ZilchWoolham

I've never played a Wal myself but my favourite ever bass tone was crafted with one (an old JG model I think). I actually bought a Gordon-Smith guitar blind a year ago, partly because one of my old heroes, Pete Shelley, used to play them. Unfortunately I quite detested the neck and found the tone very uninspiring as well. Not much later I managed to score another guitar (a Hamer) which is absolutely immaculate, and I still haven't been able to shift the Gordon-Smith without making a significant loss (I thought the price was reasonable when I bought it, but that might've been the GAS thinking for me), so now I'm just angry whenever I see it. It was a fairly new build (2005, still made in the Manchester workshop at that point though), so I'm still hoping that if I find an older one at some point, and I have the chance to try it out, it might redeem them in my eyes.

Precisions are wonderful matches for pick playing. Jazzes can get a little grindy with a pick, and certainly some people enjoy that tone as well, but I prefer the roundness and punch of a Precision. I'm mainly a pick player myself. That's how I started out, and most of my favourite bassists are (mainly) pick players - including the sophisticated fellow in my profile picture!

[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1483461523' post='3207323'] Might even make sense to make a standard 4 string fretless which is fretted when you get above the 12th fret. Those high notes are tough on a fretless, even if it's lined. (or maybe i could just learn to play fretless better) [/quote] Unfortunately, the 12th fret would then be the first fret, rendering the fretless part unplayable. Doing the opposite and defretting the upper part has been done though. EDIT: I suppose someone could make a neck where the frets are recessed and flush with the board, but pop out upon pulling a small lever. I should patent that.

My recommendation is really to just wash your hands before you eat or poke yourself in the face or whatever else you like to do after a gig. No hand sanitiser helps against all viruses, anyways.

I didn't realise until just recently that Ned Steinberger designed the NS (thence his initials for the name) model. A bit surprising since I consider his L2/XL2 an absolute masterpiece of design, and, to be honest, I've a hard time finding a Spector I don't find completely hideous. That said, the constant praise for these basses have got me, reluctantly, interested. I'm convinced now the build quality will be excellent.They don't, however, look like the type of bass I'd normally like the sound of. How could the Spector sound be described? Is there any song or video I could hear or watch that would give me a good idea of what makes them special? I'm a bit concerned about the lack of a mid control on the tone pump, since I'm very fond of toasty, nutty mids.

Glad to hear things worked out, but I take it you won't be buying from Guitar Village again soon?

I haven't bought anything from them myself, but [url="https://www.guitarbuild.co.uk"]https://www.guitarbuild.co.uk[/url] might be worth a look. They offer customised parts in the vein of Warmoth, although their website is a bit more primitive. Still, you could get a 1-piece alder or ash body made, and you'll be able to preview the piece of wood used. You'll have to get it finished by someone else, though, or do it yourself. Jon Shuker will also make you a body, and you can always expect a very good job from him. [url="http://www.shukerguitars.co.uk/services.html"]http://www.shukerguitars.co.uk/services.html[/url]

Hoping you'll get the refund sorted quickly! I wouldn't be too devastated about not getting the bass, though. You could certainly find another one for less than £599.

I found the bass I mentioned. It's a bit of a curiosity, an ESP PPJ-160. As it happens, this photo comes courtesy of an old Basschat thread about... three-pickup basses.

Tokai made a neat looking 3-pickup Jazz at one point. I also remember seeing a bonkers 3-pickup P for sale, I think it was on here. Also Japanese, if memory serves me right. The pickups were all wildly slanted and I remember it had some unique switching. I'm going to see if I can find it again.

Whatever the reason, I'm not complaining!

[quote name='yorks5stringer' timestamp='1482179192' post='3198289'] Not wishing to rain on your parade, but if this guy does this sort of thing regularly I suspect he's laughing at you and unless you can prove to the Police he's done this to lots of others too, they are not going to be interested. Don't know if there is any mileage in seeing if he has done it before with others...? [/quote] Oh, no worries, I wasn't parading to begin with. He could certainly be bluffing, or he could not. The problem is, I doubt I could trust his answer if I ask him whether he's a seasoned swindler or not. [quote name='owen' timestamp='1482247195' post='3198834'] I was swindled by someone once. I had paid by Paypal and after a lot of bleating from him about it being on it's way I dropped his backside into PP's care. They locked his account down, refunded my money and shut him down for a good month. I hugely enjoyed the end of the process but not the bit before then. I know this is of no help to OP and I am not saying "you should have done it my way" cos I have done bank transfers in the same way as you. This is for anyone else reading and thinking about buying from an unknown source - always PP straight and if they bleat about fees then add the 3% to the figure. Sadly not everyone out there is as cool as we all are. Again OP, please don't take this as a criticism of how you did it, it is not that. Many of us have done it just the same way. [/quote] No offence taken! I usually never pay in advance, actually, but I was just so eager this time. He knew how to play me, I suppose! Unfortunately I only have a first name, which may or may not be correct, and no location. I do have his actual bank account number, though. EDIT: I just remembered something that might be of significance. When I realised I had been taken for a ride, I looked up the IP number from which the reply to my ad had been sent (obviously I should have done this before giving him my money). It showed up as being used in Spain. Could this mean he actually was abroad, robbed and desperate? Otherwise, he must've had some really good foresight to use a fake IP that he could, much later, tie to a sob story.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1482174166' post='3198238'] And recorded with a Stingray [/quote] Oh, so that's when he used them. I saw you mention Alex James in a list of Stingray users but I've never seen him with one. That's interesting actually. I suppose that album isn't really what you'd typically associate with a Stingray.

