fergs40

With your copper flap you are the artisan sourdough to my sliced white pan of modding! And yes, it’s confusing enough (though logical in its own way) trying to work out what the controls are, especially if you’ve ever played a Les Paul or similar, so the labels are very useful. Plus the new (though old!) style knobs don’t look quite right - not substantial enough or something.

Been meaning to do this for ages having read @Jean-Luc Pickguard‘s thread on his new 4003, and finally got round to it yesterday. All very straightforward. My biggest concern was whether the copper would show through the pickguard from the front, but I can’t see any sign that it has. Maybe the bass being fireglo helps with that? As per @Hellzero’s advice in my first shielding thread, I made sure to connect the shielding in the bridge pickup cavity to the main control cavity. The only problem I ran into was that when I initially replaced the pickguard and output jacks and then checked for a signal, I didn’t get one. Turned out that the cutouts for the jack sockets are so tight that some little ends of copper tape that I thought I’d tucked safely out of the way were grounding the output signal. Removing any tape in the cutouts solved things. Results? Much quieter. Not as silent as the Westone became, but I wasn’t expecting that (I believe the Westone is effectively a P pickup, so cancels its own noise to some extent?). Overall, very pleased. While I had the thing apart, and in what some will no doubt consider a retrograde step, I replaced the Hipshot bridge I’ve had on there for the past few years with the original - call it nostalgia. I was also interested to experiment with the mute system again, and having given it a subtle bend before replacing it, it now mutes all four strings much more evenly than before I removed it. New set of Thomastik IN345 strings and all is good! Some pics below of the shielding and the finished article. I forgot to take a picture of the bridge pickup cavity, but it’s the same as the rest of it - I brought the tape slightly over the top of the cavity to make contact with the pickup surround. PS I was a little bit sad to be covering up the serial written in the control cavity. But, hey, the price of progress…

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My first bass was a Hondo II bolt-on Ric copy, and I also experienced the neck pulling forward as described. Luckily the guitarist’s dad was ‘handy with wood’ and sorted it with some suitably impressive wood screws. The bass then took its revenge by turning the impressive tail-lift into a full-on crack behind the saddles, leading to the end of the bridge parting company with the bass without warning - had it not been restrained by the strings, the high speed lump of metal might have killed somebody as it flew through the air. Thankfully the guitarist’s dad was on hand with some more heavy duty wood screws and on we went… I often think those starting out these days are more blessed than they know by the existence of Harley Benton and their ilk.

Well that certainly makes a lot of sense, and explains why the Westone job was more effective than the Vigier one. I shall return to the Vigier at some point and add a couple of wires. Ta!

Not specifically. On both basses I reckon the control cavities are grounded due to the jack sockets touching the copper. The Westone had a grounding wire in the pickup rout already (though on reflection it’s a mystery why, as there was no shielding in there?), so that is definitely connected to the control cavity and thus to ground. On the Vigier, however, the pickup rout shielding isn’t connected to anything - there was nothing obvious on the pickups to connect it to (and frankly I wasn’t about to start soldering anything on to my irreplaceable pickups), and running additional grounding wires along the same route as the pickup wires was too much effort…maybe another day. But perhaps some explanation for why the job seems to have been less effective on the Vigier?

I know there will be many on here who have done this a hundred times and more, but as it's my first go I wanted to share - please pass on if not of interest! My motivation for this was sparked by @Jean-Luc Pickguard's NBD about his Rick 4003, and the subsequent discussion about shielding it. So I acquired some copper tape and rather than jumping straight into disassembling my Rick, as a first experiment I set about my 1987 Thunder 1A. This is still 100% original, including the 18v preamp, but my goodness was it noisy! It probably took me about an hour to complete the job. It was surprisingly straightforward to cut out strips of tape and manipulate them into place. I had the odd piece tear when I was smoothing it down, but it was easy enough to patch. I'd read some warnings about the sharp edges of the tape being a bit hazardous, but I was either sufficiently careful or lucky and survived without injury. I did the inside of the pickup rout (discovering that a younger me had almost pulled one of the mounting studs out of the body in a ham-fisted attempt to lower the pickup), the inside of the cavity and the inside of the rear cover (which has the preamp mounted to it). I put everything back together and, not really expecting very much, plugged in. The difference was night and day - the bass has gone from a handy receiver for local taxis to almost completely silent, even with the active circuit at the extremes of its settings. Previously the active circuit was so noisy I just avoided using it, but no longer! I was so flushed with success I decided to do my Vigier Excess at the same time as fitting the new preamp (see other thread). I'm not sure the difference with the Vigier was quite as noticeable - it already had shielding paint and it's still a bit buzzy sitting in front of the computer (despite having a hum cancelling circuit). Equally I believe the pickups in these are perhaps more prone to noise than some, the sacrifice being reasonable for the excellent tones they produce. Anyway. there you are - a simple job with a satisfying result (and no slugs harmed). I'm afraid I was so engrossed I forgot to take much in the way of photos, but here are the couple I did take (one each of the Westone and Vigier).

