shoulderpet

17 minutes ago, Maude said:

Wilkinson are similar to the Entwistle pickups that I'm a fan of. I actually think the Entwistle neos (PBXN) are almost identical sounding to the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder, but actually better as they have slightly more pronounced mids. 

 

I might give the Winkinsons a go if I need to. I reckon it's Wilkinson in there now but probably a cheapy. 

 

Warman are another favourite of mine, excellent pickups for very little money. 

Yeah I think if the pickup in there is a Wilkinson it will probably be there cheaper ceramic pickup which is not a bad pickup, I have tried the ceramic and the alnico versions and the ceramic is more aggressive than the alnico version (when I tried the ceramic one I found it had really snarly mids) but it doesnt have that low mid punch that the alnico one does 

1 hour ago, Maude said:

It's cheap, it's an Encore and I don't 'need' it in the slightest, but it's money in a good charities coffers. Ah the reasons we find to justify a new bass. 😄

 

To be fair St. Lukes Hospice is a great charity in Plymouth and has really helped a few people I know so that genuinely sealed the deal. 

 

I'd seen this on eBay and liked the look of it, you know when something just has 'a look' that grabs you somehow. I had to go Plymouth today so decided to pick it up while in there. 

 

With a good clean up I think it'll be a little gem. Nice trans red with some nice grain (I can see a three/four piece body so don't think it's a photo job), aged pearl pickguard, nice grain on an amber neck, and it plays and sounds really quite well. Pots are a bit scratchy but if it cleans up nice and a good set up and fret dress gets it playing really nicely, it might even get treated to a upgraded PU and loom. 

 

Who doesn't need an extra P bass knocking around for £50?

Oh yeah, included a strap and gigbag, both cheap but the bag will keep the dust off once clean. 

 

Does anyone have any idea on age? It looks like an older Encore but it could equally be a modern one with a vintage look. I've no idea on the history of Encores. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very nice, lovely finish, looks much nicer than the Encore I owned a while back, if you want to upgrade the pickups and dont want to spend too much on it WIlkinsons Alnico P bass pickup (the slightly more expensive one) is a really nice sounding pickup that is just as nice as the more expensive offerings from Seymour duncan etc

1 hour ago, Ricky Rioli said:

 

Have you put the serial number into this?

Thanks, looks like it's a 50s P bass

Ok so some follow up thoughts on this bass now I have had it for a bit, still very impressed but thought I would post a follow up, also I initially thought this was a Vintera but I suspect it might be a classic 50's 

Pros:

Construction is top notch, no issues with the build on this at all

Looks, this bass is a stunner for sure, also nice to have a maple fretboard and a gloss neck instead of the satin finish that I dislike in modern basses

Action, the action on this is low and it plays like a dream

Neck, a lot of P basses now have 40 or 41mm nut width, this is around 45mm which is lovely and chunky

Tuners, I know some people may not give a stuff about the tuners but a lot of cheaper Fenders have really sloppy tuners, these are perfect, I have counted the teeth on the gears but I suspect that these are 25:1 ration, no slop in these at all

Tone, I swapped out the pickup on mine because I wanted a more rock tone but the stock pickup in this is great and it sounds great accoustically

Cons:

Heel access truss rod, I mean come on Fender what the hell, I even took the pickguard  off and check if the access to the truss rod was any better but it wasn't so if you are changing the strings and you go heavier then you will need to take off the neck to adjust the truss rod, check the relief and then repeat if you got the adjustment wrong the first time, could Fender have not routed the body with a rout to get to the truss rod?

Anodized pickguard, this something that I love and hate in equal measures, it does look awesome but I took the pickguard off to swap out the pickups and ended up cutting my finger open on the edges of the pickguard, yowzers!!!  I then found that Fender had cut the pickguard dimensions super tight and it took about 4 attempts before the pickguard actually went back on properly, it was actually easier fitting the pickups than putting the pickguard back on

Hi

Am selling the following items

Labella low tension flats SOLD- used previously on a P bass with 2 wraps on the tuning post, used for  around 2 hours, very slightly frayed silk but basically brand new £35 posted to Uk address

TI Jaz flat SOLD,  used previously on a P bass with 2 wraps on the tuning post, these came with a bass I brought so no idea how old these are, no box for these and silks are frayed on these so the silks look a bit tatty but for £25 posted to Uk address I think most people can probably overlook this baring in mind they are more than twice this from Stringsdirect and they sound great

Fender split coil Precision bass pickup SOLD, this is from a Fender P bass which is either a Vintera or a Classic 50s P bass, this is a fantastic sounding pickup but I swapped it for a different pickup as I was after a more rock tone, the pickup wires fell off when I took this out so I have resoldered the wires which looks a bit messy and I managed to burn the plastic on one of the wires but I have tested this pickup and works fine and once fitted no-one will see anyway, £20 posted to Uk address

1 hour ago, mcnach said:

I don't have the Artec pickup but I've got eveything else that I wanted to play with.

 

1) Replaced tuners with a set of ultralites, and chose the smaller clover tuners which I think look better in a short scale bass, and removes a bit more weight.

