ThomBassmonkey

As I've said, I have a Sandberg JJ5 that I love, I'm not expecting to make my dream bass. The idea of this is just to make something a little special for myself and have a bit of fun. I'm under no illusions that resale value is going to be a huge loss if I ever come to sell it. I think saying I might as well burn the money isn't really true. If I do do this then I'll end up with a bass that should be really good and customised to what I want. There's no way of doing this unless I go down a custom route (which will cost a lot more than doing this and will have higher losses if I sold it on). I'm really GASing for a M/M 5 at the moment. There's not a lot on the market apart from G&L or a ray. Buying a ~£400 bass and customising it will fulfill that GAS and give me something a little special and shouldn't cost much more than a SH Ray5 H (assuming I don't get it professionally finished or too much work done).

My first bass, my Washburn XB100 is with me still and probably always will be. My Ibanez BTB406QM that I used for about 10 years including all my first decent gigs is also going nowhere for the forseeable future. I don't know if I ever said my Warwick was a keeper, but I've always thought it was a brilliant bass and never expected to have it up for sale in under a year. I'm not selling it for pennies though, so I guess that's turning out to be a keeper. My Sandberg is knocking my socks off. If it doesn't turn out to be a keeper, it'll most likely inspire something that is rather than just fading into obscurity.

I don't really know a lot about pickups to be honest, I'm totally blown away by the sound of my JJ5 though and since it's a fairly standard active J5, I'm assuming it's mostly down to the delanos, which I've not tried before. It has a lot of fatness and punch, but still sounds very clear which is exactly how I want my sound. The band I play in is me, guitar, flute and drums, so I need something to keep the fatness there when there's a guitar solo, but still defined enough to be clearly defined when I'm playing runs and fancy bits. 2 reasons I'd want to change the neck on a SUB. The paint finish and I want a maple board. The other option I'm considering is a cheap-ish Fender 5 jazz and putting delanos in that so it's similar to mine. I'd like to try out something with MM style pups though. Maybe I should get a MIM Jazz 5 and make it into a "double fat jazz" If I could coil tap it too to keep the original J tone, that'd be pretty awesome.

I think of included as meaning "in addition", strings are usually included in bass sales, I'd expect to have to change them though. The case wasn't described in the sale other than saying that there was one. I don't think there's been any deception involved. If you payed for the bass, then you got what you payed for. If the case was important to you, you probably should've asked about it.

Ok, I may just go for a SBMM Ray 35 and do one thing at a time. Anyone got any experience with the Delano MM pups? I have the some single coils in my Sandberg JJ and absolutely love them. It's still early days though, so we'll see.

I'm (in the very early stages of) thinking of getting something like a MM SUB5 and heavily modding it. Basically I'm thinking of getting a couple of delanos and turning it into a HH, putting in a forearm cut and doing a re-finish. Maybe at some point in the future get a new neck for it, but no rush. It's the re-fin more than anything that scares me. Will it need a refin after being routed for another pickup? I assume there's no way that I could do the forearm contour without a refin though. There's not much point me paying for someone to do the work as I could just buy a proper ray for that money and it'd take out some of the fun! I might go for a slightly easier option like a G&L or something that doesn't need the routing and countouring, but I've been GASing after a ray recently! Maybe the Ray 35 would be an easier choice. Any advice would be recieved gratefully

[quote name='steve-soar' post='1115838' date='Feb 4 2011, 08:14 PM']Be the bigger person and let it go. It's not that important.[/quote] You say that as though I'm trying to get into an argument? I feel it's unfair that someone's being talked down in their absence by people that have never even met them and wanted to post my opinion on the subject. I'm gonna duck out of this thread now, I don't want to get into an argument (and I apologise if that's the message I've put across) and I don't see what else can be added to this that's not already been said from my point of view.

I did write out a longer post, but I don't think it's worth adding to the discussion so I'll keep it to a minimum. Just looking at this thread, it's got people gossiping about someone's private life and people being very strongly and publically judgemental about someone they've never met. Are we surprised there's not (m)any famous bassists here?

I'm definitely gonna be there on the GK stand now Saturday and most of Sunday. Sheldon, if you're near-by, I'd love to give a bass or two of yours a whirl through a GK rig. I had a quick play on a combustion recently but didn't really have a play with the settings. I'm already saving up my pennies so that when something inevitably takes my fancy, I can come home with something shiny! Maybe I can persuade you, Sheldon to sell me a super J 5 for not a lot. It's gonna be a long weekend, got a gig on the Friday, then travelling down to London Sat morning, leaving the show early on Sunday to go straight to a gig.

