Kiwi

I've learned the hard way that finding a reliable seller is key. There's a lot of factory rejects on Alibaba and other sites. And little consumer protection for overseas buyers. And cowboy sales people who are only concerned with where their next commission is coming from before they jump to the next employer.

Wow, I don't think those photos have appeared anywhere else on line. Thanks for sharing!

The eq on mine was definitely three band with two volumes and a pickup selector. I cant remember the electronics unfortunately. I only ever opened the back once and I dont recall seeing much in the way of branding or whether there was an exposed PCB. I have a suspicion it could have been one of the basses commissioned by The Bass Centre towards the end of Ashley's time in the UK. It had a p bass sized neck and was black. Im aware that the Bass Centre insisted on p bass sized neck profiles when they signed he to an exclusive agreement. Maybe 1986-ish? Tangshan is a bit of a walk from where I am. Have you visited your wifes home town? I know the name from the earthquake that hit in 1976.

I sold one of Ashley's basses via the Bass Gallery a couple of years ago, a graphite Warlord. Is it possible it might have had a 3 band you worked on? Did Kent Armstrong make the pickups? Also, your user ID is interesting. In Mandarin it means 'comfortable'. Do you have any Chinese connections or is it pure conincidence?

If I have time: 1) Learn how to use all the gear I have including the Polyend Mess and the Akai MPC1 that has been sitting on my desk unused for the last 2.5 years. 2) Get the fingerboard replaced on the Vigier 3) Finish building the strat that was tone chasing Phil Collen's rather more exotic and expensive Jacksons. 4) If economic conditions pick up, sell more stuff. 5) Set up the bass pedalboard for the arpeggiation and manual bass synth lines...I will need a second bass synth pedal for that. I have BC, Aurok, study for a PGCE and a social media channel to take care of plus a day job...

Over the weekend, I had a deeper dive and the unit is really easy to understand. It can also do not only a melodic arpeggiated sequenced line BUT...it can do one sequenced line for each of four tracks and each track can be assigned a different time signature and a different speed (as a multiple of the tempo). Doing a patch for I Feel Love could potentially include both sequenced basslines (one I/I/-IV/-VII and the other i/I/+V/+VII) and a manually played bassline for accents. I would also like to see if there is a way to use two tracks, one 4/4 and the other 12/8 to get some rhythmic accents and feels that aren't quantised to regular 1/16 notes. With the two remaing tracks, it's possible to assign effects such as a slapback delay or modulation for further complexity. So that completely blows my world of rhythmic opportunities wide open in ways I never expected but it does require knowing the unit quite well. There's plenty of user patch slots (literally thousands) but not much in the factory presets that showcase the arp abilities. However. It turns out I've discovered a bug. While it's possible to assign a pitch interval to each individual step, it turns out that when I try to assign an interval above 0 to a step, it transposes the entire track. So that's been logged and may well end up being addressed in the first firmware update. Other users are report other bugs as well so it seems like the firmware is more like a beta version. It would also be nice to have access to a minor third interval so I can sequence within a key. Once I've explored the possibilities more fully and if they release a firmware update soonish, I'll post a video showing the upper limits of what it can do.

I have a sound that I definitely prefer, which is a combination of 80's burp but with extra warmth. It's probably closest to the tone that gospel players use. I feel that having a signature sound is probably something for others to decide, assuming my playing ever becomes noteworthy enough.

Oddly enough, the owner of Alexander Pedals flagged it with me when I reached out about the blended step thing.

This is one of @thevintagebassist 's necks.

There is a patch on the Mess called Onestring which is an arpeggiated sequence based on one note. Its pretty much what Ive been looking for. Just need to deep dive the editing process.

I've started inspecting the necks this evening...I'll be in contact with each of you tomorrow with photos n stuff. So far I'm pretty happy with the quality, although there has been a change to the specification which the fabricator didn't discuss with me. The paint is now gloss rather than matt which means the weave is popping harder than ever. It's almost pornographic.

Necrothread bump: Admittedly I haven't been great at updating this thread as originally intended because it's just been one disappointment after another. I sold the Boss SY200 recently because the arpeggiation wasn't user programmable, the Source Audio C4 was sold last year due to connectivity faff and the Alexander Colour Theory and the Cooper FX Moment Machine both did pitch based arpeggiation but didn't do ADSR. So two steps of the same pitch and duration became one step of double the duration which meant it couldn't trigger a bass synth pedal with two notes of the same pitch...so 1/8 note pumping away was out of the question. And of course I could only uncover all of this after shelling out for them. BUT after 16 years...I hope my quest might be over. In August this year, a small company called Polyend released a pedal called the Mess which does virtually every kind of sequenced effect plus a load of delays and reverbs. I finally got my hands on one today and while I've had only a modest muck about with it so far just checking out factory presets...it's absolutely capable of pitch based arpeggiation with ADSR and user programmable pitch intervals. I'll post more in a week or so after I've connected it to the mimmo modded Freeze and the Future Impact. https://polyend.com/mess/

Hey guys, batch 2 is being express shipped to me tomorrow so hope to inspect the necks towards the end of the week. I'll be sending each of you photoand video and a set of heel measurements to confirm everything is as expected.s

Maple board on a SR4 neck - any thoughts? What does everyone think? It's going to be available for sale once finished.