Aidan63

As per the 'rules' - i.e. pics or it didn't happen I bought this used Fallout Tribute bass from an Ebay seller a couple of weekends back. Some of you may have seen my post about set up, but no one replied and t'internet wasn't a lot of help; G&L seem pretty light on technical info, and very good at regurgitating the 'Leo's final and best designs' mantra, which may in some way have been responsible for/indicitive of their demise. When I received it it had a very high action and round-wounds on and whilst it played ok it sounded very clanky to my ear, which my playing emphasised 😄 So I fitted a set of very used long scale D'Addario tape-wounds, which went on okay and lowered the action and adjusted the intonation to suit and now I am well happy, tamed it nicely so the single coil sound is pretty much Fender, just with higher output, and less tone variation, and the Parallel and OMG sounds are different and usable. PO/Tech/G&L ? had already recut the nut nice and low, but hadn't thinned the height at all so the high strings are buried, but that can wait till next time the strings come off. I gave the fingerboard a clean and a light oil, nice piece of rosewood. I did try and buy the last new one that GuitarGuitar had at the Epsom store, but I couldn't get them to budge on the price, or admit it was on display; it didn't get discounted for xmas or January online, but week after NY someone bought it (or it was disposed of otherwise) - I bet it finally got cleared out on an in store manager's special deal, as they need to make space for new stock post NAMM. One question for the hive, has anyone found a gig bag that isn't full size that will take it, the Gator XL guitar bag that takes the Mustang is too short as the Fallout is that bit longer overall with the slightly neck-ward bridge placement and the slightly longer headstock.

David put up for sale a set of flat wound guitar strings, which my co-jammer friend quite fancied so I bought them and a couple of days picked them up at my local InPost collection point at my local shop. Nice and easy and pleasant buy. Thank you.

China hasn't seen much if any downturn in exports to the world, including to the US, over the last year despite the tariffs and political interference, there are plenty of Chinese made US owned brands in the musical instrument industry, so all that seems to be changing is the old brands are losing sales or having to increasingly manufacture abroad, but final QC in US is expensive, so how that model works for some of these companies will likely change, it was part of the final nail in coffin for G&L. PRS have said they will be scaling back their SE production I believe as the market has become saturated and sales reduced with so much used product diluting new sales.

No worries, I just set it up as if it was a Fender and dialled in my usual settings (10 thou relief and 2.4mm string height at the 12th fret) and with the tapewounds (very used set of long scale D'Addarios) it has tamed the clank nicely and I am digging it a lot. It's more even across the strings than my mustangs and I haven't touched the pickup at all. The E and G string saddles are nearly on the deck though. It arrived with well over 3mm string height which made me more clanky especially with the 19mm spacing at the bridge to have to get used to like I was playing long scale again. Might take a bit to dial in with my usual pedals and settings as the output from it is so strong, so might not need the usual boost from the RC Booster that I use with passive basses, it's weird finally turning the input gain on the Double4 down to around half, instead of the usual full setting I use whilst wishing there was more input gain (hence the RCBooster). Not having the volume always on full is cool, more sonic variation available, and the tone control is much more subtle (with less extremes) than usual Fender set up, I haven't had a look under the hood so not sure how they get the OMG sound and what value cap(s?) and pots are in play. If anyone has an unwanted black or white pickguard for it I'd be interested, though the tort isn't unbearable, as it's fairly dark and not too red.

I recently acquired one of these, a Tribute version, and I wonder if anyone has a spec setup for it, there doesn't seem to be one on G&Ls site and a quick search on the Guitars by Leo site just brings up a spec from Ed Friedland for his M or is it L 2500 which isn't directly comparable being long scale, 5 string, and twin pickup. Just asking because the MFD pickup is a bit different to the single coils I am familiar with. I'm planning on popping some Nylon Tapewounds on, as I don't play roundwounds (too clanky and hard on the fingers for me) that are on it. I'll figure it out but always useful to have a base spec to start from. Thank you for reading

For balance, I won a bass on Ebay auction late Sunday evening [after my bed time] (bit surprised no one else bid on it tbh as there were 40 plus watching it); paid first thing Monday morning, Monday early evening seller sent the tracking info and expressed hope it would ship Tuesday enclosing picture of package and label; it did get collected, tracking updated on collection and later that evening to show at hub, then this morning email saying delivery today and 12.07 the driver arrived and knocked on next door unit and, as Gary wasn't in, put it in his shed and dropped a note through the door to say in shed. I heard him knock so went round and asked, guitar box, this size ? Yes he confirmed, I said it's for me unit 7, he got the parcel back out of shed and sure enough my name and my Unit number on the label, so he handed it over, but also showed me his delivery app which clearly had the address as Unit 6 - now how does a scanned label correctly addressed end up creating an entry on a drop list with the wrong number on it, that shouldn't be possible, someone somewhere must have done a manual data entry, I guess when they were assigning the parcels to the subcontractor Polish driver who is actually covering half our district, because all the Parcelforce drivers who could left their employ over the last couple of years and they can't recruit new drivers on the new Ts&Cs they are offering now they are owned by some foreign billionaire. We've had 3 new PF drivers who all left inside a week in the last year, one of whom is now a Sainsbury delivery driver, which isn't a well paid job, but less hassle and stress than working for PF as he was happy to tell me last month when he delivered my beanz and muesli 🙃 We are lucky here, the posties do a great job and collect and deliver a lot of the smaller PF items, even though its more work for them for which they get diddly squat for and the Posties' depot is 25 miles from the PF one. It does show sometimes as the stuff collected doesn't always make the trunk run to the regional hub that night, but they do deliver everything they receive as soon as possible, often a day earlier than expected as they like to clear the decks each day as much as possible. Now we have a regular Evri driver again even they are pretty reliable, the problem with Evri seems to be collections from drop off shops (autogenerated manifests not actually checked against packages I reckon) and theft and kpi driven prioritisation at the central hub - in last year 4 packages lost or delayed by up to a month, in every case fine till supposedly at the hub. The one that arrived after a month had clearly been found on the naughty step at the drop off location a few weeks later. Parcel companies can all hit a KPI of 99.95+% daily, it's what they do with the 0.05% of a million packages that is the difference between them, and none excel with those, but some seem to take more responsibility than others.

