Obrienp

Late entry for my worst is a Digitech Drop pedal. It didn’t do what it said on the tin at all. Very disappointing as I had read reasonable reviews of it elsewhere. Fortunately, Merchant City Music took it back without quibbling and refunded the money promptly. Great after sales service IMO and I will certainly consider buying from them again.

In Norfolk it’s any make of car, tractor, van, lorry, or other self-powered farm machinery regardless of country of origin. There is obviously a special spec list for cars bought here: most drivers save money by not specifying indicators. If they do use indicators, it normally means they are trying to trick you and will actually be turning in the opposite direction to that indicated. They will wait at a junction until there is a car coming and then pull out very slowly and drive at a steady 38 MPH in the middle of the road, regardless of the speed limit, whether it be a 20 limit in front of a school, or a 60 on what passes for an open road (there are no motorways in Norfolk and few dual carriageways).

Are they genuine humbuckers now, or still the single coils pretending to be? Not really a problem: the singles sounded good but a lot of people got upset at them being passed off as humbuckers in the specs. The main problem with these for me was the slab body; the edges really dug into my forearm to the point that I started to get tendinitis. Other people’s mileage may be different and I guess it’s not much different to a Mustang in that respect. If they haven’t changed the rest of the hardware fixings, it’s an easy bass to upgrade. Tuners, bridge, etc are fairly easily replaced without modification and there are umpteen choices depending on your budget. Postscript: I just enlarged the picture and the BBOT bridge is different: a screw on each corner, rather than the previous 5 screw Fender fitting. That might reduce the range of drop in replacements available.

Are those humbuckers? The spec doesn’t say. Expensive for a (presumably) Far Eastern made instrument! I suspect the street price is going to come out a bit less than that after a bit.

I do occasionally play the standard tuning songs a semitone up on my detuned bass but I get confused sometimes, especially in the more complex songs, so I find it less risky to keep a bass in standard tuning for gigs.

This thread has landed at exactly the right moment for me. It’s reassuring to know others get it wrong. I had a band rehearsal yesterday and I couldn’t do anything right. I couldn’t keep up with the pace of some songs, I hit wrong notes (worse than missing a note), I forgot stuff, I couldn’t get the bass to stay in tune; on it went. It came to a climax/anti-climax in “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” when I did the B flat major scale run down wrong (ended on A) and as for the two little three note chromatic run downs, I just couldn’t get the timing right. It threw me into a complete depression about my playing, fearing that age was causing a decline in my abilities and I was contemplating suggesting they get another bassist today (after 5 years in this band). Anyway this has cheered me up. I think I’ll postpone any self-destructive decisions until I’m absolutely sure I’m crap! 😀

Just regurgitating this thread. I read it and decided to try the Digitech Drop that looked perfect for what I wanted. One band I play in does a lot of songs detuned a semitone but also a few in standard tuning. I find I need two basses because even one semitone difference seems to cause all sorts of tuning stability issue, if I try to use one bass. However, a second bass on a stand can cause overcrowding problems on the kind of “stages” we tend to get (5 piece band), plus delays between songs. Well my experience with the Drop has not been good. My main gigging bass with this band is a Guild NS Starfire 1 (the one with the P pickup) but I also use a custom shortscale P/J. I tried the drop with both basses, plus another partcaster medium scale P bass and a medium scale Maruszczyk Elwood (jazz copy). The Drop just didn’t work well with any of them. On lower strings the drop was either flat or sharp and on the upper strings it started doing a sort of octaver thing with both a dry and pitch altered note, which sounded horrible! The only feature that worked OK was the actual octaver setting. That tracked well on the top two strings but got less accurate and more laggy as you dropped to the lower strings. That seems pretty much par for the course with octave pedals, so no worse than most. I have sent the pedal back and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. I am now contemplating whether it is worth trying the more expensive EHX Pitchfork. That seems to get mixed reviews and I have a feeling it doesn’t do semitones, so I suspect I’m going to have to stick with two basses.

Thank you for the comprehensive response @stevie. A second Monza is on the list but it might have to wait, as one of my daughters just got engaged. They are looking to buy a house and I think the Bank of Mum and Dad might have to step in, not to mention wedding costs, which I understand average around £30K these days!!!😱😱😱😱 Looking at the price of prestige 800 watt plus amps (even used), the Monza looks like the best value option to get more clean headroom. The 4 ohm load will double the output of my current amps. Although, as @Phil Starr pointed out, that is more than I need for the kind of gigs I’m playing, it would give me plenty of headroom (as I understand it).

That’s a shame! I know that arthritic thumb problem ☹️. Matter of interest; did you think the Precision pickup was better, worse, or about the same as a pucka Mustang pickup?

