Hidden Gems

[stewblack]

What instrument, pedal, amp or any other piece of your kit has turned out to be an unexpected keeper? 

I was musing on this one at last night's gig after once again eschewing more prestigious amps, preferring instead to take my venerable Behringer BX4500H. 

This really has proved to be the hidden gem in my collection. The eq is hugely flexible, the 'shape' control in particular gives many usable options. Their undeserved reputation for unreliability is given the lie too. This beauty has run and run for decades now and outlasted other more famous brands I've owned. 

Another stick Behringer are beaten with is their wattage claims (let's not get into that here it's surely been done to death) but the 450w they claim on this amp sounds, if anything, quite conservative. It's a powerful beast. 

So, what unconsidered trifles do you want to champion? Zoom B1on better than your Helix? Harley Benton jazz knock your 72 Fender out of the park? Come on let's here it for the bargain basement, the rough diamonds, the secret love of your bass life. 

Edited November 2, 2019 by stewblack

[CamdenRob]

I had one of those in the early 2000s. It was perfectly serviceable and cost peanuts... 

[Lozz196]

My hidden gem is my Tech21 Para Driver. It’s quite like their Bass Driver however has sweepable adjustable mids so more to really sculp the sound. It’s not a bass-specific pedal so maybe why many bassists don’t use it, sticking with the regular BDDI but for me it’s the one but of kit that is essential for my sound now.

Oh, and those Behringer amps, a mate of mine had one and with his 70s Jazz it sounded immense.

[BrunoBass]

I have a J&D jazz bass which I bought a couple of years ago from DV247, for £105. I got it as a back up but it quickly became my main gigging bass. I don’t gig it as much these days as my Geddy Lee sig sees most of the action, but I certainly preferred it to the MIM Jazz Deluxe I had at the time. For £500 I’d have been pleased, for £100 I was / am amazed by how good it is. I’ve put a Fender high mass bridge on it but that’s the only modification I’ve done. 

I bought a Joyo compressor, again as a back up or for home practise but it’s now found it’s way on to my gig pedal board. It’s the best sounding, most transparent, musical compressor I’ve owned and I prefer it to all the expensive boutique comps I’ve owned. £25. Awesome. Both hidden gems that are far superior to more expensive, ‘name’ equivalents.

Edited November 2, 2019 by BrunoBass

[bartelby]

This little Danelectro distortion pedal.

It’s fixed high gain distortion with a, switchable, glitchy octave built in.

It sits an a box for ages, then when I plug it in I wonder why I don’t use it more...

[stewblack]

Which joyo model is it you have Bruno? 

[BrunoBass]

2 hours ago, stewblack said:

Which joyo model is it you have Bruno? 

This is the one, the Dyna Comp - well recommended 😊

[Bassassin]

Just posted a pic of this in a different thread. This bass - a CSL-branded Jazz copy from 1980-ish - was a £60 pawn shop blag back when I was making a few bob buying & selling old MIJ basses & guitars. Bought it to tidy up & flip, but it turned out to be simply the nicest-playing bass I have ever picked up - just feels completely "right". Original pickups were weak so I popped in a pair of DiMarzio Model Js. Bridge, stack knobs & scratchplate were really just for fun, nothing wrong with the originals.

This has been my go-to bass for probably 15 years or so now, and the one I'd keep if all the others had to go.

[Painy]

My Squier VM P5.

Admittedly took a few modifications to the electronics to get the sound where I wanted it but it just has the most comfortable, playable neck of any bass I've owned (which has included enough basses that cost several thousand pounds to make that an impressive statement for a sub £300 instrument). I've also been able to get it to take a far lower action than any other bass I've owned.

 

[BrunoBass]

3 hours ago, BrunoBass said:

I have a J&D jazz bass which I bought a couple of years ago from DV247, for £105. I got it as a back up but it quickly became my main gigging bass. I don’t gig it as much these days as my Geddy Lee sig sees most of the action, but I certainly preferred it to the MIM Jazz Deluxe I had at the time. For £500 I’d have been pleased, for £100 I was / am amazed by how good it is. I’ve put a Fender high mass bridge on it but that’s the only modification I’ve done.

