tauzero Posted May 25 Share Posted May 25 Quote Conclusion - if I'd not already got the EHB1265, my 2024 gear abstinence may have come to an abrupt end. If you want a multiscale headless, it has to be an EHB (or a Boden for £3k). If you want a single-scale instrument then the Cort offers similar quality and a similar feel for half the money, and no irritating locking jack socket. I might yet get one when they start popping up on the second-hand market for £400. That was what I said after trying the Cort Space out at Bass Direct. One came up on Gumtree for a sum not unadjacent to £400, although I had a 280 mile round trip to pick it up. So today I went on that journey, braving the imbeciles on the M11 and A14, and picked up the black Space. The seller didn't get on with 5-strings, so was selling it after just a month or so. I'll be able to do a proper back to back comparison between the Space and the Ibanez EHB1265MS with added Aguilar pickup goodness. 16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLowDown Posted May 25 Share Posted May 25 (edited) Good job! Seems like a pretty decent bass 👍. I noticed them at Thomann recently, they seem quite new. Edited May 25 by TheLowDown Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted May 26 Author Share Posted May 26 2 hours ago, TheLowDown said: Good job! Seems like a pretty decent bass 👍. I noticed them at Thomann recently, they seem quite new. They were launched early in 2024. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodwind Posted May 26 Share Posted May 26 18 hours ago, tauzero said: That was what I said after trying the Cort Space out at Bass Direct. One came up on Gumtree for a sum not unadjacent to £400, although I had a 280 mile round trip to pick it up. So today I went on that journey, braving the imbeciles on the M11 and A14, and picked up the black Space. The seller didn't get on with 5-strings, so was selling it after just a month or so. I'll be able to do a proper back to back comparison between the Space and the Ibanez EHB1265MS with added Aguilar pickup goodness. Looks fantastic! Looking forward to hearing how you find it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassApprentice Posted May 26 Share Posted May 26 With Peach Guitars selling these new below RRP and now the first adopters selling for that price, these must easily be one the best value instruments going. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crazycloud Posted May 27 Share Posted May 27 On 26/05/2024 at 03:03, tauzero said: I'll be able to do a proper back to back comparison between the Space and the Ibanez EHB1265MS with added Aguilar pickup goodness. I'm interested in this comparo too. I lusted after the 1265 when it came out but stupidvirus poverty meant I couldn't afford one then and now they're 2x the price of the Space (before the Aguilars are added). The Space really has my interest, but after getting an Ultra Ash 5 recently, I'm finding it hard to justify another Cort 5 - but I could string it E-C... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geek99 Posted May 27 Share Posted May 27 I fancy another bash at five string (it’s been ten years and I’ve forgotten how terrible I was at it last time) once they pop up at sensible second prices … 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted May 30 Author Share Posted May 30 Being very under the weather over the last few days, I've only just felt up to starting on the comparison. I'd only given the Cort a very quick play through an amp when I bought it to make sure it made a noise. When I finally plugged it in and started playing it with the blend in the centre position, it was really thin and nasal and low volume. Moving to either the bridge or neck pickup resulted in a vastly improved tone. Having once owned a Burns, the sound reminded me of the Wild Dog setting - out of phase pickups. So I will have to delve in and reverse one pickup's connections to the blend control. That's one for Repairs and Technical. Meanwhile, the other thing I wanted to compare was the neck profiles. They seem very similar, and I got the bendy ruler thing out (on the left in the picture) to try and draw them. They are very similar - the shoulders on the Cort are very slightly wider than the Ibanez. I took the profile midway between the 6th and 7th frets as that's where the frets on the Ibanez would be perpendicular to the strings. Excuse my writing, it's hereditary as my mother was a GP. One other test remains to be completed - the EHB reaches at least the minimum standards of cat comfort, the Space has yet to be tested. I shall attack the wiring on the Cort shortly. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted May 30 Author Share Posted May 30 Wiring fixed, a couple of terminals on the blend pot had shorted out. It's quite possible that they weren't in contact before and the 140 mile journey along the goat tracks that pass for a motorway system in England had got them moving very slightly. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted May 31 Author Share Posted May 31 I thought it was fixed, it's a bit strange what's up with it. Still, I can fill in other parts of the Cort Space versus Ibanez EHB1265MS comparison. Headstocks both use clamping screws, meaning double ball ends aren't used. Necks have very similar profiles - see picture above. EHB uses Bart BH2 pickups as standard (mine has Aguilar DCBs) and standard Ibanez 3-band preamp with stacked treble/bass, sweepable mids with stacked control and active/passive toggle switch Space uses Bart MK-1 pickups and standard Cort 3-band preamp with separate treble, mid, and bass, and active/passive switch with push-pull on the volume control EHB has a scalloped body to allow access to the tuners. Saddle height is adjusted by hex head screws on each side of the saddle. Intonation is adjusted by releasing a clamp screw on the bridge saddle and adjusting the position with a screw on the tuner. Space has a recess for the tuners which makes access slightly easier. Saddle height is adjusted by hex head grub screws on each side of the saddle insert. Intonation is adjusted by sliding the bridge saddle after releasing the grub screw just behind the insert, then tightening the grub screw up again. I'll do some sound samples when the pickups are sorted. