Obrienp

Played a gig at a classic car show yesterday afternoon with the covers/originals band. The venue was a farm/caravan site in Nelson’s birthplace. We were playing in the doorway of a barn which had been converted into the amenities block for the caravan site, so not as bad as it might originally sound: it even had coir carpeting in the band area. This faced across the main entry road to a courtyard/stable block which had been converted into a cafe, bar and shop. The classic car display was in a field to the right of this area. All a bit odd in terms of our audience but on the other hand, the owner was extremely welcoming, told us to get whatever we wanted from the catering for free and paid slightly more than the usual local pub rate👍. It turned out that kit messages were somewhat confused prior to the gig, such that I arrived with my EV active 12” PA speakers, as did the keyboard player with his Yamaha equivalents, the drummer also brought an active sub. Given the distance from our location to the punters, we opted to use all of it and DI everything. That made my two LFSys Monzas somewhat overkill for “onstage” and consequently I didn’t get my chance to open them up. The gig itself went OK but seemed a bit of a paid rehearsal as most of the punters were a long way away. It was like a sauna in the barn entrance but fortunately I had brought a towel and a change of shirt. I got somewhat irritated with the lead guitarist who was constantly turning round, urging us to speed up. I agree that we took a few numbers at a leisurely place but given the lack of A/C, or fans, I thought our drummer was heroic. Everything has to be taken at breakneck speed, or the lead is not happy. IMO some stuff just doesn’t work fast: I Can See Clearly now at almost 150 BPM; nah! It’s also pretty tiring over a 2 to 3 hour set. Anyway, we got a lot of compliments from punters; even some we couldn’t actually see during the set but evidently they had no issues hearing us given our double PA 😀. More importantly we have got a follow on booking from the venue.👍🤟

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.

I had been looking forward to the Acinonyx 5 because I thought it would be a 5 I could actually play without pain (arthritis in the hands). However, not at that price! That’s too much pain!

Just acquired a Greco Atomic medium scale: story here, if you are interested. A really dinky little medium scale, with a good sound :

And for size comparison: next to a Sire U5 short scale fretless. This is one dinky medium scale bass!

Eventually managed to shrink this to less than 175 KB.

It’s quite hard to find a reasonably priced, decent P, or P/J medium scale these days. The Ibanez Mezzo has been discontinued and the Squier Jaguar H is a bit marmite (I think it might have been discontinued as well). I recently had a near miss with an 80s Aria P/J and that gave me huge GAS for one of those 80s Japanese medium scale basses. There seemed to be so many of them back then. A lot of the Matsumoku produced Ibanez and Aria basses are commanding a premium these days, so I was delighted to see this Greco Atomic medium scale P/J for sale on Reverb for around the £235 mark. I took the plunge last week and it arrived yesterday. It’s actually in amazingly good condition for a bass from the 80s (I think it genuinely is from the 80s). The worst knock it has is where it obviously got put down with a bump or dropped on the end strap button, which caused some of the poly to chip off around the button. Apart from that there are some minor dings and scratches on the body that haven’t gone through the poly, which has aged from white to cream. There is a very slight hairline crack off one side of the neck pocket that looks pretty innocuous. The Jazz style neck is in great condition for its age with no significant dings and no cracks, or repairs. It’s carved from a single piece of maple which might make it vulnerable to headstock cracks/breaks but it is fine. The rosewood board is in really good condition with no gouges, or wear and the frets are fine, with no sharp ends . It looks as though it has Gotoh machine heads (marked Made in Japan). In common with the rest of the hardware, there is some pitting in the chrome but it’s all serviceable. It appears to have the original electrics: full sized pots (Vol, Vol, Tone), which turn smoothly without crackling. On the not so good side, the bridge was in a mess. The A string saddle was on the wrong way round so that the string was not sitting in the slot but crossing the adjuster screw and spring over the edge of the saddle. The D string saddle was upside down, with the Allen sockets on the bottom of the screws. It had the top 3 strings from a tired medium scale light gauge set on it and an E string which was .110” long scale bodged on and sitting proud of the nut (too big for the slot). The pickups were crazily high on the bass side and on inspection all the screw heads were cheesed, so clearly not functional. There is a slight twist in the neck/fretboard, according to my local luthier, which he doesn’t think is too tragic. After adjusting the truss rod (that fortunately seems to work fine) it is pretty straight. Adjusting the rod is a pain because the hex socket is at the heel end and there is no cut out in the body, so you have to release the strings and undo the neck screws to get at it. I gave it a quick once over yesterday afternoon: sorted the bridge saddles, lemon oiled the neck, adjusted one of the machine heads and put a set of barely used D’Addario nickel medium scale lights (45-100) on it. I also replaced all the pickup retaining screws, which enabled me to set them to a sensible height. All of that done it plays and sounds pretty good. I took it to a band rehearsal in the evening and I was very pleased with it. I still need to sort out the nut, which is a bit high and get the intonation set. It is incredibly light and really tiny, so a great bass for long gigs. It will certainly do fine as a back up to my Maruszczyk medium scale ElwoodI. In fact my bandmates asked why I had brought a toy bass. In short I’m well pleased so far. I will add some photos when I have reduced them in size.

I don’t blame anyone for changing away from LaBella flats. They sound the business on a P bass: pure Motown but they feel horrible to me. Sticky is the best way of describing them. I have heard others say that they can be cleaned up with lighter fluid, rubbing alcohol, meths,, etc. I have tried all of these and it doesn’t work for me, they still feel sticky. The best flats for me are D’Addarios but each to their own and they are quite bright. As to the original question: rounds sound great on a P bass and I would have thought would fit in very well to your band situation. Personally, I don’t get any issues with the strings squeaking but then other people don’t find LaBella flats sticky.

Thanks @nikon F for putting up the YouTube comparison. I have a Gnome iPro (280 watt) and had the 200 watt version before. I have to say that I prefer the tone of the Elf in that comparison, except for when he was slapping. I think that is reflective of the built in EQ of the Gnome, whereas the Elf has more of the TE one out of the box. You can get close with the Gnome but it takes some tweaking of the EQ controls. I find that my Gnome, with its 280 watts @4ohms, works really well with my Barefaced Two10 and is very giggable. Paired with my LFSys Monzas, it sounds pretty horrible until I correct the eq. I suspect that the Elf would sound pretty good (without such tweaking) with the Monzas but possibly a bit too vintage with the Two10. Horses for courses and as the guy in the video points out, there is a significant price difference. If Trace came out with a 300 watt version of the Elf (for not much more cash), I would be tempted to jump for the tone, plus headroom.

I wasn’t aware of that. I’ll have a look at them to see if the ports are different. I won’t be able to tell about the crossover, although I suppose I should be able to hear the difference. The horns look the same but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have the same compression model driver attached to them. It would be a bit too much hassle to remove the grills and take the drivers out to see if they are the same.

Funny: a mate has a Monaco; he was round at my place collecting some speaker stands and saw I had a second Monza. His reaction somewhat incredulously: Why do you need two? I think that sums up the capabilities of these cabs. It probably sums up my character as well: one pint is nice but two is even better!