DGBass

One of these. The tree was more kind of sitting on top of it rather than the item being under it. Early 80's MK2 GP11 1110 100watt 4x10 combo. Thank you Santa🎄My back hates you! Oh and a Boss TR2.

On 22/12/2022 at 19:14, nilorius said:

If you know your guitarist tune and your tune - no problem.

I would agree that knowing how your guitarist colleague was tuning makes for an easier time. Saying that, I was in a band where our guitarist would tune down to a specific detuned chord for some songs, then need to tune back up a bit to play other songs and then have a standard guitar at concert pitch for other tunes. This was achievable in a rehearshal room or studio with three or four differently tuned guitars but not at a gig. As I only ever used one bass at a time, tuning up and down like this to match the guitar played havoc with my bass tuning and playability. String gauge was also a major factor in maintaining playability and staying in a de-tuned state. At the end of the day I decided to tune to standard concert pitch and play up and down the neck a bit more to make the required key changes. It made for some interesting bass sounds and playing to match what was happening on guitar and kept my gig setup standard and my bass in perfect tune. Judicious use of a bass distortion pedal and tweaked EQ kept the bass sounding like a bass even though a lot of the time I was playing up near or above the 7th fret most of the time in that band.

I have a set of Ironstone Jazz pickups in my American Standard and they are plenty beefy in use with stainless flats. They are an Alnico design based on a 70s jazz tone and have way more output than the standard Fender CS60s my bass came with as new. You can get them in singles as well as pairs and for me they seemed very reasonably priced. I would even go as far as to say they transformed my Jazz in both tone and output. Definetly worth a look imho.

Most i've paid for a new bass ever was £1299. If I was in the market for something new, proabably around £1500 would be the limit for new one, maybe half that for a used item. Any new or used bass would be getting gigged for sure so having something wonderfully unique and minted that i'd be terrified to do pub gigs with would be no use.

With a lot of the now 'vintage' TE stuff, if you are in the market for repairing them or restoring a broken item, one solution is to seek out a similar or same unit and cannibalise it for spares. One good one from maybe two bad ones if you like. Electronic component parts are still source-able as a lot of the components like resistors, diodes and capacitors are still made by some vendors. Things like speakers, complete PCB's and consumables like sitel knobs, push button caps, bulbs and sliders are harder to find if at all for some TE's now. Mosfet power transistors for AH amps (TO3 type) are no longer made from this year and going up in price as stock runs out. It will get harder to keep the power sections on old amps running. Cabs are a bit easier as there will be a speaker somewhere that will fit or fit reasonably well to replace an older unit. TE used Fane a lot around the time of the bright boxes and Fane still do a 5 inch high performance driver that might be an option to get your bright box working at around £45.

https://www.fane-international.com/view-product/STUDIO-5FRK

A common issue I’ve seen on older TE cabs on speakers is the two little flexible braided wires that go from the tags to the speaker coil former get corroded or go high resistance with time. Old Celestion 10’s are particularly prone to this after about 30 years of use.  Thats fixable usually with a bit of careful soldering. If someones poked a finger through the cone thats a different story!

I managed to get in some studio rehearsal time today and took along the ABM Mini stack I posted a pic of recently. I was very impressed with the sound from the Mini 4x8 and the Mini 1x15, and as a full rig its very giggable. Both cabs and the head also fit easily into the boot of my small hatchback which is nice. Can't help think that Ashdown have missed a trick with updated Neo versions of these Mini cabs. The 4x8 is quite weighty but managable due to its compact size. The MIni 15 is light even with a standard Sica Blue line driver. The old EVO 500 just growls like old EVO 500's do when pushed and its not an unpleasant sound at all. I'd almost forgotten how good the smell of hot ABM smells after a giving one a good thrashing. I also have to agree with BC user @Sibob who suggested the cabs sounded better used as a pair in a rig. Used seperately I found them a bit thin sounding but probably usable for a small gig that didn't need lots of oomph. 

In the ABM not so mini department, I also dragged along a recent new purchase thats not been gigged yet, in fact barely even switched on. It's an ABM 600RC custom shop and possibly one of the last made by Ashdown. The option to buy one dissapeared from their custom shop web page the day after I ordered one 🤔 It was purchased with the proceeds of selling on all my old TE kit, a nice synergy I thought at the time.  It sounds like umm...an ABM. Seems cleaner and fatter than the old school ABMs i've been used too. Plenty oomph as well and this one has the silient fan thing happening until it warms up which could be very useful for studio work. The 8x10 was borrowed from the studio and was easily capable of making the studio wall and celing rattle. For gigging i'll be using a 1x15 cab as thats more my thing. Not worked out what to do with the two extra sliders yet but i'm working on it.

