Sean

Update: I've added a Cali 76 and am using one for pick attack, one always on. Works a treat. https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/289-post-your-pedal-board-basschat-style/page/486/#comment-5597175 @Osiris thanks for the input.

All gone!

Toltec is a brand belonging to Laverack Guitars based near Leeds, UK. https://www.laverackguitars.com/toltec-pickups Lee Laverack is the chap that makes them. They are very boutique and many are wound to people's individual specs. Lee is very helpful and engaging and loves a new challenge of trying to get a pickup to match a customer's requirement. He's done two custom jobs for me, one was a pair of splittable J humbuckers, the other was a PJ set that doesn't sound like a "normal" PJ set. I've also got a pair of J pickups from Lee that I'm hanging on to until I need them. They're that good. My advice would be to contact Lee and have a proper chat if you need anything. He's a gem.

What a looker. If you lived in this shire I'd offer to have a look but take it to a decent tech.

Oooooh, yes it does!

We've just come back from seeing Jack & the Beanstalk at The Hippodrome in Bristol. We had cracking seats and I sat just in front of where the bass player was in the pit (under the stage). How does it all work? Can the musicians in the pit see the stage performance on a monitor? I couldn't see any? I guess it's all IEM and that the musical director (the chap at the keyboard in front of the stage) speaks to the band through his mic? He also used what looked like a proper old fashioned phone handset. How on earth do they get their cues? Panto format deviates from script a lot, so I guess that you have to really pay attention. It's worlds apart from anything I've ever done and I'm fascinated to understand how it works. And in case he's on here, the chap on the SR5 did a cracking job and, guessing again, that he plays an SR5 because it just does what it does in that environment with 100% reliability. It would be great if some Basschatters that have done or do this could give some insight as it's so different from what most of us are familiar with.

The NS2000/4 is very different from what you might expect and is worth commenting on. It's got really big solid maple wings with a quilted maple veneer that is around 8mm at its thickest point around the pickups. The upper horn is feckin' hoooge. It's long too and ends above fret 13. This makes it much more "Fender" on the strap. The neck carve is a bit skinny in my world, it's 41mm at the nut and 26mm deep at the first fret. Now that's a Louisville Slugger to your modern J and Ibby SR players but for me, it's about as skinny as I'll go. The cavity cover has 6 screws that go into brass grommets and that cover is recessed. This is a feature that should have been on Euros. I've added grommets and machine screws to all mine but I can't ever see myself routing any of my Euros. The tuners are budget. I'll be buying some used Gotoh tuners to replace them. The nut and bridge are brass but are unique and specific to this bass from what I've seen. They're a bit soft but are more than fit for purpose and at 25 years old are in much better condition than the frets, which I thought were a bit soft compared to other nickel frets I've worked on. The quality of the woodworking is fantastic as you'd expect from that Korean factory. It's a proper 3-piece maple neck through build with mahoosive maple wings, a reasonably nice quilt veneer and very high quality build. The savings in materials come from the hardware, the electronics and savings in cheap dot markers versus mother of pearl crown inlays. What surprised me was the extra CNC run to put the route around the cavity instead of leaving it out and putting the cover on top of the back surface like on a Euro. The paint job and finish is top notch but the colour is ever so dull. It's like a foggy day up North. No one is ever going to say, "Phwoar! That's a looker." I'm going to give it the @Mike Brooks treatment tomorrow. Water with Simple Green at a 30:1 ratio to clean and some Dunlop 65 Carnuba to polish it up. Fantastic and thanks to Mike for the tip. I did the fretboard with Crimson Fretboard Cleaner and Crimson Fretboard Restorative yesterday and that did wonders. I usually use Monty’s products but found some Crimson dregs (great name for a band) in the garage last week. I'll post a pic tomorrow when it's finished its glow up. NS2A for the next project. Although a Korean-built Legend NT rescue would be worth the effort and interesting to see how different that is.

