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Mike Mills from REM bass gear?

Mike Played a Peavey in Germany in the early 80s. Think he has two basses that night. There's a vid on YouTube. I saw them a JPJ Arena in C-Ville during the Fables of the Reconstruction tour. It was hard to see what he was playing, but a friend that was in a different spot than I said it looked like a Musicmaster. I had just traded my Musicmaster for a Peavey Foundation so that was a bit of a gut punch.

Skynyrd - Leon Wilkeson - Strings - Muscle Shoals = Awesome Rabbit Hole

David Hood played what is arguably the most heard bass solo in popular music on the Staple Singer’s I’ll Take You There. That, and everything else he played, was done on a Jazz, not a Precision.

When an interviewer asked David about his strings he said, “whatever comes on them”. After his early Jazz was stolen and he replaced it with a couple of 70s Jazzes, he said that he just couldn’t get the same sound out of the newer instruments. I wonder…
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Emergency IEM repair

I recently dropped about 30lb. This morning, I sat in at a church for the first time since unloading the extra weight and I couldn’t hear the bass. Turns out, my IEMs wouldn’t seal. Apparently weight loss affects the shape of your ear canal. A quick run to the store and a cut up bandaid did the trick. It changed the angle just enough to get my bass back in my ears. Whew!

Anyone else ever deal with this?

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Congrats. Yes. I've heard that weight changes (and aging) can change the size/shape of your ear canals, significantly for some people. I've been up and down myself and fortunately, at least for my purchase mine haven't changed much on either count, so I guess it's normal but not universal.
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WHO is making the best P basses these days?

I got to play some Shabat basses a few weeks ago. I was really impressed with them. They feel like very good vintage Fenders. The builder is very meticulous, the level of attention given to aspects contributing to the feel, sound and durability of the instrument is on par with anything. The necks are all quarter sawn, handcrafted and of the four I played, the feel and quality was equally consistent. I’ve owned Bluesman Vintage, Fender, Mike Lull P-Basses and liked each of those as well but Shabat are currently number one on my list for the vintage Fender style instruments.

Shabat Panther Bass 3-Tone Sunburst RFM | Reverb
I tried two of these basses with a friend yesterday. We both were amazed at the tonal options and how awesome they sounded. Phenomenal basses. But the prices here in New Zealand are quite steep. I'm looking at $8200NZD for either one. But the shop owner said he takes trades so I might have to part with a couple of my basses.....

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Rickenbacker output adjustment

Ric-O-Sound is designed to send each pickup to a separate amp. It uses a TRS jack with signal from one pickup going to the tip and the signal from the other pickup going to the ring. If you accidently insert a regular instrument cable with a TS plug in the Ric-O-Sound jack, you will only get a signal from one pickup.

You can run Ric-O-Sound into a two channel amp or two channels of a mixing console. When running mono, the two pickups load each other. When you break the two pickups out with Ric-O-Sound, this loading is eliminated, which will have some impact on tone.

An even cheaper alternative is to get a 2 channel mixer in pedal format. Saturnworks makes them very reasonably priced, with various options depending on what you want. Just put it wherever you want it in your signal path and it blends the two signals together into a mono channel.

One major advantage of doing this is that you can put distortion on one channel (usually the bridge pickup) and leave the other clean, so you don't lose out on low end. But there's lots of other things you can do with parallel signal paths.
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Suhr Basses Are Coming Back To Rocket!

Here's a sweet new guitar from John Suhr! This one is Andy Wood's Signature Modern T model.


Tim Pierce did a nice review of this model about a year ago:

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Looking for a 6 string

I ended up buying an Ibanez mdm1606. It looks and plays fantastic but the preamp isn't very good and the pickups aren't really to my preference so I'm probably going to swap out the electronics. The finger ramp was also a bit of a let down, it feels cheap like it's made of really light wood and the paint wasn't applied evenly.

But don't be mistaken the instrument itself is fantastic and is clearly great quality. Great fretwork, great setup, no dead spots or feet buzz and great sustain. This is just me being a bit nitpicky. It also came in at a price where I have enough money left over to replace the electronics so I can't complain too much.
The MDM hadn't occurred to me as an option (and I haven't played the MDM basses), but a 34" scale J-type bass with 18mm spacing makes sense, given your experience with your similarly-speced Momose.

If you dig the body, neck, and playability, you can always swap out the electrictronics.

Thanks for the follow up - glad you dig it. If you post a follow-up elsewhere (like for am electronics swap), please post a link here!

Meanwhile, enjoy your new bass!

Fender Pure Vintage '60 Precision Bass Pickup

I installed a PV 60 on a AO 60s P bass after having replaced the stock PV 63 with a Klein Epic 62, which was finally replaced by the Fender PV 60.
This pickup will stay.
It’s musical and articulated without being weak and for the price it is certainly a valid solution for those who seek a non-bass heavy vintage P-bass tone.
So far I prefer it to the 5% underwound Lindy Fralin I placed on another P of mine.

My final judgement: highly recommended 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Mas Hino Bass actually built with Warmoth Parts

Hey everyone. I haven't had an account here in a long time but I saw this thread and felt that I needed to chime in on this as Mas worked for me a long time ago. For a quick background, I worked at Manny's Music from 1997 until 2005 and then I had my own store, Guitar Man from 2005-2010. Mas worked as my repair man for the last couple of years Guitar Man was around and he also did some of his building in my store.

Let me preface this by saying I haven't spoken to Mas since sometime in 2010. He was mad at me over the way my store went under though that was a complicated situation and I had left the business before my former partners shut it down. Though I would have liked to have explained to him my side of the story but he never gave me a chance. And while I have no real reason to defend him, I also know the way he worked back then and may be able to shed some light here.

First, while Mas was working for me he never cut his own necks and bodies (and neither do a lot of boutique builders but we'll get into that). He ordered rough cut necks and bodies from (I think) Musikraft at that time made to his specs but he would then hand shape them as well as install the frets and so on. I do not remember what he did as far as finishing the bodies (whether he sent them out or did them himself) but everything else was done by hand by him. And while I have no idea what Mas is doing now (or I guess was doing up until his accident), I would imagine he was doing something similar with the Warmoth necks and bodies.

Second, a boutique bass is much more than someone just assembling parts. You're paying for the time put into making that instrument as perfect as it's going to be. You're not talking a few hours. You're talking a significant amount of time and expertise. And that's really the difference between a mass produced and a custom instrument - the time put into making it.

Third, I'm not going to out anyone here but lots of boutique builders outsource their necks and bodies - not everyone has the facilities to cut their own. Anderson Guitars used to cut the necks and bodies for Sadowsky and Pensa-Suhr when they were a smaller brand just as an example. And Warmoth cut them after that. Lots of small builders outsource their necks and bodies, while others make them in house. At the end of the day, as long as it's good quality wood that has been properly dried out, does it really matter who does the rough cutting?

That said I also see where the OP is coming from. I would be weirded out for sure if I took the neck off and saw the Warmoth logo. And I also find the headstock odd and that's a bit of a flag to me. Unless Mas changed it so that it's less neck heavy or something, I don't see what the point of changing a headstock you're know for is. I would think if he had changed it for a reason he might have said something about it but at the same time maybe he didn't want to freak out the folks who have his old headstock. Unfortunately Mas is the only one who can explain that.

So that said I hope this sheds some light onto the situation. I'm not in the business anymore and I really don't know what Mas's newer instruments are like but he is one of the best luthiers out there and I would like to think his work is at least as good as when I knew him.
You had a cool store and I was sad when it closed.

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