Merton

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

Yep - I use the bass as a cut only control on my ABM too, it never goes past 12 o'clock!

Yep - I think the RM and OrginAL (both this pedal and the head) share the same 5-band EQ. The ABM is a bit different. Personally find the bass control on this to work better for me I think, the one on the ABM is super low!

I tried one in Bass Direct last year when I was on the hunt for a preamp/DI/overdrive in one. It was a great thing indeed but I found the tuner to be a bit glitchy and the overdrive wasn't to my tastes. I've ended up with an Ashdown OriginAL (and just put thread on this forum about it but won't derail here!) after a brief sojourn with a DarkGlass Vintage Ultra. Anyhoo, good review and glad you are liking it

Never met him in person but his presence on here was undeniable. Hope you're doing OK @Rich

Cheers! That's my go-to setting as well. I'll be honest, when I first got the pedal I was a bit disappointed as I wanted it to do that but felt it was much to OTT - to the extend I started considering valve swapping. I believe it was @javi_bassist who suggested playing with the input gain and it really is the key to getting almost anything from super clean through to horrendous filth. Now it's become such an important part of my board that both my Darkglass Vintage Ultra and SansAmp BDDI are both destined for the FS forum.

@Painy you're clearly far more talented that I am with respect to this sort of thing. Your ABM case, the load box and now the blue speakers... if I'd done any of this they'd have looked more like something the Wombles would need to clear up instead of a useful thing I could proudly use 🤣

Love the outcome, love the story behind it. Ashdown rock

It would be great to have your demo too when you are able to! I'm going to do another one tomorrow to show it as a preamp in front of the Little Bastard head

Seems there’s not a lot of info on these online, nor are there any decent demos showing what it can do. Well, I plan with this thread to change the first of these points. There’s a demo as well but it’s debatable if it’s “decent”. So... what is it? A preamp/DI with 5-band EQ, a switchable valve drive circuit plus aux in and headphone out sockets. There’s a parallel output which offers a completely unaffected signal too, which I use to send a signal to a tuner and hence keep the tuner out of my main signal path. Two foot switches control (left to right) the valve drive circuit and essentially an on/off for the main and DI outputs. This makes the parallel socket for my tuner make sense - hit “Showtime“ to mute the main outputs and just check tuning and then hit it again when you’re ready to make noises for everyone. The clean 5-band preamp is superb and the valve drive circuit offers a huge range of tonal possibilities too, especially in conjunction with the input gain level. Use the “Drive Level” control to balance the clean and driven sounds in volume level, or use the valve as a boost, and you’re good to go. There aren’t (m)any demos of this online so I set about using today‘s glorious sunshine and heat to hole myself up inside a roasting room and make a video, partly for the benefit of @Painy who doesn’t really want to watch this to get more GAS. Some sloppy playing in places but hopefully it gives a good indication of the capabilities.

Saw this on Instagram earlier. Love the “none more black” look! Really need to try some of the 3leaf stuff...

Ashdown OrignAL has blown my mind in lockdown. Beautiful clear clean preamp, which adds life where needed through a 5 band EQ. And a bloody great filth valve overdrive too, which is a lot more controllable than it first appears. Clean and effect output channels, DI is effected only. Aux in and headphone out. Bloody marvellous.