BigRedX

AFAIAC this is the minimum requirement for a black bass: The only non-black parts visible on the outside are the frets, strings, saddles, side marker dots and the Gus logo.

Are the bodies and necks that Limelight use actually made in the UK? The OP says they want a P/J bass, does that mean a traditional design or anything with a P/J pickup configuration?

It's another of these situations where people have failed to realise that even the simplest of solid electric instruments is in fact a very complex arrangement of parts that all act together in different ways, and that trying to isolate exactly what effect one component has on the sound is very difficult with a proper scientific methodology. So adding a G-clap to the headstock will make a difference (there is actually an after-market part called the Fat Finger to allows you to do just that in a reasonable aesthetically pleasing manner) but it tends to affect the resonance in the neck which is relatively flexible compared with the average body and is used to attempt to eliminate individual dead spots on a neck rather than add sustain. Adding weight to the body (in the region of the bridge) would be a more accurate way to ascertain this. The proper scientific way to measure the effect of the mass of the bridge on a bass would be create various bridge plates that are all exactly the same size and shape but made of materials with different densities. Using the same saddles, height adjustment screws and intonation adjustment screws and spring each time. Of course first of all you would have to investigate if simply removing the original bridge and re-attaching it an number of times makes any difference on its own, before trying each bridge plate.

Too many of these basses have been very carefully photographed to hide the fact that the back of the neck is not black, but some insipid natural wood colour. It can't even begin to be the blackest bass unless the back of the neck is black.

I still have the Kimbara acoustic guitar that was bought new as a birthday present in 1974. TBH I only still have it because it's been quite extensively modified - and is very worn and simply not worth the effort and meagre amount of money I would get for it, if I was to sell it. However all the other instruments to I use regularly (apart from the Bass VIs which are a recent acquisition) are around the 20 year old mark now so hardly very new either.

How do you know that I'm just an "armchair expert" and not someone with with a physics degree in the relevant fields? You don't. As it happens I don't have the correct degree, but I remember enough about physics from school to realise that most of the marketing claims about high-mass bridges are simply marketing claims and not backed up with real science. If someone does know the subject inside out is prepared to prove that I am wrong and back up their arguments with proper scientific facts to show it, then I'll be happy to be corrected. But, AFAICS there has been zero scientific fact to contradict what I've said so far. When marketing departments make up claims which aren't backed up with fact, surely it is the duty of those that know to call "cow poop". It's all very well believing the marketing hype, but you have to remember that it is the job of the marketing department to sell you stuff you probably don't need. I would say that if there is an improvement in sustain and a change in the clarity of the notes (note that I said change and not improvement here) it will be down to the fact that the engineering of these bridges reduces the movement of the saddles due to the plucking and vibrating of the strings, rather than the overall increase in mass. Of course it could just as easily be due to the fact that when someone swaps out the bridge on their bass they attach it to the body better than the original manufacturing process did with the original bridge. The fact is you simply don't know because the process has not been done in a proper scientific manner. Ultimately if you believe it makes enough of a difference to be worthwhile spending the money, then fair enough, but I would suggest that any improvements are negligible, and certainly in a band mix imperceptible.

I think the last lot of sets I bought came from Thomann. Before that I got them off Amazon.

Excellent! You'll just need a jack to jack speaker lead to connect the amp to the power attenuator input. It will be at this point that you will find out just how much (or not) speaker break up contributes towards your preferred distortion sound.

Ideally you want to play your backing track off some non-mechanical media - i.e. not CD.

Why Oh Dear? The bridge and body are securely attached to each other and therefore act as a single mass. The alternative would be that the high-mass bridge is so "massive" that it prevents any significant transference of string vibration energy to the body and therefore renders the choice of body material completely irrelevant. Also if that were the case, then fitting a high-mass bridge to a bass would mean that you would no longer be able to hear or feel the string vibration energy in the body of the bass.

And they are wrong. As soon as you securely attach one component to another they act together as a single item. A heavier weight bridge will only make a measurable difference if it increases the overall weight of the instrument by a considerable amount, or if it is not mechanically attached to the rest of the instrument, like a floating bridge on something like a Hofner Violin Bass.