Here ‘tis, next to the MIM Jazz Deluxe I prefer it to.

[TheGreek]

Bass Collection Nanyo and Trace Elliot.

Individually great, together sublime - if you're after that 80s/90s Phat Funk sound you're less than £500 from getting it.

[Maude]

I know I'm upping the price a bit here, but in a world of expensive basses the Yamaha Bex4 punches well above it's price tag. You should be able to pick one up around the £300 mark. 

I'll admit it was vanity that made me want one to start with, the tobacco burst is one of the nicest looking basses made IMO. I'd always got on well with Yamaha basses so bought one without having ever played one and wasn't disappointed, they sound better than they look, and they look amazing. In the same way a Precision does, it's just 'there' in every mix, the P placed soapbar gives it masses of P mid punch and the bridge piezo gives a bit of acoustic air if needed, along with a very good three band EQ the Bex4 is a very capable bass. Fit and finish is up there with, and beyond some, four figure basses. 

Something very, very drastic will have to happen in my life to make me sell mine. 

[machinehead]

That would be my Ibanez Talman TMB100 bass.

These can be had for about £150 brand new and if you didn't know that you'd think you were playing a bass costing wto or three times that.  The PJ pickups are excellent, the preamp is powerful and very useful and it weighs 8lbs!

I now gig mine regularly even though I have several far, far more expensive basses.

Frank.

[uk_lefty]

A vajazzle would be a hidden gem? 

 

 

 

I don't have one. 

[sprocketflup]

Another J&D jazz here, bought from this forum, sea foam green with black hardware. I've slimmed the neck down a little and its a little cracker

 

[stewblack]

33 minutes ago, machinehead said:

That would be my Ibanez Talman TMB100 bass.

These can be had for about £150 brand new and if you didn't know that you'd think you were playing a bass costing wto or three times that.  The PJ pickups are excellent, the preamp is powerful and very useful and it weighs 8lbs!

I now gig mine regularly even though I have several far, far more expensive basses.

Frank.

I fingered one in PMT Bristol when they came out. I liked it a lot I must say. 

[NickD]

The Valeton OC-10. I went through a bunch of octaves, up and down, looking for the right sound for our current project, that would also play nicely with the other pedals I need and be small enough to fit on the board. I knew within a couple of minutes it was the one.

[stewblack]

Just now, NickD said:

The Valeton OC-10. I went through a bunch of octaves, up and down, looking for the right sound for our current project, that would also play nicely with the other pedals I need and be small enough to fit on the board. I knew within a couple of minutes it was the one.

Yes! I traded a Sub n up for the Valeton, People thought I was bonkers but it's perfect

[NickD]

I did the same with the Mooer Tender Octaver, after I'd hacked in the Sub & Up for that... It was a long road.🤣

[machinehead]

I'm going to add a second post.

When my back up amp, a GK MB200, gave up the ghost, I bought a Peavey miniMax 500 as a cheap replacement back up amp.  It cost me £285.  I actually really like it and I've gigged it often enough.

It's things like this and my post above about my Ibanez Talman bass that makes me question why I spend so much money on bass gear.  There are definately loads of cheap gear available that just work well.

Frank.

[Osiris]

11 hours ago, machinehead said:

That would be my Ibanez Talman TMB100 bass.

These can be had for about £150 brand new and if you didn't know that you'd think you were playing a bass costing wto or three times that.  The PJ pickups are excellent, the preamp is powerful and very useful and it weighs 8lbs!

I now gig mine regularly even though I have several far, far more expensive basses.

Frank.

Another vote for the Ibanez Talman from me too, I have the short scale one, a black TMB-30. I was singing its praises on another thread just last night; 

But in defence of the Ibanez Talman, I get that the design is a bit marmite, indeed it's a strong contender for the most ridiculous head stock design of all time, but it's a huge amount of bass for very little money. At least mine is! The neck is a chunky P like affair but feels great, and I say that as someone who prefers something slimmer. The body too is reassuringly sturdy but admittedly weighs as much as a housing estate. Mine has had around £50 in upgrades spent on it; New pickups (the stock P wasn't bad but the bridge was weak, I swapped them out for a matched set I had in my box of odds and sods, no idea where they originated), New pots and Jack, New bridge as the stock was a bent bit of tin foil, really it was very flimsy. Shielded the cavity and rolled the fret board edges and job done .

