molan

I've played quite a few different Foderas, Monarch / Emperor / Imperial & 4-5 different NYC's (although I think this thread is really targeted at the custom basses rather than the 'production' NYC line). I currently own an '86 Monarch 4 which is an '83 & vaguely similar to the original Wooten in that it has the slimmer body, no rear cutaway, original EMG pickups, HAZ pre-amp, wooden butterfly etc. It is, for me, simply the best bass I've ever played. Sounds great, pretty flexible tonal options from the HAZ/EMG PJ setup, lovely neck, nicely worn in and ultra comfortable. Every Fodera I've played has been really nice and the build quality is only matched by Alembic (in my exprience) but I consistantly find Alembics harder to get on with - just that old 'horses for courses' stuff again.

[quote name='steve-soar' timestamp='1319666471' post='1417151'] The New York City bass that is manufactured in Japan? My head hurts. [/quote] It's complicated, lol. All materials come from Brooklyn - woods are selected from the Fodera stockpile & shipped to Japan for carving and routing etc. The guys that do the work were trained in the Fodera shop and Joey Lauricella & Jason DeSalvo (two of the three Fodera partners) visit regularly to help on quality control stuff. The bodies & necks are then shipped back to USA for assembly & finishing by the same guys that make all the customs. I really can't see how this saves them a bean in production costs as Japanese labour must be as expensive as New York! All I can say is that the newer NYC's Ive seen have all been, as PT puts it, "flawless", easily a match for any NYC Sadowsky I've owned.

[quote name='Platypus' timestamp='1319666126' post='1417145'] Expect the PT style and tone will come across regardless of the bass he's using at the time... [/quote] I guess that's true of lots of pro players. I must admit that I've heard Paul on one of his old J's, my '63P and then a brand new Fodera Monarch and there was quite a difference in tone between each - however this was at a distance of about 3 feet and I was the only other person in the room so a bit different from a monster PA at a Jamiroquai gig, lol.

Just spotted an article in MiPro that talks about Paul Turner signing up with Fodera NYC via a partnership with BassGear [url="http://www.mi-pro.co.uk/news/read/bass-gear-teams-up-with-jamiroquai-bassist/015892"]http://www.mi-pro.co...-bassist/015892[/url] Looks like a cracking bass and I've done some searching around and found that he's been using it live with Jamiroquai on a couple of gigs already. In the past I've only ever seen him with a lovely vintagey Alleva Coppolo and a few of his old vintage Fenders so this is a bit of a departure for him. I've had the pleasure of meeting Paul and he really knows his basses, definitely the most knowledgeable player I've ever come across and he has an amazing 'ear' for tiny little subtle differences between individual basses, body and fingerboard wood types, pickup position, pickup age, string types etc. Really interesting that he's chosen to go with Fodera as a new gigging bass, would love to see/hear what it sounds like live

Uh oh - Stanley has just pulled out the Alembic! Just love his tone - no-one sounds like him on electric bass

Stanley, Lenny White, Watne Shorter, Michel Petrucciani Show is called Blue Note, probably repeated later in the week as well

[quote name='tinyd' timestamp='1319030404' post='1409076'] Nipple to the Bottle by Grace Jones has one of the simplest but funkiest basslines ever. Robbie Shakespeare isn't just a great reggae bass player... [/quote] This is my fave line from that era of Grace J & Robbie S http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHTkrXDeqSk

This is fun to groove along to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpr9qvuodVA

Just thought I'd check if anyone is going to this? I'll definitely be there, really looking forward to seeing some of Jens' creations! I've seen him talk before (with Joey Lauricella, Jimmy Coppolo and Mike Tobias) and he was really good at explaining his design ethics and build methods etc.

I've always found that courier prices go through the roof if you want to go direct and insure for over £1,000. I always use Interparcel at the full £1,000 limit and hope nothing happens. Never had a problem with them when sending overseas and they are great at tracking parcels down if they get bogged down somewhere in transit.

Here's a great little slice of early '80's funk from Firefly - you can hear lots of other people's influences in here but it really keeps a funky groove going throughout the full 7 minutes of the 12" version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCy5R-SE9Cw

I've also owned both and, when comparing the 'higher end' models, much prefer Spectors. As others have said the main real comparison model from Warwick is the Streamer and I find the newer ones a little 'antiseptic' sounding. I've owned a couple of Spector 5 strings and love the narrower string spacing - really worked for me as a bit of a 5 string newbie as I found the neck width on 19mm spaced bridges a bit too much to handle. I had one particular 5'er that wasn't the most exciting bass when played at home practice levels but it really came to life when gigging, maybe the best sounding bass (from my player's position) I've ever played live. Conversely I had another that sounded lovely at home but was simply too heavy, for me anyway, to gig with In general terms I think a lot of US Spectors sound very similar (because most of them have the same body woods). Not a huge tonal variation but, if you like that tone, then they sound great! My favourite Spectors have all been US models. I found the Euros to be good but just didn't feel as nice to play as the US ones. Obviously there's a big premium on the US basses which isn't really repaid in direct correlation to quality but I could afford the US ones so didn't really care too much about how much they were. I had an '86 Streamer for a while which sounded nice but had one of those open grained wenge necks which I never got on with. Traded it for a Kubicki with a pencil thin neck which I much preferred. As far as Warwicks are concerned I definitely think this is a brand that you really need to 'try before you buy' as I've gound different ones to sound & feel quite different.