No, no, no. As I said, because the bridge is securely attached to the body it becomes part of the body and can no longer be considered as a separate item. It's basic physics.

Depends entirely on the design of the high mass bridge, the old bridge it is replacing and the build of the bass you are attaching it to. I've only ever swapped out bridges on two basses. One - a Squier VMJ Fretless where I replaced the BBOT with a Badass (which made zero difference to the sound) and did not require any further adjustment to the bass. Second where I replaced the bridge on a Burns Sonic that had failed due to all the threads in the saddles wearing out, I had to fit a 10mm thick piece of wood under the bridge to get the strings to the correct height.

But the bridge is mechanically attached to the body of the bass by several screws and therefore, as long as it has been fitted properly, to all intents and purposes it becomes part of the body. As I said before the increase in weight due to the high mass bridges is negligible. It may be that other aspects of the high mass bridge are better engineered such as designs which prevent the sideways movement of the saddles, which should provide additional sustain, but the actual weight of the bridge itself has little or no bearing on the sustain.

Debatable. Sustain is a function of how quickly the vibrations of the string dissipate through the rest of the instrument and is based on the mass of the instrument and how flexible the body, neck and anything else the strings may be attached to are. As a percentage of the overall bass weight the additional weight of the high mass bridge is negligible. The only way a high mass bridge could affect the sustain would be if the original bridge was not securely attached to the body.

They look different. They may change the sound - although whether which one is best is entirely subjective and most likely unnoticeable in a full band mix.

Here are the ones I used to own: Born To Rock F4B: Atlansia Solitaire Fretless Hondo Alien:

It is perfectly possible to get away with only one bass. I think on here we spend too much time agonising over the details of different bass sounds, whereas in reality on stage and even in the studio one good bass will do the job perfectly well. Even in the days when I had a lots of basses I was mainly using one (and a spare) at any one time for any given band. If you intend to play live in a band where it is important not to break the flow of the performance then you definitely need a spare. Or alternatively you need to practice changing strings (and retuning) until you can do it in under a minute in near-darkness while drunken people shout at you. I'm down from well over 40 basses to just 4. I play in two very different bands that require very different basses so I have two 5-string basses (one main and one back-up) for one band and two Bass VIs for the other.

It's a device that along with the IEM system he's using, renders the rest of his bass rig pointless.

Any non-gloss finish is going to eventually buff up to a shine unless it is heavily textured.

DaVinci Resolve. The basic version is free and then there are paid-for upgrades if you need more features. We used it to make the Video for our cover of "She's In Parties".

Just had a look at the amp in question and with no master volume control you are going to need one to get a decent overdriven sound at low volume. Also with an output of only 15W, pretty much any good quality power attenuator will be fine. However bear in mind that some of the distortion tone might be caused by speaker break up which you won't get with an attenuator. Also is the speaker in this combo attached to the amp section with a jack plug or hard-wired in? It isn't possible to see how it connects in any of the photos I found on line. If it is hard-wired you will need to cut the speaker cable and fit jack plugs to it in order to use an attenuator, and depending on much or little cable there is you might need to extend the leads too. Speaker cables tend to be as short as possible in combos. With the H&K Tube 50 the lead for the speaker which was on a jack plug only just reached to the PowerBrake when placed on top of the amp, and this was about 3" further away than where the speaker plugged into the amp.

Don't see what they should. A properly designed speaker attenuator should present the same load to the amp as a speaker would.

To the OP: Can you let us know exactly which Fender amp you want to use the attenuator with?

Great for guitars if you like the tone of overdriven power stage valves but aren't bothered about speaker break-up as part of your sound. Less useful for bass for all the reasons given above, plus nearly all of them are only rated to be used with amps of 100W or under. I had the Marshall PowerBreak which I used with my 50W H&K guitar amp. Anything much more than mild distortion sounds would send the cooling fan into overdrive and kick out a good amount of heat. After a couple of hours of use at home playing volumes the casing would be almost too hot to touch. I wouldn't fancy using one with a typical high output bass amp.