Belka

More teal. This is a 1996 (I think) which I bought second hand in 1998. Wonderful bass. I know that around this time you were considered lucky if you got one with a birdseye neck. This one actually has quite a bit of flame in the neck which I think is quite rare.

There does seem to be a tendency for more glamourous, successful, talented or edgy stars to be seen as less troublesome and get away with more - I guess that's human nature. John Lennon was by some accounts serially emotionally and physically abusive to family members, Jimi Hendrix and Syd Barrett were reported to have beaten up/imprisoned girlfriends. Sid Vicious (ok, I know he barely played anything but he was integral to the group) almost certainly murdered his girlfriend. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, Rick James also have fairly sordid episodes in their past, but no one seems to find covering their music troublesome. On the other hand, Gary Glitter seems sad and pathetic, and MJ a weirdo, which probably makes them more objectionable to the public than the likes of Pete Townsend and Jerry Lee Lewis, although I acknowledge that the formers' misdeeds would seem to be worse than the latters'. Another example would be covering Charles Manson songs, which Guns and Roses, the Lemonheads, GG Allin and Marilyn Manson have all done, without suffering much detriment to their careers.

I've changed pickups and electronics on a few basses. With experience, I've found that it's only really worth it if you like the sound of the bass already but just want to tweak it to your taste/needs. If you're not happy with the sound and think changing pickups/electronics will fix things, then you're headed for disappointment.

Great - thanks for answering so quickly.

I am thinking of getting a Euro 5 LX and I have one question for you Spector experts out there. Can anyone tell me if the standard Euro 5 LX with the EMG soapbars and Tonepump has the option to split the coils to single coil mode? I've seen a few videos of the LX 6 where the reviewers say you can do this, but none for the 5, and I can't see any information about it on the Spector website either. Many thanks in advance.

It could be. It's their call and if they want to do that it's fine. I'd imagine their overheads are considerably higher than Bass Direct and Bass Bros, so that will almost certainly be a factor. The downside is though that by asking a lot more for your instrument you should be ready for it to hang around for a lot longer waiting for it to sell. Some stuff seems to be for sale in the Gallery for up to/over a year, whereas it gets turned around a lot quicker in the other places. Again, fine if you don't need the money now, but not if you do. As for sticker prices, I know that you can haggle (and indeed I did when I bought a bass from the Gallery last year). But elevated prices are also likely to put people off in the first place.

I know it can be an unwritten rule around some forums that you should never mention whether or not a seller's price is considered fair or too high, but recently I've noticed that the Gallery seem to price their used/commission items a lot more optimistically than Bass Direct and Bass Bros, who generally price their items to sell. However, I have no idea whether this is their policy or whether the actual sellers themselves are overvaluing their items. I'd guess they do have some input however. Perhaps they have more storage space than Bass Direct and Bass Bros and don't need such quick turnarounds on what they sell.

Good points, but from my point of view, your wine analogy makes more sense when talking about playing solo. When it comes to working in a mix, almost all of the basses which sound great seem to have a certain frequency point emphasised naturally. P basses, J basses, StingRays, etc., all seem to have certain natural mid frequencies which help to push through a mix in some way, as do certain custom basses like Wals, Ken Smiths, etc. On 'full-range' sounding Swiss Army knife basses, you can replicate these sounds with a preamp, but the shelving of frequencies the preamps impart mean they never sound quite so clear/detailed. I didn't mean to knock Overwater, they're beautifully made basses and I'm sure there's a good reason why so many theatre pros use them, but like I said, they tend to use the J replicas rather than the customs from what I can tell.

I think you're both right here. I've never really been interested in designers who say they can build anything you want. The most successful luthiers these days seem to be those whose basses have a signature sound. If I see a Wal or a Status on stage, I'm going to have a pretty good idea of what it sounds like. Basses built to cop many sounds, like the early Laklands, seem to have fallen out of favour these days. I remember back in the '90s the fact that you could get a kind of MusicMan sound, a kind of J bass sound and a kind of P bass sound out of one bass was considered a benefit, but these days, most professionals would just have a MusicMan, a J bass and P bass to get the exact sounds. Again, the Sims quad pickups - in theory they sound like a wonderful solution, but they haven't really caught on. I also have heard that Overwaters are designed to have a very full range of sounds, which you can eq to get any sound you like. I might be unpopular with some for stating this, but everytime I've seen someone playing an Overwater live, it doesn't cut well through the mix at all. I know they're considered popular with the theatre guys, but they seem to use Overwater Jazz clones rather than their custom designs.

One last thing, I and I think someone else asked earlier in this thread whether Xotic XJs had '60s or '70s pickup spacing. I measured mine last night and it's definitely '70s. Looking at pictures online, they obviously use this spacing for both the more '60s inspired alder/rosewood as well as the ash/maple ones.

