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I purchased a 1978 BB2000 last week. I'm still getting used to it (and to playing round wounds as I've been on tapes/flats on all my basses for years) - but it is rather nice. It sustains longer than any bass I've ever played, but also has more clarity than my (Indonesian, bolt-on) BB425. I've always fancied a neck-through Yamaha - and when I played this one it was hard to say no! I know such a post needs photos, so here goes... Phil

Surely the dream bass multi-effect is just the next one that you buy, and then shortly thereafter sell on the marketplace here? I'm looking at you @stewblack! But yes - open source, build your own is a very nice idea. For me, decent preamp, compressor, tuner, some modulation, and then ideally some spare digital processing for future proofing/loading other processing. It's beginning to sound like the MOD Dwarf (or whatever that project was called). Phil

Just a follow up to this. I tried re-bending to remove the kink. Unfortunately I couldn't get it good enough to please my preferred low action on the fretless - so I then tried to add more tension to the string to flatten it out - and eventually did the foolish thing of snapping the string. What a muppet! I bought a new set, and have asked BassDirect if they can source an individual string separately - currently they don't have the individual strings in stock.

Thanks for the help @itu

Dear all, I recently changed my fretless 5-string Clement from black tapewounds (I've had D'Addarios on there, and La Bella's before that) to rather lovely and brigher Gold White nylon tapewounds from La Bella (760G-B). This was all great apart from on one string - the A string had an extreme MWAH/buzz (depending on string height) just behind the 9th fret line (only on this 1 string, and only at this point on the neck). https://www.labella.com/product/760g-b/. I wasted several weeks monkeying around with neck relief, action, reseating strings in the saddles, feeling the neck for high spots, and gradually got more confused. However, today I took the offending string off to try and reseat it again, and noticed a subtle wave/kink in the string - just at this point. I wish I'd seen it before, but there we go - it's all part of the learning experience! This was a new set bought just a few weeks ago - so I'm a bit miffed. Has anyone had success in straightening out imperfections in a string? I wondered about tuning the A up a 4th and letting it sit for a day or 2 to see if the kink would stretch out. Thoughts from those with more experience would be most welcome. I'm reluctant to bin the strings - but might have to just to get an even sound throughout the neck. Thanks for any help you can offer. Phil

A belated reply. I put the white/copper strings on my fretted Yamaha and really like them. Maybe the roundwounds that were on there before were rather old, but I didn't expect to get more HF content from the tapes when I swapped! Super comfortable and they look good. I'm now going to change black tapewounds to the gold white nylon tape wounds on my fretless and see how that works. They have been on since 2018 so I don't feel too bad about changing them.

Bought a jazz-style VVT with series/parallel pull/push to transform my rather tired cricket bat headless into something that sounds good again! This combined with shielding all cavities and redoing the ground connections, along with a shim under the neck to lower action has made the old blue bat much less horrible. Thanks John - speedy build, and clear instructions.

Hi all, I've developed a bit of liking for tape wound strings (mainly on my fretless) or occasionally flat wounds. My main 2 basses are 5-strings (fretless & fretted)), and it can get quite expensive to find strings for them. My 3rd bass is a cheap wooden Steinberg (cricket bat) copy - so needs double-ball ends. Unfortunately the vendor who supplied Status with their strings has stopped - and their new supplier has much less choice (basically round wound, single end strings only). I liked their tape wound and flat wound strings - and didn't notice them feeling or sounding much worse than the more expensive alternatives (TI, La Bella etc) Does anyone have any other more affordable suppliers of tape wounds, and other unusual strings like double-ball end flats? I've just bitten the bullet and ordered a set of the La Bella white/copper and white/gold strings to try them out - but would prefer a cheaper alternative. Cheers Phil

Thanks everyone - I've now got a nice clean-warm tone based on the mic pre settings from @krispn . I'll now go back to some of the cabs & IRs and play with mic options as well - thanks @ratman

I should have said - I'm building a tone to go direct from Stomp into the PA - we run IEMs and have no backline - and therefore I was wondering about adding an IR / cab to shape the tone before handing off to the sound person.

Thanks @ratman

Hi all, Thanks to the many tips contained in this forum, TB, and YouTube, I'm in the process of setting up an HX Stomp - bought from a kind chap on here (thanks @CJPJ). However, I'm a fan of clean, transparent amps and cabinets - I have a Euphonic Audio (EA) iAmp 350 and 2 Cx110 cabinets (both have 10" woofer and a tweeter, with the woofer feeding a long transmission line) which are great - lots of bottom end, but very transparent. I'm struggling to find any impulse responses of similarly transparent bass amps and cabs. Right now if I drop in any of the cabinets that are modelled in the Stomp I lose lots of clarity in the sound - and much prefer the sound just using a modelled amp, running clean (thanks to Dr Tonelab for the starting points on EQ) and then going direct. Does anyone have any tips of other IRs I could try? I mostly play in church - and our sound operators are volunteers so giving them a signal that will sit in the mix easily without much work is an advantage. If I was working with somebody with lots of experience - I would just not use the IR at all and let them shape the tone as needed - but thought that dropping in a cab/IR model on the end of the signal chain should help volunteer sound people. Thanks for any tips, Phil

Bought an HX Stomp (and extra foot switches) from Christian. Condition was excellent and as described. Would deal with him again. Phil

I couldn't get an accurate weight reading as our kitchen scales were on the blink. However, using an old spring luggage scale, the total bass is now at about 3.6-3.7 kg. Before I think it was over 4kg - should have written it down before taking all the hardware off... It's not only fixed the neck dive, it has also made the whole bass feel significantly lighter. Worth it in my opinion, but paying the extra for the USA Hipshot lites might be worthwhile to avoid the need to pack the shaft with tape.

I'm afraid that it does - but I figured the weight gain was improved by having more holes in the rear of the headstock! I jest - the holes are not great, but the weight reduction is very welcome. I ended up having to not use any of the original holes - as the closest ones were still not in the right place, and I didn't want to end up with overlarge holes that might muck up the possibility of reverting to the original hardware. Phil

Thanks for the history on 'my' bass - the p pickup in particular is great - lots of growl. Now if only my playing did justice to it

The ones I had were threaded - so that might be useful information for somebody deciding which to get. I went cheap, and had to use electrical tape to pad the shaft. If you get the USA ultralites then maybe you can use the oversize bush and no tape is required!

Hi MoJo. I was after the biggest weight saving, so went for the Y-tuners but actually like the look of it without the elephant ears. The fit was not great to be honest - even with getting the larger (1/2") size. I had to use a few turns of electrical tape on each shaft before inserting. However, once tightened up it is all solid and you cannot see the tape.

I've been enjoying a pre-loved Yamaha BB 425. The only thing I didn't like about it was it was a bit weighty, and had a slight tendency to neck-dive. After much debate, I purchased the cheaper Hipshot Ultralite (Licensed) tuners - went the whole hog and get the Y-tuners to shave even more weight off, albeit at the cost of offending the traditionalists. I'm very happy with the results - the bass feels much better in terms of balance, overall weight and playability.