thodrik

I would just buy singles and work out your own preferred gauge. If you are finding a 110 a bit clacky I would actually recommend moving up to at least a 120, maybe even heavier than that if you like a decent amount of tension or you play with a heavy touch. You might need to alter the nut of the bass to fit the heavier string, but you might need to do that for a 115 anyway so it shouldn't be a big deal. There are relatively few 115 sets of strings out there. GHS do a set of heavy gauge Boomers of 115-50. D'addario have a 'balanced tension' set of 120-50 which I have used for drop C tunings for the last 6-7 years. I preferred that to the GHS sets, the Dunlop sets I tried and a set of Rotosounds I made up from single strings. I tried a custom Newtone set and they were pretty good but didn't entirely blow me away and frankly I preferred the D'addario. Much preferred the Newtone though to the DR DDT 115-55 set which I frankly think were incredibly overpriced and very unbalanced. Ultimately for drop C I am now using Elixirs bought as singles. They are expensive but they last for ages. You might not get that initial roundwound 'zing' of a new Rotosound, however the tone on the Elixir remains constant for months. If it has to be Rotosounds though, I would recommend buying a set of singles or a light 120-35 five strings set and just using the 55, 70, 90 and 120 strings.

Man, I totally regret selling my old SMX amp head now!

Do work: Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile. Once of the few double albums I really enjoy listening to all the way through. Pink Floyd - The Wall. It is Pink Floyd. Don't work (in my opinion) Baroness Yellow and Green: The Green side is just full of filler songs which are very samey. My personal opinion is the influx or CDs ruined the old school double album which generally limited artists to 45 mins per album. However, since CDs bands have frankly been putting too much stuff onto a disk, leading to incredibly long 'single' albums which are frankly longer than most classic vinyl double albums. RHCP Stadium Arcadium effort being a case in point. The other guilty parties to this in my opinion are: Guns n Roses: Use Your Illusion I and I. Considering the length of each individual album is essentially an old school double album (70 plus minutes per album) this is essentially a quadruple album. I think that at least 4-5 (or more) could have been trimmed from each respective album, leading to an album of approximately 45-50 mins per album. Metallica Load/Reload: Each individual album cuts in at 75 mins plus so we are in quadruple album territory here again. I think that at least 4 songs should have been cut from Load, perhaps as many as 6 on Reload which starts great but the second half just has too many 'kinda generic riffs in E flat' songs.

I mean, bad book-matching of bodies and tops annoys me a bit, but it happens frequently on £3k plus Les Paul guitars though so it isn’t always a sign that the whole instrument has been constructed shoddily. A natural or transparent finish is going make the body joins very obvious unless the matching is done very well. Obviously here it appears it wasn’t. However, I would probably at least plug it to see what the other QC was like in terms of general fit and finish and fretwork and at least take a photo of the top to attach to the resultant email to Guitar Guitar detailing that ‘this is not acceptable on a bass at this price point’. If the top just looked awful I probably wouldn’t keep it either to be honest, unless it was so bad and not matching I thought it looked cool. To me the Fender Ultra should be a better instrument but it is priced accordingly so for me it isn’t a like for like comparison. So long as the OP is happy with the bass they ended up with though that is the main thing. Those ultra Fenders look like cracking instruments.

The only bridge I have changed on a bass was installing a Babicz bridge on my Gibson EB3 as the original three point bridge was infuriating to intonate. I haven’t noticed an increase in sustain as much as I can actually now adjust the action and intonation of each string individually. It has made a massive difference to the instrument. I have never had any issues with traditional Fender style bridges. If the stock bridge on a bass works in the sense that I can easily adjust the action and intonation then I generally don’t see any need to replace it.

I was planning to buy a Darkglass B7K Ultra or Vintage Ultra as well as a Boss LS-2 or equivalent to start pairing stacked pedals as 'loops' that I could turn on and off with a single footswitch. I had even sold £300's worth of gear lately in anticipation of making the purchase. However, in the last week or so the plumbing in my house has gone to hell and I also need to help pay for the pressing of my bands album that all of the missed paid gigs this year would have paid for. So, essentially, what I am currently anticipating in the mail is an invoice from my plumber.

