mcnach

This. They feel like flats, but sound like roundwounds that have mellowed down a bit, just a bit, losing the initial zing of the fresh strings. They're much much more like roundwounds than half-rounds or groundwounds or pressurewounds (same thing, different brand nomenclature). It sounds like Cobalt Flats are really the ones you want, OP.

I don't think so, no. If you wire each pickup in parallel, they sound much like a standard single coil J pickup with plenty of top end. I should install a parallel/series switch for each pickup. The bridge pickup alone, in series, is beautifully fat.

For me, whether a bass is cheaper or not has no bearing on whether I'd choose more or less expensive pickups. Why restrict yourself to cheaper? I look at the overall cost, instead. If the total cost is reasonable for the results I get, then it works. £200 worth of pickups on a £40 bass is a bargain if the result is good: a good bass for £240! [1] Of course, price alone is not a good indication of the result you'll get. [1] My real life example was a £40 Westfield Jazz plus a £200 J-Retro preamp. I left the pickups alone because again, I liked the stock ones. That was a beast of a bass. Totally worth it.

I had one, in surf green... I actually loved the pickups it came with. I was prepared to replace them, I already had a couple of different sets in my drawer (Model J and Area J sets from DiMarzio) but I left the originals on. Strong output and vintage tone don't go hand in hand, generally. I like the Area J because they sound very 'traditional J', yet they're humbucking, so no hum when soloing one pickup. They're not particularly high output (I wire them in parallel, but you can wire them individually in series for a higher output, but less of a traditional sound). Why do you want a high output pickup? Volume, you can always adjust. I'd choose a pickup based on their sound first. Personally, I would leave them, if they're anything like the ones I had. What don't you like about them?

Purple and maple has always been one of my favourite combinations, yet I never owned anything in that combination. This was purely a fluke. I'm more of a strat kind of person, but now that I've been playing more I started missing the dual humbucker vibe. Then, just as I sell my car, I happened across that guitar... it was a sign! I showed it to my girlfriend, I was hoping she would be the voice of reason saying "look, you've already got a guitar, you don't really really need one, keep the money, be sensible, the future is uncertain..." but she was like "hey, isn't that JUST what you wanted? That seems pretty rare, if you don't buy it now later on you'll regret it and you won't b able to find another... and you know, you can always sell it later, I mean, that money is just going to sit on the bank account doing nothing, right?". I love her. I like the PRS design. When thinking electric guitars, most thing Stratocaster and Les Paul, with other different shapes taking a distant third place. I like how PRS came up with a kind of hybrid that retains the vibe from each while having its own thing going on. This one has a roasted maple neck, which is a bit darker than it looks in the pictures (I should have adjusted the colour balance), it's more of a caramel colour. To give you an idea, the pickup covers are cream, while in this picture they seem to have a bit of a greenish tinge, so try to mentally adjust And a 'tremolo' arm that is easy to adjust and stays in place. Now I need to go practice to justify this I've been mostly using it to put down some quite simple reggae ideas for one of my bands... but I'm reconnecting with my younger hair metal days soloing all over those ideas, high gain overdrive... and I cannot play fast any more, not without my fingers getting into a bunch. But little by little it's coming back... Very soon I'll be as bad a rawk guitarist as I used to be in the 90s

Been there... Not Istanbul, the amazing surcharge for a slightly heavier than allowed luggage. I remember looking around at a few... rotund people around me, and thinking that surely they should make a combined passenger+luggage allowance. I'm half the weight of some of those people on the flight, yet I have to pay something like £45 for an additional 3Kg? Some of those people have just gained 3Kg at their breakfast alone!

