Baloney Balderdash

A regular credit card makes for an excellent fret rocker, long side for the frets closest to the headstock, short side for frets closest to bridge. Placing the edge of the credit card across 3 frets at a time parallel with the strings and gently trying to rock it back and forth, and if it rocks just the tiniest amount it means that one of the frets are too high/low, depending.

I've had this before, and turned out it was the strings behind the nut that rattled, I assume because that specific note fretted at that specific spot on the fretboard caused them to resonate, and because that string didn't have enough break angle behind the nut, tying a hairband tight over across the strings just behind the nut fixed this issue completely. Next time I changed strings again I made sure that that specific string was long enough so that it was wrapped up lower on the tuning peg, which resulted in a greater break angle, and that fixed the issue without any need to tie that hairband over the strings behind the nut. Check your witness points at nut and bridge, that is the strings breaking at a sharp angle in front and behind the saddles and nut, and if it is set, or that setting it doesn't fix the issue, try doing what I did, with a hairband or similar, and see if that fixes it.

Long Distance Runaround - Yes

Thing though is that the frequency points for the Treble and Bass controls is set so that is cutting them and dialing up the volume instead equates to boosting the mid frequency around a center frequency of about 400Hz, whereas the huge mid scoop of the pedal happens around a center frequency of about 800Hz, so there is not really any way you can effectively dial you out of the baked in mid scoop of pedal, except for dialing down the blend, but then you will be bypassing a big part of the reason you would have it on in the first place. Clever design, let's force mid scoop on everyone. And further more to make it even worse the frequency spectrum around 800Hz or so is what normally helps giving your bass tone better definition, preventing your bass from getting lost in the mix. In all fairness Tech 21 did add a way to to circumvent this issue by including a sweepable mid control on the V2 of this pedal, but unfortunately Behringer doesn't make a clone of that pedal.

Sweepable mid control even. I pondered on trying it out, but has never gone through with it course I couldn't really find any information anywhere about how well it works for electric bass. You don't happen to have any recordings demonstrating it?

While I'd love a "Potato Potato" pedal it sounds like it possibly would have more in common with the Korg Miku pedal than the "Wah Wah" pedal, like the Western expression pedal format version of the Miku pedal. What I'd love even more though would be a "Tomato Potato" pedal, with modes reflecting all possible combinations of the two vegetables, including accounting for the two different pronunciations each respectively from that famous song. I got a feeling we would make a great pedal concept designer team. You provide the basic concepts, I elaborate on them, and the pedal engineering team makes them a reality.

Just slap on a BBOT bridge, £8.50 at Thomann, almost a 100 times cheaper, or how about a brand new Thomann cello for just £345, cause tonewood is a lie elitists made up to make profit on people who suffers from hearing delusions, and you don't want to be a cork (and probably other more questionable substances too) sniffer, do you? On a serious note, glad I chose electric bass, though honestly I always wanted an upright acoustic one.

Does they sound good? Cause I've heard their sister brand Fecal are supposed to sound like poop.

In Memory of the Truth - Coil

What was wrong with the stock bridge? And I never got why cloth covered wiring is a thing, when plastic insulated shielded wiring (that is the ground running as a braided shield all along the insulated hot wire) is much better, at least from a noise eliminating viewpoint. And yes, plywood can be as good as any other solid types of wood for guitars and basses.

Sennheiser HD 380 Pro Use them for everything music related, listening to music, practicing bass, recording/tracking, mixing and mastering. Also gaming and watching movies/series. Really well balanced and very close to FRFR, so what I hear is what I get and what I get is what I hear. Seriously need a new set of replacement earpads and cable though, at the moment I use a haphazardly hack job attached earpads that I pulled off a pair of cheap headphones I had lying around and a patched and soldered together cable for them. But they are like 20 years old, and the earpads and cable held up fine until relatively recently, and otherwise they work as perfectly as when I bought them.

"Bass amps are like pickled onions, you always know it's gonna taste like vinegar" - Woody Lump -

My main objective with utilizing an "amp-less" setup and using a FRFR speaker has always predominantly been having a consistent tone regardless of whether I am practicing at home with a pair of proper studio grade FRFR headphones, rehearsing or jamming with band through my FRFR speaker, or gigging playing live through a given venue's PA system.

I like the pickguard as it is! Please don't change it. I've always wanted a transparent pickguard where you could see the guts of the bass, and I think it even suits this bass particularly well.

Rose Clouds of Holocaust - Death in June

Well, that was my whole point with that reply, it was a response to your comment, hence why I quoted it. The first part of the sentence being: Sure (meaning yes), if... [as you said + elaborating] The second part of the sentence being: But if (my perspective)... [elaborating] + then: [my point] Just elaborating on what you said, really, as in explaining why you would set the HPF one or the other way, which you didn't really, and then presenting the opposite perspective as well.

