shoulderpet

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

Tbh its not the markers so much, when the bass arrived I noticed the markers, then I noticed the white indentations in the finish on the side of the fret board and was weighing up me options about whether I should keep or return. I was very strongly considering keeping the bass , then about an hour later I noticed (and I have no idea how I didn't notice this to start with) that the neck around the 12 fret was practically cherry red (the poor quality photos really dont show the extent of the difference in colour) and that was the decider for me

This is my other issue with slap bass, bass demos where the palyer slaps through 90% of the demo, how am i meant to hear what the bass sounds like? Im not going to slap 90% of the time /Youtube/

This is my problem with a lot of the slap players , this is technically impressive but whats the point? wheres the melody? the song? just sounds like someone w@!k!!g to me

Yeah, some of the 70s basses were real turds and would be firewood today, it always make me laugh the price that vintage Fenders go for when a lot of those 70s Fenders were absolutely terrible basses , then you have the stuff that was considered low end back then like Teisco and Kay that usually weighed a tonne, had pickups you could sing into and hear yourself through your amp, those terrible bridges the sliding bar that many of them had and the tuners that were like bronco tuners but worse.

Ok now that it is daylight again I managed to get a slightly better picture of the 2 tone finish.

To some extent yes I would expect the side dots to have a tint to them, unfortunately due to the camera on my phone (I will try and get a better pciture tomorrow when there is natural light) the pictures dont show just how orange the sid dots are, they start slightly orange which would be expected and then around the 12th fret where there is the 2 tone neck issue they literally look like someone has smeared them with red shoe polish.

Thanks for the replies Thanks, makes me feel better about returning this bass, is a shame about the faults because it practically plays itself and it sounds great , the funny thing is this bass has Squiers quality control tag attached, makes you wonder what the ones that failed were like

Ok I have made up my mind and am returning the bass, I have requested a replacement, it was the 2 tone neck finish that was the decider for me

Just noticed also that the colour of the neck is slightly but visibly more orange from around the 11th fret to around the 13th fret Next to my VM Jag for comparison, an orange hue that Trump would be proud of

Of course, sorry for the poor quality, a decent phone is next on my list of things to get

Hi Have today received a Squier classic vibe Jaguar bass from Gear4music, the bass sounds good, feels good and I have been able to drop the action low on it without issue (1.7ish mm on the E string 17th fret, 1.5ish mm on the G) however whilst the neck is in good shape in terms of the frets not buzzing with the low action there are some flaws on the finish on the neck, wanted to know what other thought , would you return it or live with the flaws in the finish as the neck is good? Some pics below (sorry for the poor quality phone camera pics) the are some imperfections on the finish along the side of the fretboard. Some small white indentations in the finish and also with the finish it looks like someone has gone a little overboard with the tinting and the fret markers are a kind of off orange colour rather than white, let me know what you think

It looks worse in the picture than it does in person

I honestly can't remember , I know the sides are slab (ie non curved) due to the binding, I will check later tonight

Ok so a couple of observations that may be useful to anyone looking at this bass since I have now had the bass a little over a week The tuners are ok, they are pretty similar to what you get on MIM Fender, they work fine and hold tune fine and I will be keeping them. The bridge although it is a bbot style it is fine and the quality is good and the option for string through is good, as the saddles are ridged it is possible to set the string spacing incorrectly if you are careless when you restring however the ridges mean that you can tweak the spacing slightly if you desire. Had a look inside the constrol cavity and seems to use 250k pots, I may swap these out for 500k volumes and a no load tone control, amybe Quarter pounder pickups also but this is not a priority at the moment and the tone of this bass sounds great as is. Bridge pickup height was on the low side which was causing a slight volume drop and a mid scoop with both pickups, checked with my action ruler and the bridge pickup was around 5mm from the strings when fretted so have added some additional foam and raised the pickup height to around 2.5mm when fretted and is a definate improvement, if anyone is experiencing the aforemention volume drop and mid scoop it may be worth checking the bridge pickup height After some research I found out the stock strings are Ernie ball, these sound ok but are already starting to loose their brightness, I will be swapping these out for some stainless steel strings for some extra bite

