NickA

Hmm. I'd love a pre Ernie stingray, but I think I'd like one that had been looked after a bit better. My oldest bass is 1986 and has "signs of wear" but it doesn't look to have had a fight with an angle grinder. Still, if it sounds good and not going to fall apart it's not really an issue. And if you like it.... lucky guy.

I'm not p- bass fan.. but we found a fender jazz and a squire p in a rehearsal studio a while back; the squire was the better bass all round. In the end they're both mass production factory basses made from pretty cheap materials... just a different headstock badge. You'd think fender would up their game to keep ahead of their "low wage economy" partners; but in fact they're just resting on the name snobbery.

If you can plug your mobile or a cd player into it and it sounds the same as listening through decent headphones then it's pretty clean. My first bass amp was an old valve job ..not a hope. Then a carlsborough cobra, sounded transparent but you couldn't play a cd player through it. Harsh and middy. then a trace gp12smx ... great with electric bass but only worked LOUD, just about HiFi though. Now a pjb flight case that's so linear that when I loaned it to an acoustic guitarist to play through, her mum said "oh, I thought she was going to use your amp"...she was using my amp. What goes in comes out and there's not a lot of EQ to change that. Great with double bass, perhaps a bit "unexciting" with electric bass. But I love the raw sound of my bass so that's fine ( not going to be playing death metal or slap tho).

PJB all the way. AER is OK and amazing quality..but sounds a bit lacking in sparkle if you put an electric bass through it..quite heavy too. No-one quite as double bass focussed as AI tho 😞

Someone at the last bass bash had a GR cab. Unbelievably light for the size of it. Couple to a little class D amp and it might be very light and pretty good -- though the Elf, Gnome etc are all a bit on the under powerful side at an optimistic 200W into 4Ohm. I've a 150W PJB flightcase which is OK for rehearsals and a Jazz trio, but add an electric guitar and an enthusiastic keyboard player and it's not quite loud enough. Depends who you play with I guess.

Had the pickups on my mk2 up and down trying to make it produce a bit more high frequency ... only makes it louder and quieter, and more or less likely for the strings to hit the pole pieces. Very bassy bass that mk2 5er; doesn't seem to have the mid range "quack" of the mk1 whatever I do with it. I'm loathe to believe its the shorter wider body, the longer neck or the different face wood ... different pickups I guess.

There is really something about being in a row of basses and thumping it out together. That's some fast learning curve you've been on! Glad you're enjoying it! Just back from my own orchestra practice and spent most of the evening counting rests; whilst violins and woodwind screeched through their difficult bits. So looking forward to a jazz session on Wednesday. 😁

Update. We fended off suggestions to to fully restore it or skip it and are paying Bassbags around £350 to fit a decent new 10mm end pin, re-use our spare tail piece and pop the sound post back up, plus other minor things. The orchestra will pay most and the user the remainder. We will fit an old spare set of strings to it ourselves- as Bassbags refused to re-use the Helicore hybrids that lived on my 4/4 for 10 years (one does have a knot in it!) .. that saves us £230 for a new set. Then ... we shall see what manner of beast we really have and whether or not it's worth getting a new bridge and/or strings (a new neck I think not). Got to be better than the 1/2 size B&H plywood thing...... surely. The bassbags recommended solution to our problem was for us to give then £3500 for a nice new bass (an Eastman VB200 I think) which though a bit bland is not a bad bass. They may prove right!! I'm no fan of new Chinese basses, but the Eastman VB503 they have is really rather good; it's also £7500, for which all kinds of good old basses can be had.

I don't doubt it! Does it have special short scale strings? .

I was sorely tempted by one of those Salace basses ( the one that played the theme to the bass chat pod casts in fact). Then tried a Chowny 5 string with a 32.5" scale ( which Mr Chowny said was the shortest you could go with a low B) ... flobby low tension B string, not great. Tried all manner of 5s and could only get on with the full scale ones. How's the acg at the bottom end?

Nice bass. Doesn't sound like a Wal to me. Then again a. Processing and b. Tool don't sound much like they're using a Wal either to me. 😂. Having said which, my Wals do sound quite different from eachother ( frets/ no frets, MK1/mk2, 4-string/ 5 string ) so there's likely a Wal out there that sounds like your stingwal too.

Cut though the mix playing finger style?. Ditch Fender and get a Warwick 😁. ...or anything but a fender. Seriously, brighter, likely round wound, strings. Bit of EQ tweaking; a precision will be just as clear as a Jazz. The jazz will have more tonal variety but no way sound like a p played with a pick.

All great advice above. Just don't buy a "beginner" bass ... They're build a. Cheap and b. For durability ...sound awful and hard to play. My school loaned me a half size Boozey & hawkes plywood thing which put me off playing for 10 years. Buy privately if you can as you will avoid the dealers 10-20%+ mark up. Still, it's also good to go to a dealer and try a few; buying a bass is like buying shoes, some fit some don't... but if you do buy from a dealer be prepared to haggle, their markups often mean there's wiggle room... and that bass you saw on a private sale was pretty good and you might just buy that one .......

Be less like a real Wal then. Most of them are a little wonky. Ps: I find my Wal custom very comfy to play, the mk2 less so. Guess 25 years of familiarity helps. But, yes, the necks seem unecessarily chunky compared to a standard Jazz.

Its definitely old ... and knackered. Could be lovely and I hope it's worth doing up. Too many nice old basses ending up in a skip because the repair cost is greater than the resale price would be once fixed. Not helped by some dealers / luthiers trying to make things perfect, when playable would do fine.

Totally true! I didn't mean to suggest a massive increase in volume simply by adding a bigger amp, jut that a bigger amp might be needed to fully drive bigger speakers! Though the man is right that more cabbage (to make better use of the wattage) may do the trick. When you overdrive a cab, it will distort - too much current going trhough the speaker coil will push the cone beyond it's linear operating point (ie just runs out of room to move) it won't just be quieter than expected but will sound bad too ... though it's the initial "thump" at the start of the note that will get attenuated and bass notes will suffer more than higher frequencies (bass notes move the cones more). However rating in watts is a poor measure of transient handling ability .. so not all 200W cabs are going to be equal. Two 8ohm 200W cabs in parallel will provide a lot more headroom and a better sound than 1x 4 Ohm 200W cab and two 200W 4Ohm cabs in parallel will provide nothing extra (the amp will overload). But also totally true is that a 550W into 4ohm EA doubler and a decent 200W 12" cab really ought to be loud enough for an upright; (my 150W PJB flightcase is NOT lound enough whereas the full 400W flightcase + PB300 is as loud as I've ever needed). Something amiss in the signal path? How ARE those pickups being blended?