nilebodgers

How do they feel compared to RS66s? Less/more rough?

Yes, that was freaky - slap with no thumb!

100% of the time as bare maple stains/wears in a pretty ugly way.

That looks too close at both sides given the fret end bevels. I’d be looking at a custom bone nut with tweaked string spacing to move the outer strings in a bit.

Synth bass on the original recording - time to buy an octave pedal 👍

Nice, but badly needs compression on the pops! (or more if already compressed)

That is the same as Series 6, SMX is completely different with a FET buffer and a valve in parallel. I modelled up the input circuit in LTSpice and at 100% gain the passive input sees approx 13k input impedence, at 90% it is 50k, at 80% is 74k and at lower gains it rises to 120k-ish. The frequency response of the input stage doesn't change significantly and it is -3db down at 13Hz and over 100kHz at the other end. I'd expect the sound with a passive bass (with no switched-on or buffered pedals in line) to change very markedly with gain as the pickups see a different impedence input. It's not frequency-dependent though, so not like a passive tone control. With my engineers hat on I'd never design an input that behaved like that, but the Trace amps were massively successful, so what do I know!

I watched that and some of the other videos and my reaction was “Playing for one year wtf!?!?”, but then I followed the links. A very accomplished jazz drummer and Music college graduate - no wonder it’s good.

Hmmm - I've got the schematics for both series 6 and SMX and there is nothing in there designed to do that. Do you have a reference explaining why+how?

Rick B is great. That playing on Donna Lee just wasn't my thing though, clever as it was. I know this is a very heretical opinion, but I don't like Bass as a solo or lead instrument (either electric or DB). A few bars of breadown with the drums maybe, but nothing further.

I just pop the covers off and stick some little plastic packing pieces on top of the bobbins so the pole pieces are flush. I have done this on both J and P pickups.

Naphtha is a pretty mild solvent, loads of techs use it for cleaning and de-greasing (check out “Daves world of fun stuff” on YouTube for an example - he uses lighter fuel). I’d check carefully before slathering it on a vintage guitar or something with a nitro finish, but modern poly finishes are tough.

I recently noticed a bit of thin black plastic sheet emerging from the back of one of the tuners on my 2008 MIM Jazz. A bit of search turned up this thread on Talkbass: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/machine-head-problem-fender-mim-jazz-bass.1235882/ and this was clearly the same problem. The "slip sheets" (washers) described in that link are 0.3mm thick plastic. That thread didn't go into detail about good ways to fix it so I thought I'd document the process here in-case anyone else has the issue. Materials needed are some 300um or 350um (0.3mm or 0.35mm) Mylar sheet plastic. This is available cheaply for use in stencil making in the UK. I bought an A4 sheet of 350um thickness from ebay for just over £2, so a very cheap fix. This material is suprisingly stiff and pretty tough & slippery, although it can be cut with sharp kitchen scissors. The tricky bit is making a tidy circular hole in the plastic - I used a 7/16 hollow punch of the kind used for leather work/gasket making. I had to sharpen the cutting edge with a grinding wheel in a dremel to enable the punch to cut the mylar and it took a hefty whack with a mallet to go through cleanly in one go. Once the hole was made it is easy to hold the steel spring washer and mylar together and cut round the washer to get the shape. I didn't follow the concave cutout as this is under the worm gear so isn't really visible. Reasemble with a tiny bit of silicone grease (e.g. clear plumbers grease) on the mylar washer and the job is done. I did all four tuners on my Jazz as all the slip sheets were damaged when I dismantled them to check. Of course, the tuners can be replaced with Hipshot HB7s (footprint compatible) at £100+ the set, or other quality tuners at £60-ish if some drilling+filling of holes in the headstock is done. There is nothing much wrong with the original tuners when they are working properly though (22:1 ratio and 315g for the set of 4) and the fix is very cheap. [I also ran a 2mm drill bit down the string hole in the middle of the tuner post while I had the tuners apart to make it a little easier to install the string] Pics of the process (the light grey material is the new mylar):

Bah! On planet earth he didn't show the fast fill at the end of the breakdown. Interesting it was an Aria Pro2. I had an SB700 for many years, but I could never get on with it due to the narrow string spacing at the bridge. He reminds me of the Billy Mack character played by Bill Nighy in "Love Actually".

Naphtha (lighter fuel/Coleman stove fuel) shifts the fretboard gunk much quicker. A capo (On the first fret) and a set of feeler gauges will allow the neck relief to be set accurately. The crimson guitars abrasive fret rubbers are brilliant for polishing frets (the SF grade if they are just a bit dirty/tarnished). A metal fret protector will stop the fretboard getting scuffed. (I much prefer the abrasive rubbers to wire wool as you don’t end up with little metal particles everywhere) To be thorough you could have shown checking and setting intonation and at least checking first fret string clearance even if you weren’t doing anything with the nut. Proper nut files are expensive and it is easy to screw up deepening the slots by over cutting, although not so much on a bass as on a guitar. A good first video though. I had an attempt ages ago at recording myself doing a setup and I was awful on camera - you are much better!

They both sound good. Bass No 2 is a little deeper and punchier to my ear, but there is not a lot in it.

Is this a new thing? I have just started seeing overlay pop up ads sliding In from the left margin when viewing the forum on my iPad (safari). Its really very annoying, especially as they are spammy google ads and not even music-related.

Interesting thread - I have been vaguely looking at the NW guitars Jazz bass necks since I got a s/h Jazz Bass. It has reminded me that I prefer the Jazz neck profile and I am thinking I might want to try a Jazz neck on my P-Bass.

Funny isn’t it. At least in the bass world amps have (mostly) got more advanced and much more portable.

The "take each fret individually down to 1mm" approach assumes the fretboard is completely flat end-to-end. I wonder if it was? I may have missed a post-crowning polish step going up through the abrasive grits?

I saw a YouTube video where someone took a fingerboard off to replace a truss rod and the first thing they did was pull the nut and the last fret and then drill 4 tiny holes through the slots into the neck so guide pins (actually 4 drill bits) could be used to exactly replace the fingerboard in position. They reckoned that would stop it slipping sideways under clamp pressure when glued and minimise any step/bump where fingerboard meets the neck.

Slapped basses all sound very similar to me if they have the same pickup configuration and string type. That is what makes demos frustrating if they are mostly slap.

That is hilarious. How much?!?!

+1 more for the Zoom - it is a great practice tool. I'm using it with an iPad running iReal Pro plugged in to the aux input for my latest attempt to crack jazz walking bass. Having rhythm and chordal context is making it look more achievable this time.