EMG456

Chapman Stick and if it was all I was playing, I'd get better, quicker! Ed

Just found this thread... better late than never Bruford/ Squire +1 Don Alias / Pastorius - Joni Mitchell's Shadows & Light tour and can't believe no one has yet mentioned... John Robinson/ Louis Johnson - most things Quincy in the '80s Nigel Olsson / Dee Murray - classic Elton John band.

Very interesting and useful. I have no preconceptions about these things and have to say that most of my recordings as hired player have been done straight to the desk via a DI, but I can see that using a purpose designed preamp could make it easier for someone to get an appropriate sound together quickly. In contrast to opinion here so far, my favourite was the first one, the Tube-Tech, followed reasonably closely by the Summit. They sounded clearer, snappier and more transparent than the rest. A trip down to the old Bass Centre in Wapping many years ago to try some preamps, clearly taught me the absolutely *massive* differences between the tone of different preamp circuits so it is a crucial and often overlooked component in the bassist's overall soundscape. Would I spend this sort of money? Well, depends how much and how much it might change my sound but back then I did shell out about 400 quid for an Ampeg SVP-Pro which I am still enjoying to this day. Cheers Ed

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1364999190' post='2033884'] I know Ed Roman in Las Vegas has got a big supply of original parts but he is selling everything at top dollar . I can still remember reading the review of the Steinberger in the music gear section of ( long gone ) Sounds magazine in about 1982 and the retail price was £999 from Soundwave in Romford , which was about twice what a Wal or JD cost back then . As I previously mentioned , I asked Ned a few years ago if he would ever make them again and he said neither he or any other company would because to make them to a proper standard is just too difficult and costly to be worth anybody's while in terms of selling them at a reasonable price and still making a profit . It's such a shame because if they were in production today there would definitely be a market for them . To me the four most important bass guitar designs are the Fender , Musicman , the Alembic and the Steinberger . Everything else is secondary to those . Long may you continue to enjoy you Steinberger , Ed. [/quote] Be aware that Ed Roman doesn't get a good rep in the Steinberger community in terms of prices and a certain economy of truth in his product descriptions. That said,, he gave me a good deal on my XL2 but when the bass arrived from the States it had a chip in the finish which had not been mentioned and a broken Transposing Pin on the Trans Trem. Ed himself passed away a couple lf years ago so things may have changed there. Headless USA is a little company specialising in Steinberger and they have an excellent reputation- a bit pricy again, though. By the time I had bought my L2, the price had gone up to £1600 - Wal Customs were £799 and Steinbergers were in such demand that I couldn't even get a discount!! You're right about iconic and influential bass designs - I would add in Rick 4001 because of it's through- neck construction and twin truss rods and the Jazz Bass specifically because it set the standard for two pickups. So my timeline would go something like Precision - so much was spot on Jazz - two pickups for more tonal variation Rick - neck through, dual truss rods, twin pickups, stereo output Stingray - active EQ Alembic - twin pickups, neck through, very active EQ, stereo output, dual truss rods- the blueprint for thousands of basses to come Steinberger - the ultimate neck through with every aspect apart from the scale length re-imagined. I'll admit that they're not for everyone but so much about them makes such perfect sense that I think everyone should try them at least once, ideally for a couple of days if you're not used to the headless aspect. Cheers Ed

[quote name='Ashborygirl' timestamp='1364748007' post='2030360'] I loved my XL2; deep, rich, singing tone, very comfortable neck. I hear rumours that Gibson have several containers full of NOS parts, enough to build several hundred XL2s, if only they'd bolt them all together & sell them . [/quote] This is not the case - there was a container but it was sorted out and the parts were either sold off or used in the Music Yo era USA reissues during the 2000's. There will not be any more L series Steinbergers made again ever. Anyway Dingus, as long as it's an L or XL 4 string you're looking for, there is still a ready supply on the second hand market. The basses are so tough that they will be about for ever and many are in surprisingly good condition. Parts are not a great problem with the notable exception of the strap pivot assembly but even there, there are now solutions available (3D printing) which will solve that issue. Back in the day, I had the Wal /Steinberger conundrum and was told by my wife that I could either have matching Wal fretted and fretless basses or one Steinberger! After much soul searching, I bought the L2. Had to sell a few basses to get it including my Aria SB1000 and a '61 Precision and, on reflection, it's the best purchase I have ever made. The bass was my only fretted bass for gigs and sessions for about 12 years and is still the old faithful "go to" bass to this day. Next year we will have been 30 years together! I like all my 'Bergers and the L2 has since been joined by a fretless L2, an XL2 with Trans Trem bridge and finally, the elusive XL5W. Unfortunately (or maybe not) the 5W didn't appear until a couple of years after I *really* wanted an extended range 'Berger for a project I was working on, so I've also got a Status 6 custom that Rob kindly made for me with the L body shape. The Steinberger bass has now got over the stigma of being an '80s fashion statement and is starting to be recognised for what it always was - the most fully realised and intelligent bass design ever. Leo Fender got it right on more than one occasion but Ned Steinberger built on that and took it to a completely higher plane altogether. I am fortunate now to have a few terrific instruments to choose from but if it all comes down to it and they have to go for whatever reason, the L2 will be with me to the end! On that cheery note... Ed

