BigRedX

Is that a Trussart? I think the shiny ones look much nicer:

To me modelling is a bit of a red herring. I don't care how accurate a particular amp/cab/fx sim is. All I care about is can I get a sound I like out of it. So the user interface and the connectivity is far more important than the realism of the sims.

For me the lack of foot switches is a major minus. Before I had my Helix I was a BassPod user. Initially I tried to get away with the cheaper 4 switch pedal, but it was simply too limiting, so I had admit I'd wasted my money and get the much bigger Shortboard.

That's the direct price from Fractal Audio. The list price (what you will pay from a shop) is $1400 So unless there is a way of buying direct in the UK without incurring extra import duty, we'll probably be paying the list price which works out at £1160 at today's exchange rate.

I outlined what I consider is wrong with assumptions about "tone woods" for solid instruments in this post.

The material(s) a solid stringed instrument is made out of will have some effect on the vibration characteristics of the string, but in the overall scheme of things this is fairly trivial compared with the other factors that have a more significant effect on tone.

I have to admit I quite like the Antigua finish. The only problem I have with it, is the inconsistency of the colours and size of the "blend" as shown all too well in the photo above.

I have one, unfortunately it had been extensively modified by a previous owner. However it looked as though the basic pickup circuit was relatively original. Because the body is so thin, it wasn't possible to use a guitar-style 3-way pickup selector switch so a standard DPDT switch with centre Off was used instead. This means that some lateral thinking was required to get the bridge/both/neck combinations required. The result is that the "both" combination wires the pickups in series rather than the more conventional parallel configuration. I'll be taking mine apart some time in the next couple of weeks, so if you don't get a diagram elsewhere, or are able to work it out from the description above, I'll draw one up for you then.

Just shabby. Not chic.

That’s because my iPad won’t let me say re-sprayed without putting in the hyphen

He should get that re-sprayed. He can afford it.

The second photo of the bass in use shows a big hole where the mud bucker used to be. BTW The Tea Set were an awesome band:

I'd have to have a grip of steel in order for the strings to touch the fingerboard when I fret them.

The last few Terrortones sets were 10-12 songs and last somewhere between 30 and 35 minutes, depending on which songs we'd picked and how much faster we played them compared to the recorded versions. Exactly this. I would always want to have the audience wanting more instead of thinking we had outstayed our welcome.

Unless you are playing popular covers, or as an originals band have at least an album's worth of well known material, or have a wildly entertain stage show, 45 minutes is too long.

Notably Off-Topic and eBay IIRC. From what you say most of your posts have been in Off-Topic threads so that's why you have no increase in your post count.

Unfortunately the methodology of the test is very poor. For a start the sample size is one of each body, so the bodies could have been hand picked to give the result Warmoth wanted. If they had tested at least 50 of each body type and got consistent similarities between bodies made of the same wood and constant differences between bodies made of different woods with no overlap in tone between any of the bodies of different woods then I might start taking this tone wood for solid electric instruments seriously. And while only changing the body each time is a step in the right direction, they really needed to rule out the possibility that simply disassembling and reassembling the guitar was not cause of the tonal changes. I would suggest doing this with each body 50 or more times and being able to get near identical tone from the instrument after each reassembly would be a start. And while it is all very well making sure that each body weighed the same, in order to do this either they had to hand pick examples of each wood with the same density or the the volume/shape of each body would have to be different. All they are doing there is swapping one variable for another. Ultimately while there were subtle difference in tone for each body wood type none of them were so significant that they would be noticeable when the guitar heard within a band mix.

According to Newtone you only need to do this with round core strings. Hex-core strings can be cut without needing to bend them first.

Exactly. Without knowing the other variables it is impossible to say what contribution the fingerboard wood is making. Also your sample size is still far too small. Also did Lozz196 know what fingerboard wood was on each bass he way playing? There may have been unconscious bias there to get the expected/desired result. Does any bass manufacturer make basses with maple necks and maple fingerboards where the fingerboard is a separate piece of wood to the neck? If so are there any comparisons of this to otherwise as close as possible identical basses with a maple neck and rosewood fingerboard, and with a neck and fingerboard made from a single piece of maple?

I think the idea of "tone woods" being important is an incorrect assumption based on acoustic instruments, where of course it is. In acoustic instruments, the body wood is extremely important in producing the tone of the instrument and to this end it will be produced with the smallest number of pieces, bracing/re-inforcement will be the bare minimum to stop the instrument breaking under the tension of the strings and glued with just enough glue to form a useful joint. Similarly with the joints between the sides and the top and back of the instrument. All done to allow thing pieces of wood to resonate sympathetically with the vibrations of the strings. Now take your typical mass-produced solid bodied instrument where the body is made out of 2 or 3 pieces of wood chosen mostly to get the greatest number of bodies out of the smallest amount of wood, then slathered in glue and joined together in a fashion where getting the correct body shape is the most important factor. How can you say that this method of construction allows to type of wood to be important?

