andruca

Well, AFAIK they've used plywood in some cheap ranges. Not saying it IS MDF tho', just that it looks as unattractive for a trans finish.

That body looks like MDF where the photo flame is peeled off, yuck! Seems like a refin should be solid color. I'm lately partial to seafoam green (accidentally, a couple such color basses came my way lately, and I discovered I like it a lot). I love seafoam green Jazzes, with a black pickguard if the neck is maple, white otherwise. You already have the white pickguard, need I say more? 👍 Not that much into matching headstocks personally, so I'd leave the neck alone. Here's my seafoam green "Jazz" to inspire you.

Leo was such a visionary, he designed bass pickups so that Lego Technic wouldn't have to👍

UPDATE: Zoom Effect Manager 2.2.0 works as plug&play with my B1Xfour as with all my other (previous gen) Zooms. And no, effects can't be "migrated" from one gen to the other. It's generation coherent, meaning, depending on the model you connect it shows available effects from any SAME GENERATION devices. The good thing is ZEM also compresses effects for the B1Xfour (same as it does with previous models). I had 80 something FX at 100% memory (previously tuned with zoom-zt2, so no compression). When plugged to ZEM it showed less than 80% used. So I kept adding stuff (mostly more guitar and bass amp/cab/drive sims, the upright effect from the A1four and a couple more reverbs/delays -I keep SFX/REV/DLY categories minimalistic, I don't use those much-). I ended up with 111 effects at 100% memory with ZEM. Not the outrageous 182 effects my MS-60B holds inside, but still real cool 👍

Hi everyone! The Zoom Effect Manager guy did it again. Version 2.2.0 (released last friday) adds support for G1/B1/A1 four/Xfour models. Just awesome. https://zoomeffectmanager.com/en/ EDIT: the site claims any effect can be installed in any device. AFAIK ZDL and ZD2 effects are not interchangeable, but I'm not anywhere near the developer's sapience on the matter so I'll drop by with a veredict as soon as I try this (late afternoon today probably, have just found out about this release).

Exactly my story, just add some 15 years of Stingray in between the Jazz era 🤣 I couldn't live now without at least one exemplar of each bass in "Leo's trinity", but I wasn't always this wise. I don't have a problem with dialing any of them to sound equally like me (meaning equally like crap) 👍 Analogous to that, us not liking any given (properly functioning and set up) bass guitar is many times really not understanding how they WANT to be played. I've been forever clueless as to how P basses WANTED to be played, stubbornly so, so for me they sucked (meaning I sucked). BTW, holy 8 year threadsurrection!

Snake oil and snobbery make for giant SCAMS. I call HUGE B/S.

I'm an avid Zoom tweaker and I love copying sounds, but don't have such a thing as Mike Dirnt's tone figured out. Still I'll try my best to "deconstruct" Mike's tone so, regardless of gear, you get the concept, then can figure out your tone on whatever platform. First thing should be identifying the kinda BASS AND PICKUP COMBINATION used. It's usually P bass or neck pickup (if you have 2) for the P bass songs, and IDK what combos he uses on the Gibson G3 (i.e. "Longview"), but still a wide open 2 pickup bass can sorta' fake most of that. P bass is middier by nature. OTOH, more then one pickup in parallel (as wired on most basses with more than 1 pickup) is more scooped, and so does it sound on GD's tunes, not that P bass mids are tamed or they're reinforced on the G3 to compensate, they sound rather "natural", as they are, to me. The other thing is THE WAY HE PLAYS. Be conscious about it, there's no sounding like Mike Dirnt (and many other punk bass players) without a firm and rhythmic motion, hard picking in general. I can't recommend thin picks enough. I mostly use .60mm Tortex Triangles, and occasionally .73mm Tortex Flex Triangles. I prefer the fluidity and also the non-choking punch of thin picks (there's a limited amount of force you can apply to a thin pick before it starts "compressing" you by bending, great for consistency). Look, there's still people asking for holy grial gear to sound like Geddy, while some have been forever able to do that on just any random Jazz Bass. You gotta mean it from the start, from your hands and your bass. Most important part to get a sound you like. Next is some OVERDRIVE. For this I'd start with a SansAmp emulation (what I use the most in my Zooms). Start with EQ flat and gain/blend at 50/50. You might have to do 2 or 3 patches at various gain and blend levels, you'll find quite some gain variety from song to song. The blend control in SansAmps (and most emulations) does a great job making you lo-fi while keeping good (non-cardboard'ish) lowend. The kinda' distortion you want is grainy, but not hissy. Use the SansAmp EQ for correcting that, and overall shaping to the bass tone you aim at. Probably boost a little bass, give yourself some nice punching foundation. Then I'd use COMPRESSION (some more, as rhe SansAmp already compresses some). Nothing shy here. There's MANY compressors in your Zoom. I mostly use the 160comp emulation. Does the work for me. I do a lot of HC/punk with a variety of bass guitars and for that my compression is sorta' "binary", in that I'm either sounding full blast or I'm just not playing 🤣 Hope you get it, just use a high ratio and lower the threshold down to a point where pick attacks stop hurting and overall tone gets fattened a little (re-adjust to such side effect on the SansAmp EQ as needed). Finally, I'd add noise reduction to any overdrive gain patch, also pretty aggressive, as punk is, so you don't sound like a frying pan when not playing. Zoom's own ZNR noise reduction model works great, just set it to monitor instrument input, not all the chain. That (and the time spent tweaking) should be about it. Overdrive could be anything, I've heard anything from a Tube Screamer to a Metal Zone work with the adequate gain for the task and enough EQ and compression. Try different overdrives, theres LOTS of different characters you fan have from the emulations in that pedal. I'm exemplifying based on SansAmp because I'm sure it's in your B1 four, and also because it's one of the easiest to use and get a good basic tone from. Feel free to inquire further if needed. Hope I helped.