What @chris_b said but I would also check out LFSys cabs. They punch well above their weight, literally and metaphorically.

Nordstrand Acinonyx 5 string prototype, sporting what looks like a humbucker:

That’s a very pretty thing!

Wow, quite a while since this thread was active. Just thought I would post a pic of the guts of my Nordstrand, which may be of interest to owners who haven’t opened their bass up yet. I decided to change the strings on mine after over two years! The original D’Addarios were still going strong but I had a set of Labella flats lying around, which I wanted to try. I decided to augment the shielding with some copper tape, as there was a bit of hum (not that bad). There was a small piece of copper tape already, which was bridging the graphite paint shielding to the foil on the pickguard. My efforts haven’t really made it perceptibly quieter TBH. I probably should have covered the whole cavity but I was about to run out of tape. A few points to note: the wheel to adjust the truss rod at the bottom of the neck is retained by a cross head screw. I didn’t know it at the time I had the guard off but there was no movement left to tighten the neck, which became necessary with the extra tension of the flats. When I reassembled everything and put the flats on, I thought the rod had jammed. This led me to take it to my local luthier who discovered that by loosening the retaining screw, you can get loads more adjustment in the rod (phew, relief) but you have to remove the pickguard to do it, which is a pain. There isn’t enough room to get a cross head driver in there without damaging the pickguard and the front pickup cover. Unfortunately, the StewMac Tele neck adjustment wrench won’t work because it’s for straight slot screws. Point two: the luthier told me he has had a number of Acinonyx in because the pickup height adjustment would no longer work. If you look at the picture you can clearly see the underside of the pickups. The screws go directly into the metal base of the pickups. This quickly loses its thread apparently and in the worst cases, the pickups just drop down under pressure from the springs. It hasn’t happened to mine but I have hardly touched them. Larger screws could work as a fix for a while, before the fault repeats itself. A permanent fix involves attaching captive nuts to the base plate, which is very fiddly, or rebuilding the pickup with a new base plate. The luthier makes his own pickups and he was not very complimentary about the build quality of the Acinonyx examples. That said, I like the way they sound and touch wood, I haven’t had any issues with mine. BTW, said luthier has also had one case of the switches failing. Again I’ve been lucky so far but I think, if it did happen, I would be inclined to replace the pickup selector with a 4 position Strat/Tele style switch (I don’t need a mute) and the tone with a rotary Varitone switch but of course, I would need a custom pickguard to be made.

Thomann seems to have magicked all this away. I have bought several items from them since the dreaded Brexshit and they seem to take care of it all. I guess they have the size to handle the extra admin. I notice that the price does go up marginally when you confirm that you have a UK address. I guess that is allowing for the slightly higher UK VAT.

I promised a couple of pics of my Sire U5 SS fretless. I’d forgotten it has a string through option. Correction: BTW controls are VVT rather than VBT. Sorry got my abbreviations back to front first time.

No worries. It did make me realise I’m commenting on something I’m never going to get my hands on, at least until it falls down to the bottom feeder level of the used market. Don’t forget to take the Fodera to the gig 😀. Enjoy!

I feel put in my place. You are right. I should use more of my time practicing and less time worrying about features on my gear. That said, for the kind of money the GR will sell for, I would have expected a bit more: it’s a crowded market but I don’t know why it bothers me, I will never be paying that amount for an amp. Everything I have is well secondhand and pretty low budget, with one exception. As for the 20 person audience, the way gigs are locally, we will take anything that is going, even if turns out to be a paid rehearsal. I think classical musicians would consider the price of a Fodera pretty low rent but everything is relative and I get the point you are making.

That is definitely on my wish list but before I went there (money permitting), I wanted to know if I was getting the most out of the one I already have. I just wondered if I would be better off with an amp with more output and therefore, more clean headroom. Consensus seems that I should stick with what I have got. Also I was wondering whether I should keep saving and stretch to a Monaco instead of another Monza but then I would be mixing 10 and 12” drivers. Just that a mate, who recently got a Monaco, was saying how much more he “felt” the bass than with his two BF One10s. I know it’s not comparing apples with apples but I can’t help but wonder if the size of the driver has something to do with that.

That’s what I understand about the pickups. I certainly haven’t noticed any hum from the Jazz. I wouldn’t expect it from the P anyway. I would imagine that it would make a great modding platform. Everything seems fairly standard fitting, so there must be a lot of aftermarket stuff available but caveat: I haven’t tried replacing anything so far. I’ll post some pics when I get a chance.

