shoulderpet

Hi I have a lovely Ibanez Mezzo bass, as some on this forum will have read on another post it arrived with some tarnished frets and I was thinking of sending it back but it seemed daft to return a bass that I liked for something that I could fix for the price of some metal polish so polished up the frets and happy with the bass. That being said the one thing that niggles me a little is that the onboard treble eq on the bass gets noisy with more than a moderate boost, by noisy I don't mean hiss so much as the frequencies it seems to be boosting seem to be the ones that correlate with string noise, fret buzz etc, as I am a treble cranked to 11 kind of person it is something that I would like to fix. This leads me to 2 options a) a darker voiced pickup so that boosting the treble gives a boost in the treble but with those highest frequencies rolled off by the pickup by its design, for example a Duncan SPB-2 is not completely without treble but the overwound design means that those highest frequencies that tend to get harsh are greatly reduced, the voicing of such a pickup could also be very useful in that because that pickup is so midrange heavy I could crank both the bass and the treble on the active eq and get a pretty balanced tone b) a different preamp, I have zero experience with replacing preamps so I am a complete noob in this world Thoughts? thanks

There is a mod that is popular with people who own the Squier as jaguar bass, the stock j pickup is weak and people have boosted the output by putting neodymium magnets on top of the pole pieces rather than underneath them so perhaps you need to do the same

Thanks for the replies I have used some T-Cut today and that seems to have done the trick, one more question, bit of buzz on the lower frets(frets 1-3), not bad but enough that I wouldn't want to lower the action lower than it is at the moment, loosen the truss rod slightly?

Thanks I thought it should be ok after all bass strings are surely more abrasive on the frets, is an Ibanez mezzo bass so I would be doubtful that the frets are any kind of gold , I will have to get some Autosol

As per the thread title I have some tarnished frets on a bass, the frets are naturally a kind of slight brass colour (they have a very slight yellowish brass hue to them) , have polished one of the frets with some silver polish (just the one to test it) and the fret I have polished has gone from a slight brass colour to a silvery colour , should I be worried? I am guessing not since during a fret dressing abrasive material would also be used ?

Hi Ibanez says on the net that they are 105-45 Daddario Nickels , haven't seen this gauge in Medium scale, were these a custom set that were made for Ibanez, if so I presume they are identical to the long scale 105-45 Nickels just shorter? Thanks

Ok so just to give an update, I have moved this bass on, I was impressed by the features and the overall quality for the price but as the new bass buzz faded I was finding that in spite of being impressed I just didn't click with this bass and I couldn't help feeling that this was a decent bass but lacked personality

I think an Ibanez mezzo is the way to go, I really be dont want to play quality control lottery with Squier (after sending 2 of them back I don't have much confidence in them) and the mezzo seems highly regarded and 2 band eq also, just need to wait for my refund for the Squier to come through

Cool, sounds pretty solid, i'm primarily a 4 string player so I think I will try one out once the lockdown is over

Interesting, I will have to try one out, I am curious about the 5 string version (would be interesting to string it E to C to chords and upper register bass fills)

Hi all My recent attempts to buy a Squier CV Jaguar left me a little disappointed in terms of the quality control (or lack of)in those basses, however one thing that I did notice was that medium scale seems to hit that sweet spot between good playability and good tone, the accoustic tone was more defined than my short scales but the difference in scale length was small enough that if i didn't know it was medium scale I probably wouldn't notice that it was medium rather than short scale. This has me wondering if anything else is out there in medium scale that is good and sub £400 , the Ibanez mezzo ticks a lot of boxes (32" scale length, active eq) but at around £250 I am thinking it is probably not appreciably better than my VM Jaguar bass, what about the (now discontinued) Squier tele bass Thanks

Yeah I usually do basic setups when i get a new instrument (adjust saddle height, tighten truss rod if buzzing from the bottom half of the neck, loosen if buzzing on the first few frets)but I think with this one based on my experience as it is only buzzing on the one fret (albeit very bad fret buzz) that it is the fretwork that is causing issues rather than the neck relief, that being said I would love to be pleasantly surprised so I will try tightening the truss rod a tad and see if it goes.

I didn't, the thing is as it is only on one string at a particular fret it seemed more likely to be cr*ppy fretwork, I will give it a try later tonight

Yeah, its a shame as I really like the look and feel of the bass but imo a bass should be playable with medium action without horrendous fret buzz and should not require the action to be super high to compensate. Always seems strange to me that as musicians we tolerate so much in terms of faults with a bass, we wouldn't tolerate a washing machine with a faulty spin cycle or a tv we could barely hear or a pc that crashes frequently just because they are cheap but with an inexpensive bass we end up justifying issues that shouldn't be there to start with.

Ok so I got the replacement, sadly the replacement is dodgy too 😡 the alarm bells started when i unboxed the bass and the action was about 4mm, I lowered the action to about 2.5mm and there was a horrific buzz on the D string at the 9th fret so I think they caught the fret buzz at the factory and jacked up the action to compensate. As this is 2nd time unlucky I think I'm going to return it for a refund and wait till lockdown is over so I can try one out in person

I really hope that's the case, starting to wish I had put an ad in items wanted instead of buying new

I will give them till Monday, if they still don't know where the bass is then I will contact gear4music

And DHL seems to have lost the replacement , can't fault gear4music, they collected from me and sent out the replacement quickly but thumbs down for DHL whos tracking advised of a delay on Friday that means it wouldn't be delivered so I arranged on their online system to collect from the depot today only to get there and they couldn't find it.

Yeah I mean i always managed to get a decent tone but it almost seems like Fender did the eq section with the mindset of choosing the problem frequencies that you would often choose to cut, that being said the basic tone with everything flat was a decent useable tone

I had the 500watt version and it was a great amp and I got it because at the time it was it had the most features for the lowest cost but tbh I think some of the eq choices are very odd like the treble being 10khz (treble control would be much more effective if they voiced it a bit lower) and the low mids being 280hz (have to be careful not too boost too much on the low mids otherwise the tone gets muddy) but to be fair despite the odd eq choices I always managed to get a decent tone from the amp and the built in overdrive and hf horn are really nice touces

Interesting, looks a lot like a Tanglewood Rebel but not quite the same, I wonder if they were made in the same factory

Great bass part, during the 1st lockdown I had a plan (which sadly I never got round to finishing) of starting a Youtube channel of my bass covers, anyway I filmed several bass covers with the intention of uploading and one of the songs on my list was Rio , anyhow I made a number of attempts at the song and in a band cover and in a band mix my bass playing would have sounded fine but in the context of a bass cover I just could not get the bass part tight enough and after a number of attempts decided I would abandon my bass cover of that song so I have great respect for John Taylor's playing

Honestly at Rickenbacker's price they have no excuse for sloppy quality control, if I paid that much for a bass I would expect a lot

Yeah, the photos dont really show just how different the 2 tones of the neck are but around the 12 fret its practically cherry red and the rest of the neck is (varying shades of) amber , even my wife (who thinks all of my basses look the same) could clearly see that something was up with the neck