uk_lefty

I know lots of people will love them and for them it works... I want one. I want to love it but I don't think it would ever work for me. I've played the German double buck back in 2006ish and recently a GPS double buck and a second hand German one. I found that either I don't understand the EQ options or the sound is far more bland than I anticipated, I'm not sure what it's own character is if that makes sense? Also I found the neck really thick. I like a thick neck, don't get me wrong, but this is something else. Overall I was expecting a big voice from it, a powerful pickup sound akin to a Stingray. I A/B'd one against a Stingray in December, keen to spend less on the Warwick and get the Warwick growl but I just couldn't get a good punchy tone from it. The Stingray just blew it away so that's what I bought. Maybe that's down to me finding the Stingray EQ far more intuitive. Tell me I'm wrong, I probably am because I didn't fully dig in. But you will make me think "if I just bought my own from new and spent just enough time..." So for alternatives I would suggest a non-USA Stingray. Or a jazz. Or a Sire M series. Or an Ibanez. You'll get lots of choice at lots of price ranges. And don't be afraid to buy second hand. A second hand guitar that's never been used beyond bedroom noodling will be in excellent condition and save you a packet that you can spend on effects and other spanky toys to enjoy.

What if spotty Herbert the Saturday boy tells you the £2200 stingray is £900 confusing it with the Sterling Ray? What do they honour at the till? I used to work on the basis "if you have to ask the price you can't afford it". Seems that's gone out the window. Could you spend an afternoon in there going round every bass saying "how much is that one?.... And this one? And this one? How much was that four string again... No the black one, the other black one...?" How long before the sales assistant explodes?

I am the polar opposite of an expert but I'm pretty sure you'd be able to cheaply get someone to either make you a cable for it with an ordinary jack at the other end of you maybe able to find an adaptor somewhere...

Good point.

What I don't understand, and there may be good reason for it... Hypothetical scenario to illustrate my point: Retailer stocks a bass, say a jazz, puts it on sale in June 2017 for £600. It doesn't sell. It's still there in March 2018 but the currency changes, costs go up. A new one in stock is now £650. The one stocked in June now goes up by £50 too. Why?

Great. You've now made me right handed in what is clearly a left handed bass shop!!! I just can't escape this wrong handedness! Incidentally what software or app did you use to do that? I've got a load of old holiday selfies that are mirrored and I need to re-mirror them so they're the right way round. Ta

Reflection of something on the chrome. It's absolutely fine for me...

Well that's a pleasant surprise... I registered the warranty for the bass on Weds night. Today I received a 25ft braided Ernie ball instrument cable from strings n things. Completely unexpected but brilliant!!

Took it to its first band practice last night. Wow. I know a lot of people love the 2 EQ version but I really like the mid bump I can bring in on the 3 EQ. I read elsewhere that keeping the mid flat, maxing the bass and giving a slight treble boost gets v close to the 2 EQ sound... whether true or not is irrelevant it gives a great tone! I can vary the tones but always get something that cuts through and sits nicely with two guitars. I love the neck too, I don't know of I've got rolled fingerboard edges because I don't really know what that means but it's just so easy to play. I'm finding the fingerboard very flat with the frets looking smaller than I was used to on my jazz. I like the rosewood board too, I think a maple board with the ash body and the huge pickup might be a bit too much, I need to calm the highs on this quite a bit as is, and my Sire is ash/ maple and can sound brittle in the highs. Overall I'm blown away by this. If I was buying a "recording bass" for studio work (I don't do any) or just playing at home I'd have got a new USA Fender jazz, but for playing 80's covers at functions I just wanted the big, round punchy sound from a bass I know will only ever sound excellent. I'm a happy bunny. You can see where the extra money goes. I didn't play it but I picked up a bottom of the range SUB on a shop months back and found it to have some sharp fret ends, scraggly bits of pickguard not tidied after cutting and generally plain looking neck wood. I don't think it would have felt anywhere near as nice to play. However if my Stingray love in continues to the point where I can't use anything else I may be buying a SUB as a backup and/ or to de-fret. Top marks again to Wunjos, it's nice when you feel that someone genuinely appreciates your custom when spending new USA Stingray money, and they accepted my MIM Jazz in trade "warts and all" as it was a well used gigging bass.

Did see one in a charity shop recently. My singer was contemplating it.

This has killed, cremated and scattered the ashes of my keytar idea. And I'm ok with that. Big red, you did look cool back then! Thanks to you all!

Having been born in the early 80's I grew up thinking long hair and keyboards were cool. They were when I was a kid. Now I hate keyboardists and can't grow long hair anyhows, but I am drawn to the keytar. I love 80's music of most types and would love a keytar to add to the visual effect of nothing more for my covers band. Question is this... I have read loads about midi controls and all this stuff I just don't understand. Is it not just something I can plug in and play? Does anyone play them live here and how does that go? Or if you saw someone playing a keytar live would you shake your head in pity and just walk away? Thank you

It explains why I didn't laugh... And why it felt like a student rip off of Ricky Gervais, much like the rest of James Corden's career

I'm not sure they're that bright

My wife caught that bit and agreed Ricky Gervais must have written it for him.

