bnt
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I'm looking for one of these too, would be curious to know if it's still available? -
The Short Scale Bass Appreciation Society!
bnt replied to Baloney Balderdash's topic in Bass Guitars
The Squier Paranormal Rascal is out now, apparently, with more pictures and info here. That Sherwood Green with Mint pickguard looks fab, though I think gold hardware would have made it even better: -
It turns out that this NPD had a hangover: yesterday I remembered that there is a music shop not too far from where I work in Dublin. So I headed there after work, and came away with another pedal: a JHS Series 3 Phaser. I've heard generally good things about these pedals and was able to try one in the shop. It's unusual in that it's a Phaser with a Blend control at a reasonable price, to mix the dry signal with the processed signal. It has a Width control that, as far as I can see, does what Depth does on other Phasers such as the TC Electronic Blood Moon. Other Phasers such as the MXR Phase 90 don't even have that. At extreme Width settings, the effect borders on tremelo, which is something I wasn't expecting, I spent more on this one pedal than on the other two combined (incl. postage & customs fees), but that just tells you how much I like the Phaser sound in moderation. I may still get a Laney 85 too - I recall there was one on sale here not so long ago.
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I mean the pedal: when you add in the +1 octave, it’s slightly flat compared to the actual octave you get with e.g. a harmonic. Intonation of the bass is not a factor, I’m talking single notes through the pedal.
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The pedals arrived today. At first I wondered whether the Matcha Cream was faulty, since it made a howling noise at either end of the sustain range, but that was the free PSU that Andertons had supplied with the pedals. (It's worth what I paid for it, frankly.) With a better PSU driving the chain - the one from the SpectraDrive - things were much improved. I noted that the tone circuit cut bass at higher settings, or seem to, which might be useful in some situations, but I kept it lower. As for the Bottom's Up, it's not good news. The upper octaves are audibly out of tune, which to me means the +2 is useless and the +1 is only useful at low levels. (I understand why, it has to do with Fast Fourier Transforms, but it can be done better.) In -1/+1 mode, both octaves at about 9-o'clock, it thickens the sound, but I don't get the pseudo-8-string effect I want. It does have a feature that was not advertised at all: the ability to save favourite settings as a preset, including the switch setting. This means you can have three tones: knob settings, preset, or bypassed. This was all with the SpectraDrive at the end of the chain, driving headphones, so it may be different through an amp moving air or a decent speaker simulation. Next? Moar Pedals, and a Pedalboard with a proper PSU.
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I have one of the Matcha Cream pedals on the way from Anderton's: it's their tiny Big Muff Pi clone. It's not being sold as a bass-focused pedal, so you have to be careful, but I've seen people put bass through it in a few videos, most recently one from Anderton's where Cici tried out a few Distortions and Fuzzes. She went for the ProCo Rat, but the video did confirm this pedal handles bass very nicely. I thought it was worth the advertised £45, but they took £7.50 off at the checkout, so even better! This is the beginnings of a bass / guitar pedalboard: I only have one pedal at the moment, a TC Spectradrive. It can emulate a Big Muff through a TonePrint, but I think it's better at the end of a signal chain as more of an amp sim / mix compressor / DI. So I intend to add a few more FX in front of that, such as a compressor and a modulation pedal or two (I want Chorus and Phaser) In the same order I also have a Landlord FX "Bottom's Up" octaver. Also not a bass-specific pedal, it's brand new on the market and there are no reviews at all yet. I thought it would be worth a punt at the advertised £30, then they took £5 off. In terms of features it lines up with the Harley Benton Sub, and could even be from the same OEM. Knobs for Dry plus two octaves, which are switchable between -2/-1, -1/+1, and +1/+2. I want to hear a little of the +1 for a pseudo-8-string effect. Given its price, I am not expecting miracles, and it won't compete with the Boss OC-5 or the Laney 85 (the one I really want). If I don't like it, I might sell it for a tenner! edit: changed the title, since this is clearly not over yet ..! ☺️
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The Short Scale Bass Appreciation Society!
bnt replied to Baloney Balderdash's topic in Bass Guitars
I'm seriously considering a Höfner Club Bass, probably the Ignition SE. I looked at the violin body, but that's a little too small for a 6" bloke, maybe. Not that the Club Bass is much larger; it looked "normal" on Tina Weymouth, who is at least a foot shorter. It's got the Lightness, being a hollowbody, and I'd like a little acoustic volume for playing by myself. It would probably get flatwounds fairly quickly. Yay or Nay? -
Don't forget there's a quick preamp mod you can do to engage "+6dB Mode", if you feel you need more oomph from the preamp. Low End Lobster shows it around the 5 min mark in this video.
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(duplicate - sorry!)
