LeftyJ

15 hours ago, drTStingray said:

You need to read what I said - that it is a different company (Praxis Musical Instruments, I understand).

I think Praxis Musical Instruments is only their "production partner" as they call it in their "About"-section, just like Cor-tek (Cort) is for many guitar brands (PRS SE series, the Indonesian Ibanez models and many, many more). But yes, you're absolutely right: the EBMM factory won't feel a thing from the demand for the SBMM SUB Joe Dart model. Their "cut out the middle man"-approach to selling these through their own channels is clever and helps raising demand by creating an air of exclusivity, since it won't be available through their regular dealer network. 

Paging @pepe1001

Edit:  Works for Eich, but hasn't been here in almost 3 years. Maybe not so effective. 

On 02/06/2024 at 18:19, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

FWIW the power amp class has very little to do with clean versus colored. That's mainly the product of the pre-amp section.

I suspect "class D" could be replaced with "small and lightweight" in this case 

15 hours ago, drTStingray said:

Indeed and I’m sure you’re right. However some people, from their posts, seem to think it’s the same company!! Linked but not the same 👍

I don't think that's accurate. They call themselves "Sterling by Music Man" for a reason 

About | Sterling by Music Man

Their predecessor, OLP, was unrelated to EBMM. But when their license to build Music Man copies ended, Ernie Ball took matters into their own hands and started the Sterling brand. OLP was a subsidiary of Hanser Music Group, who used to be the US distributor for brands such as Kustom, BC Rich, Michael Kelly guitars, Traben, Warwick and Spector. Under the OLP brand they also built cheap versions of Traben basses and a line of motorcycle-inspired "Orange County Choppers" guitars that were awful, back when OCC was at the height of their popularity due to the Discovery Channel series. 

Quietly (and unintentionally, really), and amicable. Our ADHD singer was juggling 4 kids (at the time, she's at 5 now) and too many hobbies and just didn't have the time and the focus. She was completely unreliable to make any appointments with - and entirely unaware and oblivious of it. Eventually it just didn't work out anymore and we had to tell her. Together we decided it was in our shared best interest if she quit the band and we found someone else to replace her. This proved to be easier said than done. We were an originals band who played poppy metal. We had one album out and had played about 20-30 gigs per year in small clubs and sometimes as opening act for bigger names in our genre. Not quite established, but we were making a bit of a name for ourselves.

We were in the process of writing new material for a second album, and were looking for someone who was equally amazing as our old singer: she had great pitch, a great voice, good English pronounciation, and was able to create good and creative vocal lines on the spot in jams, with temporary nonsense-lyrics. Turned out she wasn't that easy to replace... We held auditions for weeks and had about 10 female singers try out. Only one of them was any good but she was a true pro and we couldn't offer her what she was looking for - because all of us had different day jobs and no intention of making music professionally, with the exception of our drummer who had a degree in contemporary music. So she kindly thanked us for our time and left. The others were all terrible: either absolute beginners, or just an absolute mismatch to our sound. And none were creative (or confident) enough to join in on a jam and create on the spot - which is OK, we were perfectly aware this is difficult when playing with a bunch of guys you've never met before. 

Then our lead guitarist left. He already had a PhD in chemistry, and would go to Oxford University for 3 years for a postdoc research project of 3 years. That's about 8 years ago now, and he never came back . He's a professor at the university of Barcelona now. Our band is inactive ever since, but it's safe to say we all quit.

The 3 remaining members (rhythm guitarist, drummer and myself) still played together in a doom metal project since late 2019, but unfortunately the guitarist was booted a couple of months ago for not making enough of an effort. That was (and still is) a real bummer for me, having played together since 2009 

Wow, that marley blue one is great! I much prefer this bodyshape over the T, so seeing one with two J pickups is a pleasant surprise. Great mod! 

My Lionel is on the heavy side, but it's a satin finish which come with an ash body. The glossy and aged ones are all alder bodies and much lighter. I didn't weigh mine, but it's definitely one of my heaviest basses. 