Nothing planned for the rest of the year. We have a finished album which is currently being mastered and then released. We thought about sitting on the album until things go back to 'normal' but there is no prospect of normal returning any time soon. So we are just going to release it and do a limited vinyl and CD pressing or a couple of hundred units, which should hopefully sell out amongst our existing fanbase. Gigs or rehearsals are just not on the agenda at the minute. Maybe next year.

The Orange AD200 and matching 1x15 looks like a hell of deal.

Yes, and Flea pretty much ended the venture after about 18 months or so.

Its a cool finish and if I was dropping that kind of cash on a bass I would rather it be this than the Fender Custom Shop Phil Lynott version which was retailing at about £11k, though to be fair I would probably want both for the sake of variety.

My old S9 Precision I have had since 1999. It doesn't get gigged much now as the lacquer on the neck is starting to come off. The pickguard was cut into two by a previous owner because the jack socket was apparently 'dodgy' and needed to be accessed regularly. Funnily enough, I re-soldered the jack when I was 14 and the jack has been in perfect working order for the last 20 years... Definitely the most played, but the Sadowsky Metro is catching up as it has been my main gigging bass since 2010. If I had to sell all my basses, this would be the last one to go.

With the SMX, or any graphic preamp, I think that the best advice is to generally avoid boosting any frequencies below 100Hz. Boosting at around 100-250HZ gives the effect of adding Bass but at frequency level that your speakers can replicate. This allows you to use the amp at higher volume levels. Also, I would recommend getting a copy of a manual for an SMX. Here is one, though your own amp might differ slightly, but the principles of how Trace Elliot amps work are broadly similar. http://www.munns.info/manuals/Trace_elliot_gp75m.pdf

I love that.

I put a set of Elixirs on my Vigier last November. The B string is still really tight and crisp some ten months later. Normally I am changing strings every 6 weeks or so, so the Nickles are really saving me loads of money.

I recently sold a Sansamp Bass Driver to Matthew. A top Basschatter to deal with. Very easy transaction, great communication and prompt payment. Great stuff!

Lovely bass, 26 frets as well I see. I really like the look of the non-gloss open grain-style finish on the back of the neck. Very Warwick like all round. Very nice. Monorail bridges are very cool too, though I find them to be a pain when it comes to trying to dust the spaces inbetween the individual bridges. Congratulations!

Yet seemingly think it is perfectly acceptable to sand through a finish. I think that the additional costs is partially to cover the cost of the licensing agreement, partially to cover the cost of undertaking the additional work to make 'non-Warwick' shaped instruments and also adding in a decent profit margin. It just makes the instrument about £1k more expensive that ideally would be. However, at least the finishes are more fancy than the old Metros, at least when the finishes are not sanded through by accident.

Exactly, the Japanese Metro instruments had really good levels of quality control. The prices of the Metros went a bit sky high latterly, but when I bought my Metro the main comparables were a Fender American Deluxe Jazz or a Sandberg. The Metro came out top for me, which was impressive given I that really liked the Sandberg. Honestly, I was hoping that the price of the Warwick made Metros was going to be closer to the price of the GPS Warwicks, where a five string Thumb is just about £1600. It seems though that the Metros are being put in around £2.5k which is a very tough price point unless the quality control is utterly exceptional.

I really like that one. In a 'plus' point for the Warwick metros, the fingerboards definitely have a lot more figuring than the old Japanese Metros which tended to have very plain fingerboards. If I remember correctly, the hardware on the previous Metros was pretty much identical to the NYC line. I might be wrong though. Those definitely look like different tuners though. I'm not sure I saw many five string HPJ Metros though.

Absolutely, having members from all over the world is one of the best things about this forum.

The String Tension Pro site is great. For D Standard and drop C (the drop D equivalent when in D standard) I use the D'Addario balance tension 120-50 set (120, 90, 67, 50). I find the tension to be similar to a 45-105 set in standard. You might think that 120 for a low d is ridiculously heavy but when you look at the tension ratings they are actually pretty much in line with the rest of the strings. However, I think it would be pretty tight for a half step down tuning. For E flat tuning I would just use the 105-45 set you use for standard tuning. With two basses I would have one bass set up for DADG and one bass set up for standard tuning/E flat. If something happens to your main DADG bass on a gig, the E flat bass could easily be tuned down to DADG in an emergency.