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Had to make some electrical changes today as the original preamp stopped working. Over the years I’ve changed out the bridge, changed out the dual coils for big blades, and now I’m running fully passive! Still an amazing bass all these years later, and somehow only seems to get better!

Before (from early 2008 delivery):



What it looks like today:

Lo-E said:

Wash your hands before you play. Wipe your strings after you play. If you sweat a lot or if your sweat’s particularly acidic, wipe your strings with isopropyl or denatured alcohol after you play.

There really isn’t much more to it than that.

Some people swear by boiling but I never had any luck with it, personally.

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I've seen students ruin their Fingerboard, very slowly over a period of months, by slopping alcohol all over their fingerboard while attempting to clean their strings.

I'm sure experienced bassists, like you, already understand the risks. I am hoping a beginning bassist may see this post and prevent unnecessary damage to their fretboard when cleaning their strings.

Mrs B and I took a drive through the burn scar today.
Heartbreaking
Absolutely wild to see in person, even through I have visited a half dozen other burn areas

Interesting aerial photo from a local photographer

chris lykins said:

I had two USA moderns and hated them in real life. Really flat and one dimensional sounding in the room. I feel bad being negative but preferred my WL by a wide margin. I think Im just a jazz bass guy at heart

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I own a Modern, but I thought the Jazz Basses sounded amazing!

The OP might not be crazy. I sold a bass at that fits that description at a Long & McQuade and it was a Fender (or possibly squier or Japan) I am currently running through old sales to try and find the model because, as I am sure any one who has tried to google this, it simply doesn't exist. However, I KNOW that it does as I have seen it, played it, and sold it to an older gentleman to play in his wife's organ trio over 10 years ago. It was green, had 3 silver lipstick pickups and a 5 way toggle and an outright strat pickguard and body shape. It wasn't the post modern thing either, it predates that by a few years. This would have been mid 20teens. I'll let you know when I find it if no one beats me to it.

WayneP said:

TheShape101 said:

If anyone has a black 19mm 5 string bridge for sale let me know! I’d like to swap out the gold hardware to black!

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I’m in the same boat. I’ve searched far and wide for “stock” black 19mm replacement, and it appears they don’t exist in the wild. See my recent post and the ones following.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

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Well, it took a few months, but I finally got my Thunderbass outfitted with black hardware. It wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops, however: I had some problems with the only bridge I could find. More on that here. Love the way it looks though!



While I had my bass out at the luthier getting the bridge put on, a Thunderbass with black hardware came up for sale here on TB. I've been looking for one for years!!! The plan was to "pirate" the hardware for my bass, and then re-sell it. Had it been put up sooner, I'd have bought it and either swapped the hardware or sold my current one. Oh well...


Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Ecclesia: Unique Arrangements of Hymns, P&W Standards, and Original Tunes
Make Your Own Cables: A How-To Guide
Administrator, Official Pedulla Club #45
Administrator, Official Heartfield Club #36
Administrator, Official Tobias Club #133
Administrator, Official Pre-Gibson Tobias Owners Club
Fretless Club #943
Big Cabs Club #23
My Rig: Stage and FOH Friendly
My Basses

It’s a big meh for me. Not focused enough for me.

Glad you found something that worked for you.

shirojiro said:

One of the nice things (in addition to the light weight) about the Bass safe is that the two halves fit in a regular car trunk or small hatchback so you don’t have to rent a larger car when you get to your destination.

This isn't an issue for those of you who are getting picked up in a black Escalade SUV.

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And once you arrive at the hotel/venue/whatever you have a gig bag to move around locally.

I'm with everyone else so far in that for an outdoor gig with any signifiant bass that you need to generate on your own, a single 15" cab is unlikely to be enough. With PA support for FOH the audience will likely be happy, but your own stage bass level is likely to sound/feel weak...it's just teh nature of being out in the open. Double up on the cabs and I suspect you'll be much more pleased.

When you really push any cab (and outdoors it happens without even realizing it for me) you may be hearing some port noise. While there could be other things going on with the cab, your experience here sounds like what I've found when I need more speaker area to get me what I need and a single cab is being pushed too hard.

