lemmywinks

I was going to say there's nothing that can't be fixed with a few hand tools and a cheap preamp until I saw this: Think it's a Westfield isn't it? Should be a solid enough project if anybody is feeling brave. Maybe we should start pooling money to buy these and just have them shipped directly to Andy's house for fun?* *Fun for us, not Andy.......

A poster here fitted Wilkinson saddles to a V2 P7, I know the V3 has a different bridge but maybe that would be a solution? The bridge really is something they should have redesigned on the Gen 2, the tuners are easily swappable and adequate but the bridge needs replacing IMO. If you want to keep through body stringing then it's a PITA - on my Gen1 V7 it worked but the break angle of the string got on my nerves.

Depends what value you put on your time really. Taking strings off a bass, going to the shops to buy meths, soaking strings overnight, drying them off, restringing, washing the meths off your pots and pans, being moaned at by your significant other for using the kitchen as your own personal bass laboratory, doing it all again when your strings sound dead after a couple of hours............. There's being on a tight budget and then there's just being tight! A pack of Warwick Red labels is £9.68...........

Instead of boiling your dead strings or soaking them in meths like some mad scientist simply stop being a tightwad and order some new ones from a guitar shop or online store, the end result will be the sound of a new set of strings which lasts longer than one gig and is much less time consuming than faffing about with metre long glass tubes or pans.

I started listening to these guys a while ago as they cover 80s and 90s theme tunes along with songs from the Transformers movie soundtrack (obviously). They started off doing small conventions etc, they're a fun band and I wouldn't read too much into the Zep cover. check out their Doom/Power Rangers medley and rendition of the Pokemon theme. And yes I would join them in a second, they do some fun gigs and I've always had a weird thing for Arcee.

Relax, chances are you're playing too heavily - usually either a demanding bass part which is on the edge of your ability causing you to tense up or you're struggling for volume and subconsciously compensating. Always the chance it's an underlying condition so get it checked out either way, our guitarist gets this every now and then due to an old injury from a motorbike accident and had to stop playing for a few years but even working at a computer all day can cause strain injuries. Might be worth going to a tutor and getting any technique issues identified and sorted out, can't hurt really and we can all develop bad habits. Whenever I have any semi-demanding part which involves my fretting hand being in a set position and my picking fingers repeating the same pattern constantly (think the ad nauseum root & 1/16th octaves on Hot Stuff or something) I just make sure I relax.

I don't think the preamp is particularly expensive, just well designed. It's still surprising how many active basses have cheap sounding preamps which have boom, honk and fizz controls instead of bass/mid/treble. The weird thing is the Sire preamp apparently has a stupidly low bass control which boosts at 20hz yet it never gets too boomy unless you're silly with it, can wind it up a decent amount and it just fattens everything up without being overbearing.

As said nylon coated is the way forward for acoustic basses, I think if a lot of opinions about the instrument would change if people heard them strung with nylons. I've had Roto Trubass on mine (not my first choice but they were cheap and barely used) for about a decade and they still sound great so not that expensive in the grand scheme of things! My favourite nylon coated strings were Galli many moons ago but not tried them in a while.

At least you know it's an authentic Gibson...

Novice musicians place a disproportionate amount of value in the instruments their heroes used, ignoring the fact that it was pretty much all that was available at the time. Also completely disregarding the fact that their heroes wouldn't touch that wonky necked 70s Jazz bass they just paid £2k if their life depended on it. I recall an interview with either Jack Bruce or Eric Clapton regarding rehearsals for the Cream reunion - they got all of their vintage gear out from back in the day, realised their modern equipment was a lot better and binned off all the old stuff. There is nothing special about 40+ year old electric instruments, especially crude bolt on planks like Fenders.

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds was pinched from a Jefferson Airplane track. Shame as I really like the song.

Why bother with an amp? You just need a preamp which you will have already.

Here's what I have left, think the stacked pot was reused when I had the bass kitted out with a Bart piezo pre. Definitely have the original pups and probably have the two other generic pots somewhere too.

I have a Hohner preamp assembly somewhere along with the EMG Select J pickups, took them out of a Hohner JJ pro. Has the stacked pot with the red LED. Photo pinched from the web to show controls: The Artec preamps sound great btw.

I think the spacing on the SDGR is 16.5mm isn't it?

I knew who the seller was just by the pics and price tag!

Again with this rubbish: "So give old John Hornsby-Skews up north who builds them a break and try one for yourself!" Why is he trying to imply these are UK built guitars? JHS is the importer (it's spelt John Hornby Skewes btw Mark....), seeing as Mr. Skewes is in his mid 80s and left the company in 2016 I seriously doubt he is assembling Encore parts in his garden shed. MDP did the same with those budget pickups on another bass, allegedly from John Hutchinson of Janika Guitars in Nottingham - ie cheapo Chinese jobbies from the Janika eBay store. Surely he can't see this bogus sales patter and embellishment as anything other than complete dishonesty?

They're Indonesian Corts made to varying specs, as said above the SDGR has a slightly different scale length with really tight spacing whereas the BTB has wider spacing. If you compare them to other Corts they'll usually have the same hardware and electrics so you aren't just limited to those models either.

I think that gold bass looks ok, wouldn't play it myself but for what it is there's nothing wrong with it. Would look better with 3 concentric pots rather than 6 single ones.

Or just put a P neck on your Jazz bass.

Looks like standard USA Fender routing to me.

The annoying thing is the primary school paint brown with the woodgrain scratchplate and a floral motif actually looks alright to me, a bit of a geography teacher's bass but it looks "together" and cohesive. Like he actually had a design goal and put some thought into what he wanted it to look like. Then he dropped a couple of tabs and set about it with with an angle grinder.

Looking at his previous attempts at modification I'm guessing it involved a perfectly good bass case, a saw and a case of Special Brew.

Came here to post that, you can pick the headless kits up for barely any money and do a much less time consuming and far more elegant job than that. The end result would probably be one which would sell quite easily too. For some reason I quite like that wonky looking Kramer though.