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted June 14 Author Share Posted June 14 Just thought I'd add to the ongoing saga. Bartolini at least replied to me to say that the MK1s were merely designed by Mr Bartolini to give him a bit of retirement money, and Cort turned down their offer of supporting them. Cort haven't replied. I think, but can't be sure, that one of the parts of the internally split pickup has been wired out of phase. However, unlike Bartolini humbuckers, the separate windings are joined internally, so it can't be reversed. However, @Steff had a vast selection of pickups that he was looking for swaps for, including a pair of MK5CBCs that Bartolini had said would be a good upgrade, and I had a pair of Bart BH2s from the aforementioned EHB1265MS that he was interested in, so we did the swap. Stupidly I forgot to consider that they came out of a fan fret and so were 6-string rather than 5-string size, but he did have a bass with the right sized cavities and liked the sound, so all was good there. As the MK5CBCs are humbuckers and the coil windings are separately available, I'm going to make them switchable between series and parallel. Just waiting for some mini toggle switches which have a long enough thread to fit on the 6mm thick control cavity top. More news next week, I should think. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steff Posted June 14 Share Posted June 14 I can’t believe you’ve had the pickups for 2 weeks and you haven’t tried them yet, I had mine in within like 2 minutes 😂… That is strange re your MK1’s. If they sound full individually when you pan to the bridge or neck, it means the pickups themselves aren’t faulty. If they sound really thin and weak, out of phase when blended, then try reversing one of the pickups’ wires. Shielding to blend pot and the green or red to ground. That will immediately show if they were out of phase. One thing to consider is that Bartolini use different blend pots which at centre give you about 75% volume of each pickup. I actually find that useful because this way when using either pickup solo, there’s no volume drop. However if Cort have copied that circuit then you might experience some volume loss but it shouldn’t be extreme. At the end, when you get tired of this bass, I’d be happy to take it off your hands 😂 seen one for sale on Facebook market recently and got intrigued but yours looks better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted June 14 Author Share Posted June 14 It wasn't the entire pickup out of phase. The B, E, and A strings are out of phase, the D and G strings aren't. I'd described this in the Repairs and Technical section, forgot I hadn't described the symptoms here. The MK1 pickups are rather like potted up Precision pickups, one magnet and coil covering 3 strings and the other covering 2, so I think that somehow in the manufacturing process the coils on one pickup had been wired incorrectly. I also needed to wire the pickups up with 4-core wire to allow me to switch between serial and parallel, so I needed to order that, and order mini toggle switches, then the first mini toggle switches were too short threaded to use with the 6mm thick front. Just waiting for the other toggle switches to come. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steff Posted June 14 Share Posted June 14 Ooh yep that sounds like an internal issue indeed. Does it also happen when you turn the blend all the way towards that pickup? I’ve had similar issue when mistakingly putting one dual and one quad coil together. Sounds like one of your magnets is reversed and phases out when blended with the other pickup. Can easily be tested with a magnet or another pickup - if one of the pickups pulls on one side and repels on the other, and the other pickup only pulls on both sides (repels on both sides if you reverse your testing magnet) then they’ve dropped one of the magnets in with reversed polarity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted June 14 Author Share Posted June 14 The pickups are this form (from https://bartolini.net/product-category/bass-pickups/bass-soapbars/originalsplits/) Checking with a magnet, they are both the same, as shown. So it's not the magnets that are wrong, it's the internal wiring. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steff Posted June 14 Share Posted June 14 If the internal wiring is out of phase you won’t be getting just half of the pickup going quiet, but both coils. It has to be something else. Again does it do it when you solo the pickup? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted June 14 Author Share Posted June 14 Both pickups solo are fine. I think the issue is that one of the two split coils has been wired incorrectly, so the strings going over the blue bit in the picture are passing over two sections of pickup in phase, while the strings going over the red bit are going over the sections of pickup which are out of phase. Imagine a dual-P bass where one of the segments of pickup has been wired the wrong way round. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted June 20 Author Share Posted June 20 The toggle switches got here. I connected them up as per Bartolini's wiring diagram and (without buttoning everything up, just in case) tested it. Silence. Sticking my finger on the series/parallel switches gave buzzes. Putting a scope across each coil of the pickups showed a signal so I thought I'd check the signal across the output from the switch and realised that I hadn't connected the ground side of the pickups to ground. Well, that explained that. I sorted that out and now I have sound. Obviously I can't now say how the MK1 compares with the BH2s in the Ibanez because the Ibanez has Aguilars replacing the BH2s and the Cort has MK5CBCs replacing the MK1s. However, I will say that the MK1s when I was trying them had a balanced and full sound, not lacking anywhere. Not sure why they have a bad reputation, other than snobbery about made in USA versus made elsewhere. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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