Ed_S

That's the way I went when I had a candy cola precision. A new black guard on the USA Standard, the white guard from that onto a fiesta red Squier CV, and the tort guard from that onto an olympic white bitsa I was making. Order restored, nothing wasted and they all looked 'right' to me.

I've had mine since early 2018 and used it on various gigs and rehearsals in '18/'19 before things went strange. It was always plenty loud enough on its own in a rock/metal band up against two guitarists with half-stacks and an energetic drummer. Agree that the single handle on the top isn't all that helpful, so I bought the cover for the extension cab (which has recessed side-handles) and just attached surface-mount handles where the holes were. I also added wheels for the full mobility experience and extra ground clearance over beer-puddles, but that's obviously got potential to cause problems stacking it on an extension cab. Having heard it, though, I was confident I wouldn't want to do that.

If it's a close enough comparison to be any use, I have a 2021 made SR305eb and I'm quite happy with it for the money. The woodwork, frets and finishing seem to be at about the same level of finesse as on my SR506e, the stock tuners are solid and the powerspan pickups and electronics work effectively and sound good in their own right. The worst thing for me was the B125 (so B120 for the 4 strings?) bridge which had a couple of issues... - some of the grub screws for action adjustment kept working loose so a couple of the saddles would eventually hit the deck after playing for a while - fixable with some thread-lock, but irritating. - the intonation screws don't pass all way through the body of the saddles (like they would through the barrels on a BBOT, for example) so if you need to really pull a saddle back, you can find that you're at the extent of the available adjustment unless you get a shorter intonation screw from somewhere - or grab a hacksaw. Similarly, if you need to really push a saddle forward, you're never sure when it's about to come off the end of the screw. I set mine up with Warwick Red 45/65/85/105/135s and had both situations happen. Again, fixable with a couple of 50p packs of screws from Amazon, but... As soon as I knew I was keeping it, I bought mine a B305 bridge which solves both of those issues but was only available in cosmo black, so that prompted me to change the tuners, knobs and straplocks to match. I've just totted up the invoices and it owes me £395 all-in, but I find that completely acceptable for the end result; it looks quite classy and I'm confident it'll be a really solid backup when I get back out and gigging. Suitability for metal: confirmed

This is probably somebody's ideal custom-shop build specification, but... - Multiscale - Fretless - Single-cut - Ramp - Nitrocellulose - Sunburst - Roadworn / relic - Tort pickguard - Gold hardware - Wood pickup covers / knobs - Angled pickups - Loads of knobs and switches

I don't necessarily play it any more than my others, but I do have one that fulfils the brief - my 2018 Ibanez SR655-NTF. I always liked the look of the natural 605 but never ended up buying one because I wasn't crazy about the Bartolini pickups, so when the 655 came out with CNDs instead I decided it was time. My local shop had just received two, still in boxes, so I headed over and they got them both out for me to choose between. One was alright... but the other was just instantly 'my bass' and there was no way I was going to leave the shop without it. I actually gave it a clean, fret polish and restring just yesterday, and swapped the tuners over to GB707s while I was at it. Here it is with distinctly less pick dust in hard-to-reach places than usual. You'll have to imagine the smell of Silvo and fretboard conditioner yourself! 🙂

I wonder how a purely decorative PAT sticker could complicate an otherwise straightforward PLI claim compared to never having had anything PAT tested at all. Insurers aren't known for paying out if they have a reason not to, so claiming to have passed a safety test that never happened seems more likely to result in problems with your claim than just asserting that you visually inspect your gear each time you set it up. I was trained at work to perform safety testing and I have a testing machine which I can use for my own peace of mind, but the most I'd actually put on my stage gear is a blue 'visual inspection only' sticker.

