RichT

Agreed on build quality. The only issue I've ever had was a tendency for the bass to naturally hang a little more towards horizontal than I prefer due to the lightness of the body, however I sorted that by fitting some Res-o-lite tuners. I'll probably do the same with the new one at some point. Maybe not quite 2nd hand prices but the only place I've seen them for sale at anything like an affordable price is directly from Vox. They still currently have some A1H refurbs available via https://www.voxamps.co.uk/products/vsba-a1h-mbmb

I thought that every other post on marketplace was someone trying to sell a JMJ Mustang! 😂 But yes I'm keeping my shorties and playing s-s almost exclusively now. My 34" basses are feeling very sorry for themselves these days. I've just bought myself another Vox Starstream A1H! (directly from Vox, not from marketplace). I was strongly considering one of the new Sterling Stingrays with the roasted maple necks as a 'cheaper' s-s Stingray for taking to pubs and open mics, but they're £700 and at that level arguably overpriced. I noticed that Vox had some refurbished black Starstreams available for the same price. I reasoned if I'm going to spend £700 on a bass that sounds like a Stingray I may as well get something made in Japan with Aguilar electronics and Gotoh hardware. I love my red Starstream but it's almost irreplaceable now, I wouldn't want to risk taking it outside and damaging it. So I ordered a black one with the intention that if it gets knocked it won't bother me so much knowing my main red one is safe at home. This is the first time I've ever bought two of the same instrument. Surely that unlocks some kind of Basschat achievement? 😁

Not a 500/1, but I've had both the Ignition and HCT versions of the Hofner 500/2 Club bass. The HCT definitely feels, looks and plays like a bass worth twice the price of the Ignition. The tuners are smoother, the neck feels more refined and has binding (and a totally different neck joint), nicer piece of rosewood on the fingerboard, nut, tailpiece and pickguard are all visibly better quality parts, plus you get the German pickups. It's comparably much more of a premium feeling instrument. It's obviously a bit heavier, but still only about 6 lbs. I started with the Ignition, found it slightly wanting quality wise, so upgraded to the HCT. Haven't regretted that decision at all. I ended up giving away the Ignition to my then 10 year old nephew when he wanted to start playing. For him it made a great starter bass being short scale, very lightweight, and fitted with tapewounds so really easy on his fingers. Almost two years later he's still playing it and loves it. *edit - clarification

Would like to know about these too. I keep looking at the Toluca blue version with rosewood board to use as a backup for taking out to places I wouldn't take my USA EBMM. My main issue with the earlier Sterling version I tried a couple of years ago was the horrible cheap spongy quality in the movement of the knobs they'd put on there, but it occurred to me that as my USA version has a John East pre-amp installed, I might be able to fit all the original passive electronics into a Sterling instead, upgrade that aspect of it to USA standard and solve the problem. [edit] - I also remember, at least on the one I tried, a hard sharp corner from the neck onto the fretboard. No attempt to curve or roll the corner or anything. Maybe I just tried a dud? If they're making the effort to do roasted maple now, hopefully these new editions have a bit more attention paid to that area too.

That video is essential! A couple of other little tips on string changes - when you're tightening up the clamp at the 'headstock' end, use the Allen key the wrong way round, i.e. long end into the socket and hold the short end. Going this way round gives you less torque and should prevent accidentally chopping straight through your strings due to over enthusiastic tightening. Also, slot something like a credit card between the strings and the headstock before you trim them off. If you don't then it's way too easy to scratch up the headstock when you cut the strings.

Yes, as does the short scale version above. If I was ever going to swap, it would be to go short scale too. Although the weights of the various 1005 versions all seem to come in a fair bit heavier than the 1505's, and weight is a massive factor for me. Luckily it's my token 5 string bass, it's fine for the rare occasions I need those extra 5 notes 😉

Lovely stuff! I've recently found myself musing on whether I should have bought this model rather than my 1505def. I'm mostly playing short scale these days, and I also think I'm just not particularly fussed on the Nordstrand Big Splits in the 1505 (at least not in active mode, they're better passive). I've got Bart BH2's in my Ibanez SR500e and they always sounded great to me there, would like to try them in an EHB. At the moment the 1505 weighing in at 7lbs is keeping me from looking elsewhere. You can buy packs of multi sized fret dot marker stickers cheaply off Ebay. I bought a set for mine, cost about £3 I think. A good simple upgrade you may want to consider at some point is switching out the plastic toothpaste caps! I used the black metal knobs from John East, they fit perfectly and look great: https://www.east-uk.com/product/single-knobs/ https://www.east-uk.com/product/knobs-dual/