2) Replaced bridge with a Hipshot.

3) D'Addario black nylon tapewounds.

 

The bass balances pretty well now, no neck dive. The Hipshot bridge allows you to widen the spacing between strings a little bit. Not as much as I would have liked, as there's still space on the fretboard, but that little bit makes it a little nicer to play for my liking. It was nice to lose the original very thin roundwounds, the black nylons suit this bass very well. I had to widen the nut slots a tiny bit, a few minutes and a bit of care with a nut file and that was it. 

 

I kept the electronics original so far, as I want to wait until I get the new pickup... but simply putting on a set of tapes improved the sound significantly.

 

Anyway, no soundclips but here are a couple of pictures. It'd look a bit better if the pickup cover were black but hey...

 

 

 

 

Once the Artec arrives try it and if its a keeper then check if the Epiphone pickup cover fits it so that you have a spare if needed and if it does then maybe spray paint the Epiphone pickup cover, if it looks crap then you still have a spare cover anyway, if it looks good then great

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

The one time I changed the pickups on a bass I owned, it made absolutely no detectable difference to the sound of the bass.

I have to admit, unless you get a pickup that is radically different like something super hot then most of them are pretty similar, the Seymour Duncan SPB-2 is noticeably different from most P pickups.  I also think that the strings you use will bring out the character of the pickup, if you use flats then there is less harmonic content so changing the pickup will affect the tone a lot less than if you are using rounds. 

I like light gauge strings (on long scale basses at least), my P bass came fitted with TI Jazz flats and has the dreaded heel access truss rod so just as well, taking the neck off to adjust it? Not bloody likely

3 hours ago, Rayman said:

I've put a similar post in technical, but I thought I'd ask a more general question.....

 

Does it really make a difference to your tone when it comes to the build quality of the pickups?

 

I'm restoring an old P bass. I'm going for an old school vibe,  KiOgon loom, tapewounds, but I'm umming and ahhing about whether to use the original 80s budget pickup or replace it with something better quality. Is a pickup just a bunch of magnets and wires at the end of the day? Do thin wires matter, or do thicker cloth wires sound better? 

 

I don't want a bright, high output tone, I want old school. Surely the original pickups will be fine with a decent loom?

 

I'm asking because I really don't know in terms of a pickups performance. 

Cloth wires make absolutely no difference it is purely an aesthetic, the only wires that matter are the wires that are wrapped around the actual pickup coils, with the wires that are wrapped around the pickup coils there is all sorts of things going on that determine the tone.

I suspect the pickups you already have will be fine, if not Toneriders seem to be recommended a lot for this type of tone, Wilkinson (the Alnico ones) are also very good inexpensive pickups

I like the blocks, the only thing that might grate on me a little is that I am used to seeing the 2 dot markers at the 12th fret, I think I would possibly have to get some white dot marker stickers or something for that 12th fret, that being said if the 12th fret is right where the upper horn is like on a lot of basses it might be easy to remember just by that, btw that is one classy looking bass, that would look great in a punk band

1 hour ago, Majid said:

Ok I will…..but when I’m saying that I had this feeling while I was playing them off-amp, do you still think that it’s something in addition to a high action?

The action may not be the whole issue, it is also likely to be active vs passive tone but a high action will kill your slap tone, with slap too high an action stops the notes from popping properly and makes them thud more, you will also find a high action if it is very high will kill your sustain, if I was after a tone more like an upright (double) bass one of the ways I would get that tone would be to raise the action very high.

Really you should aim for Fender guideline spec of 2.4mm action at the 17th fret on the E string and 2mm for the G but the ideal for slap would be 2mm at the 17th for the E and a little lower for the G, what I tend to do is start with 2.4mm and then if there is now buzz I lower it to 2.2mm and check for buzz and if there is none then I lower it to 2mm

8 minutes ago, Tdw said:

Is the action maybe higher on the jazz than on the yamaha, string height is pretty important for slap

Good point, a high action will pretty much destroy your slap tone

On 06/02/2022 at 21:23, martin8708 said:

Probably not .

When you turn up to gigs / auditions / jam nights with posh basses , people expect you to be some brilliant virtuoso .

If you take a cheap bass , you tend to exceed their expectations .

+1 Even if I could afford a super expensive bass I wouldn't buy one for this reason, you bring a posh bass and people think "this person means business" and expect a lot, for me they would be very disappointed once they heard me play

10 minutes ago, Misdee said:

I have owned a bass for the last ten years that  has got vintage frets on and I haven't noticed any appreciable difference in fret wear, and it has always had roundwounds on it, albeit nickel rounds.

 

I think the issue is that the smaller vintage frets with enable fewer fret dressings when they eventually do start to become worn.

Thanks, I think I have only had one bass have a fret dressing due to fret wear in all my years of playing so this is reassuring to hear

18 minutes ago, Majid said:

Maybe it is the nature of an active Yamaha.

