HazBeen

Wow, what a lovely plate of chips, he says whilst drooling over the bass.

Must admit this is giving me visions/ideas of a new build..... you can’t deny a headless just balances better than headed. Lovely pics! Really nice how you contoured the upper horn for upper register access and for your “body”, it just flows....

Souds like an excellent time and 900 quid is not far from what you would pay for a similar bass of similar quality. I trained myself (not very well I must add :)...) by doing increasingly complex mods and then some full builds. A course like this would be such fun! Hats of you and mr Shuker.

Well that was a rather underwhelming experience...... I voted for Hellboy, not a great bassist but very hot indeed.

Very nice, congratulations. Jerry Dorsch makes really good graphite necks. For us in Europe they do get a bit pricey compared to Status Graphite, but then again you cannot order a headless neck from Rob & Dawn. I really like the design.

You are lucky Ped, I get to pay for my kids, my basses and my mrs! Okay, technically she takes care of the kids more than I do, but I still like to moan every so often

11 .....

Told you Nice bass!

Feck me... that is a bargain!

+3

Ooh, a quick Google tells me you can even get 30-85....

40-95 is probably what was put on at the time. Not my cuppa but they are readily available still.

Do it, can never hurt

Actually absolutely great point, FINGERS are key.

I don’t think convincing is even a goal , but just to add to your thoughts on this. 1. A Precision sounds mostly like a Precision due to the placement of the pickup, not the pickup itself. You will absolutely hear a difference from a Swamp Ash body or Alder body P. You will less difference if you change the P pickup brand, you would hear most difference if you would move the pickup forward or back an inch. 2. A slant Jazz pickup in the P position is hardly distinguisable from a P pickup. Again pickup placement has most impact. 3. We agree that strings have significant impact. 4. Take a Passive bass or Active bass with passive tone knob and roll that off and it will behave roughly the same. Sure an active EQ gives you more control and flexibility but if you have a transparant onboard EQ the passive tone and no EQed active tone will be pretty much identical and an active EQ certainly will not correct a lack of resonance in the wood or a badly selected pickup for that matter. But to be fair, this is based on my experience, my ears, my experience with bass builds etc.

If that were the case you would not see luthiers combine woods to achieve certain tonal charactaristics. Take the same pup, pre and strings but with different wood/combinations and you get different tones. A pickup and pre basically just “translate” the vibration of string/wood, maybe adding some flavour. The pup and pre therefore are the dessert, with the main being the wood with a side of string.

That would be a rather long (and time consuming) affair, so I will just give some basic thoughts for consideration. A swamp ash body has a naturally scooped character. Sticking in an East J Retro (not the flat response one) into a Swamp Ash body will not work for most (unless an extremely scooped tone is your thing). Mahogany has quite a pronounced mid heavy character so you would generally choose pickups and a pre that aren’t too mid heavy. Alder has strong low mids, but still breathes (upper mids) so a 2 band EQ would probably work well enough. The pickups either soften or strengthen the tonal qualities of the wood (depends on what you are trying to achieve) and the preamp completes the circle so to speak. As a result an OBP3 sounds excellent in one, horrible in another instrument.

After spending a lot of time downsizing the collection, I must admit I have been mainly adding lately.... not really any room for too many more (12 currently), unless I get rid of a few that is......

I find that pickups and wood have a big impact on what preamp works well and even certain pickup/pre combinations work better than others. @Al Krow do you have a certain bass in mind you want to upgrade? Might help zoom in.

This one...

Amazing ...... editing

No absolute right or wrongs..whatever sounds good right? But order is fine, I would personally put Metaphors last (assuming you do not use the overdrive). I generally have comp after the tuner.

She is quite good really, but she did say..... "didn't you just buy another?" At least she is paying attention, shows she cares