andruca

Ive played all 3, own 2 Stingray5s and have owned a Sire V3 5er (same neck profile as the V5/V7 5ers). The neck in the Sandberg is the thickest of them 3, and I particularly hate big pole Dead-lano pickups so for me the Sandberg is the worst option. The Stingray5 neck is a super comfortable slim C (20mm@fret 1). The Sires' profile is fine but not as thin and the nut is a little wider.

Now, if you're planning on going 5 string Jazz, the best one I've owned (and still own) is the MarkBass Gloxy Val GV5. Blows any Jazz 5er I've ever played out of the water. Neck is a SKINNY sharp C (thinner than Sires) and the sound is AWESOME, way more barking/growly than any Sire or Sandberg, those MarkBass pickups are amazing and the preamp, even tho' its mids are not semiparametic (as in Sires), is way superior. I've got my GV5 for 450€ used in like nwe condition, totally unbeatable.

Only bad thing I can say about it is knobs are PLACED WRONG if you want to play with a pick (which I often do), they're too close to the strings. I've taken care of that in mine (invasively). Other than that it's the best 5 string Jazz I've owned and/or played. Gives so many (i.e. "expensive" Metro Expresses), a run for their money.

I used to own a Rockbag dual bag. It was cumbersome and FRAGILE, as in seams breaking. Good padding tho'. Only recently I've relapsed, got a Gear4Music house brand dual bag. Marginally less cumbersome, more solid all around, as good a padding (yet stiffer/more structurally fit) and 80 something € + shipping. This was 3 years ago. For around the same dough there's a light Gator bag (4G series, cheapest dual they offer for bass) which is what I'd get now (might get it and sell mine). Still, I have yet to see a dual bass gig bag that's "comfortable" to backpack around for more than 15min. No surprise, you're carrying 2 bass guitars.

Dual bags are only practical if you have decent cargo space when gigging. I even have sort of a fixation about carrying as few pieces of luggage as possible. But in cramped/small vans it's better to separate basses in 2 regular bags, for Tetris' flexibility. Lately I'm taking an Ibanez EHB to gigs as my multi purpose backup bass, takes up less space than guitars, so it's a no brainer, and the dual bag stays home.

I own a (half rack space) Boss TU-50. Coolest one by far, blinding LEDs that work as a VUmeter when disengaged 🤘, visible from a mile away.

After some 20 years without playing any serious slap (except for generic crappy licks) I spent the last week doing some slap fitness, both excercises and also "testing" progress with an intro from a '90s song I like. The song is upwards of 180BPM. I'm no slapper, at all. A week ago I could barely play it at 140BPM. This is 170BPM and was the best I could do yesterday afternoon (unedited), on my SBV-500 (best sounding and easiest Jazz Bass for slapping).

The original song is called "Dr. Feel", from Argentinean band Zona Púrpura (Guillermo Vadalá -Mark Anthony, Alejandro Sanz, etc.- on bass). I took classes with him for some months back in '93. The man himself briefs us on this intro in a vid from his YT channel.

Wasn't planning on pulling the trigger on one of these anytime soon (own MANY previous gens Zooms) but after hearing the "clear over preamp" (Zoom's own) it might happen sooner than I expected. NICE 👍

Oh, BTW, I got the chance to play one of the yellow P basses at a Guitar Center in Las Vegas in late June. It was OK, thin neck, light, overall nice. Wasn't in love with the tone, average, but it wouldn't be fair to judge that too harshly as the strings it had on were quite dead. Still, I think it lacks a more barking midrange character. I in fact ended up getting a mint 2nd hand (2021, MII) Squier CV '70s P once I got back to Spain. That's the type of mids I like in a Precision, the punkest kind 🤣

Still totally in love with my Gloxy 5 string ❤️

This is my EHB1005MS, recently equipped with Bartolini P452J squared pickups (quad coils, like 2 humcancelling Jazz pickups in each capsule) and a couple coil tap DPDT switches for single/series/single. Using outer coils here, pretty Jazz Bass'ish. Some Black Stone Cherry for y'all...

Finally pulled the trigger on some Bartolini P452J squared (cuad coils, as in 2 split coil Jazz pickups stuck together). My intention was to get P45Js but there was a LONG wait on those (made to order) and BestBassGear had these in stock for a few bucks more. Glad I got these as I managed to add 2 DPDT coil tap switches, with real good results. Really liking these pickups.

Comparison with BH2s before coil tap added (hard wired neck-side inline pair of coils for each pickup)...

After coil tap switches installed, samples of some combinations...

I own a GV 5-string. It's the best Jazz 5er I've owned. Absolutely LOVE the classic Jazz tone, love how it plays, the skinny neck and how little you need to dig in for it to growl like mad. Aggressive sounding definitely.

