shoulderpet

So, for a while I have been eyeing up the new ocean turquoise Gretsch junior jet ii bass, not having a lot of disposable income my wife had offered a couple of times to go halves with me on the cost of one but I had always declined. Anyway the other day my wife told me that she had a delivery and asked if I would sign for it when the courier turned up. Anyway the courier turned up I signed for the delivery and then my wife told me to open the box, I thought maybe it was a new computer chair or something, I opened the box and my eyes lit up when I saw a Gretsch box inside the box, I was over the moon. Anyway it is a great bass, the photo doesn't do it justice, in person it is much prettier and the colour is much nicer, it sounds great too and if someone told me this bass sold for twice what this sells for i wouldn't question it at all

Not sure if the Gotoh tuners unfortunately, with regards to the J pickup it depends what you are after. Vintage - Fender pure vintage 62 I think they are called Aggressive, dark - Dimarzio model j Aggressive scooped - Seymour Duncan SJB-3 Modern scooped - Dimarzio ultra jazz I like the ultra jazz personally, nice and crisp sounding

Honestly I think the P pickup on these basses is great, you can upgrade but imo it is not necessary, the J pickup is worth upgrading, bridge can be upgraded but again I don't think it's necessary. I think the thing that is worth upgrading is the machine heads as the stock ones are junk and if I still owned a Mustang I would put some Gotoh tuners on it. With regards to the controls, if you are looking to upgrade them then I would put in a series/parallel switch in place of the pickup selector and swap the volume tone for 2 volumes or stacked volume controls plus a tone control.

I initially really liked Nyxl's, when I fitted them I thought I had found my ideal string tonally then a couple of weeks later they fully broke in and they just sounded really lifeless, no balls to them at all. I thought maybe I had a bad set and decided to give them another try a few months later and same outcome.

Ok so positive update, after reading up a bit on truss rods I decided to apply a little bit of grease around where the truss rod turns, applied a little grease loosened the truss rod a tiny bit, tightened it a tiny bit and repeated a couple times then tightened and now the truss rod turns though it's full range with no issues, before it felt very, very tight but turns out it just needed a little grease to get it moving

Yes, exactly that, my other basses I can turn the truss rod (if needed) probably a full 90 degrees no problem, this bass I can turn it about 45 degrees and then it doesn't turn any further. I need to get a set of feelers gauges so not sure if the actual measurements but the relief does by eye look a little more than it should be but the weird thing is that the bass plays absolutely fine, action is lowish, no buzz, no fret rattle.

Hi I have a bass with a heel access truss rod, plays fine but I notice the truss rod doesn't seem to turn as far as my other basses. Not sure the best way to describe it and adjusting the truss rod to show what I mean would mean removing the neck so I am going to use the below which shows angles, 360° would mean a truss rod that did not stop turning etc, hope this makes sense Using the below and imagining that the two lines shown below in each angle represent the movement of a truss rod I would say most of my basses in terms of available adjustment would correspond to the picture of the 90° angle, the bass with the heel access truss rod I would say in terms of available truss rod adjustment is more like the picture of the 45° angle Is this normal, should I be concerned?

If you want them to sound like thumpy Labellas then keep using the oil, if you want any semblance of brightness then I would pass on the oil.

Only thing that is stopping me from getting one is the lack of body contours, I moved my PJ Mustang on for that same reason.

I haven't played the Gretsch but I have heard the neck on them are quite chunky

A wrong note, a single wrong note? I would say you are doing a cracking job if you only played the one wrong note in a live performance.

For me it would depend on how it played, if I could get the action to my preference and it played well with no buzz anywhere then I would deal with it and try and get a discount on it, if it needed any kind of fret work to get the action where I wanted it then I would return it, not because of the marks but because the next bass might have better fretwork so I would use it as my excuse for a replacement.

It's the speed of it that gets me, a lot of notes crammed in, actually it's just the part in the "jumped up pantry boy" part, in that section there is a mixture of various descending parts and walks up that use every string and span from the low part of the next on the E string up to the dusty end on the G

This charming man by the Smiths, I can probably play with no mess ups 40% of the time, very busy bass part and all over the neck

Honestly I think the mixes sound better than before but I was hoping for a less conservative remix of the songs. For example the bass in the early stuff that has been remixed is still pretty quiet even for the era, i think the bass should have been made a little less boomy and it could then have been made louder, there may well have been technical reasons this could not have been done but I suspect they didn't want to stray too far from the original mix for fear of upsetting people.

A refret will not be needed for years unless you have frets made of cheese, honestly I wouldn't worry about it too much, if the bass is cheap then just replace it if it eventually needs a refret, if it is something pricier then a few hundred quid for a refret in many years time is a small price to pay comparatively speaking. I am using stainless Rotos on my new build and if the frets eventually get worn down I will just buy a new neck

And so more nut fixing being done, whilst the other slots are sorted the A string slot is a tiny bit on the low side so have refilled the nut slot for the A string and will refile to correct height. Worth noting, I recommend when fixing a nut that superglue and cornstarch is used instead of the usual superglue and baking soda, using cornstarch gives the same results but it gives you a couple of minutes to work with it before it sets completely instead of getting only a couple of seconds to work with baking soda and superglue.

So, I have swapped the P pickup again, this time for a Seymour Duncan SPB-2 that I had spare which is my usual go-to pickup. I initially wanted a bright P pickup but I figured that the Duncan although usually is a very low mid heavy pickup and quite dark would be significantly brighter without any pots to load it down and in an ash bass with a maple fingerboard and I was right, the tone is plenty bright but with some nice hefty low mids, no issues at all getting treble from this setup I am going to hang onto the Kent Armstrong as it is a nice pickup and I will use it if I decide to get the bass routed for a 2nd P pickup.

Thank you, I still need to get a nicer pickguard sorted but is coming along nicely

I have (more times that I like to admit) often just cut up an unused washing up sponge and used that, proper foam is obviously 100 times better but it does the trick in an emergency

Awesome, thank you

One of these over the bridge should help

And so after a mishap with the wiring I have the pickup now wired direct to the output jack, initially I was going to redo the wiring with volume and tone or similar but I am seriously considering just leaving it as is as it sounds so good direct to the output jack, very loud and very bright and with the Rotos has a nice bite to the tone, added a couple extra screws to the pickguard also

I would pass on it and I speak from personal experience. Was in a band where the singer would book gigs with lousy pay, tiny crowds etc, the first gig we played he told the venue as it was the first gig we had done for them we would do it for £100, we then did a few gigs at a venue for a percentage of the bar takings, he then booked us to play a few songs and to loan our equipment for a battle of the bands bash on the promise of a paid gig with the venue a few weeks later. The problem is when you accept gigs for low amounts of money, poor conditions etc not only do you get shafted in terms of pay but because you are undervaluing your services the venues treat you like dirt because they see you as cheap entertainment and nothing more. I remember the above mentioned series of gigs we did at a venue for bar takings the staff would harass us to hurry up packing our kit up after we had just played a gig for them for basically the cost of a couple pints.