Same here, I suspect my body chemistry. EB Slinky's sound great for about a week and then die very quickly, and not in a pleasant way. It's not just about losing the zing, they sound genuinely awful. D'Addario nickels on the other hand still lose the zing in about the same time, but take on a lovely mellow roundwound tone that can serve me nicely for months. Oh, and I vote for 45-100, I find it more balanced than 45-105.

Always gives me a nice warm feeling when seeing bands in the real world playing interesting non-Fender basses. Fenders are so ubiquitous online you'd be forgiven for thinking they're the only choice if you want to be seen as a 'real' bassist, but real life is thankfully somewhat more varied. A few weeks ago I was at the Dart Music festival in Dartmouth and there were bands there with bassists playing Warwick Corvette, Hofner 500/1, Mike Lull jazz, Supro Huntington III, and Status basses, plus a jazz band with an upright. I love playing spot the bass (or guitar) when it's a non-Fender headstock, had a ball that day. I'd never seen a Status in the wild before, that one foxed me for ages until he switched his LED's on 😁

I kind of know what you mean with the tone of older cobalt flats when the bass is played solo, they can sometimes seem a bit lifeless and I feel like they need more top end and presence, but here's the thing, as soon as I play the same instrument in a mix (even just with drums) it suddenly sounds exactly right. Not quite sure I can explain why.

I use the 45-105 shorties on the Stingray. The 40-95 gauge needed for the Hofner only come in long scale, although Hofners take medium scale strings due to the tailpiece so it was just about possible to bodge it. EB should 100% start making a set which properly fit Hofners. After much faffing trying out various flats, rounds, tapes and pressurewound strings on mine and never being satisfied with the results, I ended up with a spare set of the 40-95 cobalt flats and thought what the hell, see if I can make them fit. Turned out to be exactly the sound I was looking for.

Yep it's 30" short scale, and yes they're standard length Elixirs cut down to fit. I've done it with Elixirs multiple times, never had any issues at all. It's not like Elixirs have silk windings, it's all metal directly wrapped around the tuning post no matter what length they are. I just make sure to crimp the string before cutting it. I think generally it's only likely to cause an issue with some types of flatwound strings where they could potentially unravel. But as it goes, I've got sets of Ernie Ball Cobalt flats fitted to my Ibanez EHB (34" scale but had to cut to fit as it's headless) and Hofner HCT Club (not cut, but long scale strings fitted to a short scale bass, so great big string wraps around those tiny tuning posts) and so far they've been perfectly fine.

Yes it's a fantastic instrument, I find it difficult to imagine one that would supplant it for me. I put some Ernie Ball cobalt flats on there when they released the s-s versions last summer, that tamed the sizzle and actually made it extremely versatile. Lots of fundamental in the tone but with 'Ray growl when it's needed, plus the preamp is comfortably the best active circuit on any bass I've owned. Gets me right into the Paul S Denman and Bernard Edwards kind of sounds that inspired me to want one in the first place. I keep a set of Elixirs on my Starstream A1H with its big fat Aguilar MM humbucker, so I've got the option of that super bright 'Ray-esque sound there too. Not quite the luxury of having two Stingrays but not far off. Real shame the Starstreams were a limited run, they're amazing basses.

Ah that's interesting! The Maruszczyk certainly does sound warm, but I took that as kind of being factored in with the short scale. I'm happy with that, maybe that's why it sounds so good with rounds on it when I was expecting to have to use flats to get the kind of tone I was after. A lot of the P bass GASsing was wanting that mellower more vintage vibe that would do the jobs the Stingray couldn't, without being as downright awkward (in all senses) as my Hofner HCT Club! I wondered about whether the pickup position would/should be based on relative scale length. I haven't played a Lionel to compare but I've seen a few posts where they're described as bright sounding, wasn't sure if that was to do with the pickup being closer to the bridge or more to do with pickup & electronics.