I am thinking from the posts on this thread that this is the case, on an active bass you can boost frequencies before they even reach the amp which then gives the treble control on the amp more treble to work with which would translate to a more responsive treble control on the amp.  I think you have a couple of options here 1) Have a preamp fitted to the Jazz bass, 2)get an eq pedal or preamp pedal, the pedal in this link has a treble and harmonics control (which is basically like a 2nd treble control) Dr J Sparrow pedal 

You could look at brighter pickups but I would probably advise against going down that rabbit hole

Hi

I have a Fender Vintera P bass that has skinny vintage profile frets  at the moment I am using flatwounds on it and I actually momentarily switched to rounds but pretty much overnight realised that I preferred the flats however if I get a gig (or gigs) that needs that roundwound tone I may switch to rounds.

Was just looking to find out from others who have experience of these type of frets how much fretwear I can expect to see if I did switch to rounds, part of me thinks they may wear faster than jumbo frets but part of me is thinking that ime to see any appreciable wear on jumbo frets usually takes years anyway to maybe these are the same, thanks

7 hours ago, Rusco said:

Hi all - old thread alert but I'm the OP so hopefully it's allowed 🙂

 

After all the kind suggestions and advice I thought I'd come back and tell you what I did.  After a lot of procrastinating I finally bought LaBella DTB Flats to try. They're not the cheapest but thinking they have the history and are a good place to start. First impressions... flats feel strange! After getting used to them I really like them and they certainly give a warmer thump over the stock Fender P strings they replaced. OK they clearly aren't going to work for all genres but I have round wound strung basses for that.

 

I think I'm a convert to the world of flats!

Nice, glad you are getting on with them, I use TI Jazz flats as they can do a good flatwound sound but with the eq set the right way they can do a good convincing rock tone too and through my Sansamp clone that I use they sound downright snarling and aggressive

2 minutes ago, Tdw said:

Hi shoulder pet, I dont exactly disagree with you, I think it depends on what you want in a slap sound, if you want a bright slap sound especially on the pops then I think a tweeter or some other hf component is necessary if you are happier with a less bright slap sound then it may not be necessary. To be fair I don't know how the speaker in this combo performs but from what the op says about the slap sound lacking brightness I suspect the speakers freq range may be an issue.

Yes I suspect you may be right, if the Rumble 100 eq is voiced the same as the 500 them the treble is voiced at 10khz so it would make sense that the speaker may struggle to reproduce this, I also remember that my Rumble was quite heavy on the low end which also didn't help

21 minutes ago, Majid said:

Hi Tdw,

Thanks for your reply.

Rumble 100 doesn’t have a so called high freq horn but it has a bright function I use when I am slapping. Maybe it has the same functionality as tweeter. Right? 

Not exactly, a horn will enable your amp to reproduce the highest frequencies your bass produces, you can still get high frequencies without a horn but the very highest frequencies will not be reproduced.

I had a Rumble 500 and i used to get a bright tone from it by turning up the treble and switching on the bright switch but turning the bass down a quarter or so

18 minutes ago, Sharkfinger said:

Wow,  working bass for free? That's incredibly generous. If I were anywhere near you, I'd be on my way right now.

well, working apart from the bridge pickup but to be fair P basses do fine with just the one pickup

Hi

I am putting my Ibanez Mezzo up for grabs, collection from Croydon area, needs a little attention and unfortunately I dont really have the time to deal with myself, I am sure there is someone out there who does have the time to deal with or is happy to just rock it with just the P pickup. 

The bridge pickup does not work, I have left it in for the sake of aesthetics, the pickguard is a spray paint job, the bass plays pretty well and the P pickup sounds good, wiring is passive with a series/parallel switch for the P pickup

1 hour ago, Bassfinger said:

I what way does the "quality" lag behind the player series?  The player series always seemed a bit average to me for precision of build and finish.

I would agree that the player series is pretty average, if I was buying a p bass and had the £500-600 to spend I would probably look at buying used but some people really like the player series

18 hours ago, ead said:

As a serial J bass user in a 3-piece band I can't say that I have noticed the problem.  I have also trained our guitarist to not boost his low frequencies to leave me space.  I can pretty much use any bass I like this way.

Wow, wish I have been trying to do the same with the guitarist in my band for ages, he has a habit of boosting the bass on the amp and rolling off the tone control so we have a tonne of low end before I have even played a note

22 hours ago, BigRedX said:

If it was either absolutely and utterly perfect in every other way, or I was intending to mod the flip out of it, then I would sort it out myself. Otherwise I'd be asking to send it back hoping that the retailer would give me a discount. If they didn't I'd send it back for a refund.

This

On 15/01/2022 at 14:11, BassAdder27 said:

After trying these new versions of the Schaller S I’ve today removed them from both my basses and gone back to basic “leave strap on” using BassChat rubber strap locks 

 

Last band rehearsal the part fixed to my leather strap starting tuning even though I had tightened them up very tight. 
Im done with them and will stick with the more basic but trustworthy method. 
Although the older Schaller had issues I think this new variant is terrible 

I use this https://www.daddario.com/products/accessories/straps/guitar-and-bass-straps/auto-lock/

I tried the Grolsch washer method but I was not a fan as I have had strap pins work themselves loose using that method and I am not a fan of straplocks, the Daddario strap seems to work just as well and no modifications needed