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Probably a bit more practical though: the classic warning sign

I can see this thread going on for ages...

Just before Xmas I bought a set of Hipshots for my MIM Precision. The bass itself is great, but the tuners weren`t so, and as I`m going to be using this bass on a few overseas gigs this year (I ain`t flying with my US basses) wanted the tuners to be as good as I could get them. Reviews read, Hipshot HB7s ordered as a direct fit on MIMs. Except they weren`t, all screw-holes lined up ok, but the supplied ferrules/bushes were too small, and the Hipshot tuning pegs rattled in the Fender ones. So I e-mailed Hipshot asking where I could purchase a set of these, and they said just send us your address and we`ll put a set out to you, no charge. Received them today, fit like a glove. Quality customer service imo, so a big thumbs up to them. And have to say, the tuners are a real quality bit of kit, much smoother than the stock Fender ones.

That's not the words, it happened to me in Venezuela where a friend invited me to dinner with his family and at the table I asked his youngest sister if I could have a spoon and suddenly a deafening silence and after receiving what seem like an eternity of stares I asked if I said something wrong...

I was close, I said '92!

Lana Del Ray is just awful, I don't understand how that rubbish exists. Not a legal viewpoint. The melody of the song, the inflection in the vocals, the misery, it's a "tribute" to Creep undoubtedly. I would rather Radiohead issued a complete cease and desist against her career.

I guess for 99% of gigs you won't be sustaining notes on the bass guitar for very long, so fair enough. Personally I like to play some weird stinky poo and sustain is often essential

Update. A full refund has been issued with no comment. I should receive in 6 days. So a happyish ending :-)

+1 To the OP - In my experience a bass that sustains well usually sounds better than average on the rest of the notes. Sustain is essential to have but that doesn't mean that you have to use it on every note, but if you need it and the bass can't sustain then it's not a good instrument.

Problem solved on the Line 6 forum. Go to command centre and select one of the 'lightning bolts' at the top. Then just enter all the midi details that correspond with the channel and patch of the Strymon, save and job done. Each time I solve a problem like this I marvel at how good the Helix is. Probably the best designed piece of kit I have ever used.

For me its a great tool for dynamics. Letting it ring sounds great, but also adds to a sudden stop of silence. You may not notice if if you had decent basses. I had a usa precision which had loads of sustain, then i moved to a cheapo jazz copy and the difference was amazingly bad! The sustain couldnt even last a bar never mind any longer.

Great question. I think it’s just another tool for us to use depending on the music your producing. I find it really useful in a lot of the Fretless stuff I play. It lends itself to using sustain as the very nature of Fretless is the ambiguity of the note. The “left hand wobble” it has its place

I listened to them this morning and have to agree. But then again supposedly Radiohead were sued for ripping off 'All I Need Is The Air That I Breathe' by The Hollies, so they haven't really got a leg to stand on!

I'm supposed to be working on a grant so that I have a job next year, but I decided to make another coffee and distract myself a little and tell you all a story. Grab a mug, it's still warm. Last August, I bought my girlfriend a bass. She's a beginner, but very much into bass. She already had a bass, but there were a number of things she didn't like enough about it. She of course has tried all of mine, and she cannot really describe to me what it is she likes... but when she feels it, she knows. I did all I could to that bass to make it play and sound nice, but it was not quite right. From time to time she shows me pictures of basses she's seen on shop windows etc. But one day in June she shows me this one. She really liked this one. How do I know she really liked it? Because this time, she went in, and asked to try it, and played with it with other people around! She's extremely shy to play in front of anybody. She first loved the way it looked, but then... it felt great, it was very light and comfy, and she was seriously considering going back to buy it after pay day. I didn't show any interest beyond the usual, and didn't ask about the shop but I recognised it. Next opportunity I got, I went to the shop, tried the bass and bought it. Lucky for me, it was not a Wal, but a Squier P/J, Standard range. It was very nice, it just needed to be cleaned up a bit and new strings etc. She never mentioned the bass again... and I thought I had made a mistake and she really didn't want it that much. Then I smiled "cool, I like this bass, I'll keep it if she doesn't want it!" Her birthday was in August... and I gave it to her. She cried. I thought I was in trouble... especially when she yelled at me "I hate you!"... but then she laughed. She said she avoided looking into that shop until she got paid, just in case it was gone. After she got paid she went and... no bass. She went inside, looked around... nope, it was sold. She was very disappointed, and kicked herself for having waited... and decided to push it away from her mind because it was upsetting to have found one bass she really liked everything about and she let it pass. Ok, phew... so she liked the bass. But she didn't like the strings I put. I put some Rotosounds I had, as she had not tried those, and I figured they would do until she finds the strings she likes... and the search for new strings started seriously. We tried a few on her other bass, but she didn't seem to have much of a preference. However, this bass was different for her. She has finally decided she knows what strings she wants to try. Over the past few months I've tried various types on various basses, and she's tested them all, plus I have a few others that I've accumulated in the past couple of years... and she has decided that there was one set of strings that she really really really liked above anything else. Labella white nylon tapewound strings, which is incidentally my most expensive set. It couldn't be the £11 Warwick red label ones, could it!? But it was a good choice. What a difference did they make!!! The bass sounded nice before, but she loves it now, and how it plays... and as a result she's playing the thing constantly now. Strings... so often overlooked, yet so important. Now I'll have to buy myself another set. I hope she doesn't think of trying the same strings on her other bass now

