Dr M

Probably depends on how well they sell. Could go the way of the Squier '51 from a few years back - got rave reviews and became something of a cult hit, so it was quietly discontinued. Then it was re-released with a Fender decal for two and a half times the price!

Welcome to BC! 1) Another of Leo Fender's inventions, he envisaged the player gripping the rest with their fingers, and playing with their thumb. Also, it was originally called a 'tug bar' (snigger.) 2) Using non-earthed equipment can be really quite dangerous. Particularly when you're talking about the kind of voltages present in amps, you want them to be earthed unless you really have no other choice. 3) A Precision.

A lot of things have kicked up high-street prices on pretty much everything over the last 3-5 years. 5% increase in VAT, rising cost of fuel (and hence increased shipping costs), pound falling against dollar and euro. When you take all these factors into account, it's not really surprising that we're seeing that consumer prices have risen even 50% over that period.

[quote name='bartelby' timestamp='1364389346' post='2025755'] Zoom's own exp pedal is pretty good build wise (felt sturdier than the Moog to me), so I use that. [/quote] +1. They can be had for less than £30 from Thomann. Might be a little small if your feet are huge, but they're sturdy and have a nice feel to them. Also avoid all Line 6 expression pedals. Incompatible with basically everything that isn't Line 6.

[quote name='mckendrick' timestamp='1363438289' post='2012685'] It's no worse than the Moderene, the Flying V, and the Explorer. [/quote] Yup. And two of those have gone on to become icons. One never made it to production. I think that demonstrates that the line between legendary status and dismal failure is a very fine one.

Ah yes, the Katana. A favourite of books on vintage guitars. Kind like a copy of the Randy Rhodes V with bits sawn off.

I picked one up secondhand for £30. Absolute steal. Not too keen on the fuzz tone, but it can give you a nice little bit of grit with the gain control at about 9 o'clock. Also, surprisingly loud for 10W - for quiet practice in my flat, I keep the volume down to 1 or 2.

Ok, just chucked it on the scales at work (shipping scales, so reasonably accurate) - 4.25kg, so that's about 9.4lbs. How does this compare to others out there? I gather Jazzes can be anywhere from 8lbs to over 10.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1363298905' post='2011372'] Yes, crazy price that was. [/quote] Yeah, I don't think it's particularly realistic to expect to pick up a US Fender for under £500. Someone on BC got a fantastic deal there, but if that was listed anywhere else, I'd be wondering what was wrong with it!

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1363288327' post='2011168'] How heavy is heavy? [/quote] Good question. Never actually weighed it - might have to take it into work tomorrow and use the scales there. However, just from feel, it's significantly heavier than my (Les Paul style) PRS Tremonti SE and my Ibanez Iceman Bass - neither of which are renowned for being small and light! Regarding US Standards, while I would love to go down that route, I'm currently living in London (and not working in finance) and saving for a deposit, so I really can't afford to spend the better part of a grand. If that's how much I'd have to spend to notice any real improvement, I guess that answers the question!

[quote name='Butlerbass' timestamp='1362666216' post='2003031'] Thanks for that appriciate it I'm not really a fan of those basses tbf I was also debating getting a squire jaguar short scale but they don't have the same pups and electrics as the long scale models feels like they treat short scale players like beginners! Lol [/quote] Try the Squier Jaguar before ruling it out. They're very well made basses, and the PJ combo would be dead easy to upgrade. The short-scale is passive, while the long-scale VMs are active, but there's no difference in pickups as far as I'm aware.

Ah, unfortunately I'm a rosewood 'board guy! Also, that might be a little more than I can really justify spending at the moment.

I love the look and feel of Jazz basses - the offset waist and skinny neck tick all the right boxes for me. I currently own a (now discontinued) Squier Standard Jazz (2006, I believe) in red sunburst. This was my first bass after many years playing guitar. I have two problems with this bass. The first is the tone. Basically, the Squier pickups are awful - easy to change, but problem number two is making me wonder whether that's worth doing. It weighs a ton. I know Jazzes aren't often very light, but a two-hour rehearsal with this one, and my back and shoulder are aching, and then I've got to carry the thing home. I'm already using a 2.5" leather strap, so not a great deal more I can do on that front. I'm not sure whether to flog the Squier and go on the hunt for a new Jazz, or to slap some new pickups in it and spend some time in the gym . I don't know about the quality of the woods, but weight aside, the build quality on the old Standard series seems to be pretty good. I have a feeling I might have to spend a fair amount more to get any significant improvement.

[quote name='jonsmith' timestamp='1363262137' post='2010565'] One of the main reasons Gibson lost that case was because - unlike Rickenbacker - they could not demonstrate that they had taken reasonable steps to protect their design in the past, on account of the huge amount of unchallenged LP copies. That's actually the reason that Rickenbacker pursue this so ruthlessly. It's not the photo or the wording in the adverts that infringes on a protected design, but the actual item for sale. I'm surprised that a company trying to protect its own designs provokes such a negative response, but there you go. [/quote] I thought one of the main reasons Gibson lost that case was the fact that the PRS singlecut looks bugger-all like a Les Paul? I seem to remember the judge was quoted as saying something along the lines of "no-one in a position to actually care about it would confuse the two."

