Al Krow

So for me: Zero fret Lightweight tuners Neck-through or bolt-on 3 band vs 2 band EQ Pickguard or not Woods used for body or neck / fretboard Spline jointed or single piece body String through Single cut Graphite neck would all be less important than whether 4 or 5 string.

Congrats on getting yourself a BBNE1! Pics please. I suspect a big part of the reason that there haven't been a bunch of replies to your post is that the BBNE1 are as rare as hen's teeth, so there's a bit of collective 'black hole' in our knowledge of this particular bass, and you've managed to get yourself a bit of gem there! Just based on the following clip of Nathan East playing his NE1, it seems to me that the key difference with the NE2 is that the latter has a sweepable mid cut ('SMC') and a selector switch to engage the SMC and the NE1 doesn't. @pete.young is a bit of a guru on the BBNE basses and hopefully he'll be along shortly to confirm / correct what I've just said.

@la bam and if you had it to pick one out of that august list, I'm guessing based purely on the number of photos the winner is........ ...the Quilter BB800 Did I call that correctly?

Completely agree! But for once, Harry, I completely disagree! There are many things less important to me, as a bass player, than whether I play a 5 or a 4 string.

You'd best hope they slip under Customs' radar, and are not treated at all, otherwise you'll have 20% VAT & £12 handling charge to pay on top! 😁

Interesting - I think it maybe the combination with the cab (and bass). The Fearless F112 is an awesome cab. It's better than my BF SC (which is no slouch by any means!) no question, in terms of overall quality of sound and articulation at every range of the spectrum i.e. lows, mids and highs, but the F112 happily drinks power and needs pushing to get the best out of it. Now you're being far too reasonable (again). Surely there is only one right bass tone? 😂

The ease of access / layout of the HX Effects is exactly the reason I went Stomp --> HX Effects. A hark back to, but an improvement in almost every sense over, my Zoom B3N. If you want / need amp & cab sims => Stomp If 6 blocks is going to be limiting => HX Effects will be better My sense is that there are plenty of Stomp users just using the Stomp by itself. Others are using a mini extension footswitch (non midi) which gives another 2 stomp footswitches and are inexpensive. And a number have gone full midi including the versatile, but £spendy, Morningstar route you mentioned.

Well that's a very useful insight. There's been quite a lot of hype about the Quilter's ability from the Q-fanboy club and I'm sure they have good reason for liking what they like. But I know that your set up is actually very close to what I would use (Fearless F112 & Yammy P34) so the fact that the Fender Rumble 800HD is delivering and the Quilter doesn't, is a good steer - at least for me!

That's gotta be your motto, right there! Famous first words. 😁

You've got red shoes? Well jel. mate. And in the hair too.

Ah but which colour? Which colour? And what if it doesn't match my outfit? And will anyone other than the bass player notice?

Completely understandable! And hopefully Andertons will finally be stocking the SY-1s when you're done being a computer programmer and ready to sell your C4 (ask Kev...), although you never know, it might just be the explosive pedal you've always been after! 💣

How would getting a set of replacement knobs be considered for your 2020 abstinence thread? And what if they happened to be attached to a Helix Floor?

I somehow managed to avoid getting a rather luverly Shuker in the FS as a birthday treat and a couple of Boss pedals that I had my eye on have turned out to be either eye-wateringly expensive or a bit flawed in concept...so looks like my best of 2019 is going to remain in place and possibly continue well into 2020 too, if I make any progress with Mr Bfan's hairshirt thread with my fellow Bass (chip)Monks...

@Teebs - the Yammy does look good, but why did they go for a non matching black headstock on the "3" series?!! That seems to me to be the sort of superficial cosmetic point that the OP is keen to have pointed out, as tone is not important for him as long as it sounds like a bass.

I've gone Stomp --> HX Effects Previously a big fan of Zoom multifxs (had the MS-60B, B3N and currently still have the B1X-4). The processing power and resultant quality of effects on the Helix are a step up from the Zoom gear, but they are also a step up in price! I find the form factor with the additional footswitches and the ability to have a bank of patches on display simultaneously, a big plus on the HX Effects as I don't need to remember the precise order of a load of patches which I did on the Stomp - I find it hard enough to have 2 hours of set material in my head for a gig! 😁 I'm happy with my amp and cab so not particularly missing the amp & cab sims on the Stomp and I'm fortunate in that my amp also provides a choice of cab sims should I want to DI out, although frankly I'm not sure how much of difference cab sims will make in the mix through a PA with the rest of vocals and instrumentation running through. I'm mostly going to be using for EQ, hpf, drive, octave and delay / chorus.

