razze06

Bought a Squier Jazz from John, excellent transaction. Prompt communication, and a gentleman throughout. Oh and the bass is a veritable bargain!

I got mine at £259 in the shop

I tried using my acoustic bass for some intimate, folky gigs, and found that I was asked by the guitarists to bring an amp. Not enough volume. So I think you may need to use a small battery-operated amp, or maybe convert a small cheap practice amp to run off a car battery?

[quote name='Conan' post='726423' date='Jan 27 2010, 03:16 PM'] Red Dog Music is at the bottom of Grassmarket in Edinburgh city centre - or at the bottom of Kings Stables Road if you are coming down the hill from the Lothian Road end. Good music shop. Not the cheapest maybe, but good service![/quote] I agree, good shop, good service and good people. GuitarGuitar is equally good, but farther out of town towards the airport, in Corstorphine. Live Music is another favourite of mine. It's just off Nicholson/Clerk street, small shop with good service and good people (in my experience).

I bought one about two weeks ago, my first Danelectro. I had just bought a squier deluxe active jazz, which didn't work for me in with the band. Went back to the shop (Red Dog Music in edinburgh), they accepted it back as a return, and out I walked with this creme-brulee coloured baby. It looks very cool, and sounds very good to me. The pickups are very lively, with plenty of treble and low end. It sounds well defined in every configurations, no wooliness and really rich and warm when you roll back the trebles. So it sounds retro, but in a good-retro kind of way. I find it a little awkward to play with a strap, as it tend to tilt out a little, but nothing unmanageable. It's a short scale bass and very light, and that helps with neck dive. The Danos were meant to be simple, and they are. Some idiosyncrasies end up endearing it to me, like the pseudo-bakelite stacked vol and tone for each pickup, or the marine decking feel of the binding. Others, like the cheap guitar tuners, may well end up replaced. The action on mine is quite high, but that suits me fine. Given the simplicity of the bridge, fine adjustments are probably impossible. I played it in the house, and in one band practice. It proved really good in a (small) band setting, I was able to cut through a variety of mixes, really quite versatile for what it is. Maybe not the ideal choice for slapping, but excellent for most other things. And fun. I hope this help, I really like it.

[quote name='Lorne' post='725819' date='Jan 26 2010, 10:25 PM']You do know who owns Traben right? Hanser Music Group,owners of B.C.Rich,they're probably all made in the same place BTW,a new £200 BC Rich will be pretty crap[/quote] They may be owned by the same company that owns BC Rich, but they aren't the same basses, are they? The trabens i've played sounded rather good, with plenty of low end and an interesting tone, and could be had for close to £200. Not particularly pointy, but rather erm conspicuous bridge.... Never played a BC Rich bass, so I can't comment on them.

Traben?

I hear Ampeg moved all production to Vietnam in 2007. Looks like some of their higher end stuff is now made in US again. Maybe after all the outrage, especially in the US, the wanted something to lure the most patriotic (and rich) back into the fold

I would like to mention the "Jekill and Hyde" effect, by virtue of which a song is rehearsed at an agreed pace, with only minimal or acceptable fluctuations in tempo, and then get sped up or down vastly when performing live in front of an audience, causing discomfort and panic in some or all band members. My personal "bete noire" is Town called malice, which invariably gets performed at cramp-inducing tempo in front of a paying audience...

Tie your mother down - Queen (still learning) Rebel rebel - David Bowie Oh, and Mr Bright-f***ing-side

[quote name='merello' post='717827' date='Jan 19 2010, 01:44 PM']Is it a full size bass?[/quote] Yes, and then some

[quote name='krispn' post='717224' date='Jan 18 2010, 09:56 PM']Sound control - before they went bust -had one for sale in a 'go on make me an offer' manager special. Dont think they could shift if even then......[/quote] I actually very nearly bought it at their closedown sale...pipped at the posty by one of their staff, who is thinking of selling it on. I can put you in touch if you like. When I played it, I thought it had a really powerful tone, with strong lower mids and trebles. Not too much unlike a stingray, really. The neck is super chunky, but the whole thing is not very heavy IIRC. Maybe not the ideal tool for smooth jazz, but what do i know?

My personal opinion would be to get a solid, cheap and simple head, and as good a cab as you can with the money left over. You should be able to get a reasonable second hand head from here for around £150, leaving a fair bit for a good cab.