Really but doesn’t it also beg the question at what frequency that is set to and what your cabinets can cope/are optimised for? For example the LFSys Monza can handle down to 40 Hz and the BF cabinets go down to 30 Hz. It will be obvious I’m no expert but presumably sending those cabs anything lower at high volume is likely to lead to them struggling. The Mesa Subway + has a variable HPF control. There must be a reason for that. I would also have thought that manufacturers would mention an HPF in their specs. They seem to boast about every other feature, however inconsequential. I have been convinced by the HPF/LPF thread that these are worth while and I have noticed a positive effect in my own experiments (I am using a pedal, which is clunky IMO), which is different to that produced by the amps EQ controls. Other people’s mileage may be different.

Don’t like the promotional video much. A bit like one of those car ads but a quick squint at the specs on the website are much more encouraging. A few things I would have liked to have seen: independent drive control, compressor, HPF, tuner, character control, ability to go down to 2 ohms. One day, someone will do it. Mesa are almost there with the Subway 800+. My Blackstar U700 doesn’t have the HPF.

@RichT I’m not sure I’m the best judge of fretless basses TBH. I have only owned 1 other, which was an acoustic short scale Guild but a huge bodied instrument. I find the Sire to be pretty close to perfect for me. I haven’t weighed it but it doesn’t feel heavy to me. The body is scaled down and quite dinky. It fits nicely into a Thomann guitar gig bag. I would say weight is on a par with other short scale basses I have played: Mustangs and the like. It’s a pretty looking thing, with a flamed maple top and a brown back. It has bound body edges as well, rolled finger board and some contouring (so better than a lot of shorties). The back contouring is a bit strange because it has a belly bulge rather than a cut but it seems to work fine. The board is maple, which is a bit unusual for a fretless and lined (good for newbie fretless players like me). It all seems to work though. The neck is definitely a Jazz bass style, which suits my arthritic left hand but may not be for everybody. Pickups aren’t the most aggressive I’ve come across but they are noiseless. TBH I hardly use the Jazz. I might eventually get round to replacing them with something with a bit more grunt but they are adequate so I’m in no rush. The same applies to the bridge and machine heads. The bridge is a variation on the BBOT theme but much better than some I’ve seen on other instruments in this price range and has ridged saddles, which I like. It comes with D’Addario flats that I haven’t seen the need to change. In short, I’m very pleased with it. It seems like a well made instrument for not a lot of money.

I just had a Rickenbacker post appear on my Facebook feed (they have obviously profiled me) about a short scale solid body bass they were sending out to a US dealer. It was called the 4030. I did a bit of online research and apparently it is 31” scale on a 4003 body. The bridge is stranded well up the body. The pickup placing also looks a bit odd. It turns out it is a full size body and it has a 24 fret neck, hence the very forward positioning of the bridge. The fingerboard looks like ebony but is in fact Richlite. I found a US dealer online with one from 2022, that was a special order, going for 3,500 USD. Makes you wonder what they cost new but still a bit cheaper than the anniversary special semi they did recently. I have always wanted a Rickie simply because Chris Squire was one of my bass hero’s as a kid. I could never afford it and still can’t. Plus I couldn’t manage the weight, or the nut width now. I got all excited at the idea of a short scale version but not if it has the same size, bulk and weight as a long scale version. I can’t help but feel they missed a trick here. A genuine short scale (in proportion) solid body variant would probably sell well, especially as shorties seem to be a bit trendy at the moment.

So far, I’ve not messed with my Nordstrand Acinonyx; Guild NS Starfire 1 (although the writing is on the wall for the tone circuit); Sire U5 Fretless Short Scale. Are any of them magic? Well not really but they are good enough to be left alone, despite my local luthier saying the pickups on the Acinonyx are really badly made; I respect his opinion because I have one of his custom basses with his own pickups and they are brilliant. The Acinonyx pickups sound good but the thread for the adjustment screws is cut into the metal baseplate, which is made of cheese (according to said luthier). He has had to repair several after little use and it’s difficult to do without completely rebuilding them: so much for US manufacturing (the pickups not the guitar which is built in China). Also the wheel truss rod adjustment at the neck heel was completely maxed out on mine. Turns out the retaining screw can be loosened to allow more adjustment but you have to remove the scratchplate complete with electronics to do this. Close to magic IMO, is my Maruszczyk Elwood Active medium scale but I did replace the stock bridge. I bought it used, so if I had done the specification, I wouldn’t have chosen the stock bridge. Apart from that, the standard pickups are really good, ditto the active circuit (although I use it in passive mode most of the time). If I had the cash, I would probably spec up a medium scale Jake

Is the original pickup set that bad? I think I would be a bit miffed paying that sort of money for a bass and then having to change the pickups. However, I know taste in tone is highly individual. P.S. Just heard that my mate, who recently acquired a used Lionel, is having the pickups rewound by a local luthier. Is this is a Sandberg/Lionel weakness, or just coincidence?