Russ

My bad. Maidenbower. I lived in Winchester when I was a kid, so I guess that town name stuck around in my head. Plus I guess it shows how memorable my time in Crawley was...

Lived there for a little while about 15 years ago - Micheldever, right next to Three Bridges station. Depressing AF, as the kids say. But, at the time the alternative was Croydon, so, in retrospect, it doesn't seem so bad!

One of the most popular stations on SiriusXM (American digital satellite radio service) is called 1st Wave, and it's back-to-back synthpop/new wave/new romantic stuff. It's not classed as such though, it's all "80s alternative". They did mostly ignore the Britpop stuff, with the exception of Oasis, Blur and maybe a couple of tunes from Pulp. You hear them back-to-back with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc on the 90s stations (SiriusXM has a station for that too, called Lithium). And yep, The Cure are huge in the States. I saw them about 12 years ago in Philadelphia during my first stint over here, massive arena venue, and was completely sold out. They played a nearly 3-hour set. 😮 Bob from Crawley did good.

Tinie Tempah did OK for a while in the US - he had his music used in WWE wrestling for a bit. But Stormzy, Dizzee Rascal, etc had no success whatsoever. You're right, it's pretty dark, plus It's not "aspirational" like modern American hip-hop, which seems to mostly be about the accumulation of money, drugs, fancy cars, "cribs", b**ches and so on. A lot of old hip-hop was a lot closer to what grime is now, with lots of social commentary, but you don't hear much of that kind of thing any more.

I've owned 4 Bongos (but am currently down to one), so I know them quite well. They're unmistakably Music Man basses. They have that extremely distinctive upper-mid bite that MMs are known for, and solid, wide bottom end you can stand on. The pickups and preamp are extremely powerful, with a ton of headroom and almost every kind of tone you'd ever want is in there somewhere, between the two pickups and the 4-band EQ. Ergonomically, they're a little weird. They don't sit all that well on the knee, but they're well balanced, reasonable in terms of weight, and have slim, comfortable necks. Overall, they're great basses. And that's a good price. I say go for it, you aren't likely to be disappointed.

D'Amour wasn't nearly as fond of effects as Chancellor. Clangy Ricky/MM/Magnum bass sound, lots of high mids, and just a touch of reverb.

The semi-hollow Status signature bass was pretty much the template for the bass he ended up making with Warwick, with the pickup right up against the bridge, etc. I wasn't that much of a fan of it, to be honest. It had quite a harsh tone, all high treble and low bass, and not much in the middle.

That's not that much more than older non-Pro Wals go for these days, to be fair. And you get that extra bit of New Romantic cachet. A lot of Gen-X'ers who grew up with that music now have "spare" money for stuff like that! Scott Devine paid a similarly extortionate sum for a Wal that was used in the Do They Know It's Christmas video.

One of Maruszczyk's latest creations, a Jazzus with Turner multicoils and a Lusithand preamp. Pretty much nails the Wal tone to my ears.

I recall that his signature Status had crazy 36V electronics, with four batteries! I loved the design, with the downsized body - shame it was during Status' wooden neck phase (which they appear to have gone back to), would have loved to have seen one with a graphite neck.

I think you're right. Looks like a Mk2 in the Suck My Kiss video. Another player who was a prolific user of Wals back in the day is Jonas Hellborg, before he went off doing his Status and Warwick things. There’s some footage of him on YouTube back in 2020 at NAMM playing a Mk3 through EBS gear and he sounded fantastic. Has Hellborg’s endorsement deal with Warwick run its course? They don’t have his bass or his signature amps on their website anymore.

Some of the album is Stingray too - Forty-Six & Two is all Stingray, and I think Third Eye is too. It's kinda the reverse of Blood Sugar Sex Magik by RHCP - everyone at the time assumed the whole album was Stingray, but almost all of it was recorded with a Wal (with the exception of two songs where Flea played a 5-string Stingray). That's another quintessentially Wal-sounding album...

I love what I've seen of Mike's Zoot Wal-a-likes. I'd like to get my hands on one and give it a try. Lusithand's preamps are great - they're missing the "pick attack" control, but he sets the frequency sweep on the filters to extend to higher frequencies to compensate. If your next Zoot is going to be more like an older Wal, can Mike do a leather scratchplace?

There's a certain presence in the mids, especially the high mids, that's very distinctive, no matter who's playing one. It really brings out the "mwah" on a fretless too. You can hear it with all the above players, as well as 80s-era Geddy Lee, Nick Beggs, etc.

There's a lot of options right now for players who want some of that Wal flavour - quite a few companies producing multi-coil pickups (Herrick, Turner, Bassculture, and apparently now Nordstrand), filter preamps (Lusithand, ACG), and ever a couple of companies that will make you a lookalike! There's a US-based company on FB called Octave Basses who make straight-up Wal copies for Justin Chancellor fans who have neither the money nor patience to get a real one! They're supposed to be pretty good though. There's some demo videos up there of someone who has one playing Tool tunes, and it sounds spot-on. although it probably doesn't hurt that the guy in question has spent a fortune on getting all Justin Chancellor's other gear - the same amps (Demeter/GK/Mesa), the same speakers, all the same pedals, etc, so I suppose that helps. Not sure any of them will have the cachet of the real deal, but, if you love the sound, you should be able to get pretty close. I remember passing on a Wal Mk2 in the Notting Hill Music Exchange back in the mid-90s for £250 because I thought it was too heavy. I guess nobody had any idea of what they'd end up selling for!

