Kiwi

I've heard the same but the Cirrus in my hands feels dead. It's all mid range and very little crispness or fullness. Most of the Smith sound comes from the coils in each humbucker wired in parallel, plus the softer maple in the neck.

Quilted maple, it was very soft wood and hardly protected by the varnish finish.

A quick distraction is required then to defuse tension....OH! LOOK!! THREE SMITH BASSES!

Aha, you have a father's sense humour! lol

My own experiences would support that. The fretted five had mahogany wings with quilted maple facings. The fretless 5 had flamed maple wings with walnut facings. The six string had walnut wings with maple facings. The fretted five was the warmest and growliest but the bottom end response was a little boomy. The fretless five had a tighter lower end and slightly flatter mids, a more even response generally. The fretted six was pretty similar to the fretless five. I was surprised about the impact of wings on timbre because they were neck through instruments. Also Ken respecified the pickups (made by Kent Armstrong) when the BSR line was introduced. The BT pickups sounded much more growly with a tighter low end to my ears than the BSR versions. I preferred them. The other thing that Ken mentioned to me is that he mades sure the necks are not too stiff. That whacking great slab of ebony for the fingerboard helps to keep things playable. This was a revelation and made me reflect on the role of stiffness in the necks of all the wood and graphite necked instruments I'd ever played. I think it's clear from that quote that my issues with Ken's preferred communication style are not isolated. If Brubaker takes over the customer service side from Ken, it might be the best business decision Ken has ever made.

I did the same back in 2015 but took it back. It didn't sound like a tele to me and there was something up with the neck which meant I couldn't get it set up how I wanted. Great yours worked out though.

It kind of reinforces my point about how irrelevant any pre-this or post-that mythology that develops will be to the actual instruments.

I had three BSRGNs at one point, two fives (fretted fretless) and a six. There wasn't a disagreement so much as I just didn't expect or like being communicated with in the way that he did. I felt it was ungracious at best and arrogant at worst. It wasn't just me though, Ken ended up posting a video addressing his preferred communication style because it had become such a topic for discussion. I'm not sure whether it actually helped him very much. I had a look for the factory tour video that I remember and it didn't come up in any searches. Perhaps it's been removed or has become so obscure that it's hidden behind higher ranking but less relevant noise. I definitely remember seeing a tech carving away at the neck joint of a bass with a rasp, with a load of parts stacked in the back. I also recall Ken pointing out the locating dowels to ensure a consistent fit of the wings.

If you saw the factory tour vid on youtube from the mid 90's, you would see Ken has an assembly line set up. All the wings are preshaped with dowels to slot into the neck. The control cavity is routed and the only real handiwork is shaping of the neck joint. Line up 5 Smith BSR basses and you'll see there's a lot of variety in how much wood has been taken out. The point is, there is no such thing as a pre and post Ken age any more than a pre- and post-Fodera Smith bass. Ken has never had very much personal involvement in the making of the basses apart from design/spec and the final set up/QC. None of which is changing.

Came here hoping to see a chat about Gene Perez and Louis Benedetti.

When I worked in a pub in Calne, Wiltshire, I put on Wagner's flight of the valkyries to help clear out the punters so we could lock up. It worked really well.

seems like he's doing a lee sklar thing Bernard Edwards basically mentored him through production of Notorious so there's bound to be a lot of the big man's influence in those lines.

I think the answer depends on what you mean by 'all'. Every conceivable genre and style in every pick up combination? And then there's the question of how much ballache you really want in your life as you grapple with complexity of the system you eventually choose. And are you playing live or recording? Are you wanting the system as a way to discover what you want or are you wanting it because other people have asked you for different bass sounds? And none of the systems you have mentioned will be totally accurate. I've been through the same process and fell back on a pair of humbuckers with parallel/single coil switching. They did the job 80% of the time for what I needed live and the addition of a 3 band semi-parametric eq allowed some tweaking for the odd recording session. The Variax is probably the cheapest option if you are just wanting to discover things for yourself at home. They can be picked up for silly money considering the tech that is inside them. It's like a Kempler system but for instruments rather than amps. You can also look at the Mooer GTR pedal as a cheaper (and less sophisticated) alternative to the Roland system if you can borrow the basses you want to sound like. https://www.amazon.com/MOOER-Guitar-Tone-Capture-Pedal/dp/B07VQZQM7F

A early noughties Spector Euro would do the trick. Just change the pickups to suit the genre. EMG for rock/metal, parallel wired humbuckers for smoother genres.

I will put a word in for the Effectrode PC2A after all, despite it needing a huge amount of power. It's the perfect valve comp, studio clean and warm and can be subtle or squashy as you like. Just can't power it off a pedalboard brick.

Thank you! It's a good enough guess to work with.

Can anyone tell me the dimensions of the Hexavalve?

Yeah maybe I'm a bit late to the game. They're good quality too.

Even Nile approves.

Great thread this, am thinking about replacing my Effectrode PC2A compressor on my guitar board. It's a stunning comp but power requirements mean I can't run it off a power bank.

Mine honked and squeaked after the firmware update didn't install properly. lol

Me too, I had an opportunity to purchase a brand new NS Wav bass @cost about 10 years ago. I tried it and it sounded gorgeous but goodness me I stumbled around on it and fought it feriously. Just not my cup of tea but, as I said, it sounded fantastic. Also: Piano. My son is learning and I'm left handed so my dominance is on the lower notes. Now I know Jools Holland is a leftie and his left hand is always busy as a result. And Phil Collins doesn't seem encumbered when he plays 'A Groovy Kind of Love' but I struggle with controlling dynamics with my right hand.

I have an FEA Labs dual compressor, highly sought after for that Trace Elliot dual band thing but far, far better quality.

An oldie but a goodie.

Sometimes a seller will post something with an outrageous price just to get idiots like me posting about it on forums.