mcnach

Well, it's been a few days now, still getting used to that 5th string, and overall I can give a big thumbs up. 👍 It's not perfect, but whenever I think of something that's not quite 100% then I realise that I was comparing it mentally to other basses that cost me up to 10 times more It's a very decent bass, and a ridiculously good bass for the money. Mine looks like it had been on display for some time. It didn't have fingerprints or anything, but there was dust accumulated on the bridge/saddles and on the same side of all three knobs, and it seemed a bit... messy in general. By comparison, my girlfriend's Precision in the same finish was absolutely smooth and impeccable. Quick wipe, and all is good. It's pretty light for a 5-string bass: 8.6 lbs. My old EBMM SUB5 was close to 11, and the G&L L2500 was around 10 lbs. This one is only 8.6 lbs which is nice. The balance is pretty good, on a strap it stays where I put it, but I can feel the neck is very nearly in the 'too heavy for the body'. It's one of the things I've found in many light basses, they seem to achieve that largely by using light bodies, and then the neck pulls it out of balance. This one is ok. The neck is full, slightly on the chunky side for a 5-string, not far off the L2500 as I recall. The SUB5 and Lakland 5502 were shallower (and also slimmer for the SUB5). Is this bad? Not for me, I favour meaty necks: Precision/Stingray styles. The string spacing is narrowish but wider than on 5-string Rays, and the G string doesn't fall off the fingerboard because there is enough room. It is BLACK. Like... none-more-black. In a guitar rack it looks like a blackhole-shaped guitar. I love the finish. Not sure what the fingerboard is made of but it's very nice, very dark, smooth, shiny. Fretwork is good. Originally the neck had far too much relief and the saddles were too high. I think that maybe the same person who put it on display noticed some fret rattle and decided that one way to alleviate it was to ensure the strings were as far as possible from the frets. If that was their goal, I expect they slept very happily that night, proud of a job well done. If they wanted to still have a bass you could play... then not so much. A quick adjustment (what took me longest -minutes- was to adjust the curvature of the saddles, they were all over the place) soon made it very playable. I haven't played 5-string basses in years and even back then I never really adjusted to them, so I still feel a bit lost and hit the wrong string, between the narrower strng spacing hand having one more string... muting is getting rapidly better but I still have work to do to get to an acceptable level. Right now I can play ok for a while and suddenly KLANG goes the B string, ooops... I definitely don't feel comfortable to play it live yet, not that there's any hurry, unfortunately Sound... definitely on Stingray territory as you'd expect, but not amazing. It's a perfectly usable sound, and between the two volumes and the passive tone it's decently versatile. I love Stingrays, and this gets me close enough... and again, if I think "hmmm, I wish it had more X or less Y" I quickly remember the price: if something bothers me enough, it would be very easy to modify it while retaining the total cost low when you consider how good the resulting instrument is. The only thing it needs is to file the nut slots a little, as it's a little high as it is, but that's trivial and it's perfectly playable as it is anyway. Other than the pickguard (not a fan of the tortoiseshell look) I have no intention of changing anything in a hurry, but I suspect that if I end up using the 5-string more and bring it to my bands I would change the pickup. My favourite is the Seymour Duncan alnico (SMB4A for 4-string) or the original (Nordstrand MM4.2 is very close to it), unfortunately the 5-string version comes in a differently shaped enclosure so I would have to find something else. No hurry 'though. I think a black pickguard is the way to go. This is without one at all:

Indeed. For what it's worth, I spent some time adjusting and readjusting the pickup heights until I was happy with the sound: it really is easy to do. Also, are you aware of the dip switches on the board of the preamp? You need to open the control cavity to access them and it gives you 4 different modes for the operation of the treble. I had no idea when I bought mine and only found out months later. Worth experimenting with that too: some settings were not to my liking at all, but a couple were good (for me).

That looks like the pickup was pushed down in transit. Don't touch the screw yet, and simply try to pull the pickup cover up (edit: pushing down on the opposite side as @Doctor J says will help). If you can't, then undo the screw and redo it. I don't think you'll need anything under the pickup. I remember vaguely I can push mine down a bit and they push back ok. I can't check right now as I lent the bass to my trumpet player, but your picture is pretty clear to me.

Yeah, let's go back to important yet never repeated questions like... P or J? which bass for metal? is pick only for heathens? etc...

Well, it is the bass I was waiting for More tomorrow

Received the dispatched note on the 23rd of December, arrived today in one piece (Harley Benton bass).

Mine was ordered around mid-December, and a couple of days later they all had the "in stock in 10-12 weeks" or something of that kind. I'm assuming that what the label says on the box is correct I haven't opened it yet, waiting for my girlfriend to finish work.

Oh... what's in that big box?

hot and spicy, somewhat explosive?

They sound good (I used the stainless steel ones), very good even, but they're rough on the fingers. I put a new set of those just before a gig and my fingers were a little sore afterwards. Nothing terrible, but if smooth is your preference you may not like them. Soundwise, however, they're pretty good. edit: whoa zombies!

When I was a kid I wanted to be something different every 15 minutes: wildlife photographer, join the air force, archaeologist, astrophysicist, hitman (well, this was not 100% serious, more like 90% ), erm... paid-ladies'-companion (80%? ), park ranger, professional judoka, astronaut, a bar owner by the beach on a remote island (I just wanted the bar, not the customers, except my friends 😛 )... Then I discovered music and I started moving towards electronic engineering than killing (bad) people for money. I figured I could make people wish they were dead instead by playing guitar really badly and I could still make some money in the process without having to deal with deeper moral issues. As usual, life had its own plans and I ended up doing something else entirely, but Leon and Ghost Dog (The way of the samurai) are still two of my favourite movies

DR Pure Blues have a nice prominent midrange.

