Ramirez

Well, to answer my own question, I tried the 3 they had at Wunjo’s in Denmark St yesterday, and walked out with one. I was very impressed, sounded beautiful, and the weight, feel, sound and build quality were very consistent between the three. Also a shout out to the excellent and patient service at Wunjo, even on a busy saturday. They currently have the Casady fretless at £649, which is cheaper than anywhere else I can see.

The mics will be fine. Ribbon mics with conventional XLR wiring are also perfectly fine with phantom power as long as nothing’s faulty- it’s become a bit of an internet myth that phantom power WILL break ribbons! XLR outputs from other equipment is a different story - some (most, perhaps) are fine being connected to an input with ohantom power present, while some don’t like it. I’ve seen a few digital mixers shut down when their outputs are connected to an inout with phantom, and I’ve some some older equipments outputs go bust. It will PROBABLY be fine, but it’s safer to use the jack inputs* if you can (or a t transformer isolation box/phantom blocker) *Phantom power should not be present at the jack inputs, and this is true in most cases with properly designed equipment, but sometimes, on some equipment using XLR/jack combi inputs, the phantom can be present on the jack input. Always best to check!

Anyone else had a go on one of these? I'm seriously tempted.

I think you're confusing 'professional' and 'elite'. Most professional players play off the shelf basses, and I'm sure plenty of them own and play Squiers. My DPD delivery guy doesn't get to drive Max Verstappen's F1 car, but they're both professional drivers.

Quite- I was using them as examples that ‘unbalanced’ isn’t inherently ‘lower quality’ - it’s just a different system. ‘Line level’ and ‘headphone level’ can be quite close though. And they can all vary a lot!

Certainly! It’s always a good idea to balance them as soon as possible with a DI box, whether that be a guitar signal or an unbalanced out from an amp. Speaker and headphone feeds are usually unbalanced though, without problems. And there’s the added bonus that you send a stereo unbalanced signal down one XLR if you’re willing to take the risk with noise! I’ve done that a few with robust line-level signals from keyboards on occasion- worked fine and cut down on stage clutter.

Fair enough, but I still think accuracy is important even when simplifying things - an XLR cable is not just a ‘mic cable’, and stating so could cause confusion in other situations. And unbalanced connections really don’t mean a lower quality sound, generally or otherwise.