shoulderpet

3 hours ago, Dov65 said:

I'll second that👍the fit & finish on my Vintera really put my P Pro to shame especially on the neck pocket. I could easily get a pick in the gap.

Yeah the necks on the Vintera's are lovely, you would think such a wide neck would be really slow but they are hands down the nicest necks on a production bass that I have played and that lovely amber tinted gloss.  I also appreciate the high ratio tuners on the Vintera, I know a lot of people are fine with cheaper tuners but I much prefer these, they are rock solid.

2 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

That's not good. Do yu sweat a lot hen practicing at home, I'm guessing no. Gig sweating i can understand and is usually harder on strings.

Think Scot's bass lessons guy has an issue where his hands sweat and kill his strings very quickly hence the gloves he wears. 

Dave

No I dont sweat a lot practicing at home, gigging is a different story and I have had a few gigs where the venue has been stupidly hot

20 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Was that within a month of you playing regular gigs ?

Dave

No, since covid gigging has been a lot more infrequent, this is a month of regular practice but no gigs

I was quite excited about the NYXLs initially as they sounded quite bright and growly when new but I am really not a fan of there broken in tone, there is something in the high mids that I just can't dial out.

They also went dead within a month which is fine for a £20 set of Rotos but I kind of expect more from a £35 set of strings

4 minutes ago, PaulThePlug said:

No Issues swapping P n J necks of the same Number of frets... or with overhang.

Usual swap is for J Neck on a P Body, My P bitsa has a J Neck... easy swap within the same family.

But putting another make P neck on a Hairy B might need a bit of sanding. If it's got a scratch plate, might cover an element of gap, particularly around the heel profile

Odd, most would (wood) favour a satin over a sticky gloss finish, could always sand down to wood and oil.

Thanks, I would sand it down and refinish but it has a maple fretboard so that could be a bit of a nightmare to take the finish off and have to be wary of the frets

I have recently got myself a Harley Benton jb-75 jazz bass, sounds fantastic, I have definitely discovered that I love the tone of a jazz bass however the one thing that irks me about it is the satin finish neck, I absolutely detest satin necks, look cheap, feel cheap, just yuck!!!

Anyway the I have some high frets causing some fret buzz and I figured I may as well just get a new neck seeing how I hate the satin finish, I prefer a p bass neck profile so I am thinking of ordering a p bass neck and was wondering if there would be any issues using a p bass neck?

I mean they are both around the same width by the time they get to the neck pocket right? 

Thanks 

On 23/05/2022 at 17:28, Ricky Rioli said:

 

The 760FL ("light") are 43–60–82–104

 

The 45-65-85-105 set is 760FS ("standard")

Yeah it's funny that they call that there light set, I remember reading somewhere that someone had managed to get tension info from them and said that the "light" set were over 180ibs tension wise, not all that light really

59 minutes ago, thewebow said:

I have a thing for American/USA Fender basses.

 

I started recent arsenal with a '96 MIM jazz bass and a newer jag bass. Put hi-Mass bridges on both straightaway. tone is solid. Build quality is good/ok.

But picked up a used '90's pbass fretless and was amazed by quality of the instrument, from the tuners, through body stringing and pickup clarity and tone. So I was like ok USA is better..

So I recently p/ex a warwick rockbass for a USA jbass fretless from Bass Gallery ( turned out to be a '99 model) AGAIN sounds sublime..

 

So to give the fretless p bass a partner, I picked up a lovely USA 2009 American P bass from Camden Guitars.

However, It does seem incredibly light compared to the other USA basses I have and feels a bit flat compared to other..

Going to take it to Bass Gallery for a service and get it strung with flats- as it does have a slight electrical buzz and seems a bit flat overall.

Is this GAS subsiding? Is it me or in the week after getting something new you usually start finding little faults or niggles?

 

My question is do I sell the Mexicans now?

What do people think of the Elite USA series?

How do people feel about 5 string American Pro II P basses?

 

Thanks for any input

If you feel that you could sell the Mexicans and have no regrets about it then I would go ahead and sell them and put the money towards another instrument, the Fender Vintera P bass is a fantastic instrument, I know it is also an MIM Fender but I truly feel it is a much better instrument than most MIM Fenders and I suspect it could rival a lot of US Fenders

6 hours ago, BassAdder27 said:

Some really good points .. sadly my nearest store PMT Norwich has very little stock to try so it’s either take pot luck and order online or wait !

If you order from Andertons or Gear4music there returns policies are really good, that being said I hate ordering online as you never know if you will get a good bass or a lemon 

No way, not even if it was for a jam night/open mic and I was hosting it

23 hours ago, BassAdder27 said:

I currently use a very nice and well set up Player Series PBass 

 

I like it a lot but often wonder if the current American PBass which are at least twice the price would gain anything in sound ? 
 

They do look really nice and I’ve come close to buying one recently but stop myself and ask myself do I really need one ?

Convince me ? 

I haven't played an American P bass but I can only imagine it would be noticeably better not in terms of sound but feel.

I have a Classic 50s p bass, I don't think Fender still makes them but I believe that when they did they were around £200 more expensive than the player series.

Anyway I had the chance recently to play several player series P basses and they weren't bad basses but my classic 50s p bass was miles better than ever single player series bass that I tried.

On 16/05/2022 at 17:34, Fuzzbass2000 said:

Cheers - Will check that out. Still seems crazy high though.

