Jack

I tried just bass straight into amp but then I stopped using an amp so now I'm stuck. Suggestions on a postcard please.

You're close enough, we'll share one between us. Bloomin expensive they are

I'm not sure I'm on any kind of official wait list but I'm in as soon as you get it sorted. Major intent, keeping you in business. And sounding awesome.

I read that and assumed calves was a band I'd never heard of.

I had their version of the Prometheus and it was great, see no reason why these wouldn't be either. The problem with budget gear is always the used market though, the £250 HB head and £300 8*10 is a great rig for £550, but a quick look through the FS here shows that you can get a £200 Ashdown ABM 500W and a £350 Barefaced Compact instead. I know that's a little unfair, no warranty, etc. And you can make the same argument all the way up, why buy a new GK when you can have a used Berg, all true. Still.

I've wanted one for ages.

Massively. When I had two Stingrays that were pretty much identical apart from the colour I decided I wanted to differentiate them so one of them got an angrier, series-wired pickup from Armstrong and a John East MMSR. It wasn't necessarily done because of the weak G, but it definitely helped to mitigate it. Both of mine were maple and 2 band. Indeed, and there's the photo of Howard pointing the issue out to Leo Fender in person, with him commenting on his fix of using magnets on top of the pole pieces. When the people who made the bass acknowledge the problem it's sort of hard to argue that it isn't real. FWIW I have no problem with people suggesting ways to fix it or suggesting that they personally haven't experienced it. It's when one tells other people what they are and aren't hearing that it becomes a problem. As a retort to @drTStingray's (admittedly tongue in cheek) point above, maybe it's the people with better ears and hands that can tell there's a problem, and the people who can't hear it just aren't listening hard enough. I, for one, agree with BP (not surprising, as you'd assume he'd know his own basses...) when he says the problem "isn't in the wood" as I found mine went away with the new electronics. It's also worth noting that the issue seems to have been hugely mitigated with the Stingray 5 (using what would become the Sterling preamp) and the revised HH models a few years ago and then has disappeared entirely with the new Specials.

Please see earlier post, that's what I did on my black one. Fwiw this is one of Leo Fender's suggested solutions, along with adding some magnets to the G string pole pieces to achieve the same result. It works pretty well, although you don't half catch your fingers when you play over the pickup.

Stingrays are also my favourite bass. I grew up with a guitarist dad and so I was more aware of makes and models and stuff than most non musicians. I also group up with the second wave of punk, and all my idols in Goldfinger, Less Than Jake, Reel Big Fish etc all played Rays or at least other EBMM models. They were the dream when I had my Squier P Bass and 80W Crate combo. It's also worth pointing out that, long before I was a member of an Internet forum to bias me, I noticed a quiet G on a shop model some very trusting salesman let child me play for some reason. I assumed it was a setup issue, but me and my then guitarist both heard it. I've only owned 2 4 string Stingrays. Off the top of my head I think they're a 98 and an 07, but I checked on the EBMM forum so I can find out for sure if that's important. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, my 05 Ray5 did not have this issue, nor did either of my two bongos. Several other ray 4 I've played that belonged to friends or shops have suffered too. I can't promise it was all of them, but it was definitely all of them that I can remember (and you think I'd notice if one didn't). Because I really loved Rays so much I fought through the weak G. On my black 07 I angled both the pickup generally and the pole pieces as well. On my red one I changed the whole electronics package. I love the playability and the sound, will do anything to play a Ray still even now! Honestly it's more than a little condescending to suggest that anyone who has this issue hasn't played enough Rays. More so to suggest that somebody hundreds of miles away, with guitars that you've never heard or seen, isn't experiencing what they say that they are and even more so to suggest that they have a defect like hearing loss or the inability to properly eq. If its really us and not the guitars then I suggest you pick a technique, eq setting and rig that you like and ask someone to record it for you. Basschat is big enough that somebody will surely have that exact combination. When it comes to the 'eq it away' suggestion, that doesn't work. If I boost the G string frequencies to make it as loud as the others then I'm also boosting everything above the 5th fret on the D, the 10th on the A, etc. Not to mention the overtones from the lower notes, and I'm changing the way I want my bass to sound. The ratio is still wrong, because no matter how much I boost that open G, the 5th on the D is still proportionally louder.

Oh, so your issue was real and ours is imagined? Got it.

I've had it on 2 4-string Rays (both 2-band) but NOT on my Ray 5 or either of my two Bongo 4 HHs. It's definitely a Stingray thing.

An impulse response is essentially a measured model of an amp or cab that's portable (modeller agnostic, if you like).

I've got the SB2 and used it for years as the DI out of my Helix, it's a really, really solid unit. Having said that, I recently did a test on the £8 Thomann own brand DI and it's also just fine. Shipping from Thomann is a lot for small orders but they're available rebranded from a number of different sources. £8 vs £150 DI BOX TEST.