Adding that second cab is going to surprise you with the difference it makes.

Bob_Ross said:

Same here…except, to my ears the School Days album was the first indication that Stan *wasn’t* going to be breaking new ground on every release. It struck me as “more of the same” as his previous two solo albums, and so hasn’t held up to repeated listenings over the years the way they have.

otoh, School Days was still a stronger album than the ones that followed!

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I did not hear his self titled album until I went college. I heard Journey to Love first and the School Days. I thought Journey to Love was funky in spots, but a lot of the Fusion went over my head. School Days was “in your face” enough that it really got 16 year old me excited.

Ok, here we go. I'm back for a few more builds, finding time to get in the shop when I can. Lots of lessons learned from my first builds. Should be fun.

Neck beams and wing blanks. Some laminates and dimensions for quick wins so I can spend more time with the fretboards and neck carves.

srosenthal13 said:

I tried that. Too immobilizing, and not pain-free. For me, at least.

I just had to bite the bullet and lay off bass for a while.

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Yeah, probably why I haven't seen it before? I agree with the previous posts, about laying off sugars, nitrates, processed carbs, cheese, and unfortunately alcohol. I do all of those 7x24 with exception of the last one, which I get to do today in moderation. A couple beers, thus I am in a very good mood and playing very creatively, at least to my ears.

You might try a very fast bass with a thin neck, like an Ibanez SR300 series. If you set it up low, it almost plays itself. Here's my SR370EF which I am playing today, in my stupor, and sounding great!

Welp… I got a third. Another W32. This one feels refined in pretty much every way over the last one, and this EMG MMTWX is really great. I am once again very pleased by what I’ve received from this builder, and I can’t recommend his work enough. I can’t see myself moving on from any of these basses.

This one is mahogany for the body and purple heart for the neck, 32” scale. Sounds like a Ray, more or less. Really like the tone of the pickup.

I’ll post more pics if there is interest, but needless to say I am thrilled. Now having three of these basses, #11, #20, and #31, I can definitively say he seems to get better with every batch, and it’s been a pleasure to see the subtle improvements in each one.

winston said:

True dat, I saw Maron with Groove Collective about 25 years ago, a black and a white BB3000 one with rounds and flats. Fantastic sound but more importantly one of the most dance-inducing bass performances I’ve ever witnessed.

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Yes, amazing band. Really influenced me as a kid. That bassline from Rentstrike kicked in and I was sold right away.

The Yamaha BB basses sound so clear in a mix while also sounding amazing when played solo. Kind of a rare feat to pull off, but that is my experience.

I was really impressed with those coastline pickups.

I've just moved off Fender in general lately, especially with all the lawsuits they have been sending to everyone - but they did a good job on these PBasses and I think a lot of people needing a P will enjoy them.

I have the ibanez wired now as a LHZ Active blend with the Universal blend as the pot. It loads the pickups at 1Meg Ohm, they sound more like EMG pickups with extended treble response now. I kept the ibanez as series only in BEQ3 mode as VM3 has a little less bass/treble.

Heres a diagram integrating LHZ Preamps to the Ibanez power tap. It should show what you need to do to use the pickups with an aftermarket preamp

In my personal home studio, 90% of the time it's a Heil PR-40 moving coil dynamic mic up fairly tight on the speaker grill.
The other 10% of the time -- when I'm looking for a bit more "air" (or "hair") in the sound -- it's an MXL 2001P condenser mic with the Dave Royer/Mojave Audio tube electronics mod, sitting between 1-3' away from the speaker.

In anyone else's studio, it depends on their mic locker. Favorites include the Electro-Voice RE20, Sennheiser MD421, Neumann TLM-170i, and RCA 44-BX.

To make sure I wasn’t going crazy, I did this exactly last night. I changed the pick guard out, removed the neck humbucker. I did swap the wiring to the H setup (the preamp board has dedicated pads for the pickups and switch being in HH or H mode)

Sounded the same but I stopped mucking around with the slider as much. Weirdly, that removing off options makes me play better

Some independent builder should design a pedal called the "It's Not A Tumor" just for the OP.

