Karnage

I'm a fairly recent convert from 4 string to 6 string (wanted a 5, but preferred the 6 to all the 5s I tried at the same time). I can't imagine going back now. The band I'm in has 1/3 of the songs or more needing the lowest string, but wouldn't want to be 'messing around' with the tuning as opposed to playing the one thing. Don't really miss the 4 that much, and when I pick it up it feels like playing a pencil with strings on it!! The enjoyment might wear a little more thin in time maybe, but I can't see it right now, even with the extra weight I have to shoulder.

I still have a Jackson guitar (Jap built one) in purple metallic, just the same colour Cadbury use! Didn't buy it for the colour at all (must have had it 17 or 18 years), but people liked it at the gigs, and these types of colour look way better under gig lights than you expect. Get it and enjoy it!

[quote name='alittlebitrobot' timestamp='1380831950' post='2231380'] I'm fairly sure that's the fretted version of the bass Bakithi played on Graceland. If so, then that is one of the nicest-sounding basses ever made even if it's not aesthetically my cup of tea. [/quote] It's great when he plays it, he makes that bass talk. A truly exceptional player from my point of view. He knows just how the make use of the 'bloom' in his fretless, especially on a couple of the tracks on Graceland. Love the taste in his playing.

[quote name='bbqbob' timestamp='1382760625' post='2256316']So I hit the stage with DJ-5 for the first time and played three full sets with it, smiling the whole time. For last set, I pulled out another Lakland I have, JO-4... and it felt like I was playing a toy bass. It took me a couple of minutes to forget the "tiny" feel and settle in again. [/quote] I can relate to that sooo much! It's even more extreme when you are mad enough to go to a 6 string and have a relatively small necked 4 like my Status is. I don't think the 6th string is all that necessary at all, it was just the bass I preferred out of the 5 and 6 string basses I tried, certainly wasn't the most expensive one! an LTD B206SM is not an expensive bass really, but sounds at least as good as my Status.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1382725293' post='2256050']Too many bands have decent enough sounding gear as a backline and then run the vox through a muddy and battered pair of 12's... I really don't get that... if the vox suck then so does the band, IMO. [/quote] Never a truer word typed.

I never wanted the PA sound firing at me, I wanted the appropriate monitor mix, but we did have a big rig!!! 4 separately mixed monitors on stage. I want to hear my bvox more on stage than we want them out the front so I could pitch better. It's definitely right that the Bose idea simply isn't realistic at any sort of real volume, regardless of the electronics they use. As soon as you move around near the mics you provide a moving target (frequency and response wise) their 'clever' electronics will not cope with unfortunately. The difference between theory and practice. Not heard the Line6 yet, but they seem like a great idea. Just hope they are designed for the longer throw and to cope with poor acoustics we all deal with in pubs, not designed for an unrealistically good room!

I was a 4 string player for many years, then got involved in a project with over 1/3 of the tracks needing a 5 string, ended up buying a 6! Just liked it more than the 5s I tried...

I've seen Gear4Music do a 5-string one of those for not much more. Seem incredible value! Enjoy the gig, and send us a report!

Looks like a nice bass for £120 regardless of what it really is. If the instrument does the job you want for the money you pay it's not really an issue, but there are a few fake Fenders out there for sure. Someone brought me a Tele to look at, and it was a great guitar for what was paid, but was definitely not a Fender! The man was happy with what the guitar sounded and felt like for the money, but without the Fender transfer, it's true it would not have fetched the money he paid (a bit over £200).

By far the worst ever were some Trace Elliot strings quite a few years back. Most of the low E strings went suddenly dead in about 10 or 15 mins, we found there was a fault in one of the winding lairs in the batch that meant that layer was breaking, acting as a damper for the string!!! Sounded like they were 20 years old in a flash!! Was working for GAK at the time, and we sent loads back!! Rotosounds are higher tension than the likes of EB, Elixir, DR etc, whether guitar or bass, so when switching to or from them, the instrument needs setting up for the change. Put them on a guitar with a floating term and watch it get pulled way up! IMO having the tension of a thicker set without the benefit of that mass driving the pickups isn't my ideal plan.

Check out Pro Music International in Ickenham (do mail order too) they have a couple of b-stock LTD 5 strings, one bolt on, one through neck. http://www.promusicinternational.co.uk/ Not on their site, so give them a call maybe.

I just treat each bass as it comes. Heard great passive and active basses, and bad active and passive basses. Like Lowend said, all sorts of basses have their place. Some setups benefit from having an active bass, like wanting to use a long cable without anything buffering. I currently have a TL Audio valve Mic Pre/DI box feeding a Matrix power amp as my setup and the EQ is on my bass (although it's mostly left flat). Wouldn't really work that well with a passive bass, but both mine are active.

The change in gauge isn't major, but any reason you changed from 130 to 125? The change would mean that the neck etc would usually need adjusting unless like Rotosound strings the Status strings are high tension for their gauge in comparison to the EBs. You might have a freak string or something, although these things are rare. Might be you need to go to what you know works in the end.

Sometimes they use one routing pattern for multiple options (why the excess was covered with a scratch plate in some cases) and as in the 60s they probably did exactly that, the re-issue has to repeat all the bad bits as well as the good bits! I know what you mean about the non-scratchplate look though, it's pretty cool.