I used to say there was no such thing as a dumb question, but then I became an adult teacher and I changed my mind. 😀 Yours however is not dumb. Firstly, the phantom power doesn't make it past the transformer, so your pedals won't even know it's there. Secondly, that depends on the DI box. I think the Orchid boxes are buffered, so the answer there is a yes but the sound will pass through some of the circuitry in the DI, so it'll sound (probably imperceptibly) different. Are any of your pedals buffered? Cos then you could do away with all of this and use a passive DI.

Just as with everything from craft beer to god, some people are happy to let you be and some people want to convert you. As much I usually dislike people making their posts too personal and therefore not applicable to others, I think in this particular thread it's important. If you don't want to see me blather on about myself for two paragraphs then feel free to move on. Personally, I'm on my third modelling solution and second set of FRFR cabs. Just like with proper amps it takes a while to see what works. For me, my bands have good pa support so I don't need much stage volume. Secondly I sing backing vocals so I'd ideally have a monitor anyway. Then, I own a decent mixer rack so having a nice set of pa cabs allows me to have my own pa system. Lastly (that I can think of for the moment anyway) having pa cabs allows me to use my skinny guitar, electric drums and girlfriend's keys/synth collection equally well on stage if I ever needed to. Ok, I'm NEVER playing drums on a gig but I have played a few on guitar. The guy who occasionally deps for me in one of my bands (the previous bass player, he lasted one gig) plays bass and that's it. He shows up with a Sire Jazz, a clip on tuner and a sweet 1x12" Markbass combo. For him, having a bass rig is certainly a smaller and easier solution than using an FRFR type solution. On the other hand I'm a full time member and so I'm supposed to be making some kind of effort to get the sounds/effects right for the covers, hump my part of the PA (mixer rack), sing backing vocals and run sound during a show. I could bring a bass, effects board, amp and vocal monitor. And then all the cables! Oh the cables! But for me, in my particular band, helix>wedge is smaller and neater. That one wedge does bass and vocals for the stage, and seeing as I'm bringing a mixer and being the soundguy anyway I can make sure I sound good out front.

FWIW I just bought a paor on Sunday from Turnpike. £670 each and they come with the free tote bag. I agree that specs don't tell the whole story. Some speakers are just better than others at handling bass, something that the vast majority of them aren't designed to do. Some of the bigger speakers (RCF 745 springs to mind) are designed to actually handle low bass, most aren't. I think if you're the kind of person who uses loads of stage volume or who often has to carry the room from stage gear then you either need to specd big bucks on the FRFR or just cart a mini pa everywhere just for you. That's not really their use case though, most people using FRFR for bass (including me) have decent pa support and we're just using the FRFR for stage sound. And in that case you don't want a lot of lows.

On the contrary, I really appreciate the way that the balanced tension sets (at least the D'Addario ones that I use) go a long way remedying the 'floppy E string' that you get, especially when playing with a pick. For the first few years of my bass playing this bothered me, it wasn't until discovering the internet and bass forums I heard about what might the solution. It worked for me.

I have the 3 knob, 3 band version and love it. Really helps remove the yawning chasm in the mids you get with the 2-band whilst still sounding like a 2 band. I do believe that the 4 knob version is the same circuitry, just different controls, so it will voice your bass slightly differently as there's a little difference between the stock EBMM 2 band and 3 band, with the MMSR deigned to sound more like the 2 band.

Again, that very much depends. Plenty of people gigging with a single 1x10". Plenty of people gigging with no speakers, I do that all the time. Well, before, you know, the world ended. You've talked the instruments in your band which is certainly one factor but that leaves out so much other information. What's the PA situation? Genre? Volume? Size of venues? What amps are the other instruments using? Could mean 'Death metal in large clubs: 100W Peavey through two 4x12" cabs, 22-piece Ludwig, double kick drum' or it could mean 'low volume jazz in wine bars and hotel lobbies: acoustic guitar through a Schertler combo and a 5-piece kit played with brushes'. I'm afraid mine are all from scratch, but they're up on custom tone.

I've done both the Fractal and Helix racks into some bass-specific FRFR and found it overkill. I'm Stomp > QSC K12.2 these days and couldn't be happier. That DXR is an amazing little speaker by all accounts. Whilst I'm sure that, if any 10" speaker solution is up to the task it'll be that one, there are limits to what one small speaker can do for a bass guitar signal. If you're a reggae band, need huge walloping low end and rarely have PA then no, it'll not be enough. If you're in an indie rock band, playing with a pick, rounds and some grind to your sound and normally through the PA then it'll almost certainly be enough.

Indeed. When I read the op I was sure it said G10. Seeing what I expected to see probably. I've successfully used the G30, G50 and G55 with active basses.

The issue is that the bug uses a trs jack to check if it's in a guitar or charging cradle and some active preamps (not pickups) send a whine down the ring connection. This can be alleviated by using an extension lead.

My apologies, mine was an 'LT XL'