Well, if we have a continuum with SWR, with the super-clean, high-tech, tweeter-dominated sound on one side, with Ampeg, with its warm, woolly tone on the other, then Eden was somewhere in the middle - warmer and punchier than SWR, but still much more modern in terms of tone than Ampeg. Marshall missed a trick with Eden. Well, multiple tricks, really. On one hand, I’m glad that Marshall didn’t subsume Eden into its range the same way Fender did with SWR (let’s face it, every bass amp that Fender has released in the past 10 years is a descendent of what they inherited from SWR), but they also didn’t give it the care and attention the brand needed and kinda just let it slowly wither. David Nordschow’s current DNA range show where Eden could have ended up. He should get the name back.

I seem to recall it was brought up in a thread over on TB when Fred from Peavey was soliciting input from Trace enthusiasts about upcoming products. I recall him being non-commital. Obviously they’ve got a 10” ELF combo right now, but it’s pretty conventional, with no bass reflex trickery. More Commando than BLX, but better sounding than either of them!

I can recommend Herrick - https://www.herrickpickups.com/ Martin makes some great stuff, including some fantastic multicoils in various configurations. He's pretty quick, but, like most of these companies, he's not all that cheap.

They're great - SUPER hot for a passive bass. And they look lovely. Only downside is they're boat anchors - proper 70's Fender weight. The 5-string comes in at around 10lbs. They're also good mod platforms - the pickups are 35/40DC-sized so there's any number of replacement pickups available, and, if you want to upgrade to active electronics, it's already got a side jack. Been thinking of getting one and Wal-ifying it, with Herrick multicoils and a Lusithand NFP jazz plate preamp.

Klos are now doing aftermarket graphite necks, to try and take that gap in the market formerly occupied by Status. They're currently only doing P and J necks, but it might be worth shooting them an email to see if they are planning on doing MM necks. https://klosguitars.com/collections/bass-necks/products/carbon-fiber-bass-neck-and-pickguard-upgrade-50-deposit

Just realised I never posted my two new Ooshyks on this thread! Meet Scarlett and Skye - a pair of Frog 6S 6-strings, fretted and fretless: The spec is basically the same for both: 6-string Ash body, quilted ash tops with colour in the grain Roasted maple necks with ebony fingerboards and graphite rods, bolt-on 17.5mm string spacing Luminlay blocks on Skye (the fretted one), edge lines (on Scarlett, the fretless), Luminlay side dots on both Hipshot Ultralite tuners, monorail bridges, Schaller straplocks, coloured knobs for volume and pan (I have the coloured knobs for the other pots, but Noll use a non-standard size for their concentric pots and they don't fit!) Delano Xtender pickups with series/parallel/single coil switches Noll custom 18V 4-band EQ (frequencies adjusted to match the 4-band EQ on a Musicman Bongo) Absolutely loving them so far. One thing I've noticed - if anyone else has the Noll electronics, do you notice the output at the jack being a bit quieter than you might expect? The pickups and circuit are extremely hot, but the output is pretty low, considering...

Possible. I'd heard it was an ICEPower one, but I'm happy to be corrected if it's not!

The power section is, as in many Class D heads, an ICEPower module, similar to that in the MiniMega (with a bit more power), but the preamp section is completely different to anything Peavey have done. The TE team at Peavey are all Trace fanboys and were fastidious about maintaining the "Trace tone" - the pre-shape EQ boosts and cuts the exact same frequencies as on the classic amps, the dual-band compressor is basically the same as the one on the old SMX heads, and the gain staging is designed to work pretty much identically to the classic designs. They even enlisted a bunch of Trace fans online to get their opinions on what they were doing (including, if I'm not mistaken, on this very site, as well as on TB). Basically, this is a lot more than a rebadged Peavey head.

These would be the main ones over the last 30-odd years: John Paul Jones Tony Levin Anthony Jackson Justin Chancellor Doug Wimbish Colin Edwin Cliff Burton Geddy Lee Steve DiGiorgio Billy Gould Flea Les Claypool Mick Karn John Taylor Nick Beggs Mark King Jaco Out of those, the ones that have persisted the most have been Levin, Burton and Wimbish.

You should try it through a Big Twin... 😮 It's like it never runs out of power, it just keeps getting louder! I've been having to deal with the input gain thing again recently - I recently got two new Maruszczyk basses, and they're wonderful. The only weird thing is, despite having pretty hot pickups and active 18V electronics, the actual output from the jack socket is quite low, so I'm having to deal with the input gain / compressor interaction again. To my ear, it also affects the EQ. It's fiddly but I'm not going to shy away from a challenge!