Obrienp

I guess I do. I don’t have a bass that cost more than £1K but the one that cost the most (used Maruszczyk Elwood 4a 32”) is my main bass with one band. I couldn’t afford to replace it with a new one now and I would be upset if it was nicked, or seriously damaged but instruments are not ornaments, you have to use them. The Maruszczyk doesn’t get any audience attention but the much cheaper Guild Starfire 1 does. I guess the latter is big, red and retro looking.

Nice solo Daryl! Thought it sounded great overall. I get what you mean about the guitar sounding a bit out on occasions but probably wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out. That’s Strats in a hot environment for you though.

Hi, sorry for the delay. These are the measurements. Nut to front edge of the neck pickup 65 cm, 25 5/8”. I’m not sure how the zero fret affects that, so perhaps the distance from the 12th fret is more useful: 12th fret to front edge of the neck pickup is 24 cm, 9 1/2”. I hope that helps. Good luck with the mods. We look forward to seeing the results on here. 👍

That’s good about the Ultra Jazz. I won’t be able to do the measurements until tomorrow I’m afraid.

Fair enough regarding active basses. I only ever use my active bass in passive mode. Each to our own. The parallel serial switch sounds like a good idea. Worth going after that. I forgot about the pickguard. That should cover up any unsightly holes and rough edges. Just keep in mind what I said about the bridge pickup on the Mezzo. It may be difficult to find a direct replacement of the same size. Worth checking the dimensions before ordering, unless you want to do some woodwork there too. There is no pickguard there to cover up any rough edges. You don’t need to change the original barrel jack socket. You can use the extra ring terminal as an additional ground connection, or just ignore it. I don’t really like barrel jack sockets on basses and they do tend to develop faults. Also I don’t think the sockets Ibanez use are particularly good quality but that’s just my personal preference. I have a Maruszczyk Elwood (Jazz bass clone) medium scale at home. I will measure the front pickup location for you when I get home. I’m not sure if it is in the ideal position but it sounds very good to my ears.

Wow,a lot to answer there. Simply, yes you can go passive many have done it. You can have a blend pot but you need to get one with a shaft long enough to get through the body. Allparts do one. Go for 250k pots for the other ones. Again you need them to have long enough shafts to cope with the through body mounting. I can’t remember if there is enough room to accommodate full sized pots in the cavity but if there is I would advise using them. I was unable to obtain CTS 250k pots with long shafts in the UK (they may be available in Italy). Failing that Alpha do full size (and mini) pots with a shaft long enough for through body mounting. For the capacitor, go for 0.047, or 0.1 uf. I wouldn’t try to reuse the pots on the bass; they are pretty horrible and they may be the wrong impedance anyway for a passive setup. I think you are making life very difficult for yourself trying to convert it to a Jazz/Jazz set up. You would have to do a lot of routing, filling and repainting as the Jazz and P pickups are completely different sizes and shapes. Also, I found the quality of the body wood was very poor. It just crumbled when I took a very sharp chisel to it. By the way I was doing that to accommodate a normal size Jess pickup in the bridge position. The OEM jazz pickup on my 4 string was smaller than standard, I suspect this will be the same on the 5 string. It might be worth checking if a Jazz neck pickup will fit, otherwise you have to open up the route and as I discovered, it isn’t easy wood to work with! You are going to have a spare hole, if you go for a passive vol/blend/tone set up. You could us that for a standard mono jack socket and blank off the OEM jack location with a plate. Otherwise you are looking at replacing the OEM stereo barrel jack: there are plenty available but not all will fit in the space Ibanez provide. TBH, I would be inclined to replace the standard Ibanez preamp with a Glockenlang 2-band from Thomann. Reasonable price, very transparent, it has a passive mode with tone control and there is not much volume difference between active and passive mode. It pretty well drops into the Mezzo (I know, I have done it). It would give you much less work and not cost that much more.

Hi @Big_Sam. You have had masses of good advice about how to get the sound you want out of your BF cab. At the risk of muddying the water, I have discovered that the old school tone I wanted out of my rig, is not necessarily the sound that gets you heard in the mix. Now you might be happy with being a rumble in the mix but it can also be a muddy mush, especially in a space with difficult acoustics. I have been surprised by how much different my “on stage” tone sounds out in the room. Since getting a wireless system, I have had the opportunity to walk out in front to hear what the audience are getting and it can be quite different to what you hear close to the rig. I am now prepared to put up with a bit more high-mid and top end just to get a bit more clarity out front. Anyway, I just offer that as a thought, which you can completely ignore 😀. BTW, I have a Barefaced Two10 and 2 LFSys Monzas, the latter being more akin to your Super Compact but even more FRFR. The audience can hear the Monzas very well, the Two10 not so much without some upper EQ tweaks.

I forgot about this until now. I haven’t taken the grills off my Monzas but I did a rough measurement against the grill. Not very accurate because both ports seem to be about 12mm, which is almost 5”. I suspect a more accurate measurement would confirm they are both 5”. This makes sense as I bought the second Monza only a few months ago. I am assuming, therefore, that mine have the lower crossover as well. They certainly work well together. I have an outdoor gig coming up in a couple of weeks, so I will be able to give them some real welly. I can’t wait to hear how the rig sounds at volume.

