ThomBassmonkey

[quote name='nick' post='751926' date='Feb 20 2010, 04:56 PM']With regard to slaying (many) a Fender : Ibanez Blazer,Tokai Hardpuncher, current crop of Squiers....[/quote]

Agree with this (The shop I work at sells Tokais and they've all been quality instruments so it's not just the hardpunchers and I know Ibanez always make decent instruments for any budget).

CHRISDABASS, though that's a fair point, you have to remember that the prices both drop similarly 2nd hand. So a 2nd hand SBMM (not that I've seen any being sold on yet) would probably be around the £4-500 mark compared to £800 for a EBMM. Still a large difference in price range.

It's interesting to hear what people have done to their basses, I would've assumed that a pickup upgrade would make more of a difference than a pre-amp upgrade.

Brilliant Video.

Amazing that everyone there sings the same notes, shows that everyone there was automatically using the same scale.

Wonder if it'd work in countries that don't use the standard western scale though.

[quote name='noelk27' post='751518' date='Feb 20 2010, 12:45 AM']Yes. If the serial number does not relate to the specific instrument then the seller is in material breach of an essential term of the contract of sale. If in doubt about this, taking motorvehicles, an example mentioned elsewhere in the thread, assume the VIN was incorrect for a vehicle being auctioned, any buyer would have an absolute right of rejection.[/quote]

The seller hasn't explicitly said that that's the instrument's serial number, only that it's on the plate on the back so is that still relevant?

It's little bits like the wording of that that make me suspicious on things like this. The seller obviously realises that the serial number is important when it's potentially an old bass, but he's very carefully worded it in a way that only implies (rather than states) that that's the serial number that belongs with the bass. The only thing that he could really be brought up on is whether or not it's a fender from what I can tell. Everything else is very carefully worded so that as long as it looks like the photos, it's a genuine Fender and that really is the number on the neck plate (regardless of whether or not it's the right neck plate for the bass), anything else goes.

I'm no legal expert though so I could be very wide of the mark.

If possible (and there's someone you trust near the seller), I'd get someone to go pick it up then post it on to you if the ad isn't accurate.

Ok, so Squier and Fender has a pretty clear outcome on the opinion polls.

What about when the "budget" range are closer to the "proper" range?

e.g. Rockbasses can go for over £500 each compared to just shy of £1,000 for a (admittedly cheaper) German Warwick, or even closer, SBMMs and EBMMs. A SBMM can go for over £800 and an EBMM are a bit over £1300?

Especially with the SBMMs, I've heard they're not far off the EBMMs for quality and if they had a better pickup in (which you could do with plenty of change left over), surely there'd be an instrument to rival the real thing.

Sounds pretty cool, very nice feel to the songs and she seems a good singer. Personally I'd be a bit busier than those lines. Not over the top but add a few running notes between chords to tie it in a bit. I'd also try and emphasise the differences between sections, some of the songs seem to rotate around the same couple of chords and with such an open sound it sounds a bit samey through the song.

The seller says he paid three hundred pounds for it, not three.

To be fair, he says it's a fender bass with that number on the metal plate on the back.

If it's a no-name copy, then you'll have a case because it's not a fender bass.

If it's a knackered MIM fender from 10 years ago, so long as it has the backplate that he says, then the sale's accurate.

As has been said though, when you bidded, you entered a contract. You can't just decide that you don't trust him after you've already agreed to buy it.

[quote name='Muzz' post='750647' date='Feb 19 2010, 10:50 AM']Agree about the attack angle of the pick going across the strings, more vertical will help. I've been a pick player for a very long time, and I tend to try to anchor the heel of my right hand on the bridge (the Ray is a good one for that - there's a nice 'valley' between the back of the bridge and the saddles) and put less overall movement into the up-and-down. I use a thinner-than-some Dunlop .88 pick, but that's just what suits me.[/quote]

I'd discourage anyone from anchoring the heel of your right hand whilst playing with a pick on bass.

Firstly (and most relevant to this thread) if you anchor your heel it acts as a pivot which means the pick's rotating around a fixed point. It might be ok for the string that your hand's anchored at the end of, but as you move out, you'll be hitting the strings at more and more of an angle so you're more likely to get scraping and because your hand's anchored, it's harder to compensate for the angle of your hand.

Secondly (and more importantly) because the string spacing is quite wide, if you're changing strings a lot the repeated action could contribute to RSI quite easily if all the movement is coming from your wrist. If you feel you need to rest your hand somewhere, try and rest your ring finger and little finger on the body next to the g string.

By using your elbow and shoulder, you can hit every string at exactly the same angle (which at least gives you consistency) and there's no twisting and strumming involved for your wrist. It might take you a bit of time to get used to aiming at the strings properly, but just because you're not holding your wrist to the bass, doesn't mean that you have to be flailing your arm around, just keep the movements relatively small and you should be fine.

