kodiakblair

@Chienmortbb

G4M have changed hardware, those mono saddles are not the same as shown on the website or on mine.

They're actually easier to string up and adjust 😎 No poking ball ends down into the gubbins when fitting strings, you just hook the ball end in place/pull straight up to the tuning peg/snip the length then wrap and tune up 🙂

To set intonation you slacken this grub screw then manually slide the saddle back/forth, tighten again when set.

To set the string height you first slacken this grub screw.

Then its a case of using the top 2 grub screws as per normal.

If the block bottoms out yet the action is too high, you whip the block out.

Place it on a flat file.

And take a bit off the bottom. Doesn't matter if you get a bit fierce, the 2 vertical screws will still raise the block while the horizontal one locks it in place 👍

Added bonus with these is you can shave the sides too, that gives you some string spacing movement; I'll have a photo from doing that if it's required.

3 minutes ago, itu said:

Weren't there also the G-bass (maybe in the picture?), and Brian Bromberg bass? What was their story?

G-bass is to the right of my 5 string Grind.

Basically they were Peavey's attempt to score sales away from G&L's L-1000.  No Modulus connection for the G/G-V basses. My mate Ronnie was still working for Peavey then, necks were under-sized at the factory then shipped to Bell & Carlson for a carbon wrap. They had Gotoh bridges and Gotoh copy tuning pegs. Single pickup was an earlier VFL design used on the 2nd gen Forum, with a Cirrus preamp minus the blend pot. G-V was a Cirrus with bolt on carbon wrapped neck.

B-Quad was the Bromberg bass. I sometimes see "bring back the B-Quad" posts on Peavey threads. Won't happen, the B-Quad is Bromberg's design and he's been quite happy having Carvin/Kiesel build them the last 15 years.  B-Quads, 4 & 5 strings, did have Modulus necks. Complicated circuit on them too. Stereo/mono output, piezo/active VFL pickups. 2 band EQ for the VFLs, tone pot for the piezo. Bridge has piezo saddles, each saddle had it's own level trimpot and could be panned left or right in stereo mode. 

Peavey put out loads of models, hitting almost every letter of the alphabet; often think they did too many models and that's one reason why they get passed over. 

2 hours ago, tauzero said:

preferred the neck on the Grind (that saved a lot of money).

Nice when things turn out like that 😃

2 hours ago, tauzero said:

I had the passive version, the Grind BXP, They were the Gen 1 models with a scooped out area on the front of the lower horn.

Actually more like 3rd gen models 😮 

1st Gen Grinds were active US built basses with bolt on necks. 4 string models were 34" scale length PJs while 5 strings were 35" scale JJ. A year later they were joined by bolt on BXP versions. The red 5 string is my US Grind, Black PJ my BXP. No of them were particularly good sellers so they were quickly replaced by the BXP neck through; built by InYen Vina over in Vietnam.

4 hours ago, Dood said:

I picked up a (specifically) Indonesian made BXP from, hmm, 2000's?

Appeared on the market 2004, built by Samick.

I wasn't super impressed by the bubinga veneer, far right; mainly it was the gloss finish to neck and body.

I'd also been spoiled by the Bubinga bolt on neck model, the black teal, tiger eye custom and the wenge/walnut 😃

11 hours ago, Obrienp said:

Hadn’t heard of that one before but it’s probably happened to me without me realising. New set of D’Addarios too.