Hated: Hohner PJ. bought off eBay for next to nothing with a hard case. It was just a rubbish bass but think I made profit. I also got a Brice six string off Rondo music, that was completely characterless and a big heavy lump of woods that probably shouldn't be used in serious instrument making. I hold out hope that their SX brand is infinitely better. Not hated but didn't get on with a Warwick Steamer LX. I wish I had it now just to check it wasn't my lack of technique at the time. Also sold recently my Hohner B2A "cricket bat". I had the version with active EMG's and it sounded amazing, and had the sexiest of 80's vinyl semi hard cases that zipped up! Now my band are playing more and more 80's tracks I kinda wish the string spacing on that bass had been wider and I'd still have it. It was just too narrow for me, much prefer fender string spacing. Had I not recently fallen in love with and taken home a Stingray I'd probably be having a Status built to give me that headless fix.

Watched last night... Didn't think it was a deliberate send up but then again they did do a "comedy" car insurance ad or something a while back. There was a lot of David Brent in the singer, always searching to say something profound and coming out with bullocks. The drummer has massive sibling envy, talking in disbelief that Elton John's manager dropped him when the band split but kept on the singer... D'uhhhh!!! If it was a comedy it wasn't that funny and it mixed in too much of the real "tragedy" with their sister passing. But if it was a documentary they should have made more of the record label leaving them with nowt within days of it ending. The gig bit was very odd, and the whole set up with the session music's who weren't washed up 80's session players but the dad's of some of the forty plus year old women who still s team for the Goss brothers. All round odd.

I literally got plopped on. The in laws have an old cat who can be quite affectionate. He was curled up iny lap and when he get up to leave he left behind a nugget. On the music front we played 15th December and got asked if we were available for NYE. Guitarist is away so didn't get to discuss further sadly. Can't believe the venue was leaving it so late, they must have been plopped on.

Like I tell my staff, don't bring me a problem without a proposed solution!

Nope. Just bought a new USA three band. Big, full bottom end. Loads of punch and clarity. Particularly enjoy boasting the mids with the bass and treble flat. I played a Ray34 on a shop a few yrs back and didn't see/ hear anything distinctive about it, but the real thing is excellent IMO.

One of the reasons I bought my Sire was to see how I'd get on with active EQ. I had 2 band active basses in the past and always preferred them passive. With the Sire I spent a long time playing it straight through to the amp with the amp EQ off and no EQ from pedals. However, I tended to just have a tad of bass boost, a tad of treble boost and leave both the mid knobs flat. I'm looking for advice on how you guys get something from these mid knobs? I've tweaked around a lot and not found a sound I like, but then again I don't know well enough how they interact with each other and with the bass and treble EQ. Any tips gratefully received.

I know everyone wants a Helix but they're very expensive, so here's my thoughts on a pedal released in 2008 that you can find second hand. My last multi FX was bought in 2000 so I know tech has moved on. I took a punt on a Boss GT10B sold for a great price on this forum. For a multi FX idiot like me it's a bit overwhelming the sheer amount of stuff this can do in terms of programming and assigning pedals to do different tasks. However, it's well set out and there's Windows based software that can help. Also the 159 page manual (that doesn't include the four page list of presets) is very easy to follow. So, on reading reviews I head "the presets are unusable". That's not true. There are unusable presets, yes, but there are many EQ and amp SIM effects that are very useable. I played a five string jazz for some funky stuff at the opening of an ice rink using the "level 24 slap" preset, great. I played fretless on a gig the other night and used some "British pop fretless" preset and it was great. With each preset you can bring in two extra effects, e.g. add drive and or chorus by pressing the CTRL1 and CTRL2 pedals and also use the expression pedal as either a volume or wah. Very handy. You can have two parallel effects chains that you can switch between or blend. You can put the effects in any order in the chain. There's a lot going on and the display makes seeing what is happening where very easy. I've still not dedicated the full amount of time I need to yet but I feel comfortable with the unit. I've already programmed the tuner how I want it, so I have the tuner come on by tapping the pedal that denotes which patch I'm on for a second time and I get bypassed tuner, then I mute with the expression pedal. But you can programme the tuner in different ways if you don't think that's logical for you. Impressive that they have put in that kind of thought. What I need to learn next is creating my own effects. There's a few ways to do this: edit a preset, use "ez tone", create from scratch without ez tone, or download from an online resource. People say the synth effects are unusable. I agree. I've never had a pedal with a decent bass synth sound, to my liking anyway. The pedal is BIG. Very BIG. But it's a lot of tech in one place. It can do so much more than I will ever need but it's good to know that the options are there. It can do crazy stuff like make your single coil bass sound like a Stingray etc. Allegedly but I've never got in to it that deeply. Overall if you can't afford a Helix and you're not sold on the Zoom then these are an excellent option. I'm glad I got this over the ME250B. Like most of these things though the more time you put in to learning what it can do the more you will get from it. The tech may be ten years old but 10yrs old and Windows based is pretty much where I stopped learning about tech myself so it has a very familiar feel to it.

I guess to a certain generation their parents were teens when "I should be so lucky came out" and they were growing up through "can't get you out of my head" so legend... Not to the jazz/ rock/ funk crowd here but to many, many people probably. I saw Danni mime for twenty odd mins back in 2002. She was very, very unconvincing. I'm sure she'd be decent company over a cup of coffee, or even in a lapdancing bar if you believe tabloid stories from when she was a judge on X Factor, but I wouldn't watch a "performance" of hers if it was happening in my garden.