dannybuoy

MIM Fender IS real Fender... A long time ago they used cheaper ceramic pickups but these days I believe they use alnico like the US Fenders? If so, no idea when they changed but you would be able to tell from a photo. Whether they would be any better than your stock pickups is a gamble though. Personally I'd only get them if they were dirt cheap, otherwise I'd be more inclined to get something more specialist, DiMarzio, EMG, Seymour Duncan etc.

Clue is in the image URL! http://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Yamaha_TRB_5P_files/yamaha top edge 1.jpg Lovely looking bass though: http://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Yamaha_TRB_5P.html

Digging in is a big part of how I play, however you can get a lot of those growlier sounds with a lighter touch if you use lighter strings and a lower action!

The only thing I can think of is that maybe the preamp is wired up incorrectly.. there are tons of Sire users using pedals and never heard of this before. I wonder if this is the kind of symptom you might get if the preamp output is hooked up to the jack with the wrong polarity, and your particular amp happens to work but the input stage of one or more of your pedals doesn't like it? Got any other amps or audio interfaces you can try out to see if they can reproduce the same issue with no pedals in the chain?

You can't beat a Stingray when it comes to fretless tone IMHO, I'd love to pick one up some day too!

Ten bands sounds like overkill though if the OP just wants a gain control and mid boost. You're right to look at the EWS BMC v2, seems to tick all the boxes: http://ews-us.com/item_BMC2.php?item=custom

I have an aggressive playing style and don't find TIs a problem in the slightest. Tried the LaBella FLs for a while, meh. The TIs were back on within a few weeks! This just goes to show, horses for courses. Try everything you can!

Active basses are fine with the Bass Big Muff. In fact I think active basses sound better then passive basses into a Muff, as long as their output level isn't too high as to overload the front end of the fuzz circuit, and the Bass Big Muff handle more input then most Muffs. I put a buffered bypass pedal in front of my Green Russian as it makes the sound tighter and more defined vs plugging a passive bass straight in. Fuzz Face based pedals can be a different story though, a Wooly Mammoth sounds thin with an active bass. Also a Malekko Diabolik (and therefore probably anything based on a Brassmaster) sounds different (not bad, just different) with an active bass.

This! Don't use mine much but hanging onto it as it's great fun and they don't come up for sale that often: Tech21 Red Ripper and TWA Dynamorph can get similar sounds too.

From what I've seen, ash is typically heavier than alder, but swamp ash can often be lighter than alder. I'm not sure it makes a huge difference tone wise as I've had really bright lively basses with alder or basswood bodies and really dull sounding ones with ash bodies! You could probably get just as much variation in resonance between two ash bodies from different trees as you would from ash vs alder. All IMHO of course!

A low nut should only affect the open string. Once you fret the note at frets 1-3, all that matters is the height and condition of the fret you're fretting and the all the frets further up, shape/relief of the neck and bridge setup.

You do like to overcomplicate things Bas! It's more likely that he changed a resistor value or two and kept the pots the same. Not that it matters, who cares what was done inside, all that matters is the outcome!

Saw Bas had ordered a new pedal that was on back order so got him to cancel and buy used from me instead! Prompt payment as always.

I didn't think v1 and v2 were that different, just more volume on tap in v2? I have heard a complaint mentioned that v1 still leaked a bit of clean sound through with the clean volume at minimum, is this fixed in v2 also? I never noticed this issue in my v1 though so it must have been pretty minor and therefore unlikely to affect my opinion.

I'm sure this has been hashed out already in this thread, but I had a T16 v1. I sold my OC-2 a while back so could not A/B them but I was very familiar with the soloed octave tone. The T16 could vary between a subby or a raspy tone, but nowhere in the middle could I conjure up that familiar sound, until I plugged in an Octabvre Mini instead! To me the difference was like night and day, especially with fast staccato playing. The OC-2 / Octabvre are just way punchier with more attack and more mids.

I sold my T16 primarily because I could not get it to sound anything like an OC-2!

I thought it did run off USB power? Been a while since I tried it with my Corona Mini though.

'The sweet spot' is often referred to the Stingray position. Not quite middle, not quite bridge. Somewhere in between a Precision and a Jazz bridge pickup. My Sandberg Basic has pretty much the same position as the Stingray, maybe a few mm further north but not far off. The Sandberg Basic Ken Taylor on the other hand has two pickups quite far either side of this spot.

Either double down on the darkness and stick some flats on it and learn some Jamerson lines... or try a brighter sounding P. I went through all the ones in Wunjos a while back and the most aggressive sounding were the 80s MIJ Jazz Special (its a P shaped PJ with a J neck!), Troy Sanders Jaguar and the Musicman Caprice.

Yup - he also spent a long time getting it right on the Stingray!

For a MM pickup, I’d go for 1 pickup in the middle every time. A Musicman Stingray sounds so good because the pickup is in the sweet spot. I have a Sandberg Basic with a single MM pickup in the middle and it sounds killer. But they also make a Ken Taylor version with two pickups, one closer to the bridge and one closer to the neck. Neither of these pickups soloed has the same perfect balance and growl of the middle position, and things don’t improve when you blend the pickups together. Unlike a Jazz Bass where mixing the two pickups sounds great, somehow blending a pair of MM pickups sounds a lot more scooped and less growly to me, even if you cool tap it won’t sound like a Jazz.

My Yammy PJ sounds nothing like my Fender P. You really need both. I have a spare Fender P for sale btw.

£135 + £5 shipping. http://bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Nordstrand_Pickups_MM.html

Ha! I never saw you asking about them. It's pretty much just an octave up with a tone control so you can reduce the jangly top end you often get with octave ups, or even dial it right down for a more subtle effect. I guess it uses the same algorithm as the Whammy line, so great rock solid tracking. I bought it ages ago and then hardly used it as I mistakenly thought the blend control could go 100% wet, and I wanted it for split-chain fake guitar sounds like Royal Blood - however it is just a pure level control for the wet signal whilst the dry signal stays at unity.