[quote name='iamtheelvy' timestamp='1364489214' post='2027232'] I think I hit a peak when I was singing, playing bass and playing midi pedals at the same time. Mind you, needed a lie down after... [/quote] LOL - me too although it was in the days before midi! My best ever achievement was breaking a string at the start of a song, changing it and tuning it up before the end with no one in the band noticing except the drummer! There was obviously a mix of left hand tapping and convenient open string notes going on. Cheers Ed

Wow - some thread! As has been hinted here before - two types of music - good and bad. Anyone involved in the creation, reproduction or consumption of said music has the right to define which it is for themselves only. Another elder here - 54 and playing regularly since about 1974. Started off covers, then a few years of originals. Back to covers to make money. Had a spell of music full time and then back to part time/ semi pro. Got fed up doing weddings and have been involved in original music since. No difference - it's all music, mainly good! Best to just enjoy your love for music as a creator, reproducer or listener. Ed

[quote name='steve-bbb' timestamp='1363164209' post='2009326'] saw him many years ago when maddy prior was touring her solo album - good gig! [/quote] Saw that tour as well - fantastic. RK was an early influence of mine - top notch player. Ed

This is normal for a first timer on headless. I had exactly the same issue back in '84 when I bought my first Steinberger - two frets sharp if you let your mind wander! It quickly gets better. I pretty much played that bass and a de-fretted Hohner B2 almost exclusively for about 9 years. As noted earlier in the thread, similar problems can be caused by the way a bass hangs on a strap, 24 fret as opposed to 20 or 21 fret necks, different scale lengths etc. etc. I recall that back when I started playing, swapping to a Fender from my Rick was a daunting prospect - it's all down to what you're used to. I now have a variety of basses both headed and headless, different scale lengths, 4/5/6, fretted/fretless and don't have a worry swapping between them all. If you stick with it, it will come. All the best and welcome to the headless club! Ed

[quote name='lowregisterhead' timestamp='1359098623' post='1949748'] Very nice. That is very rare.... and without wishing to be crass, I'll bet it wasn't cheap either. I was going to post a pic of my L2, but I don't think I'll bother now! [/quote] LRH - didn't realise you were still keeping the faith! Gary - really nice - looks to be in great nick too - well selected! Cheers Ed

[quote name='Ghost_Bass' timestamp='1358244554' post='1935281'] They did make a 5 string, i know it for a fact as a friend of mine has one. Look at the first bass on the stand in the back [/quote] That's not an Ex-Factor, that's a Key Factor 5 - I know because I have one! Ex-Factors tune at the bridge with a massive proprietary system which was never adapted for 5 strings. They also have a shorter scale -32" I think with 36" scale being used for the two extra frets on the E string, allowing it to go down to a D. Ex-Factor necks are made with many thin laminated maple strips. Key Factors tune at the headstock using special Schaller mini tuners which have guitar- sized buttons. Also due to the narrow width of the headstock (same width as the neck) some of the tuners are wound the opposite way from normal although all the buttons turn in the normal direction. Key Factors are 34" scale and the necks are one piece maple with a rosewood or maple board. Key factor bodies have a flat top with none of the elaborate sculpting seen on the Ex-Factor. Kubickis have a really interesting tone circuit with various different passive modes and two different active modes. Like Steinbergers, they are also great basses. Ed

Nice. Double P is a great pickup combo - not seen on a Fender since the Elite II Precisions in 1983 methinks. Enjoy! Ed

[quote name='fender73' timestamp='1357370757' post='1921660'] I like 'zingy' #justsaying [/quote] Me too!

