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Obrienp

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Everything posted by Obrienp

  1. Obrienp
    For some reason I can’t see the image but I get the general gist. You can get it cheaper, if you shop around but it is still a lot for a Far Eastern made instrument. However, there aren’t many medium scale basses around, so perhaps that is driving their pricing strategy. I don’t think it is justified by the specification particularly but I imagine it is a small production run. I would still like to hear from anyone who has actually owned, or tried one.
  2. Obrienp
    Bumping this again. Has anybody on Bass Chat owned, or tried one of these basses? Views?
  3. Obrienp
    I really don’t like the idea of adding counterbalancing weights to a bass body but that’s possibly because I am old with joint issues. Talking of neck dive: I really like my Squier Jaguar H, which makes a great bass (with a few mods) for not much money but it dives badly. It seems to be a design fault with the Jaguar body shape. The top horn needs to be longer: at least reaching the 12th fret. It is quite heavy as well. If anything I would like to route some chambers in the body under the pickguard to get rid of some of that weight but that would make the neck dive problem even worse. I think the only answer is a ridiculously long strap button. It’s not going to look good.
  4. Obrienp
    I can see that there wasn’t much love for this bass on here when it came out but this all seemed to be based on its looks. Has anybody actually tried one, or owned one? What are they like to play and how do they sound? On paper it seems to have quite a lot going for it, if you can live with the looks. I see that Coda Music have one in a natural finish that only weighs a tadge over 7lbs and with the 32” scale (and jazz style neck) it might suit folks like me who have arthritis issues. I am wondering whether the chambered body makes it a neck diver. The price seems to have gone up a bit since launch: £1,050 give or take at Coda.
  5. Obrienp
    Anything that reduces stage spaghetti is worth it IMO, as long as it works OK. Enjoy the Smooth Hound. I wouldn’t be without my Boss WL-20 (fixed cable simulation). It’s great to be able to walk out the front during sound checks. I am always surprised at how different my bass tone is out front compared to what I hear “on stage”. As others have said, you also have the option to get up to crowd pleasing antics. One of our guitarists walks round in the crowd while soloing. Guitarist eh!
  6. Obrienp
    I’m envious of you folks getting gigs. The well seems to have dried up in my neck of the woods. A lot of the venues we were waiting on for dates this year have gone off air. We are considering whether we can get together with a couple of other bands and promote our own show but will the punters come out?
  7. Obrienp
    There is a white one on Reverb at the moment.
  8. Obrienp
    You are not alone there! I can do it if I am playing guitar, even quite complex picking, or slide parts but on bass, no way. I am yet to get my head round why. I can just about manage the response part of a blues call and response but anything else is beyond me.
  9. Obrienp
    I think you are going to have to find out what the wound string length of your string of choice is. Most manufacturers do publish this and the Strings Direct website is pretty useful for finding this kind of information too. You need to make sure that the wound part of the string is going to be long enough to clear the nut before the silk winding starts. TBH there doesn’t seem to be a lot of choice available for medium scale. Some of the shorter wound length standard scale strings might fit, which is an advantage: it gives you more choice and will probably be cheaper too. Conventional wisdom is that the string shouldn’t be so long that the wound part goes round the machine head shaft. I have also seen quite a few posts from people saying they have never had any problem with this and even use 34” strings on 30” scale basses. Make of that what you will.
  10. Obrienp
    I guess it’s different strokes for different folks. The neck suits me fine but I have short fingers. I hadn’t noticed it being thick: perhaps the FSR versions have a different profile? I think Jaguar basses have always had Jazz style necks, so you might be waiting a long time for one with a P neck profile but wouldn’t it be great if they did a medium scale P bass in the Affinity line to compliment the Jag. The Japanese medium scale Ps and Js seem expensive to me, plus there is all the hassle of having to import them.
  11. Obrienp
    I’ve gone for one as well but in black with maple board. Mine only had a two conductor pickup lead but I got a local luthier/pickup maker to convert it to a 4 conductor lead and he potted it as well (originally it was very noisy). I wired it for parallel/single coil/series switching using a 3 position DPDT. I understand the FSRs have a 4 conductor lead as standard, so you may not have to mod the pickup. It’s quite easy to drill the control plate to take the DPDT between the pots. Be warned the control cavity is really tight. I bought full size CTS pots only to find they wouldn’t fit. I had to use Alpha mini pots instead. Wiring it all up with the DPDT switch was like keyhole surgery! I also shielded the cavities with copper tape as they hadn’t even used graphite paint. It was worth the effort though: it sounds great and there is a real difference in tone between the 3 switching options. The OEM pickup is surprisingly good (to my ears). The only other mod I made was fitting a Fender high mass bridge, which was a drop in fit and helps a bit with the balance on a strap. The OEM machine heads are pretty good, so I am sticking with them until they play up. I now have an excellent, easy playing and great sounding bass. The neck is perfect me. Feels great and I love the unfinished feel. No sprouting frets, or rough ends. The medium scale almost seems easier to play than a 30”. All this for £180 (stock), plus about £60 for the parts. This is a real bargain IMO; so much better made than Squier Affinity offerings of old. This is what it looks like with the switch fitted.
  12. Obrienp
    Different but related subject: I just became aware of the Cort Action Junior bass. Another 30” scale bass. There is very little information about it on the Cort website. It doesn’t even give the nut width but the design looks pretty good. The long top horn looks as though the bass might balance well on a strap and at £169 it might make a good modding platform. I am not in the market for another bass but I just wondered if anybody had tried one?
