NickA

Wals and alembics are basically plywood. Just very carefully made plywood, with a fat bit of tonewood in the middle.😂

I've been getting together with a few friends just to play through some tunes. Sax, trumpet, keys, bass. Really interesting playing without a drummer as we have to keep in time without a beat. We four are so much better at open jams now.

Just reading the spec sheet on gear4music, where islt says the fingerboard is "laminated poplar" which I guess means plywood. The pine in these basses is reportedly quite soft as ( similar thread on Facebook ) they're said to dent rather easily .. But yes, at school I made a chopping board from "piranha pine" that was tough as £_&&. You'd need a chisel to dent the Brazillian mahogany core of my old Wal and the Shedua Warwick is pretty tough too. My solid padauk bass has marked a bit though. The issue with soft woods isn't so much dentability as the lack of sustain and high frequency transmission. May not be linearly related.

I bought a string winder. It even connects to an electric drill. Still an awful faff as the winder falls off the tuners too easily. Two people ( one to hold bass one to operate winder) might help.

To be fair they winge about fancy basses too. The warwick I bought from here a few years ago came beautifully setup, with an action so low I couldn't play it 😂. Job 1, jack all the strings up. Does anyone pull a bass out it's box and expect it to be perfect for them straight away? Whatever your bass, it's always worth going over the setup now and then. I reset the string heights, pickup heights and neck relief on my much used fretless Wal this week. New bass! Not sure why, as I doubt things drift much, maybe my playing style changed or the wood changed shape in the winter damp.....well worth it tho. Still setup isn't everything and a pine body and poplar board are never going to feel or sound like mahogany and ebony.

It's the best kind of practice 👍

I guess the p bass is pretty easy to replicate. The endless "has anyone cloned a Wal" threads would suggest some basses are a bit harder!

Especially if you copy something that already works. And once you ditch the endangered tropical hard woods, multi-layer laminations and hand soldered electronics it can evidently be very cheap to do. Over several years I converted my cheap bass into something that I hoped would be somewhere between a Wal and a Warwick, with elements of jazz bass. Added all those fancifications. Cost an f'ing fortune. Doesn't sound like any of those things either. 😂

I could have a hundred of those for my cheapest bass! It's like hifi, every tiny improvement doubles the cost ....and even then most people won't hear the difference.

I was thinking slave labour. The materials are awesomely cheap too. Pine body and "poplar laminate" ( aka plywood) fingerboard. Bet it's still better than my £90, 1970s grant jazz was tho.

Back in around 1980 the cheapest playable twin pickup bass I could find was a rather awful jazz copy ( blockwood body and puny pickups that picked up police radio). Maybe the 40W valve combo it came with was included ..not sure. Anyway, £90 ( I wanted a fender jazz, but they were £440) But now, in this modern age, see here: gear4music "Chicago" ( with a gig bag, cable, strap and a plectrum). https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Chicago-Fretless-Bass-Guitar-by-Gear4music-Natural/1V6V?_gl=1*1koznj7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTg0MDYzOTIyOS4xNzM5NDg5MDk2*_ga_0WF1R5QW3K*MTczOTQ4OTA5NS4xLjEuMTczOTQ4OTExMy4wLjAuMjY0NTQwNDU. £130!!!! ....and thats not their cheapest model. How can it be so cheap? Can anything so cheap be playable.

My 4/4 goes in my Skoda Citigo. In fact I took the Citigo to a bass bash with: double bass, pjb flightcase & pb300, 2x Wals and a Warwick. Had to leave my bitsa fretless jazz at home tho.