Russ

That's not that much more than older non-Pro Wals go for these days, to be fair. And you get that extra bit of New Romantic cachet. A lot of Gen-X'ers who grew up with that music now have "spare" money for stuff like that! Scott Devine paid a similarly extortionate sum for a Wal that was used in the Do They Know It's Christmas video.

One of Maruszczyk's latest creations, a Jazzus with Turner multicoils and a Lusithand preamp. Pretty much nails the Wal tone to my ears.

I recall that his signature Status had crazy 36V electronics, with four batteries! I loved the design, with the downsized body - shame it was during Status' wooden neck phase (which they appear to have gone back to), would have loved to have seen one with a graphite neck.

I think you're right. Looks like a Mk2 in the Suck My Kiss video. Another player who was a prolific user of Wals back in the day is Jonas Hellborg, before he went off doing his Status and Warwick things. There’s some footage of him on YouTube back in 2020 at NAMM playing a Mk3 through EBS gear and he sounded fantastic. Has Hellborg’s endorsement deal with Warwick run its course? They don’t have his bass or his signature amps on their website anymore.

Some of the album is Stingray too - Forty-Six & Two is all Stingray, and I think Third Eye is too. It's kinda the reverse of Blood Sugar Sex Magik by RHCP - everyone at the time assumed the whole album was Stingray, but almost all of it was recorded with a Wal (with the exception of two songs where Flea played a 5-string Stingray). That's another quintessentially Wal-sounding album...

I love what I've seen of Mike's Zoot Wal-a-likes. I'd like to get my hands on one and give it a try. Lusithand's preamps are great - they're missing the "pick attack" control, but he sets the frequency sweep on the filters to extend to higher frequencies to compensate. If your next Zoot is going to be more like an older Wal, can Mike do a leather scratchplace?

There's a certain presence in the mids, especially the high mids, that's very distinctive, no matter who's playing one. It really brings out the "mwah" on a fretless too. You can hear it with all the above players, as well as 80s-era Geddy Lee, Nick Beggs, etc.

There's a lot of options right now for players who want some of that Wal flavour - quite a few companies producing multi-coil pickups (Herrick, Turner, Bassculture, and apparently now Nordstrand), filter preamps (Lusithand, ACG), and ever a couple of companies that will make you a lookalike! There's a US-based company on FB called Octave Basses who make straight-up Wal copies for Justin Chancellor fans who have neither the money nor patience to get a real one! They're supposed to be pretty good though. There's some demo videos up there of someone who has one playing Tool tunes, and it sounds spot-on. although it probably doesn't hurt that the guy in question has spent a fortune on getting all Justin Chancellor's other gear - the same amps (Demeter/GK/Mesa), the same speakers, all the same pedals, etc, so I suppose that helps. Not sure any of them will have the cachet of the real deal, but, if you love the sound, you should be able to get pretty close. I remember passing on a Wal Mk2 in the Notting Hill Music Exchange back in the mid-90s for £250 because I thought it was too heavy. I guess nobody had any idea of what they'd end up selling for!

Well, if we have a continuum with SWR, with the super-clean, high-tech, tweeter-dominated sound on one side, with Ampeg, with its warm, woolly tone on the other, then Eden was somewhere in the middle - warmer and punchier than SWR, but still much more modern in terms of tone than Ampeg. Marshall missed a trick with Eden. Well, multiple tricks, really. On one hand, I’m glad that Marshall didn’t subsume Eden into its range the same way Fender did with SWR (let’s face it, every bass amp that Fender has released in the past 10 years is a descendent of what they inherited from SWR), but they also didn’t give it the care and attention the brand needed and kinda just let it slowly wither. David Nordschow’s current DNA range show where Eden could have ended up. He should get the name back.

I seem to recall it was brought up in a thread over on TB when Fred from Peavey was soliciting input from Trace enthusiasts about upcoming products. I recall him being non-commital. Obviously they’ve got a 10” ELF combo right now, but it’s pretty conventional, with no bass reflex trickery. More Commando than BLX, but better sounding than either of them!

I can recommend Herrick - https://www.herrickpickups.com/ Martin makes some great stuff, including some fantastic multicoils in various configurations. He's pretty quick, but, like most of these companies, he's not all that cheap.

They're great - SUPER hot for a passive bass. And they look lovely. Only downside is they're boat anchors - proper 70's Fender weight. The 5-string comes in at around 10lbs. They're also good mod platforms - the pickups are 35/40DC-sized so there's any number of replacement pickups available, and, if you want to upgrade to active electronics, it's already got a side jack. Been thinking of getting one and Wal-ifying it, with Herrick multicoils and a Lusithand NFP jazz plate preamp.