The Yamaha BBs are very comfortable to 'wear' and play. Aesthetics are entirely a matter of personal taste. In terms of personal wow factor from my own basses: I love the Spector Euro LX neck through form; I regularly get unsolicited compliments about my Ibby SR. Others will gush over a Fender body shape or an Alembic etc. etc. You won't always be new.

...finally found a (pretty big!) use for the solo'd J pup Had a slightly weird week trying to work out why my BB 1025 wasn't cutting through at rehearsal on the low B string on the D and C notes on e.g. Uptown Funk, which we were doing for the first time yesterday. Ended up taking my Ibby to the gig last night and had comments from bandmates along the lines of the "your bass line sounded great on Uptown Funk" and "whatever pedal setting you were using to fill out the sound please continue". Obviously, not being bass players, they didn't notice what bass I had or even that there was no pedal board in sight! 😂 The only thing that had changed was the bass - I'd gone from PJ to a JJ (with different pups). Was wondering whether it was possibly down to old strings, but actually they don't sound 'dead' - just played in, or whether I'd got the amp on wrong active / passive switch setting, or was it simply down to the pup height at the low end. Investigated further today and checked out all the above. Turns out that the Yammy can sound just great on the low B notes and will cut through...using the solo'd bridge J pup. Never thought I'd find a situation where I was going to prefer the Yammy J over the P or PJ. Well I just have - it's now going to be my default on anything requiring a meaty full throat low B and E string, and I've gone from 😒 to 😊 in the course of the week. Kinda makes sense - the P is all about that 'P mid-bump' and P basses were all originally 4 string so perhaps inherently less focused on the low B string? The other key point for the J pup is if you ever need to thumb slap (e.g. on Uptown Funk!) you'll get speaker pop from the P or PJ, given that the thumb is coming down pretty close to the P pup, whereas I don't find that to be the case with the J. Two years in (okay I'm a slow learner) I'm still finding out great things about the versatility of this bass. Any of you guys also using the solo'd J in any of your numbers?

Thanks for that @AlphaK. Yup I'm sure @Jack's thoughts would be of interest to a bunch of us on this thread!

Not at all! Can't meaningfully report on performance yet...story so far is that I managed to get 10% off on an eBay promotion but when the cab arrived there was a slight scuff to one of the corners and no damage to the packaging, so clearly happened in store. The store managed to mislay my email to them reporting this to them and only responded (genuinely apologetically by phone) when I had escalated this with eBay which brought this to their attention. They then more than made good by offering me £50 worth of kit from the store by way of compensation and I've treated the band to a connecting pole between the sub and top as part of this. That's taken a few weeks to sort and the sub was left in the box in case it needed to be returned. So I've ended up with, in effect, a B stock RCF sub for £575, so I really can't complain. And at 39 lbs the weight is just about comfortable, so I'm not sure I would have managed the Alto. I'm only going to be bothering with the full set up with sub at function gigs where there is no in house PA i.e. not for pub gigs. Our first such outing is going to be NYE and a 21st birthday party later that week, so I can let you know we get on, with pleasure, following that.

Damn! I wasn't even aware that Chowny were making a gorgeous neck-through 5 string, until your post. I thought this thread was about avoiding 2020 purchases? But I can't now un-know that fact and they look awesome! 3 band EQ, active / passive options, Aguilar humbuckers. @Chownybass if you ever decide to make a 'deluxe' model in a more traditional 34" or 35" scale version with the ability to switch the humbuckers into single coil mode, for delivery of a more aggressive J bass tone when desired, please keep that a secret (certainly from the participants of this thread) until 2021...

Really delighted for you, buddy! Looking forward to your monthly columns with interest.

Oh my a programmable SY-1, with a superb feature set!! And from the reviews I've seen, this is very much aimed at both guitar and bass markets. @Woodinblack - you are costing me an absolute fortune this year! On the plus side you've just sorted my Xmas pressie out! (And my third attempt at Panda FI ownership may well now be short lived...) Edit: I may have spoken too soon, apparently you need special connectivity to get the most of this, rather than normal pickups, and a budget of more than £800 for one of these. Looks like my FI is going to survive to another day!

At least with your new effects box of tricks you won't be stomping around 😉