My only gripe is the top row of knobs is too damm close to the strings. They get TOO in the way if I'm picking. So far I've removed the knobs so I have just the 3 bare pot shafts in the top row (at least I don't have leverage to move them if I run into them while playing). I don't discard restructuring pot positions in the future, as much as control cavity allows. Point for the "Leo got it right first time" crowd, I guess, at least with Precisions and Stingrays.

I was going to suggest Stingray5 the moment I read the thread title. For me it's the absolute best 5 string bass ever (also with a skinny neck BTW). That aside, taking your preferences into account...

I'm a skinny neck freak myself too. I haven't owned that many Jazz 5ers, but I've played MANY. My Jazz 5er nowadays is a MarkBass Gloxy Val GV 5. Skinniest neck in a Jazz 5er I've ever played. Also best sounding Jazz I've owned ('70s spacing kinda' barking tone). Also VERY responsive, It starts growling with less diggin' in than any other Jazz I've played. Superb preamp with a passive switch too if you prefer passive. WAY below your budget, I know, still an AWESOME 5 string Jazz. I prefer this one over almost any Jazz Bass style 5er I've owned. Only thinner necked 5ers I've played are Schecters. There's the Schecter Diamond J 5 string model. It just sounds like a more "normal" Jazz Bass (much less "in your face" than the MarkBass). I have only played 2 German Sadowsky Metros (and 1 Chinese Metro Express), all nice skinny necks. The Gloxy plays as nice, but sounds way better for my taste.

Maruszczyk Elwood is another great option. I've seen them go for as low as 700€ used here (for a 5er). Neck is a modern C shape, it's fine, just not as skinny as the MarkBass Gloxy. Just avoid the big pole Delano pickups (really hated those on a Maruszczyk Jake 5a+ I owned, and every single Sandberg I play with them, dark, huge EQ dip around 600hz, damm DEADlanos), choose something different.

My main axe has been Stingray5 since forever. But lately I can't get my hands off my Ps (and my BC feed off P related threads).

A month ago I just owned a Harley Benton PB20, upgraded with a beat up but functional '90s Korean Samick neck (skinny profile, P width tho'). All super cheap, but still real nice playing and sounding. Now, 2 top GAS inducing Ps of mine happened to show up in 2nd hand sites over the last few weeks (cheap, but not as cheap as the "hybrid"). Well, I'm stuck with 3 of them Ps since a few days ago. Ideally I need to let one of the "expensive" ones go. Like them all (all skinny neck profiles too, that's a pet peeve of mine, as I said, too many years playing Stingray5s).

i've been using Precisions more and more in the last few years. Always loved them (from John Deacon's to Jay Bentley's), just didn't get involved with them myself (except for a brief stint with a friend's American Deluxe P5, which I didnt like). I never took the time to understand the ways they like to be played. Wasn't prepared, I guess. I always totally got the Jazz Bass, started playing bass on one in fact. But it took me 'till the latest decade (my punkest) to learn to feel comfortable and somewhat (barely) competent with a Precision in my hands. Totally my fault.

1 month ago...

Now...

I've owned a Ray35 H and did never have any trouble with the preamp. Don't know about 2 pickup models, haven't played any.

OTOH, there was distortion on every SBMM SUB I've played. Not produced at the amp's input, but in the bass itself. The kind of clipping basses do when pickups are too hot and the onboard preamp lacks headroom. I've experienced this on some basses, notably a couple Yamaha BB615s I've owned. It could be worked out by feeding it 18V (add a second battery in series). That's usually possible on most preamps, manufacturers engineer for a wide range of input gains/supply voltage, so the instrument manufacturer can decide based on pickups' gain. In those Yammies tho' the preamp (Yamaha's Q-mix) was still horrible even after the clipping was gone, so I ended up installing cheap 3 band Artec preamps on both, worked like a charm, and didn't clip with the regular 9V.

EDIT: another option I didn't mention is using a variable resistor between the pickup/coils selector switch and the onboard preamp, and fine tune it to tame the pickups' output to where the whole thing doesn't distort with every EQ band boosted. That is IF hot pickups were the problem.

Has anyone seen this?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7RFSw6tdv0/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

I've even found them available for late this month for 299€, all 3 models, this is the P bass...

https://alfasoni.com/bajos-p-de-4-cuerdas/markbass-mb-yellow-pb-113625.html

Just when I was about to pull the trigger on a CV '70s P bass. If the pickup on this sounds as agressive as the ones in my Gloxy GV5 and the neck as thin (front to back, specs explicitly state it's wider, nothing about thickness) I'd definitely reconsider. Guess I'll be waiting for the demos and reviews to start showing up on YouTube before deciding.