I misread it as 'massive erection'... I need coffee.

Well, my MB-5 SBK has been shipped with UPS... but given the current situation I doubt I'll actually get my hands on it until the eleventy of Blebruary or thereabouts... The good news is that the PB20 SBK (Precision) has arrived and it's all wrapped up ready to be given to my girlfriend. I hope she drinks a lot tonight and falls asleep early so that I can play it too It's very light and looks better in person than in the photographs... which does not help my patience waiting for the MB-5...

Same here. And another that I ordered around the 14th was delivered on Monday. Fingers crossed. Both appeared to be shipped by UPS.

I agree about the 40Hz. It seems pretty common on bass onboard preamps and I was never a fan, I would prefer a bit higher... but as it's common I'm used to how it behaves. One preamp that caught my attention recently with what I think are more suitable EQ points is the Darkglass Tone Capsule with bass at 70 Hz, then low mids at 500 Hz and high mids at 2.8 KHz. If in the future I want to put a preamp on one of my basses I think I will have to look at this one. No, what I'm doing is not what you describe. I set the HPF higher than the Thumpinator, quite a bit higher. The Thumpinator is essentially transparent, and I am talking of audible effects. The centre frequency for the bass control may be 40 Hz but it is not a sharp peak and it affects quite a lot the frequencies around it too, which is the key. By combining the adjustable HPF and the bass EQ you can get a noticeable bump probably up to 120 Hz or more (where and how pronounced the bump will be depends on the exact settings, you can move that peak around). You could experiment a bit in your favourite DAW, with the advantage that you can see the EQ curves, and you'll see what I mean. It's a very useful 'trick' when mixing.

Uf, you have me for a more technical guy than I am: I am more 'a bit of sugar' than '12g of sugar' when it comes to bass (but sweet nonetheless if you're nice to me ). But from what I recall, the Mesa D800+ bass control is centered at 40 Hz. How much would I boost normally? It varies, I find it's generally a balancing act between the bass EQ control and the variable HPF and it can depend on the place I'm playing at, but usually the bass control would be turned up to around 1 o'clock or so (not a lot, but noticeable). Sometimes more, but not often. I would first boost bass a bit, then turn the HPF until it starts thinning the sound too much, and back off a bit. Then just listen to the mix and see if it needs more of a bump or less. My EQ usage is pretty sparse, both on the amp itself and on my bass, I seem to get where I want mostly through the HPF/BassEQ/voicing controls on the amp, and anything else will be treated as an 'effect' (for specific songs). I'd use the LPF gently to reduce the top end, resulting in a smoother tone, but sometimes you want more presence, and others just a very bottom-heavy sound....

No, I never tried your pedal, but I've been into HPF and LPF filters for a bit. I was finally about to order the Broughton one a few months back, but a chat with SFX made me get a unit from him instead (it was available immediately).

Close your eyes, imagine it's... I don't know, sunburst. Shaped vaguely like a Jazz but with soapbar humbuckers. Add tortoiseshell if you fancy. Better? Seriously, apart from the looks, that's a pretty normal sounding bass.

Indeed, the ability to bump the threshold frequency can be very interesting. I realised now that I guess I sort of do something like that often with my Mesa D800+, I 'discovered' by accident that setting up the HPF threshold a bit higher than I would normally and boosting the bass EQ at the same time produces what seems to be a similar bump, which does wonders for the bass sound I go for: definitely fat, but with definition and no mush. I thought I had discovered something cool and then I was told that it's a very common technique

Well, you can't possibly buy every single pedal that comes out For me it comes at a good time: over the past few years I've come to realise that my favourite tonal shaping options would be a LPF and semiparametric mids, none of that bass/mids/treble nonsense 😛 so if I can get my hands on one, it'll probably replace my SFX unit (although the LPF goes very low on the SFX and I find it very useful, it makes my bass playing sound a lot better than it is for some dub style material I play, almost studio recording quality)

Beautifully explained, thanks!!

It's useful sometimes to RTFM But I can understand the confusion. The -3/+15 is nothing to do with the slop, but rather what happens to the 'bit just after the cut off frequency' (technical AF), which can be boosted with that control. It's a pretty interesting kind of filter, on paper, I have never tried one like that.

The slope is -12db/octave according to the blurb. It's a bit shallower than what I'd prefer, but the combination looks really neat in a single pedal format. I have not experimented with any HPF that has a slope shallower than -24db/octave so I can't say how much/little I'd notice it but I think it'll do the job that I want: tightening the low end a bit. It's the adjustable LPF (I came late to the party but once I started experimenting with them I can't imagine how I managed this long without) with the additional tweakability on the mids that really attract me to this unit. The HPF even if a bit shallower than ideal looks like it would be very useful in combination. I just wish it had a level control too, as once you start removing frequencies it's easy to have a noticeable drop in volume. Right now I have a pedal made by SFX that combines an adjustable LPF (two ranges, actually: 45-500 Hz or 145-1600 Hz) with a Thumpinator (fixed HPF at 30 Hz), which also has a level control. In my opinion it's needed in a unit like this. It's not a deal breaker for the Broughton RFE as there are ways around that, but I wish they had added one.

Of course it's out of stock (more in January), but this looks great! https://www.broughtonaudio.com/product-page/resonant-filter-equalizer I wish the LPF could get a bit lower (I have one that goes down to 145 Hz and while it's not an everyday sound, it has surprisingly a lot of good uses at the very low end, although I'd typically set it somewhere higher than 300 Hz so the Broughton unit would be fine), but having both HPF and LPF in one pedal, plus the semiparametric mids to tweak the note definition just so... I can see myself getting a lot of mileage out of this.