Ou7shined

If it's tone your after and not the aesthetic then.... G&L L-1000. Serious competition (some say superior) to any Fender P.... that's why Leo built them - to improve on the design he came up with some 23 years prior. The early '80-82 (original headstock) models have the best 'tronics.

Can't be many of them around. Still, it would be nice to have some uniquely identifying detail.

Sadly the days of picking up good japcrap for £20 are most probably behind us now. Subscribe to [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=7473"]this[/url] thread and you may get some nice tips to good deals.

Colour matched headstock....

The "Economy Delivery" postage price is a bit !!!

I'm usually pretty open minded about this type of thing..... but imho that looks horrid. It might have been more effective (and less like a cover up job) with a matching headstock.

If it wasn't earthed then you'd have been playing air guitar all this time.

[quote name='steve-soar' post='1248696' date='May 28 2011, 09:42 PM']Good call on the preamp. Still too expensive.[/quote] Cheers. Agreed.

[quote name='steve-soar' post='1248591' date='May 28 2011, 08:05 PM']The preamp looks like a replacement, they should be covered in black epoxy, the cavity has been copper screened, so techically it has been repaired and it's too expensive for what it is, condition wise, I'd say fair.[/quote] The pre is fine - they stopped using epoxy on the pre's '79 onwards. I think the copper shielding is a nice (non-invasive) touch.

[quote name='KK Jale' post='1248409' date='May 28 2011, 04:38 PM']Judiciously circumventing your admittedly inspiring vernacular, my final guess is an Ibanez TR50.[/quote] I think we have a winner.

His BIN is on the high side. If you really fancy it, stick in a bid [b]now[/b] (say £805) which will remove the BIN (thus deterring trigger happy money-bags' from jumping in and spoiling it for you) and see what happens. I don't like that he seems to have pictured some light damage but neglected to mention it in the listing, even in the small section where he actually describes the bass. This will only come back to bite the buyer on the bum if they complain about any damage, as he'll just try and wriggle out of it by saying there were pics. Set-up wise it looks a goer. Btw, it looks like the back of the neck will need a bit of a rub down to freshen it up.

Why do the undead always want to eat us? I would have thought they'd have more pressing things in mind than munchies.

[quote name='markorbit' post='1248266' date='May 28 2011, 02:36 PM']Now if this was the bass that recorded Rhythm Stick then we could be talking real history and real mojo. But as far as I know it isn't. Rhythm Stick is Norman's most famous line and that could indeed have really boosted it's mojo.[/quote] Oh, that's a shame, I thought it was. How about the other famous ones, What a Waste, Reasons to be Cheerful, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll etc.?

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='1248207' date='May 28 2011, 01:26 PM']I'm struggling to agree with folks on this one! I loved the BHs and it was my era yet I'd have had no idea that this bass was NW's 'trademark' instrument. 'Literally world famous'... hmmmm maybe among a select clique of fellow bassists or musos but I'd be inclined to think that his bass wouldn't be high in many other folks estimation. If you are drawing a comparison to JE then he was literally a pioneer as much for his band as him as a bass player. Maybe it's just that I can't see £10k-£15k in a 60's bass that by our keen eyed detectives may have discrepancies! However that's the great thing, we all have our views and there may well be a BH/NW fan out there who has a spare £15k, who will prove me wrong. [/quote] Yeah I think the price may well be OTT too.... but when I say "world famous" I mean that a fair percentage of the world (who listen to western music) will have heard this bass, whether they know it or not.

Surely the interest with this bass (and the reason we are talking about it) is because of [b]who's[/b] it is and not [b]what[/b] it is? People put far too much stock in "mojo" these days (imho) but this bass is the embodiment of mojo and has it's place in the history of music. This bass is quite literally world famous.

[quote name='Monckyman' post='1248123' date='May 28 2011, 12:08 PM']Thanks Outshined for going "above and beyond the call of duty" on a friday night! Regards to the Mrs and also Mr Cat...[/quote] Haha no worries. It's all for the cause. It was a bit of a late one for Squiggy... the cat, not the Mrs (she gave up and went to bed early)

