OutToPlayJazz

Still seems terribly overpriced to me - If it had a Sadowsky preamp in it I'd be chomping at the bit to buy one.

Look up the Thunderbird Pro on Thomann - There're some sound samples there with some of the basses. Now compare it to the standard T-Bird passive sound sample. There's your answer

The ATK series Ibanez's are nice basses, but I can't for the life of me see why this signature model is literally twice the price of a regular ATK?! Yes, there's the upgrade from "ash" to "swamp ash", the fancy graphics & the D_A_E_B tuning, but at the end of the day it's an ATK which you can pick up at most music shops for £300-350 new. If it was my money I'd buy the standard ATK and upgrade something else with the difference.

[quote name='endorka' post='753196' date='Feb 21 2010, 08:10 PM']Good pickups will almost certainly make it sound really nice in my experience - you get a lot of bang for the buck in sound terms when you replace duff pickups with good ones. I replaced the stock ones on my P-bass clones with Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounders, and the instrument is now one of the best sounding I have every heard. Replacing the pots is easy and cheap and often part of replacing pickups; the knobs themselves should not need replacing. None of these changes will make it sound really nice; some will have a negligable effect, certainly compared to installing new pickups and/or strings, and some of them will have no effect at all - the machine heads certainly fall into this category. Virtually no bang for the buck at all with those upgrades. You will receive conflicting opinions about the benefits of the Badass bridge ranging from zero improvement to huge improvement. In my opinion, it is possible to get a great instrument by upgrading a mediocre one with things that are relatively cheap but give big improvements in sound (e.g. pickups) or playability (e.g. fret dress), especially as these are the things that are skimped on with budget basses. But if you get carried away with all the expensive bling such as machine heads you're wasting your money and time. Jennifer[/quote] Quite true, Jen - Obviously you're never going to make a silk purse from the proverbial sow's ear, but simple things like pickups and pots can make a huge difference. Setup items like fret dressings (as also mentioned), string height, truss rod adjustment & even your own guage and choice of strings can also make or break a bass for a player, be it a bargain cheapy or an expensive boutique bass. Rich.

[quote name='silddx' post='752936' date='Feb 21 2010, 04:29 PM']There is no such thing as a slow neck, only slow people.[/quote] That's one way of putting it, silddx - You could also say that there's no such thing as a slow neck, just good/bad technique. But a lot depends on the distance from thumb to fingers & how you place your thumb behind the neck, etc. One thing I do know is that I can play my 4-string Status S2 a lot faster than the 5-string version, so perhaps width comes into it as well.

This bass becomes cooler by the minute! I still keep thinking of getting one of the lovely glossed neck 50's Precisions with the gold scratch guard and doing some serious upgrading... Hmmm...

Sounds good - I think I've mentioned before that I've had a few of the Westfield guitars as rental instruments for students & they've all been great. I think I bought the basic strats for £55 each including the case & the more expensive model with uprated pickups for £69. Unbeatable value. Any pics of your bass?

Having played a lot of both & owned both, I'd still go for the Stingray. Especially the highly boosted 2eq model. Yes, the G&L will offer more tonal options, but the MusicMan just has a fuller & thicker tone to it & as MusicMan20 said, they feel just right in your hands. Add to that the bargain price of £999 & you'd be mad not to! Music Man Music Man Music Man Music Man Music Man Music Man Music Man Music Man Getting the hint?!

Another vote for the Warwick Corvette $$. The original one I had was immense. But a Stingray will do the job as well. Huge tone from these and a very fast neck if you use some lighter gauge strings. I've found my Stingray neck to be much more stable than Fender necks, too.

Rob's done a couple of KingBasses like that (with the matching front and back) that I've seen, strangely mainly walnut ones like yours. I like how the cream accent stripe has been moved on the back as well. That's certainly unusual, as is the redesigned top of the body shape where the body meets the neck. Very very nice bass, mate.

[quote name='alanbass1' post='751430' date='Feb 19 2010, 10:30 PM']Think I wil stick my one up on this thread: [/quote] Wow! New purchase, Alan? Lovely woods, too - Curly claro walnut front and back if I'm not mistaken!