@Al Krow you would have said something along the lines of if you had to pay for a date with a lady and maybe get some playtime would you prefer Joan Collins now or Scarlett Johansson.

Faded jeans and 'leather' patches... patches needed due to unfeasibly large testes!

Yes but when they turn spoon into vagina there's no winning.

Actually Peruvians & Colombian have the closest to what is considered classic spanish, the same can't be said about my natal dominican republic. SMH

Yep. No perspiration

That's still more than I have heard of!

Haha....well Janek is also partly to blame Si

I'd be more more worried about the person that has never heard of The Cult...

Bling has arrvived today ! Cant fit the lights right now though, as life chores are getting in the way

Ashdown products

They're usually built reasonably tidy inside - nice layout, neat cables plus pre and power stages on their own boards. I became quite intimate with the inside of my 4808 combo as there were a few ropey solder joints on the pre-amp board. It had the later 320w Clive Button power stage after it's former 'Bi-Polar Bear' gave out with it's previous owner. The later power amp was very good and as ever, plenty loud and clean..

No need - I’ve had confirmation from someone in the FB group that their preamp is the same as mine. Glad it’s all ’stock’ spec!

Eric Clapton 'Blackie' tribute guitars: http://www.guitaravenue.com/guitars-basses.htm#xl_fender Gone right off them, I have.

A Rickenbacker for a fiver isn't too bad imo.

I gig mine all the time (2 x 210) - they're fab. They're clearer, louder, punchier than my ABM 410 - and significantly easier to carry. Not sure why Ashdown stopped making them? I seem to remember someone getting a custom ABM Neo 410 a few years ago.

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Thank you for explaining my "left-hand wobble" in the correct terms. . That's why you're the teacher. Sustain is essential for feel and emotional attachment to particular styles of music.