It's funny, there seems to be 3 ways people react to famous people. 1: They practically stalk them, seeking them out to ask questions or sucking up to them and agreeing with everything they say. 2: They flame them, they feel that because the celebrity has had respect for doing something the person doesn't like, that's absurd and they should be shot down. 3: They treat them like humans and judge them based on personal experience. Personally, if I was famous, either of the first two would put me off. You only have to look at the threads about famous bassists and you can clearly see a lot of flaming. If I saw a thread like that about me, the only reason I'd sign up would be to tell people where to shove it. Likewise, I don't think I'd be very impressed if someone copied out my facebook status (and responses from friends) and posted it on a public forum. Even in this thread, there's a lot of people saying they don't like Jeff. How many of you have met him? I agree, he seems arrogant about his playing and what he's written on the facebook post, but he's been around a lot of time, what he says other people think about his playing is probably true in many cases and unless you know the story of what's happened on Talkbass, can you really comment on his response? I'm sure if I was unfairly banned or banned because I responded in kind to someone that got away with it, I'd be miffed too. No offense to the OP, but why is this thread even here? I'm surprised anyone on here feels the need to gossip about someone's private life when it's really none of the business of 99% of the members on here. Sorry, but that ended up more ranty than I initially meant it to. I just don't understand celebrity culture. I've met a few famous people and they don't have a golden aura or any special attributes the rest of us don't have. They're just people.

I'd feel more integrity doing what I love in a band I didn't than working a desk job pushing paper when I could be playing music.

If you don't know whether you want a lot B or a high C, it doesn't sound like you need a 5 string at all. I went from a 6 to a 5 because I wasn't using the other string. Mine's B-G.

I don't think I could play with a drummer I wasn't locking in with. I've been lucky in that the drummers I've been in bands with have all been good and on the groove. I went over to Germany once and the singer in my band had to pull out due to an operation that went wrong (he's ok now, thankfully). The drummer pulled out too since he had work and if the band wasn't going over, he couldn't pass it up. End result was me playing guitar, the other guitarist in our band and a drummer and bassist friends. We were all completely on the same wavelength. We just jammed every gig but it was great fun. One of the gigs we did a stop that we couldn't have got tighter if we tried, came completely out of the blue, I wasn't even expecting it haha.

My dad's owned a clapped out classical since before I was born, so I've always known they were wood. My first bass was sunburst too and you can see the grain through it. There's always the see-through perspex basses though..

Still struggling to sell mine, I'd really hang on to it unless there's a reason you desperately need shot of it. My computer needs replacing but I'd rather deal with a computer that crashes than sell my thumb for less than the £750 it's up for now. Funnily enough, the only serious trade offers I've had have been for other warwicks. I think one of the problems on a forum like this is that because for sale threads never go away (at least not for years), it only takes one person that's in a real need to sell their bass quickly to drive down all the prices for a long time. E.G. Person 1 needs to sell his bass to get his car repaired or he's screwed. He sells for £200 less than they usually go for. Person 2 is on the look out for the same bass, sees that person 1 sold his for very cheap then isn't prepared to pay too much over that. Instantly, the price someone is prepared to pay has gone down by a fair margin. It's no-one's fault (maybe a little bit of the buyer's for being a bit short sighted, but understandable). On ebay people don't tend to value stuff based on the price they go for, especially with more expensive stuff. It's just the luck of the draw if someone has the cash and the desire within the week to bid on the item. On a forum like this people seem to take prices and value a little more literally.

I always insist on being DI'd or mic'd, don't care which but I didn't spend the amount I did on an amp to use it as a monitor. When I use my amp's OD through the DI, it sounds fine.

[quote name='Johnston' post='1104078' date='Jan 26 2011, 05:31 PM']Why is it called a precision when it has a Jazz body?? If you put Three single coils on a telecaster does it become a strat?[/quote] IIRC the body shape is the only thing on it that resembles a jazz. If you cut a telecaster body into the shape of a strat, does it make it a strat when the electrics, hardware and neck are all still the telecaster specs?

[quote name='dan670844' post='1103530' date='Jan 26 2011, 12:56 PM']Hopefully Hans Peter will realise, get back to the reality that warwick makes high quality original design basses (not amplifiers/ tuners guitar cases) in Germany, if you want to do something different start another company! Brand identity, core values is ultra important with musical gear and you can't just be in for the moeny you need to love it![/quote] I think a company can branch out into other related products, but it needs to be done right. Warwick seem to have said "ok, our basses are successful, let's ignore them for a while and concentrate on the amps." which is silly, they're basically hiding their successful basses behind their mediocre amps. I got offered an Endorsement a while back by Warwick but in the end I turned it down because they wanted me to have an amp too (I'm too hooked on GK). It struck me as a bit desperate that they either wanted me to take an amp off their hands for a lower (but still not great) price and they weren't really interested in endorsing me or they wanted to give me a bass endorsement but they were so eager to get rid of the amps that that was their priority. Either way, it put me right off in the end.

I feel your pain, I'm trying to sell my Thumb BO5 at the moment and there's hardly been any interest (I've had two firm offers, one pulled out and the other involves a trade with another Warwick, which I want to move away from). I've knocked it down to £750 and still not had any more interest. That's an insane price for a bass that costs nearing £2000 new, even from Thomann. If it were a Fender, they'd be going 2nd hand for £1.5kish.

Basically, but it's also a show where you can go drool over stuff and find out what's going on, not to mention speak to distributors directly which can be quite tough to do sometimes (depending on the dist). There's often good deals on gear at them, will they be mind blowing? who knows?

If you want to find out what holds it's value best, ask someone who doesn't really know about basses to name 3 brands, the best known ones will be the ones that hold value. Best ones would probably be Fender (MIM), Musicman (the Sterling by series are a little over that price range) or Ibanez maybe.