Obrienp

Bit of an omnibus coming up, all related to the Dereham Blues Festival. Thursday night I was in the house band for a jam held in a pub on the outskirts. Not as big a turn out as expected because there were bands playing elsewhere in town. However, it gave me a chance to hear what my rig sounded like in others’ hands. I quickly realised that the combination of an Orange Terror 500 and Barefaced Two10 (retro) was too old school. I love both bits of kit but I’m not going to pair them again. The Terror cuts through much better when paired with my two Orange 112s and ditto the Two10 with a more modern sounding head. On the Saturday of the festival I played 3 one hour gigs with the Checkmate Kings. This was pretty challenging : 3 set-ups and breakdowns in different pubs. We had to bring everything, as there are no in-house PAs. To add to the challenge, we had one hour between the last two gigs and the weather made it like being in a sauna. I got through 4 shirts in the day. The gigs went pretty well, especially the last one in the Kings Head that has a band stand in a huge beer garden. They set up a real ale tent and food stalls, which guarantees masses of punters on a sunny evening. The down side is that only the front 50 or so folks near the stage are actually there to enjoy the bands. The rest are getting hammered with their mates and would rather listen to grime, or Beyoncé (depending on gender). Lesson learnt from Thursday evening: I paired the Two10 with my Warwick Gnome Pro (280 watts), which worked really well and was really loud at quarter volume. Mishaps: my previously trusty Boss WL20 wireless system packed up during the first number at the second gig: I missed a whole verse while plugging in a lead. I had hoped to get more than 5 years out of the Boss, given the price. I thought that was it for the festival, apart from a leisurely afternoon jam in the beer garden on the Sunday but our guitarist was on the phone first thing to say that we had been offered a two hour slot due to a cancellation. A quick ring round revealed that our drummer had taken his partner to hospital for a procedure and was too tired to do another set anyway. In desperation the organisers found us a step in drummer and a couple of hours later I was doing yet another set up in a different beer garden. This time I had to provide the whole PA set-up (apart from the desk) as the drummer normally provides a tower. Somehow we got through it OK and got some really great feedback from the punters. All tribute to Henry Lascelles on drums. We had never met him before and he managed to hold it down for two hours. Especially amazing as I felt my timing started to slip in the second half of the set and he was keeping it all together. Turns out he is a drum tutor: highly recommended IMO. I don’t think I could have got through all this with a standard scale bass and old school kit. I used a Maruszczyk Elwood 32” and although not the lightest bass around, the neck is just brilliant for my arthritic left hand. The Two10 and Warwick Gnome are just so light for the tone and volume they put out. It makes set-up and breakdown so much less demanding. I haven’t got away with it entirely: my left shoulder and back are giving me a lot of jip today but I guess after 7 hours of playing and all that gear moving it is only to be expected. Now for a rest!

Wish I did. I have had a 32” project bass at the back of my mind for ages but producing a neck myself is beyond my skills. I would be very interested to see if anybody knows of a reliable source.

I know a lot of people say it is fine but I haven’t had great success using standard 34” scale strings on short and medium basses. I guess if you have through body stringing it might work fine but for most, you end up with an unsightly mess round the machine head, tuning instability and in one case a flat wound E that started to unravel. I might have been unlucky. For my medium scale (Maruszczyk Elwood) I am really enjoying using D’Addario Standard Light gauge (45-100) medium scale nickel round wound strings. The tension is fine, although I do have to be a little careful not to end up doing unintentional bends when fretting the E string. That is largely down to my poor technique and I got used to it pretty quickly. The D’Addario’s aren’t ridiculously expensive, last well and give a nice growl when you want it. The Maruszczyk had flats on it when I bought it (secondhand). I think they must have been their own brand, which are pretty cheap but seemed fine. I only changed them because they weren’t giving the sound I was after. Might be worth a look/try if you like flats. I think Bass Direct stock them. Generally though, there are even fewer choices for medium scale, than there are for short scale and there tends to be a price premium. Supply and demand I guess.

