Jools4001

I've got a Barefaced Big One (15/6) with similar dimensions and construction. I've been gigging it for 2 years and although it doesn't look new, it doesn't look rough or tatty either. It's tough! Mine has a little chip in it just to the left hand side of the grill about a quarter of the way up. It's about the size of a 5 pence piece. That's the only damage that resulted from me walking it at full tilt into the pointy corner of a low garden wall during a load in. I didn't see the wall because I was carrying the cab over a gravelled car park (if the surface had been smooth I'd have been wheeling it and it wouldn't have happened). The force was enough to knock me on my ass and drop the cab with a clatter - the small chip was the only damage. They're tough!

I love my '73 4001. I've had it since 1976 and it has been my main bass ever since. I'm not elitist, I just worked my nads off when I was a kid to afford it. They always were more expensive, but at that time of day if you wanted a pro level bass you basically had a choice of a Fender P, a Fender J, perhaps a Gibson or a Ric if you wanted to be a bit more individual. I'm not going to use it as my main bass anymore. Mostly becaue it has such sentimental value to me that it is priceless as far as I'm concerned, and it nearly got totalled at our last gig when it was on it's stand and a drunk fell on it. But also because (although it's a very nice example of a well kept vintage Ric) the world has moved on and there are better basses

[quote name='WinterMute' timestamp='1350393712' post='1838174'] In the 80's I ran a GK 800RB bi-amped into an Ampeg 8x10 and a TE 4x10, I played a 5 string Thumb and it sounded awesome... 400 watts was plenty to shift the air and the decibels, however it weighed slightly more than the car I use to shift it around in and I was young, strong and stupidly keen... I also only ran one basic bass sound, and this is the key element. I'm 48 now, I play 5 string fretted and fretless and the bass sound shifts to suit the style and content of each song occasionally during songs, I need a rig that shifts the air and the db, but can cope with the different tonality and playing styles I employ, plus it has to be small and light... I have a Pod XT pro and a Crown XTi1000 awaiting a Big Twin T from Alex, I fully expect it to be able to outperform the old rig. I love 8x10 and large scale rigs as much as the next Teutonic Bass Monster, but sometimes technology and the application of knowledge and design comes up with something different. I'll let you know if Alex, (and by extension, myself) are right. [/quote] I think you will be fine. It turns out we have very similar historical rigs and very similar current ones. I used to use Trace Elliot stuff and dabbled with GK and Ampeg. All very good for their time. Like you I also now play 4, 5 and 6 string fretted basses and a 5 string fretless and also want a wide variety of sounds. I also have a Line 6 XT (in Live format) which gives me patches set up for every song in our set list and enables me to flick from a growling Ric tone from my '73 4001 to a perfect fretless tone at the prod of a button. I run that into an ART pro channel that is a fantastic channel strip type pre-amp. It's billed as a mic pre but does a great job for gain matching from the Pod, it has a nice compressor a parametric EQ and an output stage that will drive any power amp. I use the Pod for my core sounds and the EQ in the ART lets me quickly make global EQ changes to suit any room (so my patches all sound just as I want them to in different venues). All that goes into a Crown 100XLS running bridged and finally into a BF Big One. It sounds far better to me than any of the big heavy rigs I've had before and I can't imagine many ways I could improve things. The Big One is a couple of years old now but still mightily impressive. I don't think you'll be disappointed in the BF cab.

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1347541842' post='1802167'] Just to say that I gigged exclusively with a Big One for two years, using (at different times, natch) an Eden WTX-500, Orange Terror Bass, and rigs based around pedal + Digam Powersoft power amp. With all those rigs, I always got a really transparent, clean sound with no boom at all. [/quote] +1 I've gigged my Big One for a couple of years as well. I drive it with a Pod XT Live, an ART ProChannel and a bridged Crown 1000XLS. I'm no spring chicken and I've used rigs from Ampeg, Trace, GK, Marshall, Hiwatt and Eden amongst others over the years. It took a bit of a learning curve for the rest of my kit to play nice with the Big One because it is so transparent it will reveal stuff you didn't notice before.I've got it cracked now and it's the best rig I've ever had,. You know that the Big One sounds awesome when non-bass playing, non-musicians tell you that your bass sound is the best they've ever heard. It's cured my cab GAS anyway....well....except maybe for a super 15

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1342283794' post='1732825'] I swapped out ceramics for NEO'S and the result was weak. The volume was pretty much there but the cab didn't work....... And it might be argued that I didn't prepare the cab for the new chassis' but others who did it said it worked very well. I couldnt agree less..... And subsequent NEO cabs I've used have the same sort of feeling.... Close but not the cigar for me.. How do I explain that....? I can't. Maybe I don't like the 'sound' of NEO... ??? [/quote] Probably more to it than just the magnets. Unless the NEO's had exactly the same driver characteristics as the ceramics they replaced it's more likely that the cabinet size and tuning was off. I just dropped by this thread because I've used a Barefaced Big One for a couple of years now and it is very lightweight for a 15/6 config cab - about 40 pounds. I'm still amazed at how this cab pumps it out, very loiud, very even across the whole frequency range and as articulate as I'd ever want. Haven't had cab GAS since getting it.

