prowla

11 hours ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

I don't know whether this is irrational, but where most people I've discussed this with tend to rate Japanese Fenders as second only to USA Fenders, I rate modern Mexico-made Fenders (eg vintera, JMJ mustang) higher than Japan-made ones. Having owned several of both, I'm not keen on the non-standard metric hardware of CIJ/MIJ, and the electronic components (no-name mini pots, flimsy output sockets) don't inspire confidence so I always replace them.

I've got some very good MIM Fenders.

No Japanese ones though, but I'm not sure that the factories they came from were pushing out the world's finest instruments at the time; mostly midrange stuff.

1 hour ago, ezbass said:

Just checked my topic history (I sold it separately some years ago) and it appears to have been a Hipshot HE6C - 3/8".

The Ric one is the BT5.

I think the BT1 has the same base plate but a wider post.

3 hours ago, AndWhy said:

Thanks all for your comments - I’ve just pulled the trigger! Time to find my screwdriver 😂 

 

best of luck with your hunt @Woodinblack! 

I also have:

41 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Yeh, and guess which one I have been looking for, the only bass I want to drop tune!

(I want a couple more!)

I have them on several basses; they work.

When tuning you do have to operate a couple of times back and forth to cover off string slackening/tightening variations.

The dropped position has a small thumb-screw adjuster.

There are like-for-like models for most common bass tuners (they discontinued the Ric ones, though).

They are drop-in replacements for the stock tuners, but you do have to use their countersunk screws rather than the original raised-dome ones (they need to be flush-fitting for the clearance of the moving part over the base plate).

When choosing, they do gold/nickel/chrome/black finishes.

BTN & Allparts sell them in the UK.

1 hour ago, Minininjarob said:

I know some people won’t like this but the Squire logo is gone and I have a Fender Telecaster Bass logo on the way to put on instead. It wasn’t so much to have Fender instead of Squire I just wanted Telecaster instead of Precision!

I have no intention of ever passing it on as a Fender and have left the original serial number/origin country on the headstock. 
 

 

You can still just about read that the brand is Squier.

1 hour ago, bnt said:

Could we stick a pin in this, and put it on the back burner? Thanks! 

Maybe take it offline.

4 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

Anyone using the word "onboarding" deserves to be stabbed in the ear.

I'm not sure I'm onboard with that!

8 hours ago, fergs40 said:

This

And this

 

And this

And done.

A bit of this and that.

1 hour ago, ezbass said:

Content vs sound quality I guess, subject to one’s musical preferences of course. For instance, I’ll listen to, let’s say John Mayer, on a crappy set of PC speakers and enjoy it. Whereas, I don’t care how good a system is, someone I don’t like (the list is extensive) will always going to have me each reaching for the off switch, despite the pristine reproduction.

Well, my point is that the sound quality defines the quality of the content which reaches your ears.

However, I do get what you're saying; I've been to a couple of Hi-Fi shows where a lot of suppliers were playing lounge jazz, which simply bores me.

7 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

There's sound reasons for using a separate power amp - keeping low level signal processing away from high power amplification can lead to big (ISH!) gains in fidelity... I even do this with my bass set up, though I use a PA power amp rather than bass-specific.

At one time I even used a passive pre-amp (some swear by 'em) though that was only because it came with a pair of Lumley 120w valve mono blocks (beasts! took 20 minutes warm up before you could play music, and 20 minutes on standby before powering off in order to preserve the 8 x 6550 valves per channel).

But sound principles can go out of the window with hifi - we had a sound recordist at the BBC who swore by directional cables, cable lifters, high capacitance carbon fibre cables, separate hifi earth spike and those funny little Shakti stones that improved the sound immeasurably (!). And this was despite his BBC training!

Just last year I dropped in to a Hi-Fi shop and got chatting; one of the folks there said they had a system set up and would I like to have a listen.

So, I sat down in front of the rather expensive, out of my price range system and he put on some music.

I said it was a bit disappointing and was lacking something, it seemed a bit lacklustre and had no life; he said hang on a mo and went and tweaked some settings.

Suddenly the missing stuff was there.

I asked him what he'd done and he said he'd switched the mode of the power amp to Class-A.

