new recorded tone. Initial results seem positive!

Fingers crossed! My custom build had to go back three or four times to get issues ironed out, and for all that other owners of the brand say theirs are flawless and perfect, even now mine still isn’t; it’s just at a point where it plays fine, the remaining issues are purely cosmetic and I really can’t be bothered with any more back-and-forth! I’d never have another custom build. I would, however, have another Sandberg in a heartbeat!

Bought what I came to realise later was a very nice example of a Sterling Ray35 for a very good price, played it for a bit and got to thinking “this is great - if this is the moderate budget model then I bet a real Stingray 5 would be just amazing!” ...ended up trading it in for one and started working to convince myself it was indeed better. Ended up having to admit to myself that it was much worse and needed to be moved on. Ultimately I lost a grand and learned a lesson.

The most dispiriting thing I found about playing a 5 in the context of a metal band was the tendency for the guy on the desk to make a mess of my, and hence our, FoH sound. Too many of them seemed to either see a 5 and think "ooooh yeah, super low notes ahoy; let's hit it with an extreme smiley-face EQ" so all you got out front was low rumble and percussive clicking, or they'd get really flustered by the fact that, especially without compression at work, the B string can flicker an occasional 'clip' light... and suddenly they'd all-but-remove you from the FoH mix for the rest of the set. It got so bad, so frequently, that I eventually just went back to using 4s live for heavier music as it was almost a guarantee of better sound; suddenly the mids were back in the mix and you could hear actual notes. I tried to explain/request/bribe etc. but the sad fact is that once you're on stage, unless you've employed the sound guy (or you *are* the sound guy) you get what you get. In terms of the instruments themselves and especially the floppy string thing, I've had 5s that arrived badly set up, and some of those needed more work to get them properly set up than I was capable of myself and/or wanted to pay to have done. However, I've never had a 34" or longer scale 5 string bass which, when set up correctly with a set of EXL220-5s, wasn't perfectly acceptable to play with both fingers and pick - and I wouldn't say I had a particularly light touch with either. One such bass that was perfectly playable was a 2011 MIM Standard Jazz V - a very nice bass, but one that sadly ended up on the altar of GAS!