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Tried a new one back in the 90s with my band (store let me take it home). It was heavy, awkward to move and just didn't do it for me sound wise. Too distorted at high volume.

jpmcbride said:

I also 3D printed these simple thumb rests. They work great and are hardly noticeable - they blend right in as if they're part of the pickup. They're printed from a rubber material called TPU. They're not perfect, you can see the lines from the printing in them. But from 2 feet away they look great! I love them. If anyone has one of these basses and wants a set of thumbrests, let me know and I'll print you a set.

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These are exactly what I'm looking for can you send me the 3d printing file so I can print some?! Thanks SO MUCH!

OldManNewBass said:

The black pedal is his signature chorus...

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I was referring to the two pedals + the rackmount. According to the the breakdown posted after my question the rackmount is doing the basic toneshaping and the pedals are acting as boosts.

If you buy used, you won't be supporting Fender. Plus you'll get a much better deal on the AmPro II.

I’m building a large ABG (24.5” lower bout, 4.5” - 9” deep wedge shape, flat back) and my last thing to figure out is the arch top. The bass is all vacuum laminated - and the top will also be - over an arched mold [forma]. It will have a bass bar and sound post.
I’m trying to figure out the best arch or dome to use to make my positive mold. I could leave the perimeter flat or take the domed approach across the whole top (and thus have to angle the sides and linings to mate). Do the plans you’ve mentioned above include details of the compound curves?

Had a 705 and the only complaint was it's pretty easy to ding up the body. And I moved the input jack to the side.

vindibona1 said:

The thumb is not the problem. It's getting the index or middle to be able to pop with enough speed and oomph to keep up with how fast I can thump and hammer-on.

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Hey brother you asked for advice. Look up Anthony Vitti on youtube he is the finest funk instructor there is. Enjoy

Humabass said:

Just wanted to share. These two are Warmoth builds. I bought them built but then did some mods. The J bass has a Badass III bridge, Bartolini pups, and Audere preamp. I actually sent the neck to Steve McDonald Basses in Florida to have it thinned out. He does great work. One of my favorite and best sounding basses I have. The P has a a Hipshot bridge, Fralin pup, came with an ugly black pick guard so I ordered the tortoise from Warmoth. The neck on this one wasn't quite as thick as on the J so I left it alone. This bass just sounds amazing and this is coming from someone who never was a big fan of P basses. This one is special. The J is wearing MTD medium scale stainless steel strings and the P has TI flats.

I've had a lot of basses and several Warmoths. The Warmoths have always been some of the best basses I've had.View attachment 7518977

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We have similar taste in string trees. lol

Those look very nice!

I like positional workouts where you simply play 4 notes in different orders at different speeds. Do it all over the neck. Soon you will be shredding in all positions

Lock your wrists and move around, eventually you can anchor in thin air anywhere on the playing surface

I’m going to chime in late on BassMods bases. I own two, one purchased used on TalkBass and one purchased new from them directly. Overall quality is quite good, however I have a different review of their customer service. I bought a 35” scale J Bass from them a couple of months ago and it is too long to fit into a standard case or gig bag. Also when I played it live a couple of days into owning it, I noticed a short in the volume pot. I have emailed 4 times over the past 2 1/2 months to ask for a case recommendation and to ask about the short and have gotten zero response. BTW, after much research the Reunion Blues Expedition is the only bag I could find to fit it. Wish I could have gotten that info from them.

walterw said:

sure, worth a try!

i never cared for that kind of split-out pickup sound myself because you lose the actual tone of the two pickups in parallel with each other (which is not just the sound of the two pickups "blended" or "mixed" together, it's really its own third sound). separating out the pickups into each amp sounds literally like two different basses playing at the same time

i'd be inclined to skip the pickup separation, run mono from the bass and just split the signal downstream, one to the clean rig and the other to the fx/dirt rig

i wouldn't do that just because now you've only got half the stack handling the low end. better to get the polarity right so both cabs carry the lows like they're meant to

this idea would make more sense if you had a big cab stack just for the clean sound, at which point you could use a little cab like a single 12 or even a guitar combo amp for the dirt side. with no low end it wouldn't need more than like 50 watts to get as loud as the clean bass side

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Yeah, one of the cons to consider, losing the parallel tone, but I'm finding loads of versatility in turning down the tone on one pickup to mellow out the bridge without losing bite. Gotta play around with it with the band to see how it sounds but there seem to be some different options available with this setup. So far, playing everything clean with a pick, with the tone cranked on the neck pickup and the tone off on the bridge pickup is a great tone. I scooped up one of those collapsible suitcase guitar stands and both heads fit inside when it's collapsed, all the cables fit in the bag that came with the fender head, and my pedalboard is one of the boss boards than has a lid and carry handle, so this rig is also fairly packable compared to the tube amp I used to drag around. Even with two heads it's still easier to pack out.