If you wanted to get the full benefit of a Tube 800, the New York 122 2x12 4 ohm cab would be a good match. It's a step up in size, weight and price but still relatively light weight. The only downside is Markbass have now discontinued the New York 122 but you might find some stock still available somewhere. Using a Tube 800 with a single 8 ohm Traveller 102p would I think work fine, the amp will run at around 400 watts at 8 ohms if you turned it up full which not many people do these days. Although the traveller 102p will be rocking at that power level, it should cope. I've used a traveller 102p 8 ohm with a 500 watt Markbass head and to be honest, its plenty loud for most pub/club gigs, especially if you park it near a solid wall. A tube 800 and a traveller 102p 8ohm would be plenty powerful and reasonably safe to use power level wise.

If its still under warranty might be worth speaking to Orange, I hear they are quite approachable. There's a simple test you could do to see if the issue is from the pre-amp section which has a valve in it or the class-d power amp. Plug a bass directly into the return jack, if it still sounds bad or cuts out, then the class-d power section sounds suspect and could be a warranty issue. If it cleans up and sounds ok, the front end of the amp could have an issue. Could be something as simple as a failed valve in the pre-amp as well but difficult to say. It's also worth checking the obvious if you haven't already done so. Try one speaker at a time on the 8 ohm setting with your speaker leads assuming both your cabs are  8ohms each that is and each speaker lead in turn to rule out any cable gremlins.  

I've pretty much got the collecting basses psychology whipped into shape. Last time I had a lapse and bought one was seven years ago and it more or less gathered dust until I sold it recently. A pair of Fenders do more than everything I need and have done for a long time. I do have one other bass i've owned for nearly forty years but I pretend that its more ornamental than for everyday use so its listed in my head as furniture & fittings. The part I haven't yet got fully under control is buying bass amps of all shapes and sizes. I'm almost there and have leaned more and more towards using ABM's for several years now. I recently emptied out a whole pile of amps I'd accumulated over the years leaving me just two amps, a main and backup. Everything was going well until the proceeds of the selling spree burned a hole in my pocket and I ordered a custom shop UK Ashdown.  

As soon as it arrived, I did sell my main gig Ashdown ABM so back down to two. Oh, and then a GK arrived in the post so back up to three. Oh dear, I think there is a Trace Elliot on the way as well. Back up to four. And thats how it goes.

It's my thing though and I enjoy trying all sorts of used amps and mostly selling them on when i've had my fix of whatever they have to offer, or if I need cash for something more pressing. Gigging also helps me rationalize what is actually needed and what is a nice to have.  I have the ultimate basses for me, i just need to settle on the ultimate bass amp for me and I think i'm close to that.

Very nice rig! These era cabs in particular are superb, great build quality and made of good quality birch ply. Also quite a bit lighter than the early era 1048's made of MDF / Chipboard. Sold all my Trace kit earlier this year and almost feels strange not having a Trace Elliot setup. Bit overkill for my purposes but its a total barg at the asking price if you are in the market for this kind of rig.

I think the only settings I can whole heartedly recommend is to have youer LMB3 switched on all the time and I like it last in line😁 Agree its a matter of fine tuning to however it suits the individual. I rarely change settings and might tweak the level depending on what amp I'm using. Thats usually an Ashdown ABM although I have been testing an old GK bass amp and found it can cope better with a bit more signal from the LMB3 without any detrimenal effect. Just had a look at my board from the last rehearsal and looks like this:

This was my rig of choice for a recent gig and one of the few gigs I've done this year that hasn't involved an Ashdown ABM. It was more a nostalgia trip to use this Trace Elliot as I was intending to sell all my Trace Elliot kit at the time and have now done that. The AH200 GP12 is quite a special bass amp and in my experience always punched way above its weight and had that sound.

Still using my LMB3 and its the only compressor/limiter I've used since I sold my old MXR M143 limiter. The M143 was the best pedal comp/limiter i've ever used and haven't found anything to match it. The LMB3 does a good job though and the thing about both pedals is I think they did colour the tone slightly and enabled me to have 'my' sound. Done the spectracomp thing as well as a few other things and none were particularly bad at what they did, I just prefer what the LMB3 does. Been on my board for about eight years now and was used when I bought it back then. No issues with reliability either.

