PinkMohawk

With a name like 'Fame' I'll be honest, I was expecting typical, low priced dustbin fodder, but those look lovely really. Obvious Warwick inspiration, especially with the MEC electronics, and I'd have loved to see the two piece bridge, but I guess that might have been a step too far along the knock-off line for them. Definitely being built by Mayones too. Interesting that they're selling 'handmade in Europe' instruments for such a reasonable price too. I'd like to see a walkthrough of their process to see how much hand-work is going into these for them to make that claim.

Won't lie, just teeny tiny bit annoyed that you managed to snag it at 500, but since you're about to chuck that whole lot onto the Uni Pre, I'll let it slide

Wheyyyy, finally made it happen!

Yeah, your best bet is going to a local hardware store, or even a specialist if you have one local, and asking for a machine screw with that same threading, but with a philips panhead. One other aspect you need to be aware of is how tall the head of the screw is. You can see the allan head is taller than the philips head, which could be a problem since Dunlops need to be inserted to a certain depth to engage the retention mechanism properly.

A Jazz with 3 P pickups in a strat config, with a strat blade switch would actually be interesting.

Maybe a take on the one from the old Fender Performers?

That's like, a quarter inch difference. It's not gonna matter.

Well, I guess Fender *not* doing a P bass is innovative.

Fair point, they're probably about the same in terms of popularity, though I guess we could argue that, at least Green Day's early stuff was more towards punk than pop punk. But yeah, I'd agree that Mike and Mark have probably shifted more Fender and Squire basses than just about anyone else we'd care to mention.

To be fair, I don't think Blink 182 ever claimed to be a punk band. They've always been pop punk, and as pop punk bands go, there's no-one bigger than Blink 182. Mark Hoppus, whatever else we might think of him as a bass player, is probably responsible for getting more young kids picking up a bass than near enough anyone else we could name off the top of our heads. And, yeah, it is a cool bass. I'm not a Jag fan, never have been really, but as straight ahead, bare bones P styles go, that's a pretty slick one. Black and maple would have to be offered for me to even consider it though.

That's fair, I know there was one a little while ago that was going for £500 in the classifieds, you might get lucky and the current owner moves it on. Either way, good luck with it!

Yeah, I definitely got the best of the bunch it sounds like, with (relatively) minor binding issues rather than the bass either killing batteries, having been tested out by half of the country, or the neck being un-adjustable. This has been a pretty rough go for you eh Lem? Could be worth a look at their other new Jazz style basses, the GB Fusions? Or, whatever other brand you've got in mind if this has put you off of Cort for the foreseeable.

Yeah, I do wish more cabs were built with verticality in mind. Something like a staggered 4x10 would be awesome to see from a bigger manufacturer.

Ohh that's very nice, I like it. Very into the line array style with the two vertical cabs as well.

Well, I guess it depends what you're looking to do with effects. Do you want to get wild and make some insane sounds? Or is this just a situation where you want a little compression and dirt, with the odd modulation sprinkled in sometimes?

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Gibson had tossed the machines they used for bolt-on's, probably in favour of getting their QC department even more effective blinders so they can't see what they're doing. On a slightly more serious note, I'd hazard a guess at it being a directive from on high, that bolts on's aren't 'Gibson' enough for their target audience. I'd say they're leaving the getting new players onto the brand to Epiphone, except with the prices Epiphone are charging these days, that seems more and more unlikely too. Honestly, just a lot of questionable decisions.

True, but I'm looming 5 cables together into one, so it was never going to be too flexible for me anyway haha. I've had cheap cables fail through general wear and tear, bad solder joints, etc. but never anything high quality or that I made myself. Good heatshrink works well as strain relief, and I've never had issues with any cable like that.

I prefer black cable with coloured heatshrink, or you could even do the techflex stuff, that keeps it pretty subtle but gives it a clear identifying mark as well.

They sound fantastic, nice to go back to single coils after I spent so long with humbuckers.

