fergs40

This very guitar, or one very similar, has just appeared on the BC classifieds: I bought a MIJ Mk3 new in 1987 and still have it - mine only has one toggle switch, the back of the neck is body coloured and the battery compartment cover is completely different, though.

This has been kicking around in the small ads of a certain German bass forum for the past couple of months - if I didn’t have one already I would have had it even before the price dropped to its current (ridiculous!) level. It’s had a bit of surgery to insert a battery compartment, but otherwise looks good. if someone buys it I can stop wondering… PS No relationship to the seller or anything, just passing on a tip. But please delete if inappropriate.

My Westone Thunder 1A (the later one with the big - Magnabass? - pickup) has two 9v batteries - and that dates from 1986…

Wir Sind Helden, meine deutsche Lieblingsband… Just celebrated their 20th anniversary, though sadly no longer touring or making new music. This video has an obvious reference, but adds some cleverness of its own.

You’d have to do an awful lot of work to an Ignition to make it look like a CT. The binding for a start. Can’t see how that would be worth anyone’s while for the sales price difference. Faking a German would make more sense, were one that way inclined…

https://www.sandberg-guitars.de/guitars-2/sandberg-florence-series/ The Florence does already exist as a guitar: with a 3:3 headstock…

PS That is a splendid looking bass. Respect!

Couple of thoughts from another 4003 owner. Firstly on the foam in the bridge. As @Doctor J said, usually you just loosen the two thumb screws and the mute drops away. But I think @Bassassinis right that there looks to be too much stuff in there. When you buy replacement foam for the mute (it rots/loses elasticity eventually) it is oversized - you have to cut a piece the right size to glue to the metal former it sits on. I wonder if someone has bought new foam, not realised this, and shoved the whole lot in there? If so, you’ll need to remove the bridge to get to the underside of the mute mechanism to do a decent job of trimming the foam. Not a difficult job - I’d capo the strings at the first fret then loosen them enough to get the saddle out from under them. In the resulting gap you’ll find the screws you need to remove to get the bridge off. The only thing to be careful about is the earth wire connected to the mute assembly - don’t break it lifting the bridge away from the body or getting the assembly out of the bridge. But just a bit of soldering if it does snap off (or just jam the exposed end of the wire back under the bridge when you replace it - that’s what I did when I replaced the original bridge with a Hipshot…) There are libraries filled with advice on Ric trussrods, but here are my thoughts based on owning a 2011 4003 and a 2003 620/12, which should be relevant to a 97 bass. The really temperamental Ric trussrods were on the 4001 basses and possibly the early 4003 ones - then they came up with something more sensible. Well, a bit. The biggest headache is finding a tool to do the adjustment. You need a 1/4 inch socket (the metric equivalent - I’d guess 6.5mm - might work, but I’ve never tried it). The problem is that the clearance around the nut is so narrow that most sockets don’t fit. I’m lucky enough to have one that came with a set I bought in Halfords (UK auto parts store) years ago that fits perfectly. Others speak of grinding down the outer diameter of a socket to make it slim enough. Or spring for the genuine Ric tool (or a guaranteed copy…). Once you can turn the nuts, the rules are pretty much as for any other bass - don’t do anything too crazy and check the results regularly under full string tension/at whatever pitch you play at. NB you don’t have to loosen the strings to make these adjustments - again, that was only required with the older 4001 system. The idea of having two rods is supposedly to make correcting a twisted neck possible. However, I suspect any Ric with a twisted neck got that way precisely because someone who didn’t know what they were doing used this advanced technology to put the twist into it… Anyway, my approach has always been to do the same thing to both rods. As elsewhere, an eighth or a quarter turn is plenty. I don’t think you need to give time for an adjustment to settle, but equally @ezbass’s advice makes sense. An excuse to make a cup of tea if nothing else 🙂 I might, just might, leave the bass side rod a quarter to a half turn looser than the treble side overall to allow more swinging room for the thicker strings, but only if it feels right/suits your playing style - these things are sooooo subjective. Good luck!

Interesting suggestion - from the name I would have expected this case to be designed to fit a violin bass, but if you can get a mustang into it then a Club may well fit. Thanks - I’ll have a look.

As per the title, really - I know I can get the Höfner branded hard case, but I’m interested to hear if anyone has any experience of using a semi-rigid case or well padded gig bag with one of these. Thank you!

My relatively modest list: Hondo II (Ric copy) —GAP— Westone —LOOOOOONG GAP— Rickenbacker Squier Warwick Sandberg Höfner Vigier Squier Still got them all except the Hondo (loaned to a friend, never to be seen again) and the first Squier (a SS Jaguar I just didn’t get on with).

String ends as therapeutic aids - unexpected, but rather excellent! Supplementary question: do different colours have different meanings when used like this?

Tru Bass 88s - if they’re what you’re after they’re very good at it

Some excellent suggestions here. Thank you! So far I am liking the door chimes and the eye-poker best. Not a beard person (sounds like that’s just as well, mind) and gave up smoking - pipes or otherwise - some years ago. The charity craft group wins the prize for most community-minded suggestion. More welcomed!

I had to look up epiphytic. But you knew that…

I always feel a bit sad throwing cut silk-wrapped string ends into the bin - they’re very pretty. Has anyone come up with any uses for them, practical or otherwise?

I'm not sure this needs a lot of pimping...but perhaps I lack ambition!