Still loving my Russian Muffs, and debating getting a W&C Tall Font Russian. Anybody have any direct experience comparing that to the Russian Pickle? It's my current favorite "Russian" (though I keep waffling on it and the CMC offerings).

My cursory Google search tells me that the Russian Pickle has flatter mids, but less gain. I doubt I'd want/need more gain, and I like having mids (relatively speaking, for a Muff). The Russian Pickle seems to me to be slightly more articulate on bass in videos. Would the mids mod be worth it on the TFR? I'd love it if the TFR had top jacks, but that's not going to happen!

LK straps. Lior will make anything you want in many different widths, colors, distressed levels, all from repurposed leather. He has also collaborated with bass companies like MTD, F Bass and Fodera.

Just to close this out, I ended up getting a Unituner. I tried to get a polytuner, but they were out of stock.

Dr. Cheese said:

Being stuck on Jack Bruce or Geezer Butler, or in my case, Marcus Miller, is a function of age. People my age and older won’t be around a whole lot longer, and if we are around, we won’t be in charge of the media. Things will change.

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Yes, you are right. I’m getting older myself (41) and I can already see the future is not mine. Maybe I should be a little more respectful .

I hope I will keep an open mind as my life goes on. I think what’s great about the old players (AJ, MM, etc) is they have lasted the test of time, so history has preselected who to pay attention to.

220_Hz said:

Are you playing a bass with single coils?

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no. soap bar HC.

James Hart said:

and E-E 6 makes the assumption a player and their music prefers chord expansion of 5 more low notes

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For me it was having a duo / trio gig with girls that are mainly acoustic and strummers and allowing me the space to play the more melodic lines on bass, which really fattens up the sound. No need to transpose below E here as their range is higher and my singing is more limited to sporadic backing. This tuning made more sense as sometimes I play guitar or baritone with them too.

I originally bought a BQ500 ~8 years ago to use as a rehearsal studio amp, and as a backup to my main Acoustic Image Focus head.

But for the past 10 months or so I've been using my BQ500 as my main amp for all gigs and rehearsals, and I gotta say, I am impressed. Clean, clear, loud, noiseless, gobs of headroom, usable EQ, usable DI, easy to carry, plus it's red... what's not to love?

I just wish I had waited to buy one until everyone was blowing them out for <$200!

Thought I'd do a little recap.

It's been a little over a month since this bass is fully up and running and it's been great.

Pickups: I'm really happy with the EMG Gzr pickups as that was one of the biggest unknowns. The tone knob is very effective in delivering a wide palette of useful tones — not something I can say about the tone knob on my other basses.

Strings: The LaBella DTFs — on the short scale are sonically very similar to my 34" DTF strings, but with subtly but noticeably less stiffness and/or tension. I never minded the "bridge cable" feel of DTFs, but I do have some arthritis and wake up with trigger finger often on the ring and middle of my left hand and I play right handed, though I'm a lefty. I think lower tension strings help with this a little, but it is what it is.

Tuners: Hipshot Ultralite LIC — feel great and stay in tune — not much more to say there.

Bridge: GOTOH 404BO — does its job — not much more to say there either other than I specifically wanted a bridge with quick string change slots and I can't see myself ever buying a bridge without them.

Neck: Musikraft 30" custom conversion — this was the other very big unknown. I had some ideas about things I liked from various necks I own and I wanted to cherry pick the features I liked and combine them into one. However, that doesn't necessarily yield a complete package that was a winner.

I don't love the orangey tint, but I think I like it better than no tint. I think I'd prefer a little more yellowish brown, but I'm not overly concerned about this. In person it's more subtle than in pictures.