[quote name='Beedster' timestamp='1318097894' post='1398127'] Well mate, all I can say is that the only site I currently have any problem with is BC, and the problem has only been since the 'upgrade'. [/quote] Totally agree - I've been running a side by side test of BC vs Talkbass & I can read a whole thread on TB whilst one on BC is waiting to load. I've tried running three concurrent browsers on BC and that just about allows me to move around with the kind of speed I used to have before the 'upgrade'. The only other site I can think of that runs as slow as BC now does is the main Sky programming portal - however this is the same site that is currently running a 'programmes to watch out for so you never miss them' article which leads with England vs Montenegro which was aired yesterday. . . I was told by someone at Sky that the reason there site is so always so slow is simply that it was built on a crappy platform but, having gone to huge expense to move it to this platform, it was going to cost too much to move it again and/or fix it so they just decided to 'live with it' My iPhone access is worse than any other site I've ever used so this really cannot be a user interface problem as even graphic and image heavy sites load faster than mostly text pages on BC.

I spent about an hour with one of these and pair of different MB cabs today & was seriously impressed I mostly used the matching Randy J 1x10 cab but also had a blast through an MB 4x10 as well. First thing to say, partially in response to the comment above, it was damn loud for a 300w head into an 8 ohm cab. With the 1x15 it was easily loud enough for any gig I might want to use it on, with the 4x10 it was making the walls & ceiling shake and I was only half way up on both pre & master gain! Very clean sounding but with a great growl when used with the right bass. I was lucky enough to be using a Fodera Monarch Deluxe with Seymour Duncan dual coils which has a great growly sound down around first 3-5 frets anyway. Played through the RJ & the 1x15 I could get virtually my 'perfect' rock bass tone with a little bass bass boost, a touch of compression and the 'colour' control at about 9 o'clock. The colour control was much nicer to use than my previous experience with MB contour controls but I didn't have time to A/B with another MB head to see if this was just a bit of bias as I was enjoying the RJ so much, lol. The passive tone controls were great as well - damn near impossible to get a bad sound from them, just nice gentle variations which sounded very 'musical'. Definitely want to try this baby rig up against my current 'reference' Aguilar rig & with some of my own basses

Speed is the biggest issue for me as well and I'm on a fast connection and have tried on two different laptops and a big quad core mac. The real killer is iPhone - massive latency problem that I've never seen in all the time I've had an iPhone. I'm accessing via fast wireless as well. There's a huge time lag between clicking on a letter and then waiting for it to appear. Makes the site pretty much unusable I you're a regular iPhone poster.

A guitarist friend of mine has one of the Satriani Signature chrome Ibanez guitars - looks great on stage There's a whole site dedicated to tracking down every one of them scattered around the world, lol: [url="http://www.js10th.com/"]http://www.js10th.com/[/url] [url="http://www.ibanezregister.com/images/images-js/js10th/Ibanez-JS10.jpg"]Ibanez-JS10.jpg[/url]

<p>[quote name='molan' timestamp='1317674266' post='1393266']&lt;p&gt;Back home and on a pretty fast connection running a big quad core iMac &amp;amp; Safari and the site is running so slow for me that I'm using TalkBass in the background and able to get through approx 2 new threads there before each page loads here &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;div id=&quot;myEventWatcherDiv&quot; style=&quot;display:none;&quot;&gt; &lt;/div&gt; [/quote]</p> <p> </p> <p>Also - what's with all the strange quote type stuff appearing around anything I write?</p> <div id="myEventWatcherDiv" style="display:none;"> </div>

<p>Back home and on a pretty fast connection running a big quad core iMac &amp; Safari and the site is running so slow for me that I'm using TalkBass in the background and able to get through approx 2 new threads there before each page loads here </p> <p> </p> <div id="myEventWatcherDiv" style="display:none;"> </div>

On holiday in Greece and have had some issues accessing via mobile. There's a major time delay after typing each letter - you have to type a word and then wait a few seconds for it to appear on the screen. It's almost become a competition trying to see how many words I can type before they all appear I also have to click each thread twice before the link works. It's not a double-click, just two separate clicks. I'm on an iPhone 4 with fast wireless connection. Not having this issue with any other sites such as Facebook or Talkbass etc.

I agree about going to TalkBass many more Ww owners there