Merton

Yep. Bloody love it

Hey Rich, welcome! Whereabouts in Sussex? I'm on the Surrey/Sussex border near Gatwick Airport.

This

Love those Status Shark basses. Used to have a seafoam green 5 string. Can’t remember where it ended up but it was awesome.

Very well. I was playing with my active Finn 5 through it just the other day and it sounded glorious. As with the other comments it’s about setting the input gain and valve drive to suit the bass, so you may find tweaking is required if you are swapping between basses

I tried to swap to a 12AT7 but it’s a bugger to get at the valve and I’m stinky poo at that sort of thing so didn’t pursue it 🤣 Can see using a lower gain calve would lead to some lovely results though

Oooh can’t believe I missed this - it’s going to be stunning! And you’re right @Bass Culture, one isn’t enough so more start getting planned haha! I haven’t yet started thinking in finer details about the next one but it’s bound to happen 😂

Not sure. He wrote a song about where he was born but I can't remember from the lyric if it was USA or not. He didn't mention it enough...

Definitely a perplexing design choice!

FFS

Grainger make bridges. Not sure about tuners. Edit: www.graingerguitarparts.com

Agree re the Big Split tone comparisons there - for me it’s what I wanted in that bass but can totally see why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. You may be able to persuade Alan Cringean to sell you an PB /SB pair (that’s his P and J equivalents) given you liked my Finn

@TRBboy ah cheers! Will follow back IIRC that clip was both pickups on full but can’t quite remember, had too many shandies since then 🤣 The Zoot is completely passive, just Vol/Vol/Tone like a classic jazz bass. I prefer passive basses as a rule but my Finn 5 and Skelf are both active because I’m of what I wanted out of them.

They aren’t as hot as the ACG pickups in my, er, ACGs, and so I find that makes them feel less aggressive. In a VVT configuration and both on full they just have a gorgeous creamy tone. Solo the neck and you get a reasonable P bass soundalike, and the bridge gives you burp but with more heft than a soloed J in the same place I’d say. I tend to sit mostly on the neck pickup in my pop punk band, or play around with the balance as required when playing in my covers bands. I’ve got a few clips of it on my Instagram feed, quite like this one to give you a feel hopefully:

Big Splits are exactly what I was going to suggest. Love them in my Zoot Funkmeister. Not quite a PJ because they’re like a weird cross between a P and J themselves but they do sound lovely.

It was made by a friend of mine, his company is Conway Instruments. He’s done a lot of ukeleles, acoustic guitars and a few solid body electrics but this was his first bass. It’s pretty bloody good for a first bass Build thread here:

Fingers crossed it arrives soon!

Sounds sensible as it's a super-clean design so you don't want to push the preamp too hard

Gain is there to set a level into the preamp. There are two schools of though generally: 1. Set it as high as possible without clipping to get the best signal through preamp and into poweramp. 2. Set master volume at max and use gain as a volume control, like the OP prefers. If you read the manuals for various manufacturers, Trace Elliot, Ashdown, Eden all fall into the first camp, GK into the second. Personally I prefer as hot a signal as possible going into the preamp and even sued to set up my GKs like this. Just sounded better to my ears. The potential problem with the first method is if you set the preamp gain and then mess with EQ etc, this then affects the signal and potentially introduces clipping into parts of the circuit where it's undesirable and then you have to reset the input gain. Hardly a major issue but something i suspect many people don't consider

Stop posting Sandbergs - you know my current dilemma

Ditto the black hardware. I can deal with chrome on the right bass but black just sits better with me for some reason.

Have to say your Hellwood is probably the only bass I'd consider with the bell plate and no scratchplate. I do like the look of them

Agree with some of the points here: 1. Gold hardware. Eugh. 2. Bell plates without a scratchplate 3. Some headstock designs are just grim HOwever I also own basses some of you would hate (blank fretboards, reverse headstocks etc...) so each to their own