Ditto.

I had one of these. I think it was early 2000s. It didn’t have a scratch plate. As others have mentioned, the electronics were a bit weak. I replaced the pickups with a DiMarzio P/J set and better pots, etc. I also added a push/pull to give parallel/serial options when using both pickups. I replaced the original, rather cheap looking, bridge with a Gotoh in the smoke chrome to match the rest of the hardware. This is when I discovered that the top is carved and the original bridge sits in an indent to give it a flat base: the Gotoh base plate was too big to fit in the indent. I got round it but I also had to shim the neck a bit to compensate for the higher bridge height. Like others have said: I loved the look of the piano black finish but it smeared and scratched easily. The binding looked great but it did dig into the forearm a bit without the usual arm carve in the top. It was light and sounded great with the DiMarzios, which made it a good gigging bass (forearm problem apart). I kind of regret selling it but that was forced by arthritis in the left hand and the belief that going short scale was the answer. I reckon they are good basses and probably better made than equivalent MIM models. Certainly worth trying if you like a P/J with a fast jazz neck.

Sounds like you have got an amazing bass there. I hope other, perhaps more affordable, manufacturers adopt the design, so we can all benefit. Anything that takes the strain out of playing has got to be a good thing.

I agree but I don’t want loud, I just want audible. The blues band I play in is too loud; mostly driven by the drummer, who also suffers from tinnitus LoL. I wonder why? I would like a happy medium: audible but not deafening. Anyway, I’ve hijacked the thread. Let’s see how the next gig goes!

I know this problem of being asked to turn down too much. One of the bands I play in is like that. The rhythm guitarist/main singer has developed tinnitus, which I am very sympathetic about but he is constantly asking us to turn down. Fortunately, the drummer uses an electronic kit, so we aren’t driven by drum volume to the same degree as other bands I have been in. I was originally using an Orange Terror 500 and BF Two10 for gigs but at the levels we are playing at, they weren’t functioning properly: impossible to get any quieter and apparently too loud. I switched to my then practice rig of a BF One10 and Warwick Gnome but that was apparently too loud, even though I couldn’t hear myself because the sound was going passed me at calf level. Consequently, I sold the Gnome and One10 and bought a Peavey Max 150, which has a tilted speaker baffle, so the sound is projected up to my ears. I can just about hear that but to meet the bands volume requirements, I have the gain on 3 and the master on 1! It is hardly driving the speaker and apparently it is still loud. I have been begging them to just use preamps DI’d into the desk with in-ear monitoring, so we have a silent stage but the rhythm guitarist doesn’t like having anything in his ears! I even bought a cheap wireless IEM kit so they could try it out at a practice session but they have never once used it. I feel like giving him a slap and telling him to stuff it to be honest but I have invested so much time (and money) in this band, and we do sound pretty good (though I say it myself), that I don’t want to cut my nose off to spite my face. It is hard to find a decent band at my stage in life, so I don’t want to walk away from this one but it does try my patience to breaking point!

I had the 5 string version, so this may not carry over to the 4 but I thought the P pickup was perfectly adequate but the Jazz was not great. It was also shorter than a standard Jazz, meaning you would have to enlarge the cavity to accommodate most replacements. I would only have used the Jazz to add a bit of top on occasions, so I didn’t see this as a big problem. The bass was also a bit noisy but for some weird reason they had shielded the P cavity with graphite paint but not the Jazz cavity: exactly the wrong way round. I shielded all the cavities with copper tape and put in some ground wires to link them all up and it was super quiet after that. One mod I did find that produced interesting results with the standard pickups, was to add a push/pull pot to get an option to put them in series. You get a very full and aggressive tone: a bit like a hot humbucker. Over all it was a nice bass but I found the 5 string neck a bit too chunky for my arthritic left hand, otherwise I would have held onto it.