The bass as a whole is very well made, no sharp fret ends, no gap in the neck pocket, the paint job is flawless, the scratch plate fits perfectly and doesn't look like it was cut by a porpoise. I've seen basses that cost many times more that are not as well built. A few £ and a couple of hours work and I have a bass that I regularly gig alongside a couple of others that each cost 10 times as much. 

[uk_lefty]

Mine would be:

Effects-wise the Boss LMB-3. Dead cheap second hand, probably because they can be quite hard to get a good compression out of but they work wonders on a Fretless when you use the enhance function. Caline power supply thingy for peanuts off ebay, powers loads of pedals and never let me down. Second hand might be cheating a hit but I picked up a Boss Gt10-B for a bargain, it does a billion things more than I ever need, a very sophisticated multi fx, looper, recording interface... The works. It's old tech so I guess someone was upgrading to something smaller, lighter and with a better pc interface but it's a very, very serious bit of kit that I can see lasting forever. 

Bass-wise... I bang on enough about my Fretless Kramer but it really was a steal at 250 quid brand new in 2002. 

[Osiris]

I'm not really an effects guy but I do insist on having a compressor on at all times. I recently picked up a used but immaculate GLX bass limiter pedal off eBay for a tenner. It's a blatant clone of the Boss bass limiter, of which I'd used one for years, so I was expecting a slightly noisier version but as it was bought for messing around with at home any background noise wasn't an issue. It not only performs as well as the Boss (which is highly regarded on Ovnilab) as a compressor and limiter, but it actually has less inherent noise. The Boss has a slight dip in the mids when activated and that dip sounds a little more pronounced on the GLX to my ears but in a good way, it helps add clarity through my mid rich practice cab. The enhancer control is much more usable than the Boss which is unusable beyond around 10 o'clock as it's so noisy but the GLX will happily give you more high end sparkle without too much hiss at higher settings, although admittedly I only use a little myself. The controls are identical and in same order as Boss, and have a reassuring amount of resistance when turning them. It's housed in a solid metal casing. No idea what this would have cost new, it looks like they're not in production any longer, but it was presumably cheaper and easily out guns the pedal that it has ripped off.

But based on @BrunoBass's post above I'm intrigued by the cheap and cheerful Joyo Dyna compressor pedal 😀

[mikel]

12 hours ago, machinehead said:

That would be my Ibanez Talman TMB100 bass.

These can be had for about £150 brand new and if you didn't know that you'd think you were playing a bass costing wto or three times that.  The PJ pickups are excellent, the preamp is powerful and very useful and it weighs 8lbs!

I now gig mine regularly even though I have several far, far more expensive basses.

Frank.

+1. Awesome instrument, without even mentioning how little it cost. Unless I was just lucky and got a gem.

[mcnach]

On 02/11/2019 at 09:36, stewblack said:

What instrument, pedal, amp or any other piece of your kit has turned out to be an unexpected keeper? 

I was musing on this one at last night's gig after once again eschewing more prestigious amps, preferring instead to take my venerable Behringer BX4500H. 

This really has proved to be the hidden gem in my collection. The eq is hugely flexible, the 'shape' control in particular gives many usable options. Their undeserved reputation for unreliability is given the lie too. This beauty has run and run for decades now and outlasted other more famous brands I've owned. 

Another stick Behringer are beaten with is their wattage claims (let's not get into that here it's surely been done to death) but the 450w they claim on this amp sounds, if anything, quite conservative. It's a powerful beast. 

So, what unconsidered trifles do you want to champion? Zoom B1on better than your Helix? Harley Benton jazz knock your 72 Fender out of the park? Come on let's here it for the bargain basement, the rough diamonds, the secret love of your bass life. 

 

That was my first amplifier!!!

And you're right, sounded good and was reliable, and very powerful.