dannybuoy

It's a Bazz Fuss so should sound like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQAemyXYSBM

I was thinking of selling them as I don't know when I'll ever really get round to building up a Jazz bass that I had in mind to do some day, so it would be nice to be able to say what they were! I'll measure them later.

Check out the Gold Tone and Aquila basses too: http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f8/gold-tone-microbass-talk-1032038/ http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f8/new-acoustic-bass-guitar-shortbass-one-small-loud-968706/ The [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f8/sub-short-scale-talk-644956/"]sub-short-scale thread[/url] over at Talkbass shows quite a few pictures from NAMM and there are several manufacturers getting in on this game now!

Anybody tried one? For £100, about a quarter the price of a Kala, I sure am tempted. I translated the German reviews (which were pretty positive) and they say it's a lot bigger than the Kala, which is a plus point for me as I was looking into getting a [url="http://www.goldtone.com/products/details/w/instrument/494/MicroBass"]Gold Tone Microbass[/url] or [url="http://www.aquilacorde.com/corde-per-musica-moderna/strumento-corde-per-musica-moderna/2813/short-bass-one/?lang=en"]Aquila Short Bass One[/url]. I loved my old Kala, but fancied something a bit bigger and fretless. I had a Breedlove acoustic after that, but it was a big beast and I really want something in between sizes with the rubber strings, just for keeping nearby to pick up and mess around on occasionally. Therefore for the price, the Harley Benton looks like a winner. Surely not up to the build quality of the Kala, but I'm not sure I care! It would be interesting to string one up with either the new Aquila Thunder Reds or the La Bella white tapewounds designed for this scale. http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_kahuna_clu_bass.htm http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_kahuna_clu_bass_fl.htm

My mistake. It's a plain old 1 by the way, not the active 1A. Still good basses, but yes these 3's look superb!

[size=4][quote name='itsmedunc' timestamp='1391643915' post='2359809'][/size] I hope somebody off here gets it. I had a fretted. The best bass I ever had... Sold it [/quote] There's a fretted one for £100 in the classifieds here right now!

64's, 74's, 84's, Hammers? I have a pair of Wizard jazz pickups here but I've no idea what type. The only identifying marks on them is a N and B on the neck and bridge pups respectively. The Wizards site is no longer running which makes identification difficult, I don't know if Mr Wizard is replying to emails these days of if anyone on here knows him. Is there any way to tell what these are? I could measure their DC resistance which I suppose may help, I shall dig out my multimeter tomorrow! [size=4][/size] [size=4][/size]

You could always post a wanted ad for a set of Wizards, you never know!

Had another brief blast - most of the models are rather underwhelming, but the Crunch Tube, Big Pi, and Bender modes all sound great. The 3-band EQ helps massively, and the unique blend knob is a two-way control where dry is at noon, with regular blend on the left and a lowpassed clean on the right. The gate works very well too, and if you want a gated fuzz but thought they mostly sound thin and raspy, you can apply it to any model such as the Big Pi! It has proprietary sockets for the expression control, I need to see if there's any way to hook up my Moog EP-2 to this so I can morph between presets. One annoying thing is that if you put it in bypass and forget to save your preset, when you activate it again it loads the last preset and ignores the current knob positions. Haven't read the manual yet though so there might be some tricks to this. Proof of the pudding will be A/B tests with my favourite settings on my usual pedals though, but this will have to wait!

Apple sure jinxed themselves with that 'it just works' slogan, didn't they.

Turned up today and only had a 5 minute play so far, but initial impressions are good. I can get in the same ballpark as my SFT and ODB-3, and as it has 2 presets with a footswitch for each I can more easily switch between tones than I would with 2 separate pedals. It can't replace my Team Awesome Fuzz Machine though, that is a unique one! I still think analog boxes sound better at this stage, but I need to do some A/Bing later and more playing around with the EQ settings, I find I need to scoop the mids ever so slightly on the OFD for it to sound good, but then again that's typical of laying solo. Definitely better than the drive sounds on any Zoom/Korg units I've owned in the past!

