peteb

Must be an 83AVRI, i.e. an accurate reissue of a 1983 Fender

My five string is bang on 10lbs, the four is just over 9.5lbs. To be fair, that's not a problem for me and probably not for Travis (who is a big lad). I did once have a Fender jazz that was over 12lbs, which was a bit much and got moved on.

I think what you both are saying is that pros generally know what they want and go for that. I know a lot of pros and the only one that is anything like a collector (and he would deny that he is a collector) is the most successful. I'm sure that he would say that they are tools to do a job, just he has the money and opportunity to pick up guitars when he's on tour that you don't always see in the UK.

Not going to argue with that. As I said, it's all about your attitude to musical instruments, being a musician, gigging, etc.

It's all about attitude. Are you a collector, a hobbyist or a player? All are fine, but make a choice...

I would prefer the word 'professional' (or even 'semi professional')! Listen, I've just bought a Stingray that I have always fancied from a mate. The truth is that I don't really need it and may or may not gig it, but I have no intention to sell. I've always liked stingrays (even though I tend not to gig them and have sold them on in the past) and I always thought that his was a particularly nice one. Now I can afford to keep it and will play around the house and gig occasionally when the opportunity arises. However, I have plenty of other basses that I could use instead. My attitude has always been if you you like cars, then buy the best one that you can afford. But FFS use it regularly or it's just taking up room on your drive!

Absolutely! I always buy secondhand.

At that price point (about £2k) these days, there is a lot of choice for jazz type basses and most of them are pretty good.

That’s nonsense, people are more than welcome to use their hard earned money in whatever way that makes them happy. I am just speaking subjectively as someone who has gigged for more than forty years at a reasonable standard. I don’t want to be too dogmatic about this, we’ve all got a sentimental attachment to various musical instruments. All that I am saying is that my opinion as a long term gigging musician is that you primarily look at basses as tools to do a job!

The Xotic just sounds like a very nice active Fender, nothing more or nothing less! The thread has just started to explore interesting tangents and come up with some interesting contributions, just as you would hope that any normal conversation would.

I don't think so. If people enjoy having a top bass and just playing it around the house then good for them, but if you are a gigging musician then it just seems an unnecessary indulgence. Are you really treasuring it if you prefer to gig a cheaper Yamaha? I used to have a Ken Smith, one of the cheaper original Burner series. It was a lovely bass, still one of my favourites of all the basses that I have owned. However, I stopped gigging it as it couldn’t really handle the abuse that I was giving it every gig. Then I needed a decent Precision for a blues gig, so I traded the KS in for an Fender AVRI that served me well for several years, before that got sold to get the P bass that I have now. The Central Europe thing is just something that I intend to do, but it could be a week in the Bahamas or even just reducing the mortgage. There is more to life than just owning nice bases...

To me, the Xotic just has got a classic jazz bass tone. The clip you have there is more of an exaggerated Jaco tone , I tend to favour the neck pickup more (edit to say that I originally just listened to the first 20 seconds of the clip). Showing a clip of Carmine Rojas or Jorgen Carlsson would probably sound better to Dave. I reckon that the nicest sounding passive jazz that I have played was a s/h US Lakland that was in Bass Direct a couple of years ago. I was very much tempted, but I had just bought a really nice Fender Am std jazz a few months before, which had in turn replaced a perfectly good CIJ Fender jazz.

Not for me! The bass I play at home tends to be the one with the oldest strings. I would never buy an expensive bass that I wasn’t prepared to gig. My question for you is that if you have a Ken Smith, which I believe that you said you had, then why keep it if you prefer to gig a much cheaper Yamaha? That’s a lot of money sitting around there, so if you’re not using it then why not move it on and find a high end bass that you will bond with and use. Or alternatively, go and travel round central Europe for a few weeks (a personal one there) or whatever??