What I am trying to say is this: 1. Every piece of wood is different and with potentially huge variations between pieces. Therefore trying to apply absolute characteristics to a type of wood is impossible. 2. Every comparison test I have seen uses tiny sample sizes and does not take into account all the other potential variables that I mentioned. 3. While there are plenty of comparison tests I haven't seen anyone do the opposite test which is to take a handful of supposedly identical specification basses and show that they all sound identical.

There is just so much rubbish written about "tone wood" for solid bodied instruments with zero scientific proof to back it up. Simply opinion dressed up as facts. I don't deny that the choice of woods can make a difference to the tone of a solid instrument, although IMO when you factor in all the other things that define the sound of the instrument, their contribution is fairly negligible. What I do dispute is that their properties can be absolutely defined as a constant characteristic. And here is why. Just looking at "Ash" as a body wood. For starters there are over 40 different species of Ash, and the density of the wood can vary from 540kg/m3 to 710kg/m3 which is a lot of variation. The distribution of the trees covers much of the northern hemisphere and soil types, climatic conditions and growing season day length will all contribute to different growth characteristics of the trees and consequently the characteristics of the wood produced from those trees. Do we know exactly which species of Ash is used for guitar bodies? Is it always the same species of Ash? Is a guitar made in the US made from the same species sourced from the same geographical location as one made in Europe, or Asia? I can't see any information from the big manufacturers, and without that information I can only assume that while the manufacturers will have certain specifications for the wood they buy, there is still going to be significant variation from one batch to another. So having added in a lot of variables, here are a lot more. Construction. If solid bodied instruments were made of a single piece of wood for the body, a single piece for the neck and headstock and a single piece for the fingerboard, we might have some consistency between instruments to start making some useful observations about the woods used and the tone of the instrument. But they are not. Most bodies are made from 2 or 3 separate pieces of wood glued together. Glue is not the same as wood. It adds in another variable. If the body is made of 2 equally sized pieces of wood there are 8 different ways they can be glued together, each of which is going to give a potentially different tonal result. As soon as you glue two or more pieces of wood together you change the way the wood behaves compare with a single piece of the same total size. If it didn't there would be no point in multi-laminate necks. And for a two-piece body on a Fender bass is the join always in the same place? From what I have seen the answer is a resounding "no". And on a 3-piece body it is even less consistent. More unaccounted for variables. And of course a Fender style neck with a maple board will sound different to one with a rosewood board, but not because of the board material, but because they are constructed in completely different ways. The neck with the maple board is a single piece of maple with the truss rod inserted from the back of neck and held in place with the "skunk stripe", while the rosewood board is a separate piece of wood glued onto the maple neck, with the truss rod fitted either from behind or underneath the fingerboard. IMO it is these differences in construction and lamination of woods that is going to have an effect on the tone not the actual wood used for the fingerboard. And there's the electrics. Even on passive bass there is lots of potential for variation. Pickups. Do they have the same DC resistance? Have they been wound with the same gauge of wire with the same number of turns in the same way (scatter winding or even winding)? Are the magnets of the same material and magnetic strength? All these factors can change the characteristic of the pickup and the sound it produces. Even the humble potentiometers and capacitors in a passive circuit have lots of potential for variation. A good quality potentiometer like CTS will still have ±20% tolerance which means that a pot specified at 500kΩ can be anywhere between 400 and 600kΩ. The same with capacitors. And these components always have an impact on the sound of the instrument, even at maximum settings - full volume, full tone; as can be demonstrated by connecting the pickup directly to the output jack as opposed to going through the passive volume and tone circuit. With all these variables in play, trying to pin-point tonal characteristics of an instrument to the type of wood used for the body, neck or fingerboard is completely and utterly futile. When people try and do comparisons their methodology is so poor and their sample sizes so small that the results have no means whatsoever.

What's wrong with the current pre-amp? What are you looking for sound-wise that can't be achieved with the controls on your amp?

How to you get on with fitting the Newtone round core strings since you are not supposed to cut them before winding them onto the machine head posts?

No, but I rarely see any criticism of DR strings (other than the price), so I felt it was only fair to point out that not everyone who tried them had a positive result, and maybe save the OP from a potential expensive mistake.