Ed_S

Yeah, that was where my research got me with regards the XL vs XS thing, too - cosmetic differences only. The other compressors I use are DBX 160A (for vocal tracking), Markbass Compressore (for bass tracking away from my home setup), EBS MultiComp (on my main pedalboard) and Boss BC-1X (on my 'other' pedalboard), and the 166 doesn't disappoint up against any of them. Your friend speaketh the truth 🙂

I've very definitely always been a bassist who happens to dabble on guitar, but wasn't always fully happy to admit it. A few years ago I gave myself a bit of a reality check and sold all the big amps and cabs that it was clear I'd never put to any serious use, and all but my two favourite guitars. I also kept my little 1W valve head and a handful of pedals, but they don't eat anything or take up a lot of room. During lockdown I found myself browsing guitars again, telling myself that I'd spend the extra time at home really giving it a go and that a new guitar would provide the push I needed. Thankfully I called myself out on my own bull in time and instead just bought a HX Stomp since it would give me some new sounds to play with on bass as well, and a different pickup to put in one of my existing guitars. Totally predictably the guitar kick lasted about a fortnight and, although I enjoyed it a lot while it lasted, we're back to an occasional noodle just like before. Some things won't change no matter what you throw at them. My not being a guitarist is, sadly, one of those things and I think I'm finally OK with that - I'm just an occasional noodler! That said, in my more distant past I gave up being a grade 8 standard orchestral violinist when I stopped enjoying that, and I gave it up fully keeping nothing and never looking back, so that does happen as well, even after many years and having attained a level that a lot of people would be very happy with. Whichever way you go, move on with impunity and do what you enjoy!

Both for me. Stunning generalisations being that I use a pick for heavy rock / metal and fingers for lighter styles, a pick for 4 string and fingers for 5 / 6 string, and fingers until I feel like I'm risking a blister, then switch to a pick irrespective of style - just use the thicker back edge and play softer. There are a few tunes where I'll palm the pick for a while and play softer sections with fingers then go back to the pick when required, so I like a fairly big pick that isn't going to slip through my fingers and hit the deck. I use 1.26mm acetal picks most of the time, but will occasionally use a 1mm red big stubby if I want a really clear attack when recording something fast.

That green is nice but a bit pimp for my tastes! 🙂 It's a shame they trimmed the EII line back so much - the two models that are left really don't appeal to me at all, but some of the ones they scrapped really did. Much like the 'surveyor', I still wonder how much of the problem is the 'EII' brand name - when I got my EII ST-2 skinny guitar I paid less than half the RRP because the shop just couldn't shift it - it was the price of an ESP but didn't say ESP on the headstock, so they had to keep reducing it. They tried a couple and moved the 'reindeer blue' one for a profit fairly quickly because it was pretty, but the trans-black just sat there gathering dust until it was so cheap I couldn't resist nabbing it - they said pretty much at cost. Never saw another EII in there - just available for special order. Anyway, I digress...!

Aye, I had a Surveyor 415 a few years ago, and as much as it was a well made and good sounding bass, it weighed an absolutely ridiculous amount and that was why I eventually moved it on. The 'surveyor' name doesn't bother me too much... ...but that surfaced a few bad memories! 😉 ..psyche Seriously, though, nope - never seen one out and about, but I agree the white one does look nice in the pictures! If they did the AP-5 in white with black hardware, then I'd probably be in danger of buying one of those.

I had the Behringer 2200 and 2600 and they were perfectly alright for what little I paid, but one side of the 2200 just randomly stopped working and neither unit sounded wonderful. I binned the 2200 and replaced the 2600 with a DBX 166xs, which I really like. It looks much less like a seasonally decorated tree, is easier to dial in and sounds generally better to me. I recall reading that the cheaper 266 is a different circuit design and isn't as well suited to bass as the 166, but I've not got one so can't offer personal experience there.

Well I never - it does look very similar doesn't it. The through-body holes are slightly radiused on this original part, but it's so close, surely they must be related. Cheers very much for that lead - it gives me at least a bit of hope that I might be able to get hold of one! I'll send WD UK an email and see whether they can have one sent over without it costing an insane amount more than just swapping the USD price into GBP - they're usually helpful. Failing that, maybe WD USA would just send me one directly and leave me to play with the post office once it gets here. Interesting that the WD USA site is giving it the code GEB201 as if it's a Gotoh.. and I also like that they cheekily market it as a 'direct replacement for a BadAss II' 🙂

