ThomBassmonkey

I've just got a Combustion (literally less than 2 hours ago) and it plays totally naturally. I had no problems playing it without concentrating straight away. Still trying to get used to the sound, I thought it was a little weak sounding at first, but taking off the pad and cranking my amp a little sorted that out. I still need to get a little more growl from the B string, but I've not fully had a chance to play with it yet (and I know there's a kit that can add more power to it if needed too).

[quote name='davideleira' post='1165140' date='Mar 16 2011, 11:22 PM']I understand. And I know that 2 210 are taller and that it'll be closer to my ears, but we use always PA and with a 410 I'll get plenty volume, so that isn't a problem. And if we don't use, I think that the 410 and 210 do the work very good, like the 2 210. Best option is ...? ABM 410 + MAG 210 or ABM 210 + MAG 210? I'm a little confused now, and the ABM 210 is cheaper, so that's good... But the ABM 410 will do the trick no? Beside, I want to put one cab at the rehearsel room and other home, and I need more volume than my MAG 210 alone, with my band. Well, if I get a new cab, the 210 will be used only home/little things, and the 410 for things with my band, and when I want more power, I put the two working, and I'll not need to work harder. If I get the 2 210, maybe the ABM 210 doesn't do the work like the 410? And then, I'll need to leave the 2 210 in the rehearsel room, because I don't want to transport every rehearsels 2 cabs... Sorry about my bad english, if you don't understand[/quote] An ABM410 should be fine. It's unlikely you'll ever need louder. If possible, you should try and match the cabs, so one ABM210 and one MAG210 wouldn't be as good as two ABM210s or two MAG210s. There's nothing wrong with using a 410 and a 210, you shouldn't blow anything up, you just need to remember that the speakers in the 210 will be taking more power if you use them all at once. If you use two cabs, you will probably only need one for rehearsals (unless you practice very loud), so you will probably only need to take 1.

Oops, the Aurora one didn't work and the WD linked to the Aurora. Sorry mate. There are some nice designs on it though! I like the Sun one.

I don't fancy a plain one, sorry, should've said that. Don't know what I do want yet though (maybe a clear one and do my own design) but I want something a little fancy since it's a plain old Jazz bass. The link for the Aurora one doesn't seem to work. Thanks for the WD one though!

As title really, I fancy swapping out my plain white scratchplate on my Sandberg JJ5 and wondered where they're available. Thanks!

[quote name='chrismuzz' post='1169021' date='Mar 19 2011, 11:45 PM']All I need now is an anti wrong note modulator [/quote] I was bored once around a friend's house so I got playing on his GT6 while he was on a computer game. Basically by the time he'd finished whatever he was doing, I'd programmed the auto-riff finction so when I rang out the D string on the 12th fret and it played the entire intro to Sweet Child O' Mine.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' post='1168232' date='Mar 19 2011, 01:52 PM']There are loads of guitar copies its just that you havent noticed in the same way a guitarist wouldnt spot a Sadowsky from a Fender. Tokai is the first name that springs to mind now with a model costing more than the Gibsons too, You would have to be keeping a keen eye out at every gig to spot them but beleive me there are just as many Fender/Gibson style copy guitars as basses. As for strat copies bloomin heck everything since the 70's has been based on them ESP,Ibanez,Jackson etc etc In fact Thinking about as I type I tend to disagree so much that I think its the fact that the guitars have been copied so much they have just become other well known brands really?[/quote] I won't try and say you're wrong simply because I don't know as much about guitar gear as I do bass stuff. I did used to work in a guitar shop and I play though so I have looked around and to the best of my knowledge I've never seen companies like Sadowsky or Sandberg that directly copy another brand's gear at a high end level and make the majority of their profit from that. Tokai of course do make some expensive stuff, but they're far better known for their cheap copies (I love Tokai, I have a les paul "love rock" which is stunning), Ibanez, ESP and Jackson have all made strat copies, along with other companies like BC Rich, but none of them are what the companies are known for. For the most part they've all been budget instruments too.