Six weeks later... ...so despite saying I was happy with the preamp in my Excess (and I was, there was nothing wrong with it!), that 'but it's not original' devil kept whispering in my ear. So I wrote to Vigier to ask if they might have a spare preamp lying around. They didn't, but they did say they were thinking of making some more in the next couple of months. And a week or so ago I got a message to say they were back in stock. I'm almost positive this isn't the unit that would have been in the bass when it was created in 2002 (the hole for the hum cancelling trim pot doesn't line up), but it is the modern equivalent and dropped straight in. Is it better than what was in there before? Of course - it's a Vigier! As an added bonus, having unpacked the thing and looked at the instructions I saw they were expecting it to be powered by two batteries - and I only have one battery box. So I wrote them a quick email and within the hour had a reply from M. Vigier himself confirming that it would also work on 9v. So he might not be making instruments any more, but he's still out there supporting them - merci!

@Jean-Luc Pickguard Did you happen to take any pictures of the cavity shielding you did? I have been meaning to do my 2011 4003 for ages - have got as far as buying the tape, but not 100% sure what an effective shielding job on one of these looks like, so a pic would be very helpful to me. Thank you!

The bass players!

Ordered 23 Nov, turned up today (in Ireland), though the initial estimate was, as others have found, sometime between January and June next year… £19.46. Posted 5 Dec in Germany.

Buy a spare from the manufacturer of your bass and use that?

Thanks @Madein1962 - I had a look and unfortunately the 2 band preamp they list there (https://www.parts.vigierguitars.com/en/electronic/265-vigier_parts_excess_4_electronic_2_bands_eq.html) is for humbuckers (mine are single coils) and I suspect it's also 18v where mine is 9v. It's also out of stock, so everything is conspiring against me! But thank you anyway!

And the prize goes to... @Mediocre Polymath It is indeed a Bartolini, and the same model you had I think. Thanks also to @Doctor J for the link to the pictures of the Excess electronics - those show what I was expecting to find but didn't. But, as I say, happy with what I've got! Thanks all.

This is the preamp from my new-to-me Excess. Being a curious sort I had a look inside, and am a bit puzzled by what I found. Couple of things: I had expected the preamp to be on a custom circuit board shaped like the cavity rather than a discrete unit like this. Certainly the one in my Passion III is like that, and the wiring diagram on the Vigier website suggests that’s what it should be. Although there is a trim pot (presumably for the hum-cancelling circuit, though I haven’t fiddled with it - yet) it doesn’t line up with the little hole in the cavity cover, and it’s not obvious to me how it could do with the components arranged as they are at the moment. So, does anyone have any thoughts? Or pictures of their Excess preamp (the 9v one) they could share? BTW, regardless of whether it’s the original or not it does everything I would want and expect it to do, so no complaints. But enquiring minds… Thanks as ever, collective.