Jethro Tull for one year with Mark Craney and a whole bunch of years with Doane Perry. EDIT: Monty Python until Terry Gilliam renounced his American citizenship.

[b]Orange Juice[/b] - [i]Rip it Up[/i]: "You know me, I'm acting dum dum / You know the scene is very humdrum / And my favourite song's entitled Boredom" [b]They Might Be Giants[/b] - A whole bunch of songs, among them [i]XTC Vs. Adam Ant[/i]; [i]The Day[/i]: "The day Marvin Gaye and Phil Ochs got married"; and [i]Twisting [/i]which references The dB's and The Young Fresh Fellows. Technically a lot of [b]Blur[/b]'s [i]13[/i] album is about Justine Frischmann from Elastica. [b]Pavement[/b] - [i]Stereo[/i]: "What about the voice of Geddy Lee / How did it get so high? / I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy" [b]Eddie Floyd[/b]'s [i]Big Bird[/i] is about Otis Redding, and probably the greatest song he recorded! There were other Otis tributes too (at least one), but I can't remember them now.

They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants, which incidentally was inspired by [quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1481907399' post='3196226'] The Monkees - Hey Hey We're the Monkees [/quote]

It's not a basschatter, fortunately. I've got a first name, which may or may not be correct, and a bank account number. Should be very easy to trace, but I too am worried that the police might find it quite a bit down in their list of priorities. I've sent him a message back now. I told him he really has no right in asking for three weeks, and that I need the money by Tuesday. So now I'm hoping that he was bluffing, and that he's scared enough to actually give me my money back.

After a week and a half of having barraged her with polite inquiries to no avail I decided to do a bit of investigative work. I looked up all the phone numbers I could find belonging to the seller's namesakes and sent them all a collective text message, asking them if they had attempted to sell a Moog Prodigy recently. I got a few rather nice responses, most importantly one from the woman I had first assumed to be the seller, saying that she hadn't sold anyone a Prodigy. So I sent yet another email to the "seller", this time forgoing all the pretences, preferring instead to jump right into Liam Neeson in Taken. Well, nearly anyway. After threatening to have a chat with the police, I finally received a response. She told me she was terribly sorry, but that her life had taken a very bad turn and that she was in a rough condition, having been evicted and living off a former co-worker, as well as weighing below 8 stone (not especially shocking for a woman, but oh well). She offered no explanation as to why she decided she should rip off a stranger looking for a synth, or if she had been doing this systematically, but she said she wanted to pay me back, with interest, but in instalments. I told her I was not interested in the compensation, and that I simply wanted my money back, immediately and all at once. After this she stopped replying again. After a few days I thought I should remind her that I could still very well go and have a chat with the police, and as it turns out, that same trick worked wonders again. I got a new response, and this time he signed it using a different name. Yes, he. It came as no surprise really; I was fairly certain the identity was assumed. This time he told me he had been robbed in Spain. His writing was quite scrambled, so I'm not sure if he means to say that this was the reason for his dire situation, or if it happened afterwards. I'm not even sure he remembers what he previously told me. At any rate, it's plain to see I can't trust anything he says. Once again he asked me if he could give me my money back in instalments, much like a hired purchase. I told him that a hired purchase usually entails a purchase, one of which he obviously hasn't made, and that I really can't afford to wait for my money to be doled out to me in portions. Now, he seems to have dropped the instalment plan, but is asking for three weeks to get ahold of the money. I've no desire to wait three weeks just to see if he'll keep his word, which is worth bugger all at this point. And of course, I've absolutely nothing to do with his being "robbed in spain" or whatever story he'll come up with next. But I'm not quite sure how to respond now. If I tell him I need the money by Monday or I'll file a report with the police, and he is bluffing and indeed has the money, and he actually repays me, then I'll be all set. However, if I do that and he doesn't actually have the money, then I've lost my leverage and the chances of being reunited with that money anytime soon, and the only thing I can do is hope that the police do their job, quickly. So, any advice? [b]TO BE CONTINUED[/b]