The bass player in the other band of a singer and drummer that I play with, has got an Alembic. A really beautiful bass. He saw it secondhand about 20 years ago and paid (I think) about £3k for it. He says that is the best bass that he has ever played and has used it on every gig he's done ever since (and he used to regularly play the WMC circuit, so that’s a lot of gigs). I would say that he got a bargain! Funnily enough, I was watching him with a drummer that I was playing with at the time and he thought that the Xotic sounded better.

If you do go and buy an Alembic, then I hope that you take it out of the house and gig it...!

Oh, the bass player in Govt Mule, Carmine Rojas (ex Joe Bonamassa, Bowie, John Waite, etc) and a load of Nashville session guys. I was thinking once of buying an Alembic (about 25 years ago). I went down to the old Bass Centre in Wapping to try one and as soon as I picked it up, I knew straight away that it wasn't for me. Incredibly well made bass and I'm sure that it would have sounded great, but the neck just wasn't for me! I bought a Warwick Streamer LX (that I still have) instead.

Are you telling me that your Squire CV Jazz is objectively a better bass than my Xotic Jazz? Seriously, I very much doubt it! That’s not to say that your Squire is a bad bass, far from it. Diminishing returns start to kick in here and I’m guessing that I probably paid twice as much as you, but that’s not to say that the Xotic is twice the bass that your Squire is. Equally, I can’t see that a £6k Sadowsky (as good as I’m sure that it is) is noticeably better than my £2.5k (new, not what I paid for it) Xotic. If you found a Ken Smith that was difficult to play, then someone has made a complete mess of setting it up!

Money doesn’t necessarily equal quality and sometimes you are just paying for a name. I have played and owned some great Fenders and some bloody awful ones. Every American Lakland that I have ever played has been superb, but I’ve never played a Skyline that has been above mediocre.

It's just a brand name. If it was the grammar or punctuation that you were getting wrong, then he might have a point 🙂 edited (ironically) for grammar!

Who cares? Never owned one, probably never will...!

Exactly, that's the point. You get the bass that you can find / afford and you take it out whenever you gig (alright, you might use different basses for different gigs). There's a reason why I wouldn't get a YOB Fender or a Fodera (probably the best bass I have ever played), even though I could afford it if I really wanted one. If you have to worry about leaving it in a corner of a pub, or the loss of value every time it gets a ding, then why get it in the first place. But I will quite happily take a £2k bass to a gig.

I am sure that you can put together a parts bass that will be very decent and perfectly gigable, but will it be as good as a Sadowsky, Lakland, or in my case, an Xotic??

Have you really found many cheapo Yamahas or Squiers that were that good? I know that some early Squiers or Tokai basses were reckoned to be better than some of the new Fenders at the time (which in the 80s wasn’t saying much), but I’ve yet to find any that were anything special – gigable, maybe if you swapped out the pickups, but not great by any means. My go-to bass is the one I paid the most money for, which was why I paid so much for it (secondhand of course). It’s got plenty of dings now, but who gives a f**k. It plays / sounds great and the reason that I bought it was to do gigs, not sit in the corner of a room…

The new and the old Markbass stuff are very much different beasts. I've got the LM3 and had a couple of great MB combos (103 & 102) - all Italian produced, non Class D. You run your mpulse pretty much the same as I do mine, but I'm using a 4 ohm cab (maybe the master on my amp creeps up to 1 o'clock at most places). I also use the semi-para EQ all the time.

It's not the weight of the amp, so much as how the power section works and how it reacts every time you play a note. The old Markbass amps didn’t use a Class D power module and work well in a mix (keys and everything). I’ve got an old Italian LM3 and it is certainly the loudest amp that I own (far louder that the old D800). I prefer the sound of the Mesa & the Handbox, but the MB is great at what it does and just works. I’m sure that the TT800 will sound just as good as the mpulse on its own in a small room, but will it punch through a mix and fill out the sound as well?? I don’t see how it is any different in that respect to my old D800, which sounded great on its own. If you do decide to go down that route and move the mpulse on, then give me a shout. I have often wished that I had the extra headroom of the 600w mpulse, compared to the 360w version that I’ve got.