shoulderpet

Jesus, why not just use lighter strings

Apparently he plays really softly so most of the pressure would be on his fretting hand, still an incredible amount of string tension though

Haha yes, I have owned a few Fenders and even if the routing was done via a panel on the back of the bass you still couldn't take off the scratchplate because of those bloody locating holes they punch into them

Interesting, I am glad I am lucky to get some without the hole under the scratchplate although at this price it is by no means a deal breaker Am liking mine so far, is good to go out of the box, nice bright tone, only grumble is the bit of fret buzz on the first couple frets but at this price you can't expect the frets to be perfect and I have seen worse fret work on much more expensive and honestly I have played much more expensive basses that been worse basses

Ok so have received the bass, overall I am pretty happy so far, some shortcomings but that is exactly what you would expect at this price and they are all things that can be sorted in one way or another The nut is a cheapo, I may replace it but I love the fact that it is cream coloured, that is awesome so I am thinking maybe I will get some fine sandpaper and just smooth the edges a bit on it instead, some fret tarnish which is not a big deal and some T-Cut will sort that out, the pickguard is super cheap looking but not a big deal as I was looking to replace that anyway. The pickup has some tarnish on the pickup poles, anyway to remove or cover this without damaging the magnets?(from what I have heard this pickup is alnico5) I lowered the action to Fender spec and there is some fret buzz on frets 1 and 2 on the E string but not anywhere else on the neck so I am thinking that the frets probably need dressing, I might just slap a heavier E string on there to reduce the string excursion until I have the cash to get the frets dressed. Looking forward to giving the neck the Kiwi polish treatment, what colour do people usually use? Also is it limited to just Kiwi shoe polish? I have seen this which if it works looks like it might actually be a better colour Cherry Blossom shoe polish - light tan I read somewhere about some of the PB-50's having the ground wire under the pickguard, thankfully on mine it is under the control plate, looks really good with the pickguard off so I might just have a see through pickguard made for the sake of having something to put the pickguard screws into to hide the screw holes where the white pickguard was I was looking at no load pots and found that it has been suggested that they don't work as volume pots only as tone pots so I have instead ordered some 1meg pots for some extra brightness, am hoping my soldering has improved enough to not bodge it up

Its a good thing you had a multi-meter to test it with otherwise you might not have known, personally I was not a fan of the stock Epiphone EB0 pickup as the low dc resistance makes it sound kind of weak, I found that tapes and flats made it sound a tonne better

Just to add to my post, really, Really oddly the tone I got from flatwounds that cut through the mix best was on a Hofner contemporary club bass, both pickups on full, slight boost in the upper mids and treble, cut through no problem but for some reason a P bass with flats just doesnt with me Sadly I stopped using the Hofner as the 14mm string spacing made it really awkward to switch to other basses

Steve Harris changes them for every gig and every recording session, fresh flatwounds can be pretty aggressive however for most of us they are just too expensive for us to be able to afford to do this

Oddly enough I am one of the few that finds flats work better at home, I find most bass amps and rigs have more than enough low end (too much on a lot of them) and then when you throw in guitars and a drummer I find it gets hard to hear what is going on

I would look at used, someone on here said the other day that a £500 bass is essentially a £200 bass with slightly better quality control and a little more labour time and I really agree with that assessment, I have played (and returned) a number of £400-500 basses and I am always struck by how marginal the improvements are vs basses that I own that are in the £200-250 price range

This is true, Affinity used to be pretty good value for money but now looking at the Affinity series you can nowadays get a better bass than an Affinity for less

Ok so as I never actually use tone controls I am thinking of just having a volume control, I will reach out to one of the companies that does custom pickguards and see if they will make me a control plate shape with one hole for the volume control to replace the original control plate

That's a real shame, sounds like they sent you the wrong pickup, from the above or doesn't sound at all like it is the Artec

That's a real shame, sounds like they sent you the wrong pickup, from the above or doesn't sound at all like it is the Artec

Yeah, I will wait for the bass to be delivered and assuming all is well I have some mods I want to do No load pots Kiwi shoe polish neck tint mod New pickguard (white always looks awful imo) Brass saddles (purely aesthetic) I would love to reshape the headstock to look like a 51 p bass but I have neither the tools or the know sadly

Im not a massive fan of P/J basses, I had a Fender Mustang that sounded good in P/J mode but all the other basses I have tried have all been Meh in P/J mode, you lost a lot of the beef in the tone as soon as you roll in that J pickup, Also things get a little bit brighter but you lose some of the snarl from the P pickup along with a good chunk of mids

Something has just occurred to me as a possibility, hoping someone with more know how than me can weigh in. If I used no load pots for both the volume and tone when both pots are on full would that then essentially be the same in terms of tone and output as going direct to the output Jack?

Yeah no pots is a good option, if I could find a control plate with no holes where the volume and tone would be then that is probably that I would do

More brightness really, I always find right single pickup basses I like them as bright as possible

I have an even cheaper way, thanks for looking, much appreciated

Thanks, if I get the bass and I like it then then I am thinking of fitting 500k pots or maybe even 1meg pots

Well, when I say a mod platform I don't mean anything crazy, just basically swapping out the parts that are generally junky on cheaper basses (tuners, pots, pickguard, bridge,fret dress if needed maybe the pickup depending on what the stock one sounds like), I know this will cost more than the bass itself but if I like the bass once I receive it then I have no qualms about putting money into it to get something I like them more. Btw do you know if the stock pots are 250 or 500k?

And after giving it some thought I have actually decided to go for the PB-50 (Harley Benton single coil p bass) there is just something about the simplicity of the one pickup one tone that appeals to me. Also means that if I do mod it there is a simpler circuit to modify and one less pickup to swap out.

Thanks, yeah that is my aim with this is to have a cheap bass and use it as a modding platform

Interested to find this out too