Quick update on this a couple of weeks in. Firstly, I’m still delighted with this bass overall, particularly for the €322/£295 I paid for it. As others have noted, there is some neck dive, particularly with a narrow strap. However, this is easily counteracted with some light pressure from your right forearm when playing, which fits OK with my playing style. A thicker strap would sort it - I have a three inch wide padded leather Right On! strap fitted with straplocks that I use, but need to get some suitable (gold!) strap buttons for this bass before I can use it. I changed the strings for Roto 88s and am very pleased with the result - thumpitty thump thump thump. I wondered if the nut slots might need a tiny bit of widening, but the strings certainly aren’t sitting high enough for it to be a problem and there’s no obvious gap under them where they sit in the slots. The tapered part of the E string isn’t quite long enough, so there’s a half wind of the thick part on the tuner, but that’s more an aesthetic issue (for me…) than a problem per se. And still on the subject of aesthetics, the gold silks do go rather well with the hardware! I found one slightly high fret causing a buzz on the high D on the A string but a) that’s not a note I use terribly often and b) a couple of taps with a hammer on frets 18 to 20 seems to have sorted it (don’t judge me, luthiers…). I’m still playing with the pickup height to see what pleases me best, but that’s about this being my first precision and wanting to experiment, not because the pickup is lacking in any way. The tone control has a useful range - completely off is as dark as you’d expect, and I’m running it about half way most of the time as fully open is a little brighter than I want, even with the Rotos. So there we are - in a collection which includes such luminaries as a 4003, a Sandberg California and a Vigier Passion, the Squier has carved itself out a spot and is holding its own. Some pictures below of the silks on the headstock, the wrap on the E tuner, and the E string in its nut slot, FYI. PS I hadn't realised before I changed the strings that this bass has a bone nut as standard - quality! 🙂

I very much want to succeed in this year's Gear Abstinence challenge - but that pink Bass VI could spoil it all less than a month in...

Those are Fender strings rather than D'Addario (I see why you say that, but the ball ends are slightly different colours). Fender lists the gauge as being 045-105: https://www.fender.com/en-DE/40th-anniversary-precision-bass-gold-edition/0379430502.html

I appreciate this thread is focused on the Mk1 Passion, but this Mk3 just popped up on bassic.de and as we’ve got a Vigier thread going I thought I’d put it here in case there was interest… https://www.bassic.de/kleinanzeigen/vigier-passion-iii-90-10-made-in-france-1992.35818/

https://www.leboncoin.fr/instruments_de_musique/1988904642.htm I think this is the LeBonCoin listing. EDIT. 1. It does look like a wooden neck - in fact the finish at the neck/headstock join almost looks like there’s been a break. Photos aren’t very clear, though 2. Is posting a link to someone else’s for sale on another site for the purposes of this sort of discussion within this forum’s rules OK? Apologies and please delete if not

I wanted a short scale and bought a Höfner Ignition Club a few months ago - put some GHS Precision Flats on it (very fetching purple silks…) and am very pleased with the results. There’s a surprisingly pleasing variety of thumpy sounds from the two pickups, using either the volume controls or the pickup switches. As you’ll have found, the neck is quite narrow and deep, but the same profile the whole way up. Fit and finish on mine was great at the price and overall I’m very happy.

Not my first new (to me) bass, but first time I’ve done a NBD post. For some reason I’ve never owned a precision, but like many people (and posts I’ve read on here would seem to bear this out), I’ve been precision-curious for some time. I played one of these Squiers recently in our local music shop (Just Music in Berlin) and although I was impressed by the instrument itself, the snob in me couldn’t square the €500+ asking price with the name on the headstock. I know, I know… However, my interest was piqued enough to begin to look around. I read a couple of posts in that other bass forum about people getting good deals in Thomann’s Black Friday sale so I had a look and saw they had a B-stock for €322 (about £295), which felt like a decent price - ordered last Friday, turned up today. The only B-stockness I can detect is that the plastic film has been taken off the (very shiny!) pickguard, pickups and tuners (if they do that on Squiers). The worst I could say is that the silica sachet had broken so the box was full of little balls of silicon - I wondered why the package sounded like it had one of those rain shower things in it… Anyway, there’s not a mark on the bass, and it was more than reasonably playable out of the box, though I guess whoever had it previously might have adjusted it. Even the intonation was OK. I always imagined I’d get the archetypal 3TS with maple neck precision if I ever got one - this is clearly not that, but I like it! The blue is very deep and rich, with a nice subtle sparkle. The fretboard is a great colour for not being rosewood and the blocks are very nicely done. In fact, I’m impressed by the fit and finish overall. Yes, I can tell the materials aren’t as top drawer as some basses I’ve got, but it is extremely well put together - no gaps, no crackles, nothing misaligned, no shonky frets. My bass collection is quite eclectic (there’s a 4003 and a Höfner Club Ignition in there), so I’m not sure how to evaluate the playing experience, but the action is fine, the neck not too much of a handful, and I can get round on it OK. I’ve only played it through a little MarkBass 801 so far, but it sounds good to me. My plan is to put some Roto 88s on it for some authentic vintage thump - the supplied Fender rounds are great, but not what I bought this for. So, there we are - if you’re after this sort of thing this could be the one for you. And anticipating the usual question, and with the usual apology for the quality, here are a couple of snaps.