I got a couple ramps 3D printed yesterday. Made in SolidWorks by my bro to my thorough gauge measurement specs. About 1hr each to print. One is for my MarkBass Gloxy GV5, the other went to my rat rod parts Jazz (yep, the one that's full of dust). They're slightly trapezoidal as they run from pickup edge to pickup edge (given the bigger length of the bridge pickup). They're both 5mm thick total (top half solid, bottom half beams). Real solid. Not a fan of the color tho'. Might try some film wrap.

I recently got a MarkBass Gloxy. You can get one used for that kinda' money. I recently got one, coming from a Sire V3. Plays softer (skinnier neck than Sires, which I prefer), I prefer the tone to the Sire Vs, it's more responsive, has a better preamp (even tho' mids aren't parametric). Sire killer IME, would choose the Gloxy over a V7 too.

Hi gentlemen. After some time chasing one used at a reasonable price I just got a GV5 and I must say it's the best 5 sring Jazz style bass I've owned. SO engaging to play. Skinny neck, responsive, punchy, barks effortlessly. Really loving it.

I've owned a Sire V3 5-string for about a year and even tho' there's nothing wrong with it I never found myself playing it that much. At the same time I've been growing increasingly amazed by MarkBass Gloxy GV basses. I think the V3 is OK, plays nice, sounds OK, lots of tone options, but the tone is a bit too tame for me (there's more growly Jazz Basses). I've been particularly impressed by a Yamaha SBV-500 I got last Xmas (yep, the samurai bass), best Jazz Bass I've owned, I'd like those pickups for all my basses, super agressive, yet ballsy and detailed, lov'em. The bad thing about them is that going back to a normal Jazz Bass is a drag, all sound so "shy" to me now, including the V3. The Gloxy weights the same (about 4kg, doesn't feel basswood at all), looks much better, sounds better than any Sire I've played (and I've played many, mostly V7s) and is overall way more engaging to play.

The only bad thig I can say about the bass is one I find really TERRIBLE. Volume pots' position is some of the worst I've seen on any bass, they get right in my way when picking (and I pick for half the stuff I play). IDK why this isn't a thing amongst instrument designers, controls should be DAMM FAR FROM THE STRINGS, like Musicman FAR, really, manufacturers please stop doing this, thank you. Haven't opened the control cavity up yet, don't know how messy it is in there, but I'm definitely dealing with this HORRIBLE design decision, either by removing knobs and leaving just the pot shafts, or maybe fitting some rubber washers to use as ultra flat knobs. If none of that works I'd think of more drastic solutions, such as going "fixed" active EQ, hide those 3 EQ pots, move the 3 top pots to the lower row and use it VVT like a regular Jazz Bass.

Besides that BIG rookie'ish screwup with knob position the bass is AWESOME.

More photos, PLEASE!

Voilá, I'm GUYKERed, for good. These blow the Barts out of the (indistinct) mud. These are single coils and Barts are wired in single coil here too (they are MUCH WORSE than you hear here stock, in series). Only con is the Guykers have less gain, so I've recorded both passive and active with a +6db connection the onboard has (still, flat EQ). It compensates for the colder pickups. Didn't move any gain nor relative volumes between changes, so the volume proportion is faithful.

6 minutes ago, TheGreek said:

I'm seeing loads of these for sale. 

Why are so many people unloading practically new basses so quickly?

'round here they're nowhere to be seen used, I think I've only seen a 1505MS offered some months ago in my usual 2nd hand online outlets.

I just guess the pickups might be a turnoff. I got fed up within 3 days of having the bass, then rewired them for good.

Hi y'all!
 

Just 2 weeks ago I wouldn't have even imagined I'd ever own a bass like this. I accidentally ran into an ad for an Ibanez EHB1005MS for less than half the new price (presumably because of an issue with a tuner). I made my homework, checked for monorail bridge+tuner prices and made sure I could repair whatever issue for cheap, and pulled the trigger, with MOSTLY questions (many firsts, first headless, first multiscale, first bass with the horrible Bart BH2s, etc.), but that of the "investment", being that cheap, if I don't happen to like it I can get rid of it losing no money, or even earning some. On a side note, I've been looking for a cheap travel bass. I know this is not as cheap as I'd wanted, but it's a hell of a travel bass (as per dimensions) and much more, a perfectly competent instrument.

The bass happened to work OK, no tuner problem, 100% user error AFAICT. I don't know what string gauges were on that bass, but they were THICK, and the SUPOSED G string measured thicker than my regular (.065) D. Being that the scale for that string is 33", you will always max out the tuner threading before reaching pitch. WIth my usual strings it works perfectly and I have lots of threading left in the tuner. BTW, no need for weird string sets on this bass either. The same as a Schecter CV-5 I used to own, my usual Warwick Red Label Nickels are long enough, there's about 1cm of string winding left past the nut.

