BigRedX

TBH most of us could get away with a 2-string bass - either E and A or A and D depending on what you were playing. Certainly in my dad rock covers band days 90% of the songs could have been played comfortably on a bass with just 2 strings.

IMO the trick when commissioning a custom bass or guitar is not to overthink it. All of the woods on mine (where you can see them) were picked first and foremost for their colour and grain pattern. I spec'd up my instruments by deciding how I wanted them to look, sound and play. I picked a manufacturer/luthier who was already making instruments with a design I liked and gave them my colour, playability and sound specifications and they did the rest. IMO if your choice of luthier can't make you the perfect instrument from those specs you need to look elsewhere.

I've had several guitars and basses made specifically for me. I sold one of those basses last year (a fretless 5-string Sei). It's a fantastic bass, and when I first got it, it was my main instrument. However since the band it was bought for split, I've used it twice for live and studio work in the last 9 years, and I can't see any of the bands I am in currently or any music that I might want to play in the near future requiring it, so I decided it was time to move it on. The money I got was spent on something I can use for the music I am currently playing. Did I regret it? Yes and no. It was a bit sad to move on something that was specifically made to my tastes and requirements, but equally I felt guilty that it had spent a good proportion of it's life either in it's case or on a stand only getting occasional playing time - very little of it serious, so I was glad it has gone to someone who will spend more time playing it than I had recently. And should I ever need another fretless 5-string bass I can go through the whole process again!

When you say home use are you hoping to be able to play it without amplification? IME semi hollow basses are only marginally louder than solid ones, so there is little advantage.

20 years, and thousands of Pounds worth of transactions, buying a selling musical instruments on eBay and I've only ever had a few problems all of which were the fault of the courier and were sorted out under the insurance. Most of the instruments I'm interested in are only available by either buying a new one direct from the luthier or finding a second hand one one eBay. I'm happy to buy on the basis of some photos and a brief description, and often from an entirely different continent, because I know that if I can't get on with what I've bought I'll be able to move it on without much difficulty and no significant loss.

Actually it's difficult to tell from that photo. It looks as though the bass has been refinished so it could be either.

Modified Roland G33.

I play 5-string basses and I love the sound of open E. Sometimes you need open strings and sometimes you need fretted ones. There's more to playing an instrument then playing the right notes in the right place. It's playing the right notes with the right sound in the right place. If you don't get that you're not much of a musician.

The you need to play one. The sound is extra rich and ideal for post-punk bass lines. I've got a hankering for one of these now even though I don't really need it.

No definitely a separate saddle for each string looking at the 208SM photos. Edit: looks like the same bridge and tailpiece that all the far-eastern made 8-string basses use - Dean, Schecter etc.

It's 24bit with a sampling rate of up to 96kHz. What extra features from a more modern interface would you want? Until I got rid of all my studio equipment a couple of years ago I was still running 2408 Mk1 interface into a 424 PCI card and it was doing everything I needed.

Then AFAICS you need to upgrade your MotU PCI card to the 424 PCIe and you should be fine. I did this on my (Mac) system when I moved from a Graphite Power Mac 400 to a MacPro about 10 years ago. The upgrade process was fairly painless and although it was pricy, not as much as buying a brand new card and I didn't even have to return my old one (which was an original PCI 324 card).

What PCI card does you interface use? And which versions of PCI (PCI, PCIe, PCIx) does your old PC and the proposed new one have?

Also, unlike the guitar where a "soapbar pickup" is a fat single coil based on the Gibson P90, on the bass there could be absolutely anything inside the housing so long as it will fit. So very different coil and magnet configurations all housed in identical looking covers.

IMO you need to stop thinking that the various effect and amp/cab modules are exact copies of various items and think of them all as "tone-shapers". Most of the time I don't use any amp or cab sims in my patches (and I'm going straight into the PA with an FRFR speaker for on-stage personal monitoring). When I do have an amp sim in the signal path it has been chosen because I like the drive sound it produces and therefore it is there as a distortion device rather than an "amp". Quite often it will be a guitar amp too! That's the great thing about the Helix modules. You're not going to break anything by using something that hasn't been designed for bass as could happen with the actual hardware, at the worst it simply won't sound very good. Therefore you can experiment without any worries.

