robocorpse

[quote name='hubrad' post='769496' date='Mar 9 2010, 05:53 PM']Why do we, as a country, insist on still importing the cheap cr*p just because the factories still make it? You can get decent inexpensive which won't put beginners off so WHY? [/quote]

The people who are importing this rubbish are not musicians and dont give a hoot who buys it, as long as they can shift units. Anyone who is a musician and does actually have a conscience should not be involved with this crap, same as all the "Harley Benton/Jim Harley/Stagg" stuff that flooded the market a few years back. Now the standard has slipped again, and we are well into the realms of MDF bodies and neck woods so cheap that Bryant and May would reject them. Just like the early 70s all over again. MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME. THats why when something truly great comes along (old Tokais, Grecos etc) it is quickly squashed, then becomes collectable as the Squiers and Tokais were head and shoulders above the tosh that F* and G* were turning out in the 70s. I noticed loads of really shoddy Gibsons round in the last few years, maybe the whole industry is taking a nosedive, and widening the gap between well built playable guitars, and the rest, even if it has a 4 figure pricetag. I returned the last new Les Paul I bought as the binding wasn't scraped properly, the fret ends were hanging out, and the fingerboard looked as dry as the Sahara.

[quote name='throwoff' post='770256' date='Mar 10 2010, 12:22 PM']Maybe some of the big stores like GAK have one on the floor and a couple out back but almost every guitar ever is ex demo!
Strikes me as an incredibly cynical way to get away with bigger discounts.[/quote]

Strictly speaking yes, but Ex Demo is generally taken to mean the "floor model" that has never been sold, and is still "new" but may have picked up fingerprints or the odd little dink by the saturday morning warriors.
What, pray tell, is wrong with a discount? cynical or otherwise!

[quote name='bassbarber' post='769763' date='Mar 9 2010, 09:26 PM']hi was thinkin of changing the pickups on my eppi tbird non reverse, but what to? any gd ideas? was wanting to change them all and have about £120 to spend.[/quote]

EMGs. No contest. Grab some used off ebay and sling them in.

[quote name='smurfitt' post='769928' date='Mar 9 2010, 11:36 PM']will this be suitable for a LM11[/quote]

No, the rack has 10.5" available depth, and the LMII is exactly 10.5", so you'd have to unplug it all every time you moved it, and theres still a danger the rear catches would foul the amp.

[quote name='Annoying Twit' post='769355' date='Mar 9 2010, 04:03 PM']As the owner of a "Shine" bass, can I point out that this is a "Swift" bass, distributed by "Swift Music of London". It clearly says Swift on the headstock. Shine basses get better reviews than Swifts, and I think my Shine six string is well worth the £60 I paid for it. It's the same bass as has been sold as the Harley Benton six string.[/quote]

Oops my bad, I meant Swift, but Shine stuff aint much better IMHO.

[quote name='cocco' post='769215' date='Mar 9 2010, 01:42 PM']So if I want a 'hot' ric this isn't the way to go and I'm better off with a later 4001 or even a 4003? but I still want some sort of good investment ric but one I'm not gonna be scared to gig. What should I be looking for? Also what is the difference between a 4001 and a 4003? Sorry I've hijacked your thread by the way[/quote]

I'd say find the money and buy this one (Stackers bass).
Whatever Ric you buy, its always gonna be an "investment", even unloved early 4003s are starting to pick up in price now, and this FG will probably blow all of them out of the water in most respects, and it will continue to appreciate. Whatever Ric you gig with will always get the odd dink, so why not buy one thats nicely worn in, and sounds like a Ric SHOULD, rather than compromising your lust for a nice 70s one by buying a later, plain bound, Hi-Gained 80s/90s hot Rick? Unless you desperately want Hi-Gains?
Seriously, whats the difference between gigging a well used £2000 bass, and a slightly cleaner £1500 bass? Once you are up in that sort of price range, I'd only worry if the bass was a minter, or a really rare colour/variant. They are meant to be played after all! I have my giggers and my home/recording basses, they all get played, but I would never gig the V63 unless it was a crucial gig that absolutely needed it, and even then it would be a kid gloves job, and I would be devastated if it got dinked. However, I can throw my 4001S round with impunity, as the previous owner already did a good job of wearing it in and chipping the edges.