It works ok as a 4, but string twisting and human error aside, the 5 string version really isn't a good bridge in my opinion. I first encountered it on an American Standard P 5 back in 2014 - the B saddle wouldn't go far enough down or back to set action or intonation correctly. It was a bit better (although still not completely right) with a tapered B string, but I didn't like the idea of a bass dictating to me which strings I could and couldn't use, and I wasn't getting on with the width of the neck anyway, so it didn't reign long. Then last year I took a fancy to an American Professional J 5 that was on clearance after the Pro II series came out. The nut looked like it had been cut with a knife and fork (maybe just the fork) but that was easily fixable. I still found the bridge unsuitable in exactly the same ways, but this time I'd done my research and had a plan - I spent some of the saving I'd made on buying the bass to get a drop-in replacement Hipshot A style bridge. That fixes every issue I had with the stock bridge, including there now being no grub-screws sticking out to take chunks out of my knuckles. With that sorted out, it's a great bass and the B string is all that you'd want it to be.

Up to now I've never had any problems with an order I've actually been able to place, but I had my first taste of the customer service phone number this year. I had a voucher and an offer and an unusually low price that I wanted to take advantage of, so I put everything in the basket and tried to check out but the card payment just wouldn't happen. I called the bank and they said there was nothing wrong with my account and they could see no attempt to take any money. Tried again the next day since the order was still 'placed', just pending payment, but it failed again so I tried to call them to see whether they could help.. and that's when the telephonic abyss stared back at me, more than a couple of times. Eventually I gave up, cancelled the order and thought.. maybe I'll try to place it again.. but the voucher was 'used' at that point so I gave up completely and bought the thing I wanted from Thomann instead. I'll still use them for things that are in stock and on such a good offer I can't resist, but I'll use a payment method that includes provision to get my money back, just in case.

Completely agree about doing it to best match up with a singer - my main band was down a full step in D to begin with, then a half step to Eb for the next singer, then back in standard for the one after that. We had a handful of songs that they all did down in C, but as soon as Drop pedals became a thing we'd stop taking extra instruments and just use those to achieve extra half-steps-down from whatever default tuning we were in. I guess it's kinda laziness on my part as I could have just as well played a 5 in standard for all those tunings, but a fair few of the lines included open strings so it was just easier to match the guitars and join in with the pedal riffs etc. The acoustic singer-songwriter that I used to accompany had a hell of a range and would capo and sing wherever took her fancy that day. It wasn't always the same place for a given song, so no tuning would be any better than any other for me and consequently I just played a 5 in standard and moved to wherever the songs happened to be that day. I realise not everyone would like that kind of arrangement, but since the music didn't exactly lend itself to riffs off the open strings and I have no idea which notes I'm playing anyway (everything is just relative position and play-by-ear to me) it made no difference what she was up to - I just found the first note and played from there. I'm not much of a fan of down-tuning 5s to try and achieve heaviness by default, as whenever I watch a band where it seems like they've gone that way, the bass is so often lost under a sea of equally down-tuned 7+ string guitars and none of it ends up sounding all that heavy to me because there's no note definition left. If the guitars are routinely going that far down, I'd actually be considering going up to find some space! To my mind, a heavy riff is still a heavy riff in standard, and it's usually even heavier if everybody keeps out of each others frequencies, dials back the gain a little and really digs in like they mean it. As far as thicker strings for lower tuning goes, it didn't work out that way for me. I actually used 40/60/80/100 in Eb and D with 60/75/95/125 on the bass in C before the Drop pedal era, whereas I'll happily use 45/65/85/105/135 in standard. Couldn't tell you why other than to say the resulting sound and feel was how I wanted it at the time - I wasn't trying to be buck any trends or prove any points.

I never mind turning up to a rehearsal studio or a shared/house backline gig and finding an Ashdown or Peavey cab to use - it tends to mean that as beaten as it may look, it'll probably still give me a useable sound at a reasonable volume. I just hate shifting big heavy lumps of equipment round and risking hurting myself in the process, so I have a Markbass 4x10 that lives at the studio and a Barefaced gen-2 Super12 and Midget that I take one or both of to gigs depending on size. They may not have old-school visual appeal, and maybe even lack trouser-flapping-heft, but as far as I'm concerned nothing sounds as good as uninjured feels!

