NickA

Sold. Unsurprisingly. Hopefully staying in the UK with someone who will play it ...not flip it for £6000 to the states. Surprised the gallery, of all people, got caught out by this one.

Not an oddity it's an early custom with a pro bass neck on it ( they did at first). Worth about £5000 if it's all working. There's rush fans in the USA who will fight to the death for it!

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Apart from the ever increasing prices!

Oh and gold plated hardware. Especially on boutique basses. Like having gold taps in the bathroom or a gold plated gear knob in your Bentley. Sometimes, more is just less and less is more pleasing.

Basses that have been deliberately damaged to make them look old and road worn .."reclicing" I believe; awful thing to do. Called "distressing" in the fake antique furniture business or "antiqueing" in double basses and 'cellos. There were two blokes made a perfect copy of a very ancient and valuable double bass (an Amati) a few years back .. it looked perfect; then they set to it with pumice stones and sharp implements to make it look like a real (ie old and damaged) Amati; could have cried. Doing this to double basses is unforgivable, but doing it to bass guitars is also pretty bad .. even if they're only Fenders. Amusingly, though, I have a 130 yr old 'cello that was "antiqued" when built in a french factory a couple of centuries ago ... if finally caught up with its faked up age!

The Wal pickups do have separate coils for each string (two for each string in fact), but they are not then separately buffered; they are connected in parallel within the pickup. The earlier Pro IIe basses had the option to switch the coils in series or parallel (there is a little switch on the pickup body), but it was dropped on the Customs (don't know why). So the individual coils do indeed load each other (string to string). As you say ... just like having individually buffered active pickups (like the MECs in my Dolphin). I don't honestly know what the advantage in all those separate coils really is. Anyone?

Which is what many people seem to want 🙂 🙂 🙂 I fiddled around for years trying to replicate the Wal electronics: buffer for each pickup, active low pass filter for each pickup and THEN an active blend (mixer) - It's not that hard really (though the Wal "pick attack" function is a bit more complicated ....). The buffering, separate filters and "mixer" effectively put the pickups in series as their filtered signals add, and they don't load each other the way the pickups in, say, a passive Jazz bass do. Also as the pickups don't conduct any current, they don't filter the signal themselves, so you get a very flat frequency response. Later on I bought some John East ACG-EQ-01 electronics which do what my own design did (only better and more reliably); they do the same as and far more than the Wal electronics as everything is adjustable (filter Q, pick attack filter etc). The bass with that setup now overlaps in sound with a Wal but sure as hell can't do all the things a Wal can. I eventually gave up and just bought a Wal... and there is no comparison really; the real thing just works "as a whole" and has a huge range of sounds (there is no "Wal sound" really). The electronics certainly play a part; they have a pleasingly organic fuzziness when driven hard - which the ACG-EQ-01 doesn't (it's clean until it clips). But I still think it isn't "just" the electronics. I think if you built a mahogany bass with a stiff and stable neck, added some Bass Culture "Wal Buckers" and John E's electronics, you would have something very like ... but still not quite the same as it wouldn't do that slight fuzziness the same way. This one for instance; which the maker (MPU) says wasn't 1:1, but close:

Yup, needs a clean from time to time. I Clean the ebony fingerboard on my double bass with vodka on a kitchen towel. Looks like the ub804 has a rosewood board in which case vodka may be a bit harsh. Real turpentine is good, or follow up the vodka with some walnut oil, wipe off excess then allow to dry. Some people use linseed oil, I find it's too sticky. Some people swear by lemon oil. There are special finger board oils too .. but mostly expensive repackagings of the above.

note bends ... hmm. Don't do it myself; but it might need that extra leverage.

In fact it DIDN'T go for $9000; that was the highest bid and he pulled it. Now back on reverb at $9700 which is where he bought it for $6500 a few weeks back.

Down a 3rd = up a 6th. Down a fourth = up a fifth. Down a fifth = up a fourth etc. You can still refer to a note as a 3rd below another but the chord interval will be the invertion of that interval.

