Osiris

I'd like to give a big shout out to Sandberg for their awesome customer service. Earlier in the year I bought a B stock Lionel in none more black finish from Thomann and it wasn't until I'd had it a while that I noticed that it was missing the 4 dots in a square logo on the front of the body, kinda their trademark I guess. It didn't really worry me and I assumed that it was maybe because the bass was a B stock. Anyway, curiosity eventually got the better of me so I emailed them and asked if they were missing because of the bass being a B stock and if it was possible to buy a set of dots to retrofit myself. A day or so later I get an apology from one of the Sandberg guys and the promise that he'd send me some free of charge! I emailed back to say that would be great but as I'm in the UK I'd be more than happy to cover costs as it's hardly economical shipping something so small from Germany, but they wouldn't have it! The postman has just delivered an envelope containing 2 sets of silver dots. I appreciate that in the grand scheme of things this is trivial, but how's that for customer service?

That's a beauty. I was originally after a maple fretboard but I managed to pick mine up for a steal so couldn't refuse, it's all black with a black scratch plate and matching headstock. But @Stub Mandrel will be relieved to hear that mine came sans the 4 dot stickers on the body, although Sandberg have promised to send me some so I'll have to post some before and after shots!

@Linus27 Add the Genzler Magellan to your list too, it's hugely flexible and has shed loads of warmth, punch and clarity.

Have you tried either the TC Electronic Hyper Gravity or Spectracomp pedals? The free editing software for each pedal (as far as I'm aware, they're pretty much identical in terms of the firmware they use) has something like 48 individually editable parameters so there's a huge amount of customisation available, but whether you can configure the slow attack times you want... But I'd suggest taking a look if only to rule them out.

Just received some Sennheiser IEM's from Danny in an easy, hassle free deal. They were new and sealed as advertised, fairly priced and arrived in a couple of days. Great stuff!

Can't argue with that I'd take a Ric' over a 'Ray any day of the week, at least I would do if they ever made one with a playable neck!

I'm another one who cannot get on with Stingrays, I've tried several over the years but none of them have ever done anything for me in terms of feel, playability or sound. Overall I'm ambivalent to them, they tend to sit really well in the mix, often being quite prominent but there's something in their inherent tone that really irritates me, I find that trademark weird nasal mid range thing they have really jarring. Definitely not for me. Looking at the comments above they seem to be the Marmite of the bass world!

Just received a pedal board from James and it was a friendly, very quick and easy transaction. He's a friendly guy to deal with, he kept me informed every step of the way. The board was, IMO, in better condition than he'd described it in the listing - not that I'm complaining! - was very fairly priced, well packaged and arrived the next day. Deal in conference with James, I can't recommend him enough!

I'm another short @rse at 5'7" who played for 30 odd years with 34" basses and found that some of them a struggle depending on the model, the worst being a natural through neck B.C. Rich Mockingbird I had in the late 80's when I was young and hairy, but the lack of top horn meant that it hung in such a way that I couldn't reach the first fret! A few years ago nerve damage in my wrist almost ended my playing days altogether until I tried a 30" short scale and it was a revelation, playing became totally effortless and the lower frets were in easy reach. Since then I've sold off all my 34" basses and having been through several short scales I've now found the ones that suit my needs. Whenever I pick up a 34" bass these days they feel unnecessarily large and cumbersome to the point of being virtually unplayable. There has been a resurgence of short scales in recent years and I don't think it's a passing fad, I think they're back for good and are no longer seen as anachronistic oddities by most. Forget the misconception that they're for kids, beginners, guitarists or whatever, they're serious instruments in their own right and a number of name brands are introducing higher spec models to go alongside the cheaper options. Definitely something to consider for anyone struggling with 34"+ behemoths!

I don't think so, at least my Sandberg shorty came with a standard long scale bag. I've padded out the bottom of the bag with a couple of beer towels and it's a reasonable-ish fit.

A good place to start would be a pre-amp pedal of some sort, it's effectively an amp but without a power section. That way you'll get a more familiar, amp like tone through the PA. There's a million different pre-amp pedals on the market so go for one that has the type of sound you like. I don't think Eich make a pre-amp pedal but there's a shed load of pedals that will give you a similar clean tone that you get from the amp. Something like the Helix Stomp will cover more than you'll ever need although I got rid of mine because of option fatigue and replaced it with a simple pre-amp and compressor pedals as that suits my simple needs better. Although thinking about it, you may even be able to carry on using the Eich by running the DI into the desk. Just check that you can run the amp without a cab load first! There's wired and wireless in ear monitor options to explore and there's a couple of extensive threads on here that will answer all your questions. This is the obvious place to start...

