Woodwind

Phil Jones Double4 or not as good, but cheaper PhilJones Micro7

Out of interest what's the voltage/hertz in Qatar? Did you get any noise from that impressive looking transfromer?

Love it!

Excellent advice

The virus can live for a 9 days on hard metal and plastic surfaces (less on cardboard). Since there is metal and potentially a plastic varnish finish (bass depending) on an instrument it theoretically can transmit the virus. Friends of mine who are having to keep their business running are leaving carboard parcels for 72 hours after arrival, opening with gloves and then cleaning the contents with alchol. Leaving your package for a few days then wiping the whole bass down with alcohol on cloth will basically kill anything that's survived the shipping period. On an aside I want to get into the habit of wiping down any plastic food packaging I get from the shops.

Interesting to see the prices. £675 would get you a good amp today and £405 would get you most of the way to a Markbass 2x12 cab

That will look very nice with a black pick guard!

I had a shark 4, sunburst version of the one in the review. If I had kept hold of that 9 years ago I wouldn't have gone round the houses trying basses afterwards. Sold it for stupidly cheap as well to someone that was starting out and they were ultimately very disappointed with it as it didn't work for the type of music they wanted to play 🙄 Lovely basses, but I really rate the wooden neck Status ranges from the 90's.

Definitely Shim the neck (assuming it's a bolt on). I had to do that on my bass to get the action low (even now the G saddle is bottomed out). If anything the tone improved once the neck was shimmed so don't worry about that

Oh it can be used for all sorts of things 😃

I have a tiny, tiny amount of relief in the neck (it varies depending on the weather more on this bass than others I've owned) and then about 1.4mm on the E to 1mm on the G at the 12th octave (and this seems to be pretty much the same height up to the end of the fingerboard). I have the nut cut very low so the strings are almost touching the fingerboard at the nut. I use light tension strings as well, so certain things Jaco did can't be done on my bass. Thankfully I don't want to play/sound like him as it wouldn't fit the music I'm involved with.

Lower action is by no means essential 🙂 I bet you get your instruments to sound the way you want them to and that's what matters. I only use a low set up and light touch to take as much tension out of my playing as possible to avoid the risk of irritating old tendon injuries.

I like using coins as reference. Out of interest I Just rummaged through my pocket for shrapnel and can't fit a penny under my E string at the 10th fret position (fretless fingerboard)

Perhaps not bass related 😂

I'm curious on your thoughts as to why this would be the case. I've heard/read this before and on the face of it it doesn't make sense. The radius effects string to string height relative to each other, but string to fingerboard/fretboard height is unique. I can see how plucking on the G and D string pulls the string into the radius, so with a tighter curve it could choke more, but then A and E etc are being pulled away from the radius (obviously this is reversed for plectrum downstrokes ) Is this what you mean by struggling to get a low action? that the tone becomes too inconsistent? I've never played a tight radius board so I'm from a position of ignorance.

I LOATH ebay. sorry you had to deal with this.

Sorry ignore my post (edited out now). Prime example of why I shouldn't be reading about new basses post pub.

Yes thank you for the reminder, I had forgotten about this trick. If All else fails before the critical day, this is a great idea

Alas no, ok atleast not something I can beg/steal/borrow before when required

The buzz goes away when I touch any metal part, which implies the bridge earth is working, but googling around on this and it is not an uncommon buzz issue is on rays. I'll check the bridge earth first and then look at shielding 😎

This is for a stingray, but that's a great tip and I might do something similar joing the ray pickup to the control plate

Great thank you both!

I've got some recording coming up where I could really do without the buzz that comes from my bass when I'm not touching the strings. I presume this is a shielding issue. For those that have done DIY shielding would you rate copper tape as better than conductive paint? What's a good UK based source for tape with conductive glue? I don't need a huge amount as I'm only doing the one bass. Cheers Thomas

Go even further and turn it into two 2x10 cabs.