[quote name='bass5' post='751339' date='Feb 19 2010, 08:24 PM']That [b][size=3]is[/size][/b] plain crazy, people with more money than sense, for sure.[/quote]

He was a spoiled boy. Mummy and Daddy bought him a Trace combo and an extra cab, and a Warwick Corvette STD. Then he managed to persuade them that because he wore glasses, he needed the LEDs in his bass to see it properly so they did that for him without any questions asked (then just had them put in the front of his fretboard rather than the side) . So I'm not really sure that he fits in with normal common sense that would dictate this kind of choice.


I'm tempted to try and find a nice Rockbass or Squier 5 and slap some upgrades on it, that's what brought about this thread. Not really looking for suggestions, just wondered on peoples opinions. If I was going to do an upgrade, it'd be more likely to be a Squier Jazz 5 (so that there's way more things that'll fit without too much alteration) that's gradually done up over time (like Lfalex), just seems like it could be a fun and satisfying project without going to the extremes of building a bass from scratch.

I have a Brice HXB406 and it's great. The frets could do with filing down a bit at the edges, but they're not "slice a finger off" sharp, they just poke you gently. Looks awesome too.



Cost me £215 to my door a while back. Never really been used either (bought as a backup bass and my Ibanez is so reliable), it's probably going to get sold soon to fund something else.

[quote name='bass5' post='751231' date='Feb 19 2010, 06:36 PM']Yes you can buy a £250 Squier but you'd be crazy spending £600 on upgrade bits.

The most you should spend would be £100 on a pair of pickups and £15 on decent pots / input jack & wiring. Anything other than that would be madness, and you'd be better off buying Fender rather than Squier.[/quote]

Depends on if you're getting what you want from it. If you want to get the best from it, new machine heads, bridge, pickups, custom wiring (coil taps and such if you wanted it) etc would all add up and if you spent the cash doing them all up, you could spend £600 and the individual parts would be better than on the higher end model.

I've seen some crazy things that I don't see the point in though, £300s worth of LEDs in a £600 bass's neck for instance.

Just wondering what peoples' views and experiences are regarding this.

Basically (for example) you could buy a Fender US Jazz for £850 or a Squire Jazz for around £250 and stick on £600 of upgrades, which costs about the same amount of money.

Same goes for Warwicks and Rockbasses, EBMMs and SBMMs, ESPs and LTDs etc etc and all the 3rd party copies too.

To me the main pros and cons are that if you upgrade a cheap bass then it's very much more "your" bass, so the pickups, tuners, bridge etc will be your choice and also some of the components would probably be better than on an expensive bass. The biggest con from what I can see is the build quality of the wood should be better on a bass that's significantly more expensive.

Just wondering what peoples' thoughts are on whether or not the better build quality would be worth the extra investment in the first place? Is there really that much of a gap that after spending the same amount on a budget bass as a pricier version that you're still losing out? Any particular budget brands that tend to skimp on the electrics to save money rather than the wood (and so would be more suited to an upgrade project than one with better grade electrics that would be more likely to be replaced anyway)? That kinda stuff.

Just a food for thought thread, not really looking for anything (though I may take into account a few possibilities in the future).

(apologies for putting this in the off topic forum to begin with, got lost in transit)

Just gonna add to this thread now I've had more dealings with them.

Basically the cab showed up and wasn't very loud before it started to distort (barely above band practice volumes and some of the tone was lost even in the practice as it got a bit muddy) so I rang up today and Adam has been pretty helpful. My band's recording next week and he's happy letting me keep the cab for that (because it sounds awesome at low volume) then going to give him a ring at the end of next week to sort it out.

After that they're going to take it back and test it (I thought it was a bit odd that it was reacting like that to volume), then seeing how that goes I'll either get another 210RBH or a neo 212 (or maybe something else, depends on the outcome).

Been very pleasant to deal with today and I really think that all the problems I've had have been down to poor communication (in fact today, someone was meant to be ringing me back and never did because the message didn't get passed on, it's sorted now though). Would I order from them again? Probably if it was a straight forwards order that I could just place then be happy that it was going to get delivered with no messing about.

If you're only using it for playing on your own, you can't really go wrong.

Problems will only come up if you crank it for a practice or gig.

[quote name='M4L666' post='750570' date='Feb 19 2010, 09:49 AM']The problem is finding 500w cabs, I guess. They seem to be working fine, but I'll keep my ears open. Ideally, when buying a new cab, I should go for the same or above wattage of the head, right?[/quote]

Just get as high wattage as possible, can't go wrong that way.

There's loads of 500w+ cabs about, it just depends on your budget and other preferences.

It's not so much the angle of the pick (if you're using a hard pick, you need to angle it a bit so it's less resistance) bu that you're moving your hand too much left and right instead of just up and down so you're scraping a little bit and getting inconsistencies.

Try picking more from the elbow and shoulder and less from the wrist. You could try using the pick flatter too but it depends how stiff it is.

Personally I just play fingerstyle, it's a bass, not a guitar.

I think he meant to make sure that all your FX etc are panned full left/right. There's no point hard panning if the reverb is playing both sides on both sides.

