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stewblack

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14 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Would think the aguilars probably cost more than the TMB35!

Exactly my thoughts. I bet it sounds incredible but my simple rule is not to spend more on upgrading components than the bass cost originally. I broke that rule recently on a Bronco and got taught a lesson when I came to sell it. 
 

I can see it is tempting with the TMB35 because I can’t think of another decent short scale 5 string for less than £1,000. It might be argued that spending £400, or so on upgrading the main components (bridge, pickups, machine heads, electrics) leaves you with a fantastic bass that still cost you less than the alternatives.
 

Anyway, with the way string prices are going, it might be impossible to honour my rule when a string change is needed! I am still going to try though.

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55 minutes ago, Obrienp said:

Exactly my thoughts. I bet it sounds incredible but my simple rule is not to spend more on upgrading components than the bass cost originally. I broke that rule recently on a Bronco and got taught a lesson when I came to sell it.

 

Agreed, I know there is the sense that if it gets you a nice bass, and I can see that, but for me, the P pickup is actually pretty good, the J just adds a bit of bite to it (which it doesn't really need) and if I was going to spend a load I would probably go for lighter machineheads, just to help with the balance, or maybe even a pickguard as the one it has isn't that appealing!

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20 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Would think the aguilars probably cost more than the TMB35!

talmabtmb35pickups.thumb.jpg.00aed12ceaf2b72834b050b920cf4433.jpg

After the work and new scratchplate it was more, but totally worth it for final outcome in my view. Plus it was cheaper than the $10k Fodera mini MG I dream about :)

 

Doing this led me to realise I was sold on 5 string short scale format and now went for the 1005sms and really tempted to go Aguilar again for this bass too.

 

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2 hours ago, Mikey D said:

Doing this led me to realise I was sold on 5 string short scale format and now went for the 1005sms and really tempted to go Aguilar again for this bass too.

 

A lot of people on this forum have done that but it is an expensive option. Maybe not so much if you are buying in $ but this side of the pond you are looking at £300 for that size Aguilars and which ones? Do you stick with the DCB type or go for something that sounds single coil like the Super Splits.

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On 05/02/2022 at 20:34, Woodinblack said:

 

The bridge pickup of the TMB35 is actually pretty noisy and not great, but it balances nicely with the other pickup. I gigged it and got good comments.

At the risk of making people really ticked off with this thread, I think I may have sussed why that jazz pickup is so noisy on the TMB35, at least if mine is typical. This is what it looks like inside. No shielding at all in the jazz cavity but strangely they chose to paint the cavity for the precision with graphite paint (pretty sloppy job) and even earthed the cavity (I had removed the earth wire before taking the pic). You would think, if they were only going to shield one cavity, it would have been the one for the jazz pickup!

 

The second photograph is my “after” state with copper shielding in place. I will run an earth wire from each pickup up cavity to a central ground. I have also installed the Fender high mass bridge unit. I had to drill new mount holes but fortunately there was no overlap with the existing ones, so it should be firmly anchored despite only having 4 screws. 
 

The next job is to wire up the push/pull, blend and tone potentiometers, and a new output jack.

 

 

B65B48AF-9D8E-4FA9-938A-1D666182437B.jpeg

08D93E4B-DC14-4008-93FB-6831B5814CFC.jpeg

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On 10/02/2022 at 20:32, Woodinblack said:

The after looks good, and yes a bit weird that they only did one pickup, both or neither would have been expected.

interested to hear how it sounds when it's done

Well, it sounds super quiet on idle….now. The push/pull pot didn’t arrive until Saturday morning and I wired it up in a hurry so I could catch the 6 Nations matches live. Reassembled, I found the volume control was working backwards and it was buzzing like hell. A more measured dismantle and rewire on Sunday morning fixed both issues. It is now really quiet, even with the jazz on solo and more surprisingly, with the pickups in series mode. That is without touching the strings too. I also think the jazz sounds a bit stronger than before but that might be wishful thinking.
 

It turned out that the new Fender high mass bridge wasn’t making contact with the earth wire in its standard position, so I extended it (without insulation) to one of the mounting screw holes and put some copper tape over it for good measure.

 

I must have used about a meter of cloth covered wire (I am old school) to earth everything, top and bottom of the pots and onto the shielding tape in every cavity. I can recommend Northwest Guitars cloth covered wire, which I tried for the first time. It may be a bit more expensive than other sources but it is pre-tinned, so really easy to solder.

 

All the controls I used were Alpha but I was a little disappointed that the push/pull and blend controls had mini pots, whereas the tone is a full sized pot (like a CTS). This is not clear when you order them but I guess if they had full sized pots on top, they might be too bulky. They seem to work very well and the blend has a centre detent. I also liked the tag on the bottom of the push/pull that means you don’t have to try to solder the earth wires onto the side of the pot. In fact, it took a female spade connector, which made it easy to bring together multiple ground wires.

 

That’s the end of upgrades for now, I hope. Now to gig it!

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On 08/02/2022 at 21:13, gafbass02 said:

I briefly owned this stunner, but returned it when I realised it really was 99% identical to my older SR1200, just prettier. It was waaay too much money to justify keeping for such a marginal change. One day I’ll own one again though I hope. 

638E58F8-37D8-4843-91C0-D1618FBC792E.jpeg


 

Is this finish from the factory?? Haven’t seen this before. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just found this thread after a long time off the site so I thought I'd share my pair of Ibanez basses, my long serving SR600 and my much more recent EHB1505ms. Having never played a multi-scale before I was a bit apprehensive about the EHB but I adjusted almost instantly and its slight shorter scale of 35"-33" suited me perfectly!1058953400_IbanezEHB.thumb.jpg.16573eb7aad862e7cca381ff74714c63.jpgIMG_0965.thumb.JPG.f6fbd5cecf528b550aba8b75b6a6d016.JPG

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