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Short-scale, narrow body depth...won't be as loud as a jumbo-body acoustic. The Luminlay markers are nice. I like the 12th-fret marker. Other than that... https://youtu.be/JoJLbabnPc0?si=asu40LuFxC2qZQ_Z

I use an EHX Bass Soul Food to do just this. For me it's an always-on, very low gain pedal. Just there to put a bit of hair on things. I think there's one currently for sale on the marketplace for not very much.

Hey peeps, I recently bought the genzler Magellan 350 combo. Really really like the kit. I would love to add a little tube like warmth to the sound. I play a pbass ash with maple fretboard. Style of music ranges from soul, funk to jazz. I only play fingerstyle. jeff genzler suggested the genzler 4 on the floor pedal which has gotten great reviews. New they are like 200 (out of my price range) so I put a wanted post on the pedal but no luck as yet. I’m looking for possible alternatives to add some creamy low gain warmth. Something that all always be on. I suffer from analysis paralysis lol. Not really a pedal person at all. I’ve got a ditto x2 looper on the way which I’ll use with it. Possibly a tuner and a compressor. suggestions?

There isn't really a clear "I want to play bass" moment for me. It was an impulse that just bubbled up to the surface from the teenage primordial soup of dumb ideas, anxieties and dreams. When I was 14 or 15, a few of my friends at school started to play the guitar, as did my older brother. I thought they seemed really cool and wanted to join in. My dad would probably let me play his old bass, I knew that, but I was ultimately too chicken to try. At the time, I thought of myself as unteachably inept at any sort of physical skill – I was crap at sports, a risk to myself and others in a workshop and had displayed a spectacular lack of musical ability throughout my childhood. I figured trying to play an instrument again would just be setting myself up for embarrassing failure. At around the same time, oddly, I also developed a sort of nagging and largely irrational anxiety about the prospect of learning to drive. Like, I was aware that this was a thing – a physical skill – I'd need to do, and I was concerned that I would turn out to be just as bad at that as I had been at everything else. I started thinking that perhaps I should try to learn to do something (play an instrument? juggle? knit?) to reassure myself that I was capable of learning something new. The final piece of the puzzle came on a day when I was off school and bored. I was playing 1080 Snowboarding for the N64, and set a time on the "Crystal Lake" run that was genuinely world-beating. Well, perhaps not world-beating, but definitely fast enough that I could write into the magazine if I wanted, get my name in print. I sat there, looking at my character celebrating on the screen, looking out of the window at the sunny summer's day I was avoiding, and had a sudden urge to do something – anything – more productive than this. Something that might make people think I was cool, something that girls might think was cool. I went upstairs and pulled my dad's old bass out of a cupboard. I downloaded the tab for "Dammit" by Blink-182 and started awkwardly plucking the notes. With help from my brother and my dad, I beat my expectations and got surprisingly good surprisingly fast. Haven't stopped playing since. It never did help me get any girls though, and I never did learn to drive.

Thank you! - I'd agree, there's definitely a difference between the stock pickups and the new E4W's. There's some really nice depth to them over passive, obviously extra output and a really clean and sweet top end. I really like them and Nords are without a doubt a great pickup, no knocking. I feel my bass sound was more controlled with the EMGs.

No, you haven't - gifts you are involved in any way with the choosing of (which you have basically confessed to above by announcing your prior knowledge of the bass in question) are a fail - so you have the choice of failing this year or next, depending upon when it becomes yours.

I came close. Despite being the proud owner of more than my fair share of signature basses, I managed to resist this one....and believe me, I did seriously consider it.

Agree, I bought one but returned it, nothing wrong with it, very nice bass actually, but although I bought it to be a Mustang that sounded like a Precision ultimately that was why I returned it, I found that I just prefer my Mustangs to sound like Mustangs. But for anyone wanting Precision sounds from a short scale bass with Jazz width neck then these are hard to beat, the one I had played beautifully with the factory set up & stock strings.