And so... I found an Ibanez from I believe the early 90's; an RT 450, which includes a traditional non-floating tremolo (no locking nut), but the body and layout are shredder-esque like their RG's. Wonderful fit for me! The super-solid Japanese craftsmanship and great ergonomics sold me on this instrument without even plugging it into an amp before I took it home.

I recently dropped a set of DiMarzios into a Godin Session - a basic "fat strat" with a humbucker at the bridge - and I expected some subtle bumps in the sound quality from that guitar with the swap. But what I got was a profound improvement - I even like what I get with the middle pickup solo'ed... that's a first for me.

The new pickups in the Godin are Area 61's and an Air Classic at the bridge - not ultra high output, but rich and yummy in that particular guitar.

If anybody has successfully dabbled with higher output DiMazios or options from other labels in a H/S/H layout, I'm looking forward to any stories you can share. I also have an old Japanese Electra Phoenix that has what are probably a pair of DiMario Super Distrortions for pickups. They sound unbelievably good and I may go that way with this RT 450 (along with a suitable S in the middle). Many of us have our favorites, so I'm looking for input.

TIA

Don Hergert said:

As a musician, I do have to say that I have not found an ideal all-the-time setting combination that duplicates tone properly. The instruments I play all sound at least a little different than what I perceive without the hearing aids, and that is a little off-putting. There are times that I simply turn them off or take them out of my ears while playing music...

And, that raises some interesting questions about sound perception that is important for musicians. What is compleely accurate hearing where tone is concerned? Are these differences in musical tone that I hear with the hearing aids tones that people with "normal" hearing hear? And, does "normal" hearing really exist? Possibly these are questions for another lifetime .

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To the first point: If the instrument sounds the same whether you are using hearing aids or not, then you don't need hearing aids. It's not just a matter of amplification.
I don't think many people lose hearing equally across the whole audio spectrum, so properly-tuned hearing aids should restore the frequencies you have lost. Wearing hearing aids for the first time can be unpleasantly "crispy," but it's more accurate than the way you WERE hearing. However, some hearing aids are better for musicians than others! For that reason, I returned one set at Costco in order to get the Sennheisers, and I'm happy.

Second point: I doubt that there's such a thing as "completely accurate" when it comes to hearing. Even measurement/calibration microphones in laboratories have biases which probably don't match what an "excellent hearer" might experience. Yes, there may be a few gifted individuals who approach the ideal, whatever that is. For most of us, better is all we can reasonably ask for.

Don Hergert said:

For the most part, communication with my family and friends has noticeably improved. Among other things, my wife doesn't have to yell at me because I can't hear her anymore, although sometimes she does still yell at me : .

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This is IMPORTANT. Happy wife, happy life.

I have the same question, I wanna use Rolls the same way I use pedal, just a knob.
I'll try to connect it through headphones out, maybe that will work, love to have control over how loud is my bass in headphones, but don't want to open app, search for bass and to that on tablet or phone.

That is a raised saddle. It is used to take pressure from the top. Mostly helpful for strings that choke the vibration of the top with too much pressure (typically with older instruments that were built for lower tension gut strings and be used with higher tension steel core strings now).
If your bass sounds better strings tuned down one to several halftones after as bout a week this is for you (or use lower tension strings). Be warned that volume can be reduced, specially if you instrument is not choked by top pressure.

I have an adjustable saddle (Moser HVU) on my instrument with three positions, all higher than the normal saddle height.
The only thing is that you need to use the kevlar/carbon fiber tailgut it comes with.
I did knot it with a slip to be able to adjust the underlength. Slips were secured. It would be impossible to open the knot without the slip and even hard with it. But since the material stretched under tension you need to adjust your first try.

With a single height saddle you can use what you want as tailgut.
You can try a aircraft cable with the Moser HVU, but it might not be possible to find a place for the clamp. (My knot is under the tailpiece.)