mart

[quote name='JohnFitzgerald' timestamp='1357237713' post='1919648'] I only found it through a search as I'm interested in a Streamer Standard, but not a Rockbass. [/quote] They are pretty similar! I've not owned either, but the one thing I've seen commented a lot about the Stramer Standards (both the old Warwick and the newer Rockbass version) is that the pickups are not good - very weak - but are a nonstandard size/shape, so hard to replace.

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1357226665' post='1919383'] It's about computers, mate. [/quote] I'll admit that when I first saw the title I feared it was about political correctness. Have you found the first typo yet? Usually occurs on the very first page you pick at random when you open your first copy for the first time!

Just make sure you get the half-rounds the right way up.

[quote name='OldG' timestamp='1357202676' post='1918916'] Does the E string come 'into' the fretboard by the same amount, by any chance? If so, you can loosen the neck screws and alter the neck/body join angle to suit... [/quote] +1. I'd forgotten about that trick, but it's probably just what you need.

Pics would help, but if the problem is only from the 7th up, then it's surely the bridge. Have you got grooved saddles where you can just lift the string into a different groove closer to the D?

[quote name='brensabre79' timestamp='1357146647' post='1918166'] I think from what I can gather you have to reverse one of them. It is basically two volume controls stacked on top of each other, so for a blend control, you'll want one to work in reverse. ... [/quote] I would have though that's a matter of taste; you could wire it that way, or the way the OP has done. I think I'd find a backwards volume control pretty confusing personally. Of course, if the pot is log/log, then it will work best wired one way round and not the other. In any case, that doesn't explain why the neck pickup isn't coming through. Finally, I agree with brensabre about the preamp - it shouldn't affect the wiring on this pot. (But again, the live wire from this pot to the preamp is really an output, not a power - there is no power going from the preamp to the pickups, but that's by the by).

That diagram looks right, at least for how I would guess the pot should work. So at this point I would check the joints carefully - either the pot is faulty, or you've somewhere shorted out the neck pickup. If you're confident that the joints are ok, then I'd unsolder everything and get a multimeter to measure the pot in various settings to check that it is behaving as you would expect. Btw, it's kind of irrelevant, and forgive me if this comes across as patronising, but when you talk about "power" and "the power source", I'm assuming you mean the output jack socket. If so, that's really not appropriate terminology, as no power comes from the amp to the bass - the power actually goes the other way! If, on the other hand, you really do mean "power" and this is some kind of active bass, then do say whether its just an active preamp, or active pickups too, since that complicates things!

[quote name='Looper' timestamp='1357063675' post='1917033'] Just put on the Ti's I got for xmas. Flats are way for me from now on, they've transformed my bass. Will see what they're like once they're broken in but they have the sound I've been looking for, lovely to play and nice low tension (had to back the truss rod off a bit). Can't see ever going back to rounds again. [/quote] That was exactly my experience when I tried them - I've now got them on every bass I own, and love the sound and feel. I find String Express (stringexpress.co.uk) usually have the best price, even beating Thomann. And if you ever do decide to change, the resale value is good - every set I've seen up for sale on here has sold very quickly.

Need a few more details to work out what's going wrong. Is the volume control for the bridge pickup working perfectly? And the neck pickup isn't coming through at all, no matter what settings the knob is on? And the two "power" tags on the pot are linked together, are they? If so, then either there's a bad solder joint somewhere, or the pot isn't wired up the way you're expecting. In that case, disconnect everything and play about with a multimeter.

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1356819807' post='1914087'] Some songs only need a simple line. [/quote] Which is just as well, otherwise nobody would ever let me play bass!

Yeah, I'd say that's right. From one point of view you're going from three knobs to four, and so from three parameters to vary, to four. In practice, even that's not really the whole story, since an active treble control tends to provide much more variation than a passive treble control. But also, even if you just have the treble and bass flat, the preamp will shape the sound somewhat. All of which suggests that yes, the character of (the sound of) the bass will change quite a lot when you go active. Having said all that, I've got one bass with passive pickups and a preamp with a bypass switch, and there is only a subtle change to the sound when you engage the preamp.

I was just looking at the Strat version of this in a shop today, and it really is stunning in the flesh. I had to bodily tear myself away from it!

