EMG456

[quote name='fender73' timestamp='1357370757' post='1921660']
I like 'zingy'

#justsaying
[/quote]

Me too!

[quote name='cloudburst' timestamp='1357064862' post='1917068']
Really thinking of going for the XL-2 for the following reasons:
- I'll be at the institute from September doing a course so the XL-2 would be easy to transport to and fro (as opposed to the Bongo which lives in its hard case)
- For some reason I've really bonded with my Bongo and would like to keep it mint, so the Steinberger could take the abuse of being in college every day
- It would hold its money for me as well if not better than having the money sat in a bank

Does all this seem like sound logic?
Or am I just trying to convince myself?
Is there a Steinberger-specific downside of any sort?

CB

PS: Is that Robbie Shakespeare in the photo?
[/quote]
OK, you've asked so I'll answer as impartially as I can

Downsides to a Steinberger XL2.

Have you played a headless before? I ask because for a few days/ gigs/ rehearsals there can be a tendency to hit the wrong notes due to a combination of there being no headstock and next to no body to reference things to. So maybe going for a note away up at the dusty end, I often frightened myself for the fist couple of days by hitting a note say two frets out. You quickly get used to it. I now have an assortment of headed and headless 4 5 and 6 string basses and go easily between them all.

The bass also hangs differently on a strap. The pivot plate that the strap attaches to on the back of the bass is mounted slightly up and to the left (on a right hand bass) from the bass's centre of gravity. With the pivot set very free, the bass will settle at a slightly neck up angle. If you want a specific angle, you can tighten up the pivot plate so it will hang on the strap at anywhere from completely horizontal to completely vertical. I keep it pretty free but I certainly acknowledge that this at first can give you a feeling of insecurity when moving large distances on the neck because of the ease with which the bass pivots. Once again, when you get used to it, it becomes second nature to freely adjust the angle of the bass to suit different techniques - slap, fingerstyle on back pickup, fingerstyle on front pickup etc.

The strap pivot is designed to accommodate a very standard playing position- anything from medium height to low and the bass will hang slightly to the right hand side of the body with the neck angled out slightly from the player's body - just like a Fender or most other basses. I like my basses quite high on a strap and more across the front of my body. I found that the standard strap pivot did not work for me like this so I use left hand pivot plates on my right hand basses. These are very difficult to find now so if you like to wear the bass high, this may be an issue. Of course as the topic of this thread concerns coolness, I'm assuming you won't want to wear the bass very high!

The only other thing I did to my main L2 was to pad under the pickups with foam. The EMG SS or HB pickups mount with only 2 screws through the faceplate and so can have a tendency to wobble a little in use. Folks may not be aware that the L series body is essentially hollow on either side of the solid neck beam so a bit of padding between the bottom of the pickups and the beam made them a bit more solid feeling to me. Interestingly, I have not felt the need to do this on any of my other L series basses so maybe it was just part of the process of getting used to them for me.

Some say that adjusting action and intonation on the Steinberger bridge is fiddly. I don't find it so and the instrument is so stable that you will only be doing it once anyway. Loosen the two grub screws on the side of the bridge which lock all the saddles together. Then slide each saddle back and forth to set the intonation (this is the bit that some folks don't like because there is no screw adjustment). Set the height and angle of each saddle with the two saddle grub screws. When you're happy, lock the whole assembly together again with the two side grub screws. Revisit in 20 years or if you change from conventional strings to piano core strings or if your tastes in action height change.

A lot of XLs are missing the battery cover off the back because people didn't understand the principle of it. There are sources for these in the very active international Steinberger community.

That's it for me - only other downsides are you'll get less practise tuning your bass and you'll be doing a lot of explaining to people who'll want to know what it is, how you tune it, when you're going to be able to afford the rest of it... etc. etc.

To answer your other three questions;

Yes - it seems like sound logic
Yes - you are trying to convince yourself
Yes - it's Sly and Robbie.

Cheers

Ed

Sub zero in my book but then again my first L2 has now been with me for almost 30 years and I have three other L series 'Bergers as well so that pretty well nails my colours to the mast!

Seriously, Steinbergers have now gone through the full cycle of coolness from ultra hyped ultimate cool in the early '80s through to seriously uncool in the '90s. Ned Steinberger's design set a trend which went "viral" in the days before the internet but got so big so fast that it got lumped together with shoulder pads, crazy hair and all the other "fashion" trends of the '80s.