Klos are now doing aftermarket graphite necks, to try and take that gap in the market formerly occupied by Status. They're currently only doing P and J necks, but it might be worth shooting them an email to see if they are planning on doing MM necks. https://klosguitars.com/collections/bass-necks/products/carbon-fiber-bass-neck-and-pickguard-upgrade-50-deposit

Just realised I never posted my two new Ooshyks on this thread! Meet Scarlett and Skye - a pair of Frog 6S 6-strings, fretted and fretless: The spec is basically the same for both: 6-string Ash body, quilted ash tops with colour in the grain Roasted maple necks with ebony fingerboards and graphite rods, bolt-on 17.5mm string spacing Luminlay blocks on Skye (the fretted one), edge lines (on Scarlett, the fretless), Luminlay side dots on both Hipshot Ultralite tuners, monorail bridges, Schaller straplocks, coloured knobs for volume and pan (I have the coloured knobs for the other pots, but Noll use a non-standard size for their concentric pots and they don't fit!) Delano Xtender pickups with series/parallel/single coil switches Noll custom 18V 4-band EQ (frequencies adjusted to match the 4-band EQ on a Musicman Bongo) Absolutely loving them so far. One thing I've noticed - if anyone else has the Noll electronics, do you notice the output at the jack being a bit quieter than you might expect? The pickups and circuit are extremely hot, but the output is pretty low, considering...

Possible. I'd heard it was an ICEPower one, but I'm happy to be corrected if it's not!

The power section is, as in many Class D heads, an ICEPower module, similar to that in the MiniMega (with a bit more power), but the preamp section is completely different to anything Peavey have done. The TE team at Peavey are all Trace fanboys and were fastidious about maintaining the "Trace tone" - the pre-shape EQ boosts and cuts the exact same frequencies as on the classic amps, the dual-band compressor is basically the same as the one on the old SMX heads, and the gain staging is designed to work pretty much identically to the classic designs. They even enlisted a bunch of Trace fans online to get their opinions on what they were doing (including, if I'm not mistaken, on this very site, as well as on TB). Basically, this is a lot more than a rebadged Peavey head.

These would be the main ones over the last 30-odd years: John Paul Jones Tony Levin Anthony Jackson Justin Chancellor Doug Wimbish Colin Edwin Cliff Burton Geddy Lee Steve DiGiorgio Billy Gould Flea Les Claypool Mick Karn John Taylor Nick Beggs Mark King Jaco Out of those, the ones that have persisted the most have been Levin, Burton and Wimbish.

You should try it through a Big Twin... 😮 It's like it never runs out of power, it just keeps getting louder! I've been having to deal with the input gain thing again recently - I recently got two new Maruszczyk basses, and they're wonderful. The only weird thing is, despite having pretty hot pickups and active 18V electronics, the actual output from the jack socket is quite low, so I'm having to deal with the input gain / compressor interaction again. To my ear, it also affects the EQ. It's fiddly but I'm not going to shy away from a challenge!

Great review. I own a TE-1200 and echo pretty much everything you've said about it. My only personal criticisms are that it has no way to monitor input gain (a clip light in the LED ring around the gain knob would be good for a putative version 2 of the head) and yes, that the included gig bag doesn't have a shoulder strap. It's quite hefty for a Class D head and having a shoulder strap would make transporting it much easier.

So, on Friday I received my new Maruszczyk Frog 6A twins - Skye and Scarlett. Skye is the blue-stained fretted bass, Scarlett is the red-stained fretless. Yes, I name my basses! Specs: Swamp ash bodies Quilted ash tops with colour stain in the grain Roasted maple necks with ebony fingerboards - edge lines on the fretless, Luminlay blocks on the fretted, Luminlay side dots on both, 17.5mm spacing at the bridge Delano Xtender pickups (with series/single coil/parallel switches) Noll 4-band EQ, 18V Hipshot Ultralite tuners Monorail bridges Ramps I’m still exploring the range of sounds available, but, holy crap, these things are nice. Light (8lbs), lovely necks, and a very smooth, slick feel thanks to a perfect setup. They weren’t all that pricey either. Maruszczyk also make it all a bit special - every bass comes with a certificate of ownership, a nice manual, a T-shirt, a big thick leather strap and a fancy gig bag! Adrian’s English isn’t great, but he’s very accommodating of any unusual requests. For instance, to fit the colour theme, I requested coloured knobs - we managed to do them on the volume and blend pots, but Noll’s concentric EQ pots are an unusual size, and we weren’t able to get knobs that fit, alas. Doesn’t bother me really, I think they still look cool. Merry Christmas to me.

I had a Fusion S 1200 for a while. Fantastic sounding thing, but really confusing controls. Every knob has two functions that you have to press the knob in to access.

I like the Sadowsky one. But you're right about the A-C one. It's "blobby", like a low-resolution version of a Fender headstock!

Yup. It's kinda a silly and slightly shallow thing to get hung up on, but the headstock is a dealbreaker for me too.

It goes 'boxy', a little bit hairy, and compressed in a less-than-pleasant way (pretty much standard for solid-state amps), but not noisy. I play active basses, and have to get the gain up to around 2-3-o'clock for it to get to that point. I usually have it around 11-12-o'clock, and there's almost endless gobs of power from the power section, so you'll pretty much never be in a situation where you'll have to dial up the input gain to be heard. The built-in compressor does lower the volume somewhat, but, as Merton said, playing with the input gain and compressor controls yields some interesting results, anything from a hyper-compressed, Tony Levin-style tone to singing sustain (my preferred setting).

I’ve got a TE-1200, and yes, this is a thing. Just dial in your gain until it sounds bad. However, this is something that has been brought up with the Trace team at Peavey, and will probably be addressed in the next iteration of the head. They’ve actually been very good in soliciting feedback on their products, and seem to very much be open to suggestions. Some smaller, lighter cabs would be nice too - updated versions of the 1153/1210H cabs would be ideal - something that would fit in the back of the average hatchback rather than the back of a big American SUV!