The Aguilar TLC is a very transparent compressor, which isn't a bad thing if that's what you're looking for. However, if you're looking for a compressor that adds some punch, character or tonal magic to your sound it's definitely one to avoid. If you're looking for those qualities the Cali is the obvious choice. But there's plenty of options available depending on the style of compression that the player wants.

Hopefully it'll work for you as well as it works for me! And as with a comps, you're likely to notice or feel it more when playing along with other musicians or to some recorded music. Just ignore the Enhance control knob as it can get noisy, although I sometimes dial in just a little, around 8 o'clock, to add a slight presence to one of my darker sounding basses.

I've not tried the Behringer myself, but it's a clone of the Boss LMB-3, which I have just been bigging up on another thread a minute ago . The LMB-3 a very underrated comp pedal IMO and a great starting point for those new to compression.

I don't have any recent experience with the onboard Ashdown compressors so I can't comment. But I'm not surprised that you didn't get on with the Ampeg Opto-comp if you're looking for a fast attack because as its name implies, it's an Optical circuit that is doing the compressing. The main characteristic of optical comps is that they have an inherently slow attack time, relatively speaking, and tend to swell into the note as it crosses the threshold. They are often used on bass to make the tone bloom more, as it seems to be called, but like you I don't care for them personally. If you want a fast attack, one that you can use that to help clip the initial transient, which in turn reduces the initial attack of the note thus softening it a tough, you'd be better off looking for a FET designed unit. I believe the Cali 76 is a FET based circuit but not 100% on that! The Boss LMB-3 is also a FET based comp and a very highly underrated pedal in its own right. Over the years I've been all round the house with compressors and got down lost down the rabbit hole of multi-band comps with and without parallel compression as well as loads of pedal and a couple of rack units along the way. But I started with the Boss (if we ignore the hideous experience of my Trace Elliot SMX years, the dual band comp on that being about its only saving grace) years ago and thought to myself "oh, it's only a Boss, there must be much better options out there" so I moved it on and spent the next few years going through as many different comp options as I could get my hands on. Then I picked up another one a couple of years ago as a cheapy pedal to use at home. It was then I realised that on some level I'd been trying to get every other comp to sound like the Boss! It has a fixed attack and release, but they are perfect IMO, they're pretty quick (to my ear) but they are spot on for keeping the transient in check while still allowing the character of the bass to come through. They're dead cheap to pick up used, really simple to use and just sound great, big and punchy and they help the bass sit just where it should be in the mix.

It could well be. Some compressors can darken your tone depending on what type they are (VCA, Optical, FET etc) and whether they're multi-band or not. The low frequencies in a bass signal have much more energy than the high frequencies, so assuming it's a single band compressor, when the signal crosses the threshold the compression clamps down on everything and pulls the highs and lows down equally by the ratio value. This results in a perceived loss of high end frequencies. It's not a fault, it's just how some comps work. If you're using the compression all the time you can just EQ some treble back in if you want it

My experience over the years of playing with both fingers and a plectrum is that to get a similar tone when switching between the 2 techniques is to use a thicker plectrum. For me, a 2.0mm plectrum retains the depth of tone you get from playing with fingers but has some extra bite in the high end. Not all plectrums sound the same - I find that the thinner the plectrum, the thinner the bass tone is. And conversely, the thicker your plectrum the thicker your tone. In my experience anything under 1.0mm just makes the bass sound thinner and more guitar like. For year I used 1.5mm which have more tonal weight than anything under 1.0mm, but once I'd tried 2.0mm I knew I'd found the balance that works when switching between the 2 techniques without losing the depth and weight of the bass tone. These are my current go to plectrum, virtually impossible to drop and they don't suck any low end from your sound. Jim Dunlop 450P2.00 Prime Grip Delrin 500 Picks, 2 mm

Me again. Just completed another easy peasy transaction with Ben, this time I bought a pedal from him. Bargain price, well packaged, fast and friendly comms and quickly dispatched. Awesome!

