Vin Venal

34 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Most definitely a lovely metallic silver bass.

Well that's that sorted then. 😅

Apologies if I misled anyone. Bloody deuteronopia.

It's like the time my grandad accidentally painted the kitchen bright pink all over again.

Took it out in the sun. What's the verdict from people with fully functioning colour vision?

11 hours ago, garyt said:

Isn’t the answer to this , try both and go with what sounds best? 

Yeah, that's what I did.

11 hours ago, Jaybeevee said:

Can you expand on this please? it sounds significant but I don't fully grasp it

I think it just means more gain.

I think that's why my big muff (oo-er) sounds good when it's the first pedal in my chain, but feeds back and makes unholy noises if it's after another OD, or when I tried it in my FX loop.

I'll take another picture tomorrow in daylight.

I am also colour blind, so I suppose it's hypothetically possible I was sold a silver one by thomann, and told it was green. 😅

7 hours ago, 4$$ said:

Don't think this is the Emerald Green Metallic Matte color. Looks like Metallic Gray Matte to me! 

It is the emerald green metallic, I promise.

I took the pictures at night, without natural light under yellow bulbs, think it washed out all the colour.

Have you seen Mike Watt's signature Reverends now? 🤤

And Enya actually. 😅

I sometimes listen to Kate Bush...

3 hours ago, Bassfinger said:

A Fender factory, or a Squier factory.

Yeah I think the only difference between a "P Bass" or a "P style bass" and a "Precision Bass" is it has to be made by fender to be called the latter.

4 hours ago, headofire said:

Im going with, 1 split coil hum-cancelling pickup in the right spot (not reversed), two knobs, 43.75 mm at the nut, Depth at 1st fret 20.25mm..  a wide and slim C profile with a 7.25" radius. 

 

Anything else is a sandberg. 
The rest only matters in videos. 
 

 

 

That would mean a lot of fender precisions aren't actually precisions though, including some pre CBS golden era vintage stuff.

They made em with 1 1/2", 1 5/8" and 1 3/4" nuts didn't they? A, B and C neck?

13 minutes ago, visog said:

Action looks a bit 'challenging' as I come from the John Entwistle (I wish) school of strings under the frets. Much room left for height adjustment at the bridge? Also, still got the ramp?

String height is about 3mm at the thick end, and 2mm at the thin end at the 12th fret at present. I don't find it challenging at all at that, because of the very balanced, and relatively light, string tension accross the board.

Bit of a moot point really, cuz all the saddles are individually adjustable, with plenty of room to drop them if you choose. And if you want more string tension with your low action, one advantage of this design is it will take any strings, you're not limited to short scale/medium scale sets.

Ramp wise - good point. I just checked and it looks like it's gone. I probably threw it away with the box, seems like something I'd do. 🤷🏼‍♀️

2 minutes ago, Burns-bass said:

To 99.9% of people every bass sounds the same. If you like it, that’s all good but none of it matters.

 

I showed my dad my 66 candy apple red jazz bass with the matching headstock and he said “that looks knackered, my mate can re spray it”

Yeah, it always amazes me when people can't hear these massive tonal differences which I'm sure are there.

If there wasn't a massive community of people online confirming my perception, I'd think I was mad.

I think we're the weird ones though.

7 minutes ago, jonno1981 said:

Back in my guitar shop managing days I’d get so frustrated with people who refused to accept we didn’t have boxed up instruments out the back for every guitar on the shop floor. “You mean I have to buy this one?”. Yes sir, this is the instrument that you liked so much you wanted to buy it. If we had another one, how do you know if it’s as good or if you’d like it as much as this one. 
It’s not the brand, the price, it’s the guitar in your hands to judge! 

That sounds like the kind of mistake I'd have made early on. A good one is a good ONE. Doesn't mean all the others will be good.

2 minutes ago, Bassfinger said:

11lbs unusable?  My breakfast weighs more than that.

Well yeah, this is the thing - it's all also really subjective.

Anything much over 8lbs for me pretty much means a sitting down instrument.

Both of the basses I'm using at the moment - a player series p-bass, and a vintage modified jaguar - sound, depending on where I have the tone knob, like either a woolly mammoth, or a woolly mammoth covered in spikes.

There's a marked difference in the size of the mammoth, cuz the Squier is in D-Standard tuning.

I've been through tonnes of gear over the past few years, sometimes chasing very particular tones, sometimes just seeing if I like stuff.

Certainly with the instruments themselves, less so with amps, cabs and effects, which are a bit more consistent, I'm finding that all the stuff people are shopping for - sound, feel, weight, build quality - it's all not only subjective, but also a bit random.

Sound is the big one - at the moment, the best sounding bass I've owned, in my opinion, is a 10 year old beater of a squier jaguar, with much maligned online Duncan design pickups, and knackered electronics- I dunno what's going on, but when the bridge pickup is on full, the bridge tone pot acts as a master tone for the bass. For whatever reason, that setting - both pickups on full, riding the back tone, through my gear, in my room, to my ears, sounds amazing.

Weight - you can buy an off the shelf American made fender, and end up with an instrument weighing anywhere from 7lbs to 11lbs, which is the difference between toy like insubstantiality, and an unusable slab of furniture imo.