Back to basics, the design of the L2 had absolutely nothing to do with fashion and style and everything to do with functionality and fitness for purpose. In that respect, I believed in 1984 that it was the most completely realised, intelligent and ground breaking bass design ever and nothing has come along since to make me change my mind.
Over the years I've had all the jokes and the comments but what shuts them all up is the sound.

So, if you can dare to be different and can handle the pressure that will inevitably come your way, buy and use your XL2. Others can debate the look and the pros/ cons (and believe me, they will) and you can meantime quietly enjoy all the hidden benefits of using one of the absolute classic basses.

Cheers

Ed

Dave, you seem to have a never ending stream of interesting basses!

Not in the market right now but for anyone not familiar with these, they were top flight almost boutique instruments in the late '70s. I had a lot of playing time on one back in the day and it was a terrific bass. The wood inlays on the back of the neck also help to mitigate what was perceived as the biggest problem with the similar Travis Bean instruments - a cold neck!

I have bought a bass from this man and a great experience it was so buy with confidence.

Cheers

Ed

[quote name='Shockwave' timestamp='1350471741' post='1839211']
Glad someone else noticed this too! Possibly stripped SUB?
[/quote]
It does look very like some pictures I've seen of a stripped USA Sub but they had a 6 bolt neck plate and so probably 4 of those holes would be visible with a 3 bolt attachment plate fitted - I can't see any trace of them. Solid coloured Stingrays may well have used body woods which were not the most aesthetically pleasing- maybe this is one of them stripped and re-finished?

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1346776496' post='1793090']
The resurgence of popularity of these basses is truly amazing to me. I can remember when you quite literally couldn't give these basses away secondhand ~ snip ~

and now they have achieved the seemingly impossible by coming back into fashion.
[/quote]

Dingus, I'm with you on this all the way.

It's funny how the passage of time changes perceptions but I'd guess that any demand for these instruments will not likely be coming from players who were around at the time they were originally released.

Same thing has happened with '70's Fenders - they were derided at the time as being shockingly bad quality, heavy, fat necks, unstable 3 bolt microtilt neck pocket etc. etc. and now they are revered as "vintage" Fenders and seem to command a big fat price.

What do I know?!!

Nicest Gibson of the era to me was the RD Artist. Still pretty ugly to my mind but a terrific sounding and playing bass,

Cheers

Ed

I see this question come up regularly on various forums and I must admit I just don't understand the problem.

It's a musical instrument - i.e. a tool for making music with. If you like the sound of roundwounds on the fretless then there's not much more to be said - use roundwounds. Sure, the fingerboard will mark a bit but it'll take a while for it to become serious enough for it to affect the functionality of the bass. When it eventually does, have the fingerboard dressed again. Continue until there is no fingerboard left and then have a new one put on. I would rather do that than use flatwound strings on my fretless basses because for me, there is just no comparison in the sound.

On the other hand, if *you* like the sound of flatwounds on the fretless, use them. Just don't allow what should be purely a musical choice to be influenced by worries about wearing out the fingerboard. All things get worn if they are used. Treat it as a badge of honour and remember that the more worn your fretless fingerboard gets, the better the player you will likely be!

Cheers

Ed

Is this still for sale?

Something I know a bit about...

I'm not entirely sure of the dates below but I've generally speaking had at least one Rick since 1974 and at the time I was mad keen on them so I'm pretty certain of most of my facts here.

As has been stated;

4000 Bass - No Neck pickup, 1 vol, 1 Tone, dot markers on the rosewood fingerboard, no body binding. Not sure about neck binding but suspect none. I believe Rick 4000's were all set neck, not neck through construction.
4001 Bass - Dual Pickup, two Vol, Two Tone, Three way switch, mono and stereo output sockets, triangle markers on fingerboard, bound body and neck.
4001s bass - budget version of the 4001 imported by Rose Morris to the UK as the Rick 1999 model. Essentially a 4001 but with no body binding and with dot inlays instead of the triangles.

The 4001s was the bass played by McCartney and Squire - Ricks were cheap enough in the States for them not to have to worry too much about the costs there but here in the UK they were very expensive hence a lot of 1999/ 4001s basses imported in the '60s/ early '70s

All Rick bass necks have dual truss rods but they don't work the same way that say, Fender truss rods work, in that they don't always take very kindly to just being tightened up more and more - the procedure is to "help" them by applying pressure to bend the neck whilst tightening up the truss rod. Loosening strings first helps too. Interestingly, the traditional Rick truss rods are easily replaced with no surgery to the instrument - once the nut is loosened and removed, the whole assembly slides out of the slot through the body end of the neck. What they did with the 4003 truss rods I don't know but as has been stated before, 4001's always worked fine with roundwound strings - indeed it's one of the archetypal Rick bass sounds. Roundwounds do not intrinsically have higher tension than flatwounds as far as I know so I'm guessing that any percieved problems were as much to do with folks not understanding how the truss rod system was meant to be used rather than any underlying problem with the design. Bear in mind though that unlike a Fender type bass, if the neck goes irreparably wrong, the bass is essentially ruined - you can't just bolt on a replacement neck!

