shoulderpet

Fair enough, have you tried TI jazz flats? They are very low tension, I am using them on my P bass, they do the flatwound thing but you can get a decent rock tone from them too, they are not just a dull thump

It is very puzzling that you find the Roto's to be lower tension, that are known to be pretty much the highest tension flats out there, I wonder if there was a mixup with the gauges at the factory

Whilst I would definitely encourage you to try different value capacitors I really think a proper mudbucker will be your golden ticket, there something about a massively overwound pickup that you cannot really mimic with a different kind of pickup

One that sticks out in my mind is an event my band were involved with, I will leave out the specifics as it is never classy to discuss specific venues etc. Anyway we enquired about the event as we were interested in taking part and it turns out the venue has no amps, no pa, nothing so they asked us if we would lend our amps, pa etc for the event and our lead singer drafts up an agreement that they agree to in order to cover us in case anything happens to our equipment. We got there and it turns out (though no-one explicitly tells us) that we are actually hosting this event. Anyway first thing that happens, after the drumkit, guitar amps etc have been setup, our guitarist who knew full well that he was expected to bring my bass amp turns to me and says "Mark, where is your bass amp" the life drained from my face and after a few minutes of me refusing to plug into the pa he goes off and gets my amp and turns up with it about 10 mins later. After everything is setup we start playing and I still don't to this day know exactly what went wrong but the 2 vocalists just could not get there vocals together, they fudge there timings, forget the lyrics and it is literally like they are both singing different songs from each other, during the break we have to calm our drummer down who is mortified and embarrassed to be there and is threatening to walk and just to add to my own embarrassment a couple of friends who had never been to any of our gigs before decided to come along to this event. Fortunately after the break our singers got there sh!t together and we played well but by that point we had already made ourselves look like clowns

The Epiphone has a strange muddiness in the low mids but without the huge low end of the original mudbuckers, my personal opinion about neck pickups in the extreme neck position are that you either have to have them really overwound and beefy or you need a really defined pickup in that position, the Epiphone pickup is neither of those things and as a result it sounds a bit lacking

I would budget for a mudbucker, the stock pickup in the Epi EB0 looks like one but is not

That is actually really nice, if slab basses didn't hurt my forearm I would probably get one of those

I wasn't a fan either, I quite like flats and nylon tapewounds but these strings once they broke in just sounded a bit limp and gutless, if these were fitted on a new bass I would just think the strings must have gone dead

I dont know about that, I will agree it is too expensive as are most basses in that price range from other brands however I have played both the Mid priced Contemporary Hofner and the more expensive German made Hofner and imo they both compare favourably to offerings by other brands in the same price bracket, the construction on the German Hofners I have played has been top drawer. I strongly suspect that in keeping with the higher price nowadays they are probably better made than they were in the 60s

Thank you for this post, so many misinformed sources on the web claiming that the Hofner was a cheapo budget bass which was never the case

According to the Rotosound webpage the 100-40 flats are a few ibs heavier tension than there Swingbass 105-45 strings, there 105-45 flats are around 214ibs tension but they feel when heavier as they are quite stiff strings

Never really got the love for satin finish necks, more often than not they just look and feel cheap imo, gloss just looks and feels so much better, just my opinion

You're brave putting 760FS on an acoustic

Roto's are usually very high tension, are you sure they are Roto's? TI jazz flats have red silk like Roto's but are low tension, could put be those?

You need one more for Tapewounds

I agree with this, I have brought a number of basses online and returned more basses than I have kept, the funny thing is most of the ones I returned had quality control inspection tags saying they had passed QC so clearly the QC standards for a lot of companies are not particularly high

I wouldn't normally be so quick to make a judgement but I tried 4 P's and 2 J's and they all seemed that way, there was 2 basses out of the lot that didn't have sky high action but even then the build quality, fit and finish etc on those was pretty much on par with my Ibanez mezzo that cost me £200, strangely when I owned a P/J Mustang which was price around the same as these the build quality, fit and finish etc was light years ahead of any of the Player basses I have tried. That being said the fact that you seem to have a decent one says to me that maybe there are a lot of "Monday morning specials" being cranked out and maybe you just have to do some hunting to find the good ones, also I am very fussy with new basses so I may expect more than most people.

I recently tried a few of the MIM Player series P basses and a couple of the Player series Jazz basses, I love Fender basses but tbh I was shocked by the Player series, they all felt really cheap, cheap feeling necks, crappy tuners and most of them had action that was about 4mm high and tbh they didn't feel much different to basses costing a third of the price. The more expensive MIM Fender basses seemed a LOT better, imo it's almost like the Player series is Fender in name only, I wouldn't be surprised if they were identical to the low end Squiers just with a Fender decal

They really are, when I compared to the Player series the Player series felt really cheap in comparison, basically felt like Squiers with Fender decals

And....... I found a crack in the finish of the bass that I did not see when I brought the bass in the shop😥 I went back to the shop half expecting to keep the Vintera as I got it for a good price and it is a cracking bass and I spoke to them about it and played about half a dozen basses P basses in the same price range and a little bit over however compared to the Vintera Precision they all felt a bit cheap, didn't sound as nice, didn't look as nice, didn't play as nice (the Vintera practically plays itself) and had satin finishes and narrow necks (both of which I really dislike), long story short I kept the Vintera P bass. Happy that I tried out the competition and happy that I made the right choice in keeping the bass.

To be honest this must be just about the only bass where I haven't wanted to change the pickguard, my camera doesn't show the colours that well but the gold pickguard is gorgeous in person

And some more pictures, because, well why not

Yes, is a great color, I was pretty psyched to have a P bass that I dont have to change anything to make it look (or play) the way I want it, the colour, the gold pickguard, the gloss neck, visually it ticks so many boxes for me

Yes, I havent used flatwounds for a couple of years and I suspect that with a little bit of a boost in the highs and upper mids I can probably get a pretty biting rock tone from them, haven't used this bass with my band yet, that will be the true test. I am finding with the TI's I am having to be conscious to lighten up my attack a bit, I could raise the action but this plays like butter so I think I will leave it where it is