The outlook is not fantastic at the moment for me. We agreed with the reast of the band to aim for a gig a month, given work and family commitments. However, for the time being there is only one booking for March...

[quote name='mrcrow' post='709195' date='Jan 11 2010, 07:09 PM']owowwo that socket set looks like it could do a thing or two meter the polepieces to earth one at a time any earthing there means the insulation on the windings have gone usually on the outside poles..especially on jazz with narrow bobbins thats my guess... the other is that the magnetism has degraded on the pole and isnt relaying the movement to the windings sufficiently can the pup be installed the other way round just to do an A/B on your nut theory cheers[/quote] I'll take the bass apart this weekend and try some of the things you suggest, thanks. Installing it the other way round will answer many of my questions, i believe. IfI find that in fact one of the poles is somehow faulty, i'm going to have someone look at it, as I don't have the kit to do anything about it...

Hello all, I've got this quite unusual Ned Callan long scale bass I bought here on BC from Bassassin. After having the neck fixed (two of the holding screws weren't...), I am now moving to the nextlittle issue: the pickup behaves strangely with the E string. The symptoms are weak response on the open E, and 5th and 7th fret harmonics just don't sound at all. It all seems to ring as it should when unplugged, but all the above happens when i plug it in. The other three strings sound just fine. The pickup is a single coil, even though the casing is massive... I have a feeling that I may be looking at two different problems here. The neck has got a zero fret, and the the nut is quite wide on the E string. I wonder if I am losing oomph with the open E because of the sideways movement that the loose nut allows. Regarding the harmonics, it could be that the pickup needs rewinding. Maybe old wires need to be replaced to recover the original response. Or maybe I should just buy a replacement pickup, and keep the original one in a drawer for when (if) I sell it. Any opinions? cheers, Marco (Jon I hope you don't mind if I use one of your pics of the bass) [attachment=39989:ned.jpg]

My fender aerodyne Precision has got a p/j configuration, and it is wired so that the p pickup has stronger output. That is not a mod, it came like this from the factory. It is clear that the j pickup essentially adds definition to the P sound, but it is quite weedy when soloed. I wonder if that kind of wiring is the norm for P/J fenders

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dallas-of-London-Tuxedo-Bass-not-Burns-or-Watkins_W0QQitemZ170428842219QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV?hash=item27ae59c0eb"]dallas tuxed[/url] in rank conditions.

Thanks for all your advice, i'll be looking at my options when i come back from holidays, cheers.

[quote name='51m0n' post='687432' date='Dec 17 2009, 03:52 PM']They do go in the For Sale section reasonably regularly. Great basses for the money (S/H) too IMO.[/quote] I've seen a fair few, just wondering if there are some that I should be looking out for more than others.

I just want to dip my toe in the world of J basses, and I don't want to spend much money at all. What I'm looking for is something that sounds and looks approximately like a jazz. I am not looking for any subtleties or finesse. Are some makes better than others? Is it just a matter of being lucky with a cheaply built copy? Is there any point in looking at older oriental versions of a jazz bass? I reckon that second hand is probably best, but the question still remains: what is worth looking out for? Is anyone likely to ever want to sell a VM squier Jazz?

I think it's a different rating. It could be that the speaker is rated at 250w by the manufacturer using their own test, but could take 300W RMS. After all, the RMS power handling is not quoted explicitly in the data sheet. Maybe asking the manufacturer of the speakers could help? I see they are italian, I'll be happy to help with any language problem

[quote name='chris_b' post='685236' date='Dec 15 2009, 02:42 PM']Imagine if all car manufacturers had their own version of MPH. How fast would you be travelling at any time and how would you stick to the speed limit? RMS is the only constant reference.[/quote] Even there you can have a certain level of variation. It doesn't say what level of distortion was deemed acceptable when taking measurement, for example. The speaker in question has a rating value obtained using using pink noise, I understand it's often sine wave or even square waves that are used.

I would say that the "rated power" is close in concept to "RMS power", and music power refers to the maximum peak it can handle without clipping. RMS power can be obtained by testing the speaker with a sine wave of a certain Root Mean Square power X, where X is the maximum power the speaker can take without distorting (or with a small but acceptable amount of distortion). The manufacturer here says they do the test using pink noise, which I understand is another, possibly more realistic way of testing for power rating.