BassBus

Thanks to all of you who have replied that gives me a few builders to approach. Cheers.

Can any of you knowledgable people tell me if there are any of the custom pickup builders who might be able to build full humbucking soapbar pickups for me in non standard sized casings. I have an old Status S2000 fiver which has hum-cancelling pickups so not full humbuckers. Status replacements are the same and their humbuckers will not fit in the routings. Any advice would be helpful.

Well Thomann shipped me a set of strings recently and added a whole box of free fresh air with them.

As some people might say in Scotland; "Aye, right". 😄

I tried updating yesterday and my PC only decided to reboot on its own part way through the task. You can imagine. The Helix didn't like that at all and ended up with the dreaded "Boot error, entered update mode" and that was it. Wouldn't do a thing. "Oh my goodness" I said and went away for a bike ride to calm down. Came back much calmer and found a video from Chad Boston who, very calmly, explained how to sort it and it worked first time. The Helix lives again. Phew.

I'll be interested to see what wires go on what terminals on the barrel jack. I have an East pre to fit in a Bass Collection with the same barrel jack and am left scratching my head as to what goes where.

This is how to make a great bass even better.

Beautiful, tasteful playing from all of you. Excellent work.

Today I took the compressor out of my effects chain and the sound of the bass improved dramatically. That is all. 😮😄😴

Some people might think you've done this before. Mighty impressive.

The Ibanez Gerald Veasley model has a very narrow spacing for a sixer. They don't make it anymore but it might be available used.

If you want to play the same shapes as on a guitar I'd go for as narrow a string spacing as possible. The Ibanez mentioned here would be good. As for strings, you could do worse than contacting Newtone strings who can advise on guages and make you up custom sets.

Sounds excellent. What tuning is being used?

If you're talking about the two on Reverb. The bass that's been through Jeff Babicz' hands will be of the highest quality. Whether I'd pay £3100 is another matter. The other one looks OK and he is open to offers so might be worth offering something lower. That would be you choice.

But wives are too busy counting the number of shoes and handbags they have. [duck, incoming]

But I'm too old to bend down and count my toes 😄

Well, I've run out of fingers to count them but what I do know is I have far to many and not nearly enough. 😉

I wonder if it was a dead spot. Graphite produces them as well as wood. I have a dead spot on the open D on my S2. I can understand how that would drive some people crazy but in a way I quite like it.

If you're referring to the Status pickups the coils were parallel with each other as in a humbucker not as in a split coil.

That's easy to explain. The early Status basses had hum cancelling pickups. Essentially only one coil produced sound the other being there to cancel out any hum. Streamlines have full humbuckers with both coils producing tone.

I haven't been able to find any info online. There are pictures of Mr. Steinberger holding said instrument in Jim Reilly's biography of the man. There's going to be a new guitar too.

You could try Headless USA for Steinberger. They are in the USA so import duties would have to be factored in but owned by Jeff Babicz who used to work at Steinberger Sound. https://www.headlessusa.com/repair-restoration

It was horrendously expensive to produce in the 80s and they didn't charge enough for it. There was a limited market for it in the 80s and that market was filled pretty quickly. Those are the two reasons why it ultimately failed. They are still great basses though.