Looking at the 3 that PeachGuitars have currently listed online you can see the pics of each instrument, 1 is well matched, the other 2 are not but are both actually visually interesting so would be acceptable and are arguably unique, but if the book matched finish was important I'd choose the best one off PeachGuitars, but obviously the extra 10% unless you can get them to price match..

Nice and very pleasant sale of a pedal to Bernie, paid quickly, no chipping me on the price and asked me to arrange delivery for optimal day for him and all went well despite Royal Mail's tracking online being rubbish on that day - but all arrived as planned. Bernie got back to me to say he's a happy bunny and all is good.

A quick search on here didn't seem to throw this particular instrument up, I am wondering if anyone has any experience of them ? Looks like a lot to like, but of course the maybe usual Fender PJ downside too, but for the money looks a pretty attractive option, rolled Rosewood fingerboard - or maple if you prefer and some pretty colours; not quite a JMJ but they are silly money now (seemed expensive when they came out but almost doubled in price since and if you have an old one you can sell now for more than you paid for it it seems) - just a shame it's the only way to get that actual pickup but doesn't justify the price imho and I really don't like the formulaic relic job. so wondering....

Paul posted a wanted and I offered him a PJ (no surprises) bare body that I had picked up off the forum and not got around to building up, and in the course of our comms I was also able to offer a set of aerodyne pickups and covers that I had acquired to suit. Quickly paid, and Paul quickly messaged to let me know it had arrived and he was happy and posted feedback. Thank you for your purchase, I look forward to seeing the completed bass. GLWTB

Looks great; handcrafted in Brazil, what make is that ?

Pete bought a pedal I had up for sale; nice easy transaction; respect; thank you

Sounds great, nicely bass forward, but I couldn't make out the lyrics at all, 'kissing you' I think I heard but that was about it - I don't know how the punk producers did it but back in the 70s we could hear pretty much all the words over the instruments, or at least the bands I listened to, pistols, vibrators, undertones, buzzcocks et al, Siouxie was a bit vague sounding sometimes, maybe that's why I preferred the pretenders Great retro video, is MTV still a thing ?

one oddness is if you post the thread without pics and subsequently add them to the thread by editing the software does not add a thumbnail, as I found with a couple of listings recently

Sold Hutton a pedal, super chap, paid and let me know he'd received it and was happy too, all good, thank you

Is it an American made neck with the Bullet trussrod (1974-82) ? Maybe the adjuster has been changed if so as it isn't bullet shaped

So they moved the bridge closer to the neck by the look of it, so they won't be much shorter in reach than a 33" bass or smaller bodied and likely to be neck dive prone surely - I don't get it

what size allen key does it take, if its a 1.5mm then its probably M3 like most metric saddle screws

bump

Is it just me, or has anyone else found that Mustang pickups are prone to stripping the adjustment threading in their bases ? My Classic Vibe 60s Mustang bass came with really tight scratchplate to pickup cover clearance (which also caused some ghosting) and the threads in the original pickups stripped out because the cover wasn't free to move when being adjusted for height, so I ended up making some steel plates to fit under the pickups and drilled and tapped them to M3 (which is the screw originally fitted) and clearanced the guard a little so they could move a bit more freely. But I ended up changing the pickups for Nordstrands - but the holes in the Nordstrands were smaller than M3 and little spare material around the outside to allow for using M3s, so I ended up having to buy some smaller diameter US imperial screws with 28tpi, like many guitar humbuckers use, and they have been okay, but after changing strings today I found the string balance a little out so went to adjust the height and pop, stripped the thread in the EA pickup at the A end, so now I'm going to have to pull the scratch plate and probably de-solder the pickups and fanny on again making some plates to achieve adjustability. I know the Mustang was a cheaper instrument originally but for frells sake why haven't the pickup manufacturers moved to use proper metal threaded inserts in the pickup bass instead of relying on a small hole in the base which is made out of fibreboard and reliant on the adjustment screw cutting a thread and then not wearing the fine threads or the base plate splitting when working under tension from the springs. Leo did not get this right, imho, and afaic the modern pickup makers are equally culpable for not improving the basic design, just copying it, for cheapness and originalities sake. I wonder if this is part of the reason so many Mustangs from Fender now have Precision pickups in them, not because they sound better but because they are less likely to suffer adjustment failure issues. ? grrrrr, colour me pissed 😈 I'm tempted to just modify the instrument to take the Fideltron pickup I have in my spares box, but that is a big job and I could end up buggering it up completely

I actually liked groundwounds a lot when I tried them on mine, different attack to the flats, so much so, I cut them down and tried them on my Lionel fretless, now also sold, but I still have the strings if anyone wants to try them on a non through body strung shortie (ie not a Mustang) with 4 in a row headstock, though I guess you could also fit them on a 3+1 or 2+2 headed shortie.

Absolutely it can be repaired Maybe take the string tension off slightly to help ease the crack and keep it clean so there's no contaminants to interfere with the glue up All things being equal it should be stronger than ever after repair Plenty of Gibson guitars with repaired headstocks following complete breaks out there so skills are well established