Your new D'Addarios will be fine 🙂

There's not much to a twist, generally happens if you wind strings round the tuner post but the ball end is fixed in place; winding action can cause a wee twist along the length. You just slacken off the string and start again 👍

Pearloid won out in the end  🙂

On first plugging in all I seemed to get was a horrible nasally tone, switched to tapes hoping it would help; it didn't 🤬 

If I had hair it would have been in my hands, luckily tugging on the beard is painful so I looked at settings instead 😄 First thing was set the Bass/Treble on the Artec preamp to detent and turn the gain trimpot down; this improved things. At the amp I went with a fair bit of bass boost highs and mids were also boosted but to a lesser degree. A wee sweeten with the Artec pre and all was well 👍

Here it is next to this afternoon's creation, the red Telecaster jazz bass 😎

Sharp eyes will spot a different neck. The 51 shaped one was a much better fit on the red body so the piezo got a spare PB-50 neck, a reshape is on the cards soon 👍

On 07/04/2024 at 23:33, Obrienp said:

True but I think the pickup alignment is pretty accurate under the G string.

Aye, you're right; it's well within the magnetic field.

Could be the G got twisted when stringing up, fairly common mishap. 

1 hour ago, Nigel Sleaford said:

opinions on the P bass variants which came before T40?

There wasn't any.

T-40 was the first bass Peavey released, it was followed by the T-45 then the T-20.

T-20 lasted about 2 years before it body reshape and rebranded as the Fury.

T-20/ & 1st gen Fury I found to be a decent bass, the 20 had a really wide flat fretboard that was skinny front to back 🙂 Both of them had the Ferrite single coil, ugly as sin but sounds sweet; I've one in a 51 P-bass copy 👍

T-45, I never got on with mine. Another poorly thought out tone circuit IMHO, middle pot did the single coil/humbucker but made the single coil bright. Roll the other tone pot back to take the brightness down a notch and the output drops 🙁

Another thing I remember, sold the 20 & 45 to a lad in Sweden, Peavey were using the shallow flat fretwire I heard Gibson owners complain about.  Don't imagine there were too many fret dress sessions before they needed replacing.

Sold my 5 string Zephyr end of August for £150, now I know why it went so fast 🤣

3 hours ago, tauzero said:

m not entirely sure whether what I had was a Zephyr 5 or a C5, or whether they're one and the same.

One and the same 🙂.

@SteveXFR

Zephyr 5 and the Patriot were my favourite Peaveys 🙂

Pity I sold both but they went to good homes so no regrets. 

3 hours ago, Obrienp said:

I guess that is the Tone Rider pickup.

Even though, by your own admission, the scratchplate forced you to fudge the pickup position 😃

1 hour ago, velvetkevorkian said:

but I was always baffled by the fact they didn't have the actual model name/number on them anywhere.

Same story for the C-Series/Zephyr.

At least the International can be called that, C-Series mostly get wrongly listed as 'Grinds' 🙂

Ken likely didn't think a peghead name was necessary given the limited European market and the short space of time they were available.

1 hour ago, SteveXFR said:

and it's really annoying,

Sure is.

That looks a damn sight better than my flame top.

p.s.

While commonly known as Peavey International, it's Sunday title is Peavey Dynabass International Series.

1 hour ago, tauzero said:

Just curious

Happy to enlighten you.

I own/owned a lot of Peavey basses, for a time there was 68 of them. With that many it's hard to maintain any aura of mystique for a particular model; it either works for you, can be made to work or left ignored as you move on the next one.

First T-40 came mostly due to 'internet hype', that doesn't last long.  It was through the T-60 Mafia that I discovered the designer of the T-Series, Chip Todd, held similar views as myself regards the tone circuit. Chip would snip the red wire and leave his pickups in humbucker mode, that worked for me 🙂 Another one turned up local for £300, it went humbuckers/tapes; one after that got active EQ 🙂 

Forth got a semi permanent mod, I blame my pal Ronnie 😁 He had a varied collection of Peavey basses, due to his position as chief mech engineer for Peavey's US factories. Ronnie had a 5 string T-40 so when a beat to hell T-40, going for peanuts, went up for sale in Glenrothes; I had the makings for mine.

Only T-40 I left intact was the one Dave Swift sold through The Gallery. My T-40 interest had waned by then but I got it for a song so why not 👍

For years it was a preamp + usb mixer into PC with a couple of small studio monitors.

