Danuman

You know what, that doesn’t seem quite as silly as I thought.

Ah, yes, of course. Jamerson I’m well aware of. If capturing the sound of those recordings was the objective, perhaps Mr. Novak tried to make a pick-up that sounds like dead flats on a washing-up sponge even with fresh round wounds!

Thanks! Yes - sorry - that was a rather long-winded way to say that a bit of eq is needed to get a flat-ish sound (ooh, there’s a tricky concept, but I mean similar to how it sounds acoustically). It’s a really great sound when I do get it there, hence the suspicion that somewhere something is a bit off... I only wired it straight to the output in order to see if there was anything obviously wrong with the wiring. With the previous body it sounded mostly similar, except the guitar itself sounded a lot less lively. I guess I don’t fully grasp what people consider to be the defining characteristics of a vintage P sound... I’ll see if I can do a recording later tonight.

Hi all, I’ve been working on my MIM P for a while now. It’s been a slow process, but recently I completed building a new body. I just wanted to tinker with the look, but the improvement in resonance over the original body is really quite dramatic, so i’m absolutely chuffed with the result. When I plug it in, however, it remains a bit cluttered in the lower mids. Say between 150~250 Hz. I put in a lovely Curtis Novak PB-V, which to my ears sounds beautifully balanced and hollow and precisiony and flat — provided I boost a touch around 1.5k and cut a similar amount around 200. (On an Eden Traveler, so a little goes a long way.) Which is a perfectly fine workaround, obviously, but I did have some trouble getting it to sound good on other rigs. So ideally it would just sound like that with the amp set flat, as with other basses. I’ve already bypassed the electronics, so might this just be what the pick-up sounds like? Or could it be a mismatch between the pick-up and the guitar? Is there anything that could cause a pick-up to lose definition like this? Thanks for reading! Cheers, Dan

Cheers! They’re quite a thing to behold, aren’t they? Still, at over a grand less than the one I saw, it’s still way too dear. Perhaps one day. Quite happy with how my build’s coming along though!

I love Capri Orange, especially on a Mustang. I’d be tempted if it plays well... And on the flip side of that argument: the shorter scale might make you look even bigger on stage.

Perhaps you could try making a comparison without plugging the basses in first? Just to see how they resonate and how that compares to what comes out of your amp. I have a 2008 MIM P, and the actual construction of the guitar sounded a little lifeless. On top of that, the original pickup was all low-mids and little else, which combined with flatwounds got a little too muffled... so I stuck with roundwounds and I swapped out the pickup and the bridge and thankfully things are starting to sound much better. I play an Eden as well and funnily enough I like a bit of the Enhance to bring some depth to the P, but it doesn’t agree at all with my Jazz.

I regularly had to cart around my gear without any help, so after a near-death experience involving a flight of stairs and a 410 cab, I went for a pair of high-end 112 cabs. Even one of them is plenty powerful for most (sensible) gigs. Markbass isn’t really my flavour, but I’d confidently gig with their stuff. I quite like the LMIII. I have no experience with the PF210, but the 350/500 heads sound really nice, although I must confess I thought most of the buttons on the 500 only made it sound worse...

I only just got as far as sorting out my live rig, so for a long time I just had one four-string bass (a J). I’m currently trying to fix up a MIM P. Recently though, I started with a pretty nice new band and I keep wanting to go lower when playing with them... Seems a low B is next on the list.

I’d been half thinking about getting a P with a J neck for a while when I saw one of those postmodern Precisions in a shop. I was absolutely smitten. Unfortunately - or fortunately, I suppose - it had a hilariously precipitous price tag. So I set off to do a bitsa/build. So far it’s been great fun, and if (when) I do decide to spring for the high-end neck I’ve been eyeballing for a while, it’ll still not be half as much. Granted, it might not be half as good. We’ll have to see.

Luckily I already have a great semi-light-weight setup, but this is definitely in my future. Brilliant!

I wanted to adjust spacing as well, so I bought a Hipshot Kickass (basically a slightly updated BA) as it drops right in. Works and sounds a treat, but I thought it looked really awkward on my P, so I put it on a J. Turns out the Hipshot A Style bridge also comes in a version with Fender measurements, so I got that for the P. I actually like it a lot better. It looks a lot less obtrusive and the string adjustment feels a little more robust.