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(duplicate - sorry!)
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Oh, that's good to hear. Did you get to use different tones from both pickups, individually or blended? I think I would have gotten on just fine with that P on its own, straight in to an amp with the necessary headroom to handle it!
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The Short Scale Bass Appreciation Society!
bnt replied to Baloney Balderdash's topic in Bass Guitars
Another new (?) entry which I haven’t seen mentioned yet is the Rapier Saffire reissue, 31-inch scale, which is distributed by JHS with a RRP of £479. The ‘60s original was a WEM product, I get some Burns vibes from it. -
I know you saw my NBD thread in which I criticised the stock electronics, but you might get on better with them than I did, especially if you use an amp. That Roswell PM-4 (P) pickup has to have the most powerful output I have ever heard from a bass, it's an absolute unit of a pickup.
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I still have it in my office, though for the actual gig, the house amp was a SWR RedHead 2x10 i.e. much much better.
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The Short Scale Bass Appreciation Society!
bnt replied to Baloney Balderdash's topic in Bass Guitars
Anderton’s has them for £199-209, so pretty cheap, yeah. Scale is just under 23.5”. Something like this should include a headphone amp, I think, if it’s really a travel bass. -
The Short Scale Bass Appreciation Society!
bnt replied to Baloney Balderdash's topic in Bass Guitars
Well, here's a new contender in the Like, Rilly Short Scale category: -
I’m curious to hear more about the pitch shifting mentioned above as being not that good. If I get something like the Ampero, I hope to use it for a pseudo 8-string sound, where an upper octave is present but not full volume. If it can’t do something like that, it’s not for me. (My 8-string model tone would be something like John Paul Jones on Leafy Meadows.)
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I don't like working with skeletons, since anything I say just goes in one ear and out the other. 💀
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I can believe that. If I play long gigs ever again, I'll want something light and more ergonomic for the majority of the time, and keep a heavier bass like that for certain songs. I have used it with 50-120 balanced tension strings already, tuned DGCF (opt. drop C) and still have those strings for that. PS Low End Lobster just released a review of the HB PB-20 SBK, the basic P-bass in satin black. Weight 8.8 lbs, he says.
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I don't have my Enhanced here at the moment, but when I weighed it before it was around 4.7kg or 10½ pounds. I thought it was fine on stage, but for casual use in the home, its size and weight has got me checking out short scale basses like the Epiphone Newport!
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My Enhanced is Lake Placid Blue, with matching headstock. I think they didn't match the headstock of the Anniversary edition so that they could show off the roasted maple, which mine doesn't have. They both have the block inlays and the zero fret, things I like. (Why don't all guitars and basses have a zero fret? It reduces or prevents nut filing problems and tonal changes on open strings. I've heard that wear can be a problem, but even now that stainless steel frets are more common?)
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Well, I recently updated my NBD thread with a gig story - a 1-song gig, that is. I was not happy with the electronics in mine and replaced the lot with active EMGs. It doesn’t look like they changed anything there. Apart from that, it’s well-built and holds up well, if big and heavy.
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I had a chance to gig this baby last night, sort-of: one song at a company do, not my choice of material (an Eddie Cochran song). What I found was pretty interesting. I had been kind-of down on the MMTW tone when playing at home, thinking it was a bit weedy compare to the P, but I didn't think a full P tone would suit the material. So in the soundcheck I just used the MMTW, tone all the way down, and they liked the sound. In rehearsal I tried a plectrum, for the tone, but it didn't seem necessary in the end. The house amp was a SWR Redhead 2x10 at pretty low volume, since they took a DI to the PA. I was surprised at how fat the resulting sound was, and I got compliments on it later. Another bassist had a Fender USA P there, and offered to let me play that, but the neck was glossy & sticky while the HB has a satin neck finish. Overall, I had wondered how confident I would be on stage with this bass, but it handled itself very well. The weight might be a problem on a longer gig, but for this gig it helped the bass feel more "substantial", and I didn't embarrass myself too much.
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The Short Scale Bass Appreciation Society!
bnt replied to Baloney Balderdash's topic in Bass Guitars
Does anyone have any experience with the (Bill) Wyman Bass from Bass Centre? I didn't know about it before today. It's 30" scale, small body, £600 new. -
Anyone heard of this thing? I hadn't until today. A few of us at work are going to play a few songs at a company do next week, and one of them said there was a bass amp in storage. It had been left by someone who no longer works there. I have a bass there, since we ran through some songs today, so I borrowed it, and it sounds OK at low volumes. It's very light - maybe 10 lbs - and I'm not confident it would be good at anything much louder. Here's a picture of an identical one, which is on sale here, though that one is missing the tone controls. A search finds others on sale, including one for £12.99!