I've owned a CV-5 and loved it, except for the fact that despite the J-buckers' and coil tap switches' versatility it couldn't sound like a Jazz Bass. I recently pulled the trigger on a J5 and totally love it. Schecter is awesome quality, and their thin C neck profile is just superb 👍

I'd start with the cheap. All you hear in these clips is recorded with a Zoom MS-60B (it's a review, just linking the sound demo points), probably 60€ used. It can do SansAmp (has an emulation from factory), it can do Darkglass (a blendable RAT emulation fakes it nicely, further Zoom generations have a specific Darkglass emulation I definitely like a lot less than this -sounds BOXY-). I plug into any amp/PA/interface with these tones and they just work. My "clean" SansAmp tone, what I use for anything fingerstyle/slap... My overdriven SansAmp (Ampeg'ish) tone, what I usually use for picked punk/HC or heavy handed fingerstyle... My Darkglass tone, what I use for modern metal, almost exclusively with a pick... I've always found it EASY to copy any tone with Zoom's MultiStomp/B3/B1on/B1Xon generation. Just to give you an example, I've been happy with GumaDRIVE (B3K clone) pedal for a couple weeks after building it with my bro. That was until I took about 15min to have both units side by side and cloned the tone with a Zoom. I've used the GumaDRIVE for recording only eversince. Zooms can simply sound any way you like, there's MANY flavors of each effect to choose from (specially when it comes to overdrives), and effects that need it have a blend parameters to mix in uneffected signal. It's ultra flexible. You just need to know what you want and understand enough not to just randomly move knobs (and also be familiar/comfortable with tweaking, not for everybody, I know). There is a bass Metal Zone emulation on Zooms too, if you'd like to explore what Danny Sapko suggests here (somewhat effective, but original tone is more fuzzy -I like it less-, but you can also get that from a Zoom)...

True. I own the same bass (5 string also). It's comfortable to play despite the thick neck. I've played the 4 string RockBasses on several occasions, don't know the specs but it seemed like regular 19mm spacing to me. Thing is the Star Bass is probably not the best example of acoustic/hollow sounding bass the OP is asking for. It's Jazz Bass'ish, but fatter, not that much hollow honk. Still, can definitely get in the beatlesque ballpark on flats (the shorter 32" scale 4 string is better at that). It reacts like a solid body too (no microphonics or feedback) and also the feel is more that of a solid body bass (a solid maple block runs all along the center of the body). One with MASSIVE sustain BTW. I got mine because I gave up dealing with the unpredictability of ABGs/semihollows in different spaces for my occasional amplified acoustic gigs. I can more then fake it now with the Star Bass' looks while having proper performance, with a tone that still totally cuts it for acoustic gigs. Not the purest of approaches to "acoustic" gigs, I know I'm cheating 😅

I LIKE IT! Does that Aguilar have 4 wires? I still think that bass would give you much more if coil tapped. Just got back my Ibanez ATK 405 (MIK, MM+J too) and I've yet to find a bass that's better at both the all open Jazz tone and the Musicman tone (with some EQing). FYI, the ATK pickup is about 1cm closer to the bridge than a Musicman's. IME, if you have a humbucker combined with a single coil you NEED a coil tap. I.e., I'm really surprised Sire didn't think of a coil tap for the humbuckers in Z series basses. A deal breaker for me (and the reason why Z7s can't do a plain Jazz tone). I'll be following. I'd love to hear how your VMM sounds just playing with the VVT and that humbucker fixed in series 👍

I've just bought back the only bass I've ever regretted selling, 2001 MIK Ibanez ATK-405. Sound samples from back in the day. Will definitely do some review/samples video soon. EDIT: adding "review" video...

Sorry to threadsurrect. I was looking for alternatives to replace my usual Warwick Red NICKELS (not to be confused with their ugly steels), as dead new string occurence (usually the E string) has lately become more frequent. I must make clear I started to buy these 'cause they're cheap, but I've also been a Slinky's and Magma endorser, and I'd place these Red Nickels in between, definitely better than Ernie Balls (I hate the prolongued "half dead" zone they enter shortly after new), just not as nice as old Magmas I used (one of the finest string brands I've ever used). I really prefer the Warwick Red Nickels to most top name brands. They LAST, with proper tone, AND brightness, way more than average. I've just tried these Legacy strings and, OMG, do they suck. They come "pre-dead". I mean you can tell they're not dead, but they're dark sounding and it just takes them a few hours of playing to go from there to properly certified dead. Killing strings has never been of particular concern to me, as my hands don't sweat. But these JUST DIE RIDICULOUSLY FAST, no matter what. They're also too stiff. I've opened two 5 string sets so far. Still have two more and a 4 string set in stock, which I'll probably never use. They're shockingly bad for "rebranded Rotosounds" (which I doubt they are despite some users' claims, unless Rotosound is going sideways, badly, IDK, haven't bought Rotos recently). Only thing I like about these Legacys is the minimal packaging, this is how all strings should be packed. That's about my review 😢

I've posted a lot, just search. Only recently I've decided enough Turdtolini scam is enough, and started flaming them this abundantly, whenever the subject comes up. No need for others to repeat my expensive mistakes 🤣