A valid point... but for me it's flexibility. I can use my FRFRs as FoH speakers. I can use them for backline. They are light. They are portable - certainly compared to the typical bass cabs out there that put out similar SPL... The important thing to remember that a FRFR does not automatically equate to a PA speaker. There are plenty of manufacturers that are doing FRFR cabs that look like guitar cabs. The problem is, not many of these are capable of delivering high SPL for bass... that simply wasn't their target market as the uptake of FRFR by bass players is a minute proportion of the market. The fact that a lot of modern PA speakers can handle a lot of bass makes them an idea candidate for use with bass. So yes, the cabinets of a lot of PA speakers, certainly the ABS cases, enable them to be pole mounted or placed on the floor so they can be used on their side as a wedge - and as you say, be used like a tilt back combo. The thing is, that tilt-back combo has a prebaked sound to it. The case for FRFR is that a modeller is placed before it, so that FRFR can reproduce the sound of the model without, unlike your generic tilt back combo, colouring the sound itself. OK, yes, we could use anything we wanted if we just needed "a sound" for monitoring purposes... but it would actually be nice to have the versatility to be able model different amps and actually like - no, love - what we hear coming out of the cab next to us on stage. Over time, our tastes may change, the gig may change... but a modeller with the FRFR solution caters for this perfectly. No prebaked cab sounds means we can get what we want on stage as well as out front. You may call it obsessive extremes - maybe it is - but a lot of people are clocking onto the fact that a decent modeller and FRFR opens up a whole world of flexibility. For me, the ultimate bonus is that I can take a modeller to a gig and a set of inears... so I use the FRFR aspect of the PA itself and I don't even need to take a cab onstage. It sounds a lot better out front too... as there is no bleed coming from the bass on the stage... Some people may call the whole thing overkill and say, meh, too much for a pub gig - but in reality, the benefits from quiet stages and loud PAs will realise the greatest improvement in a pub... where the stages are small and the venues are generally not built for music. So, if you were to get say a Helix LT - circa 690 quid... and a beefy FRFR speaker, say a 735... (oh look a bargain at Andertons) £580 for the Mk2... thats a ridiculous rig for £1270. When you compare what an average traditional rig costs.. say a Little Mark 800 circa 550 and Mark Bass NY122 circa 560 - £1110... I'd say that the £160 difference is a small price to pay for the flexibility of all those different amp models... and the comprehensive fx that is also available to you... and if you are also a guitarist... it will also cover all guitar rig needs (all amps, all pedals). Does it make a little more sense now?

Stop getting us lefties all excited about a bass, only to find out you mirrored your webcam

Sure is, but I'd prefer you to view in person before disclosing its whereabouts.

I'm glad I am not the only one to feel like that. Going around and around a genre that didn't even originate here is a bit stale in my humble-bumblings too. Trouble is... the 12BB is like the common denominator in the wide world of western styled music. It's obligatory to know it if you want a half-decent tool kit to bring to the jam. It's easy though, right? That has been said of so many seemingly simple things in life. More often than not, the simple things are harder to get away with with style and confidence whilst not making yourself look like a tourist.

Maybe it really is just me these days, but when I was first getting into music in the early 70s, one of the my main memories was that when my musical heroes made one of their infrequent appearances on TotP they would be wielding ever stranger custom guitars often from the work bench of a certain John Birch in Birmingham. Later on with the advent of punk and post-punk, sometimes the choice of instruments would be dictated as much by what was affordable as it was by what looked cool and interesting, but it also introduced me to the instruments of Microfrets, Burns, Hayman, Mosrite to name but a few. I always felt that if you chose to use an instrument that wasn't in the mainstream then maybe your music might be a little more interesting too and perhaps worth that extra effort to check out. Of course it wasn't always the case - no matter how cool Jerry Garcia's Travis Bean guitars looked it couldn't make me like the music of the Grateful Dead! And sometimes those imperfections can kill the music stone dead. I've lost count of the number of times a record has been completely ruined for me by the acquisition of a scratch or piece of grit stuck in the grooves of a vinyl LP, usually on my favourite track, and more often than not at some point after the record in question has been deleted and therefore difficult to replace with a pristine copy. CDs and lossless digital files are the answer to this, I no longer have to worry that the act of playing the music I love might destroy it for ever.

I just clicked the link, that Lana Del Rey song is just awful. Her name translates as 'the king's wool', just as a fun side note.

Camera has flipped it! Sounds tasty.

Nice, how was this bass set up when you received it?

Depending on thickness i use a standard paper holepunch to put holes in mine, ive also used a 8mm drill bit on thicker ones. Does a good job

The TC Electronics MojoMojo at lower gain does a great vintage mid rich drive sound that will give you a similar vintage driven bass tone (without the wobble) and can also be picked up for less than £50 new. Might be worth a look if you don't fancy lugging about a monster all valve amp. I hadn't thought of a Leslie speaker, but now it's been mentioned it's so obvious

What it means specifically could be just about anything. For decades Fender drivers were labeled 'Fender Special Design' and the only special about them was the label.

This is the latest revision. The signal path isn't totally obvious from the layout, but it works for band purposes -the awesome El Cap being the final pedal. The SnU and Harmonist aren't final decisions and the latter may be on notice thanks to it's erratic 'on off' response to an expression pedal. I need to make way for a distortion to stack with the Pork Loin anyway, so anything not punching its weight is at risk.