Killed_by_Death

The stiffness of the neck is a huge contributing factor to the overall timbre. I've owned two of the same model that sounded wildly different & the biggest difference was the neck. The one with the much stiffer neck sounded brilliant, the other just sounded 'normal', like has been mentioned earlier, it sounded like any other bass. IME laminated necks aren't necessarily stiffer, one of the flimsiest necks I've ever seen was a 5-pc Maple with Walnut stringers.

Paul Reed Smith does a Ted-Talk where he says that the woods & components don't impart a tone or timbre, it's all a process of subtraction. Stiffer & harder components subtract less from the overall timbre. I want ALL the spectrum of the timbre I can get & then I'll subtract if I want 'warm', which is rare.

I was commenting to passive pickups to a pre-amp, generally the volume pot is between the pickups & the preamp.

I guess, if people like 'warm' sounding instruments, the stiffer the better for me, I don't want 'warm'.

too rigid is a thing? IME the stiffer, the better

The closest I've come to measuring neck stiffness is by setting them all up the same & then changing the tuning, wait a day & measure the change in neck relief. Ironically, my cheapest bass has the stiffest neck, I can set it up for E-Standard & down-tune all the way to B-Standard, & it remains playable.

A lot of active basses still have passive pickups & the volume pot will affect the timbre in the same way as a fully passive bass. Some will use an active volume & blend, but they're in the minority.

https://www.facebook.com/rayhburton1/posts/1633429060378664

https://www.thomann.de/gb/gotoh_gb350_2l_2r_bc_bass_tuners.htm here are the specs: https://g-gotoh.com/images/pdf/GB350-Dim.pdf https://g-gotoh.com/product/gb350/?lang=en

If you don't need overdriven sounds, just turn down the Gain. I remember trying a T.E. Elf & with the Gain turned up it was too loud even with the volume just cracked a wee bit.

I play when I'm home alone, & now I'm rarely alone, so... We have gotten a mic. & do at-home kara-okay/bass singalongs, but those generally only last 30 to 45 minutes. In the beginning I was announcing to all & sundry that the lockdown wouldn't affect me, because I'm a recluse anyway, but I went stir-crazy & my nature of being a complainer 'blossomed' into pure angst that got me canned from a large bass forum. Ah well, such is life when Winter depression hits! On the bright side, now I'm less likely to be staring at my computer screen when the 'good stuff' is happening on television. Yeah, I missed a lot by 'multi-tasking'. adding: OTOH I've developed a callus on my fret-hand index-fingertip, probably more about the dryness of Winter it broke last night, in bed of all places

I feel like I should warn you about buying Ibanez 'Standard' machine-heads, because IME they are crap since 2011. Find a luthier supply in the U.K. (or Europe) that sells GOTOH. GOTOH is what Ibanez use on the higher-end stuff. BTW, Mein Shop in Deutschland has a drop-down menu that lets you select Great Britain.

Some local clowns went to see a band at a nearby arena, & they were FB-Live broadcasting the show in portrait. What a waste of bandwidth, you couldn't even tell who the band was if t wasn't for their logo behind them. Most of the screen was of the backs of the heads of the crowd & the area overhead of the band.

https://www.meinlshop.de/en/ibanez/spare-parts/e-basses/tuning-machines/single-tuning-machines/ibanez-e-bass-machinehead-right-die-cast-black-substitute-for-2mh1cb222b-r-2mb0007r-bk My advice is to buy all new GOTOH Res-O-Lites: https://g-gotoh.com/product/gb350/?lang=en If one of your machine-heads broke w/o provocation, any one of the others could go at any point.

stop refrigerating your chili sauces while we're on an adjacent subject Any chili sauce worth having is its own preservative.

Here's a good resource: https://www.fretnation.com/Bass-String-Lengths-by-Manufacturer_ep_47-1.html

It's not even about price, but we are led to believe we NEED an expensive instrument to be a pro or to find The One. TBH I 'could' do everything I needed on this one I put together for $200 USD:

Folks in developing countries have difficulty finding The One. It's not exclusively 1st-world, not being wealthy enough to buy all that you're interested in & trying them all until you find The One.

I've owned a guitar with a roasted neck & it was incredibly stiff for such a thin neck (Ibanez RG). I could not FEEL a difference from a non-roasted one, & TBH the 'feel' parts makes zero sense to me, since it's finished with the same poly as a normal neck. The local luthier told me that his largest volume of work on roasted things is putting them back together after people split them, for instance tightening the machine-head nuts too tightly. I've seen two instances of the roasted necks on the new Ibanez EHB series cracking at the headstock for no good reason. It just happened w/o any provocation.

My EHB is The Most Comfortable instrument I've ever owned. no more tennis-elbow

Years ago I measured the difference & even though the UTP & Wi-Fi connections were rated the same, the UTP was 10x faster! My Smart-TV & PS4 are wired, but my laptop has no UTP port.

I had a similar experience around the holidays, people were selling iPads like mad after they were gifted new ones. So I grabbed one for $60 USD, 'used' it for a single day & sold it before the weekend was over.

I had The One for years & recently found a new The One, so now have a #2 that's damn fantastic, but the #1 is more comfortable to play, has a stiffer neck, & has split-coil humbuckers. After a week of negotiating with SweetWater, I got it for $1,350 USD (there's 5.8% sales tax, BUT I got 5% cashback to the card I used to pay) IME, you should not settle for 34" scale for a 5-string, get a multiscale: https://www.ibanez.com/eu/products/detail/ehb1505ms_1p_01.html

https://www.dogalstrings.it Anyone tried them? Seems they're making Carbon steel strings!