BigRedX

So you like the headstock but not the boring P-Bass body?

As the owner of a bass that was originally matt black, I can confirm that it will eventually buff up to a semi-gloss with playing.

What sort of company makes a digital effects unit with presets and not include MIDI? A stupid one.

TBH any modern solid state or Class D amp is going to be producing a far higher output then the average power attenuator is capable of handling, irrespective of whether it is bridged or not. The highest power handling I have seen on a power attenuator is 150W and the accepted practice is for safety it should be rated at twice that of the amp.

I really liked it - it sounded great and was surprising easy to play given that the neck is just a square cross-section. However there are a limited number of songs that are practical to play on a one-string fretless bass, and I've been ruthless in clearing out instruments that I don't use so it's gone.

Have the prices gone up? I'm pretty sure mine was less than that new.

Stop! Before you download any free plug-ins or buy any of the commercial versions, make sure that you have explored all the ones that come bundled with your DAW. The most important ones generally are EQ and compression, so make sure you know how to get the very best out of the ones you already have, and then you'll be able to work out if they are sufficient, or if you need something with a more user-friendly interface or more sonic capabilities. Then move on to Reverb and delay. After that it very much depends on what you want to do and what comes bundled with your DAW. Personally I've stopped using 3rd party plug-ins, because these is already too much choice in my DAW (Logic) and TBH if I can't get a decent sound it's far more likely to my short-comings as an engineer and not the fault of the plug-ins.

Don't use this cable. Those fin things on the sleeves of the plugs which are supposed to improve the contact of the plug in the socket will eventually force the contacts of the socket further apart so that normal jack plugs will no longer work reliably in the same socket. If the cable itself is still good, you could cut off these plugs and replace them with Neutriks, however IIRC from Planet Waves cables I've owned in the past, the cable itself isn't particularly well made compared with Van Damme cables and therefore it probably isn't worth the effort. In the bin with it!

So this is going to be a Bouzouki with a guitar shaped body? Just had a quick search to see what they look like - the ones that retain some of the bouzouki features in the body look very nice - with the D-shaped sound hole and bouzouki style tail-piece.

Is that only for bridged amps?

AFAIAC this is the minimum requirement for a black bass: The only non-black parts visible on the outside are the frets, strings, saddles, side marker dots and the Gus logo.

Are the bodies and necks that Limelight use actually made in the UK? The OP says they want a P/J bass, does that mean a traditional design or anything with a P/J pickup configuration?

It's another of these situations where people have failed to realise that even the simplest of solid electric instruments is in fact a very complex arrangement of parts that all act together in different ways, and that trying to isolate exactly what effect one component has on the sound is very difficult with a proper scientific methodology. So adding a G-clap to the headstock will make a difference (there is actually an after-market part called the Fat Finger to allows you to do just that in a reasonable aesthetically pleasing manner) but it tends to affect the resonance in the neck which is relatively flexible compared with the average body and is used to attempt to eliminate individual dead spots on a neck rather than add sustain. Adding weight to the body (in the region of the bridge) would be a more accurate way to ascertain this. The proper scientific way to measure the effect of the mass of the bridge on a bass would be create various bridge plates that are all exactly the same size and shape but made of materials with different densities. Using the same saddles, height adjustment screws and intonation adjustment screws and spring each time. Of course first of all you would have to investigate if simply removing the original bridge and re-attaching it an number of times makes any difference on its own, before trying each bridge plate.

Too many of these basses have been very carefully photographed to hide the fact that the back of the neck is not black, but some insipid natural wood colour. It can't even begin to be the blackest bass unless the back of the neck is black.

I still have the Kimbara acoustic guitar that was bought new as a birthday present in 1974. TBH I only still have it because it's been quite extensively modified - and is very worn and simply not worth the effort and meagre amount of money I would get for it, if I was to sell it. However all the other instruments to I use regularly (apart from the Bass VIs which are a recent acquisition) are around the 20 year old mark now so hardly very new either.

How do you know that I'm just an "armchair expert" and not someone with with a physics degree in the relevant fields? You don't. As it happens I don't have the correct degree, but I remember enough about physics from school to realise that most of the marketing claims about high-mass bridges are simply marketing claims and not backed up with real science. If someone does know the subject inside out is prepared to prove that I am wrong and back up their arguments with proper scientific facts to show it, then I'll be happy to be corrected. But, AFAICS there has been zero scientific fact to contradict what I've said so far. When marketing departments make up claims which aren't backed up with fact, surely it is the duty of those that know to call "cow poop". It's all very well believing the marketing hype, but you have to remember that it is the job of the marketing department to sell you stuff you probably don't need. I would say that if there is an improvement in sustain and a change in the clarity of the notes (note that I said change and not improvement here) it will be down to the fact that the engineering of these bridges reduces the movement of the saddles due to the plucking and vibrating of the strings, rather than the overall increase in mass. Of course it could just as easily be due to the fact that when someone swaps out the bridge on their bass they attach it to the body better than the original manufacturing process did with the original bridge. The fact is you simply don't know because the process has not been done in a proper scientific manner. Ultimately if you believe it makes enough of a difference to be worthwhile spending the money, then fair enough, but I would suggest that any improvements are negligible, and certainly in a band mix imperceptible.

I think the last lot of sets I bought came from Thomann. Before that I got them off Amazon.

Excellent! You'll just need a jack to jack speaker lead to connect the amp to the power attenuator input. It will be at this point that you will find out just how much (or not) speaker break up contributes towards your preferred distortion sound.

Ideally you want to play your backing track off some non-mechanical media - i.e. not CD.

Why Oh Dear? The bridge and body are securely attached to each other and therefore act as a single mass. The alternative would be that the high-mass bridge is so "massive" that it prevents any significant transference of string vibration energy to the body and therefore renders the choice of body material completely irrelevant. Also if that were the case, then fitting a high-mass bridge to a bass would mean that you would no longer be able to hear or feel the string vibration energy in the body of the bass.

And they are wrong. As soon as you securely attach one component to another they act together as a single item. A heavier weight bridge will only make a measurable difference if it increases the overall weight of the instrument by a considerable amount, or if it is not mechanically attached to the rest of the instrument, like a floating bridge on something like a Hofner Violin Bass.

No, no, no. As I said, because the bridge is securely attached to the body it becomes part of the body and can no longer be considered as a separate item. It's basic physics.

Depends entirely on the design of the high mass bridge, the old bridge it is replacing and the build of the bass you are attaching it to. I've only ever swapped out bridges on two basses. One - a Squier VMJ Fretless where I replaced the BBOT with a Badass (which made zero difference to the sound) and did not require any further adjustment to the bass. Second where I replaced the bridge on a Burns Sonic that had failed due to all the threads in the saddles wearing out, I had to fit a 10mm thick piece of wood under the bridge to get the strings to the correct height.

But the bridge is mechanically attached to the body of the bass by several screws and therefore, as long as it has been fitted properly, to all intents and purposes it becomes part of the body. As I said before the increase in weight due to the high mass bridges is negligible. It may be that other aspects of the high mass bridge are better engineered such as designs which prevent the sideways movement of the saddles, which should provide additional sustain, but the actual weight of the bridge itself has little or no bearing on the sustain.

Debatable. Sustain is a function of how quickly the vibrations of the string dissipate through the rest of the instrument and is based on the mass of the instrument and how flexible the body, neck and anything else the strings may be attached to are. As a percentage of the overall bass weight the additional weight of the high mass bridge is negligible. The only way a high mass bridge could affect the sustain would be if the original bridge was not securely attached to the body.