DF Shortscale

The Albridge is about as good a bridge as you can find for Musicmasters, but yeah AmpShop can be tricky with shipping. If I ordered from them again, I’d pay a little extra and ask for FedEx shipping, they normally use USPS which is a diabolically unreliable service. It’s worth emailing them first.

I love the one I have, it’s the easiest, lightest, fastest playing bass I own. The build quality is brilliant, I think they’re actually made by Valiant in Ukraine who tend to make decent stuff. I added a bridge pickup to mine, the tone was a bit one dimensional but that’s more of a Musicmaster characteristic rather than a problem with the bass itself. The only thing I would say is that the paint on my bass is a little thin so it started to ‘relic’ quite fast but I don’t mind that. Also dealing with the people at Woodcraft can be a bit sketchy, they’re very nice but it’s a small operation, there’s lots of stories about orders taking a while to turn up so you have to chase them at times. But the bass itself is amazing and gets lots of compliments and questions, people generally don’t know this brand so they can’t figure it if it’s a modded Fender or something else. It doesn’t have the charm of an original Musicmaster like the one above tho!

Yeah, I think their intention was to update the functionality while allowing it to be a drop-in replacement so it’s definitely not a vintage-styled copy. Same applies to the Ampmaster basses, they’re basically refined Musicmasters without the issues that can affect the originals (noisy pickup, intonation, neck dive etc) but all the individual parts fit Musicmasters perfectly.

If you’re feeling brave and don’t mind paying shipping / taxes etc, Woodcraft in the US sell excellent replacement parts for Musicmaster basses. Their bridges and pickups are really good and should be an easy fit. Dealing with them can be a bit hit and miss at times but check out their replacement bridge, it’s nice: https://www.ampshopbassexchange.com/product/albridge-parts-mms18-vintage-bridge-for-musicmaster-short-scale-direct-replacement/ (No affiliation, I bought one of their Ampmaster basses a while back, wasn’t the smoothest transaction but the bass is great)

Bought an Aguilar compressor from Paul, all as described and sounding great, and just in time to be gigged this weekend. Thanks Paul!

Thanks Paul, it worked out well! Great to meet you both, hope you enjoyed the show.

editing this because it turns out I was shipped the wrong gauge set - problem is now hopefully solved

*edit: I'm deleting this comment because I was shipped the wrong gauge strings previously so it turns out I re-ordered the wrong set.

I have a recent set and they only have silk at the peg, and they do have the coloured ball ends. They all feel the same though, same level of rough/smooth across all strings.

Thanks, they look ok and the price is ok too. I'll see if they can give me any indication of weight.

I have an old P-bass which I'd like to bring back to life, it was my first Precision and I was fairly clueless when I bought it, but despite that I loved playing it for many years. It's supposed to be an '83 Fullerton re-issue, but in reality it's a random P body with Quarter Pounder pickups, with a legit '83 Fullerton neck on it. It is incredibly heavy (feels like over 14lbs), so I stopped playing it many years ago, but given that the body is a random very heavy chunk of questionable wood, I'd like to replace it and hopefully reduce some of the weight. So my question is - who makes a decent quality, relatively light, already finished Precision body? Doesn't have to be Fender, doesn't have to be chambered / super light (to avoid neck dive), just has to be better than the boat anchor the neck is currently attached to.

These are currently my favourite strings on a precision. They mellow out after a little while but they definitely are bright to begin with, give them around 2 weeks to mellow. They’re pretty stiff too, and a little rougher than other flats but that’s what I like about them.

I wonder if he ever sells anything at these prices, I had a look at the rest of his shop, there are some shockers on there.

Yeah I thought it was a 'touch on the optimistic side'. It has a couple of watchers, which means there must be some people out there thinking it's not completely crazy.

I saw a converted fretless '72 P neck on Reverb for what seems to me like an insane price, around £1.5K (link here). I have something similar which I was going to put up for sale at some point soon but I had a very different price to this in mind, I'm curious what people's thoughts are - to me it seems like this should be priced as anything else that's vintage but modded, but who knows.