I've put Gotoh GB707s on a couple of non-premium Ibanez SRs that didn't strictly need them. They're drop-in replacements, they're relatively inexpensive, and I just think they look and feel nicer than the originals. They're also a bit smoother to turn, and the posts are wider than on the originals which I prefer when restringing. I guess they should be more accurate and might be a little more stable than the originals, but that's about it. Same as when I replace bridges, I'm looking for improvements in one or more of aesthetics, playing comfort and ease of adjustability; I have no expectation of improved tone.

I'm not against the body shape - kinda reminds me of a Talman - but the neck just looks like an afterthought to me. I reckon with an ebony board and matched headstock, that sunrise burst one would look just daft enough to get my vote. If they're as unpopular as people predict, I'll have one for cheap next Black Friday and find it a better neck.

Oh aye, they're that alright! Still makes me smile every time I use it 🙂 For the record I had a 600 for a while as well and there's absolutely nothing to complain about there either. And an original shiny RM800 which wasn't far off the ABM600 to be honest. I wanted to buy a Tech 21 dUg Ultra Bass 1000 as I came to believe that it used a very similar power module to the ABM1000 and I was curious to see if it had the same slam in a different implementation, but the price of those things was always too much to justify for an experiment. Anyways, I digress!

I was probably a relatively early adopter of lightweight gear - my Markbass LM2 was my introduction and has a 2007 date sticker which won't be too far off when I got it. I've been using lightweight gear ever since and personally have never had an amp die on me which isn't the result of a publicised and acknowledged problem with parts or manufacturing. The fact that my main amp is of conveniently negligible size and weight, and in case I feel it's any less reliable for it I can carry a backup amp that I barely know is there, just makes my gigging life so much happier and more enjoyable than lugging a single amp around that's ultra-reliable and universally-repairable but I have to carry into a venue like the Húsafell Stone. That said, I'm not a fan of manufacturers in any field who try to shoehorn too much into a product, and that's the creeping problem that I see potentially reducing my personal level of choice in lightweight amps. I want an amp for playing live, so a DI out is handy but I won't buy one that has a headphone out and auxiliary in for jamming along to tracks at home, or a built-in effects setup with a phone app to configure it, or anything that requires software updates for different voices, or has a Bluetooth input or a USB interface for recording into a DAW etc. I just see it as something else to go wrong, something that I'm paying for which I don't need, something which may have introduced a design compromise or diverted attention, budget and board space away from the bits I need to be as good and durable as they possibly can be, and something where you can almost guarantee that in 5 years nobody will have a phone that still runs the app that they discontinued 2 years before that. Just give me a one-trick pony with a trick that I like. The heft and authority and general volume thing... I'm currently satisfied that it's a design issue, not a technology one. The amp I've experienced with the most power and authority is the Ashdown ABM 1000, which has a lightweight power section.

Rather than trying to run through an arbitrary list of things, I always do the idiot check in my head as if I'm setting up. I'll visualise taking everything out of their bags and boxes and then step through using each item to set up, checking that each extension reel, cable, patch, pack, battery etc. that I 'use' is packed where I think it is. The exercise only ends when I've imagined picking up the bass, putting my earplugs in, looking at the set list and, with pick in hand, am ready to go.

I still don't know half of the proper names of ours! They don't get numbered, but they have a working title that relates to how they sound at the start, and often we continue to know them by that title even when a proper one exists. If you nick one of our setlists (never really got why people do that with local bands playing originals, but it's very nice that they're enthusiastic and I don't mind in the slightest) you'll get things like 'dun-dun' and 'dugga-dun' mixed in with the more recognisable names 🙂

I had an SP212 a few years back - picked it up second hand as it was going cheap and I was interested to try one out for myself given that I'd read a lot of people commenting less than favourably from an engineering standpoint, but some saying they sounded good irrespective. I had an original Terror 500 to pair it with so it looked very much the part, seemed like it would take a lot of punishment, and I must admit I quite liked the sound in a band mix - quite 'big' without being overpoweringly loud. Sadly I couldn't get rid of the smell of the previous owner's cigarettes and didn't much like the weight of the thing, so off it went to its next owner and I haven't actually missed it. It was responsible for a fun moment one rehearsal. I'd taken the terror straight from a gig where it was paired with the SP212 and whilst I'd switched it to 4ohm, I hadn't altered the volume control before plugging it into my BF Super 12. It was pointed straight at one of our guitarists when I flicked the standby and played the first note. I nearly cost him a perfectly good pair of strides that day.

