Hi all!
New member here … looking forward to learning and participating in the community.
I’m based in Brighton, UK where I work as a critical care nurse for the NHS.
For many years I half heartedly tried to learn the guitar (acoustic) but never really got anywhere. About 10 years ago I got my first ukulele and … wow! Great fun to play … joined a jam group, did a few open mics and then joined a ukulele band (Qukulele) playing tenor uke.
4 years back or so I purchased a Kala acoustic-electric bass ukulele (yes, they exist and are rather fun … tho temperamental creatures) and I became “Smanth the bass” in Qukulele. I found that whilst the Lala was loud enough to hear when practicing, with even one or two other ukes playing it was inaudible … so a Roland Micro Cube Bass RX joined the family. About a year later I got a solid body UBASS but then … covid hit the world. My band participation dropped to zero (I had to leave the band due to work pressures) until a few weeks ago when I rejoined. Having loads of fun, but my bass skills are … patchy ... I'm probably best described as an intermediate beginner so I've set out to become better and here I am.
One of the biggest issues I have with a UBASS is intonation, the strings are super fat (to get the low notes with its scale length of 20.5 inches) but the bridge position is fixed so one cannot alter string length sadly little that can be done (I’ve tweaked truss rod, saddle height and nut slots to get the lowest playable action to reduce string distortion) ... I tune at the 3rd or 5th fret so the lower frets are OK-ish, but any higher than 7/8 and it can sound nasty!
So I recently added a Ibanez GSRM20B Mikro (Scale Length of 28.6 inches) a monster compared to a U-BASS, but it sounds and looks fantastic.
I then added a Greg Bennett Corsair MCR-1 Mini (Scale length of 24.5 inches) I’d seen some amazing reviews but when mine arrived it sounded absolutely terrible … crap intonation, loads of hum, and a weird harmonic sound ... I was very disappointed. I spent a few hours adjusting the truss rod, saddle height, pickup height, intonation and it sounded good enough to risk trying a new set of strings and … now it is brill! It will probably be my goto bass for playing with the band (Unless I want a real upright bass sound where the Kala still rules) as it is so wee!
S’manth x
My collection (I've put a smaller black pickguard, black bridge and black knobs on the MCR-1 since this was taken)