That Joyo discount code thread has cost me a lot of money. First the American Sound pedal. Then the British Sound. That led me to play a lot of guitar lately (I started coming back to it at the start of the lock down)... which led me to miss the sound of two humbuckers... (I had sold all my guitars except a strat and a P90-equipped Les Paul style guitar)... and after managing to sell my car last week, today I welcomed this into my home: Both American and British Sound pedals sound great with that guitar, but the American sound is particularly delicious... I'm thinking I should try to trade instruments with the guitarist/singer in one of my latest projects for a few songs (he used to be mostly a bass player in the 90s)... Effects pedals, amplifiers, instruments, have got a lot better since I was a teenager! back then, I had to spend a lot of money, comparatively, for pretty mediocre gear. I could have only dreamt of overdrives like these back then.

Yup, that's what I use. I bought one that looked reasonable for £8-10 and it's been very useful. For luggage as well as solving the "how much does my bass weigh?" questions. You don't want to arrive to a Ryan Air flight with a suitcase that's 3 grams over the limit...

Well, since the lockdown I've been playing a lot more guitar than usual... and this just happened: My fingers are sore from so much playing those tiny weeny strings

Nice

Ah, that might be it, having to login. I never did. I never registered.

It was the same for me (shrug). In the end I bought the American Sound, and a few days later the British sound one. They're without question the coolest pedals I've bought in years. American Sound is really good on bass, and even better on guitar. British Sound is equally good, but different sounding and I prefer the American Sound for bass. Go on!

Yeah. I get the concern about fakes that look so good that they stand a chance to fool some people... but going after a shop like that is not a very effective, or correct, way to go about it. The shop should have been a bit wiser, 'though, but they're hardly the problem.

really?

This. Humidity etc may be very different at source from what it is where I receive it. Just like I don't expect a bass to arrive in tune, going over it adjusting it to my own preferences is something I would always count on doing. Sometimes, an instrument has arrived nearly there, but it's by chance more than anything. I don't expect to have uneven frets, or badly cut nuts, etc... but set-up? Yeah, I expect to do at least a very basic one on receipt. It's also not a big deal at all. Like buying a new car and adjusting the seat/mirrors for my own driving position. edit: I also very very rarely keep whatever strings a bass comes with. I have my preferences, so I put strings I like very soon after I get the bass (I keep the original strings on initially until I'm satisfied that I'm keeping it). Sometimes those strings mean minor adjustments too, I can't expect a company to guess what strings and gauge I would be using on the bass. (shrug)

No idea, but I like the design of the box

That's exactly what I was going to say. Bass 1 sounds ok to me, I may EQ it a bit differently but it sounds like a P. Bass 2 sounds like someone turned down the mids, which some people may want, but not me, however it's still a Precision sound. :shrug: what pickups & strings are you using on both basses?

+1 Few things take away the 'fun' of a gig as rushing around to set up and dealing with emergencies. We like to set up with plenty of time, so that we also have some time to chill and chat before we start... and if there's a problem, we have a chance to solve it without going crazy. The difference in time between a rushed and a relaxed job is not very much really, but how we feel afterwards is like night and day.

Oh god... I had to endure this very frequently back in the day. It did make me smile when I found out how the whole "asereje" came about

It's one of those days when I end up searching something and becoming a zombie-thread resurrector It's been 9 years since I started this thread, and I decided to write a little update. I had 3 Sue Ryder Precisions when I started this thread in 2011. One to leave as a normal P, one to make fretless, and another for a heavy modification project. Fast forward to 2020, where are we? The normal P ended up with a Wizard Thumper, flats for a bit, then roundwounds. It was a revelation, and this little bass turned me from a "ugh, Precision" into a "ooh, lovely Precision" kind of guy. I sold it years ago, and I have owned various other Precisions since. The beginning of a new era. The project... I never assembled it, and didn't even finish stripping the body (hard work!!!) and I sold it as a bunch of parts. The fretless, however... I still have it and I love it. I bought a 70s style maple board Japanese Fender Precision, but I preferred the Sue Ryder, so out of 4 fretless basses, this is the only one I've kept. With a Model P and D'Addario black nylon tapewounds. It sounds great. Now, I'm about to change the pickup on my reverse-P Maruszczyk Jake. I've put a John East MMSR preamp and the original pickup will go (big poles Delano of some sort, I forget the exact model), as I never loved it, it felt a little too... clear, 'hi-fi', hard to describe. So I am about to put another model P on this one (it'll have black nylon tapes on it too). The Model P is such a great pickup! I'm considering trying a DP127 here, because it would look great, but I know the Model P would suit me well sound-wise... Do I risk it and see what the DP127 is like on this bass? Hmmm...

