geoffbyrne

P.S. to all the above - a common reason for fret buzz on the first few frets is that the truss rod is over-tightened, thus bending the neck in a back bow, dropping the nut relative to the bridge & therefore the strings rattle off the frets near to the nut. If you can, try turning the truss rod adjuster about 1/4 turn anti-clockwise, leave for a couple of hours & see if there's been an improvement. G.

Who knew? Actually, there's a lot of love for BBs on this forum - try a search. G.

Congratulations!!!! You do realise, don't you, that we MUST have pictures for your story to be believed............? G.

The Millenium pre with mids fits the Cirrus if you can get hold of one, and they are not that expensive - $65 on the other side of the pond, if I remember - maybe someone's got one?

A Cirrus BXP had by far the nicest neck (for me) I have ever played, but I found the electrics iffy. If yours is a 'proper' made in the USA Cirrus, it could be great! G.

I've already got 3 Yamaha basses - guess which I'd recommend? G.

I've one of these - kindly donated by Casapete of this place & the Boys of ELO Experience - and I use an ART valve mic pre-amp in front of it. Makes it pretty loud. Runs the foldback. I don't have any prob pushing up the EQ. G.

Bump

Check the impedence of the speakers & how they are wired together. I had a Maine head rated at 60W @16 Ohms and the matching Maine cab had two 12" Fanes wired in series (triangle style).. The amp would do 120W @ 8 Ohms, but I never found out if it would go to 4 Ohms. Ideally, use 2 x 16 Ohms in parallel. G.

[quote name='steve-soar' timestamp='1361561797' post='1987719'] Errr, this advert is about 4 months old. Shadows...mmm...no connection for me. Did some good work by supporting Burns but playing Fender on record. I think Hank had the same monkey glands injected into him at that Swiss clinic that Cliff did back in the 80's. [/quote] In his book 'Pearls and Crazy Diamonds - Fifty Years of Burns Guitars 1952 - 2002' author Per Gjorde suggests the opposite - that Marvin was recording with Burns as early as the 'Dance On' recording (Page 80). It is certainly evident to those au fait with the early Shadows sound that there is a big change in tonality around this time and that while the Shads continued to appear with Fenders, only changing when 'Rise & Fall of Flingel Bunt' came out in 1964, they were using Burns in the studio and, in fact, recorded more tracks with them than they had with Fenders. G.

I've heard (read here) that the Badass can sit high even when screwed right down & a neck shim is sometimes needed to correct the action - I have no personal experience with this, but others may chime in. The Schaller 3D is the opposite and sits very low & flat, but comes (new) with a hard plastic seating to raise it should there not be enough adjustment. This one, I do have experience of & personally found it very decent. My only concern is that the shim is plastic - metal would have been better. It also sits comfortably beneath the heel of the hand, should that be your playing style. There's a lot of folk on here like the Babicz too. Good luck with the hunt. G.

When I started playing, The Shadows was really the only band to aim for. G.

You'll have trouble getting an exact replacement for the Yamaha soapobars, as they are a size unique to Yamaha. It's the length. You'll fine other soapbars the correct width, but they'll all be those few millimetres short, leaving about 2mm open space each end of the pickup cut-out. If that doesn't bother you, then fine. What I did was to swap out the (I think) single coil soapbars for the double-pole humbuckers off an RBX375 - and they were an exact fit too. When trying to find the magnetic field with a little screwdriver, I found that the tip was attracted on a single plane down the centre of the soapbar, hence I figured this was probably a single coil in a big shell. Luckily I found another Basschat member wanting to lose his humbuckers from his RBX375 & we made a swap - suits me Sir! G.

Can't help as far as value is concerned, but the Elpico heads were the be all & end all of PA amps back in the late 50's & early 60's. I remember working with a professional crooner (Bert Turner) in the early 60's who had an Elpico amp & two Wharfdale speakers - the epitome of luxury - the Rolls Royce of PAs at that time. To be realistic, I'd say they probably are akin to the Hofner Treble & Bass amps of the same time. G.

