Mr. Foxen

Dunno how it would work for a 5 string, but Tim Commerford uses a left handed headstpock on his BEAD bass so the bottom string is the longest. I have a left handed neck here to try it once I get it over to the luthier to fit. My 5 string suffers from rubbish B syndrome too, am considering a guage thicker, but it sound fine acoustically, so it might be the pickups and amp.

At work and googling it will be unsly (I type this in notepad and rapidly paste in) But soaking them in a tube of alcohol based solvent is supposed to work. Sounds right, will soak out the grease and not corrode like boiling, oull the out, wipe off the swollen out the coils gunk and hang them to dry outside.

Peaveys seem to go for no money and are good bits of kit. I bought a new Johnson on ebay, asked the guy to put his ear against them and send me the one that sounded loudest. It had poo hardware, but a good enough chunk of wood and a thick neck I liked. Westone Tunders are a classic, saw one go for £38, but most go for more.

Got me a black SG to refinish, I'm steaming lables off Jack daniels bottles and gonna psate them on and varnish. Pick your poison.

[quote]True Bypass - On/Off Digital Volume Amount of Wah Different types of wah on it also - Auto, Synth etc[/quote] Behringer Hellbabe, plus looper pedal for the win. Lots of adjusty knobs, optical.

One thing I always do is put my ear on the body ( generally the top horn for convenience) and listen to what it sounds like there. Also, I pay aattention to how much the body vibrates when you are playing, I want my basses to really come alive when you hit a string. If the wood is good everything else can be replaced, I did that, load of no name generics, picked out the one that sounded loudest through the body.

Its the not buying basses that I have trouble with.

Now they look very tempting, if I make a bunch of money selling ym other gear, one of those is going to get tried out. However, I've always preffered Rosewood boards for their not getting really grotty properties.

I just realised I spent nearly as much on a pedal as I did on my main basss. Then I had a think and realised that Fender are probably struggling to keep a place in the market as the have pretty much nothing to trade onbut their name. Theres just a limit to how good you can produce a piece of wood with strings on, and theres plenty of competition at that point, the Yamaha stuff is great quality as an example, and theres plenty of no-names that are near as good as a Fender once you switch a few choice pieces of hardware, the downside being that it will hold no value. Will anyone give me £200 for my Johnson P bass? No, its got the wrong name on the headstock, but you have no idea how it plays or sounds. Consequently, manufactureres must keep shooting out products that appear to have a premium value in future, especially considereing its not a consumable product, they are pretty much around forever. Barring Townshend moments. In fact, that last point is probably the most important one.