shoulderpet

Hi Ibanez says on the net that they are 105-45 Daddario Nickels , haven't seen this gauge in Medium scale, were these a custom set that were made for Ibanez, if so I presume they are identical to the long scale 105-45 Nickels just shorter? Thanks

Ok so just to give an update, I have moved this bass on, I was impressed by the features and the overall quality for the price but as the new bass buzz faded I was finding that in spite of being impressed I just didn't click with this bass and I couldn't help feeling that this was a decent bass but lacked personality

I think an Ibanez mezzo is the way to go, I really be dont want to play quality control lottery with Squier (after sending 2 of them back I don't have much confidence in them) and the mezzo seems highly regarded and 2 band eq also, just need to wait for my refund for the Squier to come through

Cool, sounds pretty solid, i'm primarily a 4 string player so I think I will try one out once the lockdown is over

Interesting, I will have to try one out, I am curious about the 5 string version (would be interesting to string it E to C to chords and upper register bass fills)

Hi all My recent attempts to buy a Squier CV Jaguar left me a little disappointed in terms of the quality control (or lack of)in those basses, however one thing that I did notice was that medium scale seems to hit that sweet spot between good playability and good tone, the accoustic tone was more defined than my short scales but the difference in scale length was small enough that if i didn't know it was medium scale I probably wouldn't notice that it was medium rather than short scale. This has me wondering if anything else is out there in medium scale that is good and sub £400 , the Ibanez mezzo ticks a lot of boxes (32" scale length, active eq) but at around £250 I am thinking it is probably not appreciably better than my VM Jaguar bass, what about the (now discontinued) Squier tele bass Thanks

Yeah I usually do basic setups when i get a new instrument (adjust saddle height, tighten truss rod if buzzing from the bottom half of the neck, loosen if buzzing on the first few frets)but I think with this one based on my experience as it is only buzzing on the one fret (albeit very bad fret buzz) that it is the fretwork that is causing issues rather than the neck relief, that being said I would love to be pleasantly surprised so I will try tightening the truss rod a tad and see if it goes.

I didn't, the thing is as it is only on one string at a particular fret it seemed more likely to be cr*ppy fretwork, I will give it a try later tonight

Yeah, its a shame as I really like the look and feel of the bass but imo a bass should be playable with medium action without horrendous fret buzz and should not require the action to be super high to compensate. Always seems strange to me that as musicians we tolerate so much in terms of faults with a bass, we wouldn't tolerate a washing machine with a faulty spin cycle or a tv we could barely hear or a pc that crashes frequently just because they are cheap but with an inexpensive bass we end up justifying issues that shouldn't be there to start with.

Ok so I got the replacement, sadly the replacement is dodgy too 😡 the alarm bells started when i unboxed the bass and the action was about 4mm, I lowered the action to about 2.5mm and there was a horrific buzz on the D string at the 9th fret so I think they caught the fret buzz at the factory and jacked up the action to compensate. As this is 2nd time unlucky I think I'm going to return it for a refund and wait till lockdown is over so I can try one out in person

I really hope that's the case, starting to wish I had put an ad in items wanted instead of buying new

I will give them till Monday, if they still don't know where the bass is then I will contact gear4music

And DHL seems to have lost the replacement , can't fault gear4music, they collected from me and sent out the replacement quickly but thumbs down for DHL whos tracking advised of a delay on Friday that means it wouldn't be delivered so I arranged on their online system to collect from the depot today only to get there and they couldn't find it.

Yeah I mean i always managed to get a decent tone but it almost seems like Fender did the eq section with the mindset of choosing the problem frequencies that you would often choose to cut, that being said the basic tone with everything flat was a decent useable tone

I had the 500watt version and it was a great amp and I got it because at the time it was it had the most features for the lowest cost but tbh I think some of the eq choices are very odd like the treble being 10khz (treble control would be much more effective if they voiced it a bit lower) and the low mids being 280hz (have to be careful not too boost too much on the low mids otherwise the tone gets muddy) but to be fair despite the odd eq choices I always managed to get a decent tone from the amp and the built in overdrive and hf horn are really nice touces

Interesting, looks a lot like a Tanglewood Rebel but not quite the same, I wonder if they were made in the same factory

Great bass part, during the 1st lockdown I had a plan (which sadly I never got round to finishing) of starting a Youtube channel of my bass covers, anyway I filmed several bass covers with the intention of uploading and one of the songs on my list was Rio , anyhow I made a number of attempts at the song and in a band cover and in a band mix my bass playing would have sounded fine but in the context of a bass cover I just could not get the bass part tight enough and after a number of attempts decided I would abandon my bass cover of that song so I have great respect for John Taylor's playing

Honestly at Rickenbacker's price they have no excuse for sloppy quality control, if I paid that much for a bass I would expect a lot

Yeah, the photos dont really show just how different the 2 tones of the neck are but around the 12 fret its practically cherry red and the rest of the neck is (varying shades of) amber , even my wife (who thinks all of my basses look the same) could clearly see that something was up with the neck

Tbh its not the markers so much, when the bass arrived I noticed the markers, then I noticed the white indentations in the finish on the side of the fret board and was weighing up me options about whether I should keep or return. I was very strongly considering keeping the bass , then about an hour later I noticed (and I have no idea how I didn't notice this to start with) that the neck around the 12 fret was practically cherry red (the poor quality photos really dont show the extent of the difference in colour) and that was the decider for me

This is my other issue with slap bass, bass demos where the palyer slaps through 90% of the demo, how am i meant to hear what the bass sounds like? Im not going to slap 90% of the time /Youtube/

This is my problem with a lot of the slap players , this is technically impressive but whats the point? wheres the melody? the song? just sounds like someone w@!k!!g to me

Yeah, some of the 70s basses were real turds and would be firewood today, it always make me laugh the price that vintage Fenders go for when a lot of those 70s Fenders were absolutely terrible basses , then you have the stuff that was considered low end back then like Teisco and Kay that usually weighed a tonne, had pickups you could sing into and hear yourself through your amp, those terrible bridges the sliding bar that many of them had and the tuners that were like bronco tuners but worse.

Ok now that it is daylight again I managed to get a slightly better picture of the 2 tone finish.

To some extent yes I would expect the side dots to have a tint to them, unfortunately due to the camera on my phone (I will try and get a better pciture tomorrow when there is natural light) the pictures dont show just how orange the sid dots are, they start slightly orange which would be expected and then around the 12th fret where there is the 2 tone neck issue they literally look like someone has smeared them with red shoe polish.