Jolltax

You can pre-order on Andertons, I've always wanted to try a Bongo, so weird looking ..

Was watching some YT and happened upon this Anderton video where they are playing HILS basses (never heard of them). About 15 minutes in they are playing a short scale, passive, headless bass with a humbucker and they cost £499. Would have though it would be perfect for travel :

I travelled with a bass quite a lot and lived in hotels for weeks at a time, I think a lot of the super-compact basses are a bit compromised although I have only 'tried' a Steinberger not owned one. I am with @Burns-bass and others, the secret is having a cheap setup and then not worrying about it being bashed about, I do also think headless is good because actually there is no real compromise in actual playing / fretboard, unfortunately they aren't cheap. The way I did it was I bought a cheap Harley Benton JB and had the neck bolts fitted with inserts so I could easily remove and restore the neck. Then I played through headphones, or occasionally I managed to play through the hotel clock radios line-in - the Bose ones pack serious bass for their size! The bass cost £85 so it didn't matter if it got bashed or broken in my baggage and I actually sold it for £100 a couple of years later!

Me too, I own an EHB and also a Sire cheapy 4 string (M2) and am a fan of both. Gut feel the M6 is probably just as well made and specced as the EHB and given that its literally half the price of the EHB looks like a good deal.

My point is that having gone to the trouble of actually making a multiscale bass with so-called custom pickups to then ergonomically compromise it seems an odd choice and reflects the fact that the market is still developing. Perhaps its just a matter of time as the multiscale market appears to be growing if recent new models by Sire (M6?) and others are anything to go by. Mind you, the new ones all seem to have the same issue - the market will decide, I guess. My instinct is that very few players swap the pickups on their basses (more likely to swap the bass) and I think the 'standardisation' argument has already left the building years ago - my Ibanez pickups are already 'custom' so the point is moot anyway. Its like arguing 'everyone should have a P-Bass because I've got one'. I bet some enterprising individual with a 3D printer could knock something out that would be an improvement ....

Question for you fellow multiscalers out there : I enjoy playing my Ibanez EHB but the pickups annoy me as they are not good as a thumb rest, when playing they are not straight and at the moment its annoying me : Ever more annoying is that Ibanez seem to have recognised this problem as they give you a thumb rest which is a parallelogram creating a weird mountain range for your thumb. WHERE are the parallelogram shaped pickups which run parallel with the strings, surely this is what we need? Do they exist? Grumpy today (must be my age) J

Go with the bass with the nicest neck and that feels the most comfortable, as a learner it doesn't really matter about the pickup configuration as long as you got somewhere comfy to rest your thumb whilst playing the bottom string - decent basses all sound similar enough for pickup configuration not to matter. For me, comfort and the neck the most important thing. I think some of the best necks on (new) budget basses are Sire, second hand Yamaha (not the super cheap ones) are also lovely

Really cool, headless is the way to go imho Love the fact that it has a truss rod wheel for easy adjustment, nice little touches

Very true, I am an intermediate player at best, I often end up making tabs for tunes for which I can't find songs I am learning for my band (my music skill level not good enough to make transcripts) My teacher very good at encouraging me to use music, its just not always easy to find ... which is why I appreciate the work you have put into this

Just me reflecting again on this thread, if you got an active bass, a preamp / pedals, EQ on your amp (and / or maybe even going into a desk) then most of us are playing through 3 or four stages of tone / EQ adjustments, its no wonder it gets confusing (for me anyway). It makes me wonder how much of my bass am I actually hearing and how much is just electronics e.g. I wonder how many times I have cranked the treble on active bass without realising I have it turned down somewhere else in the signal chain, probably a lot of the time Conspiracy theory : maybe we are all secretly playing exactly the same sounding bass and the only difference is in the electronics and we are being scammed by bass manufacturers

Very cool website, love the emphasis on music transcriptions rather than TAB

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The gig economy unfortunately not known for its pension provision. I worked offshore with someone who was a bass guitarist in a sixties band which charted a couple of times he left to pursue a career in the Oil business, reached a fairly senior position. He didn't like talking about it.

I love that this thread is 3 years old and the vote is basically 50/50, which as it happens I think is the correct answer . I switched to a 5 string headless Ibanez EH1505 which has multiscale neck bought about a year ago, really like the bass. I think one tries to weigh up the pro and cons of any innovation to conclude whether they are a net improvement. My conclusion / opinion : Headless is the way to go, better balance, lighter bass, same playable string length with shorter neck, good tuning, no obvious downside I have found yet Multiscale is of marginal benefit (if any) and for me has downsides, I'll probably prioritise other things in future purchases. I do like the way it looks though. For me, its a wash - I am 50/50 on it To elaborate - the downside of multiscale for me is subtle : the fan frets mean I feel like I am having to stretch / adjust my hand more at the extremities of the fret board particularly at the low end of the neck where I am already least comfortable and perhaps making it a bit more difficult to accurately position fingers at the fret. If you have huge hands, I guess this might not be an issue ! Worth bearing in mind I am an intermediate level player only, not super experienced. As other mentioned I would like to try the new Sire M6 as in my experience the necks on Sires are nice... my Ibanez will be hard to beat mind you

OK, good point, I get it. I have PowerDrumKit (which is very cool btw) for that kind of stuff but I guess my (the lazy) way is to get the stem