Flatwounds are always really expensive unless you buy the cheap ones on eBay but then it's a bit of a gamble what you get

On 18/05/2022 at 07:23, Andy_L said:

Good question. I've just checked and they're 45-105 too, so I wonder if I have a rogue set

 

Maybe not fair to try selling them

That doesn't sound right to me, when I tried Labellas they were like iron rods, I took them off because they were causing me pain

33 minutes ago, Bagman said:

Talk Talk - “It’s My Life”

 

The Smith’s - “ This Charming Man”

 

David Bowie - “Slow Burn”

 

Kate Bush - “Breathing”

Ooo some fantastic ones there, This charming man is deceptively tricky, Breathing has some fantastic fretless bass on it

Honestly I would put them in some hot wat and a very small amount of washing up liquid (just place them in a container with the hot water, do not boil them on the stove or anything) but be prepared to have to replace them if it makes the coating go bad but to be fair 3 years out of any set of strings is very good going

Another good one that I somehow forgot

[YouTube]

On 13/05/2022 at 09:01, PaulWarning said:

most acoustic guitars manage without intonation adjustment, IMO it's overrated as a problem on basses, generally we don't play chords with loads of overdrive, unlike guitar players, so unless you've got perfect pitch (disclosure time, I've got the opposite, whatever that is) you or anybody else aren't going to notice, who does on fretless basses for instance? I once asked a double bass player about how accurate his playing was, intonation wise, his reply was "As long as you're somewhere near nobody is going to notice"

I totally agree, in fact most times when I get a new bass I don't even touch the intonation unless it is obviously off, no audience members or band members have ever said that my bass playing sounds out of tune.

The other thing is I learnt quickly that if you are too obsessive about intonation you will never be happy with any bass you play and the audience are unlikely to notice anyway

19 minutes ago, neepheid said:

Carlos D is one of my favourite bass players - fantastic melodic player who apparently didn't even like playing bass (https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/aug/12/interpol-carlos-d-bass) - what?

 

One of my favourites too and the reason for my recent purchase of a jazz bass

Whilst I am not a fan of bass solos I love songs that have bass being used as a melodic instrument.

The below are some of my favourites for this, anyone else have any good examples of this kind of thing?

[Youtube]

Great intro bassline on this and gets pretty funky around 1.32

[Youtube]

Bass starts around 40-ish seconds in to the song

[Youtube]

[Youtube]

5 hours ago, PaulThePlug said:

@shoulderpet... many thanks for the G4M combo... A most Generous Gent!

Wet and worthwhile ride over, even fitted in the top box of the scooter... One happy and surprised Son!.. A nice practice pairing with a Ibby GSR200...

 

Glad I could help, good to see it going to good use

On 12/05/2022 at 22:22, kodiakblair said:

 Neck is 92 mm long , bridge is 95 mm. Screw mounts front to back 29.5 mm.

 

 

 

 

This is useful, have been thinking of giving these a try, looking at the dimensions I might end up just swapping out the bridge pickup for these, don't think the neck pickup route will be deep enough

3 minutes ago, Pea Turgh said:

I bought one of the “Deko” ones off Thomann a few years ago - weighed sooo much, but sounded really nice.  Sold it to a mate who uses it exclusively for recording.

 

Is yours heavy?

Yep 12.5ibs

A bit of a belated NBD as I received this bass on Wednesday,

I received the bass in a right grotty state, the seller described it in as new condition, the bass still had the pickguard film etc on but the bass itself was filthy, as new condition meaning if as new meant it had been buried underground.

First stop before anything else could be done was to remove the strings, as you can see from the below pic the strings were absolutely minging, I would have been ashamed to sell someone a bass with these strings on it but people are odd, I tried to avoid touching the strings as much as possible.  Next job was to remove the thick layer of crud from the fretboard, the camera on my phone doesnt show this very well but the fretboard was pretty gross and i gave it a good scrub and then gave the rest of the bass a good clean and then wiped it over with some alchohol to kill any nasties.

After about half hour cleaning it, I restrung the bass with some super light Nyxl I had spare, fair bit of fret buzz so I adjusted the truss rod and then had a nasty shock when the truss rod seemingly had no tension, I thought the truss rod was done for and much later that night then it occured to me that it was acting a bit differently to how a broken truss rod would usually act, after a bit of forum consulting and googling I found it was actually a 2 way truss rod and I turned the truss rod key a bit more and it started gripping and all was well thank god.

Anyway I loosend the truss rod to take out some buzz on the first few frets and it mostly did the trick but I seem to have a high fret on the 1st or 2nd fret that was causing some fret buzz on the 1st fret, have raised the action and it is a little higher than I would like but it is manageable until I get the cash to have the frets looked at.

And finally I pushed the pickups poles up on the A and D string sides to get the pickup pole heights consistent 

Overall I am pretty happy with the bass and after a fret levelling this will be a fantastic bass, it looks great and it sounds fantastic, I havent owned a jazz bass in about 20 years and now im wondering why I delayed it for so long, both pickups on full is a fantastic tone and those low notes on the E string sound awesome, I get the feeling a jazz bass in D standard would sound amazing.

If I had to complain about something it would be the dreadful cheap pickguard, I will replacing it in the near future, I am thinking maybe brown tort (if anyone knows what aftermarket pickguards will fit this bass I would be very grateful)

Before cleanup

After cleanup

21 minutes ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

Making a loom for a bass a couple of days ago reminded me of something I should confess:

 

The first few times I used cloth covered wire I was cursing how fiddly it was to trim the insulation from the ends as wire strippers didn't work well on it. It was only relatively recently that I realised you just push the insulation up to expose the core.

Yep, as you probably know from having my old Ibanez and my Harley Benton my soldering skills are limited so I try and solder as little as possible but cloth covered wire is definitely easier to work with

Ok, so is all good now apart from I seem to have a high fret either the 1st fret or the 2nd as there is some nasty fret buzz on the 1st fret on the G string, I have raised the action to compensate for the time being but I will get someone to take a look at the end of the month once I can afford to