T-Bay

Tort looks better though. I have one that colour on my black jazz. Best combination 🙂

Tort everytime. Pearl looks odd.

Or maybe the hardware on the headstock is cheaper and therefore heavier. Mine has Grover tuners, no idea what the epiphones have.

I wonder if that’s what makes the difference, mine is a neck through. You would think the weight where the neck joins would be fairly neutral bias wise but perhaps not.

I am very sensitive to it, it is one thing that guarantees I won’t buy a bass. I even went to the effort of designing and machining a bespoke arm for the strap on an SG I was given as it drove me crackers. I don’t carry my basses under my armpit like some but equally it’s not around my knees. All my straps are on the longest hole apart from one which is particularly long. Not sure how that compares to there’s but guess it’s about average? There is no hint of neck dive on the Tbird when there. There was a thread on here where several people put up pics of their Tbirds without dive, so either it’s limited to certain models, hence my wondering about epiphone versions, or perhaps just one of those urban myths? It does seem to me to be a fundamental mistake for a maker to produce a bass that inflicts damage to itself at any opportunity but it’s far from the only piece of poor design around basses sadly.

I always turn mine on a few minutes before I intend to use it, they only need a few seconds technically but it’s no hassle and just allows them to stabilise a bit more. Similarly I leave it on standby for a few minutes after playing to let it cool a bit.

My Gibson Thunderbird has zero neck dive, is it the epiphone ones that dive as none of the Gibsons I tried ever have.

That’s what I do and never had a problem, you won’t even come close to stretching the cab at the volumes we are talking about. Sorry if my earlier reply wasn’t clear, as HJ states run it at 8ohm into the 8ohm cab. I have never run my amp above half way anywhere. I have messed about with it once going to about two thirds at an open air gig and our drummer (who was late) heard it over a mile away! Output is not an issue with these amps. I have revolved mine to get a bit cleaner sound higher up the output range which is supposed to take a bit of power out but can’t say I have noticed.

I have a midget and compact and the 1000w terror amp and do just that. I have just used one cab at smaller venues (and one that’s up loads of stairs) as well.

I sandwich them between off cuts of ply with the lower being cut to shape to act as the master. Then rout with a bevel bit. You need to be careful to set the depth of the bit obviously but otherwise it’s pretty much foolproof.

How does it compare? I looked at it but went for the hot wax to sit alongside the soul food in the end.

That’s........ errrr......... interesting...........

I love mine which is a cheap unknown one wonderfully named ‘rusty axe’ on the headstock in *best quality paint by the maker or retailer. I have never gigged it but what it’s fantastic for is that instant ability to just do something. So if I need to fix something in my head or try something out it’s ideal. I would gig it but it doesn’t fit with the sort of stuff we do.

Batteries, spare cables and an ability to fix almost anything on the fly. and I play a bit of bass too

I have never spent close to £3k on a bass, but my two go to ones were both bought blind (although with a knowledge of their features that indicated strongly they would suit me), I have bought a few after playing them briefly and liking them only to find that a while down the line they sit gathering dust for whatever reason and I move them on. I think you need to live with a bass for a while to truly know if it’s for you and even the best shop is very unlikely to lend you a £3k bass for six months to see if it’s ‘the one’.

Mine is on my board and I have never had any interference issues.

Genuinely not mine, but a mate had a load of hassle with a bandmate who was married with two young kids but who would insist on copping off with any woman he could after a gig but expecting the other bandmates to cover for him. It all came to head when he decided to do it mid gig last year and they were late starting the second set as he was at it in the back of his van in the car park and they had to go and bang on the outside to get him. The shame is that he is a fantastic musician but a pretty terrible human being.

It’s also easy to forget that far from accepting a tax regime and working within its boundaries, companies such as Amazon and the Pharmaceutical companies (such as the one I Sadly one worked for ) actively lobby to ensure that the tax regime remains beneficial to them and work very hard to ensure anyone who would change it to their detriment does not get into power. I can’t see many market traders on a Saturday pulling that off......

Another vote for Bananas, it has become a bit of an in joke in the band but I never get cramp unlike rehearsals if I am banana free.

Jazz every time for me, the Precision neck is like a Cricket bat.

The same amazon customer service refused to refund on a piece of equipment bought for a charity for disabled kids I support. It was returned to the vendor with proof or delivery and they just ignored repeated requests to intervene and refund. The local trading standards told us they were too big to take on. We ended up £150 down, money that had been raised by the kids making stuff, doing bag packs and collecting pennies. They are, and always will be scumbags imho, and that’s before the issues regarding tax/ workers rights etc etc etc.

I have a Digitech drop and it is very very good but not perfect. I mainly use it for practice where the original is in a different tuning to how we play it but occasionally use it at rehearsals and have used it live for the drop D on another brick in the wall. The only time I find it struggles is when you play a run across the strings from low to high, it goes a bit warbly on the higher strings in a way it doesn’t if just stay in that area. Nothing major but I notice it. I have never used it for more than a tone down but it will go a full octave.

One of our local recording studios has a battered old Precision in there. Plays sooooooo nice but the Fender sticker looked wrong so I asked the owner. He confirmed that it was a Squier but said it was the best sounding bass he had and he only put the sticker on after people complained that they didn’t want him using a cheap bass. He got it second hand for pennies and it may have been set up/ messed with by a genius, or it may just sound nice like that out the box.