Baloney Balderdash

I use an always on 1 octave up effect from my TC Electronic Sub'N'Up Mini for a bass/vocals and drums duo I got with a drummer friend of mine, the Sub'N'Up in my opinion got the most natural sounding octave up effect on the entire market of octavers (though pitching up a whole octave will always sound somewhat artificial), using the default polyphonic octaver Toneprint template, though to get it perfect you will need to play with the EQ option the Toneprint editor offers you, also got as good as perfect tracking and a pretty insignificant latency. This will give an effect similar to that of an 8 string bass, with pairs of respectively bass and octave strings and fill out a lot of sonic space. If you decide to go for my recommendation just PM me and I will mail you the settings I use, which I personal think sounds remarkably natural without any obvious odd digital artifacts (will still sound artificial isolated, but as said that is inevitable with this kind of effect, and mixed with your regular uneffected bass signal, and especially in the band mix, you won't hear that at all).

The trussrod really shouldn't offer much resistance either way except for at it's maximum travel length, also you don't adjust the action with the trussrod, you do that by adjusting the height of the saddles, down by the bridge, the trussrod is used to adjust neck relief, as in how much the neck bends (usually you would want it to bend just ever so slightly forward to give the strings more space to vibrate). And the trussrod in an Ibanez GSRM20 have a 1 way trussrod to clear that out for you as well.

After having struggled for quite a while with my tone changing from time to time I plugged my bass in, sometimes while it was plugged in as well, and sometimes quite radically, and after having tried to source down the problem, changing instrument and patch cables, leaving out effects one by one to determine if they were the source to the problem, and even installing a new barrel jack plug in my bass and completely re-soldering the DiMarzio Model P pickup that I have currently installed in it, I came to the conclusion that the issue unfortunately have to stem from some fault with the pickup it self. So as I don't have enough knowledge and skills to be able to source the issue down further and even less fix it, and that I don't have the money right now to buy me a new Model P P pickup, I decided to conduct an experiment with adding a neodymium bar pickup right down under the pole pieces of each of my EMG Geezer Butler P pickup's two halves (that is on the bottom side of the pickup plastic enclosures, since these pickups are completely sealed), hoping to make it as hot, aggressive and hopefully overall more similar feel and tone-wise to the Model P pickup, the Model P being wound to have just ever so slightly higher DC resistance than the Geezer, but with a much stronger magnetic field from it's ceramics pickups than the Geezer's Alnico V magnets have. I haven't actually installed the modified Geezer P in my bass yet, but testing the magnetic pull with a piece of iron against the pole pieces of respectively the Model P and the Geezer P it seems that they now are very similar in magnetic strength, and with the neodymium allegedly supposed to have tonal characteristics to what some describe as ceramic magnets on steroids I hope that the combination of the stock Alnico V and the added neodymium magnets in the modded Geezer P has resulted in it becoming at least somewhat in the ballpark of the Model P in terms of feel and tone. I will update this thread with a summarize of how the experiment actually went when I have installed the modded Geezer P and tested it out, and I'll try to get an audio clip recorded that I'll then post a link to as well (even if I guess it would have made more sense with an actual before and after clip). Anyway this is how it looks (having used hot glue to attach the added magnets, that way making them fairly easy to remove again if the experiment turns out to be a failure or that I at some point would want the standard Geezer P tone) :

A bit pretentious though, especially considering it by far most likely is actually a budget instrument. Kind of like a now bankrupt and closed big Danish music gear chain that had a series of budget musical instruments and music gear called "Supreme" (kind of like how Thomann got Harley Benton). The Supreme tube condenser mic that I bought from them though is no short of amazing though, and has served me well for 18 years or something in that ballpark, it actually even wasn't exactly that cheap, but compared to other tube condenser microphones on the market it would still be considered budget. But yeah, "Shite", "Mediocre" and "Wannabee" are probably brand names you'd want to avoid regardless of what business you are running or what you are trying to sell.

If you are just interested in comparing it's output to other of your basses you could simply record the different basses if you got a DAW installed on your computer and a sound interface, just using the same settings on whatever gear you eventual use between the bass and sound interface (like a preamp, EQ e.t.c), and playing the exact same with about an equal amount of force behind your picking on the different basses you want to compare, that way you would get both a dB measurement of the difference between the output of your different basses and you would get a visual idea of it by comparing the graphic representations of the recorded bass signals in your DAW.

Dial in more mids on your amp's EQ, if it's a more general issue. Or get a clean boost pedal you can kick in and out as you desire, if it is a question of your bass drowning because the guitars actually gets louder in some parts of the songs you play (typically distorted parts, where setting the volume of the distortion higher is part of what makes up the song's dynamics).

