Woodinblack

Had a practice in Thursday. Was actually a good practice, it just because we actually played well, or because I was testing out my new mustang, but also because at the end of each song we got a round of applause from the people in the beer garden! We have had worse audiences at gigs! anyway, we have a gig next week, unlockdown permitting but the guitarist didn't want to do it as it was inside and he hasn't had all his jabs. So no problem, tell us and we can get someone to cover. So after a bit of prodding he says he isn't happy to do it so we get another guitarist we will work with this week and come up with something to cover - we have cancelled the last two gigs at short notice, so don't want to do again. so tell the guitarist we have it covered so he has decided to step down as he isn't ready to play gigs inside again. Our next 2 are outside, but there you go. hope we can work another guitarist in somehow

I can't believe that is true. I have it on good authority from this site that if you don't play oasis it is not possible to be invited back! well done anyway, I think the thread you meant was the "how was your gig last night" thread

I put a set of those but 50s (as they didn't have 45) on my Squier mustang and I like it, gives a good sound for the mustang (not a sound I would want on anything else). Enjoyable to play.

Yeh, I thought that. Most things are class compliant. I had a midi interface (M-Audio) that had been in my draw for a decade. I needed 3 actualy midi ports, so I dug it out although I remembered I had an issue with it. It didn't work. I took it apart but it looked clean inside. I did a web search and found there were drivers for it, which seemed odd. Installed them and now it works. I was a bit surprised, it was all a bit last century, haven't needed a driver for anything usb since.. the original iMac!

Sounds like something you should report to line6

TBH - I can't think of any speaker combo with a 300W amp that wouldn't work ok with that. But 300W is almost twice as loud as 50w.

I was talking all of them in general, but for the 5 string, there have been issues in the past - I got mine from bax when they were the only people with one for £189. But at the moment of this post, there is no real issue with availability - as you say G4M are showing 20+, Andertons are showing 4, several other smaller shops have them in. There are a few other people who are awaiting stock, Thomman say a week, bax says 11 days and GAK/PMT undisclosed. My post was just reacting to the post with a link to reverb saying they were out of stock everywhere, when they aren't, and even if andertons didn't have it in stock for £30 less, the people who have that specific bass on reverb have it on their own website (guitar.co.uk) for almost £20 less. Reverb is not a good place to buy new things from as people use it as a shopfront and bump the prices up to absorb the reverb fees. Its always worth checking who the advert is by and going to their own shop. The Bass Gallery put all their basses up there with a 10% extra for instance.

I mean most of the major suppliers. Andertons have them, as do G4M and Thomman, Gak have quite a few of the models, PMT have a few of the models. What I mean is there is no obvious shortage of them, so I was puzzled why you said everywhere was out of stock!

Thats is exactly as I saw it - I used to see them in the shops in the 80s, wonder why anyone would want a toy bass when you could get a real one for not much more. Then all of a sudden recently that opinion changed. I have a Classic Vibe. I bought one the second it was announced and then realised it was about 9 months to release date so I cancelled the order. Then the reviews came out and people said they didn't like this or that so I went off it. Then one appeared in my facebook marketplace round the corner to me, new and cheap. I bought it. I have not played anything else since. I put flats on it (which I also hate) and they are great too. I took it to practice last night, the drummer loved it and wanted one. It is so fun to play. Downsides, well the pickup is microphonic and is a bit middly, probably need to fix that. I would prefer a perloid pickguard. And that is it, absolute winner.

Out of stock where? All the major suppliers have them in stock for £20 less than that for immediate delivery.

Yes, its putting out a lot of power and doesn't have much surface area, so you would expect it to get fairly warm. I only tend to use mine as a backup so it gets used mostly at home. even then it gets warm.

So apart from this issue of the volume control not being the same, do both basses sound and act basically the same - like do the switches and tone do the same thing and they have basically the same output volume when they are both full up? Do both pots measure the same static resistance between the outside two terminals of the pot (with the volumes flat out)?

The Jack casidy is a fairly unique design (or class of design, used on a few others) compared to an ordinary guitar which is much simpler thing, due to a very low impedance pickup and a switch to change the impedance of the whole guitar. Normally I would say it is pretty hard to work out what is happening if you have no experience of working on them but you have the advantage that you have two of them, so with just a meter you can buzz it out and find out what the difference is. Yes, you can measure the transformer with a normal meter, as long as it is accurate enough at low values, although it seems around the pot is a place to start, what the values as you turn it are. You could send it to a guitar tech, although it would have to be the right one, because most of them are not particularly good with electronic, because there are a lot of things to do on a guitar and the electronics on 99% of all guitars / basses are very basic so they don't need to be.

it can be for the reason you don't like it. If you check the big retailers they list what their policies are. I have returned basses and other items to andertons and G4M without issues.

Noone wants to make a bad purchase choice, which is why the best thing you can do is play one, I know, pretty hard if you can't find one. You haven't listed where you are so hard to say what your options are, but obviously some of these things are easier to try than to find, for instance it doesn't matter what colour the Gibson LP Junior is if you just want to try it, rather than if you want to buy etc. Sometimes it is very hard to know what you are going to like. I don't like 4 string basses and hate flatwounds, yet I picked up a CV mustang recently, slapped flatwounds on it and it is all I am playing for the moment. Its really hard to tell what is going to 'click' without trying it.

Wow - I would have to spend at least a day in my music room to get it even close to being as neat as that. I can't really contemplate being that tidy!

I have gigged the CTM, but not clean. Which is why I don't really use it much - I save it for occasions with PA support, which is not that common for me.

Depends, you have a high and low input. on the high input you can barely get the preamp to overdrive at all. In the low input you can, but in normal use it just basically makes the sound thicker. Obviously it is just 100 watts, so you can get the power amp to overdrive pretty easily. I love the sound, I just don't like the weight and TBH, I have got an ABM600 now which makes a lovely sound with a bit more volume.

Thanks - will investigate, although those pickups look a lot bigger than the ones on the classic vibe, or maybe it is an optical illusion

I have one I would sell but there is no way I am posting it, so I hadn't bothered putting an ad up!

I put flats on it yesterday. Considering I don't play 4 string basses, and I don't like flats, I am enjoying this a surprisingly large amount, its really good (a bit buzzy in my living room) although the pickup is a bit microphonic. So where can you get a perloid scratchplate for this? I have looked around, can't find anything. I could just get the material and make something, but it would probably be bad if I did. I know there are custom places, but it seems that this would be a normal thing?

Hipshot ultralites. The ibanez monorail tuners on the EHBs, East preamp, Nordstrand big singles / big splits. Dunlop strap locks. Or the new Shaller ones. I wish I could pick!

Well, the 6.8 is standard resistor size in the E12 & E24 resistor range, which is 'normal' values. 690 would be a specialist value, and as the resistors used in those guitars would be around 10%, it is well within the range!

The F is only a semitone above the 8th string of a chapman stick in classic tuning and that doesn't break (and on a railboard is also 34", or 36 on a standard stick).

Having a look at the P pickups I have here, one in an ibanez Talman (budget as hell), and one in a Maruszczyk which is a Nordstrand P5, but before that was either a hausel or delano, not sure (probably the former), they were all equal sizes - I didn't even check with the replacement to see if it fit but it did. Is it not normal that both halves are the same size, I think the issue is you just want another dummy polepiece on the side that only has 2. Couldn't you just stick a silver dot on the half that has 2? Actually thinking about it the original Hausel pickup in my P didn't have pole pieces. Can't find a pic of my hausels, but here are some delanos, would this not be ok? https://www.delano.de/pc_5_he_m2/pc_5_he_m2_details.html