They've obviously been threatened to cease and desist by G*bson or F*nd*r. Shame that the musical instrument market is becoming subject to the same restrictions as DVD regions nowadays, and being enforced. Very sad. Rickenbacker are the arch bastards for this sort of thing, all kinds of strict rules about not shipping parts internationally, so you officially had to pay £125 and a 6 month wait for a part from Rose Morris you could have had in 2 weeks for $99 under the counter from a well known Ric parts stockist in California...

The thing is, he wants 59 quid for it, I have seen those "Shine" basses for 39.95 new in the box. They truly plumb the depths of horrific cheapness, matched only by the MDF telecaster I saw a couple of years ago.

Ooh, that reminds me....
That clip is taken from the BBC classic "Rockschool" programme with Dierdre "Girlschool" Cartwright, Henry "King Thumb" Thomas and Geoff "Geoff" Nicholls.
Does ANYONE have a copy, no matter how ropey, of the first series? PM if you do...

Toaster has lower output and bags more "Traditional Ric" character.
The mismatch between Rick neck and bridge pickups is the key to the sound, the neck pickups are wooly, the bridge pickups are like razorblades. As the years progressed, the sonic gap between the 2 was narrowed, firstly by the original Horseshoes being discontinued in favour of a conventional bobbin and magnet pickup with screw-in polepieces, then later, the ubiquitous "Hi Gain" pickups with the rubbery polepieces. The neck "Toasters" were upgraded to "Hi Gain" around 1973, and they now balanced the bridge pickups a lot better, but at the expense of the original Ric sound, which many people (including Rickenbacker themselves) were keen to improve upon at the time.
Toasters are very cool looking pickups, and they give the Squire/McCartney tones their wooly bottom end in bags, but for most other applications, you might be better off with a Hi-Gain in the neck. The best way to "upgrade" any Ric bass to make it sound right* is by finding a proper Horseshoe bridge pickup, and these are rare as rocking horse poo, so are the reissues. Reissue Horseshoes go between 400 and 1000, but 1960s originals you can count on writing a blank cheque and hope the American hoarders/archivists haven't got there first. Thats why the V63 series go for such bonkers money now, they were an all-in-one proper reissue as close as Rickenbacker could get it without going overboard. It will be a cold day in hell (or a 60s Ric, and even then it would have to be a corker) before I part with my V63.

* like a lovely clanky 60s Rick a'la Squire, Glover, Rutherford.

Pricedrop bump.

Still got loads left, PM me directly please, not here in the thread. Go for it, stock up!

Final price drop bump. If these arent worth a tenner to someone, I'll stick them on the next sh*tter bass I put on ebay.

[quote name='RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE' post='768378' date='Mar 8 2010, 07:27 PM']I used to go to the Soundhouse in Kingsbury back in the day.
When myself and a friend used to request 'heavier stuff' (Budgie,Motorhead,etc) Neal kay seemed
to love playing 'pomp' stuff (styx ,triumph etc.) I could be wrong about the band names,
but I was only 16 then and Neal didn't seem to like the harder stuff.[/quote]


We always had the same problem when he moved the Soundhouse to the Clay Pigeon in Eastcote, it was hard work getting any Motorhead, Tygers etc out of him, and the one time we actually asked outright for some Metallica was the week Cliff Burton died in the coach crash, and he just said "F*ck off, I'm not playing any of that thrash sh*t", about 10 of us stopped going there after that, he had a good Metal night, but he was an arrogant twunt.

[quote name='dudewheresmybass' post='767406' date='Mar 7 2010, 10:36 PM']i thought it was reasonably well made, but was a little surprised it only made it to about '82/3.
Where's the rest?[/quote]

I reckon it was based on the old meaning of Heavy Metal, and if you go too far past 1983, it mutates so wildly that it would become a 6 hour programme. Maybe if they had done it as "Rock Britannia" to cover '66 to '80, then "Metal Britannia" could cover '77 to present, but even then, it would possibly need more subcategorisation once you hit the mid 90s, there is just too much cross-pollination between genres now, and not enough good NEW British Metal bands.
I think it was initially made well, but ruined in the edit, and those sound effects were ridiculous and very unhelpful, took all the weight out of it and turned some of the anecdotes into little more than Benny Hill foolery.

