Vin Venal

Yeah, that's what I did.

I think it just means more gain. I think that's why my big muff (oo-er) sounds good when it's the first pedal in my chain, but feeds back and makes unholy noises if it's after another OD, or when I tried it in my FX loop.

Have you seen Mike Watt's signature Reverends now? 🤤

And Enya actually. 😅

I sometimes listen to Kate Bush...

Yeah I think the only difference between a "P Bass" or a "P style bass" and a "Precision Bass" is it has to be made by fender to be called the latter.

That would mean a lot of fender precisions aren't actually precisions though, including some pre CBS golden era vintage stuff. They made em with 1 1/2", 1 5/8" and 1 3/4" nuts didn't they? A, B and C neck?

Yeah, it always amazes me when people can't hear these massive tonal differences which I'm sure are there. If there wasn't a massive community of people online confirming my perception, I'd think I was mad. I think we're the weird ones though.

That sounds like the kind of mistake I'd have made early on. A good one is a good ONE. Doesn't mean all the others will be good.

Well yeah, this is the thing - it's all also really subjective. Anything much over 8lbs for me pretty much means a sitting down instrument.

Both of the basses I'm using at the moment - a player series p-bass, and a vintage modified jaguar - sound, depending on where I have the tone knob, like either a woolly mammoth, or a woolly mammoth covered in spikes. There's a marked difference in the size of the mammoth, cuz the Squier is in D-Standard tuning.

I've been through tonnes of gear over the past few years, sometimes chasing very particular tones, sometimes just seeing if I like stuff. Certainly with the instruments themselves, less so with amps, cabs and effects, which are a bit more consistent, I'm finding that all the stuff people are shopping for - sound, feel, weight, build quality - it's all not only subjective, but also a bit random. Sound is the big one - at the moment, the best sounding bass I've owned, in my opinion, is a 10 year old beater of a squier jaguar, with much maligned online Duncan design pickups, and knackered electronics- I dunno what's going on, but when the bridge pickup is on full, the bridge tone pot acts as a master tone for the bass. For whatever reason, that setting - both pickups on full, riding the back tone, through my gear, in my room, to my ears, sounds amazing. Weight - you can buy an off the shelf American made fender, and end up with an instrument weighing anywhere from 7lbs to 11lbs, which is the difference between toy like insubstantiality, and an unusable slab of furniture imo. Things like tuning stability - you can improve the odds with material choices, etc, but imo, it's mostly a crap shoot if you get a "good-un", or a neck which seems like it's still trying to grow towards the light. For context, some of the basses I've gone through - sterling musicman stingray, fender american ultra jazz, sire u5, gibson 2015 sg, fender vintera and player mustangs, ibanez mezzo 5er, ibanez ehb1005, fender player p-bass, marusczyk jazz, couple of squier jags. All good basses, with the possible exception of the gibson, which sounded like it was under water no matter what I did, but maybe that's your thing... My conclusion is this - there's too much variation between individual instruments for differences between - brands, location of manufacture, materials, components, and price - to be anywhere near as significant as we're led to expect by marketing. This leads me to believe its just not worth buying an expensive bass sight unseen. Certainly not unless factors which are important to you, like weight, quality control, setup, figuring etc - are all known - like a dealer who takes detailed images and weighs individual instruments. And I don't think I'd ever order a custom instrument. You might get a good un, but you might get a very expensive wall decoration. It's also led me to think that I should stick to budget instruments. Probably sub £500 used. If my "best" (for me at the moment) bass is a slightly broken squier from a line which didn't even have a great rep when it was out 10 years ago (Indonesian vintage modified) which cost 250 quid with a hard case included from a dealer (so is probably worth about 100 quid), there's no point spending big money. Thoughts?

Yeah, definitely not a sound issue, I don't mind single coils (although I prefer noiseless ones). Just an aesthetic thing I suppose - I'm OK with humbuckers pretending to be single coils (which is basically what a noiseless J pickup is), but not the other way round.

I have a hard time seeing why they'd do it too. Can the difference in manufacturing and installation costs be enough to warrant making single coils that look like humbuckers, instead of just actual humbuckers? Apparently so. This bass has always been on my radar, but to be honest, I don't want one with pretend humbuckers in it. It's just a bit sad.

Nice one! I was looking for an iconic player with one like it. His basslines on REM stuff are killer. Might have to recreate this: So need a tort pickguard, and a very flamboyant blazer... 😁

Yeah, I think that's the closest I've seen on vintage basses. I think the blonde on teles was slightly translucent with some wood grain showing - the buttercream is like an opaque version of that.

Got me a precision in buttercream yellow. Love this colour, very vintage, without being a cliche. Looks like it could be in a 60s vespa or something. Pickguard suggestions? The plain white doesn't do it for me. Maybe brown tort? Purple pearl? Black? Also, does anyone know anything about the colour? It's supposedly a Fender colour from back in the day, but I don't think I've ever seen it on anything vintage. Was it one of the less popular special order jobs?

I recently put a bass in D Standard, and love it. Lower tension, heavier sound, and closer to my vocal range if I ever want to attempt singing. I only did it cuz I had a set of strings thicker than I like for that scale, but will keep it in that for the foreseeable. One thing to keep in mind is that "standard" tuning ain't what it used to be. It's all based on a nominal standard of 440hz for the middle A, which was only standardised at the start of the 20th century, before which it was all over the place, but it had generally been creeping up for several centuries. Go back far enough and EADG was much heavier. 😁