The good thing about a P-Bass is that there isn't actually a lot that can go wrong electrically. If your bass had been stored away for a long time, and was working before it was stored, i'd go for the simplest culprit of corrosion/oxidisation on the jack plug and/or dirty/dusty wipers on either the volume or tone pots. Switchcraft type jacks are for the most part bomb proof, the only thing they can suffer from is as user @Grimalkin mentioned, a build up of oxsidisation especially in the barrel part. I would work a jack in/out quite a few times, give it a wiggle for good measure. And, give the tone and volume pots a good massage back and forth for a good few minutes each to see if that works anything into life. A sparing amout of switch cleaner in the jack barrel and to the pots is also a good strategy assuming you have some. I wouldn't start cutting wires or desoldering until you are sure the basics are covered. I had a similar issue after storing my p-bass for a few years and a dirty tone pot was the culprit.

If its a gig in a larger venue or one where the backline is provided I'll always take the P-Bass as I know the tone will fill up bigger rooms easier and with provided backline, there is less fiddling about to get a useable sound with a P-Bass. I like using a Jazz with my own backline though, probably because I use the Jazz more at home and at rehearshal. I have learned over the years to rotate between them for gigging to minimize wear and tear, and either instrument works well in a band setting. The P-Bass just nudges ahead slightly for overall giggability. Never been a fan of PJ basses and although I did own one for a short time, I just couldn't get to grips with the range of tones it made. 

I remember there being lots of 5 string action around that time and I even jumped on the bandwagon myself with a Yamaha BBN5L bass. Only 5 string i've ever gigged and it was a regular feature from around 2000-2003 for me. 5 string Soundgears were very popular amongst my local rock/metal fraternity, as were Stingray 4's and Fender Jazz basses. I suppose you could also ask what was the popular bass in the 2000's featuring on mainstream  music TV or for a particular genre of music. Or even your local scene. Fenders always seem to feature in any decade and any genre music. They still do even now.  Bands like A Perfect Circle released Mer De Noms in 2000 and I remember putting down my Yamaha for a while and realising my Fender P was still cool in 2000, especially after watching Paz Lenchantin rock a P Bass during a performance of Judith on MTV. 

5 stringers though are what I associate most with the 2000s.

I was involved in an original music band project where the guitarist insisted on drop tuning in some weird and wonderful keys. He used a Digitech Whammy pitch shift pedal. I bought an EHX PitchFork for the bass to try and match what he was doing. Neither pedal impressed me and the Pitchfork never managed to track everything but mostly did a reasonable job. The sound quality was never great either in my opinion. It aded a sort of metallic resonance to the notes and I could definetly hear latency. In the end, even our guitarist gave up with his pitch shift pedal and settled on an extra instrument already detuned so he could swap guitars on stage when needed. For bass I just used my fingers to transpose keys on a bass tuned to concert pitch. That was a few years ago and I guess Pitch shift pedals might have moved on somewhat in processing power and sophistication but I could say it was the least used effects pedal I've ever owned!

Yes,  but reluctantly on my part. Discussions on doing crowd pleasing xmas tunes never go smoothly in our covers band when a gig set list is being drawn up. The only good thing is that we haven't needed to play xmas tunes since December 2019 just before the pandemic! We collectively settle on a medley so as we don't have to suffer playing xmas tunes all the way through. Pubs and clubs are decked out in their xmas glitter this time of year so its almost expected in venues that you get musically festive at some point in the set.

Not in order:

Run Rudolph Run

Santa Claus is coming to town

Merry Christmas ( Slade of course!)

Yep, direct from the horses mouth is often the best source of information and although i've never had cause to contact Orange about stuff, its good to know they are approachable🙂

I'm not familiar with your kit but the principal of a single input into the return would bypass all of the front end of the amp so you wouldn't likely get the use of a control in the pre-amp chain. The LBT blurb suggests the compressor is a front end effect rather than an output compressor like Peavey's DDT feature. Most compressors on amps are front end these days. Out of curiosity, I tried doing the same on three different amps. An Ashdown ABM, a GK and a Markbass. All were the same, none of the pre-amp controls functioned going direct into the return. One other thing is that using the return means your input source will need enough level to make the most of the power amp section. A Sansamp should be more than capable of supplying a hot enough signal. I suppose best option is to try it out and compare the two setups.

