Alpha-Dave

Antoniotsai 7 String Bass Cost : won on Ebay, inc shipping&import duty = £335 Specs : 7 string, 35” though-neck. Maple/mahogany 5 piece neck. Swamp ash body. Rose wood fret board with a huge inlay. Through-body stringing. 2 truss rods. Individual bridge pieces, 16.5mm string spacing. 2 pickups, 3 band active eq. Thick padded gig-bag, but no rigid internal support. Pros : B sounds great, as do all the other strings. Same quality as any other far-eastern guitar (I'd say equal to an Ibanez BTB505 I once owned The woods are great, non are figured, but they're all strong, smooth and not at all cheap. The mechanical hardware (bridge, tuners and truss-rods) are all good and as you'd find on any 'name' £500 far eastern bass. The Electronics are similarly ok. They do buzz if near a source of RF interference, but I think this is fairly standard. I'm going to re-shield the control cavity with £3 of Maplin's aluminum tape just to be sure. Cons : Had to replace the flat battery Had to replace awful strings, but an Overwater £22, 7-string set is great. Neck dive (see options below) To solve the neck dive there are 3 possible solutions : 1)Live with it, using a comfort strapp for playing standing. This is an ok, cheap solution 2)Replace the tuners with Ultralites, this would cost about £96 from the cheapest source I could find, and would save quite a bit of weight, the equivalent of removing 2&1/2 tuners. I removed a couple, and it balanced ok, but still titled a bit, but combined with (1), is a good solution. 3)Cut the head off and add bridge tuners. The bridge tuners would cost £188 from Status-graphite. The problem is getting a 7-string string clamp that will attach to the end, and not interfere with the truss rods. Status and ABM only make them for 6ers, so would have to have 1 made. Costs are from $50-100 from David King in the states, but would require self-fitting, or Robbie at RIM Custom Basses reckoned around £150 for him to make&fit a brass end-block, plus bridges. I've opted for option (1), and if I decide to keep it long-term, then possibly (3)

I have to recommend the EH HOG synth pedal. Pros: It can handle a low E (because it has a fundamental-filter at the front end), does 2 ocataves down and 4 up, plus harmonics, has a foot controlable filter effect. Can do the octave bend like a digitec whammy, but you can play during the travel. Cons: HUGE footprint (with expresion pedal and memory foot switch) and significant cost.