[quote name='cloudburst' timestamp='1357064862' post='1917068'] Really thinking of going for the XL-2 for the following reasons: - I'll be at the institute from September doing a course so the XL-2 would be easy to transport to and fro (as opposed to the Bongo which lives in its hard case) - For some reason I've really bonded with my Bongo and would like to keep it mint, so the Steinberger could take the abuse of being in college every day - It would hold its money for me as well if not better than having the money sat in a bank Does all this seem like sound logic? Or am I just trying to convince myself? Is there a Steinberger-specific downside of any sort? CB PS: Is that Robbie Shakespeare in the photo? [/quote] OK, you've asked so I'll answer as impartially as I can Downsides to a Steinberger XL2. Have you played a headless before? I ask because for a few days/ gigs/ rehearsals there can be a tendency to hit the wrong notes due to a combination of there being no headstock and next to no body to reference things to. So maybe going for a note away up at the dusty end, I often frightened myself for the fist couple of days by hitting a note say two frets out. You quickly get used to it. I now have an assortment of headed and headless 4 5 and 6 string basses and go easily between them all. The bass also hangs differently on a strap. The pivot plate that the strap attaches to on the back of the bass is mounted slightly up and to the left (on a right hand bass) from the bass's centre of gravity. With the pivot set very free, the bass will settle at a slightly neck up angle. If you want a specific angle, you can tighten up the pivot plate so it will hang on the strap at anywhere from completely horizontal to completely vertical. I keep it pretty free but I certainly acknowledge that this at first can give you a feeling of insecurity when moving large distances on the neck because of the ease with which the bass pivots. Once again, when you get used to it, it becomes second nature to freely adjust the angle of the bass to suit different techniques - slap, fingerstyle on back pickup, fingerstyle on front pickup etc. The strap pivot is designed to accommodate a very standard playing position- anything from medium height to low and the bass will hang slightly to the right hand side of the body with the neck angled out slightly from the player's body - just like a Fender or most other basses. I like my basses quite high on a strap and more across the front of my body. I found that the standard strap pivot did not work for me like this so I use left hand pivot plates on my right hand basses. These are very difficult to find now so if you like to wear the bass high, this may be an issue. Of course as the topic of this thread concerns coolness, I'm assuming you won't want to wear the bass very high! The only other thing I did to my main L2 was to pad under the pickups with foam. The EMG SS or HB pickups mount with only 2 screws through the faceplate and so can have a tendency to wobble a little in use. Folks may not be aware that the L series body is essentially hollow on either side of the solid neck beam so a bit of padding between the bottom of the pickups and the beam made them a bit more solid feeling to me. Interestingly, I have not felt the need to do this on any of my other L series basses so maybe it was just part of the process of getting used to them for me. Some say that adjusting action and intonation on the Steinberger bridge is fiddly. I don't find it so and the instrument is so stable that you will only be doing it once anyway. Loosen the two grub screws on the side of the bridge which lock all the saddles together. Then slide each saddle back and forth to set the intonation (this is the bit that some folks don't like because there is no screw adjustment). Set the height and angle of each saddle with the two saddle grub screws. When you're happy, lock the whole assembly together again with the two side grub screws. Revisit in 20 years or if you change from conventional strings to piano core strings or if your tastes in action height change. A lot of XLs are missing the battery cover off the back because people didn't understand the principle of it. There are sources for these in the very active international Steinberger community. That's it for me - only other downsides are you'll get less practise tuning your bass and you'll be doing a lot of explaining to people who'll want to know what it is, how you tune it, when you're going to be able to afford the rest of it... etc. etc. To answer your other three questions; Yes - it seems like sound logic Yes - you are trying to convince yourself Yes - it's Sly and Robbie. Cheers Ed

Sub zero in my book but then again my first L2 has now been with me for almost 30 years and I have three other L series 'Bergers as well so that pretty well nails my colours to the mast! Seriously, Steinbergers have now gone through the full cycle of coolness from ultra hyped ultimate cool in the early '80s through to seriously uncool in the '90s. Ned Steinberger's design set a trend which went "viral" in the days before the internet but got so big so fast that it got lumped together with shoulder pads, crazy hair and all the other "fashion" trends of the '80s. Back to basics, the design of the L2 had absolutely nothing to do with fashion and style and everything to do with functionality and fitness for purpose. In that respect, I believed in 1984 that it was the most completely realised, intelligent and ground breaking bass design ever and nothing has come along since to make me change my mind. Over the years I've had all the jokes and the comments but what shuts them all up is the sound. So, if you can dare to be different and can handle the pressure that will inevitably come your way, buy and use your XL2. Others can debate the look and the pros/ cons (and believe me, they will) and you can meantime quietly enjoy all the hidden benefits of using one of the absolute classic basses. Cheers Ed

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1346776496' post='1793090'] The resurgence of popularity of these basses is truly amazing to me. I can remember when you quite literally couldn't give these basses away secondhand ~ snip ~ and now they have achieved the seemingly impossible by coming back into fashion. [/quote] Dingus, I'm with you on this all the way. It's funny how the passage of time changes perceptions but I'd guess that any demand for these instruments will not likely be coming from players who were around at the time they were originally released. Same thing has happened with '70's Fenders - they were derided at the time as being shockingly bad quality, heavy, fat necks, unstable 3 bolt microtilt neck pocket etc. etc. and now they are revered as "vintage" Fenders and seem to command a big fat price. What do I know?!! Nicest Gibson of the era to me was the RD Artist. Still pretty ugly to my mind but a terrific sounding and playing bass, Cheers Ed

