EMG456

Well the Barts were perceived back in the day to be quite "dark" sounding pickups and they live up to that here. Passive, it's full, rounded and plummy. The neck pickup is indeed too much on its own for my personal tastes but both on together is a fantastic, tight sound. Bridge on its own is more Musicman than Jazz I would say - very usable. Switch to active and the two band eq can add that bite at the top end, add huge lows or indeed, make it all much more middley when both are rolled off - again reminiscent of an old Stingray 2eq circuit. Out of phase is extremely thin and honky as to be expected. Feel wise, there's a little bit too much relief on the neck at the moment for me- I'm just going to let it settle in for a few days before I start tweeking things- I've every confidence that it will fall into line when I do that. One thing I didn't recall from my previous Oddysey encounters was that the board is virtually flat- no radius. That's quite a trend now but not so much back then. Long sustain that you might expect from a well built, through-neck, maple bass.

That's a very good question to which I don't have the full answer yet.🙄 I was provided this helpful guide and I mostly concur except that the active treble (actually more like a high mid/ treble) is not broken but works fine. As per the guidance, the actual function of the mysterious switches 1 and 2 is as yet still unclear. It sounds great though, active or passive.

Good things come to those who wait - not much option if you're looking for one of these. And yes, that's a Kahler Trem! The bass has been modded over the years with the Kahler and a strange active circuit but you can still play it Passive as well and the active and passive each have their own volume control presumably so you can balance the two different sounds. All the work seems to have been done to a very high standard and the original wood working, timbers and finish are all excellent and surprisingly well preserved. It sounds and feels great and (IMO) looks fantastic so well chuffed with this one. I've only been looking for about 25 years!

Well, I suppose the fact that emg named themselves with my initials is indeed a coincidence. 😉

Well I liked it so thanks for that! And his other stuff's pretty good too. Maybe you need to listen to him with your eyes shut?

It may seem silly but a capo at the first or 2nd fret would give you a medium/ short scale bass on a standard scale neck without any irreversible modifications...

The consensus in the Steinberger community seems to be that it's mainly the pots that let the spirit instruments down. Apparently replacing the pots with good quality ones from the likes of CTS will make a noticeable improvement.

Above your budget but someone is selling a real Steinberger XQ5 for (I think) a very reasonable price. Different league to the Hohner or Washburn.

Go on - you know you want to...

Ah - if one piece I suspect the heat treatment may not do so well as I believe that the heat softens up the bond between neck and fingerboard allowing them to move slightly against each other. What could work is a refret using fret wire with a slightly thicker tang - the bit that goes into the fret slot. the cumulative effect of 20 frets with oversized tangs may be enough to bring the relief back down.

What he said. I used to believe that the heat treatment thing was just crazy urban myth but having tried it myself, it works. A couple of years back I bought a beat up Hayman 4040 which had a neck with huge s bend in it - pretty much beyond repair I reckoned so I managed to buy a replacement neck (Sheregold but the same really) from a friendly basschatter. That's good and the bass is nice but rather than chuck the original neck away, I decided to experiment. By a system of trial and error, I now have that neck straight apart from one little bend right at the heel end. I haven't taken the time to sort that last bit out but I will soon. I reckon that a luthier who unlike me actually knows what he is doing would be able to sort it out for you.

Just keep doing it - it'll all fall into place eventually.

Lovely.

I would still be playing the bass - I love it but... I should have stuck in at my piano lessons when I was 6 and I should have started on the Chapman Stick in the early 80s. If I had done these I might be quite good at them by now! Hey ho!

I’m amazed he’s still going after all these years- more power to him. Away to dig out my Wal.

I’m obviously more out of step than I thought! i always set up the amp so the volume on the bass is at about 75%. That way I can adjust to allow me to play with optimal force for each song. If I want clank, I can dig in but the overall volume can match the smoother sound when I play softly. Or I can swap over to just the back pickup without losing volume. I don’t think I could play with a fixed volume on the bass.

If the gig is set up to require fretted and fretless, that’s what I bring. If there are songs on Chapman Stick then it comes along too. I don’t tend to differentiate between 4,5 or 6 string- if the odd song needs a low note and I’ve brought a 4, I’ll just detune the E to get there. These are listening gigs though- you’re easily changed between the applause (hopefully) and the preamble to the next song. If it was a dance gig or a theatre type show then I would rethink to suit. Wouldn’t change between a P and a J because there would never be a P there. 😮

Bought basses from Europe on this site and had no issues. Also have bought basses from the US including one through eBay- again, no issues. If you communicate with the seller you’ll get a pretty good idea of how sincere they are. Pay by credit card using PayPal for eBay or a low cost escrow system if outwith eBay and high value.

As an afterthought, fretless Steinbergers didn't have a zero fret- the fingerboard has a ramp at the nut end and the strings rest over that. Consequently the tone between fretted and open strings is about as closely matched as you can get on a fretless instrument.

late to this... Interesting bass and have to assume that it is indeed a custom factory order and yet... I don't think there's any room for an extra fret at the top of a standard L2 neck/ fingerboard blank? And the neck is standard length as the double ball strings attest. Also, never seen a genuine Steinberger fingerboard that has the double dot inlay at the 24th fret - always omitted possibly to do with Ned's minimalist tendencies of the time - no need to mark the 24th fret as it's the last one? Spectors which Ned also had a hand in originally don't have it either, I think.

Reckon Alan must have given me a real bargain then. 😂

As others have said, Speak to Alan. I chose the MC pickups because of the sound - punchy and detailed but maybe not for everyone. They are active pickups too so there is no true passive setting for a bass with these pickups if that is an important thing for you. Also the DFM pre gives you a plethora of options for shaping your mids - each filter sweeps down right through the mid range with variable "Q" boost but you've got an additional dedicated sweepable midrange boost as well. You can also internally set the pickup blend that feeds the midrange stack - ie bridge, neck or any mix of the two. As if that's not enough, the pullswitch on the neck pickup filter stack activates a presettable low mid boost and the one on the bridge pickup filter stack activates another presettable for high mids or Wal style pick attack. I love filter preamps and I think this is probably the best one I have tried - simple to use live but hugely flexible and creative for recording.

If you buy a MacBook you will definitely be paying the apple premium by comparison to most Windows machines. Apple's os is good but really no better than Windows despite what many claim. It can also prove frustrating for anyone who has a good grounding in the Windows ecosystem and likes to delve beneath the surface in terms of fine tuning for performance etc. The issues you mention - juddery playback, hanging - are probably more influenced by a shortage of available RAM than anything else but remember intensive processing like real time video editing depends on a combination of things, all of which have to be in place for top performance. Must it be a laptop? Again, a mobile i5 or i7 processor is likely to offer less performance than a desktop one - careful comparison of specs is in order here. Also mobile processors more likely to be thermally throttled down during intense usage which can sometimes become self defeating. Shotcut being multi platform is good as it means you won't have to build in re-learning into your upgrade but I'm not sure if all versions are updated simultaneously so that may also figure in your thinking if you're going to switch platform. I run Shotcut on a Surface Pro 4 i7 16gb ram and performance is acceptable to me as I'm basically doing it for my own purposes. If I was doing it professionally, I think I'd want a much beefier desktop system.

I’ve seen the original but not this ‘78 one before. An angled Jazz pickup at the bridge and an acrylic core!!? Wonder who the “prominent New York” player was.