1 hour ago, NancyJohnson said:

He would say regularly that achieving 85% of musical audio fidelity was cheap and simple, the big money is in the final 15%, which I suppose is where his business model lies.

It's the same with most things.

The most extreme case of performance is probably cars: the difference between a supercar and a hot hatch; that last 10-15% can cost £1m+.

I think the differences in Hi-Fi can be quite subtle.

54 minutes ago, ezbass said:

Very much this and I think it is down to size of the format. This is what I miss about vinyl. Poring over the artwork of some albums, especially gatefolds, and finding some small detail that you’d missed before (difficult with cassette or CD, as they’re so much smaller) is something you can’t replicate without that 12” size.

 

Regarding sound quality, I had a conversation, many years ago, with a colleague about hifi gear. We came to the conclusion that non musicians were more likely to spend more money on their setups, compared to those who played an instrument. Players being more concerned about the quality of the music, rather than the quality of the reproduction, that and the likelihood of many musicians to have impaired hearing anyway.

It's ironic that musicians will happily discuss upgrades, pickup sound, valve amps, digital vs analogue, feel, and so-on, but yet argue about whether a system's ability to reproduce those subtleties is a real thing or even relevant.

I don't understand how you can separate the quality of the music from the quality of the reproduction.

11 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

I have a mate who owned an extremely high end hi-fi business.  We're talking installs running into the tens of thousands; another of my mates is one of his clients.  It's ridiculous money changing hands (£750 for a turntable power supply, I mean, WTAF??).

 

Anyhow, I reckon I've listen to enough records on high end kit and - while it's a personal opinion - no amount of money thrown at various set ups is going to convince me that those crackles and pops and surface noise etc. would be worth the outlay.

 

Could you imagine if, in an alternative universe, CDs actually came first, then 100 years on some wag said, 'Hey look, I've invented this, it's 7" bigger, made of black plastic.  It's prone to scratching and if you play it a few times, it'll actually sound worse!  You won't be able to use it anywhere other than in your house and the hardware will cost a fortune.  It's great, and oh, it's going to cost you three or four times more than those CD things.'

Yikes - I'll be spending £3k (s/h) on a power supply for my network streamer in the forseeable!

https://www.naimaudio.com/products/naps-555-dr

(I was going to invite you round for a listen, but maybe not! 🙂 )

I have to say I've gone digital.

But one day I'll get my LP12 out of the loft and set it up again.

Meanwhile we have a pic'n'mix the usual arguments:

• Digital is more accurate than vinyl.
• Vinyl has more feeling than digital.
• Digital has more dynamic range than vinyl.
• Digital sounds like sandpaper.
• You must be mad if you spend £2k+ on a needle.
• CDs are limited and you can't spread jam on them and expect them to play.
• Vinyl LPs warp.
• Anything above £250 and you can't tell the difference anyway.
• Some albums sound better on this and some on that.
• Anything above £251 and it's all a placebo anyway.
• My vinyl sounds no better than my digital when played over Bluetooth.
• It's about the music not the system.
• Go out and listen to some live music.

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

Because most vinyl lovers are in denial. There are all sorts of technical issues that affect what can be cut to a master disc in the first place and then what will actually be playable on a typical system once the results have been stamped out of a pice of hot plastic. As much as vinyl lovers would like to tell themselves otherwise, the final stage of the manufacturing process is hardly one of precision and finesse.

 

My current band are contemplating a vinyl version of our album (CDs still sell exceptionally well in our genre) and if we do it is likely to have a different running order to accommodate the limitations of the medium as well as having some the the more extreme stereo effects collapsed to mono in order for it to be capable of being cut.

 

For me, any records I bought as a teenager simply don't sound right unless they are played on my old dansette that cost £8 from a junk shop in 1973 and played one side of the stereo mix much louder than the other. These are versions/mixes of those records I am used to and everything else sounds wrong no matter how superior the reproduction might be.

Well, I've never heard a digital system that hands-down beats a top-flight vinyl one; there's just something slightly detached about its performance.

38 minutes ago, martthebass said:

You have a point from a technical point of view but to suggest vinyl lovers are in denial is inaccurate.

 

I have a budget/mid level system with a Rega RP3 turntable for vinyl, Rega Apollo CD player and a Rega Brio R amp.  I'm even beckoning in the 21st century with streaming using a Wiim Ultra.