Horseshoe pickup was replaced in the bridge position by the so-called high gain pickup sometime in the late '60's early '70s. Both of the '72 4001's I have owned did not have the horseshoe. You are right that the horseshoe pickup goes right back to Rickenbacker's "frying pan" lap steel guitar, generally accredited as being the first real electric guitar as we know them. Yes, the horseshoe magnet doubles as the pickup cover and can't be removed.

Up to some point in '72/ '73 the 4001 body binding was two layer with the inner layer being black/ white chequered and the triangle inlays were full width of the fingerboard made of crushed sparkle material. After that, the body binding was reduced to one layer with no chequered effect and the inlays were more conventional "mother of plastic" and didn't cover the full width of the board. Around about this time, the toaster pickup in the neck position was replaced by one which looks more like the high gain bridge pickup in a little chrome case.

In the sixties, Rick used mahogany wings on the outside edges of the headstock al-la Squire and McCartney's basses and later on just used extra pieces of maple.

To save costs originally, the left hand models simply used standard right hand necks - this is why Macca's bass has essentially a reversed headstock.

More recently, I think around the early '90s to early '00s, Rick reissued the 60s styled 4001s/ 1999 as the 4003 V63 and also a C64 version which has the reversed headstock of Macca's bass even on right handed versions and the removal of the body edge contours again echoing Macca's bass which he sanded down himself!

Interesting (if you're an anorak like me) piece of Rick/ Fender/ Beatles trivia. The 4001 shape was designed for Rickenbacker by Roger Rossmeisl. In the late 60's Rossmeisl worked for Fender and was in charge of building the special prototypes of the all Rosewood Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars. One of those Tele's was going to be presented to George Harrison so two were built by Rossmeisl and a hot shot young luthier working at Fender at the time, Phillip Kubicki. Yes, "that" Phillip Kubicki! The better of the two Tele prototypes was given to Harrison during the sessions for the Let it Be album and George can be seen playing it in the final gig on the roof of Apple building.

Cheers

Ed

Andy - have sent you a couple of PMs - are you still selling?

Saw Jaco about '78 or '79 with Weather Report - changed my bass life forever.

If you haven't already got it, the full double album of Joni's Shadows and Light tour showcases live Jaco at his absolute best.

if you want to see how he handled more rock orientated stuff as a sideman, he played most of the tracks on Mott the Hoople singer Iain Hunter's second (I think) solo album, All American Alien Boy.

He [i]was [/i]and to my mind remains the greatest bass player ever.

Cheers

Ed

Someone should buy this - it's been annoying me on here for ages now!

I would buy it but for the fact that I've got one already. In fact it's the longest standing bass in my flock, seeing as I bought it new in 1978!

As mine has been through a lot more abuse than this one has, I can confirm that the body is a mahogany butchers block core in two slices - front and back, topped off then with a two layer veneer, the outside layer of which gives the timber that you can see through the 'burst finish.

Mine got a pseudo "Antigua" refinish when I added a DiMarzio J pickup about '81 and then was stripped back to natural much later on in the '80s so it now looks like a kind of poor man's Wal!

Anyway, it's a great sounding and feeling fretless and I'm never selling mine so, if you want one, you'll have to buy this one!

Cheers

Ed

Question...

What is the body routing like on this bass - is it '60s style so it can be used without a scratchplate or is there a route going all the way from the control cavity to the neck pickup?

thanks

Ed

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif] "a string converter[/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]so I won't have to use those terrible 'double-ball' strings."[/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]One of the *best* things about the Steinberger system is the double ball string.[/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Stable tuning and you can change a whole set in about 5 minutes without any tools. I even changed a broken string once during a song and was back on four strings before the end. OK, song was in a key where I could use open strings often! :-)[/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Good makes I can buy here in the UK are Elites or Status Hot Wires.[/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Best of luck[/font][/color]

[font="helvetica, arial, sans-serif"][color="#282828"]Ed[/color][/font]

Is this bass still for sale?

Ed