This is quite a long post, so do feel free to skip to the pictures below… So, as I’m sure we often tell ourselves, I really didn’t mean to buy this. No, really. But I’m very pleased I did. I was on the Ishibashi Music website (looking for something completely different) and this presented itself at a very reasonable price. I’ve never bought an instrument from so far flung a seller (I’m in Ireland), so was a bit trepidatious. But I knew many on here had been down this route before, so I pressed ahead and of course it wasn’t really any more complicated than buying from a local seller. A couple of days later I got a shipping notification, and a couple of days after that a text message from An Post asking me to pay the import duty (really just 23% VAT plus a small processing fee). So I paid that and sat back to wait for delivery. And then An Post did a strange thing - they sent the bass back to Japan. We still don’t know why they did that. The best explanation I have had from them is that there must have been something wrong with the import paperwork (in which case, why ask me for the import duties?), but they haven’t said what that was, and neither Ishibashi nor Japan Post (who did investigate on Ishibashi’s behalf) have been able to get to the bottom of it. To their credit, Ishibashi were wonderful, and readily agreed to try sending the bass again (they could just have refunded me and left it at that). They were understandably reluctant to re-send the bass via Japan Post/An Post when we were no wiser about why it had been returned, so this time they sent it by DHL, a more expensive option for them, at no extra charge to me over what I’d already paid. This time it got through (albeit I had to pay a second set of import duties, though I’m still hopeful of getting the first lot back), and it turned up yesterday. And what a great instrument it is. Ishibashi reckon it’s a 2003 model. I know the early Excesses had a pick guard, which obviously this doesn’t, but it does have the single 9v preamp, so I’m wondering if it’s some sort of transition model between the first Excesses and the later 18v models. It’s got some light scratches as you’d expect on a bass of its age, the recess round the jack socket is a bit of a mess (which I guess is just inherent in the design and the result of years of trying to locate the socket with a jack plug) and some of the chrome is looking a bit tired, but no major dings and from a few feet away it looks mint. There was an odd buzz (really more of a ‘zinging’) on the open E and G strings when I first tuned it up which caused a few nervous moments (have I bought a lemon? Is it going back to Japan - again?). I eventually traced it to these strings sitting too high in the nut/string guide and buzzing gently against the zero fret - a couple of minutes work with a file on the slots sorted it out. Never come across that before, and Ishibashi say they put EXL165s on it, which aren’t madly heavy strings, so all a bit odd. All of the grub screws which lock in the intonation on the bridge were also completely backed off, so I guess maybe there was a bit of a rattle from them too. Anyway, all quiet now! I’m not convinced the preamp is the original (I’ll do a thread in technical to ask about that), but the sounds that come out of it are fantastic in their range and quality, and the playability is, of course excellent. The neck is noticeably chunkier than that on my Passion III (to be fair, every other bass I have has a chunkier neck than the Passion…), but very easy to get around. I’d like the action a little lower but the A saddle is bottomed out, so will look at shimming at some point I expect. When I find the luggage scales I’ll tell you what it weighs - somewhere just north of 4kg I’d guess. Anyway, I’m delighted. Some pictures:

I don’t think I’ve got the same strings on any two basses. I can’t claim any great science or skill to my choices, but I think it adds to the distinct character of each bass, though there’s no two of the same model either so maybe I’m kidding myself! It does also, however, provide an excellent additional argument when the ‘why do you have so many basses?’ discussion comes around…

I’ve got a copy of this: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/631443/writing-better-lyrics-by-pat-pattison/ It’s really useful for technique/craft, in much the same way as we need to work on these with our bass playing. It takes you through the whole process, starting with generating ideas in the first place (which I always find the most difficult bit). A lot of the advice isn’t dissimilar to that in Tweedy’s book, which I also have (and which is probably a more entertaining read!), but may be a worthwhile addition nonetheless. Anyway, leaving all that aside, if you’re writing poetry I’d say you’re already most of the way there with lyric writing - you’ve found something that matters to you enough to express it in carefully chosen words. I shall look forward to some uploads to the music sharing part of the forum in the near future!

This very guitar, or one very similar, has just appeared on the BC classifieds: I bought a MIJ Mk3 new in 1987 and still have it - mine only has one toggle switch, the back of the neck is body coloured and the battery compartment cover is completely different, though.

This has been kicking around in the small ads of a certain German bass forum for the past couple of months - if I didn’t have one already I would have had it even before the price dropped to its current (ridiculous!) level. It’s had a bit of surgery to insert a battery compartment, but otherwise looks good. if someone buys it I can stop wondering… PS No relationship to the seller or anything, just passing on a tip. But please delete if inappropriate.

My Westone Thunder 1A (the later one with the big - Magnabass? - pickup) has two 9v batteries - and that dates from 1986…

Wir Sind Helden, meine deutsche Lieblingsband… Just celebrated their 20th anniversary, though sadly no longer touring or making new music. This video has an obvious reference, but adds some cleverness of its own.

You’d have to do an awful lot of work to an Ignition to make it look like a CT. The binding for a start. Can’t see how that would be worth anyone’s while for the sales price difference. Faking a German would make more sense, were one that way inclined…