I've made a couple of status updates concerning this predicament I'm in, but I decided a proper thread was in order. So, some of you might have heard the beginning of this story, but for the sake of reading convenience I'm going to take it, once more, from the top. Three weeks back I received a reply, via email, to a LTB ad I had posted for a Moog Prodigy. It came from a woman who said she had one she would be willing to part with for the price I had suggested. She didn't live nearby, but she could send the synth with a courier. This was only the morning after I had posted the ad, so I was excited to have found a seller so quickly, and she was very eager to respond to my questions and get the deal going. I absolutely hate waiting for deliveries, and can't stand sales that seem to trudge on, slowly, with no end in sight, so I'm always chuffed to find a seller who's willing to get it over with as quickly as possible. I've a feeling a few others on this forum might sympathise! I asked her if there was any way I could be assured that the deal transpired according to the agreement, and she told me she could drop the synth off at the courier and snap a photo of the receipt before I made the transfer. If I didn't pay, she could just fetch it back. Since she was so accommodating I thought it would be nice of me to not bother her too much, so I decided to just pay her in advance. Of course, if this were someone else's story, I'm quite sure I'd start hearing the alarm bells right about now. I am not, however, completely stupid (or so I thought), so I figured a few safety measures were in order before I parted with my £500. I looked her name up on Facebook and found a girl who indeed was a musician; more specifically a seemingly very bright, very non-shady young musician studying to be a doctor. I also asked for pictures and quickly received a couple of snaps of a nice looking Prodigy in a flight case. I did the usual reverse Google search and found they passed the test: no matches. They were, however, strangely low-res, but my then state of chuffedness quickly brushed that detail off as not important. The first warning signs materialised in front of me as I had transferred the money and realised that she was supposedly already at the courier's, and I still hadn't given her my shipping adress. I quickly sent it to her. She replied that she was just about to ask me for it, as soon as she had made sure that the transfer had been completed. Maybe not entirely comforting, but at this point, I couldn't do much at all but hope for the best. As it turns out, the best wasn't going to happen. The warning signs that had materialised earlier were now more or less hitting me in the face. I was given a tracking number for the courier which didn't work. This didn't seem so strange, as it could probably take more than a few minutes for the shipment to appear on the website, but I still craved some type of reassurance, so I asked her for a photo of the receipt. She replied that she hadn't been given one. Now that did seem a little strange. I asked her for an estimated delivery date, and got a reply the next day saying that it should be with me that day (Friday the 25th) or the following Monday. Well, it didn't show up that Friday. It didn't show up on Monday either. As you've probably fathomed by now, I still don't have it, and neither, in fact, did she have it. [b]INTERMISSION[/b]

Reminds me of Pete Shelley's broken Starway guitar!

[quote name='MoJo' timestamp='1479639311' post='3177966'] I was going to say, isn't a considerable part of the 'stingray tone' down to it's electronics? I had a passive OLP some years ago. It had the pickup in the correct position but sounded nothing like a stingray [/quote] There's another obvious factor I missed completely. And again it depends on what you think of when you think of Stingray tone. They have a 3-band as standard nowadays, right?

[quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1479583084' post='3177678'] Anecdotally, it was a simple typo - the Roadstar range was meant to be called "Roadster II". Would make sense if it was true, and odd Japlish mistranslations are not without precedent - if not for a similar spelling error, Nintendo's platform-jumping simian videogame mascot Donkey Kong would have been boring old Monkey Kong. Which realistically would have been a bit less confusing. [/quote] I've heard the typo explanation as well, but as you stated, close sources seem to be, well, elusive. If it was a typo, I'd argue it wasn't that bad; Roadstar does have an air of confidence to it. That Donkey Kong story is a bit of a myth though, it seems. Apparently Miyamoto-san was actually looking for a word that meant something along the lines of "silly" or "foolish". So, in reality, it was probably closer to being called Ass Kong than it ever was to being called Monkey Kong!

The Roadsters belong to an earlier line of instruments and were not sold alongside this particular model. At this point they were all called "Deluxe", so it doesn't really refer to anything in particular. There's also the interesting question of why the Roadster series' successor was called Roadstar II. There is no Roadstar I, nor is there a Roadster II. That's Japanese brands for you!

Sting is another famous user of the Musicians. In 1985 the Musician MC924 was indeed quite similar to the RS960. Both had the same pickups and a similar body, although the Musician had a more dramatic arch and was made out of ash, while the Roadstar was made out of basswood. The main difference throughout their lifespans was of course that the Musician was neck-through, and the Roadstar bolt-on.

^Very true. I was focusing on the pickup in isolation, but taking the construction into consideration, the differences could be even bigger. It's hard to say just how much the tone changes with a different bridge, neck construction etc. but eventually there are several reasons why not all basses sound alike. Oh, and by the way, bubinga, Enfield Guitars do make something not entirely dissimilar to your hypothetical bridge-to-neck pickup. They share some similarities to the Musicman Reflex circuits drT mentioned, as well. I haven't tried one of their basses myself but I've only heard nice things about them.