MichaelDean

6 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Well, the polytune existed before the unitune. Certainly I don't use the poly part on the bass, but it is handy on the guitar. One strum and you can tune it all, couple of seconds and you are done.

I've got a Polytune pedal tuner, but I think I just find the Polytune option a bit overwhelming! Too much to look at that technically/logically makes sense, but to me looks like chaos.

I got a Unitune for Christmas - it's excellent. It's replaced my Snark, which kinda did the job but the TC is a big improvement and can accurately track a low B. I also don't massively see the point of the extra Polytune bells and whistles, even for a guitar. 

No, they didn't. I didn't ask though to be fair! I had tried a different valve before I sent it to them to see if it was that. When that wasn't it, I decided to call in the big guns. 

6 hours ago, CJPJ said:

I played my ABM600IV for the first time in the studio last night. Just a wonderful thing with amazing sound - the band commented on how much better I sounded 🙂 . The change in tone with the EQ boost and Asdown magic button on/off is really noticable. I'm not 100% on the match with my recently aquired Epiphany cabinet - its a fantastic speaker but I need to A/B against the K410 I was previously using to really feel its its a keeper - changing cab and amp at the same time makes it hard to track how and why your sound is changing.

 

One thing I did notice was the reasonably loud buzz when I had the valve drive botton pressed in. To be fair, the chap who sold me it told me about it but now that I have it I think it needs a service and I might send to Ashdown to take a look.

Do you think this might be needing a replacement valve or maybe something related to grounding? There is a underlying grounding noise from my P Bass as it's single coil which I'm OK with but this was a deeper and louder 'hum'.

I had this on mine. I couriered it to Ashdown who fixed it and had it back to me in about a week or so. I love the valve drive now mine is working. 

I've tried my Dingwall for some doomy stuff and it didn't quite hit the mark for me. It was all a bit too hi-fi sounding. I think it could work well for post-rock. I have just moved the neck pickup to the middle position though and I think that might be a bit better for doom. It's a bit growlier. Also considering downtuning to ADADG, but it also depends on what the people I'm jamming with are tuned to. 

My Mustang dooms really well though. I love the strong fundamental you get with a short scale. I reckon the medium scale could work well. 

It's only a small thing, but I got a TC Electronic Unitune Clip. Puts the Snark tuner I've been using for the last ~10 years to absolute shame. It's so good with a low B! It's a really nice upgrade. 

56 minutes ago, scrumpymike said:

Pleased to see this.  I nearly bought one off fleabay till I noticed the positioning of the top strap button.  Can't do with neck dive.

Just to fuel GAS... I have one of the first batch of short scale Jags. Just levels out on a strap. With something grippier it would be fine.

3 hours ago, baa said:

I think the black vinyl looks good now thats it's done.

I promised myself that this time I wouldn't do it on the kitchen table, but at work where light, work area and tools are better.

I ended up doing it on the dining room table, so it's not perfect, but good enough. 🙃

 

It looks like you had good supervision at least! 😸

Seems to me like it came out nicely. How does the bass sound now it's done?

A bit late to the thread, but I just got my new pickguard from Brian about an hour ago. Really helpful over eBay messages and just what I wanted to hide the neck pickup hole after moving the pickup on my Combustion to NG2 pickup configuration. I'd recommend his services.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/earlpilanz

I did email Tinytone about what I wanted and they never got back to me.

I've had hankerings to try a P-Bass again recently and was wondering what walnut and roasted maple would look like together. Very classy! Enjoy!

My first planet waves cable lasted 15 years, the second, not so much... I'm a fan of Lynx Cables now. For their guitar cables, they're cheaper if you get them on eBay versus their website. Doesn't quite make sense to me!

Just reading some of the other replies reminded me of a guitarist I used to play with. One day he turned up to practice with a Helix LT - decided that it would be simpler to have a fancy multi FX rather than patch cables that break. Sounded great, his peals before were fine too though. One day, he decided that he wasn't making the full use of the Helix, sold it and set up a traditional pedalboard. Turns out he had some faulty patch cables and spent the first 20 minutes of band practice tearing apart his pedalboard!

I feel like I hear people saying that they're not "making full use of the thing" as a reason for selling their Helix products a lot as well. I think as long as what you're using the thing for is comparably priced to a similar set of pedals and it performs to a standard where you're happy, keep it to do those things. You don't have to use all of the bells and whistles all of the time, but they can be useful every now and then.

