JapanAxe

And that’s exactly why my maple-board Precision was my choice for last Saturday’s theatre gig. The lighting changes drastically throughout the set and I need to be playing the notes that I mean to play, especially up the dusty end.

Late-notice stand-in with Dire Streets at Axminster Guildhall, having spent a day and a half getting back up to speed with a 2-hour set that I hadn’t played in a year (although I had done some more gigs with them on rhythm guitar). Excellent venue with great lighting and PA and a good-sounding room, plus nice green room with refreshments. Not a capacity crowd so the seats were set out to leave room for dancing in front of the stage, which plenty of people made good use of - more during Sultans of Swing than Private Investigations it’s fair to say! Got a compliment from the sound guy on my bass sound: '73 Precision > Origin Effects Cali76 Compact > Origin Effects Bassrig '64 Black Panel > DI to PA. I had been suffering some IEM angst over my Sennheiser XSW setup but it worked brilliantly last night. In the close-up pic I must be playing the solo run from after the last verse of Telegraph Road, as none of the other songs take me so high up the fretboard!

Strangely, for sight reading I have taught myself to find higher fret positions without looking; but on a rock or pop gig I really want to see where I’m putting my fingers. One of my Precisions has hard-to-see side dots that I make more visible with white paint from a Posca pen. The dots last maybe two gigs!

I don’t think you’ll save much weight downsizing from the Super Twin. The cloth front version only weighs 17kg plus as you know it has wheels on it. But I’d suggest the Two 10 (13kg - cloth front, no tweeter) as long as you don’t give it more than 500W.

I would have to say there are things I haven't thought of replacing yet.

That’s not a phrase you read on here every day!

I’m pretty sorted with my Focusrite Scarlett & Reaper setup, but what makes me want to bang my head on the desk is MIDI. I’m no technophobe, it’s just a weird blind spot that means MIDI never seems to want to do what I want it to do - changing patches is about my limit. You have my sympathy.

😆

I’m kinda happiest with just one (Precision) and a passive tone control, but I do also enjoy the modern sound of my NG2.

Thanks Dan. You’re not wrong about the option paralysis! I’ve put mine back to stock for the time being. The D-Roc is passive so no buffering to be had. It certainly wouldn’t be the end of the world if I just left it that way, but modders gonna mod…

Well I swapped the bridge and middle pickups over (no de-soldering)... I like the soloed neck pickup, very Precision, not least because it sits in the same place in terms of the speaking length of the string. Not so keen on the bridge/neck ('Jazz') setting, again no surprises because I don't really enjoy Jazz basses. Consequently I'm thinking of having the following 4 options: bridge, bridge/middle (parallel), bridge/middle (series), neck. If I can re-purpose the existing 4-way rotary to achieve this, that's a win. I'll still need to re-wire the neck pickup from parallel to series, but that's not hard.

Now that's useful to know!

Thanks for that Matt, really useful. And yes it was the V-Town Guitars video that I watched. That lobster fella also did a load of stuff to a Dingwall but tbh it's hard to work out what's going on in his vid! Yes I'd worked that out about the series/parallel wiring of the pickups, all the conductors are easy to access and switch around. In the stock arrangement where the neck pickup is wired parallel, it is never soloed. It's not like this bass needs more treble, it's pretty spanky to start with - hence the idea of a bigger value tone cap.

Good call, I’m in a Dingwall owners group.

I can recognise when modes are being used, eg today I have been playing ‘Coz I Luv You’ by Slade, which leans heavily on the Phrygian. But I never bothered learning them by rote. To me their most useful aspect is modal interchange, where chords are ‘borrowed’ from other modes - it’s used a lot in rock, particularly using chords from the parallel minor (Aeolian mode).