[quote name='mart' post='1248102' date='May 28 2011, 11:52 AM']Yes. The idea is to attenuate the volume of one pup before mixing it with the other. That way you get a different proportion of the two pups, whether you're in parallel or in series.[/quote]I want it to work but I'm still struggling with a workable possibility. [quote name='mart' post='1248102' date='May 28 2011, 11:52 AM']I'm afraid I couldn't understand your comments about your Schack preamp, so I don't know how closely my circuit resembles yours. At each end of the blend, you get the signal from just one pickup. The other pickup has been reduced to zero volume. I'm not sure what you mean by "both". Both pickups? Or both serial and parallel?[/quote]Actually I went on to discover that they look similar but are intrinsically different as you've done away with the traditional crossover blend. I had to... ahem... "reverse engineer" a perfectly good blend pot. [quote name='mart' post='1248102' date='May 28 2011, 11:52 AM']Hey, I'm really sorry for ruining your evening! Please apologize to your missus on my account [/quote]Don't worry, she's well used to playing second fiddle to matters regarding bass. [quote name='mart' post='1248102' date='May 28 2011, 11:52 AM']I didn't have time to put together some sound samples of how the circuit is working on my bass. From a quick play the sound seemed to be roughly what I expected in each position. In particular, in both series and parallel modes, with the blend pot fully clockwise only the neck pickup was on (checked by tapping the polepieces with a screwdriver - only one pickup produced the tap through the amp), and similarly when fully anti-clockwise only the bridge pup was on.[/quote]Yep that's how I did my test bed results too and why I subsequently felt it necessary to go for a fully built up bass to try and hear the series punch. [quote name='mart' post='1248102' date='May 28 2011, 11:52 AM']I'll be interested to hear what you think the circuit is doing, when you've got time to work it out. But please don't stay up specially for this [/quote]Watching the F1 qwallies just now but if I get time later I'll have another pop at it. My eyes are a bit fatigued from staring at schematics too much last night though. [quote name='mart' post='1248102' date='May 28 2011, 11:52 AM']It's being lost somewhere, sure, but it doesn't have to be lost to earth. Put it this way: take your pickup, and join the two wires together. If you pluck a string, it produces a signal in that pup. Where is the signal going to? Well, it's just getting lost in the wire (dissipated as an infinitessimal quantity of heat). It doesn't have to go to earth. And that's essentially what I'm doing with the signal when each pickup is attenuated (by the blend control) before being mixed (in the series/parallel switch). At the extremities, in series mode, I've got one pickup with its wires shorted together, joined to the end of the other pickup. Unfortunately, it's not actually quite so simple, because the blend puts an extra 250k resistance in there. That's probably the cause of the volume drop you're hearing. And in the cold light of morning, it doesn't seem a very desirable feature. Originally I had the blend pot wired differently - for each track the 3 tags were wired as: negative, out hot, in hot, instead of -, in, out. In other words each track was acting as a traditional single volume control. But of course that doesn't work well in parallel - when you blend out one pickup you end up shorting out both. (That sounds like something you were describing in your circuit, so maybe this is where the difference is?) So I switched the wiring round to avoid this problem in parallel mode, but perhaps things work better the other way round. That way, in series mode, when one pup is blended out, the other one is in series with nothing.[/quote]Haha I thought they were shorting out. I redrew your schematic (and the 4 relevant achievable options (series/parallel/pan left/pan right - neglecting centre indent position) to something that I could visualise better in my mind and each time I traced it to a short I couldn't believe it... I eventually gave up and went back to playing the real life model.

[quote name='neilb' post='1248086' date='May 28 2011, 11:43 AM']Quite a standard set up IIRC, poss higher action than I would have as Norm does "dig in" when he plays. Badass adds the usual oomph to the sound. His rig was a brand new Trace, just literally put in place by the Trace guys minutes before the set. Managed to get a snap of the rig too, with Norm. [/quote] Sweet. Oh for the luxury of roadies.

[quote name='neilb' post='1247988' date='May 28 2011, 10:22 AM']I can only authenticate the fact it is Normans bass, [b]as he let me have a close look and play when I met him [/b]at a show in 2009, as per my photo above. On close inspection of the photos on the Baxter site, the extra patent number does indicate a slightly later year, however the "offset contour body" logo is year correct positioning. Anyway, its Normans bloody bass here, it has more sweat in it than John Leslies handkerchief....its iconic!![/quote] Ooh what was it like to play? (what's his set up like)

Holy crap now that's one bass that really does deserve to have a "W@@@@@@@@@@@W RARE !!!!!!" in the title.

With just one problem.... I don't think it works. Well it kind of does - it produces similar results to what you'd expect (ie. panning bridge to neck in both switching modes) but there's just something fishy that I can't quite put my finger on. I bodged together bits and bobs I had lying around to make a test bed. The results were inconclusive (only a noticeable volume drop) so I had to coble together a whole bass to see if I could actually hear the difference in tone. Much noodling later (oops) I still can't hear a distinct series or parallel shift, all I hear is the drop in volume. What you get here is a sort of "quite switch". I think the signal is being bled to earth somewhere but I'm just too tired to work it out tonight. Think of it in these terms, if you are in series mode (which means they physically share the exact same rail) then you "blend" one pup out to solo the other, [b]what is the remaining pup in series with?[/b] It's still physically connected with it's buddy but the muted pup's signal is being lost somewhere... presumably to earth. Seeing as I've spent all night on this, I'll selfishly post some pics. Unfortunately I don't have a suitable switched pot, so for the purposes of this experiment I've used a separate switch and vol pot. Test bed Rat-bass bodge Not really what me and the Mrs had planned for Friday night ... ... but at least I have a new bass to play about on Soloed neck pup (in parallel mode ) sounds fantastic on this bass btw.