I haven't owned or used that many amps, and rarely have GAS for another. I've been using the same EBS HD-350 and EBS Proline 4x10 for over 15 years now and I have no desire to get anything else (except maybe a Fafner). So I guess that's my contribution:

#1: EBS HD350. Very flexible, it can do glassy clean hifi sounds but is very much capable of some warmth and tube-like drive too (without actually using a tube). It's plenty loud through my 4x10 at 4 Ohms, I've never been able to turn it up past 11 o' clock without fellow bandmembers or sound engineers giving me dirty looks or yelling at me. It's got a useful and functional compressor/limiter that smoothly and subtly evens out unwanted peaks, despite having only a single control knob. 

That said, the best live tone I've ever had was:

#2: Ampeg SVT-II Pro + Ampeg SVT810. Gritty, punchy, and it needed almost no EQ'ing to sound the way I wanted it to. 

14 hours ago, gafbass02 said:

GMR - custom preamp fitted by Dex Audio, it’s bartolini module that’s been ‘breathed on’? It works more like a two band filter over a very useable range, it’s hard to describe but nice. A little goes a long way, even though the range is limited. It’s hard to describe. 
Fender - so many mods since 1994 ish I don’t know where to start. It had a status neck at one point. 
ibanez sr1200. Just the ramp. 
SR500 stripped, burnt finish and bartolini preamp. Done by me. 

 

I could drool at that GMR all day 

Almost needs a NSFW tag, it's that beautiful! 

Revelation Bass VI-alike

This is my Fender Crafted in Japan JB75-US. The pic is from 2009 so this isn't even its final form ()

I changed:

• the electronics to an Audere JZ3T preamp with 3-way impedance switching, but hated it, for several reasons (1). I had a battery box routed into the back of the body for this;
• the electronics back to passive VVT, but with the addition of a De Gier / Vanderkley FatBoost,. It's a subtle active bass boost of up to 6 dB, accessed via a rotary switch where the jack used to be, with a regular Jazz Bass knob to camouflage it. It has an internal trim pot for setting the gain level. Works great, subtle but effective. The electronics cavity needed to be routed slightly to make room for it;
• the stock bridge to a Leo Quan BadAss II;
• the stock tuners to Hipshot HB2's and an Xtender;
• the strap buttons to Schaller security locks;
• added a pickup cover.

The previous owner had already changed the white pickguard to a black one, which I like a helluva lot better, and had holes drilled for both covers but I never mounted a bridge cover because it gets in the way of my playing and I don't like the look. 

It's a heavy beast with a fairly deep neck profile, and oddly for a '75 RI has the bridge pickup in the regular 60s position (like most CIJ JB75's in fact, but there are exceptions). But it plays and sounds great and I love it. 

(1) I was always struggling to find a "neutral" tone that matched the passive sound of the bass. It just wasn't there. And the most important USP of the Audere, its impedance switch, was a totally useless feature for me because I hated the high-Z and low-Z settings and only used the normal position. Besides that, the Audere was prewired righthanded, so the pots turned in a direction that was very unnatural to me. They were PCB-mounted, so I couldn't change that. I hated it so much that I stopped playing this bass alltogether, which is a shame because it's so good! So I had it changed back to passive and it reignited my live for this bass. 

Welcome, fellow lefty and Warwick fan! Lovely Streamer you have there!

I have two Streamers, a 4-string LX and a 5-string LX5. The 4-string has the same colour as yours, but in high gloss lacquer. 

I tried an Audere JZ3T in my Jazz Bass once (it was the 4-knob version with active 3-band, passive tone and 3-way impedance switch, but they sell them in 3-knob config too) and it was nice, but I got lost in all the tonal options. The impedance switch is cool but to me it didn't really offer anything usefull beside the middle (neutral) position. The low-Z setting gave a very deep, dubby low end and less high end. The high-Z setting was thin and almost a bit out-of-phase in character and was completely useless for me and my bands. 

In my Ellio Martina I have an Aguilar OBP-3 in a 3-knob configuration (volume/pan stacked with active/passive push-pull, mid/treble stacked with mid frequency select push-pull, and bass) but I don't like the center frequencies they chose for the EQ. The bass frequency is too low to my taste, the treble control is too high, and the mid control somehow only has a noticable effect when it's almost entirely up. May be a problem with the MEC pots it's coupled to in my bass, I don't know. 

