lemmywinks

The woodworking required to build a through neck bass from scratch doesn't quite tally with the hack job that is the rest of it though, if it is hand built I would be surprised if the same person did the botched 8 string conversion.

Sensible upgrades apart from the pickup cover (pointless) and the battery covers which are no longer tool free. I like the rolled fingerboard edges though, that's a smart move for them. Wouldn't kill them to stick some licensed Ultralites on there though would it?

Did you expect them to be the right way round? Look at it FFS! Looks like the holes for the machine heads are too wide and have been plugged with some sort of rubber ferrule.

Well someone's stuck a bid on it. Own up, which one of you was it?

Also just noticed the neck is cracked near the truss rod, on the plus side it has a set of Schallers:

Hahaha I didn't see that, some of them don't even reach the edge of the fretboard!

To be honest you can buy the headless bass bridge and nut kits for £25-£30 on AliExpress so this might make a nice Hohner The Jack copy project for someone up for a bit of Steinbuggery, especially as it should go for a very low price. With a bit of elbow grease you might end up with a presentable through neck underneath all that green marker pen.

Thought Hohner B Bass at first but it's PJ and the shape is different, I think whoever is responsible for this really wanted one of those!: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BASS-Guitar-in-green-this-is-the-AND-in-rock-N-roll/253952871655?hash=item3b20c54ce7:g:wqMAAOSwtmZb1KaU Quite an entertaining and honest description from the seller anyway which makes a change.

Was hoping you'd come along, are the 90s and later Fenix basses like this one (which I really want, it looks great) still Young Chang? Looks to have the same bridge as the Samick built Arias but maybe they were sourcing the same Korean parts. I can remember drooling over the 4 string version of that as a youth, it was reviewed in one of the guitar mags at the time. Never managed to stumble across one in the wild though.

I think I must be getting less sweaty as I age then as strings seem to be lasting me much longer than they used to. Either that or I'm getting tighter with my money.

Imagine how much of a tit you'd look displaying that in a glass case in your office. "You're guitar looks a bit knackered" "It's actually authentic wear done to replicate someone else's music career and playing style" "Riiiiiiiiiiight........"

I always thought with the Sires you're paying for a great neck and preamp attached to a nice working bass which looks the part and is more than solid enough for a hectic gig schedule. Interesting about the corrosion though, mine doesn't have this and I clean it about twice a year!

Also I hope the OP doesn't mind this turning into a thread about horrible headstocks............

Crikey that's a terrible mess, never noticed that before. Even the knock-offs on AliExpress do a better job:

Imagine how much of a tit you'd look playing that on stage. "You're guitar looks a bit knackered" "It's actually authentic wear done to replicate someone else's music career and playing style" "Riiiiiiiiiiight........"

Your old combo may have a low mid hump whereas the more modern Laney may have a flatter response? The volume might be similar but the baked in sound might give more perceived volume. If it has the mid pre shape switched in then disengage that.

The older ones might be more desirable but the headstock shape is horrid: Bleurgh, nearly as bad as that Alleva Coppolo thing.

Here's a tasteful take on the Fender headstock I've always liked, it's from an old Fenix (think they were Samicks): Compare to a much more expensive Sandberg which looks like a toddler tried to make a tin opener out of balsa wood:

If you ever feel bad about your Sire headstock just remember people regularly pay £5k for an absolute travesty like this one: Nothing wrong with the Sire headstock IMO, if we hadn't been looking at Fenders all our lives most of us would probably think their headstocks looked rubbish too, I do regardless!

Yeah I saw it and am aware of what the outputs do, that doesn't sort anything for me really as we have a ton of different XLR cables for varying sizes of stage, unless I got a short special cable and extended it with standard XLRs. Might as well just use a dongle adapter in that case which is the least inelegant solution, still a bit of a hack though especially if you need to use the effects send to output to your amp/monitor. It's not something I need either but the thing that interests me is the ability to model different preamps from across the entire equipment spectrum. Like there's probably some amazing models of mic preamps from high end desks that would sound better (to me anyway) than any bass specific preamp pedal you could pay £200+ for, I don't really need any of the bells and whistles or effects tbh although I can see how they come in handy.

I have a spare bass, DI preamp and cable lying next to my setup, tbh it's more about covering every eventuality and making sure any problems are sortable with minimal fuss. Having to trek across the stage trying to plug you DI into a mixer would be something I wouldn't want to do. Not a major concern, just one I would like to bypass easily should it happen. As it stands if my bass monitor failed then I would still be FoH, doing things your way I wouldn't with no quick fix (ie 5 seconds) remedy and that's all I need to know. I've also never had an amp failure, however I know people who have and it's a PITA. Like I said you gig how you like and use what equipment you want, it's honestly no concern of mine.

