LeftyJ

I can safely say I always have GAS for something new... But I have toned down a fair bit during the last few years. I have a couple of great basses that serve my needs perfectly. However, I always like to try out new things. And being a lefty, I can rarely find these new things in music stores, so instead I buy (used) to try. High on my list of wants is a multiscale bass, and I kinda sorta want a Precision. And having owned my my Atelier Z Baby Z-4J for about 1.5 years now, I can safely say I've been bitten by the shortscale bug. I now really want a Mustang or shortscale P. I bought a Harly Benton PB Shorty to try, and while it sounds great it's a poorly built and finished bass with a neck so bendy I could swear it's made of reed instead of maple. There's a Sandberg Lionel for sale local to me and I have been looking into ways to afford it... Guitar-wise, I'm very happy to have a G&L ASAT Special again after foolishly selling my old one about 10 years ago. That and my old MIJ Squier Strats and Carvin 7-string leave me nothing more to wish for. And the Taylor GS Mini acoustic I own is absolutely perfect in every way!

I kept some posters from old gigs and had them laminated. One (of the release party of an album) is on the wall in our rehearsal room, where I still regularly rehearse with 2 other members of said band in a new group. I've still got some old merchandise too, and some test prints of business cards, magnets, stickers and t-shirts. Most notably, I've kept a CD from a faulty batch that had our artwork, but was accidentally pressed with the music of a children's group on it. We were supposed to send the whole batch back, but I just HAD to keep one for sh*ts and giggles. I'm the only one in the band that still has them, the others were destroyed. Edit: now that I think of it, we stlil keep our old website in the air just for this purpose. We just switched hosts last year because the cost went up considerably. I guess we're a nostalgic bunch

You received these for a review in De Bassist and kept them afterwards, if I'm not mistaken? Playing the devil's advocate here: Maybe they sent you two that stood out?

I think @Bassassin is on to something here, the bridges pictured look very similar!

The narrow pickups somewhat remind me of the Steinberger-copies by Riverhead and Headway, but they're slightly different in size and the hardware is quite different. I've not seen this one before.

They misspelled "bass primer". I'll have me some high speed silver on the neck please! But keep the dull aluminium away, I like me some definition and attack

Offer the Mustang Bass (by you-know-who) as a lefty. I would be perfectly happy with a lefty version of the Squier CV too. And real, Canadian-made Dingwalls, I would love me an Afterburner II with an all-wenge neck. I really appreciate they've given us left Combustions and NG's, but I feel they're incredibly overpriced for something made in China and I don't like their looks as much.

Aye, output on these is ginormous! Owned a USA-made SB-2 and the splitcoil ate the bridge pickup for breakfast. The MFD bridge singlecoil was useless on its own because of the vast difference in output, but provided a useful bit of "tone control" to the splitcoil.

Many of the Swedish-made EBS amps can phantom-power an active bass with a stereo jack cable. Or the last (EBS) pedal in the chain, those support phantom-power through the jack too. I've never tried it on my HD350 or my NeoDrome, but it should just be a matter of flicking a tiny dipswitch on the back panel. I don't know about their Chinese models (the current line of smaller combo's and the Classic and Reidmar models) but I know the Swedish models have it.

Lovely find! My Streamer LX4 has that same colour, but high gloss. I love it. The Fortress was their only model with the splitcoil in the regular P position (and not reversed). Very nice! What preamp is in there, @Rayman? I don't think I've seen a Fortress with those controls before.

Ernie Ball does. Most Music Man basses in recent years have pickups with a hidden dummy coil below the humbucker. On the regular Stingray there were no switching options, but the Sterling and Stingray 5 have always had a 3-way switch for series/single/parallel switching - and the current Stingray Special does too. I'm a big ATK fan, I've owned two 1996 ATK300's and one ATK305, all made in Japan, and they were great and incredibly solid (and heavy). By the way, your last picture with the controls explained is of an ATK200, which doesn't have the iconic triplecoil but instead uses a quadcoil humbucker with no singlecoil option and no phantom coil. I much prefer the triplecoil

They did reissue the Musician, but they overdid it and charged silly money. Meet the MC30th: https://reverb.com/item/2353753-ibanez-rare-ltd-ed-mc30th-musician-bass-no-7-of-only-15-made-in-japan-w-ohsc

The 5-string is a JJ. It's missing a string, but it still counts

What a beauty! There's a 4-string U-bass for sale in the Netherlands at the moment, seller claims it's a prototype: https://link.marktplaats.nl/m2013371014

Yup, should be on par with the other high end basses Japan had to offer in those days: Ibanez Musician, Aria Pro II SB series, Yamaha BB. Very nice find!