Probably not the recommendations you were hoping for 

Other preamps I have experience with were stock electronics of various brands (Carvin, Ibanez, Cort, Status) so not much help there. I have yet to try the Darkglass, but the idea of two mid controls and no upper treble sounds very appealing to me, and very functional. 

On 18/05/2024 at 15:13, bass_dinger said:

I see that I am missing a few bits.  Adjustable bridge saddle and a machine head retaining screw. 

 

Can anyone help?

 

Full wanted advert here: 

 

 

 

Your bridge appears to be an ABM Mueller 3705 in aluminium. Your best bet would be to send them an email or give them a call. Make sure to check the spacing first, these bridges come in either 17 mm or 19 mm spacing and the saddle inserts might differ in width between the two. 

5 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

 

I've got the purple one.

2 hours ago, tauzero said:

I wonder if they'll introduce headless models - they had a headless guitar, the Dullahan, but that's gone (not before I bought one though). They're not averse to making non-clone instruments - after all, the HBZ neck-throughs with a slight resemblance to Peavey Grinds are still going strong.

Was that the Kiesel Osiris copy? 

It's not for the Roadster RS900 in your profile pic is it? That's not a Roadstar II but a Roadster from the first series. They use what I believe to be Gotoh GB-1's with a custom heart-shaped knob instead of a clover. The normal GB-1's are still readily available from Gotoh. 

Ooooh, finally a lefty version of that Mustang-like shortscale PJ! It still only has a master volume and master tone, but the switch is a great add! I'd love dual volume. 

But FFS, why only black for us? I would sooo choose the Shell Pink one if I could! 

On 18/05/2024 at 20:17, SteveXFR said:

I played in a doom band, all our songs were miserable.

Came here to say exactly this 

5 hours ago, Kiwi said:

Geoff Gould supplied them to Alembic and Musicman AND was setting up Modulus at the same time.

Wow, I wouldn't have guessed the Cutlass necks to be made by Modulus. The Alembic and Musicman necks were constructed very differently to Modulus necks, with their woven graphite monocoques rather than the patchwork necks Modulus used on their own basses. Today I learned!

13 hours ago, Buddster said:

Bit different, but Charlie Jones. 

He is the brother of the studio manager where I worked at in Bristol when I was 19 in early 80s.

His band recorded and hung out there and got signed to Magnet records. I did thier live sound. 

Me a young player, his style, attitude, live performance and drive were really inspiring. Intense but a really lovely bloke. I learnt a lot about other things from him, even though he wouldn't have realised. 

And looked cool as hell when played! 

 

Quite the rare Warwick there! That's an "Infinette", a semi-hollow Corvette / Streamer hybrid that predates the Infinity but ultimately inspired it. Very unusual and very cool! 

2 hours ago, LukeFRC said:

the shop didn't even do research to find out the value of a Wal. - do you think they had any idea about packaging and CITEs to send a bass internationally?! 

I was going to argue musical instruments were exempted from CITES rules a few years ago - but then I googled it and found out the B-word meant the UK dropped out of that exemption 

13 minutes ago, paul_5 said:

Tapes are MUCH wider in diameter than rounds, I’d start by checking the size of the groove for that string.

This right here. You can actually see it in your last pic if you look closely: the upper line is where the bottom of your string sits, and the bottom line is where the nut slot appears to sits 

Hugo Prinsen Geerligs of The Gathering. They were my gateway into modern metal back in 1997, when I first discovered them, and through their development into more atmospheric and progressive styles they also dragged me along into different styles outside my comfort zone - almost straight away, when they released their double album "How to measure a planet?" in 1998, which was nothing like its precursors. I've been following them ever since. 

Please tell me you covered Willie Nelson's "On the road again" 

On the road again

I just can't wait to get on the road again

But one Al Krow is making music with his friends

And I can't be arsed to swerve around again

Or no pickguard, like an actual L1000 (how is your 5-string neck labelled L1000, and not 1005?)