8 hours ago, skidder652003 said:

had a look, couldn't see it. Do you have a link? Thanks.

The plugin is called Helix Native, just scroll down the page a bit: https://line6.com/helix/helixnative.html

If you've got an audio interface, you can also get a free trial of their helix plugin on the Line 6 website to try out the sounds a bit before you buy.

It's the other side. Between the trem block and the strap button end. 

Whoops - double post...

I love my ABM 600. I've got it paired with a Zilla neo 212, and they seem to work really well together. It's got all of the mystical heft you could ask for and more than loud enough for any gig I would ever play. Reminds me of a better version of the Trace Elliot combo (Commando 12) that was my first good amp, but wasn't quite loud enough to gig with. 

Amazing! Free set of new strings for my Mustang! Thanks for the heads up!

It'd probably be a Mustang:

- Pickup modelled after the one in mine

- 40mm nut

- 7 ½" radius

- neck shaped like a little p bass

- maple neck, rosewood board (maybe ebony...)

- gloss neck

- mother of pearl inlays

- vintage size stainless steel frets

- 500k pots, 0.047uf capacitor

- Hipshot ultralites with a drop tuner

- Ash body with tummy and forearm contours

- black grainfill on white cerused body, white grainfill on black cerused competition stripe

- black three ply pickguard

- thumbrest in 70s position

- mustang bridge

- thru body strung with D'Addario nickels

It'd probably have to be a bit more than the JMJ Mustang because of the finish, but I reckon it'd sell well...

Ugh. Payment/invoicing portals are the worst. When I was working in an invoicing role, we were invoicing a company in Ireland for certification. No VAT applied as they're EU. Took months to get it right on their portal and get paid. They couldn't get it right at their end. These things aren't suited to one off/weirdy-beardy transactions.

Can't imagine having to jump through these hoops for a gig!

I was pretty annoyed when the Mikey Way Mustang came out (due to the band affiliation!), it would have been my dream colour scheme but with a regular Mustang pickup and the same neck profile as my 70's one. Still kinda fancy picking one up someday but they don't come up much.

Nothing else signature wise really floated my boat, but never say never!

16 hours ago, Al Krow said:

@MichaelDean - you make a fair point!

 

However, for me it's really nice to know that all the fx available on the Zoom bass multis have been tweaked with the bass player, and the our lower note ranges, in mind. I no longer need to start by working out what's good for bass and deleting 90% of the stuff that really is better just on guitar. Sometimes too much choice can be daunting! 

I can totally see that side of it too, but programatically speaking, it shouldn't be hard to categorise them as bass or guitar effects. Then you know you have a set of effects that are optimised for bass and then you can try out some guitar ones if you feel the need later down the line.

Like:

• Overdrive
  • Bass
    • X
    • Y
    • Z
  • Guitar
    • A
    • B
    • C

I messaged John about a loom for my Mustang bass after I butchered the electronics with my cheap soldering iron (now in the bin...).

The mini Bourns pots feel really nice and it's a very reasonable cost and an excellent product! Screw terminals are just so convenient. Why aren't they standard practice?!?

Small rant...

I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, it's nice having products built with a bassists needs in mind (A/B inputs, XLR out, etc.). On the other, I don't quite understand why Zoom still insist on doing a bass version and a guitar version. The extra bits on the B6 has would, I'm sure, also be very welcome on the G6.

All of the other manufacturers have combined the guitar and bass units and then been able to sell to both markets straight away, reducing on manufacturing/tooling costs, etc. Then they make sure the product works well before expanding the range with variants on the theme.

Plus, it always feels a bit like hand holding to have a reduced set of effects like reverbs and delays vs the guitar version. Almost like they're saying "No! You can't use a shimmer reverb on bass! Fool!". Can't they just give us everything and let us choose what's a suitable effect for bass?

I got my B4n to do delay and reverb for lush volume swells, as it's cheaper than two good pedals of either flavour and certainly sounds good enough to my ear. Plus I made a mean squelchy synth patch for "Toxic" when I was in a covers band. Now I've used that programme to load the extra guitar effects on to it, my pedalboard can do double duty for the guitar I bought a few months back.

I'm very happy they're a thing!