This I had the exact mirror image of yours, and it was indeed on the neck plate.

Yes, one of the new Schaller S-locks. They fit on the old Schaller strap buttons, but Schaller do not recommend using the old locks on the newer strap buttons because they're just slightly smaller.

I currently only have my 1983 lefty MC924 that I love - but never play. It's very rare and it's from my year of birth which makes it quite special to me, and it's really comfortable to play and sounds great. I mostly play my other basses. That said, I've always been a vintage Ibanez geek. I've owned two more MC924's, an RS924 (indeed, as @Bassassin put it, one of the best sounding PJ's out there), two 1996 ATK300's, one 1998 ATK305 and a 1987 (first year) SR800LE, all made in Japan. I've also had a few of their guitars, all RG's and also all made in Japan (two RG470's and two awesome RG550's). I'm sure more will follow, I'm a sucker for anything Ibanez Japan.

The Status Graphite Facebook groups are buzzing with news of new Status basses, the Series 23 with graphite-reinforced maple necks with phenolic fingerboards. Rob has updated his site too. Exciting, but weird too!

I've been a plug and play type of player for most of my bass playing years. I started out as a guitarist and have had loads of pedals and multi-FX units, but for bass I've never really felt the need. I had some pedals for sh*ts and giggles at home (like envelope filters and a synth pedal, and some other things that went unused) that I had no use for in any of my bands, but that's it. If I had an amp with a slight bit of dirt I was happy. Now for the past 3 years I've been in a doom metal band where I need to be able to add more drive on occasion, so I had a use for the Darkglass B7K that I've had sitting at home for a few years, and I've finally made a small pedalboard (Pedaltrain Nano) with said overdrive, a tuner, a compressor and a chorus. But I often forget bringing it to rehearsals and even gigs... It's just not really for me, and in the end I'm happiest with just my bass into a dirty tube (pre)amp that I can vary the drive on by altering how hard I pluck.

Still better than having bands split, and then having two bands touring with the same material. I used to listen to Rhapsody when I was you get, they're a symphonic power metal band. When the two founding members and main contributors clashed in 2011, they went their own separate ways as "Luca Turilli's Rhapsody" and "Rhapsody of Fire". The latter kept the original vocalist until 2016, when everyone except the founding keyboardist reunited and did a farewell tour. Then in 2018, confusingly, they reunited again onder the name "Turilli / Lione Rhapsody" - still without said keyboardist. Ever since, my bandmates and I have jokingly used the addition "OF FIRE" for any newer lineup of an older band.

The correct name is actually Dymondwood®, trademarked by Rutland Plywood Corp, which consists of layered hardwood veneers that were heated, vacuüm pressed and impregnated with dyes and phenolic resin. Roscoe also offers Rainbow Dymondwood on their fretless basses, which has multicoloured dyes (each layer has a different colour, and when the radius of the fingerboard is introduced, this gives the rainbow effect).

I too choose this guy's signature bass. That sounds almost perfect! I'll have a solid orange, somewhere around Candy Tangerine would be awesome. And a fiver with the same specs too!

...except the ad fails to mention it was stripped of its Dark Stain finish. The area around the serial number still shows the original colour of the back of the neck. It was completely refinished ssve for that little bit on the back and the front logo. There are no lefties in any other finish than Dark Stain. I've owned three of these and know my Musicians Whoever did it did a beautiful job, but it's not original and incredibly overpriced.

At home, either my EBS NeoDrome 12 or straight into a Yamaha USB mixer with two KRK V4 Series II monitors. Both sound great, but I usually favour the EBS.