LeftyJ

I recently had a guitar valve amp repaired and hit just over €200. It's a cathode-bias amp, so the bias of the power tubes is regulated "automatically" - until the cathodes fail. So the power tubes were running way too hot, and several parts controlling the power regulation towards the power tubes were replaced. Luckily I still had a spare set of EL84 power tubes or it would have been a lot more. Tubes are expensive these days!

Nothing in particular, and everything in general I don't have any specific GAS at the moment, but then again I rarely do: it usually just suddenly overcomes me whenever I come upon a piece of gear that speaks to me. The exception is I'd really like to own a vintage lefty Mustang Bass or Musicmaster Bass some time - but the prices have gone completely mad. That said, I have a few other items on my list that I still really want to try sometime: Spector Euro LX 5; Something (anything) with fanned frets; I'm really impressed with my Sandberg Lionel and wouldn't mind a longscale California VM or VT; Zon Sonus or Legacy 5.

Here in the Netherlands we're on 230V too, since 1989. Prior to that we had 220V. 230V is pretty much universal for all of Europe these days, including the UK, according to Wikipedia (if it says so on the internet it is obviously true! 😞 Mains electricity - Wikipedia

I'm somewhat tall (1.96m) and subsequently my hands are also somewhat large: 21 cm like @Hellzero's. Add to that 15 years of manual labour (working in soil and groundwater surveying, making boreholes of up to 7 metres deep by hand for sampling) so they're not just long but somewhat chunky and callous too (though it's gotten less after spending most of the last 4 years working in an office). I can get around on most types of neck, but I much prefer a solid Jazz Bass-like C-shape with a nicely curved compound radius fingerboard - preferably a radius of no more than 10" at the nut, coming down to a flatter surface towards the bridge for a more even plucking height. In recent years I've come to appreciate shortscale basses a lot, and I'm equally at ease on the shorter fret distances as I am on a 34" bass - they're just so much fun to play!

I've been playing mine some more too, and after some time with it I can honestly say it's not the preamp that's noisy but the singlecoil pickup. On the neck splitcoil I can turn the treble up as far as I want and it remains totally quiet and hum-free, but with the bridge pickup soloed the noise gets annoying with the treble halfway up or more. I really like the EQ center frequencies of both knobs, the range of both is very useful and musical sounding without getting overly harsh or boomy too soon. It really is a nice bass with a great feel to it and a great range of tones. I'm still a bit bummed by the QC issues, but I don't mind them as much as when I had just received it. I've actually gotten quite curious about a fretted one now too...

I mostly use an amp when playing at home. I'm definitely on team "overkill" here, with a 150 watt 1x12 EBS NeoDrome. I also have a simple interface with a Yamaha 8-channel mixer with USB and two KRK V4 series II active monitors, and recently I picked up a small 5 watt tube head (H&K Bass Master) but I have yet to pick up a small cabinet for home use. So far I've only used it with a 1x12 guitar cab, which sounded great.

I have yet to try one, lefty supply is short. But I'm very curious to give one a go!

I believe they were announced in late 2020 and entered the market in early 2021. Not sure what the deal is with the updates and when they were done. I just looked up on YouTube when LowEndLobster's first unboxing video was posted (including his complaints of very noisy electronics), and that was November 22, 2020.

It is! The serial numbers follow the Warwick logic.

I picked up this cute H&K Bassmaster (pics not mine, but it's the same device) a couple of weeks ago, mostly as a home practice amp. It came in the original box! The seller was clearing the stock from a long closed bass store in the Netherlands (due to the owner's health issues). The master volume doesn't seem to work, but otherwise it's all fine so I'll just need to have that looked at. The EL84 is mostly there to generate actual power amp saturation for recording situations, but it's very much capable of driving a cab (5 watts output power). I paid €190 and I feel like that was €190 well spent!

Can confirm, I don't have a JMJ but I have this case and tried it with my Atelier Z Baby Z-4J (which is Mustang-shaped) and although it just fits, I'm not comfortable with the stress it puts on the G-string tuner. Not recommended.