Nice, the tone in the video has a certain bite to it, makes me wonder what a Split coil P middle pickup and a single coil P bridge pcikup would sound like together , I reckon that would make for a super gnarly aggressive tone

Honestly if the existing nut functions as it should I would leave it as is , a brass nut will only affect the tone of open strings, even then it is debateable, brass does look good though

Is meant to be mint green but is more of a turqouise colour really, they do them in natural and tobacco burst also

Or new bass week since I have had it since Saturday. Was after getting a new bass and was looking at this bass and also looking at the Squier CV Mustang bass that I also really liked the look of however the Sire being a short scale P/J bass with a maple fretboard was what swung the deal for me , I like the look of the Fender Mustang P/J with the maple fretboard but with this being nearly £200 cheaper and me not being able to stretch to nearly £600 it was a no brainer to get the Sire. As I would expect on a £400 bass there were some minor cosmetic imperfections for example the truss rod routing and the paint job around the truss rod routing could be a little neater but for £400 it really doesn't bother me and I have seen bigger flaws on much more expensive basses. Quality wise this is fantastic bass, this is easily on par with MIM Fender, the neck feels great and satin finish is very well done, the fretboard also has rolled edges which feels nice and the through body stringing is a nice touch as well as the option to top load the strings. Sire claim "You can play it comfortably straight out-of-the-box, needless of any initial set up,” and this does seem to be true, from the box the bass arrived with the action just a hair above 2mm at the 17th fret and played flawlessly which makes a nice change from receiving basses from online retailers with half an inch action, I was able to drop it down to 2mm and I suspect with a setup I could probably drop it further still. Plugged in this bass sounds really good, probably due to the maple fingerboard this bass has a bright, full tone, if you like a darker tone you may find yourself rolling off the tone control but I like a really bright tone so this suited me fine, the pickups in this bass also sound really good. All in all very pleased with this bass, as said earlier this is as good as MIM Fender and nearly 200 quid cheaper Excuse the terrible mobile phone pics

Hi Just got a Sire Marcus Miller short scale bass, lovely bass, was hoping someone can help me ID what strings the bass comes with, they look at least a gauge heavier than the 95-40 sets I use on my other basses but they feel nice and flexible, not stiff at all, they seem to be nickel as they dont have that dull grey colour to them that most stainless strings have and they have brass colour ball ends no silk and they are just about long enough on the winding length to string through body, I know some of their basses come with Daddario but I dont think these are as the ball ends are not colour coded. Pictures below , thanks

I think it has to do with the changing perception of short scale basses. To elaborate further, if you look back to the 70s a lot of budget basses were short scale, there was Kay, Jedson, Columbus and a couple of others, pretty much all of the output from Kay, Jedson and Columbus was poorly made junk, microphonic pickups, cheaper than cheap machine heads, dreadful bridges, terrible electrics. Even Fender during that period in time seemed to treat the short scale with a degree of contempt with the (IMO) dreadful Musicmaster bass that was usually put together from the leftover parts from other models like for example the strat pickup that was under the black pickup cover. Then there was the false perception that short scale automatically meant mud, this was largely a result of the kind of basses that were short scale that were available , the above mentioned basses were tonally limited due to their cheap electronics combined with the flatwound strings and the poor amplification of the time, this perception was not helped by the Gibson EB0 and EB3 that had massively overwound pickups and the trend of those times for short scale basses to be hollow or semi hollow. Fast forward to nowadays and the sands of time have helped for those perceptions to be largely forgotten, a lot of the people now playing bass don't have memories of learning on those dreadful cheap basses of the 70's and the short scale basses that are around nowadays are far superior because to put it simply people expect better nowadays and it is now possible to make better instruments nowadays and so people are trying these basses and finding that they are actually more comfortable to play than long scale basses (for most people ymmv etc) and actually sound pretty damn good which of course drives demand for more short scale basses. Controversial perhaps but I would be willing to bet that the Squier Jaguar ss bass has played a large part in the resurgance of the short scale

Have got GAS for a Squier Mustang bass and current covid situation means spending time in a music shop trying out basses (if you are even allowed to at the moment) is probably not the best idea so I will be buying online. Which retailers have good customer service in terms of accepting basses back if there are any issues with the least amount of fuss? Thanks