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1356809289' post='1913925'] I don't see how anyone could rate Adan Clayton as a poor bass player. OK he's not a soloist or slapper, but he's probably one of the most melodic bassists out there. [/quote] On another forum this same topic came up, and one member said he thought Clayton was bad because of the bassline to the song "40". Naively, I pointed out that it wasn't Clayton on the bass for that song, and the guy replied saying he knew that. So this genius had formed an opinion of a bassist on the basis (sorry!) of a line he didn't play.

And somebody posted some Mick Kahn lines a while back, which were great. The search function should locate them.

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TiDShnnoJs"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TiDShnnoJs[/url]

[quote name='Voodoosnake' timestamp='1356647077' post='1912103'] There we are then, its all subjective. I'm off the mark in your opinion and maybe others but hey…..its only rock n roll. [/quote] +1. If we forget that it's only rock and roll then it will be very easy to get upset in this thread at someone else putting down our fave bassist. Perhaps it would go better if we stuck to the more exact question of: name a band YOU like that has a bassist that YOU think is no good.

And about 10 minutes in someone will start questioning whether U2 are actually a "super" band or not. As you were ...

I give it three minutes before someone mentions U2. Oh, wait, it's already happened!

[quote name='hamfist' timestamp='1356508215' post='1910558'] Lets hope he ... 1/ reads this 2/ works out that you are referring to him and....... 3/ realistically re-assesses the worth of his instrument [/quote] Or ... get someone else to put a really low offer in - £200 or something - so that he'll then be naturally drawn to a thread about lowballing!

Are they really that cheap though? Thomann seem to be offering new ones for £156, including the pickguard! Still, if you want a bass to finish yourself, then this probably is an ideal thing to start from.

Basses come with different "scale length"s (the distance from bridge to nut). 34" is pretty common, but 35" and 32" occur quite a lot too. However, the length determines the fret positions, so if you have a fretted neck (or a fretless neck with any sort of position markers), then you must stick to the same scale length as that neck. To work out what that length is, you need this rule: [quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1356304504' post='1909108'] Bridge to the 12th fret=the same as the nut to the 12th fret. [/quote]

[quote name='shizznit' timestamp='1356186410' post='1907752'].... I panic so much when any of my kit has gone pear shaped. [/quote] I can very much relate to that. I checked over the wiring in the cab earlier, and everything seems fine. I had the amp plugged in and powered up, and jiggling the connections didn't cause any crackling or anything, so I think that can't be the problem. But I didn't think about a cable resting against the cone, so that's something else to look into. And I'll try a few different speaker cables and seek any is dodgy. Thanks for all the suggestions guys!

Yep, that makes sense. I'll have a look at those. Thanks!

Bit of a strange one this. I had a gig a few weeks ago, and when I was setting up I had a problem with the 1x15" speaker cab I was using. First it was sounding bad on some notes, as if something was rattling in sympathy. To try and isolate the problem I cranked up the parametric mid control, and panned the freq to try and isolate the problem note. But, as I might have foreseen, in doing this I blew the speaker: it sounded worse, then a bit of a pop or something, and then only a very quiet, but very farty sound came out. Luckily I had another cab handy, so I just switched cabs and carried on. For various reasons, it's taken me until now to have a look at the blown speaker. And when I plugged it in to my amp today it worked perfectly! I didn't crank it mega loud, but I did take it up to the sort of volume you'd need to compete with a drummer, and there was no hint of farting at all. Any guesses as to what's going on? I don't quite trust the cab now, but on the other hand, since it worked fine today, I'm not sure what the problem could be. Fwiw, it's a Warwick cab, 8 ohms, rated at about 400W, and both today and at that gig I was using my Shuttle 3, with no other cab, so the head is theoretically pushing out at most 175W.

Well, on paper, being very naive, it won't work - with those specs you run the risk of blowing your speaker. (Mind you, it does say that 500W peak is only at 2 ohms, so you really don't have to worry about that particular figure.) But the more accurate answer is: it might be fine, it might not. The way to tell is to plug them in, play at lowish volume, with a clean tone. Keep playing, and slowly bring the volume up. You'll hear distortion before the speaker goes, so that will tell you how much volume you can safely get. Then it's up to you to decide if that is loud enough for your gigs. My hunch is that it will actually be fine. But you really need to do the test in order to know for sure.