[quote name='henry norton' post='405235' date='Feb 10 2009, 12:06 PM']That's exactly my point - how many basses does a player actually need, short of the fretted/fretless issues. Does anyone remember that weird bass from the late 70s/early 80s that had a knob to wind the frets down into the fingerboard, thus giving you a fretless/fretted option? I think I saw it on Tomorrows World....[/quote]
Interesting point raised there. I read the review of the new Vbass unit and it starts by saying there are two types of bassist - those that have one 'trusty' bass which they use for everything, and those who have one of each type for various sounds. I am definitely the former, having found the one which feels best to me, but I do like having the typical jazz/pbass sounds in my arsenal. Problem was that I could never feel happy playing a P or Jazz because compared to my Vigier they just didn't play as nicely.
As a result the Vbass was the complete solution for me. It gives me all those sounds (or extremely close approximations thereof, mostly because I have tweaked them to how I prefer them to sound, you can get whatever you want out of the unit believe me) plus every effect I need, often with far more in the way of parameters than the usual single boxes. For example on my fretless the chorus affect is applied above 1khz. only.. plus it gives me polyphonic stereo synths which I am sure could only be made on a keyboard otherwise. All in all it does everything, but most of the time it just works as a superb clean pre-amp for my bass with the magnetic pickups, just like any other pre.
So without labouring the point any further, these two are my 'ultimate bass' for certain because they have a completely individual sound which I can call 'mine' but are very usable and versatile. They cut through perfectly, are 100% stable construction wise and I can knock them about a bit without worrying about picking up dents and so on.
Here they are, once again:
Cheers
ped