Not really, it's nothing to with regions or anything, just the type of gigs you're doing. If you're playing pubs and using your backline as FoH then you're not going to be using a DI in any form. If you have decent PA (either owned, provided or hired) then you will 100%, if it's a venue PA with an engineer then they will usually hand you a DI box as they'll probably have a varied experience of amp DIs and want something they know will work as expected. If you're going through a decent PA on every gig however then you're more likely to buy something like a Helix. I think Line 6 omit the XLR because they know can get away with it, because people will work around it same as they work around the lack of the headphone port on Apple phones and see it as an acceptable compromise. Again - form over function. Not for me, YMMV and you can spend your money how you like, as can I. Regarding the amp failing thing (wildly off topic but a quick point) - if it failed mid song then you would definitely have an issue. That's why it's generally a better idea to take the signal before your amp/monitor, so you don't look like a prat playing a silent bass while everybody else on stage stares at you! The engineer can put your bass through the monitors and nobody has to pause between songs to plug jacks into a mixing desk, the audience would never notice. Again if you're playing for beer at the Dog and Duck then it's less of an issue than if it's at someone's wedding and they're paying you a decent wedge for it.

🤣 I'm in Lancashire, hardly London! We own our own PA, I currently DI off my Fishman pedal and am only looking at Helix units because of the preamp models available (and the ease/cost of adding any required effects for future song picks) and the fact I could replicate the feature set of my current preamp pedal while keeping it to a single piece of equipment. I never DI out from amps (the FRFR I use actually has a very nice DI out though, XLR would you believe!) as if the amp fails you have nothing going to FoH which would spell disaster at someone's wedding or whatever. I could count the amount of times I have used an amp's DI on one hand. That's how I gig and I don't think it's as uncommon as you think, I always kind of assumed most working bands gigged like this. Most of the ones I know who regularly play functions etc do.

The Fishman was £230+ at the time of purchase, I think they are under £200 now. I don't think a great whack of that went into the DI portion though as it's a fully featured preamp box which just happens to have a nice DI on it, better than the MXR M80 DI and definitely better than a cheapo DI box. It isn't "focusing on being an excellent DI" in any way shape or form - it's a tuner, compressor, eq with semi parametric mids, notch filter, switchable signal booster, HPF, brilliance control, impedance switch....... it doesn't really focus on anything. Have a look at it: https://www.fishman.com/products/series/platinum/platinum-pro-eq-analog-preamp/ I'm not sure what you mean when you say the Helix won't have a decent DI signal, it would be exactly the same as the 1/4" output (which is a DI) only with the wires soldered to a different type of connector (the industry standard one that everybody uses). If that signal wouldn't be good enough there would be no point using the Helix at all, which we know to be false. My bass setup comprises of a Gator bass gigbag with all my kit in and an FRFR cab, literally I go bass>Fishman>FRFR which is why I don't want to be adding equipment or carrying dongles. I don't carry anything else and I can get set up ready to play in a couple of minutes, pretty much exactly the same as our dep guitarist who just takes a guitar gigbag and his Helix floor unit to gigs. There seems to be a bit of confusion here, I'm not saying it's the end of the world - just a silly omission. Like I said form over function, unfortunately sacrificing connectivity and buying dongles in order to make products smaller seems to be a trend people put up with nowadays, personally I don't like it but each to their own. Your equipment and preferences might be different to mine, I need an XLR DI out full stop so the lack of this puts me right off this particular unit. That's all I was trying to say, I have no idea why posters are so keen to convince me otherwise!

I find it a bit weird that comprehensive bass players' tools like the Boss and Zoom units don't have what I would consider an essential part of a live bass player's arsenal and it definitely puts me off them, they're "do everything" boxes that should do everything. Maybe it's just me? Our cables are exclusively XLR and I don't always use the same one (different stage sizes = different cables) so I just think that for the working musician an XLR DI is essential. Every time I've been presented with an engineers DI box I've offered the use of my Fishman unit instead which engineers usually prefer as it's a great sounding DI and better than the one the have, I have a generic DI box I can use but the one built into my preamp unit is much better and this level of usability is something I would expect when upgrading to a Helix. Maybe I'm being old fashioned here? Tbh I don't think so and I don't think XLR cables are going anywhere. I'm not particularly keen on manufacturers cutting usability for no good reason. Having to carry around a different cable or dongle isn't something I want to be doing in all honesty, horses for courses and all that.