hubrad

50 mins on the phone seems like a good sign.. I occasionally dep with a soul band and have probably spent more time on the phone with the guitarist, a friend of a friend, than actually playing music! We can disagree on some things but still talk about them.

Sorry to hear about the health stuff! I know what you mean about the buying and selling addiction.. I frequent a couple of other forums in other fields, and the same thing happens. Easy to be drawn into it, and sometimes quite a down to step back from it! Mind you there's tons of other stuff going on inbetween all that part so well worth staying around for me.

I just bought some strings from Charlie.. they arrived swift and safe, just as described. Many thanks for a smooth transaction!

This. ^^^ Unless the socket is fixed onto the chassis then a loose or broken solder joint is remarkably common. Manufacturers do it this way for cheapness, deffo not reliability, and I hate it! If it does turn out to be the socket itself you may need to contact the manufacturer or distributor for a replacement, but alternatively you can buy a chassis mount socket and wire it to the pcb. As soldering jobs go, it's one of the safer ones, just take it steady. Edit: Rereading your last post, it probably is a replacement socket job. The hardest bit is usually actually getting hold of a direct replacement, or as I've sometimes done just wire in a different one.

Am I the only one hanging onto this thread and waiting to hear if there's a match on this? I love a good back story! Or did it get taken to pm to protect the innocent?

Crumbs! Hope your friend is ok. As you say, sucks on so many levels.

Eyup ead, when you say you inverted the pickup, did you invert the whole thing, i.e. both halves, or just one half relative to the other? If the whole thing it may just be that you altered its pickup direction so it's not getting whatever is causing the problem. Is it worse when you stand near such as TV, strip lights etc? 'Fraid I have no experience of the passive EMG, just actives which I like alot. However, as with any sealed pickup, if anything goes amiss inside it's skip time!

Or, indeed, the rabbit vs rabbit hole..

You neeeed a bit of Melissa Etheridge in there!

I just saw their photo of this bass. It looks awesome, and speaking as a big fan of Overwater I'd say it'll sound it too!

My eyes are going out of kilter! At least on the photo, so it might be down to the angle of the shot, it looks like a 34" neck in a shorter scale body.. it's noticeably shorter from bridge to 12th fret than 12th to nut.

OMFG.. do not start that particular ball rolling!

As one who mostly plays fretless, I'm always going to suggest taking that leap! If you already have a nice fretted 5 string then a fretless 4 string means lots of bases covered, and a budget as you mention means you should be able to find a good one. Basses For Sale is well worth a look from time to time. You might find something local or within easy distance, to boot. I'm on the mobile so can't see where you are. Good luck in your quest!

When I was looking for something to fit this very bill, I.e. something like my 250W SMX TE but more headroom, the "amp specialist" at Bass Gear (sadly, I believe this chap died a couple of years ago now) got me to try the 500+50W Gallien Krueger Fusion 550 with valve pre. I went for the heavier option, I.e. not class D, but corking tone and just what I was after. Still use the TE as well, mind! Iirc you'll be looking for lighter weight, Fretmeister, so possibly worth looking at the 500 or 800 Fusion heads or the new models if they're here yet.

EMG do VVTT as standard, but they do an active blend control which gets round the loss in middle position if you want to stay with passive tone controls. I prefer the whole system with Vol, Blend and active 2 band. Really versatile!