Nothing Left to Die (by Jex Thoth)

I love my 28,6" scale Ibanez Mikro Basses. I got a both a 4 string Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro Bass, which is actually my main bass, and a 5 string GSRM25 Mikro Bass. Both has as good as perfect fretwork from the factory and the neck on my 4 string Mikro is the most syable neck I ever had on any bass or guitar. I've replaced the pickups on the 4 string with first a P/J set of EMG Geezer Butler pickups, and since with a just a DiMarzio Model P P pickup wired directly to the outpur jack socket and the J disconected, which is what is installed in it currently. The 2 J pickups on the 5 string though is the stock ones, and they sound right out horrible in my opinion, so need to have them replaced as some point, as well as I need to have a new nut cut for it to accommodate the fact that I tune it E (as in the low E of a 4 string) to C and the resulting thinner string gauge. Ponder on maybe having the J pickup cavities routed to take Thunderbird pickups so I can install 2 Gemini 5 string Devastator Thunderbird soapbar pickups in it instead. Sounds too horrible for me right now to really play, but as said it got as good as perfect fretwork and sounds good acoustically too, so I know it would be worth it. Here they are : First my main Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro Bass (mahogany body, maple neck, rosewood fretboard, DiMarzio Model P wired directly to output jack socket, J pickup disconnected and lowered, various visual mods) : And then my 5 string Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro Bass (poplar body, maple neck, jatoba fretboard, stock J pickups, various visual mods) :

Dead And Lovely (by Tom Waits)

There you go: https://www.thomann.de/gb/source_audio_sa_270_one_series_eq2.htm

Electro Harmonix has announced a new analog Vibrato and Chorus pedal they call Eddy : Here's the manual on EHX's homepage: https://www.ehx.com/products/eddy/instructions And here's a short article about it: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/31134-electro-harmonix-introduces-the-eddy-analog-vibrato-and-chorus Looks really promising and the above article says that the street price will be just 99$ (equal to about 74£/600 Danish Kroner), about half of the price I thought it was going to cost after watching the video. I might need to get one of these. Judging from the video the vibrato sounds beautiful, but would like to hear a bit more of the chorus side, and ideally a demo of it on bass, before I decide to pull the trigger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_rock Basically progressive rock for hipsters.

You Set the Scene (by Love)

Beside my high gain distortion bass setup, which does have a somewhat fuzz-esque quality, consisting of a Joyo Orange Juice, which is an analog emulation of an Orange amp like overdrive, stacked into a Boss MT-2 Metal Zone mixed in parallel via my Boss LS-2 with a Mosky Black Rat, which is a Rat clone, in the Turbo Rat mode, stacked into a Joyo Orange Juice, and this, even if I realize that it might sound unnecessarily complicated and some might think why not replace it with 1 or 2 proper quality pedals, works absolutely spot on perfect for my high distortion tone, my "real" fuzz tone in my bass pedal effects setup is handled by a Behringer SF300 Super Fuzz, which is a pretty accurate Boss FZ-2 clone, which again was a take on the Univox Super Fuzz octave fuzz, and while this also actually works great I feel that there, unlike my high gain distortion setup, still would be room for improvements. But damn, just watched a demo of the Orange Fur Coat octave fuzz, with control over the switchable octave up, and man does it sound absolutely monster massively incredible sublime for bass. Might have to put a few bucks aside on my quite tight budget to get one of these to replace my Behringer Super Fuzz. So massively thick, with a monster crushing crunchy rasp to it, and with the capability to get quite spluttery too, while still retaining fairly good low end and overall definition. Here's a demo of it: The Behringer Super Fuzz is a great bass fuzz pedal, and not just for the money, but the Orange Fur Coat in my opinion still manage to beat it by miles. Might be the absolute best fuzz for bass I ever heard, judging from the above YouTube demo at least, and I am quite certain this would deliver the absolute spot on perfect fuzz tone for my bass pedal effects setup.

Same Old, Say Mold (by Sentridoh/Lou Barlow)

I really wish Harley Benton would have more short scale bass offerings. As it is this is the only option they offer for this. My dream is a 28,6" scale bass (like both Ibanez, Jackson, Squier (Fender) and ESP now offers options for) in the upper quality range of what Harley Benton offers, preferably in a bit more experimental design and with either a Thunderbird, double Music Man or Rickenbacker kind of pickups configuration. If they did it would instantly become first priority on my to buy list.

I like Lightning Bolt. Noise Rock has been around as a genre since the early 80's though, and got increasingly popular in the 90's (though largely remaining an underground kind of genre). Sonic Youth properly being the most popular band of this genre. I played bass in a noise rock band myself around the mid 90's, and later in the 00's in a noise rock and hardcore influenced math rock band with the same lineup, but with an added extra bass player (where I had more sort of a "lead" bass player kind of role and the other bassist sticking mostly to a more traditional supportive bassist kind of role). Basically it is just more or less experimental rock, partially drawing inspiration from early punk and incorporating noise/atonal and sometimes improvisational elements from avantgarde music and free jazz. This is a great album from Lightning Bolt :

Add to that no dead spots issues on the fretboard.

My first bass amp was a Dynacord Bass-King T, 50W hybrid amp, with something as unusual as a transistor preamp section and a tube poweramp section, I played it through a 1x 15" cab + a 2x 15" cab and it was plenty of loud enough for band practice with a noise rock band that I played bass in back then, I even played a couple of open air festivals with this rig and had no issues with being heard and hearing my self, though it did go through a PA and we had monitors on stage. Only time it struggled and just barely was loud enough was a show in a sort of mid sized venue, an old cinema, with only the vocals going through a PA. But for smaller bar sized kind of venues or gigs with PA support and stage monitors I never had any issues with it only being rated at 50W, despite playing fairly loud and noisy rock. More recently I've owned the earlier original 50W Bass-King model, which is a full tube amp, and I kind of regret selling it, should have kept it and used it for my guitar rig. Both were great amps. Congratulations with your find.

As already said every bass, strings, pickup(s), amp, speaker/cab and even EQ will sound vastly different with the exact same settings, so wouldn't make much sense to suggest general EQ settings that'll fit all, cause they by far most likely won't, then add to that personal preferences and it gets totally pointless.

The red paint is based on panda blood and the blue on blue whale sperm.