PinkMohawk

Jack's got the right of it, if the stain doesn't work, might give one of those 'Shou Sugi Ban' finishes a go. Nice excuse to get the blowtorch out at least.

There's a public address for the shop in Japan making them, so if anyone fancied going along and having a peek in the window we could find out for sure

Apparently they're being made by Sleek Elite, a custom shop in Japan, handmade under license. Which, for 3.5k it better be hand made.

There's absolutely zero finish on this one, that I'm absolutely sure of. My main concern is that it's a two-piece body, with the two pieces being different colours, so I'm unsure if they'll take the stain in the same way. If it really goes to the dogs, I can always pick up a couple cans of Rustoleum and spray some black instead so it won't be the end of the world either way.

The best P-bass is of course.... The BC Rich Mockingbird. Double the P, double the good. On a slightly more serious note, I'd have someone's arm off for a Matt Freeman signature P bass at a reasonable price. If I wasn't a broke student, that is.

They sound amazing, and I don't doubt for a second they feel even better, but I just can't handle the shape, either the body or the headstock. They just look wrong to me.

Quality, reckon I'll treat the body with it too, see how that comes out. Hopefully the uneven body wood colour doesn't cause an issue and make the blacks look uneven.

Damn, I've had enough of that from my poorly painted bass haha. Have you had that issue with the vinegar/steel wool solution? As for the 'properness' I'm not sure, it's a kit bass that I didn't pay a whole lot for, so I wouldn't be so sure. It's relatively dark for non-Brazilian rosewood already, but like I said, I'm looking for as close to that perfect ebony black as I can get it. In terms of strength for the vinegar/steel wool, is it just a matter of feeding as much steel wool into the vinegar as you can to make it stronger?

Personally, I like how they look without covers, but yeah, I can see how they'd be uncomfortable. What about getting a set of J covers, then cutting the tops out? You'd get the surround, give you a place to anchor your thumb, but without obscuring the pole pieces from view and mostly maintaining the visual aspect of the pickups.

Thomann's E-Bass Case should fit, though it's a tight squeeze. I use one for my Epi Ripper, and it just fits lengthwise. Though I did remove the strap buttons and bolted a strap directly to the body, so it's a touch shorter without the strap button, so keep that in mind, it isn't a simple drop-in fit.

I considered the wax, but I'm looking for less Brazilian rosewood (which is lovely) and more pitch black ebony. It'll probably make more sense when I finally get all the parts in and get to work on the bass itself, but it's going to be all black with gold hardware, and I want it pitch black. I've got an Epi Grabber/Ripper, can't remember which, that I repainted with that Black 2.0 paint which was great, but wear and tear has worn through the paint in a lot of places, and I want this bass to be jet black as much as possible. That leather dye result looks the business, a few coats of it looks like it'll get as dark as I'm looking for.

Hey all, I'm gearing up for a project bass that I bought years ago and never got around to doing anything with. I'd prefer it to be a maple fretboard, but it's not, and I'm not willing to try removing and replacing it with maple, so instead I'm going to go with making the rosewood as pitch black as possible, so I'm turning to the experts here to see if anyone knows a way to turn rosewood as dark as possible without just painting it.

You could try using the Kindle app as a PDF viewer? I've been using my Scribe for a while as a PDF reader, just downloading charts and tabs and whatever else to my PC, then sending it to my Kindle via the browser. Then in the Kindle app I organise them however I need, bring up the ones I want and then it's just tapping through them like any other document. If all you're doing is looking through charts and you don't need any extra functionality, that'd probably be a good bet for you.

I agree that locking tuners are unnecessary, I mostly just like the design of the buttons instead of the usual clovers or Y-keys haha.

I am, for better or worse, one of those haters of this new 're-issue' of the Grabber. I'm sure that, as its own thing, taken without considering where the Grabber started, it's a very good bass. For me though, there are too many little issues that get in the way for me to truly want this bass. For one, I think the price is a joke. £900+ for something like this is just asking far too much, not when the hardware specs are what they are. The pickguard/body misalignment is an infuriating little visual detail that just really puts me off as well. The lack of sliding pickup, especially at this pricepoint is a joke. If Kurtis Novak can be selling his own crack at the sliding plate for 50 bucks, I don't see any excuse for Epiphone to not have including their own shot at the sliding mechanism. It's not like we're talking about a hugely complex system of gears and pulleys, it's a sliding bit of plastic with a swimming pool route. Not exactly rocket surgery. I'd like to give one of these a go, but I don't think Epiphone will ever be seeing my cash for one, not unless they hire someone who's actually looked at an original Grabber first.

Not sure if you've seen it, but Kurtis Novak is offering his own reproduction of the sliding plate, and he's said that he'd be willing to route for a different pickup as well, if you wanted to get some Grabber-ness on one of these new ones.

Ooohh that's pretty slick. Not a huge fan of their headstock design but that's just personal preference. How do you find the Sperzels? Rare to see them on a bass.

I'd think your best shot at something like that would need to have piezo elements under each saddle. Obviously it'd need each string on it's own separate saddle to minimise crosstalk, but it might be feasible? Of course, then you're left with having to deal with the piezo sound rather than traditional magnetic pickups, and all the challenges in terms of tone that entails, especially if you want to run the signals through effects, but I don't really see a viable way to make it happen otherwise.

Looking forward to the inevitable video of someone much smarter than I taking that Lego kit and turning it into a working Minimoog.

Oh for sure, I didn't mean to make it sound like the engineers were blameless when it comes to venues like that. I was there on a visit for the Biffy shows they did over a few nights last year, Jon Burton (ex The Prodigy engineer) is their engineer, and he had it sounding huge with the in-house system (point of interest, they were all running live amps on stage, at high volumes too. Anyone who's had a look at Simon Neil's rig will understand what a bear it is to deal with on a relatively small stage like that). What I was getting at with the 'get what you get' comment was that, if there's an inherent problem with the system/room combo, then sometimes you really can't do anything about it. Some engineers have the experience and skill to remedy those issues to the point that they don't get in the way of the mix, others don't. Anyway, to minimise my rambling, there's a huge amount of science and tech that goes into modern system design and implementation in modern day touring, all of which becomes totally moot the minute you get a crap engineer working the faders and making the calls about system tuning.

The Ultimate Guitar app lets you do this with their midi tracks, the official ones that they put out themselves. Transpose, slow down, solo instruments, all that good stuff, it's what I use a lot for practicing new songs, and if I connect to the PA in the practice room it'll fill in for missing members or whatever else I need. Of course, it's not the actual tracks, but depending on your use case, it might work for you.