I saw my first bass come straight out of the box. It was a good brand, it came well set up with decent strings, and it had no hardware or fret issues. It was a great (and very lucky) place to start, but at the same time it gave me no reason to disbelieve the guy in the shop who said that "you only replace bass strings when they break, and they rarely do". So I didn't. And because I really like having clean hands, those strings stayed non-grotty and were on there a long time. That also meant that I didn't clean or oil the fretboard, never polished the frets, never adjusted the action or intonation, and because it was clearly a stable neck I never touched the truss rod. It had passive VVT electronics and they never stopped working so I never opened the cavity cover either. My friends at the time would take their guitars to a local shop to have them cleaned, re-strung and set up, so had I not grown up to be such a massive gear-slag, that may have been it; one bass that keeps working until it stops and then gets repaired by somebody whose job it is to know how... and repeat. In fairness it worked like that with my violin before I was a bassist. I tuned it and cleaned the rosin dust off it, but anything else was done by the shop where I bought it. 22 years and a lot of basses that weren't quite so perfect later, the first thing I do with a new one is take it to bits and check that it's not hiding any issues, give it a clean, polish and tidy-up, and set it up with new strings. I haven't invested in learning to do fret work other than polishing and sorting out a bit of sprout, so a bass with actual fret problems is a bass that's going back, but I've learned how to do most other maintenance and hardware or electronics modifications, and within the bounds I've set for myself I'm satisfied that I'm not likely to make a mess of anything. I personally don't buy second-hand instruments but that's just because they never end up feeling like they're 'mine' - that seems to only come from having cut the tape on the original box. The care and maintenance record is also a concern, though; it's been the previous owner's absolute immutable right to do with that instrument as they see fit, so I must assume they have. It may play 'like butter' because that's what they've been rubbing it down with every night before bed for the last 10 years! Of course, I would never tell anyone not to do precisely what they want with their own property within the constraints of the law - I just elect not to buy it from them when it hits the market. I'd rather buy new and take the financial hit in exchange for a clean slate of my own and a warranty.

I had a one as my main gigging amp for ages and it was great. We're not a quiet band in the slightest and I always found it provided the right amount of volume to be good for stage monitoring when the PA is decent and doing all the hard work, and similarly good for going backline-only in a small room that doesn't warrant a massive PA so doesn't have one. Of course it can fall down when you turn up to a room that should have a decent PA but doesn't, though at that point you'll still probably find it goes louder than you expected on its own, and hopefully there's a cab lying around that you can borrow. I had the NY121 cab as well, though it only went to one gig in the time I had it, and it didn't actually need to; I only took it because it was an out of town venue I'd never been to so didn't know what to expect, but in the event the combo would have done fine on its own. I started travelling even lighter - just taking a Nano 300 head and plugging into house cabs or pre-arranging to borrow a cab from another band - so I sold the combo and cab to free up some room. Ended up missing the combo, though, so I bought a new one with the much nicer leather handle ..and then the world went down the pan so I've not had chance to use it yet!

I didn't keep mine because as much as it was impressively loud and genuinely sounded good, I impulse-bought it without considering whether I actually had a use for it. I practice and record using headphones/mixer/preamp and I have a Markbass 801 combo which would be smaller and easier to carry than the Thunder and my smallest cab to any venue where that combination would be viable. If having a fanless practice amp had been at all important to me, though, I'd most likely have kept it as it really did sound alright.

