andruca

More photos, PLEASE!

Voilá, I'm GUYKERed, for good. These blow the Barts out of the (indistinct) mud. These are single coils and Barts are wired in single coil here too (they are MUCH WORSE than you hear here stock, in series). Only con is the Guykers have less gain, so I've recorded both passive and active with a +6db connection the onboard has (still, flat EQ). It compensates for the colder pickups. Didn't move any gain nor relative volumes between changes, so the volume proportion is faithful.

'round here they're nowhere to be seen used, I think I've only seen a 1505MS offered some months ago in my usual 2nd hand online outlets. I just guess the pickups might be a turnoff. I got fed up within 3 days of having the bass, then rewired them for good.

Hi y'all! Just 2 weeks ago I wouldn't have even imagined I'd ever own a bass like this. I accidentally ran into an ad for an Ibanez EHB1005MS for less than half the new price (presumably because of an issue with a tuner). I made my homework, checked for monorail bridge+tuner prices and made sure I could repair whatever issue for cheap, and pulled the trigger, with MOSTLY questions (many firsts, first headless, first multiscale, first bass with the horrible Bart BH2s, etc.), but that of the "investment", being that cheap, if I don't happen to like it I can get rid of it losing no money, or even earning some. On a side note, I've been looking for a cheap travel bass. I know this is not as cheap as I'd wanted, but it's a hell of a travel bass (as per dimensions) and much more, a perfectly competent instrument. The bass happened to work OK, no tuner problem, 100% user error AFAICT. I don't know what string gauges were on that bass, but they were THICK, and the SUPOSED G string measured thicker than my regular (.065) D. Being that the scale for that string is 33", you will always max out the tuner threading before reaching pitch. WIth my usual strings it works perfectly and I have lots of threading left in the tuner. BTW, no need for weird string sets on this bass either. The same as a Schecter CV-5 I used to own, my usual Warwick Red Label Nickels are long enough, there's about 1cm of string winding left past the nut. Surprisingly I like the bass a lot. Plays wonderfully and has lots of nice features. It has 2 problems tho', one's stupid, the other is a REAL problem. The stupid thing has to do with fret markers. The front markers apparently aren't for the player, as you CAN'T SEE THEM, the low B string completely covers them from your viewpoint when playing. The side Luminlay dots are nice... IN THE DARK, AS IN NATURAL LIGHT THEY GET COMPLETELY LOST. I don't rely on markers much, but being this my 1st multiscale I'd love to have clear markers for the upper register, where frets are more tilted, at least while I adapt, as I occasionally might get lost. Nothing some stickers won't correct. Now the real issue with this bass is the crappy Bart BH2s (not real Bartolinis, but a "licensed copy" some chinese manufacturer produces for Ibanez), which come wired in series and sound totally DEAD (excessively and unnaturally scooped). I don't have a problem using a soldering iron, so I rewired both as single coils (neck side coil of each PU). I don't discard going the Nordy Big Splits route in the future, but the change to single coils at least made that necessity les urgent, it's the only way I find these BH2 pickups acceptable, they're beyond crappy. It's silly that Ibanez offers this bass with such poor pickups (IDK about you, but I DON'T PAY 1200-1300€ FOR DEAD PICKUPS). But also, the next EHB/MS model up is simply paying 200-300$/€ more for just pretty wood, USELESS. You have to pay 500$/€ more to get Nordstrands (plus the useles fancy wood, guess you can't avoid that). Just don't get it, my Sire V3, at 1/3 the new price, has 10X better pickups. I insist, once rewired to single coil the bass sounds a lot better. Not as good as the demos I hear with Nordstrands, but definitely a "normal" usable bass guitar. The rest of the bass is awesome, comfortable, light, steel frets, the finishing, the neck profile (sorta' D, but as skinny front to back as SRs), the roasted maple, the birdseye in the fretboard, I even find the aesthetics on this graceful, or let's say it could be worse (it could also be a single cut, for the ultimate aberration). Here's a clip I've recorded with the EHB, a song by Argentinean supergroup Divididos. The EHB here does a great "impersonation" of the original neck pickup Jazz Bass tone, with highs cut and lows slightly boosted. My stable looks like this now...

I haven't tried the RainSel, but AFAIK, when you use the stock LineSel effect you just bypass the rest of the chain (after the LineSel) when it's on. With the RainSel it's the same, you just have 2 extra parameters to blend in dry signal (from the input) and wet signal (so far int he chain, remember everything after the RainSel is bypassed). The stock LineSel is simply ment to do the bypassing. You get your sound, as wet as it might be right before the LineSel.