But more importantly, the shape and feel is dialed. I have a Squier Classic Vibe 70s P neck that is very shallow front to back which I really like. I picked the Musikraft profile that was closest to that and it feels good, but the shoulders are more vertical than the Squier — I guess it's more U-shaped than V. I'm pretty used to the new shape already, but that Squier neck is my favorite shape. Too bad that particular example has some other issues. . .

I also went with 12 degree radius — jury's out on this. Most of my other necks are 9.5 and I have one Gibson that's 12. I don't think I'm super picky about this and I'm happy with 12 degrees on the custom neck. Probably would be just as happy with 9.5.

What I really wanted and I'm glad I chose was a short scale with a wider nut width than is usually available on shorties. I got 41.28 mm (1 5/8") and the width and string spacing is perfect for me.

Body: I feel like I hit the jackpot with this. It was less than $100 shipped from ebay. Paulownia. It is extremely light and as a bonus, I think it looks really nice. I read a Roger Sadowsky interview where he kinda debunked tone wood, but also not really. But his takeaway or guiding principle was he always chooses the lightest wood for a given project. Not lightest in absolute terms, but amongst the pieces for whatever the specific goal is. I'm paraphrasing a bit, and maybe getting it wrong a bit, but it seems his goal is to maximize resonance.

With that in mind, and because I had a nice piece of wood and because I like the look and feel of stained bodies, I chose to stain and not paint with a heavy poly, or even put a clear coat on. Also, as a noob, if I messed up, I still had the option to paint over a botched stain job. Well this body and the whole bass is very resonant. I don't know how much that matters once it's plugged in, but I do play unplugged often and it's very pleasing.

All in, I'm stoked on the bass and the process. It could easily be my only bass and I'm considering selling my others. I don't have any particular attachment to them, they're all easily replaceable and I'm not really using them now. Maybe that'll fund my next partcaster?

Thanks again to everyone who helped me along the way.

The 3rd band I was ever in was a Bauhaus Tribute Band in the '80s. I was David J in that band. I'm looking forward to this.

PaulKF said:

Thanks again. Let me ask you this. The main thing I'm lacking is a very good amp modeller. Thus I looked at the Anagram. In a chain ending in a value pre amp - and with a Cali 76, MXR, Octaver before it - have you seen any amp modellers (would be great if they did modulation also - that are a real choice? I know the HX STOMP but I'm trying to avoid to be a button fiddler! And I prefere the viseral feel of just tweaking it. Did anything come on your radar that delivered this? with thanks.

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Aside from getting to play with some zoom and behringer multi effects units I haven’t gone very deep into that. I did like the zoom I tried. It had lots of amp sim options and everything overall sounded good. However if budget allows and you like Darkglass it won’t get better than the real thing. The nice thing about some others like line 6 and zoom is that they have other sims ranging from ampeg to Eden to you name it. To me I prefer having a generous amount of eq room to get my tone and then use preamps for color but cab sims work too. I found when I tried some cab sims that all it was doing was giving me a certain eq curve, compression, and attenuation in certain frequencies and I spent forever trying to fine tune them so I decided I’d rather just be twisting knobs or sliders for myself vs my tone and then for whatever sim I’m trying to use.

Framus, possibly Hofner factory, circa late '40s / early 1950s. White plastic binding and trim, post WW2 tuners. Plywood basses can crack ; often the outside layers do. I had one of these for a couple of years as my first upright bass. It was great. Everyone who didn't own one and never played one was constantly giving me advise on it. They should be priced along the same lines as most mid 20th century plywood basses; ie $2000-low $3000s.

Occasionally you'll find a fully carved version of this model, but I've never seen one of those with the plastic binding. I playe done at SPBGMA in Nasheville a couple of years ago; it was painfully quiet.

I second the use of DaVinci Resolve on a computer. It has a very powerful function called multi-cam mode that let's you sync via audio. Very accurate IME. In this mode real time camera angle edits are a breeze and you can go back and make changes after the fact. Tons of YouTube tutorials. I used to work with Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premier Elements so a lot of the workflows are familiar to me but there is always a learning curve. I just started using Resolve for multicam video a couple months ago and only needed a couple hours at YouTube university to be up and running (it had been almost 20 years since I was regularly editing video FWIW).

I love Noel Neal's tone. Great use of chromatic approach notes.

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