funkle

I also meant to say. As time goes on, although I love expensive instruments, I am finding that cheaper instruments are often just as acceptable to me, as long as there is a certain minimum level of quality. But since the minimum level is met very easily these days, I find there is a huge amount of choice out there.

I wonder if the white one is made of different body wood? I am increasingly of the view of Roger Sadowsky. Most of the tone of the bass seems to me is in the neck, a little bit from the body. Pine seems absolutely fine to me. (I was worried it might be too light and get a lot of neck dive as a result)... I love maple fretboards and I am generally finding bigger necks to give better tone. So this bass is a complete win for peanuts for me...

Where have I been? I've only cottoned on to Precisions in the last few years in a proper way....and this bass....absolutely killing. https://shop.fender.com/en-GB/squier-electric-basses/precision-bass/classic-vibe-50s-precision-bass/0374500501.html I very rarely gush about instruments. I have owned many very fine and expensive ones, and still do. But I am telling you right now, in a way that is very rare for me, that this is an absolutely astounding instrument. Not 'for the money'. Just plain great. I could easily recommend everyone have one in their collection. Originally, I was looking at getting a Fender roasted maple neck for a project P bass, then realised I could basically just buy a new inexpensive bass and be content with project one 'as is' for now. Been tempted by the Harley Benton version of the 50s P bass for a while, but didn't want to do any fettling at all....so stumped up £339 on the Squier on the assumption that if I didn't like it, back it would go to Thomann. Was very inspired by this video and its super gnarly tone - linked below for your pleasure: Now all I can say is this bass - or at least this particular one - is killing. It sounds just like the video, which was my main criterion. The fit and finish is excellent. Two tone burst is well done, I like the vintage tint on the neck, the neck pocket is tight. It looks great. I will take the pickguard off and report whether there is routing under there or not, but reports from others are good on this. The hardware is good, not Hipshot, but good. The bridge is BBOT with threaded saddles - I like this and find it perfectly functional. It intonates well and the strings don't move side to side. The tuners are better than those that were on my cheapie SBMM Sub Ray4; they aren't so stiff and they work fine. Tone and volume pots feel and work fine and tone pot gives a fair bit of variability to the sound. I do have a niggle here - the edge mounted jack doesn't feel as 'tight' when I plug into it as it could. I may need to open it up and tweak that. The nut and fretwork is frankly unbelievable for this price. I was surprised. Proper bone nut, properly cut; I don't need to file it down at all. Narrow tall frets with no sharp ends and well seated. I can get a setup of my customary low relief (0.003" - 0.005" at 7th fret with capo at first fret and holding down strings at last fret) and 5/64" action on E string 12th fret going up to 4/64" at the G string 12th fret. No buzzing anywhere. This is good quality fretwork in my view - I won't need to consider a fret level. The neck is a modern C profile and is glossy. I have no issues with this finish. I have plenty of instruments with different finishes on the necks and find it easy enough to accommodate them all. Nut width 42.8mm and feels comfortable. It comes with 45 - 105 D'Addario nickel rounds. My favourite string brand and one of my preferred gauges. Sweet. It's a light instrument. I need to weigh it, but it feels just under the 9lb mark I think. I will report back. There is a slight tendency to neck heaviness on the knee, but not on the strap. It's about normal for what I see with most Fenders or Fender-style clones. Unlike the Ibanez Talman TMB105 I bought earlier in the year, I see no need to get lighter tuners. Sound. Everyone's hands vary, but I think this bass could cover any style. I played slap, pick lines, fingerstyle, jazz, funk and felt delighted with all of them. This pickup is really responsive to right hand dynamics in a way I haven't appreciated in a while and it has a beautifully gritty tone if you dig in just a little. I see no reason to change the stock pickup. The sound responds nicely to where you place your right hand; I think it by and large sounds best directly over the pickup, especially digging in. There is hum if you take your hands off the strings - it is a single coil - but when your hands are on the strings, I hear no hum. The tone knob is useful. I don't see any need to mess with the pots/electronics, apart from my previous comment about having a look at the tightness of the connection when I plug a cable in. It could well be the one I picked up is one of the better ones out there. But this particular instrument is an absolute peach. I can heartily recommend this instrument to anyone, which is relatively rare for me. It's not a good bass 'for the money', it's just plain good. Thanks for reading. Pete Nearly forgot...pics or it didn't happen...

