Tokalo

Popped up in my Facebook feed: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1p5NDaS7DRYZtJU9/?mibextid=WC7FNe 🚨 Missing bass!! Please share this post!🚨 Hi all. My bass was taken between Sunday and Tuesday from the Guildhall School of Music. Please keep an eye out for it. Please check your local pawn shops, music shops etc and contact me directly if you see it. It’s a unique custom made 5-string bass with through-neck construction. There’s only one of these in the world so it’s pretty distinctive! It was in a tweed Ibanez powerpad padded gig back (pictured). Thanks

+1 for powered speaker (with pre-amp). I’ve got a 600w Behringer that weighs about 14kgs and cost just over £150 (so under $200?) I also have a 500w TC Electronic mini head (bought new for the warranty; about £250) and a 500w Ibanez cab (16kg, £150 used, can be carried in one hand).

I’ve just had a MIJ 51 p bass delivered from Fenderfever today. I had some trepidation because £1k is a lot of money for me, and this thread was the only store review I could find. Two days after I paid, I had a duplicate deduction appear on my credit card app. It disappeared next day, so I think it’s just a Mastercard thing. But all doubts have now dissipated - fast delivery and bass is exactly as described. I’m very happy I shopped there!

Alex is - quite simply - a very pleasant chap! He just bought an Hpf pedal from me. When I found he lived nearby, and I had a rehearsal in Stevenage that week, he was more than happy to meet up, even though it inconvenienced him a lot more than me.

I treated myself to a new bass - that is far better than my playing deserves - in December: it’s taking a bit of getting used to, but the more I play, the more I find I get on with it. It went to luthier to have an active/passive switch fitted, and I found I was pining after it every day. Now it’s back, I play every day. I find it very satisfying. (And I feel like I’m justifying the expense - can’t wait for this year’s first gig next month!)

I swapped out the pickup on my Sandberg Electra VS4. I found the original sounded like JJ in The Stranglers. Great, but not what I needed: I wanted a more vintage sound for gigs with a dad rock band and a soul band. I put in a (not expensive) Kent Armstrong pickup which just sounded more suitable. I’m not sure I could have tamed the mids/highs enough using eq without losing a lot of the original note?

Gary has just installed a passive/active volume control on my new MTD Kingston. At the same time, he straightened the neck on my Spector Coda - for free! Over the past few months he also did a setup on my stepson’s Ibanez SR1605 (“it’s never played as well”), and repaired a bridge on friend’s son’s classical 6 string (“he was so nice and helpful, and did a great job”). Highly recommended!

Ordered a b-stock bass (MTD Kingston Z4) in December. I’d been watching it for months, just hoping I might get a Christmas bonus big enough. Bonuses were announced on 8 December, so at that point I knew I had enough. But when I checked it was still available, the price had increased by £100! I must have just been no more than a week late. I phoned on the off-chance that there was room for negotiation, but before I’d even finished my first sentence, Mark said I could have it for the earlier lower price. (He also delayed despatch so it would arrive on a day when my good lady was at the office!) In short: super service!

Thanks for all the comments. I wasn’t particularly looking for an active bass: it was the neck and the weight (and looks!) I liked. Stock p/ups are MTD proprietary Bartolini soapbars, which seem to do a good job through headphones. I use the tube drive on the Digbeth pedal to thicken up the sound, and to adjust the eq according to the room etc. My amp is a TC BQ500, which I tend to keep flat so it’s really just a power amp. It seems to me that the role of electrics on a bass is to capture as much of the whole tone (ie note + harmonics + sub-harmonics) as possible. So as long as the onboard preamp doesn’t take away any of the signal from the pickups, it will be staying put (though I’ll be asking GaryMac to add and push/pull passive pot).

I got myself a MTD Kingston Z4 with my Christmas bonus. All seems good (very good - really light, punchy p/ups, wonderful neck), although I can’t try it out at volume with a band for a couple more days. Reading around (on here and TB), there seems to be a consensus that the G&B preamp is a bit weak/thin. I’ve stretched my budget to buy the bass, and I’m not looking to spend more. It occurs to me that I have 3 preamps in my chain: 1 - on the bass; 2 - a Laney Digbeth on my pedalboard; 3 - the eq controls on the amp. So I’ve got plenty of options to thicken the sound and give it a bit of welly. Would I really see any benefit from swapping in a £170 - £210 preamp?

Blacksmith nano-carbon coated (AOT). I’ve been using them for 10 months on my gigging based, and very happy. Normally available on Amazon for about £22.

My 10-year old son was showing an interest in my basses, so I put an ad in the Wanted section for a small Jackson. Mick answered by offering to lend us his Squier mini p-bass. It’s the perfect size, and the lad was clearly comfortable. He’s played it every day, learning Living on a Prayer, Crazy Train, Back in Black etc. We’ve given Mick his bass back now (I believe he’s sharing it with someone else). My son is getting his own mini-bass for Christmas now. Mick is just the most generous and helpful guy. Not only by sharing a bass, but also selfless with his time and advice.

I put Ultralite lollipops on my PJ Mustang. Neck dive solved! (And I think they look less outsized /ugly too)