All Activity

I saw a converted one (not aBBNE2) the other day with block markers which I previously thought made it impossible to do, but obvs isn’t. I know two luthiers, one now only does his own brand stuff, and the other I not sure if it is something he would take on. I normally do all my own repairs etc but I have never pulled frets out.

Do it. Some people might say that a bass that was originally fretted won't make an ideal fretless, but as long as you get a decent tech to do the work it'll be fine. It's really just a matter of removing the frets, filling the gaps with some kind of wood veneer, replacing the nut with a lower one, adjusting the bridge and perhaps putting some kind of finish onto the board. It'll also be completely reversible if in the future you decide to go back to fretted. I'm sure someone will mention lines getting in the way/distracting you and fret markers being in the 'wrong' place for a fretless, but with daily practice this will become a non-issue, and in the long run will help with intonation, especially beyond the 12th fret. Just had a look at Yamaha's catalogue and the bass in question already has an ebony fretboard, so you wouldn't need to worry about having that finished, which makes things easier.

If you're more after AlNico than Ceramic, DiMarzio AREA J might be worth a look. I had a DP248 once (well, I actually still have that one but no bass it would fit in). Can't say anything bad about it. It sounded like a J-pickup in the bridge position.

It takes some people ten years to become an overnight success... Agree with all you have said in your larger post. My day job has nothing to do with music, music is a hobby to help me do something different from resolving complex IT and management issues. It's cheaper than Astrophotography so I reckon thats a bonus Rob

The EMGs are a lot of that sound. It's a Reverse P and a J. The placement of them is further "south" than many "conventional" basses. This means that because of the placement of the bass coil of the P, it is picking up the strings much further back than a non-reverse P in a conventional more "north" placement. Then we have the preamp in that Spector, which is a vintage HAZ unit, that will be working with the EMGs in a way that gives the signature Spector sound. The HAZ sounds liked it's dimed on that isolated track. Dimed HAZ pre-amps have a sound that is specific to that circuit design, very distinctive and unique to that combination. It depends how far down the rabbit hole you want to go but even if you had Mike Starr's exact bass, rig and settings, you'd get close but you'd still sound like you playing it. When Mike Starr was recording that bass line, he was trying to get as good a sound as he could with the gear he had (on a decent record company budget) and he'd have been influenced by his favourite players, his band mates, the engineer etc. That iconic sound is the result of a lot of inputs from various people. It's good to explore and dissect some of your favourite bass tones, we can learn a lot but we have to understand the constraints we have with the gear we've got. And, when we play as part of a band (whether live or recorded), the sound we get sits as part of a mix and a lot of the detail that us bassists obsess about can be lost, or just isn't important to the audience. I've seen many great/legend bass players playing their own iconic bass parts live on different basses through different rigs and getting a different tone and it's all good. On the complete flip side of that, I take great pleasure in "Spectorising" bass parts in my covers band. Sometimes I think, "how can I make this sound as Spector as possible and get away with it?". I'd also say that if you get creative, an Ibanez GSR200 and a Zoom B1x together are capable of producing more good bass sounds than any normal person could use in a lifetime. So many bassists have had a career on one pickup bass with minimal effects. You've got a vast palette available. Go explore!

I have an EMG J set and EMG 3 band EQ in my Sandberg TT4. I do like it but I fancy a change to something passive and less hifi. It also currently has the ABC control that means when both pickups are full you don't get that classic jazz mid dip - often useful but also not entirely traditional jazz like. Whatever I get must be humcancelling though. What is good these days? I noticed from @Kingbassist rig video that many pit pros are using noiseless Barts but I can't tell what model - and there are a few choices - any ideas? Or maybe the noiseless Nordstrand? The Aguilar DCB set looks good - but it's very expensive. I'm looking for something vintage, deep and plummy that works well just with a passive tone control. Another thing I really like is when polepieces are flat with the top of the plastic - not protruding at all so if I do have them very close to the strings I don't get any string on pole clicking. So covered pole recommendations are good too. All recommendations welcome!

Don't Hang Up - 10cc

Shielding the whole of the pickguard, not the cavity, can take out a bit of treble on a strat or similar, and I like a real bite to my guitar tone (Martin Miller style) so that’s why I did it in strips as minimum as possible. can’t see why it would be any different on bass? And again I like the jazz bass high mid growl so if I had to earth the pick guard I would do it as minimalist as poss.

Do it. Onwards!

"I hear you telephone thing, listening in..."

Thank you so much! I wrote the Nathan East inspired track to go with my demo video and, it seemed fitting to use a 6 string headless as Nathan has one too. Love that bass!

A while back I bought a heavily discounted BBNE2 and traded a multtiscale 6 string Ibanez I wasn’t getting in with. now I am all about fretless and have had this irritating idea that won’t leave my brain about having the Yamaha de-fretted. Am I crazy? Would you do it?If so are there any decent luthiers in Suffolk you would trust to do it, or should I just leave it well alone for when I am back in love with fretted again. ???? Every time I pick up the Sire V10 I wish it was the fretless Yamaha and I don’t think Mr East even plays a fretless unless it is an upright. Aaarrrggghhhhh!!!

Yes, I agree and that is exactly why I'm saying it's a huge problem. The issue is not that people are not working hard enough now - if anything, people are working harder than ever before, for far less reward. But the AI / social media platforms you use to plough all that hard work into are the same platforms that are making their money from putting you out of work and making you broke. In 2026, everything you post on insta, TikTok, Facebook etc is being used to feed generative AI. When you use those platforms, your license agreement tells you that. The generative AI fed by those platforms floods the internet with worthless junk which is a facsimile of everyone's content, and that devalues your actual work to zero. It's a trap, and there is no getting away from it without moving away from the algorithm chase model and the platforms that provide it.

Shielding the whole cavity can be bad for tone? Interesting...never heard that one before. Can you elaborate? Kind of makes sense but I'm no expert with electrics ☺️

Very much this and I think it is down to size of the format. This is what I miss about vinyl. Poring over the artwork of some albums, especially gatefolds, and finding some small detail that you’d missed before (difficult with cassette or CD, as they’re so much smaller) is something you can’t replicate without that 12” size. Regarding sound quality, I had a conversation, many years ago, with a colleague about hifi gear. We came to the conclusion that non musicians were more likely to spend more money on their setups, compared to those who played an instrument. Players being more concerned about the quality of the music, rather than the quality of the reproduction, that and the likelihood of many musicians to have impaired hearing anyway.

Just going back to my mate, he used to (no pun) wax lyrical about different elements he could add to his system to make it sound (subjectively) better. I can recall speaker isolation systems (spikes, then this ball bearing/cup system). Crocodile clips (on speaker cable) attached to curtains, speaker cones made 'from the same stuff that they coat the tiles on the space shuttle'. Power supplies. Power amps. Different cartridges for different music ('Yeah, this one us better for reggae.'). He would say regularly that achieving 85% of musical audio fidelity was cheap and simple, the big money is in the final 15%, which I suppose is where his business model lies.