I can relate to the ire of the OP. I had my eye on a bass at a different shop (for absolute clarity, not BD) before xmas and noticed that it had been reduced in their winter sale and was now listed as warehouse rather than shop stock as it had been last time I looked. I rang up to check on the condition and was told that it was a brand new one which had never been out, and (when asked directly, given my suspicions) certainly was not the one from the shop which had just been moved back to the warehouse for easier shipping once the come-and-get-me price tag went on it. What arrived was dusty, had multiple dings on the edge of the body and one on the back of the neck, had a piece of veneer lifted and snapped off the body, had no plastic covers on the hardware and a hang-tag/case/manual/box that didn't match the serial on the headstock. It clearly wasn't as described, and wasn't a particularly nice example either so I can see why it might have been the one they just couldn't shift. They accepted that it wasn't right and processed a collection/refund, but because of the time of year and availability of couriers I had to spend the fortnight over xmas and new year negotiating a big box of disappointment at the bottom of the hall, which needn't ever have been there had my direct and unambiguous question been met with an accurate answer. Hell, even if they'd just said "you know what.. I have no idea and honestly I'm not going to put any effort whatsoever into finding out for you - either chance it or don't!", I would have been a bit taken aback but I could have worked with that. For the record, my own experience of BD has been overall positive and I've always got on fine with Mark.

I applaud them for providing such variety, but I'm personally finding less and less to get excited about. Given that the finishes in use on the artist signature models are essentially sunburst, black with red bevels, white, black, blue, red, amber, natural, and vintage burst, and all but one have either black or cosmo-black hardware, maybe it's not so unusual to want a premium bass in a more conventional finish.

I really like Ibanez gear but it seems there's an ever-decreasing amount to lust over if you're looking for a 5er from the Premium range that doesn't have fanned frets, no frets, gold hardware, no headstock, a ramp, an f-hole, a pile-of-twigs-inspired artist inlay, wooden pickup covers or just a really weird finish. I wish they'd do a simple but classy SR Premium model in a couple of conventional finishes with Nordy breaks or singles, the usual preamp (but with dome knobs, not the cheap plastic things) and black or chrome hardware - surely that would require no additional parts, tooling or product development time on their part and appeal to enough people to be profitable. Of course, then they'd also need to actually make some of them and get them over here so you could buy one without the opportunity to do so feeling like some kind of honour being bestowed, but that's another matter. As is the availability of spare parts given that a lot of their hardware is bespoke and there's a great online parts catalogue to tell you exactly what the code is for the thing you want... you just either can't find it, or can't have it delivered to this country. I digress. An SR1305-SB was my recent birthday gift to myself, and I can't see much else in the '22 range that I'd be tempted to send for.

I buy PLI as I consider it just another running cost that comes with my hobby and I feel happier with it than without, but even so, if anything did go wrong then if only for my own peace of mind I'd always like to know that I'd tried my best to mitigate any risks I'd identified and wasn't being negligent. If I could demonstrate that fact, I reckon my insurer might find it useful as well, especially in the face of a chancer. I'm not an electrician but I was trained to PAT test as part of a previous role, so out of habit I visually check everything I use and make sure it's looking ok from the point of view of a 'competent person'. I've seen a lot of gear provided by venues and brought in by other bands which is an instant fail upon visual inspection, and whilst I've not hacked any plugs off (yet) I've told the owner and/or refused to use things.

I would say that the thing which makes me sound 'like me' on most instruments is my playing style rather than an innate tone, and if I sound fundamentally different on a given instrument it's because it actively forces me to modify my playing style, usually by feeling physically awkward in some way. If somebody associates me - as our lead guitarist does - with a specific tone, I'm inclined to believe it's because that's what they generally hear in combination with my playing style at the point where they're best placed to recall it. Years of rehearsals playing the same genre of songs on broadly the same bass and amp in the same corner of the same room with the same number of people in it who are also playing broadly the same instruments and standing in the same places, for instance. I dial in a suitable tone for the room and genre within the bounds dictated by the gear. The ideal is that I leave the settings mostly flat, bring up the master until the sound tech tells me to stop, then play.