Some of you may have been following Lemmywinks's struggle to get a Cort GB Modern 5 that's been ongoing for the last few weeks. Well, I've decided that the first one he bought (With the binding issues) wasn't a big enough issue for me to say no to it. That, and it discounted the price a little more. So, I got it transferred over to the Birmingham GuitarGuitar store, took the train over, spent a good hour playing it, checking it over visually for anything else I could try and get a discount for (Didn't find anything) and then traded in a couple of old pedals before I paid my money and left with my new bass. Despite Lemmywink's issues with it (And they are issues, don't think I'm downplaying them, these are issues that really should have been caught at QC, or when GuitarGuitar got it in and should have inspected it) I'm loving it. The fit and finish, the feel, the tone, it's all very lovely, though, compared to my two other basses, it's probably not much of a surprise that I think it's very nice, given how badly I've treated the others over the years I've owned them. I even went and bought myself an expensive Pinegrove Leather strap for it too, which is very nice and definitely worth the money for some high quality leather. You might notice the biggest change I've made so far, which is removing the clear pickguard. It might have just been my own eyes, since Lemmy said he couldn't see it, but I noticed that to me, it seemed like the guard had this almost purple tint to it? I've taken it off either way, and filled the screw holes with caphead allen screws, just to hide the holes.

Here it is, featuring a fancy Pinegrove Leather strap (Great strap, thoroughly recommend, etc.) and a closeup of the little caphead screws I used to fill the pickguard holes with.

Angled for bass, straight for board/amp. In terms of length, I prefer longer cables, but at a certain point, it's just time for a wireless.

Agreed. I mean, I get it, when I was working retail, we were selling shoes, and the ones that were on display would still technically be 'new' when we sold them, even if they'd been worn to try on in the shop, but also people weren't wearing the shoes for an hour walking around the shop, and we were constantly sweeping and mopping the floor to keep it clean. And, any shoes that came back as returns got boxed up separately and sent back to the warehouse where it'd be sold as 2nd hand for a steep discount.

Haha yeah, I'll be babying it, right up until that first ding, then all bets are off. Though the only playing I'm doing these days is much tamer than my old band, so I'll not be throwing it around like my Epi Grabber. It's my first active in a while, so I'm going to reserve judgment on the pre until I get it plugged into my proper rig, but I'll definitely agree that passive/active sounds basically the same when the B/M/T are all set to noon, surprised me how little difference there was, I had to twiddle the knobs to make sure the push/pull wasn't a dud haha. I did like it with the pre flat and a little bass boost, but that was playing fingers with just the amp in the noisy room, I'll want to see what it's like in a band environment before I can be sure if I want to change anything or not. I'm going to swap the knobs out though, just to personalise it a little. Would love if someone was looking to trade the chrome bridge and tuners for black versions too, but I'll keep myself under control for now haha. For sure, those pictures you posted of it absolutely weren't of a new bass, except perhaps in the sense that they'd never sold it, it'd just been hanging on the wall getting played by anyone and everyone.

Bugger me, you really can't catch a break Lemmy. I picked up the first one, with the binding issues earlier today. Played it at the store through one of the Darkglass combos and it sounded absolutely massive, absolutely zero complaints in terms of sound for me. I only got them to transfer that one to the store, not the second one so no chance to check and see if I could hear the pickup rattle, though I've no doubt it'd have irritated me as well as you. Would it be worth the time to try and get them to pay for a proper tech to give it a go over? Apart from the binding issues, the only thing I didn't like in-person was the clear pickguard, it almost seemed to have a purple tint to it? Might have just been to my eyes, but it was always coming off anyway, so it didn't bother me. Even found some panhead screws to fill the holes with instead of the countersunk screws from the pickguard. Lovely satisfying moment peeling the plastic off of the cavity cover too. Just need to give the action a little tweak to suit my very aggressive playing, and I've got my new main. Even got a little spendy and got a lovely Pinegrove Leather strap for it too.