Mine arrived yesterday. The serial number dates it to 2021, which is after the most glaring QC issues of the first batch had been resolved. It's nice, sounds good, but there are still some QC issues. Nothing too big, and at €299 I'm a little more willing to look away from them than I would have been at the original price - it would surely have gone straight back to Thomann. Still, I'm not sure yet if it's a keeper: The A-string is clearly louder than the other 4 when using the splitcoil - assumably because both halves of the splitcoil pick it up; The preamp is fairly quiet, so that issue has been resolved on mine - until you turn up the treble boost to halfway or more. Then the noise soon becomes unbearable. Active mode is also considerably louder than passive, even with both EQ knobs set to 0; The side dot at the 7th position is missing. Not just missing from the hole: there IS no hole. Nobody bothered to drill one and they just went with it; The adjustable Just-a-nut is a nice feature, but the nut slot wasn't routed deep enough and it doesn't adjust low enough to my liking for a fretless. Would have been fine if this had had frets, but not here, so I'd need to cut the nut slots; I had to adjust the saddles WAY down to make it playable. The G-string saddle is almost maxed down; The height adjustment screws in the saddles all have varying lengths, in random order. After adjusting the action some of them now stick out ridiculously far; String alignment over the pickups could have been slightly better - but it doesn't seem to affect the tone or playability as there's still plenty of fingerboard width left on either side. There's some good stuff too though: it sounds really good, the hardware is great, it plays well (even despite the nut height not being to my liking), the included gigbag is pretty impressive even if it's not exactly identical to the original Sadowsky Portabag, and the ebony fingerboard - if a little pale - appears to be sealed really well and smoothly, almost to a polish. Looks and feels really nice. For €800 this would have gone straight back, but for €299... I haven't really made my mind up yet. I'll need to play it a little more Again, note that this is a 2021 model. The early batches of the MetroExpress series were known to exhibit several QC issues, many of which have since been attended to. The one that Thomann shipped to me was obviously marked down for a reason: they need to get rid of their old stock, because these old basses are making the new and more expensive models look bad.

Thomann have a killer Cyberweek deal on the Sadowsky Metroexpress Hybrid 5 fretless. I ordered mine on Monday and received it today: Sadowsky MetroExpress 21-5 Hyb BK FL LH – Thomann United Kingdom Thomann are still clearing their stock of the first series, as the new and improved series has been available for a while now. The one I got has a serial number dating it back to 2021. Not sure yet if this one has had all the initial QC issues fixed or if it's from before that, I'm still at work and have yet to plug it in. Issues were mostly electronics-related (noisy preamp, poor string-to-string output balance due to P pickup having two coils below the A-string - even if only one has pole pieces).

I'd say Jazz too, covers nearly all eras. He played Laklands for a while too, both Joe Osborn and Darryl Jones models - which are both basically Jazz Basses. He even (briefly) had a signature version of the (fairly affordable) Skyline Darryl Jones, which was somewhat confusing namewise.

I was just browsing Thomann's "Cyberweek" deals, and a lefty MetroExpress Hybrid 5 fretless popped up for €299... (the old RSD version obviously). So to cut a long story short, their stock is now down by 1. I've been wanting to give fretless another try, and I've been curious about these basses for a while. At this price, I really couldn't resist anymore. I'm really curious! Oddly enough, this was the only version I came across in the deals section. The same bass in the lefty Vintage (JJ) version is still priced at €429.

The mid cut/off/boost switch is standard on the Board 300 preamps (300/301/302/303). My 2002 S2 Classic has the Board 300, and my 2011 S2 Classic has the Board 303 (which is still the most recent update of this circuit, and is still in use in the current Series 23 basses. In both my basses it operates on 18V (so 2 PP3's). I recon the 3rd battery in yours might be to power side LEDs, and the biggest of the two switches turns them on and off? Mine don't have LEDs and only have the smaller switch for the mids. The variable mid level control you describe is currently only available on the Chris Wolstenholme models. You're probably right in thinking this should be fairly simple to add

Nice, I'd love to give them a try. I always use these, working my way up from coarse to fine: Micro-Mesh Soft Pads Set – Thomann I tried the rubber Hosco pads too, but they only come in fairly coarse varieties so they can't be used by themselves without finishing with something finer.