Last year I bought an Xotic after reading some of the good feedback on here. I originally was after a 5 string but I saw this bass being advertised in Japan second hand at a very low price (around £1300 - it had been bought a few weeks earlier on Reverb for about £1600, and then obviously returned to the same store). I just loved the finish, which seems to be a special run of a few six string only basses they did for a Japanese store. Obviously I had to also factor in shipping and import duties, so in the end it probably cost me about £1900, which is still not bad considering it's practically in mint condition (it's a 2020 model). The fit and finish are extremely good, and it sounds great - it's a slightly more hi-fi twist on a '70s Jazz. I can get extremely low action on it, and it's generally very comfortable to play for a six string, with a nice neck profile. The parts are all high quality, and the preamp is very nice; subtle, but very musical. Set flat, it sounds more or less the same as it does in passive mode, which is what a good preamp should do in my opinion. The only negative I can mention, which has been stated here already, is the weight. This one comes in a around 5.3kg/11.8lbs, so it's a heavyweight. I think the ash they use is medium weight rather than the really heavy northern ash, but it's a very big bass with heavy parts, so of course it's going to weigh a lot. I can manage two hour gigs on it with a decent wide strap though. No neck dive at all, obviously.

I think you're right. I mean, the pickup/bridge misalignment is not forgivable at this price point, but complaining about a vintage style bridge, truss rod access at the body end and neck dive being defects isn't really fair, they're features of pretty much any vintage styled Jazz, and you'll get them on custom shop instruments costing three times this much. I see this bass has an ebony fretboard and Gotoh tuners, so it's not as if Fender is using cheap parts. Shame they couldn't get this right. The whole gold foil thing would probably have worked better as a short scale Mustang/Musicmaster bass rather than a Jazz , especially with their narrower spring spacing and the current interest in short scales. It is quite an entertaining video though, although it does annoy me sometimes when he tests out tones that noone would ever really use (whenever he reviews an active bass, he does a sound test with the active eq all the way off - I mean, does anyone use that kind of setting?)

Here's mine. This is the pedalboard of someone who doesn't really care much for effects. Funnily enough, the two I like most (the delay and phaser) get the least use in my band's sets. The others all get used to get the right tones for songs, and the Cali is always on.

I did the tour of the Fodera shop just before I ordered one in 2015. I still have it and it's my absolute favourite bass of all time. They are great people and a great company and contrary to what people think, no one there is getting rich. Their custom basses are all different and you really have to know what you want before ordering to avoid making an expensive mistake. Having said that though the Seymour Duncan dual coils they typically use do have a tone all their own which puts them all in a similarish ballpark tonewise. Aside from the one I ordered I also bought another second hand. Although I initially loved it, over time I realised that the tone of that particular bass just didn't work for me so I ended up selling it. Neither of the basses I own(ed) had the extended B headstock and personally I don't think it can much difference to the tightness of the B string. I think Mike Pope was the first to have a bass with that feature. He's a great player and a very creative guy so if it works for him...

I'd bet his name is actually Kevin and he used to (still does?) play a fretless Wal.

The tuners and the bridge are also non-original. They're Fender, but they've come off a CBS bass, not a 1961.

Bought a nice P bass from Diego. Everything went very smoothly - he kept me informed, sent the tracking details, and packed the bass very carefully so it was in excellent condition when it arrived. Deal with confidence with Diego.

I bought a pedal from Stew recently. Very smooth and pleasant transaction. Excellent comms, item exactly as described and all working (he tested it before handing it over to me) and he even threw in a power lead. Deal with confidence with Stew!

Meat Oaf

Chia Crisis/Chin Crisis Cho and the Bunnymen Level 4 Icehose Culture Cub Spandau Balle Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Ark Thompson Wins The Bugles Rankie goes to Hollywood

Britpop selection: Bur Asis Pup Elastic Manic Street Peachers Superrass Dogy Shed Seen Happy Monays Cat Jams Super Fury Animals Lighting Seeds

Totally agree. The TV logo Jazz basses generally have low output and produce a more hollow, woody, thumpy tone. They sound good with flats and a pick, and to be fair some people might prefer that tone. The early '60s and late '70s basses have seemed to me a lot fuller sounding and alive though. Of course there are exceptions, there are some TV logo Jazzes that sound a lot fuller and some lifeless pre-CBS and late '70s ones. Just my observations/opinions, YMMV etc.

Actually, the nicest sounding Precision I ever played was a '71. I was just pointing out that I think the later '70s Fenders are very much unfairly maligned on their QC issues when in reality, apart from their weight, there's nothing worse QC wise about them, and in my experience (of course others' will differ) the woodworking/fit has seemed marginally better.

I've always found that the TV logo Fenders seemed to have worse QC than the '76-'83 'smaller' TV ones. The woodworking/fit is much rougher on the earlier-mid '70s ones. '77-'78 seemed to be when they started to improve QC, and to my ears they sound better (especially the Jazzes - the late '70s ones had a slightly higher output, similar in resistance to early '60s basses). I think the reason why people perceive the early '70s basses as better is a) they're closer chronologically to the pre-CBS period and b) the weight. They're certainly a lot heavier than the earlier ones.