Personally I think that Eastwood would be on dodgy ground trying to make an exact copy of an instrument that is still in production by company which has a reasonably strong link to the one that originally made it. Also given what the majority of the other Eastwood instruments are like, there is no guarantee that what they produce will have more than a passing resemblance to any of the previous versions, although I would have thought that they would be using the original late 70s version as starting point if any. Personally if I was after a specific specification of the Aria SB1000, I'd be looking for a second hand model that met my requirements. I seems to work fairly well. Only a small deposit is required to secure your instrument, which you will get back if the target amount isn't reached. The balance isn't required until Eastwood are ready to ship the finished items. If you are really unsure you could wait until the target amount has been reached before putting down your deposit.

That's interesting. AFAICS all the other instruments on the "Bring It Back" page have previously been made in limited edition Eastwood Custom Shop versions, so that would imply that there has been an Eastwood version of the SB1000 before.

If they are it will most likely appear on the Eastwood Customs site first. How close they get to the original version is very variable. As LeftyJ says they tend to use standard parts, so what you end up with is something with roughly the same body shape as the guitar or bass it is copying but not much else. The very worst example is their take on the Ovation Magnum bass which doesn't even manage to get the body shape right. Some would appear to be much better. I have a Hooky Bass 6 PRO on order and apparently both the bridge and pickup had to be custom made for this model as there was nothing even remotely right in the parts bin. I'll post in detail about my experience and how good (or not) the bass is when it actually arrives. However I can say that the delivery date for this instrument has continually slipped back from being late March when the bass was first announced, to at the moment late July when I expect to get mine. Whether that is due to the current pandemic or simply a symptom of over-ambitious deadlines I don't know.

If the measurements work out OK (I'm hoping for Burns Barracuda width at the nut and Squier Bass VI at the bridge) than I may well go for a red/black burst one.

Looks as though the people that own Andertons now also own Burns Guitars, so they probably can offer a cheaper price than the competition.

One of those popped up on an eBay search the other day. Considerably cheaper than the Barracuda which it seems to have replaced. Could you please measure the string spacing at the nut and the bridge for me when yours arrives. A single measurement from the centres of the two E strings in both locations will do, along with the width of the neck at the nut. I haven't been able to find this information on-line so far. Thanks!

Very much this. There is no denying that the selection of woods and construction of acoustic instruments has a massive effect on the way they sound. When the projection of the sound is produced by a carefully selected single piece of wood, braced as little as possible to withstand the tension in the strings and attached to the rest of the instrument (whose size and shape also have a significant bearing on the tone) with minimal contact points - again just enough for the body to withstand normal playing use and little more. Compare that with the typical solid electric instrument body. Great thick chunks of timber slavered in glue and cut and joined in a way to maximise the number of bodies obtainable from a single board. The shapes while harking back to acoustic designs are often more to do with what is now visually acceptable based on the original solid instrument designs, and have no bearing on what may or may not sound best.

Live video of "The Man Who Hides From Love" This was recorded/filmed at our last gig back in December 2019 at the The Lending Room in Leeds.

I'm completely sold on my 745 cab. I can't see myself going back to a traditional bass rig. Interesting none of the bassists who have been forced to use my set-up because of equipment sharing gigs have had anything bad to say either. Some have been pleasantly surprised.

Are you making bodies out of a single piece of wood? If so "resonance" might play a small part, although I think if a big lump of wood, like you would use for a solid bodied instrument, sounds dead there is probably something structurally wrong with it. If you are gluing two (or more) pieces of wood together to make a solid body how do you decide where the joins go. Do you test the body again after glueing? What would you do if once glued to another piece of wood the resonance is no longer right. Throw the whole lot away?