dannybuoy

That’s on my short list, but was struggling to find one in stock for a good price anywhere!

I have a Sterling by Music Man short scale Stingray inbound to try out… was also interested in the G&L Tribute Fallout. My first 30” scale bass but I love playing my 21” scale Kala so much I’m sure I’ll get on with it and there may be a 34” scale Sandberg Basic going up for sale in the fallout (pun intended).

BB for fingerstyle, with the Ray a close 2nd. Jazz for slap (BB sounds bad there!).

The real thing is much better than the sim, but I expect you’d find a similar result. It doesn’t have much headroom with high output basses, and there’s no blend of course. I was almost set to sell mine until I discovered how good it sounded with a Kala U-Bass!

Great little basses, I had the fretted 23 as well as a Kala U-Bass a long time ago, and recently picked up another fretted Kala. Things to note: - The fretted models do not intonate very well, notes are visibly flat on the built in tuner on the 5th fret (and maybe lower than that). - Fretless models don’t have this problem, but you need a good ear and to be to hear yourself clearly. There isn’t as much margin for error in finger placement as there is with a full scale bass! I’ve never tried a fretless one of these but have been looking at either the Aklot fretless U-Basses going cheap on eBay, or the Gold Tone 23/25”! - Most find the stock white Aquila Thundergut strings to be quite sticky (some claim not to have this issue though, depends how oily your fingers are I guess). Applying lube or talc helps but is messy. Road Toad Pahoehoe strings do not have this problem, but on the other hand they need constant retuning as they’re very stretchy. - The acoustic versions are plenty loud enough for solo unplugged practice, making it the perfect sofa bass! On the other hand they are prone to feedback if playing at high volume. You can buy covers for the sound hole to suppress this. Best vid I could find of the fretless in action:

I guess it depends on the gear being combined with the pedals, as both the BDPG and Mastotron were instant nopes for me! The Diabolik is the best high gain synthy fuzz I've tried.

Not out of the question, but a smaller lighter body would be preferable at the same time.

I did look up ACG, Chowny and Marusczcyk, but didn't see anything on offer similar to the Mouse. I was really after more of a mini upright bass sound, semi hollow + piezo. Basically my Godin A4 but smaller! I will follow that build thread to see where it goes!

I am hankering after a Rob Allen Mouse, I'm interested in any alternatives but 30" scale fretlesses seem hard to come by. Thomann make a fretless Hofner Beatle bass... and I haven't found much else available off the shelf! Any other models I may have missed, or any UK luthiers out there building anything similar to the Mouse?

The MojoMojo is very similar to the Spark, just darker/muffled and higher gain. So if you want something more modern and hifi than the Spark, this is vintage and lofi! The Vintage… well I could waffle on about it but there’s a ton of demos on YouTube that can convey how it sounds better than I can here! The newer models with the attack switch (the same pre-dirt treble boost the B7K and Alpha Omega have) would be more flexible as the original is quite dark sounding.

What are you plugging it into? For example I get a lot of noise with some preamps if I’m plugged into my PJB Bighead running on battery power, but that goes away if I plug in the USB cable to charge it. I suppose doing so grounds it. You could therefore possibly get the same issue trying to record from a laptop or iPad that isn’t plugged into the wall. If the noise changes a lot when touching the strings or putting your hand near the pickup, that would also indicate a grounding issue.

My Phase 90 has a slight volume boost! I think the newer ones are true bypass, maybe it’s just the older ones that have a volume drop.

Check out the TC Spark then! I’m favouring it over the Mojomojo lately.

Agreed, 90% of pedals don't come with power supplies, and if they did I would have a lot of junk power supplies accumulating.

The SM7B is really good at preventing plosives up close also, since the capsule is buried deep down within, which prevents you getting too close to it.

Get nice and close for the proximity effect for starters. I can highly recommend the DBX 286S for an all in one preamp, compressor, de-esser and ‘enhancer’ (it has low and high controls that sound a bit similar to BBE processing, I have no idea what they’re really doing but they sound good!).

The Diabolik is basically a smaller version of this with fewer controls. Best synths/gated fuzz I’ve tried, would love to try a B:Assmaster too!

Don't use a passive splitter, try a Boss LS-2. If your gain levels are decent through each chain but you have low volume when summing them together, then one (or any odd number!) of effects are inverting phase.

My brother’s into amateur boxing, I tried to convince him to have Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick!

It’s still a bassline in my not-so-humble opinion even though it’s played on a guitar through an octave down. A bassline doesn’t need to be played on a bass, it could be anything in the lower register, even a piano. Yes it’s the main hook... But still a bassline! 🤥🥊

Seven Nation Army?!

They’re singing the chorus!

In what way? All Tech21 pedals have a pretty good clean buffer in my experience, but any buffered non-true-bypass pedal will have the effect of brightening your tone slightly with a passive bass as it counters the signal loss you would otherwise get. One issue I remember having though is that the bypass signal distorted a bit when the gain was cranked, which was. a bit weird but didn’t affect ‘normal’ settings.

The Diabolik sounds better to me without a buffer in front of it, but I’d expect putting the OC-2 after would upset the tracking a bit. Not always the case with fuzz/drive though, so worth trying if you haven’t already!

These are great, you get a hard case and a mic clip included in the price too.