I have to disagree on US fenders being overpriced, they hold their value way too well for this to be the case. They also age their wood far better than most, especially when compared to many far eastern made instruments. If any bass retains it's value well compared to the competition in its price bracket, it can't be that overpriced as you can own one and pass it on for little cost to you. When you lose a load of money selling on a bass, you've paid too much for it. Obviously if you love it and don't sell it on you haven't lost any money IMO!

I know it's not a bass, but a few Ovation electro acoustics from about 20-25 years ago were so badly made and finished in comparison with every £300 guitar I could find, but cost about £800-£1000. Tops splitting, splinters in your fingers if you tried checking the finish of a strut in the body, I could carry on. Not seen anything anything close to that bad by any other company, not sure what was going on then, maybe a truly horrific batch or something? A Glen Campbell model was the worst I saw. Truly shocking. Nothing else I've seen has really been such an obvious thing to label like this, definitely not a lovingly crafted instrument like a Fodera.

Great t-shirt design, a worthy winner indeed! Enjoy that awesome bass!

The Larivee acoustic 6 string fretless bass I played years ago at a show. Never thought I'd be a 6 string bass player, but here I am! I loved the feel and sound of it back then, but it was a grand or two from memory.

I first used Matrix power amps before they were even called Matrix!! Great products, every single one I've used. All the ones I have used were more traditional style power amps, but the build quality and the designer's insistence on not cutting important corners seemed obvious. I still have a 2U 300watt unit I use for my bass. Weighty sound but with control. I had amps up to 2400watts in 2u from them (1200watt/side into 4 ohms), but all toroidal transformer power supplies. Tested them against far more expensive amps, even Crown and QSC, nothing was better, only a match when really good. Very reliable limiters, incredible control of low frequencies with no edge in the mid when pushed. Back then, no generator used in a festival or the like had any buffering for high peak loads, and traditional power amps still faired massively better as their peak draw from the mains was far lower than digital supplied amps. Not the same issues these days. I would be surprised if anything they make doesn't 'do what it says on the tin' so to speak. Not tried the specific ones you mention, but it's a name I'd trust.

I've had some Mk1 Mackie SRM450's for a long while, and they are fun all-use speakers, but a little 'hifi' in their approach, i.e. they do sound better at 8-10ft than at 40ft which isn't ideal. I use them for parties and all sorts of things. They have a great sound for playing CDs through or quieter acoustic stuff in better sounding venues, but they aren't the best thing in the world at vocal projection, DB technologies stuff as pointed out is better, even the Opera 450 of the same era was actually better (and cheaper) for vocal projection, even if for music/parties the Mackie was much better at the low end (why I kept them when selling off my big rig). The big thing was the Mackie sounded better than the opera with music in a shop but not in the 'real world' when trying to project vocals, and that's where choosing can be tricky. If you get a chance to listen to things, don't do so too close up, and note that a venue with a lively acoustic can require some mid frequency projection to get through, this might feel like mid 'brightness' close up in a shop, but work out way better when gigging. I'm not talking about the bright treble that the Mackie SRM450 has, but mid frequencies where vocal detail is delivered (where the Mackie is a bit lacking really). Listening to PA is only really good in a shop when they have a big enough environment for you to really know what's going on at useful distances. Good luck and take your time. Hire/borrow a few bits where you can I think as was recommended before.

Your ear picks up part of the projected wave from all the speakers, somewhat down to the size of the side of your head. Get a much larger sound field by using a larger rig, and your ear close up will get a small percentage of what's more audible further away. Get 50 watts through a raised 4x10 and it will be easier to hear close up than 50 watts through an 8x10, but 30 feet away the 8x10 will sound louder. That's what I mean by the 'focus being further away'. I understand why Mr. Foxen doesn't like my terminology (trying badly to communicate maybe), but the principle is there from experience as sound engineer as well as bass player, and my degree in physics too.

The larger the cab system, the further away the sound focus will be, meaning in rehearsal you are probably not hearing what the amp's doing at all, and fewer drivers running will strangely be easier to hear close up. Anyone running a rehearsal room who gets an 8x10 in it unless it's the size of a large pub and the bassist is standing 30ft+ away from it is wasting money and space. Crazy. The previous advice of only using the 4x10 on top of the 2x10, and getting further away from the amp is about right. That along with turning down. I've gigged guitar using a 15watt valve guitar amp with 1x12 speaker (modded Blues Junior). 4x12 is not a good thing for the band, despite the guitarist liking the knob extension factor. I found 4x10 guitar seriously excessive and sized down.

Personally I don't like the narrow string spacing you get when doing this. I've ended up using quite a wide 6 string, and besides refining the damping technique (I now have 5 strings to keep quiet instead of 3) I found it much easier to move onto that I expected. The wide neck really isn't an issue even with my smaller than average hands. I do occasionally use slap, and the narrow 5-strings and 6-strings are a real pain there, but not only when slapping in my experience. I don't personally think it's that much of an introduction to what a good 5 or 6 can offer. Just a cheap way of getting a 5 for occasional recording maybe? Get a 5 or 6 with a 'tight' sounding B (not always the case at all as pointed out) and you'll really get a feel for whether you like using the extra string(s). My old Status 4 isn't getting much play these days!

Guitar in general is far more about adding extra harmonics than bass on average, hence the situation. A guitar amp (even one that you'd say sounds 'clean') is nowhere near flat in response, most bass amps are far closer to it. It's also far easier for a messy bass sound to 'clog up' the mix in a band with a complicated sound than most things.

Looks like good motivation to me! A lot more inspiring than that bland view usually seen.