Smoking! I'd love to hear audio with that Noll preamp....

Great job. Can’t wait to see the finished item!

I love the Alien Audio basses. They sound fabulous in all the videos I have found of them. The Tim Akers band has a bassist called Gary Lunn who plays one; he sounds fab. Of interest, the Alien Audio basses actually change the pickup locations quite a bit. I attach below a table I made of all the different basses I had and how pickup locations compare. The Alien Audio basses don’t have the middle coils in the classic location - the front pickup is moved quite a bit towards the neck, and the rear reverse P has its EA coil line placed in the 70s Jazz position. The research may be of interest to all folllowing this thread.

Ok, I got fed up waiting for a Fernandes, so I made my own dual P pickup bass. https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/440973-dual-p-pickup-bass-modding-a-mexi-fender

I’m no longer certain that a maple neck is required. The DiMarzios seem to have plenty of top end...might just be wasting my money! I’m also toying with routing out the bridge pickup space further to allow me to swap around to reverse P there. And then using a surround of some sort to allow me to make it look good. The D and G strings are a bit clavinet-esque with the current layout, though I knew that would be the case going in. Anyone know if it’s easy to get someone to 3D print stuff? A custom pickup surround would be a natural thing to get printed... EDIT. Ok, played around with pickup heights some more. This made a huge difference, more than I had realised was possible. I lowered the bridge pickup a touch for DG coil - and much of the clavinet-like quality disappeared from that coil. The rear pickup now sounds more like a beefier Jazz type pickup. Lowered the neck pickup to match outputs with the bridge more than I had previously and the blend quality of both pickups full on changed a lot as well. I may still tinker with this more just to experiment - especially as the Dimarzios have easily adjustable individual pole pieces - but this will do for now. Lesson for me - pay more attention to pickup height.

Great sounding basses. I owned one about 15 years ago, gold top. The pickup system is unique. I couldn’t get on physically with mine. The binding dig into my forearm - the huge body played a part too - and I could never sort the neck dive. I ended up using an acoustic guitar strap thing to more or less hold it up at the headstock, but in the end all the niggles made me sell it. The bridge was annoying as well, sadly. They sound great though.

Beauty.

Had to remind myself, but dug out the info again. 1 is for a rechargable battery OR 6 dB internal gain - I think this could vary a bit 2 for Bass Wide/Narrow EQ contour 3 for low treble boost at 4.0 kHz 4 is high treble boost at 7.5 kHz. Depends on your rig on how you set it. 3 and 4 both on gives tremendous treble. Though my ultra clear Basschat 1x12” with horn it’s just too much. So I have 3 or 4 on only, can’t remember which, lol. I leave the bass EQ boost as ‘wide’ (switch 2 on) - very cushy sound. Welcome to the club! Pete

It seems sensible for people who have differing opinions to amicably disagree. As long as people with short scale or medium scales are happy, it’s all good.

Fair enough. I have a sample size of 4 medium scale basses, all with the same tendency, owned for a few years and played regularly, but what do I know, lol.... Joking aside, I’ve played other short scales and medium scales as well. I think the tone is lacking in the ‘piano like’ quality I hear from 34” scale and up. Your mileage may vary - my experience tells me these basses lack something their bigger brethren have.

I played only 32” Fender Jazzes for a while (MIJ). Also 32-34” Dingwall Jazzes, for a bit. Strung with rounds. The shorter scale was undeniably easier to play and much more ergonomic overall. The weight was a superb bonus. However I felt that the low end lost something compared to 34”, a lot more midrange twang in the sound as well, and after trying EQ etc (and finding it just didn’t sound how I wanted), eventually I went back to 34” basses because of that. They sound better to me, and still do.

I approve this purchase, lol!!! I’m still sad about selling one of my Celinders. However the other two still comfort me 😁 Enjoy the bass, they’re real crackers.

Man. This is such a great bass now. I’m almost tempted to go the whole hog and add a neck humbucker like a DiMarzio Model One....lol....overkill though...

