Silvia Bluejay

It's @Happy Jack's pride and glory! 🥰

Here it is - plenty more where these come from, if you're interested. With apologies for derailing the thread towards a non-wooden bass! Edit: all taken by me, on a black photo background and a bit of photoshopping for light and contrast.

NS Design NXT5 - maple and ebony. @Happy Jack's etched, lacquered aluminium.

Thankfully, GAS will never be killed by a choice of tones on one single bass. We need to buy all the basses the Variax emulates, one by one, and compare their sound closely with the Variax, so we have a very clear idea of which basses we have to keep because, you know, it would never do to go out and play with a poorly emulated tone. God forbid. 😉 Having said that, I do like most of the sounds on that 705. PS - nice to meet you too, Mike - enjoy the bass. 👍

I agree, and I'm not trying to open that can of worms. The Jazz bass for petite women is my contribution to the bass myths this thread is about.

Plus one to the utter rubbish of referring to one's bass as 'she'. I'm not sure if it's more sexist, creepy or plain weird. Makes my skin crawl. (Same in the case of those idiots who refer to boats, ships and cars as 'she'.) Whenever I've referred to my basses as 'he' in revenge, I've been immediately corrected - bl**dy foreigner that I am - and told it's IT in English, not HE. Oh, really? 🤦‍♀️ Short scale only for wimmin - heard that, never took any notice. BUT: - Petite lady? Get a Jazz bass, the neck is lovely and thin, you'll be fine. (Forget about the horrible, misshapen, heavy-as-hell body, though, will you). Heh.

Agree about the wonderful Ibby necks. @Skinnyman, make sure you're comfortable with tight string spacing. though (I love it, but I do have small hands). Incidentally, what's this eighth fret of which you speak? One of the advantages of a good fiver is that you can go lower, rather than higher, with your basslines, and play across the neck rather than along it. Depending on the genre, you may not need to go further than the 8th fret at all.

I think it's mostly a marketing ploy, and it works brilliantly. Hence my doubts about getting rid of the purple low B ball end.

Of course we don't need the colours. But both @Happy Jack and I are seriously OCD... 😎

D'Addario strings on new, shop-bought Ibanez: Typical set of D'Addario strings bought as replacement:

Although there may be a difference between string sets installed on new, shop-bought basses (two gold-coloured ball ends) and new string sets you buy as replacement. My two new-ish sets bought in Dec 2019 still have purple ball ends. It's a mystery! 😱

D'Addario have now deleted the purple ball end! The low B comes in gold, like - erm - the E string. Pretty sad, if you ask me.

@owen - Dunno about others, but I can't see any functioning links or photos in that thread from 2007?

Looks very nice! 👍

If the Stagg is similar to my old Harley Benton, the unamplified output coming from the pickup is rather low; acceptable when you plug into an amp or a combo, but rather hopeless when you try to plug in headphones directly and play along to your MP3, due to the high noise ratio. I'm afraid the only solution I found was to use a proper headphone amp. I have a PJB Bass Buddy with its own headphones connected to a desktop PC with a Soundblaster external USB sound card. That may be overkill, but it can deal with any pickup's output level. Mind you, the computer itself, especially the radio mouse, introduces noise into the circuit, but the level is acceptable.

The neck can be moved by using a hex key (one turn is enough! Very quick adjustment). So clearly there is a joint of some sort, but the neck itself is not meant to be dismantled.

To avoid the nightmare of transatlantic shipping, @Happy Jack and I had Gollihur send a bass to our family in Pasadena and then we literally flew to the US to collect it. (Yes we also got a holiday out of it!). It was less painful - but a bit long-winded - to take the bass on the plane, have it inspected and pay import duty, than risk international shipping, even with an excellent store like Gollihur. Even getting small, low value items shipped in the cheapest possible way from the US to here is a frigging nightmare. Avoid at all costs.

I've found that as well in Bass Guitar Magazine Oct 2019 issue - scanning it as we speak. I have created a PDF of the May 2016 article as well.

Black - like my Fortress. Edit: This one.

Not sure about Bass Player Magazine - it's not sold in the UK. Bass Guitar Magazine, on the other hand, had Alex Venturella on its cover in May 2016. I will have a copy somewhere in my archive, but I'm not going to part with it - however, I can scan the article and send it over to you in PDF format if no-one can help you with an actual copy. Alternatively, you may be able to get a copy from the publisher as a back issue or at least contact them for help if it doesn't appear to be available there.

Also check out @Chownybass, who are a British company although their basses are not built in the UK.

Interesting topic. I play mostly 5-stringers at 45mm max, but the main difference I notice is, as mentioned above, with the string spacing at the bridge. Usually the wider the bridge, the wider the nut, but not always. When I visit music shows (remember those?) I pick up a lot of basses, and I'm usually surprised at how easy I find adapting to different shapes of the neck and different nut widths - but more than 16.5mm string spacing at the bridge, and it goes straight back on the stand.

You ARE loud enough if your sound engineer is a bass player...

Then again, is that something you miss or look forward to at a gig? PS I don't believe that nobody notices the bass player, really. That will depend on so many factors, number of bandmates, attitude, the way you dress, etc. Or indeed whether you're playing an upright or a DB as opposed to a bass guitar...