Things like tuning stability - you can improve the odds with material choices, etc, but imo, it's mostly a crap shoot if you get a "good-un", or a neck which seems like it's still trying to grow towards the light.

For context, some of the basses I've gone through - sterling musicman stingray, fender american ultra jazz, sire u5, gibson 2015 sg, fender vintera and player mustangs, ibanez mezzo 5er, ibanez ehb1005, fender player p-bass, marusczyk jazz, couple of squier jags. All good basses, with the possible exception of the gibson, which sounded like it was under water no matter what I did, but maybe that's your thing...

My conclusion is this - there's too much variation between individual instruments for differences between - brands, location of manufacture, materials, components, and price - to be anywhere near as significant as we're led to expect by marketing.

This leads me to believe its just not worth buying an expensive bass sight unseen. Certainly not unless factors which are important to you, like weight, quality control, setup, figuring etc - are all known - like a dealer who takes detailed images and weighs individual instruments. And I don't think I'd ever order a custom instrument. You might get a good un, but you might get a very expensive wall decoration.

It's also led me to think that I should stick to budget instruments. Probably sub £500 used. If my "best" (for me at the moment) bass is a slightly broken squier from a line which didn't even have a great rep when it was out 10 years ago (Indonesian vintage modified) which cost 250 quid with a hard case included from a dealer (so is probably worth about 100 quid), there's no point spending big money.

Thoughts?

Reduced to 700 quid. Bargain imo, and means if you're swayed by some of the reviewers opinions on the Bartolinis (I like em personally), you can basically get an as new one and put in the aguilar DCBs everyone favours for pretty much the same as a new stock one.

9 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

I would say that it doesn't really have that much of an effect apart from noise in situations, it is a very riich sounding bass, and TBH, it probably wouldn't sound as good with humbuckers, so I don't see it as a functional issue.

Yeah, definitely not a sound issue, I don't mind single coils (although I prefer noiseless ones).

Just an aesthetic thing I suppose - I'm OK with humbuckers pretending to be single coils (which is basically what a noiseless J pickup is), but not the other way round.

11 hours ago, Jonesy said:

 

I agree with you and think the vid does go a bit OTT on the whole fraud front............but he's not wrong, a company deliberately misleading the buying public is definitely fraudulent and he has a case. There's no way this is a mistake by Fender/Gretsch and they don't know what sort of pick up they put in there.

 

I still have no idea why they'd do it though. By all accounts, it's a good bass with a big sound. I doubt many buyers would have not gone home with it based on what they read with their eyes over what they heard with their ears.

 

Having a custom image like that is best practice for any YT material and it's designed to grab attention, but I wouldn't say it was clickbait, personally. It's not as if the content is unrelated to image or he's talking about something completely unrelated. Another thing that will help the view figures be a lot higher than those others is the brands he talks about .G&L, Lakland & Reverend are all well known to us in this little bubble, but they're no way near as big a brand as Fender, who are arguably the worlds best known guitar brand. The amount of content and searches for Fender on YouTube compared to the other 3 would be mammoth - hence the vid appearing in more searches, suggested videos and subsequent views.

 

But you're right - that image would help him boost views. Personally I'm not against it. But maybe because it's the field I work in  🙂

 

 

I have a hard time seeing why they'd do it too. Can the difference in manufacturing and installation costs be enough to warrant making single coils that look like humbuckers, instead of just actual humbuckers? Apparently so.

This bass has always been on my radar, but to be honest, I don't want one with pretend humbuckers in it. It's just a bit sad.

Oof. That's a stunner.

GLWTS!

3 hours ago, AndyTravis said:

Very Mike Mills…

Nice one! I was looking for an iconic player with one like it. His basslines on REM stuff are killer.

Might have to recreate this:

So need a tort pickguard, and a very flamboyant blazer... 😁

4 hours ago, Grahambythesea said:

I think that colour is very similar to what they used to call blonde on the Telecaster bass in the 70s. If you Google Teles there are several photos that look similar.

Yeah, I think that's the closest I've seen on vintage basses.

I think the blonde on teles was slightly translucent with some wood grain showing - the buttercream is like an opaque version of that.

Got me a precision in buttercream yellow.

Love this colour, very vintage, without being a cliche. Looks like it could be in a 60s vespa or something.

Pickguard suggestions? The plain white doesn't do it for me. Maybe brown tort? Purple pearl? Black?

Also, does anyone know anything about the colour? It's supposedly a Fender colour from back in the day, but I don't think I've ever seen it on anything vintage. Was it one of the less popular special order jobs?

I recently put a bass in D Standard, and love it. Lower tension, heavier sound, and closer to my vocal range if I ever want to attempt singing.

I only did it cuz I had a set of strings thicker than I like for that scale, but will keep it in that for the foreseeable.

One thing to keep in mind is that "standard" tuning ain't what it used to be. It's all based on a nominal standard of 440hz for the middle A, which was only standardised at the start of the 20th century, before which it was all over the place, but it had generally been creeping up for several centuries. Go back far enough and EADG was much heavier. 😁