Delayed NBD - Maruszczyk Jake 4P 30" (Apologies for post length. tl;dr - After 35 years of playing bass I finally bought my first P bass, highly recommended) I actually got this about a month ago, only just getting around to posting about it! Never having owned anything vaguely resembling a P Bass since I started playing in the late 80's, I found myself increasingly feeling that it was a sound missing from my collection and started looking for something that would get me in the ballpark of the distinctive P sound. Getting a standard P bass was out of the question, I have osteoarthritis (in multiple places) and the Fender P body is too large and too heavy for me, complete non starter. I preferably wanted short scale, passive, and under my magic weight of 7.5lbs, so I started by looking a Mustangs, firstly because the Player series has a P pickup, but then down a rabbit hole with all the other models reasoning that split pickups are split pickups, but as it happened I couldn't find any Mustangs much below 8lbs so gave up on that idea, plus I really can't deal with humming pickups and I've read a fair few reports of noisy Mustangs so I pulled myself back to being set on something with a single P pickup. I was playing with the Sandberg configurator, toying with the idea of pushing the boat out a bit for a Lionel, and this is the look I came up with. Colours were exactly what I wanted, but these don't tend to come in much under £1800 once they get to the UK, and tbh I'm not entirely sold on the look of the Sandberg finishes. But then completely by chance, I found this rather attractive short scale Maruszczyk Jake on Bass Direct... Aha! Now that's more like it! Exactly the same colour scheme but with a nice bit of flamed maple!😍 30" scale, Haussel PB4 pickup, scaled down P shape alder body with flame maple top, 40mm nut, 19mm spacing at the bridge, gorgeous satin neck finish, 7lbs 7oz, and at £1250 probably a good £500 cheaper than a Lionel (also somehow cheaper than precisely the same config on Maruszczyk's own website), plus Bass Direct gave me a decent part ex price for a bass I was looking to move on to bring it down further - BD were excellent to deal with, as always. It's a fantastic little bass, very comfortable, lightweight and easy to play, hangs perfectly with no neck dive, satin neck finish is wonderful and the 40mm nut gives it a touch of P bass heft while remaining appropriate to the overall short scale dimensions. The colour in person glows, more turquoise/peacock blue than it looks on my laptop. And most importantly, to my ears it sounds like a P bass. Interesting to note the difference in pickup placement between the Lionel and the Jake... Obviously it looks like the Jake's pickup is closer to the neck than on a classic Fender P bass, however as far as I can make out, Maruszczyk have actually placed the pickup the same distance from the bridge that it would be on a standard 34" scale - about 5.5 inches from the bridge to the pickup centre line. Consensus from what I've read, is that Fender P pickups are located about 28.5 inches from the nut. So, 34 - 28.5 = 5.5. I don't know much about string physics but given the obvious differences that occur the closer the pickup gets to the bridge on any scale length, I'm guessing that possibly Sandberg went for the more traditional aesthetics of the look of the pickup location, whereas Maruszczyk sacrificed the traditional look to chase the classic P sound in what would be this bass' comparable sweet spot? Whatever, it's a pretty convincing take on it, short scale warmth notwithstanding. If you're looking for a short scale P style bass, can't recommend these enough. One slight word of warning though, I've never bought a bass that's required quite so much setup to get it to what I'm used to. I tried 5 sets of strings on it wondering why they all sounded awful before I realised quite how low the action was and quite how high the pickup was. It was only when multiple sets of strings sounded chorusy that I worked out what was going on, increased the action up to 6/64 and reduced the pickup height by a full 3mm. I read other people received Maruszczyk's with pickups set crazy-high but even so, it was nuts. Anyway, all sounds great now. Oh, and the tuners function well, but they do feel a step below the quality of the rest of the instrument. Stiffest tuners I've ever experienced on a new bass, had to smother the gears in lip salve (best thing I could think of) to lubricate them and get them working smoothly. Luckily they hold tune incredibly well so I don't need to use them much! Currently got short scale D'Addario 45-100's on it, which just happened to be the set No.5 on it at the time I adjusted the pickup height, and they've stayed on. I've been meaning to go back again and try some flats and Elixirs etc to see how it responds to different sets now it's adjusted correctly, but it just sounds so damn good with the D'Addarios on it I haven't been able to stop playing it for long enough to think about changing the strings. I don't think the Jake would replace my No.1 - my short scale USA Stingray (modded to be active with a John East preamp) which I bought from scrumpymike just over a year ago, but it does something completely different and complements the Stingray beautifully. If for some reason I had to get rid of most of my basses, it would be this and the Stingray that I'd keep (...and my Vox Starstream A1H, couldn't let that one go.) People like to say that P basses "sit in the mix" well. Actually I think my Stingray sits "in" the mix, in that it's tone naturally draws attention and sits smack bang in the centre of the mix for songs/genres where the bass needs a strong presence as a featured main instrument. In comparison I hear the Jake more as sitting "under" the mix, ever present and inconspicuously holding down the low end, doing it's very necessary job without hogging the attention. Maybe just a difference of terminology, but both fantastic basses in their own right with very distinct personalities.

