Grand Wazoo

[quote name='Foxx' post='1361432' date='Sep 3 2011, 11:44 PM']Is it my eyes, or does that precision have jazz-width neck too? [/quote] No your eyes are perfectly fine that's exactly what they have. I tried them both at Guitar Guitar Epsom a couple of weeks ago, check this: the one with the pbass body has a jazz neck width with the two 'buckers the one with the Jazz body has 2 Pbass pickups and a precision width neck, a complete mix and match of horribleness and they both sounded proper sh|te (to me at least)

At the risk of getting slated, I have to say that from your sound clip, I see (or I should say hear) nothing wrong with the original sound sans John East, and I would definately say that I prefer the original sound. Sorry

[quote name='Musicman20' post='1360889' date='Sep 3 2011, 12:38 PM']Nice review Fran, what were those basses like?[/quote] They were ok for £700 a piece, these are MTD Kingston - made in China mind you, a bit of ok, aimed at the mid / high end players, well made and with nice pickups wood covers, they certainly beat the average Ibanez SR series and with nice veneer tops to boot. Oh and the necks were comfy too. I think the one I tried was called the MTD Kingston Z and looked very much like this one except that the one I tried was a 4 banger not a 6'er [url="http://www.mtdkingston.com/MTD_Z_InfoSheet_v2.pdf"]http://www.mtdkingston.com/MTD_Z_InfoSheet_v2.pdf[/url]

[quote name='redstriper' post='1360423' date='Sep 2 2011, 09:13 PM']Henry - the EB-0 certainly sounded deep and was close to the right tone, but I couldn't get on with the growl and lack of clarity. I must be more fussy than I thought and after 30 years of playing the same bass with 'my' tone, I'm struggling to find anything to match it. I have thought about the series/parallel thing and it might work, although it could be another blind alley - the soloed neck pup on my old bass is so much louder and deeper than any other Jazz bass I've played, including other 60s models. Chris, the more I think about it, the more I think it's more than just the pups. I have thought about swapping pups between the old and new basses to test the theory, but I'm not great at DIY and I'm scared of damaging the old ones and losing the one bass in the world that has 'my' sound. All this searching for the right tone is starting to do my head in to the point that I may simply sell the 2 new basses and go back to my heavy old hard to play beast and stop looking for a replacement altogether. It's not pretty, but it does the job and it feels so right - I still take it to 95% of all gigs.[/quote] Steve as I've said to you that evening at your place, you should really get your vintage Jazz restored and start tayloring your sound more with your amp than with your bass. After all a "reggae" tone is initially generated by the bass but then it is perfected by the amp and with that mark bass you have you should have no reasons not to get a wicked dub sound from it. I also recommmend you to start using mutes, either a simple strip of foam which I have loads still left if you want me to send you some, just pm me your full name and address, or you could look at these retrofit models which can be flicked on and off: [url="http://www.bassmute.com/bassmute/bm_mainframe.html"]http://www.bassmute.com/bassmute/bm_mainframe.html[/url] Here is a video of it in action [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI9iAkTSOd8&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI9iAkTSOd8...feature=related[/url] Good luck

Yes I agree it is merely a clean head unless you crank it. I assume Randy Jackson ain't exactly the sort of bloke to play Death Metal, and if this head was designed for that sort of sound I doubt he would have had his signature on it. So no, this is no Terror Bass, no Little Rocker, it's just a powerful staple sound of a head which I think would be more at home with the average session musician who plays a wide variety of styles.

[quote name='nottswarwick' post='1360680' date='Sep 3 2011, 08:30 AM']How's the clean tone?[/quote] Do you mean as opposed to distorted? You need to crank the gain up to 7 or 9 (while keeping the master pretty low or it will explode) to get it to clip first, however I haven't really explored playing it dirty because I rarely do, so overall I have only played it clean, and all I can say is that when you play it clean it can go from very funky, cristal clean to moderately vintage hot and deep.