Surprisingly I like the bass a lot. Plays wonderfully and has lots of nice features. It has 2 problems tho', one's stupid, the other is a REAL problem.

The stupid thing has to do with fret markers. The front markers apparently aren't for the player, as you CAN'T SEE THEM, the low B string completely covers them from your viewpoint when playing. The side Luminlay dots are nice... IN THE DARK, AS IN NATURAL LIGHT THEY GET COMPLETELY LOST. I don't rely on markers much, but being this my 1st multiscale I'd love to have clear markers for the upper register, where frets are more tilted, at least while I adapt, as I occasionally might get lost. Nothing some stickers won't correct.

Now the real issue with this bass is the crappy Bart BH2s (not real Bartolinis, but a "licensed copy" some chinese manufacturer produces for Ibanez), which come wired in series and sound totally DEAD (excessively and unnaturally scooped). I don't have a problem using a soldering iron, so I rewired both as single coils (neck side coil of each PU). I don't discard going the Nordy Big Splits route in the future, but the change to single coils at least made that necessity les urgent, it's the only way I find these BH2 pickups acceptable, they're beyond crappy. It's silly that Ibanez offers this bass with such poor pickups (IDK about you, but I DON'T PAY 1200-1300€ FOR DEAD PICKUPS). But also, the next EHB/MS model up is simply paying 200-300$/€ more for just pretty wood, USELESS. You have to pay 500$/€ more to get Nordstrands (plus the useles fancy wood, guess you can't avoid that). Just don't get it, my Sire V3, at 1/3 the new price, has 10X better pickups.

I insist, once rewired to single coil the bass sounds a lot better. Not as good as the demos I hear with Nordstrands, but definitely a "normal" usable bass guitar. The rest of the bass is awesome, comfortable, light, steel frets, the finishing, the neck profile (sorta' D, but as skinny front to back as SRs), the roasted maple, the birdseye in the fretboard, I even find the aesthetics on this graceful, or let's say it could be worse (it could also be a single cut, for the ultimate aberration).

Here's a clip I've recorded with the EHB, a song by Argentinean supergroup Divididos. The EHB here does a great "impersonation" of the original neck pickup Jazz Bass tone, with highs cut and lows slightly boosted.

My stable looks like this now...

On 09/02/2024 at 11:55, LukeFRC said:

question for you - but how does this work?
Could you do something  like full wet reverb into bit crusher on the trails..., and then into this to act as the master dry wet blend? 

I haven't tried the RainSel, but AFAIK, when you use the stock LineSel effect you just bypass the rest of the chain (after the LineSel) when it's on. With the RainSel it's the same, you just have 2 extra parameters to blend in dry signal (from the input) and wet signal (so far int he chain, remember everything after the RainSel is bypassed). The stock LineSel is simply ment to do the bypassing. You get your sound, as wet as it might be right before the LineSel.

V2 works fine. Windows will just just ask you to exhaustion if it's legit, but it should run.

Just early this week I laid down 2 bass tracks for my band (fast melodic HC), both in drop D. Really like the tone. Jazz Bass definitely, but more aggressive and "glassier" highs. And it plays amazing. Will link a drums+bass sample once I have one.

2 hours ago, Pea Turgh said:

It goes through the install process, but the only thing that shows up then is the uninstall.  Must be the old laptop giving up.  Will have a pop on my Mac Mini instead.

 

Thanks for the confirmation @andruca 👍

Oh, yes, just go to the folder C:\Program Files(with or without "x86" and there should be a directory "ZoomEffectManager", and inside there's a .EXE file for ZEM. Create a shortcut to it and move it to the desktop. Went thru' the same when I installed, just didn't remember that when answering before, sorry.

17 minutes ago, Pea Turgh said:

Hello peeps.  I’ve previously used the effects editor successfully, but the laptop I had it on has since perished.

 

I’ve tried V.2 on an alternative laptop but the program doesn’t seem to install at all.  Not being particularly IT literate, I’m wondering if V.2 is a dud, or if I’ve stumbled across a duff site (zoomeffectmanager.com).  Maybe I’m the issue!

 

Anyone with recent version experience?  Or a link that works?

AFAIK it's legit. I use it often and have version 2.1.1 (latest, released feb-2023) since some 6 months ago. Works great, even let me convert my MS-60B to an MS-50G (6 FX slots, it will do that too).

The download page is https://zoomeffectmanager.com/en/download/ Make sure no antivirus/antimalware rule is blocking your download.