Here's the fret job in progress. On an instrument with very worn frets there's a point that comes when doing a fret level where you need to make the call on either carrying on or a re-fret. This Far Eastern beaut will be getting new frets in the summer, I'm looking forward to putting Jescar 55090 stainless narrow/tall frets on, doing the fall from 15 onward and seeing how that goes. (Fret fall is brilliant if you pay up dusty ends a lot). If it works out nicely I'll be refretting the '02 E4 and the '17 E4LX Maple as they're pretty battered.

Another LHZ installation yesterday. This time my first LHZ-04 (it’s a smaller version of the LHZ-03) into a Korean-made NS2000/4. The passive EMGs came out (up for sale here) and some actives went in. This is my very first solderless installation. It came with the pre-wired jack and the EMGs just clip on and away you go. It had a full fret level, and dress yesterday too with a fall off from the 15th fret, new strings and a fingerboard glow-up. It plays and sounds fantastic now. Ideally it should be refretted bt I think I just managed to squeeze one more out of it before having to get the serious gear out.

Please could someone explain this from the Overlord website about the Fujin bass? Japanese wind god, a terrifying magical demon who carries a large bag of winds on his shoulders. Often pictured alongside Raijin, and like him, our second headless bass model features a classic double-cut design. What's the double-cut design got to do with Raijin? I've lost the plot.

The latest iteration of my gigging board while I was experimenting with adding a noise gate yesterday. I bought that Donner to prove out the concept and it does the job. I'm not sure what a high-end bass-specific noise gate would give me but am willing to learn. The big change with this board is the addition of a second compressor. I play about 50% of the set with a pick, the other 50% fingerstyle and previously was only ever happy with the compressor for one or the other. I also tried comp off for fingers, comp on for pick and just couldn't get a setting I was happy with. I then mocked up a dual comp patch in the HX Stomp and reached a point where I was happy switching between pick and fingers. If you use 2 comps, you quickly learn that the two "stack" so you need to think about ratio settings. Signal path: Spector with EMGs and LHZ Haz-clone into: Front End: 1. Korg Pitch Black Bass Tuner. Brilliant, accurate like nothing else I've got. 2. [sfx] Microthumpinator v2 I've had one of these on/under my board for about 15 years. 3. Origin Effects Cali76 Bass Compressor (Pick Attack) Switched on for when I'm using a pick. 4. Origin Effects DCX Bass (Sparkle) A tone/EQ-shaper that I've got really attached to. It works nicely with the Spector/LHZ and is always on. The filters on these are very good and allow you to keep your low end intact. 5. Origin Effects DCX Bass (Overdrive) Dirt. These boxes are so good and have such a nice range of drive sounds that it made sense to snap up a bargain when it presented and get another. I love these as dirt pedals, so versatile giving warmth and breakup right through to smooth fuzz that reminds me of the SansAmp DP-3x. Effects Loop 6. Aguilar Chorusaurus v2 (Shimmer) I've been through a lot of Chorus pedals over the last 20 years. This one is the winner. You can see that I use quite a subtle chorus. I use it a lot. 7. Origin Effects Cali76 Bass Compressor (Always On) An utterly marvelous compressor. 8. Noise Gate We'll keep an eye on this and see how it performs in the wild. The board is a D'Addario expanding one and I use a Pedalsnake to run power and signals through the loops. A future addition could be an Emma Discumbobulator v3. We'll see how the set list evolves.

I agree. And I've gigged two cabs many times where the lower one is just a shelf. At the SE Bash recently we did a non-scientific "test" with one Monaco vertical-mounted on top of one horizontal. We walked around the room listening to just the vertical and then did the same with the both plugged in. It wasn't particularly loud but it was very revealing with that dispersion going on. @stevie will be able to explain it properly but what I got out of it was that now I'm playing in a band where I need to use backline to fill the room, I'll be thinking more about this and probably taking both of them with me just in case. I know one Monaco is amazing but the pair with one turned through 90 degrees was like another dimension. @cetera and @Wolverinebass were there when we were doing it.

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