If the pickup has a 4 conductor lead you can add a 3 way DPDT switch to get series/single coil/parallel options. I did this on my Squier Jaguar H bass and it really opened up the available tones. An alternative would be to use 2 push/pull pots: one to provide a coil tap and the other to switch between series and parallel wiring of the coils. Series is louder and fatter, with prominent mids; parallel has scooped mids like the classic Stingray tone (and is not as loud); single coil is more like a Jazz pickup but the exact tone will depend on which coil you keep active. You may not be able to get the full Fallout tone this way, as I believe they use some resistors, in addition to series wiring, to shape the tone. Apologies if this is teaching you to suck eggs: there are plenty of wiring diagrams online for these mods. I found the Bartolini diagrams very useful but bear in mind that there is no standard for the conductor colours, so you will have to figure out which colours your pickup uses. You need to identify start and end conductors for each coil, or do it by trial and error. There are some online guides on how to work out which conductor is which, if you don’t have the patience for the trial and error method.

Yes, it’s a good thread that one. I should have posted an update, in case anyone else was nervous about doing the replacement . I went ahead and did the valve swap but I used two JJ valves in the end. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. The biggest chore was undoing all those screws to get the cover off. I also wore cotton gloves when handling the valves, so as not to leave grease on the glass but I have since been told that it is not really necessary. The JJs are still going strong, so I have not done a yearly replacement. My local amp tech says that preamp valves don’t need to be replaced anything like that regularly. I guess I’ll leave them until the sound starts to deteriorate.

You have had some good suggestions already but I would throw the Nordstrand Acinonyx into the mix (squeezes in £50 under your £1K limit). It is super easy to play and very light. However, if you have big hands you might find it a touch cramped (36mm nut width and 16mm spacing at the bridge). I have a Starstream 1H and mine is a great little guitar but perhaps not as versatile as twin pickup models. Also there have been some quality issues with them. Mine is fine but I might have been lucky. However, at that bargain basement price, you might be able to put up with doing a bit of setup work to get it right. The original asking price was around £500! The Ibby EHB1000S is a nice little bass. I was sad to part with mine. It would be better suited to those with larger hands than the previous 2 I mentioned. It is very light and ergonomic. The string locking mechanism means that you can use standard scale strings and snip off the excess. That gives you more choice and also avoids the SS cost premium. However, a lot of people find the standard Bartolini pickups a bit old fashioned and upgrade to Aguilars @ over £200. Another option would be to look for a used Maruszczyk Jake or Elwood SS, or a Mensinger Cazpar. They are in the same league as the Sandberg Lionel others have mentioned IMO.

I didn’t notice the nut width: well spotted. That reduces the GAS a bit and if it turns out to be heavy as well, even more so. I’ve come to the conclusion that Jazz width, or less, is the ideal for my dodgy left hand. Heavy is definitely off the menu as well.

Now I’ve got GAS! I’m telling myself it’s in the same space as the Acinonyx and that is already occupied.

I started a thread on the EHB1000s here: Like a few others, I changed the pickups for Aguilars in the end. Otherwise great bass IMO. Light, ergonomic, comfortable and you get a lot of kit with it. Plus you can use standard length strings giving more choice and keeping the price down. I am sure there is a thread on the EHB1005 as well.

I take it your third sentence is referring to the V1, twin pickup version?

I would certainly report it to the dealer (Thomann?). At the least they might refund you a few quid. It would be a pain to have to send it back though, especially as it is birthday present.

V1

I’ve been wondering about that and had come to the conclusion that 3 is not different to button 1 but I have to admit my hearing is not what it was.

As I understand it, it is meant to be all 4 and that is how it works on mine.

I just tried mine and it is definitely louder in all-in (series) mode than in parallel. Are you sure all the switches are engaging when you put it in series? I have a hell of a struggle getting mine into series mode. I would happily trade the mute button for a one button series switch.

At least it looks easier to modify than previous iterations. I suspect the pickup is the same strat under a solid cover but with better machine heads and individually adjustable bridge saddles, it is already a great improvement.