donkelley

[quote name='kurosawa' timestamp='1377853536' post='2192684'] There are some species of body wood I steer clear of, like poplar, which in my experience can dramatically worsen the dead spots in even a very good neck, but there is no decent predictor of great sound, although I find that by limiting myself to alder and going for the lightest plank, I can avoid much unpleasantness. [/quote] Just sayin.... my poplar bodied Ernie Ball Musicman US SUB 5 with 2 band active preamp is an exceptionally even sounding, trouble free, amazing toned stingray. I've never heard of any issues with poplar other than the ugly woodgrain and color, and my own evaluation as an owner of two 8 to 10 year old ernie ball musicman poplar-bodied basses is that it's one of my all time favorite tonewoods. I would easily choose it over many other alternatives these days.

I just wish Fender hadn't reused the starcaster brand name for their cheap line of strat guitars. Now we get off topic posts like the one far above talking about cheap strats instead of the imho absolutely incredible semi-hollowbody starcaster from the 70s that I loved so much. guitarist in my band in 1989/1990 had two of them with seymour duncan pickups installed - those were the best semi-acoustic rock guitars I've ever played/heard. love 'em a starcaster bass would be sexy looking and sounding I bet! and with that fender neck!? mmmm

just posting things as I discover them.... the best lesson I learned in life is to follow your convictions whole heartedly, but be open to learning that you're wrong or that there is more than one simple correct answer to a complex question. I'll also just add that it would be quiet a coincidence if each of these three unplugged basses sounded so distinct yet so much like their amplified tone. However a coincidence is of course possible! Cheers! :-D

76/77 era jazz is excellent, so is the musicman. pedulla disappointed me. musicman should have (imho) recorded with very different settings on the treble control between the two finger recordings, or maybe that's what you did. love all of the stingray recordings though and the mid/late 70s jazzes. great work!

my twins: USA built (in the 2000s) Ernie Ball Musicman S.U.B. 5 strings: fretless and fretted!

good basses considering the price of those sbmm rays. if you want/need stingray tone it's a good way to get very close. as for active, there is zero reason to avoid active. I tend to avoid passive because I hate the lack of control of passives. this is from a guy who played passive for the first 7 years exclusively (precision). I LOVE actives. I miss the tone and control with passives. I change all of my batteries about every 6 months just in case. I've never had one die in a gig either live or recording for pay. No worries at all with active basses. They're much easier to record too due to having an output impedance and buffer that lets you plug directly into the board and it sounds awesome without needing a DI.

I have also changed my opinion somewhat over the past year. mine though is moving more towards the wood making a difference... I used to think it made only a small amount if any but I've found it can make a big difference. Although I should clarify that it's not necessarily the body wood I'm hearing the differences between as much as the entire acoustic sound of the bass coming through in the amplified tone much more than I expected it to. My personal revelation came when I got three new basses this year: - usa made ernie ball musicman sub 5 fretted - usa made carvin bunny brunel 5 fretted - korea made ibanez btb 556 6 fretted All have passive pickups with active preamps All have very very well understood tones that are consistent to the lines and models of the instruments. - sub: it's basically a stringray and sounds exactly like a classic stingray or pre-ebmm stingray - bunny: it's got that carvin presence-cranked-to-11 tone and brightness as heard in multiple youtube videos - btb: it's got that dark sound that lacks high end, lacks zing, and yet takes so well to extreme changes in the vari-mid eq. Here's the thing: those are the amplified sounds, or recorded sounds. Now if you just grab each of these basses and don't plug them in and listen to them, or have someone else do that while you sit wiht your eyes closed not knowing which one they're playing (as I tried doing recently), you can tell instantly which one they're playing: acoustically, the sub sounds like it's amplified tone - zingy, scooped, slightly metallic, very funky with a refined but very present high end, the bunny sounds intense, very bright, very responsive, shows fretting errors more than the stingray, and has a very alive complexity to the tone the ibanez is quiet, dark but still good and with some clarity, somewhat compressed in dynamic response. those are exactly as they sound plugged in, although of course the preamps can alter the tones to diverge from these fundamental tones to a certain degree. So whatever the reason, I suspect it's mostly a combination of body woods and build style, the acoustic tone does come through the pickups, and yet I know from experience that the pickups and their placement have strong signature tones as well.

personally I have found very few build QA issues with ibanez mid priced items. the bargain basement stuff, maybe. but not their midrange stuff from korea or indonesia. I chose and play an ibanez BTB 556 as my main 6 string bass. the feel, versatility, tone, and look is oustanding, as is the build quality. I prefer the string spacing and amazing long scale length tone to the SR series personally, the 6 string SRs feel too close together for my right hand. Even the BTB is a little closer together than I'd like, but it's the trade off of any 6 string bass. the 5,6 and 7 hundred series of BTB is absolutely outstanding. The SR series midrange and upper range also is amazing, but it's a question of preference of feel and look, and to a certain degree tone since I find the tone different between all BTBs I've played and all SRs I've played, which is 3 btbs (I own 2 of them) and dozens of SRs. I still prefer every BTB to every SR, for my personal taste. But All of them, SR or BTB, are great basses. All that being said, if I were you ideally I'd look for a used carvin 6 string LB series bass (LB76). but they can be hard to find... probably more so in europe. I think they're probably simpler to get a great sound out of and unarguably some of the best built instruments in the world, not to say Ibanez is poor, but absolutely not in the same "hand-built by luthiers" quality as are carvin instruments. and Carvin is stupidly cheap on the used market despite being entirely custom ordered hand built to spec american instruments. Another option is Peavey - the cheap import Grind is very good for cheap, but the US made peaveys are insanely great, and a used Cirrus or millenium (USA models, not the import versions which are still good but not as insanely great) will not set you back as much as many other instruments. PS - I'm clearly in north america, so maybe finding used USA made peaveys is, like with carvins, not as simple a task as it is here.