My "amp-less"/FRFR setup:

So question is, do you have an always on magic tone sauce enhancer pedal in your setup, and if so what is it and what does it do? Mine is my EHX Black Finger, tube driven optical compressor, that is the first thing in my signal chain right after the bass (or that is I got a pedal acting exclusively as buffer just before it, since the input impedance of the Black Finger is something like 150kOhm ridiculously low, and some of my high end is cut off my signal if I don't), though with just a very subtle compression dialed in, and predominantly used as a tube preamp stage, with the tubes (2 x EHX 12AX7EH), which are operating at proper high 300V plate voltage, driven to just on the verge of their breakup point. What it does is relatively subtle, but it changes my tone from great to amazing, adding an unique warmth and harmonically rich depth to my signal, and just a touch of subtle tube grit when digging in. Here it is, to the far left, together with the rest of my temporary setup, as I am in the process of completely rearranging my "amp-less" pedal setup, so here is just the core of my always on "clean" tone setup, and the core of my high gain distortion setup: (and yes, it is dirty as hell, but I've owned it for nearly 20 years, it has been all kind of places and have been stomped on with shoes on, and beyond vacuum cleaning it has never been cleaned, also the photo enhancement edit does make it look much worse than it really is, just pretend it is 100% pure magic mojo tone sauce)

That's an amazing looking bass too!

Sure, if he plans to exclusively use the HPF as a means to filter out sub frequencies for the sake of getting max volume possible out of his amp while protecting his speakers and preventing them from farting out, but if he additionally wants to use it more as an EQ effect to tighten up his low end and make it more punchy (for this you need to set the HPF cutoff point closer to the lowest fundamentals your bass produces), then it might very well affect how the Mutron reacts and the resulting effect on its output.

If you like that way your compressor/limiter reacts to your low end and the resulting effect, then sure, but most people wouldn't as it will affect the rest of the overall tone of your bass in those cases, most would say negatively. Also please read my edited in addition to my original response to you.

Towards the very end of the chain, right before an eventual DI, though if you use a compressor that sits towards the end of your chain then before that. So with the signal chain you are listing there, right before your compressor. As you write in your response above this, some pedals works best with the full signal of your bass, but also some effect pedals will produce more low end, hence why the HPF should be after those.

Show us your cheap budget #1 main bass and tell us a bit about it. Here comes mine. A just 28.6" scale length Ibanez GSRM20 neck + GSRM20B body Mikro Bass, that I named "Dud Bottomfeeder". I have it strung with Elixir Nanoweb coated hex core nickel roundwound guitar strings of the gauges .068 - .052 - .038 - .028, which gives a very close to perfectly balanced tension across the strings, in tenor bass, A# standard, tuning (that is as 1 half step above the 4 upper strings of a 6 string bass in regular B standard tuning). Obviously it is not good for filling out a traditional bass role in this tuning, but I feel that this is the tuning where it really shines, and it is great for solo/melodic work, as well as it can be used for chords, making it very suited to be treated like sort of hybrid between a guitar and a bass in terms on what and how you play on it (left fretting hand wise that is, right hand I mainly use traditional 2 finger, index + middle finger, bas plucking technique, however, rather the striking or pulling the strings, I more so stroke the strings, in a slightly inwards slapping motion, with the outmost tip on my fingers/nails, sometimes combined with 1 or 3 finger plucking technique, flamenco guitar style, index and/or middle, finger flicking technique, traditional classical acoustic guitar finger picking technique, as well as double thumbing. Rarely use picks, which though I don't either do when playing guitar, but when I do I prefer a .60mm Dunlop Tortex or a 3.1mm Wedgie Soft rubber pick, depending). . I have had it strung up with regular bass strings and tuned to regular 4 string E standard tuning before though, and used it as my main bass in couple of projects, in a band context, and honestly it sounded great for that too. I have pulled out both the stock pickups, but just replaced its reverse P pickup, for an EMG Geezer Butler P, wired directly to the output jack socket, with the stock jack socket also having been pulled out and replaced for a front mounted regular jack socket. You wouldn't think it was anything special playing it acoustically, it doesn't sound bad, but I suppose kind of boring and dry with no exceptional resonance going on or anything, but combined with the EMG Geezer Butler P, which is vintage voiced, but with an extraordinary articulate and well defined dynamically responsiveness and clarity to it, it just sounds absolutely amazing amplified, and for some reason it react exceptionally well to having it's tone manipulated by outboard effects, which makes it perfect for the "amp-less" setup that I prefer using. It got a very no bullshit immediate quality to its tone that I love, but not in the dry or boring sense, rather in the sense of having a very clear and harmonically balanced tone, but at the same time with a certain depth and complexity, and still having a nice snap and punch, to it. It just seems that whenever I try any other bass I always relatively quickly come back to this one, like the other basses color the tone too much already at the output of the basses themself, but with this one it is really hard to make it sound bloated and overprocessed, always retain this immediate clarity to its tone, where some other basses already sound bloated and overprocessed right from the start coming straight from their output jack socket. And then it is just an absolute joy to play. Anyway, enough with the babble here it is, Dud Bottomfeeder (though the knob closest to the neck is red now): I do ponder on, and likely will at some point, installing the J pickup from the P/J EMG Geezer Butler set where the current P pickup is from, wired to a separate jack output socket, for parallel active off-board mixing of the two pickups, via a Boss LS-2 or similar, as well as installing single mono rail bridge pieces, milled from solid brass, and in the same instance reduce the string spacing from the current standard 19mm to 17mm.

I am not particular fond of choruses either, but I love the right flanger pedal dialed in to deliver a subtle flanging effect to sort of sound like a more exotic more shimmering and ethereal kind of chorus, and a lush phaser with a deep quacking swirl, or even better such a phaser mixed in parallel with such a flanger, for a mystical oriental sort of vibe, perfect for playing riffs in harmonic minor, phrygian dominant/phrygian minor (also known as the Spanish Flamenco scale) and the double harmonic scale (also known as the Byzantine scale) and that sort of exotic oriental vibe. Tremolo can be beautiful too for slow melodic parts.