... and I liked it a LOT. I had to take my Little Mark Tube 500 head to the authorized service workshop Proel International in West Norwood because it needed 2 noisy posts changed under warranty, first of all what a great service! "while-u-wait"! Not many authorized repair workshops do their repair while the customer can wait and watch and they can sit you down with any MTD bass you like (yes they are also main distributors of Michael Tobias Design basses) and any Mark Bass amp you can dream of, so I politely asked if I could try their new TTE 500 Randy Jackson model and I loved it. The first thing you'll notice is how light it is, only 6Kg it has a nice vintage leathery sort of side handle that allows it to be carried around with one hand. I've only tried it in a 2 x 10 MBass cab i.e. only 300W power at 8ohms but even then it was scarily loud. Now, about the sounds. I am not a good reviewer but I'll try my best. This amp is quite a departure from what you'd expect from MarkBass, the preamp is all tube powered, I could see 4 valves through the grill mesh and they look like 4 x ECC83 type, while the power amp is a solid state one, this is their new propietary "tube technology emulator" hence the name TTE which as the name suggest is none other than a tranny trying to sound like a big f*** off valve power amp of the 70's, and guess what? it does sound like a big f*** off 70's valve power amp, hearing is believing. Now the intersting bits, THE CONTROL PANEL, only one input socket followed by a passive / active switch, nothing out of the ordinary there, first in line is the gain knob coupled with the clip light that tells you if you are overloading your input sound, the idea is that if you see the little clip light coming on it means you need to back up the gain a little until it disappear, next in line is an "always on" compressor rotary knob which means the more you dial it towards 10 the more compression you introduce into your sound, leave it at 0 and no compression takes place, oh and you'll know when you are compressing because a little blue led light comes on when the effect starts to work. So how does this compressor sound? Well it is subtle and surprisingly enough, it's quite transparent without over colouring or defeating the original clean signal sound, so it does a good job of squeezing your upper and lower spikes into your preferrable even keel, while retaining the sound as it was intended. So top Marks there - no pun intended. The EQ layout is also different from the average Little Mark heads as instead of Low / Mid Low / Mid High and High you've only got 3 knobs Low, Mid and High and the cherry on the cake is a new sound shaper called Colour which is slightly similar to their VLE (Vintage Loudspeaker Emulator) present in all the other Mark Bass heads, which simply explained implied that the more you turn it towards the 10 mark, the darker it gets, by dimming the highs and introducing dark mids and bottomy lows into the equation. The last control knob before the ON/OFF switch is the Master Volume. So how does it sound, well, having played mainly Mark Bass amps for the last 6 or 7 years, such as LM II / LM III and Little Mark Tube 500 my ears are well tuned to those type of heads and after trial and error I have come to learn a lot on how to get a good sound from them, by actually using all the knobs! Whereas I have noticed that the majority of the people who owns them leave everything at 12'o clock and just use the VLE/VLF filters to shape their sound, which is a bit of a waste because Mark Bass amps can be very very versatile if you know how to tweek them. Still, the less knobs you have to shape your sound, the easier it gets, and this new TTE 500 gets you there in no time, seriously: plug in, give it a little comp, set the lows a bit over 12'o clock, stick the mids at quarter to nine, and your highs at 1 o clock, and you are left with the final shaping Colour knob to take care of your cutting through presence, the result is guaranteed to please both you and the audience. With the possibility to sound both modern and vintage, this amp is very versatile, loud and blessed with the good looks too. I recommend you to try one and see/hear for yourself, then you tell me how right or wrong I was. However the best news is that when this amp was first rumoured to arrive on our shores it was estimated to be costing around £990+ but instead it retails a lot more reasonably at around £799 from GAK / SoundsLive and other online retailers which is very close to the retail price of a Little Mark Tube 800 head and to be honest I know which I'd choose. but... Would I buy one? Heck yeah! but... Am I going to get one? Sadly no, and that is not because I don't like it, as I've already said it, I love it but I don't need another amp certainly not that badly anyway. If I didn't have already 3 great amps, I would definately go for it. Honestly if you get a chance give one a spin, you'll love it.

Hey Gareth, keep an eye on this one to get an idea on how much it'll fetch, perhaps you might want to put a bid on it yourself: [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Musicman-Bongo-5-String-Bass-Guitar-/110736275467?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item19c865780b"]http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Musicman-Bongo-5...=item19c865780b[/url]

£400 tops

I agree £850 - £900 depending on conditions but Gareth don't forget I sold my few months old mint Sapphire Black Bongo 5HHP (p = piezo) to Guenter on the EBMM forum in Germany for £1300 in Oct 2010, it was immaculate with the original hard case and candy. He's been a happy German ever since.

[quote name='Bankai' post='1357104' date='Aug 31 2011, 03:49 AM']Can't remember if I posted before but I now have a regular day, I'm in every Sunday. And occasionally other days during the week. Pop in and say hello! Expect deep discussion [/quote] I will soon

[quote name='steve-bbb' post='1358239' date='Aug 31 2011, 11:02 PM']ashbory ?[/quote] +1

[quote name='dood' post='1356434' date='Aug 30 2011, 03:49 PM']Ahhh, wait a sec! I think I know! The older models didn't and the newer ones do![/quote] Correct I have the older model

[quote name='LuvMusic' post='1357094' date='Aug 31 2011, 01:51 AM']That's exactly my thought too, that's why maybe an Overwater, Burns or the Squire James Johnston, these are not available (without importing them) in the states.[/quote] Guitar Guitar in Epsom has that Squier James Johnston, I've tried it and loved it.

Well The Bass Gallery in Camdem is great but it's more of an "High End" $$$$ boutique store, I would suggest a new store that has been opened less than 2 months called Guitar Guitar which so far has the larger stocks of basses and amps I've ever seen under one roof. It's a little out of town but worth a train ride, here is the address: Guitar Guitar Epsom Store 6 Capitol Square, Church St Epsom, KT17 4NY Tel. 01372 730578 [email protected] Store Hours Mon - Sat - 10:00am - 5:30pm Sun - 11:00am - 5:00pm

I have had both the Boss RC 20XL, and the Digitech JamMan both have an interesting feature the sets them apart, what I like about the Boss is that it "quantizes" your mistakes whereas the JamMan doesn't however the JamMan has a USB port and removable memory card which you can export your recordings to pc which the Boss hasn't, the JamMan I still have and sold the Boss, all I have to do is be more accurate instead of quantizing.

[url="http://www.notreble.com/buzz/2011/08/26/squier-releases-vintage-modified-mustang-bass/"]http://www.notreble.com/buzz/2011/08/26/sq...d-mustang-bass/[/url]