Hey all, I've got a cheapish 90s bass with what seems to be an odd bridge. It's got very fender-esque measurements for mounting hole and string spacing, but allows through-body stringing. I'd like to replace all the hardware with either black or shiny nickel/chrome instead of the satin stuff that's on there from stock, but having spent a bit of time browsing this afternoon, a bridge is proving hard to find. I'm not actually bothered about stringing through, so I could technically fit any 5-hole f-style replacement and just glue the ferrules in place so they don't get lost, but I'd quite like to keep it as-intended if possible so wondered whether anyone had any suggestions for one with the ability to string through? Doesn't have to be fancy, but does have to be smooth and well engineered. Price-wise, if a Babicz or Kickass were an option I'd be up for that, so around £150ish. Ta very much in advance, Ed

Heh, I could stretch to a board with all homemade patch cables.. Actually my main board started out as a B&Q shelf, some rubber feet, kitchen drawer handles and a bike chain, so maybe I can salvage some DIY points there! Sounds like a perfectly reasonable compromise - I would have liked to try a DHA rack preamp but sadly availability of cash and thingy never coincided.

Cool looking board - I do rather like either everything to be from one manufacturer or everything to be from totally different manufacturers, as both show a kind of commitment to.. something-or-other! I have the tube overdrive (TO800) for guitar and it's a great TubeScreamer substitute. Never bothered me that it's plastic when pressing the pedal, though I do feel like I'm about to break the little loops on the side every time I put a new battery in it.. it's just not actually happened yet and hopefully it won't! Admittedly it's not my favourite overdrive for guitar, but neither was the 'proper' TS808 which is why I sold that and kept the cheaper green box that did the same thing. I was less pleased with their Sansamp clone, as the switch felt generally iffy (although I'll give it its due - it did work) and the knobs didn't seem to do very much to the sound. Wasn't terrible by any stretch, but wasn't worth keeping as I could tell I'd literally never take it out of the box again. Come to think of it, there was another one I had years ago and gave to a bandmate on the off-chance that she could find a use for it that was eluding me. Think that was the blues overdrive (BO300) but it was nothing like a Blues Driver, which I assume is what it was going for. The one I'm surprised that you've got on your board and aren't having issues with is actually the tuner. I have one of those that I bought to keep in my backup bag, but it just doesn't pick up bass notes well - especially a low B. In fact it hardly gives any kind of reading at all if you have vibrations from external stuff like drums on stage. It's alright-ish for guitar, but even then it's jumpy. I'm glad yours works, though!

When I played more guitar than I do these days my old Marshall TSL60 had a foot-switchable parallel loop with a level control on the front, so all I used to do was keep a short patch cable between the send and return and use it as a solo boost. Worked really well because the amount of boost was easy to set and stayed relatively similar wherever you were on the master. Not sure whether there are any bass heads out there that could do the same.

Speaking of SRs, I think they’re great, but sadly I can only own ones with a top/veneer as I’d rather see a full-width Marshall head precariously overhanging my One10 than this... I know that it can’t be / isn’t meant to be parallel but I just can’t deal with it!

Looks very nice, too! 🙂 I just accepted that given all three were the same, that was how they were. If it makes any odds, they’re all SLs from the cedar-bodied era - maybe they’re different in some way?!

The only thing I don't like all that much about mine and which I'd generally alert a potential buyer to is that they both have whatever the opposite of fret-sprout is. Mine are both PF boards but one other that I no longer have was exactly the same with maple, so whilst I haven't played loads and it might not be true of the majority, I'm 3 for 3 - every fret at both ends. Running my hand down the sides of the board isn't the smooth experience I'm used to with other brands, and I'd have seriously preferred that it was. It's not massively uncomfortable or unpleasant, and I've clearly decided I can live with it, but I guess it could be a deal-breaker for some...?

I really like Ibanez for cheap but sturdy stuff - got a GSR180 that I bought to cart round as a gigging backup, a GSR200b that I impulse bought because it was so light and had such a nice neck that I just had to, and a TMB30 that I was given and decided to mod and see what all the short scale fuss was about. I'll be honest, some days I put down a £1400 Sandberg superlight, pick up the £140 GSR200b and genuinely question my choices. The Ibanez is actually lighter, just as comfortable to play, holds its tuning just as well and makes a sound very much like me playing a bass. It doesn't look flashy and of course there's a difference in the quality of the parts, but the body wood and finish of both seem to be equally soft and susceptible to damage so I can't see either coming out of a life 'on the road' unscathed and I could fully replace the Ibanez a good few times for the same money. Properly great little bass! Still got a picture of it in my saved attachments so here we go...

Can’t particularly relate as I’ve always preferred the feel of a brand new pick and intentionally use ones that stay feeling that way for a good length of time. Since ‘brand new’ is a much easier state to return to than ‘perfectly worn in’, I’d probably invest some more time and money into trying to find one that feels alright from new and then stick with it - bulk buy and treat them as more of a disposable item. Or I guess maybe find another player whose ‘worn out’ is your ‘perfectly worn in’ like some people (equally confusingly to me) do with roundwound strings!

