HowieBass

It's common to daisy chain grounds from the back of the pots, like this

I'd be genuinely frightened to turn that on!

I can't see anything that looks like a ground wire going to the output jack...

There's not a great deal of voltage going through any tone capacitor in a bass so the different voltage ratings shouldn't make any difference.

They're the same on mine, no exposed pole pieces.

Aha, you bought it! I went for the solid black for mine for the very reason you've stated (but then I do like black basses). I run the EQ on mine pretty similar to you; bass boost of about 25%, mids flat, treble flat; I add mids of about 25% when both pickups are at equal volume (to fill the mid scoop a little) and cut mids by about 25% when soloing the bridge pickup. Happy NBD!

Dead spots aren't uncommon, especially with Fenders on the G as mentioned above (5th up to the 7th). Stiffer necks exhibit few to no dead spots, which is why higher quality basses often have laminated necks or graphite reinforcing bars inside the neck. The only way to resolve this is audition a few instruments to see which suffers from this the least or add mass to the headstock (often with something like a Fender Fatfinger).

Ummmm, you know when you start off with a bass; one bass. And then a bit later you somehow end up getting another bass, because it's a different colour or shape or has a different number of strings or a different pickup configuration or it's passive or active... and then you need a decent amp to play it through... and then maybe some effect pedals... That's GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome).

Please sir, I know what GAS is!!!

Even more fun when you start cranking truss rods, shimming necks, moving bridges and sawing bits off intonation screws. Get stuck in!

I guess a signature bass is a signature bass if the artist is still prepared to have his/her name used with it. Maybe when Fender change the spec and swap out a Badass for something else then that artist cares more about what they'll earn in licensing rather than maintaining a perfect replica of their original bass.

I doubt there's a great deal of expense involved in designing a bridge these days, particularly with the resources available to a company such as FMIC. It's simple engineering in metal. What I have read about user experiences of Badass bridges is that quite a few people struggle with the sharp edges of the saddles with some of the variants whereas the new chunky Fender bridges look reasonably rounded.

[quote name='disssa' timestamp='1421072773' post='2656797'] Unfortunately only in german: [url="http://www.musiker-board.de/threads/bugera-veyron-m-bv1001m.598979/"]Klick[/url] [/quote] English translation here [url="http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.musiker-board.de/threads/bugera-veyron-m-bv1001m.598979/&prev=search"]http://translate.goo...79/&prev=search[/url] The reviewer estimates it can deliver a real world 500 to 600 RMS watts and seems to like it. Note the 2000 watts is peak into 4 ohms.

Don't try any Level 42 though...

I aim for .012" (business card thickness - that's cardboard not a plastic credit card which is too thick) at the 8th fret with the E held down at the first and last frets. I've got a set of feeler gauges (the sort you use for spark plug gaps) to measure the relief with mine.

No point getting into stubble with your better half...

[quote name='ColinB' timestamp='1422305671' post='2671012'] Sounds like you need more relief in the neck, not less. Slacken the truss-rod a bit, try it, slacken some more etc etc. [/quote] +1 it needs more relief not less.

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1422267098' post='2670374'] Alembic discovered that if you added mass to the head of a bass, in the form of a brass plate, sustain improved so why wouldn't extra mass on the bridge work equally well? A major aspect of making good cabs is how you control the resonating surfaces to eliminate as much unwanted vibration as possible, so why wouldn't you want to manage and improve the vibration generated to improve the sustain and tone on a bass? [/quote] I think the headstock is a different matter - as I mentioned earlier it's regarded as a heatsink (by Tobias and Sadowsky) and it can rob a vibrating string of energy, particularly when the neck to headstock transition isn't well designed. A light headstock will vibrate more easily than a heavier headstock, so adding mass there helps. That's probably why you put a clip-on tuner on the headstock because that exhibits a fair bit of vibration. The bridge at the other end is already anchored to something pretty heavy (the bass body) so adding a chunky bridge doesn't increase the mass by the same proportion.

The issue you've encountered with the bridge might be why you got it cheap

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1422215551' post='2669982'] I'd allow that a neck needs some rigidity, as does a bridge and even a nut, but are you (and they) really certain that most of the difference isn't down to the player, or the pickup, or the pickup placement, or fingers, or plectrum, or strings, or EQ, etc.? Do several basses, lets say a Precision and a Jazz and a Stingray, all with maple neck & rosewood fingerboard really just sound alike due to the neck/fingerboard combination? [/quote] What I should have said, but obviously neglected to mention, is that with the same pickups and strings and playing style and EQ (lets say a handful of Precisions or a handful of Jazzes), those basses that have maple boards will all sound alike and those with rosewood boards will all sound alike and maple boards sound different to rosewood boards, with body woods being less of a contributing factor. I would expect the bridge to have rather less influence still. The least rigid part of a bass is the neck IMHO. Tobias and Sadowsky, who have made a few thousand basses between them, consider these instruments as almost like acoustics, claiming that if they sound good unamplified, they'll sound great when plugged in. I've never built a bass from scratch, so I can't speak from personal experience as do those two luthiers, though other BCers have made similar comments with instruments they've tried in a store, listening to the tone before plugging in. Here's the video I was referring to, which has featured on here before... http://youtu.be/QzDxC98VNx8

I suspect what makes it expensive to go down this route is removing the old finish before it's ready for a fresh translucent finish. It'd be cheaper to find someone selling a suitable body.

You won't have increased the weight of the bass much at all so adding mass in itself doesn't really explain any change in tone (if more mass meant a great sound then we'd all be clamouring for heavy basses). What might be at play is rigidity (though the BBOT affairs on a couple of my basses seem pretty strong and rigid... ), also the stability of the saddles, how the strings break over the saddles and how the strings anchor at the bridge. What's improved with the action, were the saddles bottomed out on the other bridge? Where rigidity really comes into play is at the other end of the string... one thing I learned from a bass clinic YouTube video featuring Roger Sadowsky and Mike Tobias was that the headstock can act as a 'heatsink' and the more rigid the neck to headstock transition, the better - by heatsink they mean something that absorbs string vibration (which is bad - you want as much vibration to stay in the string as possible, reflecting back from both the nut and the bridge). They also confirmed my understanding that the neck rigidity and fingerboard material probably account for most of the difference in tone between basses. The main thing with your new bridge is that YOU think it sounds better, which in the end is all that matters!

I would imagine it'll be an offer of a repair unless it's so badly damaged that it's a write-off; I wouldn't suspect a repaired head to be any more likely to fail than a new one (which yours clearly was 8 months ago) and it might actually get a bit more hands on testing than something straight off a production line. Hope you get it sorted ASAP whatever the outcome.