[quote name='Jack Cahalane' timestamp='1360409542' post='1969886'] Does it make your amp sound weak? [/quote] Not that I've noticed. G.

Yes, this happens in the rehearsal rooms we use - next door's stuff not only comes through the walls, but over the amps too. G.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Yamaha-BBN4-iii-Bass-Guitar-/200892034356?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item2ec6192d34 G.

FYI Out of Phase tends to cancel out the lower frequencies & you get a 'tinny' sound - my previous Westone Thunder III had this setting, although it was with 2 pickups instead of within one humbucker. I didn't find it all that useful & only ever tried it in the bedroom to hear what it sounded like. The Thunder III could do all those settings. G.

PM'd. G.

When I played in a Blues band a few years ago I had a Westone Thunder IIb fretless I had strung BEAD - sounded immense, also had a fretted Ibanez Roadstar strung the same. This was because the singer tended to be stuck in the key of D....... G.

[quote name='guido21' timestamp='1359979351' post='1962727'] Thanks again to everyone for all the helpful input. It looks like Yamaha receives the unanimous vote. I had read other comments about the Epi neck dive but didn't pay much attention to it. [i]I have a Yamaha BB415 with a John East Pre-amp and a Jazz-type neck, a Yamaha BBN5 with a P-type neck and a Yamaha TRB1005 Fretless. Guess which I'd recommend? The BBN4, actually!! Also, the Peavey Millenium BXP, Cirrus BXP & Grind are also good value-for-money starter basses.[/i] geoffbyrne is there a particular reason you recommend the BBN4? Does that have a P neck? I was watching 2 of them on fleabay and both went for peanuts... [/quote] My BBN5 has a much wider neck (at the nut) than my BB415 - the comparison between the P neck and the J neck has some substance here. Now, I've never played the 4 string versions of either of those models, but I suspect they are proportional to their number of stings. I would go for the N for precisely the reasons you suggest -- it has a P-type neck and they are cheap second-hand. Mine's a cracker, although I've swapped the single-coil standard pups out for the humbuckers found in the RBX375 model as I had one of those originally and preferred the humbucking tone. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/geoffbyrne/P1010063.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/geoffbyrne/P1010062.jpg[/IMG] G.

I have a Yamaha BB415 with a John East Pre-amp and a Jazz-type neck, a Yamaha BBN5 with a P-type neck and a Yamaha TRB1005 Fretless. Guess which I'd recommend? The BBN4, actually!! Also, the Peavey Millenium BXP, Cirrus BXP & Grind are also good value-for-money starter basses. G.

I'm sure there was an thread in Talkbass by Greenboy about this kind of thing which was very informative, but it was at least a couple of years ago and you'd need to do a fair amount of digging/searching to find it, but, if you know Greenboy, you'll know it's worth reading. G. Actually, here it is, and it was 6 years ago..... [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f15/boutique-3-way-115-215-budget-336504/"]http://www.talkbass....-budget-336504/[/url]

I play all 5ers (I have 3) and for me, it's not really about the Low B (I often use the low D, but rarely go below) - it's more about the technique of playing [i]across[/i] the fretboard rather than up & down it. It enables me to figure out a way to play a song & then, if the key needs changed, it's easy to simply move that pattern up or down the fretboard. String spacing on a 5 or 6 is always going to be narrower than on a 4 - you have to deal with it or go back to 4s. I have a fairly small hand and I don't have fingers like sausages so that helps. Certainly, more amplification would help you. As you probably know, each octave you drop demands twice the power to maintain the same volume, so the low B needs a fair bit of power and suitable drivers to cope. G.

I'm a wee bit older, & my guilty pleasure would be Elkie Brooks. Saw her live in Barnstaple a few years ago & she was exceptional. (I might get to pluck her later........ ) G.