Else the problem could be that the click is spilling off the stage. IEMs/phones for your drummer would be the only way to effectively cure that.

[quote name='Phaedrus' post='750465' date='Feb 19 2010, 02:39 AM']BTW, I've owned two 4x4s, and loved them both, and would love to have another one again. And while we did use the second one for the school runs, I also used it to hump band gear round in, and to get me to places where I fish that would otherwise mean long awkward walks. I couldn't (can't) afford to run a separate normal car for the school run [i]and[/i] a 4x4 for the fishing/load-lugging. So rather than have a normal car that could only cover one of my requirements, I had a 4x4 that could cover both.[/quote]

Using your analogy though, would you use a 4x4 if you only needed to do the school run or transport yourself without any gear that wouldn't fit in an average car?

I guess the car analogy is a good one though since people do buy sports cars and 4x4s to do the shopping and pick up their kids even just for the image.

Thanks, now I know what I'm listening for at gigs, I'll try both.

If you like the MB, why not get it? Worst that can happen is you like the GK rig too.

I voted GK, I own a RB700-II that's currently running into a 210RBH (swapping to a Neo 212 for more volume) and it sounds beautiful. If I could afford the 410RBH and the back surgery I'd need every 6 months from moving it about, I wouldn't even hesitate. All comes down to taste though.

Edit: and be careful, GKs are known for being loud and my 210RBH (which has similar specs to the MB STD 102 HF in that it's 2x10 400w at 8ohms) isn't really loud enough for gigging.

Ok well it was ok in practice. I found that I had to push it a bit so it lost a bit of it's clarity (not enough to be bothered about really, it still sounded great just not quite as good as it did 1 lower on the volume dial). If that was the highest volume I ever used it, I'd probably keep it, but it left me little/no headroom so it's going to go back and I'll be after a Neo 212 probably (though considering a Neo 410 too).

[quote name='Bankai' post='749908' date='Feb 18 2010, 04:06 PM']One other thing.

The head is 350w into 4 ohms. 240w into 8 ohms.
Both cabs are 150 @ 8 ohms.

I'm not too sure on what this works out to as I don't fully understand the relation between impedance and rms. Could someone tell me what the power output would be if I used 1 cab, and what it'd be if I used both. And whether I could only use one without putting the cabs in danger.

Thanks.[/quote]

4 ohms can be divided into 8 ohms with 2 cabs so with both cabs running, you'll be using 350w. With only one cab, it'll be 240w.

The wattage of the amp is higher than the combined wattage of the cabs though (if you're using both) so watch out for overdriving it. It's not a massive difference though, so as long as you're easy on the volume it should be ok.

If you send a message to James Warner Prophecies ( [url="http://www.myspace.com/thejameswarnerprophecies"]http://www.myspace.com/thejameswarnerprophecies[/url] ) we'd be interested in some gig swapping action. I've only recently joined the band so it's probably better to grab one of the others. I'm sure something could be sorted out though. We play a similar style of music (roughly, we have some songs up on our myspace anyway) and we're based in Derby, so it could work out well.

[quote name='discreet' post='749210' date='Feb 18 2010, 01:41 AM']Would be very interested to know how it goes... was thinking about one of these myself.[/quote]

Being honest, I think I'm half just being paranoid. I'm just finding it hard to judge in my home because my old amp was a lot cheaper and only 150w so it used to get muddy at higher volumes while this stays clear so it's not as easy to judge. Plus I'm still getting used to the head, only spent a day or so playing with the bi-amp feature. I need to get used to the boost dial which seems to distort it faster when it's up than with that down and the volume up (like a gain usually, but it seems the wrong way around).

My mind's just pulling me in two directions. It sounds great, but if it's not going to be loud enough, it's better to return it now and spend the extra £50 or so to get a neo 212 (which has an extra 200w and more surface area, plus people say is mind bogglingly loud) than to decide later on that it's not enough and have to fork out for a new cab (which would probably have to replace this one rather than add to it due to space restrictions, so that'd cost me an arm and a leg).

Either way, I'll try and remember to stick up a post tomorrow evening/friday morning and let you know how it is.

Thanks Still not sure about the cab, it doesn't seem loud enough but I won't find out till tomorrow night at band practice. Might end up swapping it for a Neo 212.

The Brice is excellent, it's never really been played in though as I just wanted it as a backup bass. Probably going to sell it soon because I'm after a Warwick (when I recover from buying the amp!) Feels really good for the price though and feels just as good as the Ibanez, just the tone isn't quite there (though I have some EMG45Hz pups to put in it, just never got around to it).

Personally I find that as a rule of thumb, cheap instruments can be every bit as good as expensive ones (see threads on here about Westfields amongst others). Just that the QC isn't there.

With cheap guitars, there seems to be a higher ratio of crap instruments to good ones, with expensive instruments, they're generally usually all pretty much the same quality (as the others in the same line).

I played a RB streamer next to a EBMM ray and preferred the streamer (despite it being over £1000 less). I'd suggest going to try some out and avoiding ordering over the net.