  13. Obrienp
    Didn’t think that would stay unsold for long. Congratulations!
  14. Obrienp
    I have two basses with single MM pickups: one with series/parallel switching and one I have modded to series/single coil/parallel switching. I can’t speak for the Cazpar (would love to be able to) but I find there is a big difference in tone between parallel and series modes on my basses (ceramic magnets). Parallel has significantly scooped mids with prominent highs, whereas series has strong mids and slightly compressed highs. Both have plenty of bass, with series sounding darker overall and as you mentioned, louder (perhaps emphasised by the strong mids). The humbucking options sound quite different to single coil mode, which is more like a Jazz bass neck pickup. The above is a long winded way of saying that I wouldn’t dismiss the series wiring option. I think it has its own sound and having the series/single coil/parallel switching gives you a great tone pallet to play with. Obviously how it works for you will depend on your pickup’s construction.
  15. Obrienp
    I still think I would go for two stacked vol/tone pots but appreciate that CTS pots, orange drop caps and decent stacked knobs would cost a fair proportion of the original price of the bass.
  16. Obrienp
    Just flicking through the Bass Direct website and they have a used Mensinger Cazpar 4p 30” with twin Delano SBCs for £799. Beautiful looking with an olive wood top and what looks like a maple fretboard, although the description says Ebony. That sounds quite a good price to me but others may know otherwise. Fortunately, I don’t need it and can’t afford it…. Really, I don’t need it and can’t afford it. Might be of interest to somebody on here though (I have no connection to Bass Direct).
  17. Obrienp
    @Smanthbelated happy birthday! 🎉🎂🥂 Let us know how you find the TMB35 when you get it.
  18. Obrienp
    Perhaps it’s because that is what sells. It takes a lot to beat a precision pickup set for all round versatility. There are some notable exceptions though: Ibanez EHB1000s has Bart soap bars, Sterling Stingray SS and Vox Starstream H have MM humbuckers, various Gibson shorties and Epiphone copies have humbuckers, Nordstrand Acinonyx has single coils but they are very different from your P or J single coils, even the Gretsch G2220 pickups are quite different, then you have the Hofner (and copies) with humbuckers. Those are just the reasonably priced ones. If you go up market, you have the likes of Mensinger and Mullarky who have soap bar and humbucker options, not to mention EBMM. Actually, now I list them, there are quite a few. I forgot Chowny!
  19. Obrienp
    Yes, I can’t even pretend that B and D are close together on the keyboard! Old age I am afraid. Weight wise: it seems both peoples’ perception and actual weight varies. I would have thought that the bodies are knocked out cookie cutter style but perhaps the wood blanks vary in density. Might be worth trying a few. Definitely worth putting on the short list.
  20. Obrienp
    @SmanthHi S’manth. I had the TMB35. It is a really nice bass for the money but it does have a pretty chunky neck, which doesn’t suit everybody and my example (at least) was quite heavy for a shorty. It was also quite noisy out of the box but a bit of copper tape shielding sorted that out pretty easily. On the plus side the stock precision pickup was OK (the bridge Jazz was a bit weak) and the B string was useable right down to open B. Just corrected typos!
  21. Obrienp
    Oh, well. Maybe I have been lucky with my 34” scale basses then. Three Fenders and three Ibanez all very well balanced.
  22. Obrienp
    @KateWantsToPlayBassI agree with everything previous contributors have said but I am wondering about the problem of neck dive with short scale basses. If your nephew has a leg brace, I guess he is going to be sitting to play a lot of the time. Neck dive can make some shorties awkward to play when sitting. A full size bass tends to balance pretty well when played sitting down. I can’t remember having a full scale bass that neck dived (somebody will prove me wrong).
  23. Obrienp
    Not wishing to hijack the thread but I fitted the Warman with the 3 way switch and Alpha pots. It all worked well and is a really good, fairly cheap mod. I am sure it is not up to Bartolini standards though but it certainly gave the Jaguar a few more tone variations. In the meantime I had given the original Squier pickup to my local luthier to see if he could convert it to four leads, as I liked the tone. It turned out to be quite a task because the manufacturer had used a lot of resin haphazardly, without actually potting it, which probably explains why it was so noisy. Anyway, he managed to do it and then potted it with wax, which has made it very quiet. Unfortunately, he lost the piece of paper he had written the colour assignment on, so I had to do quite a lot of experimenting to wire up the three way switch. It turned out to require a completely different wiring to the Warman, including which pins on the switch to connect with a shunt. Anyway, I finally succeeded and it sounds pretty good. It is massive in serial mode (Squier standard) but the single neck coil sounds really good, like a hot Jazz with that single coil clarity. Parallel mode gives a good mid-scoop with a fair amount of punch. This is what the control plate looks like with the mod:
  24. Obrienp
    The control route in these is tiny. I couldn’t fit full size pots into it when I rewired it, so you would have to enlarge it to use the full length of a bigger plate.
  25. Obrienp
    The Boss WL-20 and 50 automatically seek the best of 14 channels. I have never had a clash happen with the WL-20. The WL-50 receiver will power other pedals as well when you are using the power adapter (it can also run on batteries). They claim the rechargeable batteries in the dongles will last 12 hours. I have certainly got over 6 hours continuous use out of my WL-20 (I’ve never tried to go longer without recharging). Worth considering IMO, if you can’t source the Line 6.
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