wow, fantastic information folks! thanks so very much :-) I'll check out all of the options - budget is important to me, if I can get by more cheaply with good results then I'll do it. But I'm always on the search to get the series I control and tone that I had in the 90s with my current basses or some new hybrid bass I may yet have found or frankensteined together. Closest I have now are my BTBs with the vari-mid controls, but of course they don't really emulate the effect the same way. if I turn down the treble control and bump the mids at a high frequency I can get close to my previous Alembic tone, which is almost more maddening to me since it makes me realize how much of the Alembic tone was in the electronics. I don't miss the weight of the series I - that thing was mad, although I loved the look as it was the first bass photo in a magazine that I'd ever fallen in love with and literally dreamed about owning one day. I'm wondering about the rack mount since it may give me a lot of that flexibility in my varying range of instruments. I will do my research on the ACQ stuff (sounds ideal really) and other suggestions. thanks!

Cool! Anyone else with other options? Might add well look around a bit.... Not to mention I'm in north America although in theory anything can be shipped anywhere...

Anybody have recommendations? Please :-) I loved the filters in my Alembic series 1 but it's long gone for 15 years now. There must be after market options to put that into my favorite basses now?

Hey pal! It's Don (dkelley) from talkbass.... good to see you following up with this color change thing. I believe I embraced the "wine vomit purple" title when I got my fretless 5 in that color. LOVE the color, personally. Will be very interesting to see the outcome though if you do paint it. I've only ever painted one instrument in my life and it was a tragic failure when I was a teenager... partly due to a poor choice of paint color and texture. So I don't think I have the guts to do it to an instrument I truly like and that has some actual monetary value (albeit not a ton of $$$). I really need to open mine up and check the wiring - being fretless I think series switching capability would be really cool - maybe in a push pull. I also wish I could throw a piezo strip under the saddles but of course it doesn't work that way (need one for each and they need to be carefully placed and installed and probably would sound bad and/or break easily if I did it myself). Just saying though - I still love my bass. mine still has the original pickguard out of difficulty in finding a replacement that fits 5 string usa subs.

Hi everybody! thanks for the kind words of welcome, and it's great that this is such a warm and friendly place to a guy like me. :-) I'm playing a 6 string ERB Ibanez BTB556 now - note my updated list of instruments in first post. Agreed the finishes are bizarre on US EBMM Subs, but the basses sound and play virtually identically to US Stingray Classics which are built on the same machines by the same folks with the same parts. I kind of like the red wine colored fretless body, and the black fretted one looks very heavy metal in a "my bass wears a leather jacket" kind of a way, I suppose. Not that I am exactly a tough metal head kind of person... although I am getting into heavier music as I get older. I suppose that's the opposite of most folks. And yes - I definitely want to get back to playing live if I can at some point, but it's not practical in my life these days. I'll be really interested to become involved with this board over the next few months - there seems to be a lot to learn from the membership here! Thanks for the welcome, once again :-D Cheers Don Kelley That Canadian Bassist

Hi there, I'm a 44 year old musician on the west coast of Canada! Hope it's ok that I signed up for your forum :-D I've played bass on repeated minor sessions a zillion times over the years and done my part as a pro musician before having kids with my wife. Now I just play remote sessions out of my home studio and dream of getting back to playing live. Basses (UPDATED): - 2 US-made EBMM 5 string Sub basses, one fretted, one fretless (these are basically 5 string classic stingrays with ugly finishes to cover the poplar bodies) - Ibanez BTB556 natural finish 6 string ERB (much nicer than what I had before) - Ibanez BTB405QM - Hagstrom HB-8 Amp: - Ampeg PF-350 - Traynor TC-112 cab with Eminence 2512 speaker instead of stock celestion - Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro (yes, seriously, and yes it's really REALLY good and useful) Lots(!) of guitars, a banjo, mandolin, really good classical violin (approx 350 years old, my instrument of training), viola, electric violin, 2 acoustic guitars, roland drum kit, couple of synths (novation, yamaha), korg digital piano, a lap steel guitar, a cajon, and I'm sure some other things I'm forgetting about. But I have been most successful as a violinist and bass guitarist mostly over the years, followed by electric guitar, then drums. I've played each of them on other people's albums over the years... although I don't remember a lot of the gigs I've had which I'm sure must have been entertaining LoL