It will. It's as inevitable as Thanos @ossyrocks This topic has been covered many time on Basschat as EZ alludes to above. It's definitely worth doing a search to see what turns up, but there is a lot of misunderstanding about compressors and compression in general so take some of what you read with a massive pinch of salt. But in short, no, you don't need one. BUT... if you understand what they do and how to use them then they will make your bass sound more consistent and polished, and, depending on which type of compressor you go for they can add a ton of punch and/or character to your tone too. FWIW, I always use them as it just makes the bass 'feel' better to me.

Yeah, that was crap too, but it was cheap and very nasty - whereas the Trace rig was around £1200 even back then and had the bass response of a £50 mobile phone.

I'm more than happy with class D amps and their light weight form factor. Yes, there are some that aren't so great but there are some that are. For the past 5 years or so I've been using a Genzler Magellan and it has all the heft - I might as well be the first to say it - that I need and then some. Very much a deep, clear and weighty sound. I also have the 350 as a backup amp and have gigged and rehearsed with it many times too and have never come close to running out of power or struggling to make the bass be heard, that's playing in a moderately loud pub/function band. Certainly no depth or projection issues at volume. I think I've posted this before but the most gutless amp that I've had the misfortune to own was a Trace Elliot SMX head through a pair of 15" Trace cabs, back in the early 90's. These amps seem to be regarded as something magical these days but I have no idea why, it was at best a 1 trick pony, virtually no grunt or projection in the low end or the low mids and a seemingly constant spike in the 2-4Khz region that got fatiguing on the ears really quickly. A million tone shaping options on the pre-amp but nothing that really translated through the speakers into anything other than trying to make you sound like a clanky Mark King wannabe, albeit without any noticeable low end in your sound. A truly awful amp, IMO and IME. And a couple of years ago I bought an Ashdown Little Stubby because we all 'know' valves are the best and that I must surely be missing out with my meager class D amps 😀. It was alright but nothing spectacular. It certainly didn't blow me away in the way that the internet had told me it would 😱🤷‍♂️😀. Trouble is that to get it sounding anywhere near what I wanted (classic 70's on the edge of breakup type rock tones) at home, the reason I bought it, you had to push it too hard and loud at to be unusable without annoying the family and the neighbours. But it wasn't loud enough to realistically use in a band context either. I'm sure it's a great amp if you're able to push it without annoying a lot of people around you but I wouldn't describe it as any sort of life changing mystical experience. Certainly nothing to sway me away from my Magellans. After returning the Little Stubby for a refund I picked up an Ashdown Touring 220 combo for a steal from eBay. It's an all valve pre-amp into (I think) a 220 watt class A/B power section - but I'm happy to be corrected on the technical details if that's not right. It's a much more pleasing amp to my ears than the Little Stubby was and the passive EQ stack is great once you get used to it. And as much as I highly rate the Touring 220 combo, it doesn't do anything, or have more heft or whatever, than my Magellans. We're all different, YMMV, horses for courses, each to their own, etc. Just thought I'd better get that in before the ratting of pitchforks starts 😁

That's probably it then, I married a sensible one but often yearn for a metaphorical one night stand.

Agreed with all of that although the lack of a contour on the Mustang doesn't bother me in the slightest. The Sandberg (I'm still tempted to get Scratch-IT to make me a scratch plate with a photo of Lionel Blair on to fit to mine) is refined and oozes class and attention to detail in every regard. In contrast the JMJ feels much more uncouth - but it has a whole level of charm, character and an unquantifiable something about it that makes me pick it up more often than not over the 'Berg. To draw a particularly crap and inappropriate analogy, the Sandberg is the sort of girl you dream of marrying whereas the JMJ would do all manner of unhygienic things with you in a pub toilet if you bought it a Babycham and a bag of pork scratchings. Hope this helps.

They're great basses, IMO although I recently sold mine - Yeah, I know, but only because I prefer my JMJ Mustang. Not noticeable neck dive but then again I use a 100mm wide leather strap with a suede backing so there's a lot of inherent resistance to neck dive. A few people online seem to moan about the stock pickups but IMO they were very good, clean and clear with classic Fender sounds on tap. I had mine modded to include a blend pot as the stock 3 way switch was too limiting, but the blend really opened up the tones available, my favourite being around 60:40 mix of neck/bridge. Slim jazz like neck profile. Very good basses, IMO, with bags more tonal character than the Performer bass which is twice the price but just sounded a bit bland in comparison.

I've got no idea what the weight of a super light model would likely be but my ash bodied Lionel probably weighs less than 6 grams. I have to tether it to something substantial, like a drummer, to stop it blowing away in the breeze 😃