BigRedX

To the OP why do you want Fender to make a 6-string bass? As you can see from the AAF abomination (which looks as though it was made by someone who once saw a photo of a Carl Thompson bass) it's not exactly their strong point. Plus it's not exactly their core market of players who want P and J basses in a decent range of colours and occasionally with matching headstocks. Even their other 4-string models don't sell well enough for them to stay in production. Plus they struggle to make decent 5-string basses (IMO the standard Fender construction and production doesn't lend itself to consistently good 5-string basses) so how can you expect them to fare any better with a 6-string. 6-string players are happy enough to use something that doesn't say "Fender" on the headstock.

Is it a big something or a little something?

With Brian Eno on clarinet and production.

Bear in mind that the latency on any pitch MIDI device is dependant both upon the pitch of the note being played (the lower the note the greater the latency) and the accuracy of the device being used. The very best pitch detection systems (which this is not) require a MINIMUM of 1½ cycles of the waveform to successfully detect the pitch. For the E string on a bass this is 36ms and very noticeable. Even the G string is 15ms which is still noticeable. Expect the latency of this device to be close to double that! And that's before you figure in the additional latency due to producing the correct MIDI data from the detected pitch and you'll see/hear why these systems are no good for the bass guitar.

Wasn't the Alien Ant Farm custom shop model a 6 string?

In the past if a station was big enough to supplying a complete track sheet of everything they played to the PRS then there would be people doing this as their job. These days it's all done automatically through embedded IRSC codes in the CDs and audio files so there's very little additional work to do.

The problem I have found is that after about a month or so you are very familiar with 90% of the music they are playing. If I want to listen to stuff I know and like I have my iTunes library and Spotify. The whole point of radio for me is that it will introduce me to to new songs and bands and surprise me in the way that John Peel's programme did night after night in the late 70s and early 80s. Radio 6 is fine for a couple of weeks, but then I need to stop listening for a few months otherwise I get bored of hearing the same songs over and over.

BTW for those saying that the Helix is too expensive, bear in mind that in real terms what you get is considerably cheaper than what you would have paid just 15 years ago. My first multi-effects unit which did only a fraction of what I can do with the Helix cost almost as much when I bought it in the early 90s. Also the bass rig that the Helix and RCF cab replaced cost me considerable more even though most of it had been bought second-hand. When I sold this rig and the guitar one, because the Helix had made them superfluous, I came away with a small profit

Eastwood Hooky (for Hurtsfall) or Gus G3 (for In Isolation) > Line6 Helix Floor with Linn Adrenalinn in one of the effects loops > PA. I have an RCF745 powered cab but this only gets used for rehearsals with In Isolation and at gigs where we are asked to supply a bass amp (I have a few patches on the Helix with a selection of amps and cabs only for these situations). Hurtsfall now all go direct into the PA and this has massively improved our sound both on-stage (in terms of monitoring) and FoH, and I can see the whole band adopting IEMs before the end of the year. In Isolation still have a conventional backline for the guitars and take much longer to set up and sound check. I'm hoping that once Hurtsfall have gone the IEM route both bands can do a few gigs together where I can demonstrate the advantages of both ditching the backline and switching to IEMs.

IME adding a single inch to the length of the neck does little to improve the clarity of anything tuned down below D, and less so on any bolt-on necked instrument. You need the right strings along with a super-stiff neck and rock solid neck joint (or ideally neck-though construction).

IME unless you are going go and buy in person Ishibashi are the only Japanese seller who are properly geared up to deal with foreign sales. I've bought 4 or 5 times from them without any problems, so long as you remember to figure in postage and import charges. Trying to buy on-line from anywhere else like Digimart has been an exercise in futility.

IME the back button rarely works properly on any forum (mostly because it results in threads not being properly marked as read or not), and I always use the site navigation tools instead. That's what they are there for.

There are always shortcuts available to any "career" if you are lucky enough to know the right people and be in the right place at the right time... Are you the best friend of anyone whose band has just had 2 singles at the top of the UK charts, have a massive record company advance (or 2), and who have recently sacked their bass player?

