JPJ

P pickup for the rockier stuff, both for the slower more atmospheric stuff where I wanted a bit more mwah. Got to say it’s amazing how well balanced the pickups are, no big jumps in output as you switch between the various combinations. I am thinking about changing the three-way for a five-way with fixed resistors to give two blend options but that’s probably overkill in a live setting.

Just bought a Fender Tony Franklin fretless precision from Rupe. Excellent transaction, very friendly and helpful comms, bass securely wrapped and packaged. Great guy to deal with and a credit to the ethos of Basschat. Deal with confidence.

Being a fan of the Yamaha NE-1 parametric eq but having stupidly owned two and sold both, I’ve just ordered a clone kit from Germany https://www.musikding.de/NE_04-bass-preamp-kit and I’m going to have a go at assembling this myself. This will be my first attempt so who knows the outcome but I’ll keep you guys and girls updated on here for the comedy value if nothing else.

So I took her along to last nights rehearsal expecting to play one or two songs then put her back in her case but no, three hours later I was still slip sliding away. In comparison to my Lakland P, she’s a little heavier and slightly neck heavy but that’s probably the D’tuner which is quite a chunk of engineering. Sound wise, growl and sustain right across the neck, it’s just so alive. The rehearsal rooms we use have really good gear, but as I really struggle to get a decent clean tone out of the supplied Ampeg SVT III’s I took my own amp along (SWR Marcus Miller pre & Amplite power amp) and she obviously liked the pairing. By comparison, I own two other fretless basses (1980 Ibanez and a later Overwater Perception 5 string) neither of which are even close to being as lively as the Tony Franklin. Whatever Fender did when they made this particular bass they did it right.

I remember trying one of yours and it stuck with me. As I now have a gig that warrants it, I thought I’d treat myself 😎

New (to me) old fretless bass day here at JPJ Towers thanks to our own @rockdog Fender Tony Franklin Fretless Precision in 3 colour sunburst with tort scratch plate. Only arrived an hour ago and I’m posting this between Zoom meetings so only had a quick noodle but boy does she sing! Looking forward to getting more acquainted this evening 😎

I can imagine that the production costs are relatively high and demand low and sporadic. From my limited knowledge of the carbon graphite world prepreg material has more than quadrupled in price recently, not helped by the situation in Ukraine, and the tooling costs, autoclave etc make setup costs very high.

Great work and a really nice result. When I first saw your solution to the gouge in the body I wasn’t a fan, but seeing it finished I think the dog might have come up with something innovative. The single pickup cover makes for a lot of thumb positions to exploit the tonal differences between the two pickups. It might just be that your dog is a genius in disguise 😎

This is the sort of pay-to-view channel I’d subscribe to 😍

John East used to offer a battery indicator but it’s no longer listed on his website but it might be worth dropping him a message?

Same in the pipework industry 4500mm of 6” pipe 😎

Ah many thanks Andy - I’m off to Axminster to order one 😎

I know what you mean, it took me quite a while to dial mine in. At first I thought it was a bit ‘listless’ tone wise, but now my passive P goes in Channel 1 with preshape 2 engaged, and the fretless goes in Channel 2 for a healthy mid boost to bring out the mwah.

Yes @warwickhuntbut with a difference, my speakers will be in a line as my OCD couldn’t take that either 🤣

Woohoo! I can cancel my gym subscription then 😂

Andy, Hope you don’t mind me asking, but what model cutter do you use in your router? Reason for asking is that most of the top bearing cutters I’ve used have too much cutter below the bearing to make your wonderful safe technique work for me hence why I still make templates for everything.

So regarding size, this is going to be a single cab solution to all my gig needs, therefore I am not looking for ultra small or lightweight. Playing around in Excel, I think its going to be really difficult to be below 100 litres and stick with a finished width of 520mm to accommodate a 19" rack head in rack case without overhang (my OCD can't do overhangs 🤣). So width is fixed, height is dependent upon getting two drivers plus port on the baffle and depth is going to be whatever it is without the whole thing being unstable.

Personally, I just stick my Radial Tone Bone in front of whatever amp I'm using. Set channel 1 to flat and plug your 'main' bass into that, use channel 2 with the full range of tone controls for your second bass. This also works great if you are doubling fretless and fretted or EUB & fretted.

I’ve built and finished few bodies over the years and the cost is in the time not the materials. Making templates, cutting, routing, shaping, then sanding, spraying, flatting, and polishing all take hours upon hours. I would budget around one third to one half the cost of the bass when new for a new one-off body.

Fascinating stuff, thanks again Phil for taking the time to look at this for me.

I once had a girlfriend like that 😂

I’ve been using a Line6 G50 for a long long time, probably 10 years. I’ve had no bad experiences or signal dropout although a previous guitarist had the same unit and I would cause his to drop out if I got between his transmitter and receiver even though we were on different channels. He moved his receiver to his pedal board and the problem was solved. I’d love another transmitter pack as I often swap fretted to fretless, but they are bloody expensive!