Musicman666

On 09/11/2025 at 07:07, knirirr said:

As far as I am concerned Facebook is extremely dastardly - I refuse to have an account there or on any other service owned by the blackguard Zuckerberg. I block all known Meta URLs on my phone via DNS. 

Luckily for me my job doesn't need me to use it (it doesn't appear to be popular in academia), though some hobbies are affected by this stance. 

but you don't exist?

7 hours ago, BassAgent said:

That collection is absolutely perfect. Except for perhaps a flatwound Precision, I wouldn't add or get rid of a single bass there. Lovely. 

thanks ...i never intended to have so many but my problem is i can't sell any .. i see positives in all of them ...probably getting a little out of hand to be honest ...a precision was my only bass for many years but i sold it ...i wonder if i can sneak another one in..?

ok i briefly have the whole lot out of storage together so i took a quick pic! ...so rare to have them all in one room these days on account of the wife..

maybe if i just cut so there is a small amount of silk just to hold it together ..?

ah ...ai seems to think this is a bad idea 

ah ...problem is back on ...for some reason i blanked out the xl sticker and purely focused on the insert wording ...so yes i still have a problem...so can you cut down tape wounds without them unwinding?

ok ...package arrived ...all the strings are surprisingly now standard long scale not xl ...go figure ..not sure what's going on over there but i'm happy now ..i would delete this thread if i could ...maybe admin can do it for me....cheers. 

i recently bought a couple of labella tape wounds strings 760n online who gave me xl length instead as they didn't have any regular scale lengths in stock. When i asked them if this was ok they just said i have to be "very careful" ??  Before i break open the string set and cut them can anyone tell me if it's possible to do this without the silken end part being totally removed thus allowing the tape covering to unravel ...this all sounds potentially a tad janky to me. 

10 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I just looked at the DFSchat forum, and they have a topic called sofas on the bass.

ai tech isnt quite there yet ..

do you ever get the feeling that the best bass you have ever played is whichever one is in your hands at any given moment?

the finish on this 90s stingray has seen better days but for some reason it plays better than ever.

any bands that actually push their own envelopes and develop artistically thus challenging their fan base with each new release need not worry ... ai is like the formulaic approach ...no innovation, it gets boring pretty fast. 

yep ...i got that deal ...  that fret kisser is such a great tool, i have used it a few times, only wish i had bought it years ago. The file is quality too. 

20 hours ago, Cat Burrito said:

Personally I like the tones of Simon Gallup (The Cure) and Craig Adams (Sisters of Mercy era), and both helped shaped my early playing days.

...add hooky and severin while your at it...  opening bars of israel and rock and a hard place ...less is more. 

6 hours ago, ezbass said:

Mick Karn, Pino, Alan Spenner on Roxy’s Flesh & Blood, John Giblin, Geddy, Derek Forbes.

permission to add a certain mr tony levin to this list. 

2 hours ago, Mudpup said:

I've experienced the same when we downtuned to D to suit the singer. Everything just sounded a bit flubby. I have a D tuner on each 4 string and that sounds great usually in normal tuning so could it be something to do with taking the tension off the neck maybe? Maybe get a Digitech Drop pedal or a new singer?

funniest part is the neck tension jibe ..

6 minutes ago, ezbass said:

Another option is to only tune the E string down to D and keep all the others standard. It needs a bit of thought in terms of playing, but I find adapting to that not too hard (I often use a drop D tuner for songs that require those extra lower notes).

yeah ...personally i find my brain can't cope so well ...

ok ---i'm using 50 to 110 on rounds  ..seems to work ok. i could give you the gauge on d dario chromes if u want?

i will check when i get home 

i think you might need to increase the gauge ..half my basses are tuned to standard d and they don't sound muddy but i do use heavier strings ...regular gauge would probably be too loose and floppy. 

i also have the musicman version with the wider neck that i got decades ago when the bass vi was truly a rare commodity  ..its very capable of bass vi duties but it's achilles heel is that musicman used regular guitar tuners thus cutting itself off from being able to fit the superb heavy gauge fender bass vi e string even if you managed to track down as set in those days  ..so you ended up having to use the specific ernie ball vi bass set of strings made for it which lacked a certain clarity on the low e that i can now thankfully get today from the vintera which of course is designed specifically for the fender bass vi set ...so now after acquiring my vintera i have relegated the musicman to baritone g to g duties which is another very interesting area to get into. I find within the bass vi format it's more about string choices than the bass itself and the area that sorts the men from the boys is that low e ...i am so fussy about low e string definition ...this is what ultimately made me veer away from the classic vibe ..it seemed that with the classic vibe it was all a bit of a kludge whereas with the vintera it just does it straight out of the box  ...no shimming or third party bridges or particular strings needed ...ironically i did end up getting a stay trem for the vintera not because it ever needed one in the slightest but simply because my ocd wouldn't allow me not to, since i already had them on my avri jazz and jag .... in fact if the truth be told only the jag every really required one.

6 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

Width-wise the neck is very much in skinny 70s Strat territory.

the strat is slightly larger but yes in the same territory ...i think the squire is faithful to the original bass vi in terms of neck width. 

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

The nut is cut fine. The strings are already a little too close to the edge of the fingerboard. The neck is just much too narrow for bass guitar thickness strings, which isn't surprising considering that my skinny-stringed guitars have wider necks (and string spacing at the nut) than this.

 

 

 

well it looks like the original bass vi has a thinner nut than a strat so presumably on that score alone you are not comfortable with the bass vi.

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

Is that the width of the nut or the distance between the centres of the two E strings?

 

The nut width on my Squier VM Bass VI is 41mm but the distance between the centres of the two E strings is only 35mm which puts the strings much too close together, and even more so when you consider that they are much thicker than guitar strings. For me this second measurement is the important one. Overall nut width tells you nothing about the string spacing. Compare this with the Eastwood Hooky which has a nut width of 50mm and 42mm between the centres of the E strings and is consequently much more playable (for me).

 

As has been said shimming the neck is required to get a decent string break angle over the bridge. The increased downward pressure of the strings on the bridge by changing the break angle also goes along way towards stoping the bridge from wobbling around without needing to fit inserts. Wobbly bridges are fine on Jaguars and Jazzmasters if you want to do MBV impressions, but IMO have no place on a Bass VI. Plus once you've replaced the E and A with something more suited for playing bass, the vibrato mechanism goes from extremely subtle to almost inoperative.

that does sound possibly like a badly cut nut ...i will measure mine and get back to you on that one.