I had great fun making a fairly substantial pedalboard with a custom flight case but then realised how inconvenient it might be at some of the smaller venues we (used to be able to..) play where there are 5 bands and no storage, as well as some of the very short opening sets we get with bigger bands who fill the stage and refuse to move anything of theirs yet demand that you PUFO in 5 mins flat after your last note. That’s why I got the FlyRig - because it’s decent quality and ‘it’ll do’. The board has, amongst others... a TU-3 tuner, OC-3 octave, VT-Bass overdrive, MXR chorus, EBS compressor and a BDDI. The separates sound better and if I always had the space I’d always use the main board, but the FlyRig is sometimes much more appropriate and covers what I need to a level that I can live with. Sorry to say the Behringer didn’t impress me as a BDDI alternative - the switch didn’t feel that sturdy, the knobs didn’t seem to do very much and it just didn’t sound right to me, so I’d vote to put my £20 towards the real thing.

Saw Slipknot, Machine Head and Children of Bodom in 2008, and was pretty much only there for Bodom. They played their disappointingly short opening set and then Machine Head played about 3 songs before Phil Demmel collapsed due to some heart condition or other and that was it until the headline slot. As soon as it became apparent that he was alright, we were all willing Bodom to come back out and carry on - bet they could have plugged in and made do - but nah, didn't happen.

I reckon it depends on whether the thing you had was a particularly good example, and you risk re-buying one that's only average. Probably matters more with instruments than it does amps and electronics. I went one better with a Sterling Ray35 which I traded in for a proper StingRay 5. In the shop I managed to convince myself that it was a massive step up, but then a few months of playing it made me realise that the Ray35 was a much, much nicer sounding instrument, and what I'd bought at great additional expense was actually just nice woodgrain. I've played other 35s since and in doing so realised just how nice the one I had was. Should have kept it. Sold the Ray at the usual kind of loss you experience from new, as it was just a monumental disappointment and I wanted it out of my sight!

I discovered a while back that my band associates the ‘Precision with volume and tone full-on through a Markbass with the EQ at noon and both filters off’ tone with me, and they seem to prefer it to most other things that I buy, try for a bit and eventually sell. I like it as well so I certainly don’t see it as a problem if that’s the tone in their head when they think of me as they’re writing etc. I never set out for that to be ‘my’ tone, but the LM2 was the first amp I was really happy with the basic sound of so I guess it figures. I really like the GK MB200 with everything at noon as well. When it comes down to it, I give a clean DI to the sound tech at gigs and I give a clean DI track to the engineer for any studio recordings, so I don’t think I count as being too precious about tone as long as they make it fit the mix.

Certainly was a bargain! If I hadn’t already got one I’d have been after it myself 🙂 I paid a couple of hundred more for mine back when the peavey warehouse got cleared out and everything was being auctioned off. Think that possibly makes it either a return or a repair but it’s been fine for the last few years so I can only imagine that if it did once have a problem it was sorted. I don’t get to play it as often as I might, but every time I do it’s good fun. If I was to offer any small piece of advice, I’d say don’t run it for 3 hours and then immediately pick it up and carry it to the car with the back pressed tight to your body. Those power valves are close to the grille and damn near melted the elastane in my comfy stretch jeans!

I’ve always used badass bridges on my fenders/squiers that came with cheap bbots from the factory and I think there is probably a difference in sound, but I’m not sure whether it’s down to sustain. The decision to get rid of the first bbot was taken on functional grounds - I got fed up of it either rattling, bits working loose and altering the setup in transit, or grub screws sticking up and tearing chunks out of my hand and/or gig bag. The decision to go for the badass was taken mainly on aesthetic grounds - I just like them. The difference in sound, if any, is probably due more to the way I play when I have confidence in the hardware on the instrument than it is the mass of that hardware.

No worries! Actually I suppose since you specifically said 1/4” to 1/4” cable, that’d need another of the jack to speakon converters as the speakon joiner thingy isn’t combination as far as I recall. Or just use a speakon/speakon or speakon/jack cable instead as either would get you to the combination socket on the head. You absolutely can use two converters and a join, though - I’ve done that as well. Apologies if that sounded like a brief introduction to egg-sucking but I noticed that what I’d said wasn’t quite accurate 🙂

Those two Neutrik converter/connectors that you linked do work well together - I keep one of each in my gigging bag and have used them on the end of an appropriate cable to get from a combo’s speaker to an external amp head just like you describe.

Great deal on that VB-2, whoever got it - and just in time for the cold weather, too! 🙂 Actually noticed the other day that Richtone have a s/h matching 1x15 if it was anyone round here doing some rig building.