I always like to compare this kind of thing to cars as basses are all opinion so you can't base it on fact. A £15,000 car will get you from A to B nicely, you can put your stuff in it and it'll be fine. A £45,000 car will do the same job, but it'll probably feel nicer and have better performance. Will it be 3 times faster? No Will it carry 3 times the stuff? No It's all down to whether or not you can justify the extra expense. I've gone through a phase over the last year and a half of going from gear that "does the job" (Ibanez BTB406QM > Carlsbro bassline 150) to my current set up which looks, sounds and feels amazing. The retail is probably getting on for 6 times the amount though, it's not 6 times better, it's just worth the extra money to me because the 50% better it is makes me happier.

I saw this on GK's facebook earlier, I wish I had an iphone haha. Nearest thing I have to a portable rig is my 2001RB-II and just one 410RBH..

My signal chain is Bass > Amp > Cabs. Always has been, always will be as far as I can tell at the moment. I've played in all kinds of bands from pop to punk to metal, that's all I've ever needed. I do use a distortion now I have it in my 2001RB head, but it's a very transparent distortion (as much as they can be). I find that if you're using a bass guitar, it sounds best as a bass guitar. I've never played any music where I've felt any effects would suit my playing. I once played bass synth for a practice or two to see if it worked out, but it didn't and if it did it was played on a keyboard, not an effected bass guitar. In saying that, music's creative, as I've said before (and will doubtless say again), people can and should create music how they want to create it. I've never snub anyone else for using FX, I judge it on the merit of it's context.

If it was backline and vocal PA, then it's not really fair to compare it to bigger rigs. One of the important things for me (and probably every bassist) is how the bass sound cuts through the mix. That can't be compared at this kind of gig to a fully PA'd gig. As Dan says, the difference in gear quality really starts to shine through at higher volumes. If cheap gear really did sound as good as expensive gear, you'd see a lot of big artists going around with it and you don't. There's enough people that have good sense not to waste money that you'd see some. The only example of cheap gear being used by the kind of artists that can have anything they want is Hartke. As much as gear like Squiers are brilliant for the money, they do fall short of more expensive gear.

[quote name='Shambo' post='1168032' date='Mar 19 2011, 10:44 AM']Fender is the worlds most famous marque in guitar and bass manifacturing so they can charge a premium for their instruments safe in the knowledge that demand for their product will always remain relatively stable.[/quote] I disagree with this. I think it's true to an extent, but companies like Marshall and Gibson haven't been doing as well recently as they have in yesteryear. Fender don't stick on quite as much of a premium as those two though (IMO at least) but that doesn't mean that they're immune to losing out because of it. The big thing going for Fender is that the P and Jazz are massively copied (for some reason bassists seem more into copies than guitarists, high end strat/LP/tele copies aren't that common compared to high end J/Ps IME), almost every (if not every) company has at least a copy of one or the other, or both, in their catalogue. Fender have the advantage of being "the original", so people assume that it makes them better. Most people haven't heard of a Sandberg JJ, but if you say you've got a Fender Jazz, they'll nod approvingly, even though it could be a MIM.

If I was thinking about a Fender, I'd probably go for a Sandberg....well...I did. You can buy a bass that's handmade by about 5 people in Germany for not a lot more than one that could be anything from a stunning instrument to one that looks like it could've been glued together by 5 year olds. I know which I would (and did) go for.

This is what I always find helpful when I'm EQing: Turn all your EQ down to minimum, turn them up one at a time and find out exactly how they all affect the sound. They all have certain characteristics, depending on what EQ you're using, whether it's parametric or 3/4 band etc. e.g. the very low freequencies might be "wool", there might be something around the low mids that sounds like "honk", that kind of thing. Once you get a feel for what all the EQs do, knock them all up to half way, then if your amp has anything like contour, play with that to get a feel for it. Same with any other EQ shaping knobs like presence etc. Once you know what everything does, then you should try and start EQing it propery, if you know the sound of each control, it should be fairly easy to work out what needs to come up and what needs to come down to achieve the tone you're aiming for (or as close as you'll get with your setup.) I don't really buy into the "you'll always sound the same, whatever you play through". The timbre will change a lot between different gear, but a good bassist (with a little practice) will be able to use their fingers to change the tone. e.g. playing towards the bridge adds in some mids and makes the tone much "harder", playing towards the neck makes it softer and rounder sounding.