I see this question come up regularly on various forums and I must admit I just don't understand the problem. It's a musical instrument - i.e. a tool for making music with. If you like the sound of roundwounds on the fretless then there's not much more to be said - use roundwounds. Sure, the fingerboard will mark a bit but it'll take a while for it to become serious enough for it to affect the functionality of the bass. When it eventually does, have the fingerboard dressed again. Continue until there is no fingerboard left and then have a new one put on. I would rather do that than use flatwound strings on my fretless basses because for me, there is just no comparison in the sound. On the other hand, if *you* like the sound of flatwounds on the fretless, use them. Just don't allow what should be purely a musical choice to be influenced by worries about wearing out the fingerboard. All things get worn if they are used. Treat it as a badge of honour and remember that the more worn your fretless fingerboard gets, the better the player you will likely be! Cheers Ed

Something I know a bit about... I'm not entirely sure of the dates below but I've generally speaking had at least one Rick since 1974 and at the time I was mad keen on them so I'm pretty certain of most of my facts here. As has been stated; 4000 Bass - No Neck pickup, 1 vol, 1 Tone, dot markers on the rosewood fingerboard, no body binding. Not sure about neck binding but suspect none. I believe Rick 4000's were all set neck, not neck through construction. 4001 Bass - Dual Pickup, two Vol, Two Tone, Three way switch, mono and stereo output sockets, triangle markers on fingerboard, bound body and neck. 4001s bass - budget version of the 4001 imported by Rose Morris to the UK as the Rick 1999 model. Essentially a 4001 but with no body binding and with dot inlays instead of the triangles. The 4001s was the bass played by McCartney and Squire - Ricks were cheap enough in the States for them not to have to worry too much about the costs there but here in the UK they were very expensive hence a lot of 1999/ 4001s basses imported in the '60s/ early '70s All Rick bass necks have dual truss rods but they don't work the same way that say, Fender truss rods work, in that they don't always take very kindly to just being tightened up more and more - the procedure is to "help" them by applying pressure to bend the neck whilst tightening up the truss rod. Loosening strings first helps too. Interestingly, the traditional Rick truss rods are easily replaced with no surgery to the instrument - once the nut is loosened and removed, the whole assembly slides out of the slot through the body end of the neck. What they did with the 4003 truss rods I don't know but as has been stated before, 4001's always worked fine with roundwound strings - indeed it's one of the archetypal Rick bass sounds. Roundwounds do not intrinsically have higher tension than flatwounds as far as I know so I'm guessing that any percieved problems were as much to do with folks not understanding how the truss rod system was meant to be used rather than any underlying problem with the design. Bear in mind though that unlike a Fender type bass, if the neck goes irreparably wrong, the bass is essentially ruined - you can't just bolt on a replacement neck! Horseshoe pickup was replaced in the bridge position by the so-called high gain pickup sometime in the late '60's early '70s. Both of the '72 4001's I have owned did not have the horseshoe. You are right that the horseshoe pickup goes right back to Rickenbacker's "frying pan" lap steel guitar, generally accredited as being the first real electric guitar as we know them. Yes, the horseshoe magnet doubles as the pickup cover and can't be removed. Up to some point in '72/ '73 the 4001 body binding was two layer with the inner layer being black/ white chequered and the triangle inlays were full width of the fingerboard made of crushed sparkle material. After that, the body binding was reduced to one layer with no chequered effect and the inlays were more conventional "mother of plastic" and didn't cover the full width of the board. Around about this time, the toaster pickup in the neck position was replaced by one which looks more like the high gain bridge pickup in a little chrome case. In the sixties, Rick used mahogany wings on the outside edges of the headstock al-la Squire and McCartney's basses and later on just used extra pieces of maple. To save costs originally, the left hand models simply used standard right hand necks - this is why Macca's bass has essentially a reversed headstock. More recently, I think around the early '90s to early '00s, Rick reissued the 60s styled 4001s/ 1999 as the 4003 V63 and also a C64 version which has the reversed headstock of Macca's bass even on right handed versions and the removal of the body edge contours again echoing Macca's bass which he sanded down himself! Interesting (if you're an anorak like me) piece of Rick/ Fender/ Beatles trivia. The 4001 shape was designed for Rickenbacker by Roger Rossmeisl. In the late 60's Rossmeisl worked for Fender and was in charge of building the special prototypes of the all Rosewood Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars. One of those Tele's was going to be presented to George Harrison so two were built by Rossmeisl and a hot shot young luthier working at Fender at the time, Phillip Kubicki. Yes, "that" Phillip Kubicki! The better of the two Tele prototypes was given to Harrison during the sessions for the Let it Be album and George can be seen playing it in the final gig on the roof of Apple building. Cheers Ed