Can't argue with that! Depends so much on the amp architecture that it's impossible to make one rule for all. Turning up the gain gives a nice strong signal into the power amp, but not if you then turn the volume down. If you want a clean sound turn up both gain and volume avoiding clipping in both, if you like the sound of the pre clipping, turn up the gain and if you want to clip the power section, turn up the volume too ( but it will be unavoidably loud! )

Hey! He touched it ok! Worth gadzillions 😄must be 🤣 🙂

It went for around $9000. ! The mark up is due to the price of and long wait for a new one. prices "start at" £6050, £6350 for a mk 3, but there's a 3 year order backlog .. When demand surges (Tool have an album out, someone from Rush kicks the bucket) people want one and want one now. Then people see how quickly they're gaining value and the collectors and chancers step up. Nice basses, not £15,000 nice ... but up there with Alembics and Foderas I suppose. Weird thing is, equally special basses ( Smith's, ACGs, maybe Overwaters and a few others) can't command a fraction of the price and lose value as soon as they're played. Bill Wyman's Wal is up for auction right now, expected cost £40,000+ and there's a £10k offer in. ..https://www.julienslive.com/m/search?page=1&view=list&sale=undefined&catm=any&order=timeleft&live=no&hybrid=no&timed=no&regular=no&buynow=no&makeoffer=no&xclosed=no&featured=no&lotnum=894

I know .. gutted. Was going to paint it black and flip it back at £25k..

https://www.ebay.com/itm/193628307622 Nuts, quite nuts. Flipped by someone who already paid over the odds on reverb.

I had the GP12smx version of that for years. Agree with everything Belka says. It was a very clean and clear amp for it's day lots of punch .. too much for home practice in fact! About scooping the mids ... I always did that with the trace EQ ( BIG Smile across the 12 bands,) Much too "thin and middy" otherwise. Never scoop the mids on the PJB kit I have now ... it stays dead flat except for a little adjustment for room acoustics. Paid £800 for my trace in 1998, sold it for £150 in 2018. Miss it somewhat, especially with my Warwick. Don't miss the weight though. Had space allowed, I'd still have it.

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Yes they do sell for £5000+ at dealers. This one is at a dealer (elite Vintage guitars) not a genuine private sale. They don't sell for £5750, certainly not this one. Probably worth £4250. Replicas of Geddy Lee's Black one or Justin Chancellor's maple one go for silly money to USA based fan boys who then play along with rush and tool recordings. Beats me. Especially as the rush fans are now arguing about whether geddy's had a face-wood under the plack paint or not .... and now it transpires that he recorded an album called power windows on a brown one!!! Arghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! Madness. I have two, one cost £800, the other £4150. Doing much better than my pension fund despite a £500 service last year. The four string fretless is the bass I'll never part with, sounds great and nice to play.

Serious, but in a tongue in cheek kind of way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donny_Benét "anachronistic post disco" apparently; he envisions his album as the background music to a 1980s dinner party! not a bad bass player though

FWIW ... Most Trace amps have a separate fuse in the back of the amp (ie additional to the fuse in the plug) it can be changed without dismantling anything - that's the one that goes occasionally. Just there, between the ON switch and the power socket. Nice to hear the new Amp is problem free though!! Happy playing.

Up to 18 months ago, my bitsa copy jazz bass was the most expensive bass I owned. Original bass was a Grant jazz copy bought in 1981, got esp pickups a Schaller bridge and an ebony fretless board in 1983, Kent Armstrong pickup rewind in 1986, then endless iterations of home made electronics. New hardwood body in 1991, new neck in 1992. Put away for many years then resurrected in 2016 with passive controls and Delano pickups. A couple of years back it got east acg-eq-01 electronics, then gotoh tuners and finally a set of decent eb cobalt strings. Total cost over the years ... About £1000; value ...ermm, not a lot. Nice bass now. Has some of the qualities of Jazz bass but brighter, Warwick growl and Wal tone flexibility I was after and does a killer Jaco Turbo sound. But in the interim I acquired a fretless Wal and a Warwick which tbh do it better, so it doesn't get played much. Bitsa basses are great fun and you learn a lot, but a professionally built one will be better value in the end. 😞