Yes. The pickups balance easily with height adjustments. It turns out I prefer the neck pickup slightly louder anyway, so I have kept it a little higher than would otherwise. But equal impedances/outputs makes it easy. To be fair I found balancing the Mexi P pickup with the Aguilar Hot P pretty straightforward as well - pickup height worked fine there. But there may have been tonal effects from the differing pickup impedances. For PJs, I have found using a DiMarzio Ultra Jazz bridge pickup a very good solution. It’s so powerful that it can actually overwhelm the P!

It’s odd, the videos I have found online of the Split P seem to have much less high end than the Model P. It’s not what the EQ graph shows for it on DiMarzio’s website, but from video, the pickup sounds nothing like the EQ curve shown on their website.

Yep. Allen head poles. I did check out Billy’s - great sounding pickups, perfect for distortion! I’m a DiMarzio fan for sure.

Ok, an update. After a lot of testing, I ended up with dual DiMarzio Model P pickups in the bass. They are much grittier in the mids than the typical Fender/vintage type pickup, and two of them together is pretty beastly. I definitely won’t have any problems being heard in the mix, that’s for sure. They look cool as anything as well, lol. I’ll try for some pics soon - it’s not with me at the moment. Maybe some video as well. Next up, I’ll try out a Fender roasted maple neck. That will be a month or so yet. But it should give me even more treble, I think...not that this setup lacks it!

By the way, here's a couple of videos that served as inspirations to me. Maybe they inspire someone else too. There were plenty of others I ended up researching, but these two really show what is possible with a dual P setup - and with the same pickup set-up too, spacing and all.

Not quite a build diary. But I guess such an irreversible mod that it may interest others. I scored a relatively cheap 2005 Fender Mexi Precision on here with the explicit purpose of making a dual P bass. Having listened to many of these on various videos, I became infatuated with them, though not the price that many command on the secondhand market (especially the BC Rich Basses). So I decided to make my own. Here’s a workbench photo from my local luthier, who I asked to do the routing. I also had @KiOgon make me up the electrics, and scored some other bits secondhand on here. The main P/U is a Mexican P, the bridge is a secondhand Aguilar Hot P. Put on a secondhand Hipshot bridge as well. Dual V/T setup and series/parallel switch. Didn’t help that the pickups were out of phase to each other at first.....Had to flip the leads on the Mexi P pickup to get everything working right. I was confused until I figured it out though - the lows thinned out when I blended pickups, though each pickup individually soloed was fine. I thought carefully about the pickup placement and whether it should be reversed. I ended up putting the EA bridge coil at the location of the coil of a rear 60’s Jazz Bass pickup, non-reversed - controversial....but I didn’t want to reverse the main pickup, and I feel that both pickups should be oriented the same way after listening to a lot of dual P videos, so... Both pickups in parallel sounds great. The Aguilar Hot P is a little dark for my taste, though great output, and will be changed. I really like how the typical Precision character is kept by keeping the main pickup in usual location and orientation. Rolling in the bridge gives a meaty Stingray/Jazz-ish type flavour without really sounding quite just like either of those. I dig it. The mid scoop from both pickups full on together sounds good too; different place to a Jazz though. Bridge pickup on its own is meaty Jaco type tone with a little touch of more ‘quack’ on the D/G strings, due to the coil location. The amount of this can be varied quite a lot depending on where I play. I like it, others may differ. I never play bridge pickup solo only, so it makes little odds to me, as the blended sounds with the main pickup are what I’m after. Both pickups in series is a gloriously dark, middy, thick, rich beast of a tone. I think it would work great with distortion. It sounds fabulous with a pick. I can match pickup output levels with height adjustment but impedances of these pickups are wildly different. That may have an impact. I still have my sights set on a dual DiMarzio Model P setup - like the BC Rich basses of old - we’ll see how that sounds when I test it. I also plan a swap from rosewood to maple neck - rosewood just sounds a little dark for my taste, at least for this bass. The joys of modding!

Totally agree. After experimenting a lot, the only reason I change a bridge now is for mechanical improvements (string top loading or better ability to hold intonation etc) or for aesthetics. Tone wise it is minorly noticeable, if it all. I am fond of Hipshot hardware. It seems well made.

I loved these basses when I tried them out in New York. You, sir, have excellent taste. These beat out Sadowsky for me, and most other things too.