V2 works fine. Windows will just just ask you to exhaustion if it's legit, but it should run.

Just early this week I laid down 2 bass tracks for my band (fast melodic HC), both in drop D. Really like the tone. Jazz Bass definitely, but more aggressive and "glassier" highs. And it plays amazing. Will link a drums+bass sample once I have one.

Oh, yes, just go to the folder C:\Program Files(with or without "x86" and there should be a directory "ZoomEffectManager", and inside there's a .EXE file for ZEM. Create a shortcut to it and move it to the desktop. Went thru' the same when I installed, just didn't remember that when answering before, sorry.

AFAIK it's legit. I use it often and have version 2.1.1 (latest, released feb-2023) since some 6 months ago. Works great, even let me convert my MS-60B to an MS-50G (6 FX slots, it will do that too). The download page is https://zoomeffectmanager.com/en/download/ Make sure no antivirus/antimalware rule is blocking your download.

After my last acquisition (the flying samurai Yammie) I think my collection is gonna be stable for some time now. L to R: Epiphone EB-0, 2003&1997 EBMM Stingray5s, 2011 MIK Warwick Pro Series Star Bass 5, Harley Benton P bass kit (now a fretless 5 string PJ), Harley Benton PB-20, Sire V3 5er, 2000 Yamaha SBV-500.

Standard 34" scale. Looks small, I know, even my Stingray5s look like guitars on me 🤣

Hi everyone 😘 I've been good in 2023, so the Three Wise Men brought me a 2000 made in Taiwan Yamaha SBV-500, which I had been craving for the last decade or so. Bass came from Japan for a great price. It's in good condition, has a small (non structurally compromising) crack going on from the E string tuner screw, apparently repaired (doesn't move and closer inspection reveals what looks like a glue line). Also it had a lot of surface rust on polepieces and screws (pickguard, pickups). Looked like it lived in a demanding environment (highly humid or beach zone, I guess). Nothing to worry too much about. I scraped it all away with sime sandpaper and steel wool (only steel wool for the polepieces). Also swapped the factory knobs (which I don't like) for those chickenheads. Took some time to scrub the back of the neck with some scotchbrite pads too, not that the finish was sticky bright, but it's even nicer to play now. Also I shielded the bass cavities. This is the 3rd bass I shield (did it to a G&L L-1505 and a cheap parts Jazz before). I WON'T DO IT AGAIN, NOT WORTH IT, no results really, hum reduction is negligible or inexistent. The sounds amazing. It's like a more aggressive Jazz Bass tone. Has a really skinny sharp C profiled neck (less than 20mm thick @fret 1), which makes it also play awesome. Here's some pictures (or it didn't happen)... This is how she looked all rusty... Thihs is how it came out after cleaning rust... This is the aforementioned crack... Time and coper tape miserably wasted... Detail of the scrub work on the back of the neck... And last, but not least, a bass cover vid (very appropriate song for the bass), so you can hear how it sounds...

Holy... Z7! I owned a SBMM Ray35 for over a year. I expect that Z7 to be better. My Sire V3 5er is definitely same quality league, at 1/3 the price new. Now, "P style"? Why?

There should be no difference in fact. Just higher headroom => lower distortion, which is not an issue if your pickups' gain don't clip the onboard preamp in the first place. Some claim a cleaner/richer tone, that's exactly how lack of distortion sounds to me. Some poorly designed/fitted onboards do benefit from the 18V upgrade. Most if not all are designed to work with a wide power supply range, so manufacturers/builders/upgraders decide whether to prescribe 9 or 18V based on the output gain of their pickups of choice. I know a couple examples of instruments with onboard preamps clipping from factory. One is most entry level Sterling By Musicmans. You don't even have to boost anything to get them to distort (in an ugly non-musical way), you're out of headroom just by digging in. The other is the Q-mix some Yamaha BBs used to come equipped with. Slightly boosting anything would make mine (2 BB-615s I owned) fart. They stopped distorting when fed 18V (the preamp still sucked, ended up swapping both for ~20€ 3-band Artecs, WAY better, and OK at 9V). So. If your EMGs were already clean sounding the gain might perfectly be, as you've experienced, close to none.

That was only because I already had the hole in there. Otherwise I would've gone with a single 22nF cap (my fave value for passive tone).