Now I have some albums on both Vinyl and CD and despite my aging ears I can hear distinct difference between the media; I'm not going to advocate one medium over the other but there are times when I prefer the vinyl and others the CD.  It's hard to put into words but vinyl can sometimes give a more immediate delivery and a warmer more involving experience.  There are times when the vinyl seems flat and less dynamic compared to the CD.  These differences are probably more apparent when you go to a true high end system.  Now you may ascribe what I've just said to lack of objectivity but the enjoyment of music is quite often a subjective experience and opinions differ........much like the insistence that amps based on valves are superior to transistors.

As you wander up the performance chain you tend to find that some albums sound distinctly worse than others.

With something like a WiiM Ultra you can do room-modelling eq.

Some digital transcodings do have tweaks done to the levels which can come across as being more dynamic.

In general, a lot of the loss in fidelity of any reproduction is down to a cloth-eared engineer or producer in the studio or mixing room.

16 minutes ago, AMV001 said:

 

Nice. What are the six positions?

It has two axes each of 3 positions; on my Ric I've got an SD humbucker, so I just have one with in single-coil and one with it humbucker.

But there are lots of other options.

https://www.freewayswitch.com/

23 minutes ago, AMV001 said:

1981 4001 BT with personal modifications. Its taken a while to get all the mods I wanted done and I still want to install a parallel/series switch (probably on a push/pull pot). But that can wait a while I think, I just want to enjoy it for now.

 

I have a (6 position) Freeway switch on one of my Rics.

9 hours ago, p4ul said:

new irrational prejudice is unlocked!

Some of these prejudices can be quite deep.

4 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

I was referring to the positioning. Ultimately any passive circuit unless you are using rick-o-sound the tones affect the other pickup. Gibsons are far worse because the volume affects the other pickup too!

The point is that the Ric ones switch out the tone cap with the pickup, so they're not both in-circuit all the time.

15 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Well, more not gibsons when it comes to twin tone and volume controls, fender have their own crazy ideas.

Arguably, Gibsons are wrong, because both Tone controls affect both pickups; Rickenbackers address this by: a. putting the tone caps on the pickup side of the selector switch so that they're out of curcuit when their respective pickup is off, and b. keeping the circuits independent right up to the output sockets and even allowing them to go to separate amps (Rick-O-Sound).

Another "Rics are wrong because they aren't Fenders" issue. 🙂

2 hours ago, spencer.b said:

I know it's irrational and it's all down to personal taste and I know I'm the d!CK here but this is s safe space right?

Custom colour fender basses should have white/mint guards , look in the books , nearly all white guards , why oh why do people put tort on them, sunburst, yeah tort of course, Olympic white beautiful, fiesta red OK I'll let it pass there is the odd one (although more than likely a sunburst bass refinished by the distributor like selmer or kitchens to order when new) but Daphne Blue , all wrong .Candy Apple Red are you f***!ng serious, Shoreline gold, I feel sick 

Apart from looking all wrong the celluloid tort is really hard to replicate unless you drop a fortune on a spitfire, why oh why do fender put awful cheap looking tort guards on custom shop custom colour basses , with an aged mint guard you'd have to get close to tell it wasn't the real thing with a tort one it catches my eye a mile off

Sorry everyone!

It's torture, I tell you!

Just now, AinsleyWalker said:

Which part, the last sentence? Absolutely!
The part about the application of pickguards? I'd say that's accurate

Putting "absolutely" after an opinion still doesn't make it a fact and the "I'd say" confirms it as opinion.

2 minutes ago, AinsleyWalker said:

On an acoustic instrument where you need to strum for volume, I can understand a guard (but I'd prefer not to have one) but on electric basses they have been almost solely cosmetic (Jazz bass) or to hide routing (P bass). Some look OK, others look tacky. 

That is an opinion, but not absolute fact.

4 hours ago, KingBollock said:

Often adding more solder will help to reactivate old, stubborn solder.

 

I’ve been using the same 17w Antex since 1988. About three years ago I bought a 25w Antex, just so’s I could have two different sized tips to hand without having to wait for the iron to cool down to change the bit.

Yep - I tried adding more and that didn't work. 

My old iron is an Antex; it can't do silver solder though.