Just for info, the folks at Polar were quite approachable and I suspect relished the chance to get away from their desk to rummage around in the warehouse looking for NOS rack kits. Unfortunately there wasn''t anything available for my ask. However this may be of interest to owners of the old school RB800 amp. Polar still have some NOS 3U rack ear kits for RB800's available, so if you are lucky enough to own an RB800 and fancy racking it...give them a shout.  

2 hours ago, Chaddy said:

Triggers Broom?

I've had as many ABM's of all shapes and sizes pass through my hands to have a reasonably good idea of what is fairly original. The two cabs (4x8 and mini 15) are stock MK1 ABM Minis. The JJ ECC83S I fitted to replace a no name valve is not original but everything else appears to be. One thing Ashdown did with amps of this era when they built them in house was date the components they fitted, a bit like what TE used to do back in the day. Whoever built an amp initialed and dated a component part as well which is a nice touch. Little things like that give you a good idea as to what you have. I suppose you can never really tell for sure with twenty year old amps of any make but this particular one is the most original of this era i've ever come across and the best condition by far. The serial number says Nov 2002, the transformer, an original XTE1 model Oct 2002, and the power module 24/10/2002 which all seems right. I remember reading Ashdown's manuals of the time which rattled on about their "ABM Design Philosophy"  to build a "minimum service, high quality, long lasting powerful bass amplifier." A clean out and a new valve every twenty years seem to fit that philosophy! Sounds lovely as well and very quiet and controlled in operation for such a powerful old amp, its definetly not had a hard life. I suppose there are a few Triggers Broom's out there as these amps are super easy to repair and maintain and always look the part even if the internals may not be as they left the factory. This one though is definetly a cut above the rest🙂 

5 hours ago, Tim2291 said:

Ah, this is the age old question though, would it have saved you any money or would you have actually ended up with something else? I would argue that your years of experimenting with other instruments developed your taste to the USA Standard, whereas if you had started with the USA Standard your tastes may have developed to a different instrument! 

With the P-Bass, I'm sure it would have saved me money tbh. I knew it was a keeper the day I bought it, it just felt quality. If that had been the case when I was starting out I'm sure I wouldn't have strayed off the path as much or suffered attacks of GAS( I had a major affair with EB and pre-EB stingrays for a number of years ). I also have an American Standard Jazz Bass, its only ten years old and I also knew that was a keeper the day I bought it. Again, it just had that quality feel. I would say in its case, it was probably more years of experimenting with other JB instruments to find a keeper( i've owned 8 jazz basses of various makes and as a lefty there is a more limited choice anyway) That journey eventually developed into an American Standard Jazz. It took a while, but I have two really nice reliable, great sounding and comfortable to play quality USA Fenders and I have no desire to own anything else.  I also don't need anything else tbh as both instruments cover all my requirements really well. I can tell you thats a very happy place to be 🙂

Something I've been restoring recently and haven't yet had the chance to gig. A cupboard find that had been locked away for over ten years and had a few issues due to lack of use. It's now fully restored, fully operational and pretty much mint condition. The EVO500 amp head is quite unique for amps of this vintage. Its UK built as are the ABM Mini cabs and they all have consecutive serial numbers. The amp has the old school EVO 500 front panel but has the newer EVOII rear panel with a speakon jack. The power section has the later bipolar 500 watt output stage and not the earlier 400 watt mosfet board. All the dates check out as November 2002. Looking forward to trying it out at a gig.

To answer the OP's original post, ie. where is the value in a USA Fender I can only add that there is just something extra built in thats worth it, especially in the standards. I can't speak for every model year however my own experience of buying a USA Standard  as it was called back in the late 90's has been exemplary. Fender got back to their roots about this time after a few odd tangents in the eighties. The build quality on my USA standard is superb, materials, finish, playability and tone all make for a great and very reliable bass. I've owned it for nearly 25 years now and the neck has never moved, its only needed one fret level in that time and I'm told by my tech the frets will last for sometime yet. I never thought back then i'd still be using it to this day and its become my go to bass for gigging and almost and old friend. 

I've owned squiers, players, antoria's, ibanez's etc over the years and while I've never owned a bass that wasn't giggable, none have felt so comfortable and reliable as my late 90's USA Standard. For me the investment back then was well worth it and if I was starting out again, I would save up and grab an American Standard without hesitation. If I'd got one to start with, it may have saved me from years of being lost on a gear quest before I finally got my USA Standard, and of course a a fair bit of cash🙂