Silly question, never having owned a Mustang - I've never had to shield any of my basses with hum cancelling pickups. I was under the impression that the purpose of the split Mustang pickup was to cancel hum, same as on a P bass, is this not the case?

Just for clarification, I thought the Icon series and Ignition series are the same thing, Ignition just being the newer name for the Icon. Having had both an Ignition Club and a contemporary HCT Club, unless you specifically need it to be fully hollow then everything about the HCT is better - better quality finish, better pickups, better tuners & hardware, even a better quality pickguard. The HCT is simply a class above the Ignition build-wise. On paper the HCT neck spec is thicker, but in the hand my perception is that the carve feels much more refined, and despite the numbers it somehow feels slimmer and more tapered. I was actually really surprised to discover that the HCT had the thicker neck, it certainly didn't feel like it. Obviously one of those things where numbers aren't the whole story and you have to try it for yourself.

Just a heads up if anyone's interested - I was mulling over whether I should try some flats on my (ever so lovely) EBMM short scale Stingray just to see how it would sound, when I discovered that Ernie Ball will soon be launching short scale Cobalt flats, and Amazon currently have them on pre-order for about £33. Looks to be a very decent price - at least when compared to what long scale Cobalts usually go for (and the inevitable short-scale premium that will no doubt get added on top). There are two sets of gauges, 45-105 and 50-110, both about the same price. They sound great on this much-too-short demo:

Visited Mike yesterday to buy an EBMM short scale Stingray bass. Wonderful experience all round, great communication, and wouldn't hesitate to have further dealings again in future. Mr & Mrs Scrumpy couldn't have been more generous with their hospitality (and cake!) and talked me into attending the South-West Bass Bash later this year, so will be seeing them again soon.

So I thought I ought to report back after a week of ownership... and wow, what an instrument! The Vox A1H beats any bass I've owned in terms of build quality, it feels solid and made with precision and attention to detail. I think mine may be one of the heavier examples at about 6lb 14oz, but anything under 7lb is fine by me. Ergonomics of the surrounds are great and well thought through so while you're playing it, either sitting or standing, you're completely unaware there's anything unusual about the design. Neck & frets are beautifully finished, and the sound... oh the sound is exactly what I was after. I've never played an American Stingray, but the Vox has the ability to convincingly emulate all those Ray-featuring classic records I love, so I'm happy. What I'm most impressed by is just how easy it is to play. Whereas I've found I sometimes need to coax my EHB1505 into what I want it to do and have to play carefully to achieve the desired results, this thing just wants to make all the right sounds without me even really trying. I think there's something special about the Aguilar pickup and pre-amp in the Vox, it seems to respond to right hand positioning and how hard I play completely intuitively. The Starstream comes across as less odd and more functional in real life than in photos. The matt finish on the surrounds makes them feel like wood and it kind of has the impression of a natural evolution of something like my Hohner stick bass. And for something featuring so much physical space it really sounds very solid-body, much more so than the chambered EHB does. scrumpymike was entirely correct, at the price these are available they're an absolute steal, can't recommend them enough.

Ok that's convinced me. I like the red/ebony A1H version that Dan's playing in the video, and upon investigating, it turned out there was literally one red A1H left - a refurbished unit for £718. Can't dither in those circumstances. Slept on it and then put the order in first thing this morning. Vox have a 30 day free returns policy so nothing to lose.