uk_lefty

You're on to something there. There's such a mind boggling array of choice. For my big bass purchase a few years back I went in to Wunjo with a budget in mind and came out with a deal done for my number 1 bass. There were only 3 appropriate lefties, only two were realistic choices, so it left me to make a judgement call and form the bond. I'm happy with what I got. If only shops were open!!

7s were the original models, 9s and 10s are more expensive than 7s. 5s cheaper then 3s cheapest. Not sure why those numbers but at least they indicate something

Would you have paid 300 quid for it? Or is 129 about right? I love Ashdown generally for everything but always thought 300 quid pedals was stretching it. Be interested to hear your view.

I'd personally go for the P7. You get a J pup you don't have to use and an active pre amp that again, you don't have to use. But as said before the pre amp is the big plus on Sire's for me. The unfortunate thing is that the 5 series, the passives, all come with that lovely roasted maple neck that you don't get on the 7s.

P was already used. I think that's the only logical explanation!

That's absolutely awesome!!!!

Am sure this has been done a hundred times over but hey, I have no social life these days so just incase anyone hasn't heard about these or wants another opinion, here tis What's good... It packs in a serious amount of effects for bass, guitar and acoustic guitar. Very small footprint, lightweight, won't be carrying a metre long flight case any more. That's all good. Its quite easy to use when hooked up to my PC, and though I haven't tried properly, I've not worked out how to change settings once it's set up to play live. It's really easy to edit in the PC. I just chose a bass preset that was OK then started adding in things, swapping the order, trying out different compressors with the filter and seeing what works best. I guess once I find what I want I can easily set up effects under song names as I had on my previous multi. Quality of tones... Well, I'm comparing this to a Boss GT10B which I thought was incredible, though big. Through headphones I'm not hearing a massive upgrade on the Boss but I expect through FOH or recording is where the HX will really take over. Negatives... None, but some watch-outs The HX is very good but I expect to do a lot of tweaking to get close to what I had at my toe tips on the boss as presets. Some of the Boss presets really were very good, and this is where the HX is lacking in my opinion. Then again, it's so much easier to edit the HX and the voyage of discovery will be a great learning experience, so I'm not downbeat about that. I can create my super clean compressed amp sound and my driven more traditional amp sound and learn about all the stuff that lies in the middle. What surprises me is that, though never owning one, I have an idea in my head that the MuTron must be the best filter sound, so I go to that first on the HX. Well, for me it's actually not. So work through the effect types in order to find what works best for you. I love just dragging the order of effects around on the PC and then the endless options on tweaking each effect how you want it. I'm not bothered that there's much more guitar stuff, I'll play guitar through it too, but the guitar effects work really well on bass you just need to tweak them right or give them the right input. I can see me spending a lot of time on this. It was easy to do synthy 80s stuff on here too. Filter, octave, fuzz, compress, tweak to make it work. Might get rid of my EHX Bass Mono Synth now, I'm not sure I need both. Only thing I now want is an expression pedal so I can bring in some Wah. I do like a Wah pedal!

I think it's the darker wood colour

I play all my basses through a Blackstar BEAM. It's not a great bass amp, I'd prefer an Ampeg. Maybe a few barely used Ampegs will be coming up second hand soon...

Me too, something about it 👍

July to August this year... P5, roasted maple neck passive split coil P and the D5, passive roasted neck single coil P. Both look fantastic.

Just seen on Facebook. Looks like passive P basses and single coil pickup P models....

I bought a Jinwan neck, a lefty P bass neck with binding and pearl blocks. I ordered the black painted one to go for the 80s MIJ look and got glossed maple. That was one of a few issues... The neck is made for either a lefty or for right handers to use it upside down, there's dot markers on both edges! But also, the nut is in upside down! It fits perfectly to a P bass body I had built by Guitarandbassbuilds.com and when I eventually get time I will be building the bass with that neck attached. When it arrived with issues I emailed Jinwan and got a response within 1 day and a satisfactory resolution a day after that. Good customer service I think.

Yeah, I get you. Mine was heavy, but it was a 5 string so there was extra meat on it. I think the hardware is a personal choice thing. Some people complain about sharp bits on bridges, my hand only goes near the bridge when I'm changing strings, all down to the individual. I just wouldn't write off the hardware, it's good enough, not spectacular.

I pre ordered an HX Stomp from Andertons a few weeks back, orders due to arrive with them on the 29th. It arrived with me today at lunch time. Just need the kids to go to bed early tonight! I funded it almost in full by selling off my Boss GT10B which I loved, but found a pain to carry around, a Zoom guitar multi effects (G7.1ut) and a Zoom 506 ii acoustic guitar pedal. Figured I'd get everything those pedals do and more out of an HX Stomp, except a bass Wah. So the plan years back was to get rid of my pedal board and have a decent multi. In the time I've not had an effects set up for bass I've been thinking I could loop a bass Wah and synth pedal in with my HX Stomp and I'd need a board and power supply and....... I've read the manual today and I've read chunks of the long Helix thread on here, but any tips on starting points other than downloading latest softwares of course, very gratefully received!

I had a vintage V7, so it had the BBOT Bridge which was just never an issue for me at all. The more modern bridges look more solid. The tuners feel cheap but I never had a problem with it slipping out of tune and I gigged in a tin shed in summer and at an ice rink in winter, no problems! While they could have been better I saw absolutely no reason to change, the bass performed perfectly with no issues from either. I've never understood "neck dive" being a problem so for me lightweight tuners etc are a luxury and not a necessity whereas other people would say the opposite. I saw Marcus Miller at a Sire plugging event and he was asked about the different models. He prefers the V7 and his view on the V9 etc was, not a direct quote but words to the effect, fancy wood tops and so on are for you to enjoy looking at and inspire you to pick up your bass but they are not making a difference to the sound. And that's from a man who is one of the top living bassists AND who makes money out of people buying Sire basses with his name on them!