Hi, Not going to be of much help but i can see the output from rectifier is +45V and -45V so perhaps secondary winding output of transformer has to be in such region. As that is what feeds rectifier. I don’t remember much from college (studied electronics extensively) but i can imagine two wires on input (220V) so them three should be related to output.. See diyaudio website, people there design their own amps and perhaps someone there could help on how to go about sourcing appropriate transformer for your amp.

The changes suggested will all improve the bass in terms of quality, but as above a good fret level & change of nut will make it be able to be set up to play at its best. That coupled with the pickup change will get you a bass that plays great and sounds it too. One thing to consider though, quite often Squier put 500k pots in the electrics, resulting in a quite toppy sound, sometimes just swapping those to 250k can bring a real change to the existing pickups. Might be worth a try.

I might get my wife to buy that Epiphone and save it for me for New Year, but let me borrow it this year. Technically that would keep me in this year, and should be exempt from next year as it would've been bought the previous year. Have I just found the perfect workaround? 😁

I got into classical music with my school orchestra playing double (contra)bass. The school music teacher was a closet jazz fan who encouraged me to explore improvisation techniques. This was great for my musical development, but didn’t help my street cred one bit. Most of my mates at school were into rock music………and I wanted to be in a band. So, I acquired a beaten up Burns Jazz bass and began playing it in various local rock bands. Most weren't that good and folded through common adolescent hot headedness. Feeling a bit disillusioned, I auditioned for a cruise ship touring big band on double bass. Dang me if I didn’t get the role and then scared myself xxitless when I realised what journey I was on (literally and metaphorically). I have to say that playing three sets a day and reading the dots was a great leveller for a naïve gap year student. Interestingly, my dear parents were diametrically opposed to my activity at the time. I was pursuing a dream, playing bass with serious musicians. I guess that I quickly learned that living the dream was hard work and not all I had imagined. Went back to serious studies (not music), family, and life in general with little time for bass. I never lost the passion for performance based music and began again playing bass in my 50’s. I had kept a 70’s P bass and thrashed that in various cover bands over the years. I still get a huge buzz from playing bass, especially gigs, festivals etc. My musical tastes have certainly evolved, and being able to sight-read has certainly helped me explore different types of styles. I am still poor at slap though….and proud of it. As far as basses, I’ve been through a passive-active-passive journey and up a 4-5-6-4 string cul-de-sac. The first serious electric bass was the Burns; the latest was a Yamaha BB1200. I guess there have been about a hundred instruments in between. Some are still with me………as well as the passion.

Well spotted lol 😜

Unfortunately the slant is so slight that I can’t really make that argument 😂 it did cross my mind though

Hi there. Sorry I completely forgot about this. Here's the voltage selector, looks to be on 120/240 for mine.

This journey, into bass playing? What made you pick up that first bass at the start of this long and winding road? There seemed to be a lot of bass driven music around, growing up in the late '70's and early '80's, no matter the genre, though thanks to an older brother, I heard a lot of hard rock & metal, Sabbath, Hawkwind, Purple, etc. Hawkwind's "Space Ritual" stands out as the "wow" moment, then discovering Rush and others. Tried convincing my parents i needed a bass, but it wasn't til I was 16 that I got a Kay P bass and dodgy amp from a bloke that worked with my Dad... Do you still have the same fire and enthusiasm? Do you still love it? Fits and starts. Still love to play when I get around to it, but getting around to it takes a bit more these days, as I'm not in a band at the moment. What has changed along the way? Your taste in music, taste in basses? Taste in music has waxed & waned, visiting numerous rabbit holes, but still mainly hard rock & metal. What was the first bass? And what’s the latest? First: Kay P bass. Current: 4003 Always lusted after a Rich, took me 20 years before I finally bought one, but it was like coming home. Love them.

But Liszt was also a good looking man who knew how to dress stylishly. Something I'm not detecting in any of the "bass virtuosos" being discussed here.