itu

Holy Paderewski, a new split-fret from Steve Chick! Straight from maestro himself, or does he have a distributor at this end of the world? How much was it? A lot, presumably.

I am too far away, but bartolini has reasonable and legible pages. Their electronics are not so complicated. Blend, vol, active tone capsule, output.

As Rics are discussed here in general, was it so that the 4-string models are 4000 (single pickup), 4001 (double pickup), 4002 (rare special model?), 4003 (a renamed 4001), 4004 (Cheyenne or so), and the semiacoustic 4005? Rose-Morris had few special model names of these. Oh dear and of course... answers to my questions can be found from: http://www.rickbeat.com/

If you even think about preamp (John East...), you can tweak the basic sound quite some. On the other hand, if the pickups do not produce something, the preamp cannot create that either. I see a preamp as an enhancer. bartolini, Delano, Lollar, EMG, q-tuner, SD, DiMarzio, there are so many possibilities... if you even consider individual makers, the possibilities become endless. Body, a chambered one, if the weight is an important issue. Screw inserts, top loaded bridge helps while restringing, and lightweight tuners... remember to grease the truss rod before installation. Helps a lot in the future.

Very good points! Hi- (passive) and lo-Z (active) basses drive certain pedals very differently. My experience has been that compressors and OD/fuzz/dist are the ones that need test driving. I discussed about this with one pedal maker, who was saying the same: different signals, different results. Try before you buy. Many pedals have circuitry that change the signal level or impedance, and these fx combinations may become very different when working together.

Yes, I know, Guild Ashbory fits the bill only partially, but I would add it to the list. Fun to play, complicated body shape.

Half fretted necks, there were quite a few makers back then. Ibanez Ashula (2 models) was mentioned, too.

IE Divaricator can mix nearly any effect on top of the bass frequencies. I use 400 Hz as the x-over f. It does not work for envelope filters and few others, but most of the basic effects work just fine.

A bit like Musima, but the Phillips screws are too modern.

If the basic specs were clear (scale length, amount of strings, pickups...), the question about a special model is mostly about design. If our basses were like Diddley's square instruments, a J shaped body would be radical. To get a dozen of players behind a J design might be hard. Take some time to sketch the unit and listen to the comments. Only if they are reasonable, make changes. A basschat.co.uk instrument could be rad or radical, but definitely different. As said before, no need to copy existing shapes.

I will paste this text here, too: I thought that this (no logo thing) has to be confirmed, so I wrote to bartolini. Yes, they said, they do have produced few pickups without logos. No brands, projects, or artists were mentioned. It is possible, now we all know it.

Where could I possibly buy one...?

Isn't Aguilar only a tone tweaking unit, while John East and AGC (by J. E.?) are full mixers with active blend and all? Aguilar can be compared to Sadowsky and Artec, while J. E. belongs to the very few like EMG and Audere. The latter have a low impedance mixing which is rare and does not load the pickups (=the sound is not affected). Basic passive blend is a simple pot which has an effect on the pickup frequency response.

Sound. An instrument may look and feel good, but everything else comes after the sound. I may forget many things and issues while playing because I love the sound of the bass.

If money and weight was not an object, a Mesa 400+ and maybe a 4 x 10" or 2 x 12" or even a 4 x 12". That would be it! I had had one chance to play such Mesa in a gig. Loud, tough sound! Now my workhorse is a Glockenklang Soul. Works really well and weighs 24 lbs, which is about 1/10th of the 400+. Well, Mesa is actually 70 lbs.

Old Peaveys have something that resembles a comp, and GK micro series combos have comps. Sessionette bass amps had a switchable one pot comp. Some kind soul had opened up the Spectra's settings. I moved them to my HyperGravity and now I have four knobs to tweak the settings. Very powerful.

No, my suggestion is not free, but it is effective. Take a lesson or few from a teacher. Very efficient.

I had started playing piano at the age of 5, and was in music schools until I was like 25, so school gave me friends, not any musical education. This is like my son playing basketball in a wonderful team and the school teacher trying to tell him something about his playing skills. Or when I went to do my military service and my condition started to go down. There was simply not enough sports. When I was a kid at school there were levels in maths: if you were good enough you could learn more. Things have changed later on when everybody has to have an equal chance not to learn too much...

And please: cut the quotes a bit, there's no need to repeat everything.

There is also this former Modulus neck builder, whose name I tend to forget... Jerry Dorsch. He has built several necks for those who find him. He is in States, so customs etc. may affect the price quite a lot.

Basslab, another German company, any comments on that?

I certainly would try to find something that I already have. I can not see any benefit in doing this kind of sell-all-buy-something. If I use a retroscope, and think about the past, I do see many purchases that were funny and unnecessary. Live and learn...

Modulus Quantum neck (5-string) is very thin from the fretboard to the back, and 17.5 mm string spacing. Ibanez Veasley model (6-string) has 14 mm string spacing.