[quote name='Jack Cahalane' timestamp='1329939148' post='1550142'] Or more realistically, try the short scale Squier Jaguar bass [/quote] +1 Unless you've got plenty of spare cash and a burning desire for something with Fender / Gibson on the headstock, the Squier Jaguar is one of the best short-scales out there at the moment in my opinion. PJ pickups will give you the tone you want as well.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1362301877' post='1998019'] It will show you what notes to play, but not really teach you any theory or technique. It annoys me that they try to sell it using the "It will teach you to play" guitar bit. At the most, you might learn a couple of things, but i reckon it's just a bit of fun more than anything. [/quote] To be fair, it does include theory and technique videos. Some of them are pretty awful (the one on syncopation springs to mind) but a lot of them are at least as good as the videos on YouTube that many people work from anyway. Again, I don't think it's a one-stop solution, but it's a much better tool than I originally expected.

Got it for Xmas from my other half. It is actually very well done. The intelligent on-the-fly changing difficulty works really well, the visuals take a while to get used to, but after that they're quite intuitive. As for helping learners, well, it actually inspired said other half to try taking up bass. I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a complete teaching package, but for anyone who is either getting lessons, or has an experienced player to ask for advice, it does offer assistance and encouragement. The thing that does bother me a little is that the scoring for guitar and bass are wildly at odds. Playing guitar with someone else on bass, you can find yourself nailing runs, chords, leaping up and down the neck, while they're plodding along on open strings. Then you'll find the bassist's score is ten times higher than the guitarist's!

In a word, no. There's nothing particularly special about the construction of Tri-Sonics, so the impedance should be in line with a (a fairly hot) strat pickup. It sounds like there's a short in the windings somewhere.

[quote name='cocco' timestamp='1362091059' post='1995806'] The poles generate a field, which obviously is stronger at the pile than a few mm away from it. [/quote] To expand a little on this, if you look at the width of the string as it's vibrating (the excursion, I believe?) above a standard fender P or J bass pickup, it should be nicely spanning some portion of the gap between the two pole-pieces. I presume the original intention of the design was to give a nice, balanced magnetic field across the full width of a vibrating bass string. Now if you try and line 4 strings up with 6 pole pieces, the distance between the string and the pole piece is going to be inconsistent. The top and bottom strings might be almost directly over a pole piece, while the others are likely to be sitting between two of them. This might result in an inconsistent output between strings, where some are sitting in the strongest point of the magnetic field, while others are sitting in the weakest point between 2 poles.

[quote name='ahpook' timestamp='1361743268' post='1990249'] i've done a bit of research and the increased damping does change lower frequency of the string in a predictable way (Sir George Stokes did the legwork for us), but it's a very small contribution - the shift in frequency between a string in a vacuum and in air is of the order of 10e-11 Hz. from the equations*, very, very hand-wavingly it looks like the damping due to the greater density/viscosity of the water would be of the order of 10e9 larger than in air, so a drop of 10e-4 Hz [i]might just[/i] be an answer. an order of magnitude estimate, shall we say i may be totally wrong though - i just fancied playing with some equations for a bit [url="http://courses.physics.illinois.edu/phys406/Lecture_Notes/Waves/PDF_FIles/Waves_2.pdf"]*page 21[/url] [/quote] I'd agree that you're probably in the right ball-park. Purely qualitatively, If going from vacuum (no damping at all) to damping at atmospheric pressure only produces a change of 10e-11Hz, then the damping in a medium even ~1000 times denser is still not likely to produce that great a change. In fact, in terms of the relative magnitudes of the changes, in comparison, the 10e-4Hz change in water is massive compared to the 10e-11Hz change in air. Speaking as an engineer, I think the thing to bear in mind is that we're discussing the effect of a medium with a density of 1000 kg/m^3 on a vibrating body with a denisty of ~8000 kg/m^3.

Just a quick note - be careful with the Epiphone Thunderbird Pro IV vs Epiphone Thunderbird Classic-IV Pro. Tiny difference in name, completely different instruments. The Pro IV is active, and doesn't really sound much like the classic TBird. So from what people have said, it might be quite a good option. The Classic-IV Pro is fully passive with actual Gibby humbuckers. The one I tried some time ago sounded bloody gorgeous, but the QC was horrible.

Bit of an off-the-wall suggestions, but what about the Zoom B9.1ut? GAK are still selling them for £99, multiple switches, expression pedal, and MIDI in / out. I'm not too clued up on MIDI, but the manual seems to suggest it will do what you want: http://www.zoom.co.jp/products/b91ut/downloads/

[quote name='MarshallBTB' timestamp='1361647880' post='1988849'] Just got a B3! Planning to replace my Pod X3 Live with this and a couple of other bits (inc expression pedal) and just take the B3 out for smaller gigs. But.....my line 6 expression pedal doesn't work with it. Any advice on alternatives to the zoom one? It seems a bit small!. [/quote] I think the Line 6 expression pedals work on their own form of black magic. I seem to recall reading that they threw the system everyone else has been using for years out the window and went for something completely proprietary (bizarrely based around a mono jack rather than stereo ) Anyway, I have the Zoom expression pedal and it's fantastic. A little smaller than some (it's probably 2 inches shorter than a crybaby - don't have them to hand to compare right now) but it's a rugged, die-cast casing, nice action, and good, grippy rubber top. Got it from Thomann for £28, and have no complaints.

[quote name='BassTractor' timestamp='1361656507' post='1989037'] Are you mad, man? Have you ever even contemplated what new possibilities those three digits give? On the Music Man forum, there's a guy who owns more than 300 Music Man instruments, 320 IIRC, and I seem to remember all of them are basses too. Seriously. Not that I condone it, of course. best, bert [/quote] Wow. Just, wow. Imagine the insurance premium on that! 320 instruments at upwards of £1000 each?