Recently moved on to wee Hotone nano and a dirt cheap 2 x 8 cab.

41 minutes ago, MichaelDean said:

I don't understand why they haven't done a (maybe slightly lighter) reissue of the T-40.

Mainly because internet hype doesn't transfer to real life, it's a hugely over-rated bass 😲  

My thoughts after owing 5 of them.  The tone circuit is poorly implemented, you give up the humbucker tonal range for the single coil 'tap', phase switch is pretty much pointless.  Dan Armstrong briefly used the same spin-a-split idea but soon ditched it for 2 pots.  The 'Secrets Sounds' video and settings only work for those with eyes for ears 😆 Just because there's a humbucker at the neck, it's sure as hell not a mudbucker.  It also looks very dated.

The weight is strange. Hartley later said they were only pandering to the then perceived wisdom that heavy = good tone 😁 Course, like most things Hartley says it's not strictly true 😄 The bare bones of ash body T-40s aren't that heavy, just over 5lbs.

Nope, the T-40 weight comes from all the daft die cast hardware bolted to it. 

1 hour ago, Chienmortbb said:

I now have to look up how to adjust the height of the individual bridge pieces. More soon 

You use the 2 grub screws at the the front of the saddle.

9 hours ago, Obrienp said:

but I will find out when the strings go on.

Sorry, late night.

You could have dropped the split coil in place and used two wires for positioning. 

6 hours ago, Obrienp said:

That’s about 4.5Kg, or 9lbs, 14oz! A real big boy bass and about 1Kg more than my ‘51 with the same neck.

Might want to keep that quiet around women, a fair few of them will have had babies heavier than that 👍

Headin out for couple of hours but I'll PM you regards bridge fitting.

57 minutes ago, neepheid said:

where does the ball end of the string go?

G4M use the same design as Ibanez, ball ends lock below the saddle, could do string through body option if needed.

2 hours ago, Obrienp said:

Ooh! Thanks for the suggestion.

My pleasure.

I've so much stuff here it's nice to put it to use, even if it's just a mock up 🙂 

11 minutes ago, Obrienp said:

I am with you on simple solutions.

Scratchplate.

The G4M body has the typical P-bass router cavities for pickup/controls which will need covering up 🙂

Quick mock up with a G4M P-bass body/neck and Telecaster bass scratchplate. 

The scratchplate comes from  eBay seller 'earlpillanz', Brian cuts these custom (£40) so you can have the WRHB pickup area omitted. Squared pocket area on the place means you can leave the body as is, it'll be under plastic 👍 

1 hour ago, Obrienp said:

Anyway, any advice and benefit of experience gratefully received.

I've fitted square to rounded and vice versa

There's no sound reason why the neck heel should fill the pocket, whip the scratchplate off Fenders and you'll find plenty with gaps round the 3 sides 🙂 It might look unsightly buts thats all 👍

Intonation issues is something folk go on about, the difference is so minimal it's not worth bothering about.

Here's my trusty 51 P-bass printout, square heel.

This is a rounded heel neck positioned deep over the pocket, corners touching.

Overhang of the rounded heel.

That 3mm doesn't affect you at all. 

1. Your square heel neck stops at the corners.

2. You're fitting the bridge so can move it forward or just move the saddle.

Now say you fancy squaring the heel, it's a simple job. 

Get plenty of masking tape on the body then rest the neck on it like my 2nd photo, heel corners touching pocket corners. Run a straight edge down each side of the neck.

When the neck is running centred to the pickups/bridge, draw 2 lines down the masking tape and mark the end of the heel. Remove the neck and clamp 2 straight edges to the body, following the drawn lines and place at stop at the mark where the heel ends. This photo is just for an example, no clamps on.

That's your jig to square the corners, less than 2 minutes with the router 👍

53 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

"Authenticity"

I thought all things 'Authentic' were Gibson trade marked.