Personally, I would not bother with it. I've owned only a handful of instruments that allowed be both ways of stringing them, and of those I only really compared two, both Precisions. I can't say I noticed anything. If the difference is supposed to jump at you, well, it didn't for me, so I am in the "whatever difference must be too small to matter to me".

British Sound pedal arrived and it's just as good, but different sounding. For bass I still prefer the American Sound and I'll stick to it, but my Stratocaster sounds beautiful through either. I haven't quite managed that Marshall JCM800 type of sound yet but I didn't investigate a lot yet (I know it's there, I've heard it in a demo): I found a sound I really enjoyed and spent over an hour on my guitar. I'm rediscovering guitar since I got the American Sound pedal...

That looks sooo nice!

Welcome to the light! 1) It depends on the type of gig. For small bar gigs we typically bring our own PA etc, but bass doesn't go through it. For the rest of the gigs, which for me is the vast majority, there's a bigger PA at the venue and yes, my bass is generally DI'd, although on occasion they wanted to give me a microphone AND DI. Most sound engineers have their DI boxes, but they're generally more than happy to use the DI on my amp (Mesa D800+ for the past 3 years, it's got a very nice sounding DI). Sometimes, rarely, there's a sound engineer who insists on using his DI box, and I just go with it: it never sounds bad either. Considering my amplifier really acts as a stage monitor most of the time, I'd be happy with a DI as long as I had a good monitor. I once had to go DI without an amp at a festival when their bass amp broke down... but they had really good monitors and I loved it. It made me realise that any trouble with bass on monitors is merely due to unsuitable monitor speakers. It's always wise to have a backup DI box: it takes little space, can live in your case permanently. It's unlikely you'll get caught out even if you don't have one, but if you can, why not? Another consideration is: do you use overdrive on your bass? Anything above low gain will sound pretty bad on a DI: the higher frequencies on the distortion make it sound fizzy and ugly. Using some kind of speaker emulation in that case can be a very wise move. Some DI boxes already have that function, but there are quite a few stand alone units that will give you that option. I use a lot of overdriven sounds with one of my bands (a RATM tribute band) and for that one I use a DSM OmniCabSim DeLuxe box. I use it as a DI, you can tweak it to simulate different kinds of speakers, and makes overdriven sounds work very well. 2) a 212 is not too much, I don't think. You have a volume knob on your amp, use it Single cabs may be easier to carry/pack, but there's something to be said for being able to use just one hand to carry them so a 212 is not a bad option. I use a couple of 210. Whenever I can, I bring both, even if one is enough when I just need monitoring, because I seem to get a better stage coverage with two cabs, without needing to be louder. Not just me, my band prefers it too. So... if using your 212 is easy... I would stick with it: you can always turn down. Also, the difference between 900 and 500W is not that large, unless you also increase the number of cabs. In fact, I'd focus more on the cabs, if you end up needing more volume. I made that mistake years ago, I went from a 500W to pretty much the same amp but in 800W as I hoped to get a bit more volume... nah, it barely made a difference. Adding another cab, now THAT did make a difference. I'd also invest in an adjustable high pass filter. It removes the bottom of the bottom. It's been a revelation for me. It's surprising how much you can remove from the very bottom end and still sound big and fat... but you get better definition and it's a godsend when stages are a bit boomy. People often think bass is about the lower frequencies, and to some extent it is, but there's a lot of low frequencies that you actually sound better without.