[quote name='Conan' post='749135' date='Feb 17 2010, 11:41 PM']Mine's number 263 - born on November 24th 1986. I really must get some pix posted up here...!! [/quote] Please do, Mr.Conan - We're always eager to feast our eyes on lovely Status basses around here!

This is rapidly becoming the Lincolnshire and surrounding areas bassist's club - Shall we have our own little bash?

Another vote for the Status Streamline. There's nothing quite like them to play & they sound amazing, as well as only weighing around six pounds. Here's Mart's (my old one) & my new one... Also available in different colours - Here's a cool red one with gold hardware Vern ordered last year... Actually James, I just noticed you're very close to me - I'm just over the Humber Bridge, so you're welcome to come and try mine.

Okay, I went back to the place today and played the one I was looking at. It's an excellent bass for the money. In fact, I'm going to get one of the chrome orange ones. The eq is excellent & powerful & the necks are lovely too. No complaints here at all. Yes, that's the colour. I originally wanted the white one when BGM reviewed it a while ago, but the chrome orange is now top of my list having seen it in the flesh.

Wow! They're definitely heavy guages I can always pop to the Humber Bridge (only a couple of miles from my house) and ask if they have any spare? I use light strings for speed - Status basses have 30-90 (or 115 in the case of the five-stringers) & my Music Man has 40-100 fatbeams. I suppose it begs the question - Why do you want such heavy strings? The other thing to remember is that the heavier the string set, the more tension you need on your trussrod. Strings as thick as those mentioned will cause your neck to bow like a banana!

Hello close neighbour Charlie! Welcome to BassChat

I can't see any use for flatwound strings, apart from hanging oneself! They've always sounded to me as if I've suddenly lost the top end frequencies of my hearing. Dull and not nice.

Just to clarify, none of the Status-Washburn 1000 models had a graphite neck. They were all wood covered in a gloss composite-like paint.

Also in this price range is the Warwick Triumph. I've had mine for about four years now & it's fantastic.

Yes, it is pretty unique. The Stingray 4 with the original alnico magnets does have a sound pretty much of it's own. The most impressive thing about mine is the tone. It is a ten year old instrument, but it has a really thick tone underlying that huge snarl. They really are a unique and special bass.

[quote name='witterth' post='745611' date='Feb 15 2010, 10:21 AM']OTPJ or BassBus..... you chaps are in the know,so, I was wondering can you have leds fitted to a really old status? (mine can be seen on musicman porn thread) is it a daft idea? will it spoil it? love the idea of a "red" xmas tree!! ps dont like status page thats why I ask here!! BC rules!!! Witterth[/quote] As the brotherhood have already told you, Martin Simms will retrofit LEDs, as will Status. Usual cost is about 300-350 per side. So the average is £700 if you want both front and side ones. I think SIMS also do the flashy ones where they flash on and off as you play. How cool?

Quite true. If you can truly get such low volumes, you could try one of the Tanglewood large bodied electro-acoustics.

I liked the original post on this thread... The truth is that "Joe Public" fails to notice not only clever bassists, but good musicians in general. As an example in question, I used to fill in as a geetardist in a sixties trio. Now, first of all I'm no guitarist at all. I can manage chords and the odd solo. That's about it. Not a patch on my bass playing. The lead singer/bass player was awful. Terrible singer & possibly the worst bass player I've ever heard. Ever. The girl on drums could just about hold an eight-beat rock rhythm together with a dodgy fill around the kit. Nothing else! But we played 60's soul hits that Joe Public knew & could sing along to. [u]We cleaned up![/u] So the moral of the tale is that it doesn't matter if you're a top line professional player or a mere simple plodder just starting out. As long as you play tunes that Joe Public knows, you'll go far. As a little epitaph, I also used to play at a jam session in a Nottingham suburbs pub on a Thursday night many years ago. If the band were struggling to get it together, the two old hecklers at the back would shout, [b]"Play something we know!"[/b] If the band was really really bad, they'd shout, [b]"Play something YOU know!"[/b]