Painy

Get the drummer to wear one of these to isolate the mic from the drum? Available from all good vets - plus, as he's a drummer, it will have the added bonus of preventing him from licking his own balls (sorry @Dad3353). 😁

If its a business seller and you click onto their profile you can then click on your legal information which should show you where their business is actually located (or at least registered). The amount of times the listing says it ships from London but you check the legal information and the company is located in Shenzhen or Guangzhou!

Only wish I could afford to. 😞 Unfortunately the already expensive pastime of trying out loads of different strings is made even more costly when they're flats and again even more so when it's a 5 string.

I recently bought a Sterling Ray 25CA which I'm liking a lot but I fancy trying it with some flats. I want to get a bit of that flatwound thump and punch but without losing too much of the Stingray bite. At the moment I'm thinking of EB Cobalts as they seem the obvious choice to fit the bill but I'm open to other suggestions if anyone has any?

It's been a bit of a nightmare trying to get together in the lead up to Christmas (especially as we both have young kids) so not had a chance to get much further than chatting about it so far to be honest. Hoping to get our heads together at some point over the next few days though if we can. If we manage to come up with anything tangible - sketches or what have you - I'll post them up here to see what you guys think.

Ooo, mid 1990s me loves that! Current me however (fortunately for my bank balance) only loves it up as far as the nut.

I had a Korean Spector Legend 5 string once that just sounded utterly insipid - literally the most MEH sound ever. It also felt really flimsy like it was made of balsa wood even though it wasn't especially light. I also recently bought a Gibson EB13 5 string - one of the stupidly cheap end of line ones from GAK. I really liked the quirky looks and it felt really comfortable to me. It also sounded great - right up until I tried actually playing it with the rest of my band. No matter what I did it just seemed to disappear almost completely in the mix - just hopeless! Fortunately it sold on ebay for more than I'd payed new and I was able to use the money towards getting my Sterling Ray 25CA which I'm now enjoying much more. 😊

Back in 1996 I was asked by some school friends (who had heard that I played bass) if I'd come and have practice with them just for one evening as their normal bass player couldn't make it. I impressed them enough that they asked me that to join their fledgling band and agreed between them that they would sack their current bass player as they felt he wasn't really up to the task. We then agreed to get together again the next evening as everyone was keen to have another go ASAP. The next day at school, word got back to the other guy that he was about to get the boot but nobody had a chance to speak to him directly. That evening we were setting up in the singer's garage when there was a knock on the door. Turned out to be the other bass player's mum come to tell everyone off for being mean to her son. Of course everyone sheepishly denied that they were planning to sack him and that's how we ended up with 2 bass players for our first half a dozen gigs. Unfortunately it sounded pretty dreadful and the guy had all the stage presence of half a house brick and slightly less musical ability so in the end I got fed up and told everyone that if they were too scared of his mum to sack him then I'd do it. Later on at a hastily called band meeting at the local play-park and after an awkward 15 minutes going on the swings and down the slide workout saying anything I eventually told him he was out of the band. Didn't feel great about it at the time to be fair but 22 years and around 1500 gigs later I'm still with the band and the only bass player so it all worked out in the end.

If you read my first post it's my UNholy trinity precisely because of this. The P bass is also a Squier!

New pickguard now installed and I'm really happy with it!

I use a Joyo Roll Boost. Cheap and cheerful but built like a tank and gives up to a frankly insane +35dB boost should you for any reason ever want to push the front end of a tube amp to face-melting levels. Used at more moderate settings though it's a very nice, clean and transparent boost.

Looks like I'm going to Hell then. 😈

After 21 years of playing 5 string basses exclusively (apart from about a year when I used a 6 string a few years back) I don't really see the point in swapping back and forth as there's nothing a 4 string offers me that a 5 doesn't because I'm totally comfortable with my 5 string basses.

I've already sent him a link so he can view it. Maybe he'll read your suggestion anyway but I'll mention it to him. 😉

It is indeed.

A kill switch is something we've already spoken about actually and he already considered for his guitars and can offer as an option on custom orders so would be easy enough to specify on a bass.

Blimey! For that money I think I'd rather just buy for a used DB751 and train our drummer to carry it for me.

Unfortunately the pickup routing isn't great under there. Also, the fact that I actually really like oval guard is one of the main reasons I went for the Ray25CA rather than the normal Ray25 or 35 with the teardrop guard.

Absolutely, hence he's asked me for some input as he's very aware that it's not as simple as sticking a longer neck onto the same body and as a guitarist himself rather than a bass player he was interested to know what the main differences were likely to be from a bass player's view point.

The plate on the P is actually a dark brown tort.

You can't groove with a pick!