[quote name='peteb' post='766204' date='Mar 6 2010, 04:48 PM']I would like Motorhead if they got a proper bass player and a singer who could sort of.... actually sing!
I know that this is the opposite view to that taken by most Motorhead fans.....[/quote]

Surely its Lemmys individual stylings that are the key. Nobody else sounds remotely like him, and those who try are just copyists. Total "Marmite band". I love them to bits, always have done, and I am a particular fan of Lemmys sound, especially on "Iron Fist" and "Another Perfect Day"
If you want "Motorhead with a proper bass player and a singer who can sing" I suggest you try out MC5, one of Lemmys biggest influences.

[quote name='dave_bass5' post='765996' date='Mar 6 2010, 12:53 PM']Yeah, it seemed to be just a few "old" faces over and over again.

Oh, and anyone think it slightly tongue in cheek they had Nigel "Den Dennis" Planer doing the commentary? Maybe it was just me.[/quote]

Further ridiculing the genre by voice-over association. Not sure who I would have got to do it though, none of the usual suspects would have been suitable. And yes, the omission of Girlschool was unforgivable.

The pickups sounding "thin and wimpy" would be both of them, not just one, if it was out of phase (one black/white pair reversed) so its not that.
The diagrams are correct, pickups should go to #1's and exit at linked #2's which feeds the o/p jack.
According to the wiring you describe in your own bass, the pots are wired wrongly, if you connect the pickup hot to tab 2, thats the wiper, and you are giving each pickup a variable resistance between hot and ground whenever you turn the pot. It will work, but it will vary the circuit characteristics. What you should be wired for is a constant resistance from hot to ground by connecting the pickup hot to one end of the track (tab 1), and the wiper picks up the signal somewhere along that line, so you get volume control, but the pickup side of the circuit stays at the same impedance. Maybe Franks bass is wired oddly, but I would think more likely it was goofed at the factory, and it might cause problems in the real world.
Tab 3 is always connected to earth, leave that alone.
You are obviously not averse to changing the wiring in the bass, so why not swap the #1 and #2 connections and see if that cures it? While you are doing that, it would be worth temporarily hard-wiring each pickup in turn DIRECT to the output jack, and see if there are still wimpy sounds coming from the bridge pickup, in which case you will know its knackered.
Only problem then is Fender will not honour the warranty as soon as you touch the solder joints. Catch 22...

If you desperately want to do this, and the band are good enough friends to get through any bad times, then go for it, but BE PREPARED to lose a load of money. You are very likely to get ripped off, and left with nothing, or just some beer, so make sure 2 of you are carrying credit cards with a big limit, as you might find yourself living from them.
One thing though, if you are playing venues as far away as Portugal and Scandinavia, it seems logical there will be breaks in between each area of the tour (20 gigs in 30 days = 10 days off for travel, right?), so if things are going very bad after the first 5-10 days, make sure you have a way to drop out if you feel you have to. This makes it even more important to get paid for each gig ON THE NIGHT, and NEVER, EVER, EVER, NEVER, EVER et a promoter or booking agent EVER owe you money. EVER. NEVER NEVER EVER.

Surprised nobody else posted this, or are all the Squire fans propping up a bar somewhere telling people how they invented Rickenbackers?
Seriously though, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR FISH!

Bill Nelson, w000!
Don't forget John McGeogh as well, rest his soul.
Also Bic from Dark Star/Cardiacs.

Ta, consider it reserved

Whatever method you use, remember it will be a once-only job, so do it well. If you mess it up, it will wreck the signature, or risk removing it if you have to reapply laquer/tape etc. I personally would use clear laquer, but do the first 2 coats as an EXTREMELY fine mist, just to get it started, but not enough to actually pick up the ink and run it. Practice on something else first until you are confident. That said, it might be better to just leave it and let it wear, unless its someone really uber cool who has signed the instrument.
Sticky backed plastic would be another good way to protect it, a lot easier to apply than laquer, but it will go tatty quicker.

I'm selling one of [url="http://www.soundslive.co.uk/product.asp?id=6341"]THESE[/url], any good to you? 45.00 posted.