Yes, I admit it’s a bit peevish, but fitting strings can be a bit awkward. The holes in the shafts are only just large enough, so you have to be really careful when crimping the strings. I’m actually quite surprised by how much this annoys me. (Anyway, I still haven’t swapped the tuners out, so I guess until I do they cannot be all that bad...) Cheers for taking the time for such a detailed answer! I’ll take a look at your suggestions.

Nice work! I have a 2008 MIM, which I bought for very similar reasons. Not too terribly fond of the tuners, but the neck is really comfy. Admittedly, though, I swapped out pretty much everything else (including the body, which I made myself out of curiosity) so I guess levelling and dressing the frets is next... Which tools did you use? I used one of those hollow three-in-one crowning files before, but it was a bit crude. Anything you recommend?

My Jazz sounds so nice it hurts sometimes. But then my P is like an old pair of slippers. Oh well.

I’ve been playing a late 70s J copy for years and, although I’d suspected it for years, I only recently found it is actually - objectively - pretty heavy, at about 11 lbs. Only (sort of) a problem during really long sets, though. And the action is really nice, so it’s easy on the left hand. The reason I keep playing it is it sounds amazing.

I had a bit of a scare once, involving an unexpected situation, a young player without an amp and a rig that was not at all intended for a loud gig. Long story short: My second EXT was an MNT. I may still swap the EXT for another MNT at some point (although I do believe Marc is on record somewhere stating the EXT sounds slightly better...) but it's by no means necessary. With my 500 watt amp the pair of 'em can get absolutely irresponsibly loud - and if I do decide to bring just the MNT for smaller gigs, I can throttle it without having to worry. Edit: In addition to the debilitating volume, I should say it sounds absolutely delicious.

I'm on the lookout for something that might serve as a practice tool for the road. (I suppose ideally with some tone-shaping pre/DI backup/other capabilities...) The VB99 is surely not that! Haha. Nice to learn about it, though. It looks frightening!

[quote name='Bigwan' timestamp='1505247072' post='3370544'] These have been pulled from sale again. Got in just in time Ped... [/quote] Drat. I'll have to keep an eye out for something better, I suppose. [quote name='ped' timestamp='1505233218' post='3370416'] Of course A/B comparison with my main unit the difference is clear as day but for a little practice tool, it's fine and a nice addition to have. [/quote] Congrats! If I'm permitted to be so bold... what's your main unit?

Turn down the bridge pickup, roll off the highs and stop worrying about it. It's not exactly the same, but the only people who are likely to notice are going to be bass players. If you're after some '60s thump, stick a bit of washing-up sponge under there. The other day I saw Curtis Harding's bass player do just that!

I have no experience with Rumble amps, but if it's boominess you're trying to mitigate (I dunno, perhaps some overbearing lower frequency band? Maybe in the room!), I'd prefer to address it with EQ, and then using compression for sculpting dynamics. Then again, a good squishy comp can be a great bit of fun. YMMV.

I got a bunch of the older Lava cable plugs because they seemed more dependable than others. No idea if the newer system is better, but I doubt they'd be worse. At the time they were hard to come by, but now they're easy enough to get. Board is trim and it sounds great!

I picked up an '08 MIM P recently. Great condition, for about 350 I guess (Holland). It's a very nice bass, if perhaps a little plain. The rosewood neck is lovely, but I definitely expected a much better pickup. (Perhaps those were upgraded later?) By accident, really, I stumbled upon a Curtis Novak pickup, and it now has a beautifully chewy sound. (I'd describe it as gourmet bread and butter) All in all that's a whole lot of precisiony goodness for a very affordable price. If it plays well and you can get it for a fair price, I'd say it's a fine piece of equipment.

Just received word from the distributor. This is not going to happen, as they consider the plugs to be inexpensive as is. I feel silly having to waste a bunch of them because of such a minor defect. Guess I'll try the all metal ones next time, if I can find them.

Hi all, I seem to be going through a cyclical bit of frustration: once again I find myself fed up with the various bits of cable I have lying around, so I ordered a length of quality cable in order to fix me up a set of proper leads. While digging around in the scrap drawer, I found a box of old Amphenol plugs. Unfortunately the plastic tops have split, but otherwise they're fine. I snooped around for a bit, but the amount of available product makes my head spin! I didn't, however, manage to find what I was looking for. Perhaps it's idle hope, but does anybody know if there's parts for sale anywhere? Cheers! Minor aside: I also have a bunch of Neutriks, which are also pretty good (and not, strictly speaking, currently broken) so it's a bit of a non issue, really. I still kind of prefer the design of the Amphenols, though...