Vin Venal

Very cool. I do love a good bit of bakelite.

A much better picture:

Yeah if I was buying a new Fender, and wanted that custom shop vibe, I'd be looking at the American Originals with the nitro finish - the relicking surely isn't worth £1500 on top?

Sandberg 48 owners! How do they compare to Gibson/Epiphone T-birds in terms of ergonomics? Are they equally massive, heavy and neck divey?

Wait a moment, aren't you the chap who does the bass demos for guitar interactive on YouTube? If so, I really enjoy those - really thorough, laid back demos, and I dig your pick playing.

The first one sounds like a setup issue, which is on the shop rather than fender imo, but yeah, if I buy an expensive bass I expect a good setup. The second one is obviously a fault, which could be on Fender, but equally could have come out of the factory working perfectly and got jolted or dropped somewhere along the way leading to a dodgy connection somewhere. Either way, again the retailer bears much of the responsibility imo - they should be doing a setup which includes making sure the electrics work at least. Edit: I wonder if custom shop stuff often ends up sitting in the shop for a really long time due to the massive prices, leading to setup issues, stiff tuners, dodgy electrics etc?

Personally I prefer the aesthetics of a pickguard, and it's a fun easy way to change the looks of an instrument, which is half the fun imo. I do agree with perspectives above though that pickguards from a manufacturers point of view are often about cost saving and easier mass manufacturing - much easier to just rout everything out from the front and cover it with a bit of plastic. On more expensive instruments with nicer looking wood and finishes I'm more inclined to leave it off.

Slightly niche area I'm guessing, a knob's a knob to most people, right? But I wanna change the knobs on me P-bass at some point. I just think domed or flat-top metal knobs are a bit boring. Curious to see what weird and wacky options are out there. This is the bass in question: Thanks in advance!

Tortex .88 accept no substitute!

I had the EHB1005SMS for a while and really liked it. While the bartolinis probably weren't the best choice, you could kinda make up for them with the excellent pre-amp, but I think in the long run I'd have been looking to put something with more clarity in there. Everything else about the bass was spot on, especially the aesthetics - most comfortable easy bass I've played.

Only been 6 months or so, but finally got round to putting the new scratchplate on this. Went with the Mike Mills look in the end, I think it looks rather well. Very pleased with how this bass feels, sounds, and now looks. 😁 Thanks for the suggestions.

Yeah, but the other way around. Always played Jazz basses or Ibanezs with skinny necks, partly cuz the neck width seemed easier, partly cuz I thought P-basses seemed boring. Got the right P-bass and suddenly got it, and rarely play anything else now.

If they were all 8lbs 3oz, I'd have one by now. Think you got lucky there, most of the ones I've looked at have been 9lbs plus. Looks lovely in that colour. Enjoy!

Things got out of hand. Lol. Got to say though, early experimentation is it sounds great. No phase issues, and no problem with different sustain on the low end - maybe because I have quite a lot of compression later in the chain anyway. Those are three pedals I love on bass, but they aren't really usable sounds. Running them this way opens up all sorts of potential. In general, these are the sounds I've been looking for - massive. I'm not sure if there's another way of getting that thick, distorted tone with all the harmonics and still having a big round bottom end. Signal splitting is the way forward.

If bypassing the preamp sounds better, before you change your gear, try changing the order of your effects by running some in the loop instead of in front of the amp. That might sound even better, as the issue may be where the preamp sits in the signal chain rather than the preamp in itself if you see what I mean? What effects do you run?

Are you looking at tube/valve heads? I know the ABM600 is all tube, dunno what markbass models you were looking at. There's a global shortage of tubes, which is really the least of our worries given the thing causing it is our seemingly inexorable spiral into another global war. Maybe time to consider switching to class D amplification. Spend any money you save in the process on a geiger counter and iodine tablets.

I'm surprised. I thought the density and rigidity of the wood would make a lot more difference than it did.

Yeah, I hadn't considered phase inversion. I don't think any of the pedals I'm currently planning on running in the dirty loop are known to invert phase, but if they do, I'll have to switch the LS-2 for an OBNE, or I guess I could stick a single transistor boost last in the loop, cuz I think they all invert phase?