I may have misunderstood the OP, but I read the question as being what Fender Jazz bass would cover all your bass playing requirements, and I replied that there is no Fender Jazz bass that does that for me which I see as a perfectly legitimate reply. I would have posted the same if the question had been about Gibsons or Rickenbackers. I think it is naive to assume that everyone is happy or able make do with a traditional bass of some description.

I briefly owned a Squier VM fretless Jazz when I was getting into playing fretless bass almost 20 years ago. I hated pretty much everything about it. I didn't sound as good or play as well as the £70 Wesley Acrylic defretted bass that it was supposed to replace; and when used standing up with it on a strap I couldn't properly reach the G-String machine head, although I had no problems with the much larger Overwater Original.

But they are so boring... IMO the only way to be more boring than having a Jazz would be to have a Precision.

Neither the image, nor the string count of a 4-string Fender bass suits any of the musical projects I am currently (and likely to be in the future) involved with.

I don't think there's any music I've gone from loving to hating. There are some genres that I'm less interested in than I used to be like prog, trip hop and progressive house/trance, but I still enjoy listening to anything I liked enough at the time to buy on record or CD. There are some songs that I would be happy to never have to listen to again, whose enjoyment was killed by having to learn and play them when I was doing Dad Rock covers, but none of those were ones I liked enough to actually buy when they were originally released.

I've got what is now called the M80 Classic which was bought back when it was simply the only M80 case for bass. From a protection PoV it is great and probably better than many "hard" cases. It also has the advantage that it can be squeezed into spaces in a tightly packed car without worrying about damaging the instrument inside. However, as I have said before, as a gig bag for carrying the bass any distance it fails miserably. It is simply too uncomfortable to wear for any length of time. The straps are too close together where they join the top of the case which makes it awkward across the shoulders, and bottom hangs so low that each step causes it to slap against the back of my legs. To me it seems as though Mono have simply enlarged the guitar version of the case without considering the practical implications of adding an extra foot to the length. Also after 10 years the main zipper is starting the wear out at the bottom of the case, so it is not longer safe to unzip it fully. When it finally fails I doubt I will buy another one to replace it, unless I knew I would never have to walk any distance carrying a bass in it again.

And the OP has admitted that they intend to break the law on a publicly accessible part of an internet forum that is indexed by all the major search engines...

Do you have a multi-meter? If so you could check for electrical continuity between the bridge, vibrato mechanism and the control plates, before going to the trouble of taking the bass apart to check for missing/disconnected earth wires.

Could be. Might also be the single coils pickups and this amp is making the noise more apparent. Does it go away if you touch the switch plate as well as the one with knobs on? What about if you select the middle along with either the neck or bridge pickups (these combinations should be hum cancelling)?

@kodiakblair Most people on here who want tools for working on their instruments want them only for that purpose, and so specialised tools from StewMac and the like are ideal for them, as they can buy them and then get on with job. I used to be a keen DIYer until my expectations outstripped my abilities in that field, and I've made guitars in the past (back in the 70s using the IM articles as a guideline), and if I had the time and inclination to build guitars again I would get the required tools off the peg and they would be reserved solely for making guitars. If I can save time and effort buying the right tool for the job, then I will because in the majority of cases for me time is more important than money. Your properties are probably different.

Yes but back then most of the specialised tools required had to be individually modified from the ones that were commonly available. International Musician magazine ran a series of articles by Stephen Delft in the late 70s on how to built your own solid electric guitar. This ran to over 2 year's worth of issues and several months were given over discussions of what tools would be required and what modifications would be needed to those that you bought. I distinctly remember that there were detailed instructions for how to file the set off a standard handsaw to make it suitable for cutting fret slots. These articles also included instructions for making a truss rod from scratch as the alternative at the time would have been to remove one from an existing guitar. Thank goodness for modern luthier's supplies.

True, but most of these people rely to a large extent on word of mouth to get more work, and being a nice person does go a long way towards getting those recommendations.