Horses for courses I suppose - I didn't like the EQ on the Streamliner! The knobs on the Terror do the job for me once you figure out how a passive EQ operates. Treble at 2 o'clock, Mid at 3 o'clock, Bass at 11 o'clock and they pretty much just stay like that! It is a very dark sounding amp though, as is the Aguilar by all accounts. You won't like the Terror if you like a lot of high mids and treble!

[quote name='TG Flatline' timestamp='1391422775' post='2356847']Matt Bellamy has Manson guitars put a Fuzz Factory (also Fuzz Face-based) directly in some of his guitars so he can still use his wireless but get the best out of his fuzz too. That's not exactly the cheapest solution though, granted![/quote] I never knew that was the reason but now it all makes sense!

Logitech mouse with the free rolling mousewheel? If so try clicking it into the other mode where it moves in steps.

There's not been much noise about this pedal lately... but my curiousity got the better of me so I just ordered one from Bass Direct. I'm quite picky about my drive pedals and never got on with any digital ones before so lets see how this fares! It gets great reviews over at TB, if it gets the thumbs up from johnk_10, who has cloned and built nearly every drive pedal under the sun, it must be alright! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaHPsHtvdL4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUJ30QGm-Nw

Don't cables only need to be PAT tested if they are a certain age? I worked at a company once where the IT guy claimed it was cheaper to bin our old cables and buy new ones than it was to get them PAT tested!

Definitely give the big triangle shape a go if you haven't already (I like Dunlop Tortex blue 1mm). Smaller picks are better when it comes to guitar, but when you have the wide string spacing of a bass you can get away with something bigger that offers better grip and feels nicer in the hand. Small picks just feel awkward now, like eating with toddler size cutlery!

+1 to the Orange wiping the floor with the Streamliner. Not tried the Tonehammer, but it's certainly good enough for George Porter Jr!

£200 budget, first bass, but something that can cover a variety of tones and is well built enough to serve even pro players? You'd be hard pressed to do better than this Classic Vibe Jazz: http://basschat.co.uk/topic/228581-squier-classic-vibe-60s-jazz-olympic-white-l199/ If you do go the Thunderbird route, it's well worth the extra money for the Epiphone Classic Pro version - it's pretty much the same spec as the Gibson model. They fixed the position of the strap button on this one too so it doesn't neck dive as much!

A standard Tarkin is not going to be that different from the other muff fuzzes I guess. Not sure about the Dwarfcraft stuff, but considering the builder plays passive basses and is more of the mad scientist than sensible engineer type, I would hazard a guess they were not designed with actives in mind!

I would get anther fuzz that plays well with actives. E.g Iron Ether Oxide, Darkglass Duality, or anything based on a Big Muff. The latter would work well for stoner sounds, I quite like the look of the new Swollen Pickle that has the internal controls on the outside. Or the EHX Big Bass Muff Deluxe or Wren & Cuff Tall Font Russian come highly recommended too. BTW, the active/passive switch on the Big Bass Muff Deluxe is just a pad to lower your input signal in case have a really hot signal from the active bass which overloads the pedal. You probably won't need it unless you use massive amounts of boost on your EQ, the standard Bass Big Muff doesn't have this switch yet works just fine with actives that I've used.

I think you are barking up the wrong tree I'm afraid! Magnetic pickups have a high output impedance, and many vintage style fuzzes are designed to work well directly connected them. A buffer converts this to a low impedance output, which is better for driving long cables without signal loss, but doesn't play well with some fuzzes. The preamp in an active bass is essentially a buffer, so adding another one is not going help things. What you need is a pickup simulator. There's not many off the shelf solutions to this that I know of, although I have seen some pedals (Seymour Duncan?) with a 'drag' control. Here is a circuit that does what you need: http://www.muzique.com/lab/pickups.htm I think BC member (Toasted?) made a few of these up a while back for people. If anyone knows of a little mini pedal to do this job, I would be interested too! Actives don't play too well with my Team Awesome Fuzz Machine.