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Obrienp

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Everything posted by Obrienp

  1. Obrienp
    You have had some good suggestions already but I would throw the Nordstrand Acinonyx into the mix (squeezes in £50 under your £1K limit). It is super easy to play and very light. However, if you have big hands you might find it a touch cramped (36mm nut width and 16mm spacing at the bridge). I have a Starstream 1H and mine is a great little guitar but perhaps not as versatile as twin pickup models. Also there have been some quality issues with them. Mine is fine but I might have been lucky. However, at that bargain basement price, you might be able to put up with doing a bit of setup work to get it right. The original asking price was around £500! The Ibby EHB1000S is a nice little bass. I was sad to part with mine. It would be better suited to those with larger hands than the previous 2 I mentioned. It is very light and ergonomic. The string locking mechanism means that you can use standard scale strings and snip off the excess. That gives you more choice and also avoids the SS cost premium. However, a lot of people find the standard Bartolini pickups a bit old fashioned and upgrade to Aguilars @ over £200. Another option would be to look for a used Maruszczyk Jake or Elwood SS, or a Mensinger Cazpar. They are in the same league as the Sandberg Lionel others have mentioned IMO.
  2. Obrienp
    I didn’t notice the nut width: well spotted. That reduces the GAS a bit and if it turns out to be heavy as well, even more so. I’ve come to the conclusion that Jazz width, or less, is the ideal for my dodgy left hand. Heavy is definitely off the menu as well.
  3. Obrienp
    Now I’ve got GAS! I’m telling myself it’s in the same space as the Acinonyx and that is already occupied.
  4. Obrienp
    I started a thread on the EHB1000s here: Like a few others, I changed the pickups for Aguilars in the end. Otherwise great bass IMO. Light, ergonomic, comfortable and you get a lot of kit with it. Plus you can use standard length strings giving more choice and keeping the price down. I am sure there is a thread on the EHB1005 as well.
  5. Obrienp
    I take it your third sentence is referring to the V1, twin pickup version?
  6. Obrienp
    I would certainly report it to the dealer (Thomann?). At the least they might refund you a few quid. It would be a pain to have to send it back though, especially as it is birthday present.
  7. Obrienp
    V1
  8. Obrienp
    I’ve been wondering about that and had come to the conclusion that 3 is not different to button 1 but I have to admit my hearing is not what it was.
  9. Obrienp
    As I understand it, it is meant to be all 4 and that is how it works on mine.
  10. Obrienp
    I just tried mine and it is definitely louder in all-in (series) mode than in parallel. Are you sure all the switches are engaging when you put it in series? I have a hell of a struggle getting mine into series mode. I would happily trade the mute button for a one button series switch.
  11. Obrienp
    At least it looks easier to modify than previous iterations. I suspect the pickup is the same strat under a solid cover but with better machine heads and individually adjustable bridge saddles, it is already a great improvement.
  12. Obrienp
    What a beautiful bass! I can’t even manage 3.8 Kilos, let alone 5 but somebody is going to get a fabulous instrument. GLWTS!
  13. Obrienp
    PM’d
  14. Obrienp
    A nice thing about the passive Starstreams is that they are quite easy to modify. The bridge is standard 5 hole Fender style and at least on the 1H, the pickup standard MM. The machine heads are Gotoh style, so I should imagine an easy swap: the OEM ones on mine are fine so I haven’t tried to change them. I am an inveterate tinkerer, so immediately replaced the bridge with a Fender high mass unit. The OEM was fine and in fact was more solid than the units they use on Squiers. After a while, I decided the Fender unit just didn’t look right: it came too close to the bottom of the body and having Fender stamped on it confused the hell out of fellow bassists. I replaced it with a more discreet but still chunky unit: there are so many 5 hole units out there. I also replaced the pickup with a Kent Armstrong. Again nothing wrong with the OEM unit but I prefer covered poles on MMs because I tend to anchor my thumb on the pickup and it buzzes if you touch a pole piece. It turns out the Kent Armstrong casing is a few millimetres bigger all round and the Starstream has a very tight route. I had to ease it a bit by sanding the casing. Incidentally, all the cavities are shielded with graphite paint. In the process of wiring in the new pickup, I replaced the mini OEM pots with full sized CTS. There is plenty of space in the control cavity but the through body mounting does cause challenges. At the time the only long shaft push/pull CTS pot I could find was a 500K. Ditto standard pot. This made it very loud but too bright as well. I eventually found a full sized non-CTS 250K pot for the tone that had a long enough shaft to fit. This plus a 0.1 oil in paper capacitor calmed the brightness down. I have since seen long shaft CTS 250K pots are back in stock with some dealers. I had to keep the original jack socket because it is quite unusual, in that it has to go through both the body and the outer plastic moulding. Fortunately, it is a good unit but could prove tricky to replace if it fails. As I said previously, the control cavity has plenty of space in it, so I imagine it would easily accommodate a preamp and battery, if there is a two knob unit out there. There might be enough room to drill a mounting hole for a third pot too. The jack socket might be an issue though.
  15. Obrienp
    I must have struck lucky with mine. Good luck with the replacement.
  16. Obrienp
    Just as an indication of post/courier costs: I just sent a fiend's Precision bass off to Northern Ireland by Parcel Force Express 48 and it cost £12. This will have a slightly higher insured value but I reckon it would be around the same money.
  17. Obrienp
    Good luck! Mine is fine. Frets all even, no sharp ends and it is really nicely made but I believe @scrumpymikehad issues with a passive 2S, before getting the Artist version. Luck of the draw I guess. As @fretmeistersaid, at that price why not?
  18. Obrienp
    Yes, a bit irritating if you spent close to list on one!
  19. Obrienp
    Heads up all: I was doing some research on current prices with a view to putting my Vox Starstream 1 H up for sale (don’t want to but got to shift a bass or two); Guitar Guitar are doing an offer on both the 1 H and 2 S models today: £199!! Note this is the passive model but still a nice little bass. At that money you can mod it to the Artist spec and still save cash. Hell I was thinking of putting mine up for £350!
  20. Obrienp
    Really surprised this is still here! I would have gone for it, if I didn't have my Elwood 32". GLWTS.
  21. Obrienp
    Notwithstanding the fact I am selling one, I think the Squier Jaguar H is a great bass for the money. It’s not the only bass that neck dives by any means but you need to like the single humbucker MM vibe. It’s got plenty of scope for modification for not much money too but you can probably apply that to the Ibby as well. If I was starting again, I would buy one of the FSR versions, as they have a 4 conductor pickup lead (giving plenty of scope for wiring options: serial/single coil/parallel) and graphite paint shielding as standard. They also have fancier colours. All for less than £250.
  22. Obrienp
    Yeah, I think it was some sort of epoxy and really randomly applied. Not really potted, just haphazardly sploged. That is what caused my luthier friend so much work.
  23. Obrienp
    Got the same rig. Only pedal you need is a tuner (in my case). Good stuff!
  24. Obrienp
    Got to state my vested interest up front, I am selling mine in the Basses for Sale listings. The reason it is dark is that the pickup is wired in series as standard. I have got more tones out of it by wiring it to have a series/single coil/parallel switch. Single coil and parallel have a brighter top end. The FSR version has a 4 conductor pickup as standard but they just wired it in series for some reason . I had to get a luthier to rewire my pickup to 4 conductor (standard Affinity version). I guess if you give it 500K pots it will make it louder and brighter too. Yes, the Jag body shape does cause it to neck dive but so do quite a few Jazz style basses (in my experience ). At least the Jag H is quite light.
  25. Obrienp
    Happy to post/courier but I appreciate that puts the cost up.
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