Sid Fang

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1364315396' post='2024751'] According to a dealer in the States I was having a chat with who sees a fair few , on an increasingly large number of them the necks are becoming a bit bent , despite the fact that they are made out of graphite . [/quote] Really? I've never, ever heard of that having happened. It could, of course. There was a lot of the Black Arts in the original Ned Steinberger design - one of the reasons Gibson was never able to cost-reduce and scale-up production - and some graphite/epoxy mixes may have been less rigid than others, but it's not a problem that comes up very frequenty with 'bergers in the forums I frequent. It would be bad if it did happen - unlike Status and most other modern manufacturers of graphite necks and guitars, the XL-2 has no truss adjustment. One would probably have to apply pressure in the opposite direction for 20-odd years...

I only play one bass and one amp...at a time. Sometimes 2 cabs, though...

I've had an XL-2 for years, and it's been my main bass off and on, including recently (see my profile photo). The pivot plate is one of the utterly brilliant things about the bass. It's effortless to swing the neck up or down as one plays if that makes the reach more comfortable, of just for dramatic effect, so I've never, ever, noticed that the nut seemed far away. I bought mine in the late 1980s, when they were no longer trendy but were stll easy to find. My objective was to have something small and rugged with which I could travel, but it's got such a fast, even neck and such a big, punchy, detailed sound that it became my "go to" bass. The only thing it lacks, for me, is a B string. I hoped for years to come across one of the very rare XL-25W's, but finally gave up and ordered a Stealth 5 string from Status Graphite (should be ready in a couple of weeks!). I opted not to go with the more Steinberger-like Status Streamline precisely because it *doesn't* have the pivot plate, and I had doubt that I'd find the compact format workable without one. As long as you don't let the electronics corrode, 'bergers are nigh-on indestructible and I've never had any problem with mine. The one component that apparently does fail after enough use are the "claws" that hold the tuner end of the strings. These were made from a relatively cheap steel alloy and many of them fail after 20-30 years of use. Fortunately, there are a couple of people in the USA who manufacture stainless steel replacement parts and sell them on Ebay for something like 20 quid the piece.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1361924028' post='1993293'] Aren't T-Birds dead weedy sounding? [/quote] Not in my experience. At least not the old ones.

Keyboard amps make MUCH better substitutes for purpose-built bass amps than guitar amps. Keyboards amps and cabinets need to be full range, down to bass frequencies, and pretty clean. I've used them in a pinch from time to time, but wouldn't buy one just for bass use.

I've had one of these for the past few years, and have used it for practice while travelling. It doesn't sound anywhere close to as good as my EBS rig, but then again, my EBS rig doesn't fit in the accessory compartment of my bass case. My principal point of comparison is with the old Dunlop/Rockman "Bass Ace", which didn't sound much better, but which is 20 times bigger and doesn't fit in any of my instrument cases. It's really easy to make the AmPlug sound like crap, but without the stupid "boost/compress" mode - which I think is there simply because the little switch exists for all the guitar models and the Vox engineers thought that they had to do *something* with it - there's a range, albeit narrow, of gain settings that are perfectly acceptable for practicing electric bass. Lord knows I'd never record through the thing, but that's not what I bought it for!

I'm a very happy EBS user - Drome for practice, HD350+Neo 212 for gigs. I'm toying with the idea of adding a second cab to the HD350 rig, and was thinking that a Neo 210 would give me some interesting flexibility, but I don't want to order one and deal with the hassle of trying to return it if it doesn't "play nice" with its bigger brother in terms of phase effects, etc. Has anybody out there used this particular pairing in a gig situation? You can hear Swaeli Mbappe playing just this rig at Musikmesse in [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqDwtOi5AWA[/media] and it's got a good balance of grit, depth, and clarity in the video, but it *is* just a camcorder video and it's done at very low sound levels.