I had a Gator board that was heavy as hell, made of ply and I velcro'd a Caline power supply underneath, since sold on to guitarist. Other guitarist is a gear snob, but he uses a Donner pedal board. Looks like the pedal train type things but it's dirt cheap on Amazon and comes with a nice bag.

I can only speak for myself but I regretted selling mine. I thought it was a "cheap" way to see if I liked features not usually available on lefty basses before I invested in a more expensive instrument. In actual fact if you gig regularly and you need something rock solid and inexpensive I don't think you can beat a Sire. If only the headstock wasn't so ugly I think people could love them like they do other brands (joking, you don't look at the headstock when you're tickling the dusty end). I'd had some active basses before, two and three band, and could never get my head around them. This may make me sound like an idiot. However the Sire active system was just intuitive to me, and I have not really grasped what they mean by sweep-able mids or care what Hz I'm tweaking, but for me it was easy to get that bass where I wanted it sound wise. As easy as my 3 band Stingray which is bass, mid, treble. The second hand value of the Sires is poor because they're so cheap and easily available new, better still on B stock. I felt like I was giving mine away, and I really regret it, because now I don't have a fretted 5 string and the best fretted 5 strings for me are the Sire V7 or M series! I'd say if you're curious and you have the cash get a second hand one for peanuts and you'll see what the fuss is about. Is it as "good" as my MIJ Fender? No, but not far off. Is it more tonally flexible? Yes. Would I be happier leaving it on a stand at a break in a gig than my MIJ Fender? YES.

Awesome!! Glad you got hold of it at long last. £600 sounds like a good deal, from what you described just from a bass collector point of view, but fulfilling the long held dream is priceless!

What made you lust so much after this bass, I want to hear the story! 😊

True. Its just one of the things I would look out for though. The guy who just bought a multi effect off me was completely sound, but he originally offered PayPal and sending his own courier, which is a way some scams are done. He was genuinely just trying to reduce cost and have some control. It's a minefield for both sides. In a separate post I've also pointed out people using English as a second language are always buying furniture and baby stuff I sell on local Facebook groups, so I'm not prejudicing against anyone without perfect English, but again it's something to watch out for. It's almost like trying to fill a bingo card!

Tell tale signs of a scammer for me: User only joined Facebook this year. Facebook has been around 15 years or so, if you've only just joined now and you're looking to buy gear... Nah. Bad English or impolite/ too eager to close a deal before an agreement is reached "send it me, yeah bro", or when told of postage charges "I only have *cost of item*" in which case I suggest you spend it on food and shelter and not frivolous items like effects pedals. Unreasonable expectations: "are you near London? What's your nearest train station I'll meet you there". Well, your train ticket to St Albans will cost more than the 4 quid I want for postage so not sure what your game is. Reads like a translation of a Dickens novel: "I'm asking in behalf of my esteemed cousin who is currently taken sick to his chamber and unable to peruse the item. He definitely wishes for it to be acquired. Please furnish me with your PayPal and address and I will send a courier forthwith to collect. From *miscellaneous non English sounding name*. Send photos to John Frank Churchill at Gmail. Com (or other incredibly English sounding name for authenticity) " How I recently got through this: Buyer wants to send his own courier and pay by PayPal. I refused the" own courier" unless he sends bank transfer, avoids the scam of recovering money via PayPal saying items not received. Discussion back and forth saying there's a lot of dodgy stuff going on at the minute, apologies for being over cautious but have been seeing a lot of attempted scams recently. Agreed PayPal goods and services with me posting by Parcelforce. A bit of faith shown on both sides after some discussion. Sent a photo of the item in its packing, a photo of it wrapped up with his name and address on the box, then a photo of the full Parcelforce receipt so he can see a parcel weighing 5kg was sent from my local post office to his address and he has the tracking number. Then Parcelforce's tracking system went haywire and couldn't trace the parcel which led to some fraught questions from the buyer!! He also saw I had missed taking down one of the Facebook ads after we agreed the sale, so I did as soon as he pointed it out. Luckily it arrived with him on time and he's chuffed to bits with it.

J fit is good, assuming either my Entwistle pups are a mm wider than most or the rout was just a little off. It's no biggy.

So I've had some time to progress things. Today I have been sanding and filing the body rout because it was about 1.5mm too narrow to take the "ears" for the P pickups. The sanding isn't so neat, but it will do. I can squeeze the pickup in so I'll sand a bit more to make it comfortable and not have friction when changing the pup height. Later I'll experiment with the stain by starting with the control panel cover thing.

I started off using it to just chop up a long rehearsal recorded on a Zoom handheld in to songs and get rid of chat between songs and false starts, save as mp3 and host on Dropbox. Then I started to use it to record off the USB output from a Blackstar ID Core BEAM (very handy for home recording), then for vocals got a USB mixer and started to play around with adding track upon track. Here's something that took me about 20mins using that kit: Listen to Take on Me by clive mustang on #SoundCloud https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/6Y2bd There's no drum or vocal on it. I was purely trying to prove a point that to do an 80s cover without keyboards is possible, so it's just intro, verse 1 and 1st chorus with a mess up over how long or short that chorus should be! Am sure Audacity could do more but just for taking the input and recording track over track it's doing the job.