bassmayhem

Payson Supercharger 5 Fan fret 37" - 34" all passive bass! Asymmetrical neck profile, hidden fret ends. Stainless steel thin frets. Nordstrand BigRig and NJ5S pickups. Like two Fender basses on steroids...

I succeeded! I have uploaded the video clip!

I made a very simple video clip demonstrating the tone of the bass, and my Corona style haircut... Signal chain: the bass - Boss wireless - Genzler Magellan 350 w. straight eq - Genzler BA 10-2 - straight into the mobile phone's microphone. Nothing else. Well, I managed to upload the video clip, my very first one ever! This is no show off-video, just a little groove to illustrate the tone of the bass in my hands...

What a beautiful bass...! The Nordstrand Big Splitman 5 with Lakland spacing in the bridge position, and the NJ5S in the mid/neck position. I used the original mini toggle switch to get series/parallel/70's coil mode. The pickup has four coils so it is humbucking in all positions, and I preferred the coil closest to the bridge to get the tone I like. The preamp is the stellar John East Uni Pre 5. It takes some thinking, squeezing and sweating to get things in place. I had to put the balance pot as the frontmost pot. The volume is just in front of the toggle switch.The two lower are mid/mid shift and bass/treble. The "rearest" pot is passive tone. https://nordstrandaudio.com/collections/5-string-music-man-bass-pickups/products/big-split-man-5?variant=48677049940 https://nordstrandaudio.com/collections/5-string-jazz-bass-pickups/products/nj5s-hum-cancelling

It is a VERY TIGHT FIT...

This summer I put together a Corona Project Bass, a tribute to The First One. Not an exact copy, but a very good and functional modern take on the classic P'51. The details making biggest difference are the Babicz Full Contact Bridge and the super nice somewhat overwound humbucking version of the original style pickup made by Swedish Urban Pickups. https://www.urbanpickups.com/ https://www.facebook.com/UrbanPickups I don't like false labeled instruments, so I had a friend making me my own headstock logo in classic design. A nice bass all in all, if I am allowed to keep it. My cat has another opinion...

My Fender Super Bassman - and the Bassman 100T I had - requires the gain set relatively high, since the noise level when cranking the power amp is immense. My Vanderkley Spartan has no gain control at all. When I asked Marc Vanderkley about it, he answered: "There is nothing in there you can overdrive". The little Quilter Bassblock 800 had no overload LED; Pat Quilter said: tweak with your ears - not with your eyes! My personal standpoint: set the gain high enough to get a decent signal with as little noise as possible when opening up The Big Tap. Decent signal? That's up to me. Or you. I prefer my Super Bassman to break up a bit when digging in, so gain at around 5, and master volume at 4 - 5. I tend to keep the Class D amps a bit cooler; no good idea letting them clip. No good tone comes out of that. Any kind of dirt or grunt, I add a tad with a pedal in front...

Stock flats. No reason changing. I have three other basses with Thomastik flats: a P51' clone, a Dingwall Super P4 and my Payson Supercharger 5-string. Otherwise I use rounds on everything; even on my fretless. I tweak the neck as straight as possible - no relief - and raise the bridge saddles. I do that on all my basses. They always play in tune with minimal buzz. Also, the tone is better when the saddles are high and get that "downward pressure" from the strings. The nut is filed down to almost fret height; that makes the intonation at the lower frets much, much cleaner. Here is a trick if you file your nut too low, or have any other problem with the nut (as I had): - Mask the area around the string slot with tape! - Fill the slot with bicarbonate! (Use the blade of a small screwdriver as spatula.) - Add a drop of Super Glue! (Loctite) - Let harden! - File a new slot! I had to make a new string slot for the E- string, due to bad shaping from factory. Now all strings sit nice and firm. The only thing on the bass that was bad, was the nut. Bad shaped slots and poorly filed ends that stuck out a bit on both sides.

I got myself a little blue Mustang last weekend. I am no fan of short scale basses, but this one was really neat... It took some setting up and tweaking, but now it feels like mine. (Btw, the thumb rest now rests in peace...)

I promised a review after gig... We had a trio garden gig without PA support: worked fine, fine, fine! The rig is as loud as it is small, and sounds really, really good. With a tad of cut in the lowest register you can play louder than you would expect, and still the tone is fine. A hit!

This can be an effect of the Corona; I had to wait "a while" to get my Uni Pre.

Well, I left them untouched, those adjustment wheels. I kinda use it with everything neutral.

Then you have a bit easier; you don't have to think about the mini switch, no matter how mini it is, it takes some expensive space in the cavity. Also, the drilled holes for the original preamp are bigger, so you need bigger washers and cannot have a nut or washers on the inside, due to the length of the shafts and threads. Good luck! A guy here in Sweden has this one, the same as yours but with Big Singles and Glockenklang 3-band preamp:

My fretless 55-02 died in December last year. I ordered new pickups from Nordstrand and a preamp from John East, the Uni Pre 5 knob. I had to wait 'til the middle of July to get all the goodies, due to the Corona situation, but now it is completed. It was a h*ll of a job to get all the preamp parts and the mini toggle switch for the MM pickup in place; it took my tech a day and a half to get it right. Now I can use the bass in active AND passive mode; that was not the case with the original Bartolini pickups: the difference in volume was enormous. Now there is no difference what so ever. In the original electronics, the mini toggle switch switched between 60's Jazz pickup position, 70's Jazz pickup position and Stingray tone. Now I have the 70's Jazz position, Stingray (parallel) and "Solo volume" (series).John East is the king of electronics. Carey Nordstrand makes fine pickups; may he recover well from his cancer treatment. 💖

I've had a sh*tload of Dingwalls: Prima 6, Sklar, Super J4, Super J5, Super P4, Super P5 and an Afterburner I 5 string HS; the ones I favour are the all passive Super P4 and ABI. ABZ is the barebone gem: no dead meat, just plain good bass.