I always found the staff at PMT Norwich very helpful and honest. Like others have said, they didn’t have a huge amount for experienced bassists: they mostly stocked instruments for teenagers starting their musical journey. It was slightly different for guitarists who were presented with a massive array of electrics (not so much acoustics) but a lot of that tended to be the same limited range of Fenders but in every colour under the sun. However, if you wanted to try something available from their online stock (very comprehensive) they would get it in for you very quickly and there was absolutely no pressure to buy. I did note that the selection of stock changed significantly as a result of Covid. Before lockdown they had a whole room dedicated to acoustic guitars with a good selection of Martins, Taylor’s, etc. They also had a similar stock of basses but after lockdown, the acoustic section dwindled to just a few cheaper brands, ditto the basses. The electronic music section took over a lot of that space, complimented by PA gear: a lot of overpriced Bose gear, etc. I feel very sorry for the staff who have lost their jobs. They were mostly local musicians who needed the work to support their musical endeavours. I doubt the one remaining (private) music store in town has the capacity to give them work.

I am just going to reinforce what others have said. I dep with a covers band and have done others. Initially it was a bit of a challenge because they had a set list of over 60 songs and were going to do most of them in a 3 hour gig. I had played about 20 but mostly different arrangements and keys. They didn’t have chord sheets. Thank heavens for Ultimate Guitar. I put together my own chord sheets and put them onto my iPad. They were able to give me one rehearsal beforehand, so I was able to tweak arrangements, keys, etc. I guess about 20 of the songs had iconic bass lines that had to be learnt, the others I just busked against the chords. I have been going to blues jams for years, so I am not too phased at having to busk pop, rock, blues, soul stuff. Like others I really welcome the stimulus of having to learn new material. I just expect to get paid what the rest of the band gets. Addressing the original post more specifically; local jams are great places to find musicians who are used to busking stuff and don’t get phased by new material. In some ways, it is more difficult as a lead guitarist, because it means carrying the melody a lot of the time and there may be iconic solos that have to reproduced. If it’s just rhythm, I think that is pretty much the same as the position of a bassist. There are generally loads of people out there who are pretty accomplished amateur musicians, enjoy playing and would leap at the chance to learn new material. As others have said, they don’t need to be provided with scores at this level. It is going to be much more successful/easier for them if you can provide chord sheets with your arrangements. A Spotify/Amazon Music playlist with the arrangements you are following is also really helpful. Even better if you can provide a rehearsal session.

I would love to be able to have a go at playing through a rig like that, just for the experience. The great thing in your situation was you didn’t have to do the load-in and out! Result!

@eude couldn’t agree more. The original attraction of the Acinonyx was the Far Eastern price point but with some quality parts: Hipshot and Nordstrand, making it much cheaper than a luthier made custom bass. The attraction disappears if it’s going to be US made at US prices. Why accept a compromise when you can have exactly what you want for less?

Fast forward 7 months from my last Acinonyx related post above and I have decided to go ahead with my idea of replacing the buttons. I find it almost impossible to get the “all-in” mode with mine and I find the back row of buttons gets in the way of my right arm when standing to play. I have also heard of the buttons failing completely. In fact my local luthier has had to deal with one. I like the idea of the pre-set tones but not the implementation. My idea is to do the mod in a way that is completely reversible, should I want to sell the bass. This is quite easy as all the electrics are mounted on the scratchplate. The catalyst for starting the project now was said local luthier acquiring a CCN machine. I spent some time with him yesterday getting the original scratchplate digitised and working out where the controls should go. His design software can create a multi-layer model so that you can transpose the design of the scratchplate onto a photo of the control rout in the guitar body. That way you can line up the screw holes, pickup positions and avoid putting the controls in a location where there isn’t enough space. I am going to use an Oak Brigsby 4 position blade switch (like a Tele) and a rotary varitone from https://myhumbleworkshop.com/. I will replace the original vol pot with a CTS 250k and the jack socket with a Pure Tone while I am at it. I’m going to try to use the original chicken head knob on the varitone. I have a Hipshot knob for the volume, which matches the machine heads. The pickguard will be made from white pearlescent 3 ply. We reckon we can get all the controls and jack socket onto the bottom part of the plate, where the existing volume and jack socket are located. I have left it with the Tony, the luthier, to perfect the digital template. Once I have approved it he will do the machining. There is going to be a short hiatus while he is away for a week’s holiday. I’ll keep you all posted. I am bearing the cost of digitising the plate but now it’s done, Tony is going to have it ready to go, so if anybody else is interested, he can do you a replacement, or custom plate easily, which should keep the price very reasonable. You don’t have to have the same controls, or control positions that I am going for but obviously the more customisation work Tony has to do, the more time he will have to charge you for. I’ll will post his details with the next instalment but if you can’t wait, DM me.

Coincidentally I’m just undertaking a project with my local luthier to replace the buttons on my Acinonyx with a 4 position Tele style blade switch and a rotary varitone switch. He has just acquired a CCN machine, so he can do accurate replica and custom pickguards. Once mine is digitised, he will be able to knock them out with relative ease, if anybody else is interested. You don’t have to chose my control layout, of course. Anyway, I think there is a dedicated Acinonyx thread somewhere, so I will post details there.