fergs40

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.

Hopefully being three weeks after the last reply won't lead to 'zombie thread' accusations - it's taken me that long to find the two (rather blurry) pics of my first bass. Anyway, my first bass was (is?) a Hondo II copy of a bass by a company well known to all of us. The first pic shows the rather 'zit burst' sunburst and also the dual outputs (no recollection of whether they both worked). You can also just about make out the two impressively-sized wood screws my friend's dad used to re-secure the tailpiece after it broke spectacularly in two just behind the saddles in the middle of a particularly energetic song - it was lucky there was no-one in the way of it as the string tension fired it at some speed through the air before the strings brought it up short... The second pic is the only one I can find of the full bass - not a bad copy all in all, though I remember it having a bolt-on neck rather than being neck-through. I lent it to a friend when I went to university in 1986 and he in turn 'lent' it to his cousin - the trail goes cold in an attic somewhere in Portrush on the north Antrim coast. If anyone has sighted it since, I'd be delighted to hear about it! Finally, as with many others here, my second bass, and first 'proper' bass, was a Westone Thunder 1A, brand new in 1986 (thank you, student grant), in red with the Magnabass pickup. Been lucky enough that I've never lost that or had to sell it, though it's been on a few adventures...