zaksnaporaz

Yes, I do love the sound of good woods: I am currently experimenting with a p-bass of which I once found a cheap body made of wood layers (is that called plywood ?), it all started from there. But even with a good Fralin pickup the tone was perhaps fairly deep and with decent treble, but lacking the nice resonant throaty mids and tight bass you'd expect from a good ole p-bass. So I'm currently getting a zebrano wood body made, I'm curious to see the result... But let's get back to graphite necks: I think the high mids grit is just as addictive as good wood tone can be, but in another way. It might be or not be your cup of tea, but I don't think one is inferior to the other - unlike cheap woods that definitely are a trade off to the tone, no matter how good the pickup is. And talking about pickups, I generally don't think much of the series wound humbuckers - with the exception of the p-bass split coil that sure is series wound but with only one of the pickups giving the tone of a note, the other just acting like a dummy for hum cancellation and mild low pass filter. That is exactly why I really like Stingrays much better than Sterlings that feature a ceramic pickup wound in such way to sound decent when wired in series, but with the result of sounding a bit lame when wired in parallel: actually to my ears it does not sound very good in any of the wiring positions. On the contrary a good old Stingray just sounds fantastic with that typical parallel coils and alnico magnets tone that - fair enough - might not be everybodys cup of tea. No wonder that I wasn't digging the MM Status pickup very much, although it is not too bad. But that AlnicoV SD pickup in parallel wiring that it's in there now just makes that bass shine, I can't stop playing it...it's like I grabbed its sweet spot or G-spot.

Hi, I have a Smart Bass from Status since 2005, with ash body and a single MM pickup. I went for that pickup because I like the Stingray kind of tone, but was a bit disappointed after trying it for the first time. What I liked was that particular bright and grinding overtone sound typical of a graphite neck combined with a body wood such as ash. What I disliked was the fundamental tone, with a too much lower-mids shifted ground tone (sounds dull, somewhat blurred and unsweet to my ears, but the loads of overtones are masking this so it's not easy to pinpoint) and harmonics not being very similar to the typical Stingray tone I was after. So I asked to Rob Green to please explain, and all he replied was that the Status pickup - unlike the Stingray - features ceramic blade magnets with the 2 coils wired in series. I thought oh well there we go and went to check whether I could wire the pickup coils in parallel like on Stingrays ; but unfortunately there are only 2 wires coming off the totally sealed Status pickup, so I just gave up and went on for a few years while experimenting on other basses also with a MM pickup, actually ending up purchasing a Stingray. It wasn't until recently that I decided to try and change the pickup on my Status Smart Bass. So I went for a Seymour Duncan SMB-4A (AlnicoV) replacement pickup that I had mounted on another bass, finally changing it for a softer Bartolini MMC that was better coping with the rather rigid tonal characteristic of that other bass. Once the Seymour pickup installed in the Smart Bass, I tried a few wirings but ended up keeping the parallel: this significantly changed the tone ...for the better ! Now the fundamental is nicely punchy and focused (like on a Stingray) and the overtones - although not essentially different from before - do feature that particular and very addictive "dzing" so typical of Stingrays. Hah, I must say I'm very happy about my modification and am finally going to keep my Smart Bass instead of try selling it away as I was perhaps finally planning to do: it sure is a very nice alternative to my Stingray, with these graphite neck -like overtones (a bit similar to the Modulus Flea bass). And its construction is really awesome - that's gotta be said about Status !! cheers zak