Actually, after years of playing with stainless rounds on my fretless, I started to use Elixirs for the last couple of years. I know coated strings are not to everyon's taste but they seem easier on the fingerboard, they're kinder to fingers if you do a lot of slides, the slightly less lively sound seems to suit the fretless tonality and they last a long time. I get about a year out of them instead of 2 months on uncoated strings.

I have a '94 Patrick Eggle Milan V and I didn't like it much as a fretted bass, but the bridge pickup always sounded fretlessy even when it had frets - so I took it to Martin Petersen who took the frets out of it's rosewood board. I've always used SS rounds on it. It's just undergoing a fingerboard true up now, and getting epoxy coated so that it's a bit harder wearing, but it took 15 years to get to the point where the fingerboard was worn enough to need attention - and that includes at least 5 years where it was played for around 2-3 hours per day as my main bass. One of the key things is to use vibrato up and down the neck (like a cellist would) if you pull the string across the fingerboard as you do on a fretted bass, you'll wear it out much quicker. I've never worried about it that much though, if you think about it, if you use stainless rounds on a fretted bass it'll probably need a refret after 10-15 years hard use, so a fretless needing it's fingerboard truing isn't much different

I have an Epi Pro IV that I use as my backup bass, and it also wears heavier strings than usual because it's always tuned to Eb. I got it because I've always liked slightly idiosyncratic basses, not that the T-Bird is particularly radical ,but it's a slightly less obvious choice than an P or J type bass. I also use it in a rock band and it's just right for that, it's active so it's got a good range of sounds (although cranking the treble gets a bit fizzy) and it looks cool. I don't have a problem with neck dive, the strap button on the pro is behind the neck join (or would be if it had one 'cos it's a neck through) and a 4" strap takes care of any remaining tendency for the headstock to point floorwards. But...because the strap button is where it is the whole bass hangs further to the left so that the first fret seems a long way away, and where my right hand naturally falls it's virtually on the bridge rather than over the bridge pickup (fine for pick players I guess - but I'm not one). The other thing that is caused by the strap button positioning is that if you let the bass simply dangle from the strap, it flops forward with the face of the bass towards the floor at about 20 degrees, so unless you keep the upper bout pinned to your body with your right forearm, or assume a Steve Harris 'foot on the monitor' ose and rest the bass on your right thigh you can't see the fingerboard. That's fine for pounding out Thin Lizzy and AC/DC stuff, but for anything more intricate it can be a pain. I'm an old git and I've been playing a long time, so it's not too much trouble to adapt, but if I was a new player...I'd get a Squier J or similar

Mostly, when I see an ERB being played I think of it as an opportunity to get in touch with the guy and see if I can audition as their bassist

My band plays most of our gig in standard tuning, but the first 6 or 7 songs in the second set are from bands that tuned down to Eb when they did the originals Guns and Roses, Thin Lizzy etc... for some reason those songs don't have the same vibe when we played them in standard tuning. It's easier to have a spare bass set up for drop tuning than dick around tuning between numbers (and having to put up with rubber band strings for the drop stuff). So, my Ric does most of the gig tuned to standard wearing 45-105 Elites and I have an Epi T-Bird Pro IV that I use for the drop tuned stuff and it wears 50-110 Elites. The difference in string tension between the two basses is not enough to worry about. I used to use lighter guages, but I've found I prefer heavier strings these days. I know you think that 50-110's might be over the top but my bass handled them with no need to widen the nut slots and just a tweak on the truss rod, so it shouldn't take any work to speak of and it's only going to cost you £15 or so to find out if you like them

[quote name='Billy Apple' timestamp='1349293616' post='1824460'] Has anyone AB'd a Ric and a Roc? I'd be interested in what Ric aficionados have to say. [/quote] Yes, I have...well, sort of. I haven't played them directly back to back but I spent about an hour with a Roc in Wunjo with a view to getting a relatively inexpensive backup bass for my '73 Ric. My Ric is a very good one and (apart from when I used to be in a band where fretless was a better vibe) I've used it as my main bass for a very long time, so even though I didn't have it with me when I tried the Roc I think that I know enough about what Rics are like by now. So the Roc. I was quite impressed with it. The Ric is only 1 1/4" thick and the Roc body is a lot chunkier, the Roc is also substantially heavier and the neck also has a much chunkier feel to it than my particular Ric. Having said that, it's not a baseball bat and I found it to be pretty comfortable, I could live with it although I prefer the more slender neck of the real Ric. The difference in scale length didn't worry me, although I regularly skip between the 33 1/4" scale length on the Ric and 34" scale length basses. Some of the metalwork on the Roc looked a bit shonky, particularly the pickup cover, but since that would be the first thing to get taken off that's not a problem. The Roc bridge doesn't look like the Ric bridge, but since the Ric bridge is the work of the devil that's not a problem either. In fact the Roc bridge looked a lot more functional and easier to adjust. Tonewise, the Roc sounded pretty good, in fact very good for a bass in this price range, but it didn't sound anything like a Ric. Maybe there was just a hint of Ric on some settings (soloed bridge pickup) but in general the Roc didn't have the mids, the top end or complex harmonics of the Ric. I was very tempted to buy it but decided to think it over a bit and ultimately decided that if the Roc didn't sound like a Ric then I might as well get something with a completely different vibe as my backup bass and went with an Epi T-Bird Pro IV instead