Wow, I never realised these were THAT big. The upper strap button is at what, fret 16? Bloody hell! What are the electronics in the B2? I tried finding it on the Status Graphite website but couldn't find specs of the B2. I'm guessing it's probably a Board 300 series preamp but with the volume pot taken off the circuit board, since the other controls appear to be pretty much in the same spot.

So it's a Sandberg 48 then?

Only once have I been in the position you're describing: really searching for that one perfect bass. It was when I wanted to upgrade from my old Condor Jazz Bass to my first proper 5-string. Being a lefty, I couldn't really be picky: what 5-strings within my budget are on the market, and is there a choice of colour at all? This was in or around 1999-2000 and most Dutch music retailers didn't have much of a webshop or a way to view their stock online, so I had to do it the old-fashioned way and took the train to Amsterdam to visit as many music stores as I could in one day. At the end of that day I had a list of 3: Cort Artisan B5L, Ibanez SR885L and Yamaha TRB5IIL. I went with the latter based on feel (very solid and with a smooth and chunky neck), tone (warm but tight, almost piano-like on the high strings, possibly due to the 35" scale) and playability (it had the widest string spacing of the 3, a regular 19 mm at the bridge which I liked a lot). They had a choice between trans blue and amberburst, and I chose the amberburst. Nowadays I just browse classified ads and once in a while one will grab my attention and call my name. Often I buy to try, and sell when I don't gel with an instrument. Looks are usually the first thing I go off on, and often the trying doesn't really start until the instrument is at home with me, has had a thorough cleaning, polishing and adjustments to my taste. There have been many examples of me buying instruments which were outside of my comfort zone, just because I wanted to give them a go and was unable to try one in a store.

I quite like the tone of my Lionel's stock pickup. Ironically, the previous owner sold it because he thought it sounded too modern - even after replacing the stock pickup with a Fender Custom Shop '64 P pickup. So he put the stock pickup back in and put both the bass and the replacement pickup up for sale. I have to add mine has a heavy ash body, I'd imagine the alder version (which is basically all the glossy and aged finish versions) may sound somewhat less bright. I do feel the stock pickups are fairly cheaply made, with non-magnetic slugs for pole pieces and a big ceramic bar magnet glued to the bottom. I don't associate that construction with a high-end German-made instrument. But I'm happy with the sound so I guess it doesn't really matter.

I used to love modding mostly my guitars, but for some reason I've left nearly all my basses alone. I have modded my '75 Jazz Bass reissue pretty heavily (Hipshot tuners, Badass II bridge, MEC pots, De Gier / Vanderkleij FatBoost, battery box routed in the back) but all the others were pretty much left unchanged save for new Sadowsky-style aluminium knobs on my Streamer LX5 and Atelier Z Baby Z-4J. I just never felt the need to change anything. I've more or less stopped modding my guitars too in previous years, and embrace their quirks and specific characters. If they don't sound the way I want to I always used to blame the gear, but now I've come to terms with mostly having myself to blame

Thanks for inquiring, but I'm afraid I have long since sold it. I just looked up how long it's been, and apparently this was in November 2011. Time flies when you're having fun

I have both, but I rarely touch the active EQ on my active basses, and I never touched the tone control on my passive basses, except sparingly on my Jazz Bass. That is, until I got a (sort of) P-bass. Suddenly that control made sense, and became incredibly useful. My ideal control layout for my needs is very simple: I'll just have a master volume, a buffered pan pot (if twin-pickup), a passive tone control and an active bass boost and I'm happy as can be.