I don't know if they're still as bad now, but Warwick used to be terrible at CS charges. It cost something like £4,000 more to have a SSII in a custom colour simply because it had been through the custom shop. There's some that I've seen on the site in the gallery that I honestly can't see why they cost 2-3 times more than a standard model. I've never really compared Fender MIM/J/A basses though, there was a stunning MIM Jazz in a shop in Nottingham a while ago that started off my GAS for a jazz that lead me to my Sandberg. I would've had it if it had been a 5er. It really did sound and feel amazing.

It is worth noting that people aren't great sellers by default just because they sell on here. I've had a hell of a time with one particular member, the moderators have done all they can but there's only so much they can do when they have no legal power over members. It's still not been resolved and I don't expect it to be, so people do have bad trades on here. But I've had many good ones, I'd rather trade through here than ebay or other sites. It is (and will always be) a case of buyer beware.

Machines are so advanced no, they should be able to knock out instruments to a decent quality without having the prices sky high. IME the price comes from having very high quality control (so you're paying for wastage) or having them hand built (which means better attention to detail, though not specifically anything better overall). Neither make the end instruments better, they just make it less likely you'll get a duff one. Brands like Westfield show that you can make cheap basses that are way above their price point in quality, but dogs can get through the QC. I don't think I could bring myself to buy a boutique bass (new) when I could have 2-3 great factory basses for the same price and upgrade the hardware to my tastes.

This comes under the same moral stance as buying a bass cheap then selling it on for more in my books. People shouldn't profit from selling on this site, it's not good for the community spirit....BUT Each sale should be looked at on it's own merit, not what the bass has been sold for previously or what the seller's making on it. Some SR5s have sold recently for £600, I wouldn't think it was unfair if a SR5 sold for £800. Who am I to condemn someone because they've sold a bass at a fair price just because they've bought it cheaper? It's not fair on someone that bought a bass for their own purposes then decided they didn't get on with it if they should be forced to sell it under value, and unless you can 100% say what purposes they bought it for, you can't judge them. I agree that everyone on the site should be involved in the chatting though, trading basses on here can be stressful, it only takes one bass to sell cheaply because someone needs money in a hurry and that bass's resale value plummets and doesn't recover quickly, especially in the more popular models where there's more than meets demand. Anyone that just sees that aspect of the site probably doesn't have the best impression.

[quote name='Delberthot' post='1167207' date='Mar 18 2011, 02:35 PM']I know I've had about 70 basses so why should a pro be any different, especially because most, if not all of them are getting them for free. [/quote] Pros shouldn't be any different, but anyone who has a signature should be. A player with a signature bass should be saying "this is a bass that represents what I want from my bass". Obviously some companies reproduce cheaper "copies" of the bass, but they should be the same with slightly cheaper components or more lax QC. I heard a while ago that the reason Flea stopped using EBMM basses was because they refused to do him a signature model. He used rays for so long and they were such a massive part of his sound, I think that if that is true, it says a lot that he'd change tone over something so stupid.

How about a Thumb 5 BO? If you want something similar to your SR's neck, I think they're quite jazz-shaped. You could start there.

[quote name='neepheid' post='1167180' date='Mar 18 2011, 02:22 PM']I think I see what you mean now. I'll keep that in mind. Until the neck arrives and is fitted I won't be entirely sure what I should do.[/quote] I just had another quick look and found this: It's done for looks and it's on a guitar, but it should give you an idea of what I'm talking about with taking mass out from behind the lower horn and neck pocket hehe. It wouldn't give you perfect access but it'd help a little. If you still had to deepen the whole cutaway for better access, this might just mean that you can leave an extra few mil there that you might've taken out otherwise.

Try and play the bass set up as close to you'd have it as possible. I got burned with several hundred pouds worth of repairs after buying a bass that played beautifully tuned E-C, then as soon as I put a B-G set of strings on it the neck went wonky.