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I took ardgedee's advice and bought a simple passive A/B or A+B switch on amazon. It has a 9V connection if I want/need leds to indicate which function is connected.

Thanks for the replies.

coyoteboy said:

Im going to need Ultralights to match, now. The Samdberg this is all going on is in the shop, but you happen to know if the Sandberg closed gear is small or large post? I think Its a small post.

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Sorry, I don't know.

There are engineering drawings on Hipshot's site with dimensions. You would just need to have the bass handy to compare...

rickdog said:

No clue about the bass - but isn't the woman dancing behind Phil also in this video of Jefferson Airplane?

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Could be, she definitely has that look. Probably as a lot of those folks followed all the San Francisco bands at that time

Swapped out the neck pickup for a Bart Double J. Post on it over here.https://www.talkbass.com/threads/th...eck-pickup-swap-for-bartolinid752j-b.1689910/

laklandplayer said:

VAT is a tax unique to the UK. Shipping and tariffs on my last order of 2 sets was around $21.00.
I use my balanced tension gauge numbers from Kalium along with tapered cores on my B-D strings and with the Newtone's the feel is spot on. The G string has the same tension as the low B and all feel the exactly same, the neck relief is consistent on both sides of the neck too.

I'm a low tension guy because early in my career I was having all types of hand and joint pain with swelling from playing too hard on high tension strings. My hand doctor, at the time, was a guitar player and he understood. He convinced me to go the lowest tension strings that I could find, lighten my touch and let the amp do all of the work on loud, live gigs. I did it and I haven't had a problem in over 30 years with no signs of arthritis. We need to take care of our hands, arms, neck and shoulders as if we were athletes and sadly most bass players don't think in those terms, I certainly didn't back in the day.

Getting back to strings, most bass string makers just package gauge numbers with no regard to tension let alone balanced tension. Finding your feel is important, it just takes time and experimentation along with proper bass setup, nut height and string action

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Good knowing that. I like equal tension and Kalium was amazing for some time. Then I got hooked and left scratching when things got stupid.

Amazing - especially the Yes tunes!
The Fish had really big hands and very keen timing but you make it look easy. Well done!

Another challenging fun Squire tune is Violet Purple Rose, from his time in Conspiracy with Billy Sherwood. I think you and your dad have the ears to figure that one out.

Keep it up! Thanks for posting!

Stepper McQueen was my first - and still my biggest - reggae bass influence. Absolutely wonderful player.

Later, I really got into Shakespeare and Family Man. I also really love the Two-Tone ska guys, particularly Charley Anderson of The Selecter and Horace Panter of The Specials.

Welcome to TB!

J'ai le compresseur , le chorus flanger et le riverbero dans mon set up et ils sont sublimes , chaud et large , rien a voir avec du bosd mxr ou n'importe quoi d'autre le seul bémol alimentation dec12 volts a plus de 650 mw...

Ok, thought Id share. I saw a new sealed set of Alice chrome flats for upright bass, $32 shipped. I mean, at that price, I had to try them. They were sealed, new shiny and tight windings, look of good quality compared to the typical makers. Installed and found they settled in quickly. They play well, fifths are good, finish works with a bow, etc. I will say, the tone is different than Helicore hybrids with more sustain, more electric like, and more crispy highs, which isnt as desirable to me, but manageable. Too early to know if they will last or not, but they note like new strings compared to the old Helicore Hybrids they replaced. Short story, easily usable for a super low price, unmatcheable. PS - these are lighter and lower tension than Helicore mediums.

Also, gently used clean strings are an option, from those who change every 6 to 12 months.

bass player 53 said:

Thomann is an excellent supplier.

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They are. I got a well made German fiddle from them for under $1000 shipped, and a Harley Benton EUB with a carved scroll for about $650 shipped

Enjoy it in good health young blood

I have the 50-70-85-105 set (#2812) and they are perfect for my Corvette fretless.

Phreaky Phriday said:

You might be surprisingly happy with some of the components on it - I'd wait to decide what to mod until playing it if i was you

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I'd been hearing good things overall on the Glarry Club page about them, I wanna make a headless one!

Dubarium said:

I have a Peavey Millenium 4 string and the gator for ‘oversize’ basses like soundgears and the like fit great - I fine tuned the fit to be exact with some pool noodles but the oversize bass gator case is perfect

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Thank you! I ordered something online and it did not fit so I am back o the market haha. This is a good price on these Gators.

Even at $1300, for a USA Precision that's playable much less of a bygone era, you've done well. After a few live gigs, you'll have it paid off.

I'm in the process of building a headless bass and am trying to work through my clamping options. The string retainer I am using is in the attached pics. I really wanted to avoid having to screw clamp the strings, I'm nervous about breaks. Originally I was going to have my retainer post offset from the string path so I could wrap around the outside first and then hook the string through the center. For some sleep deprived reason I made the holes right in line with the string path. Le fay does this with their Capone bass, which was the inspiration for using a tension lock vs screw clamp.

How bad is it for the string to hold all the tension on the first corner? How round does it need to be to avoid breaks? Le fay goes straight through, then half around counter clockwise and back up, then clockwise around and back up. Does looping it through in a figure 8 spread any of that tension?

If you do a proper setup, you dont't need radius gauges, the radius is there already, the strings are following the fretboard curvature.

Slightly OT, but related.
Few of the current crop of small digital mixers have security that prevents a user from accessing the WRONG mix.
The QSC TM’s do (but they have been discontinued)
Every other mixer I use (too many to list) requires the user to select the correct mix buss when connecting.
If that connection drops and the user reconnects, they often do NOT reconnect to the same previously selected AUX buss.
Suddenly, someone is [inadvertently] messing with your mix - mid song!
This is especially problematic (for me anyway) when my 8-piece tribute band’s UI24R drops connections. Yes, we run an external router.
I often cannot quickly reconnect but when I do I get I get a random AUX buss selected.
If one doesn’t check which buss mix that is, you’re suddenly messing with somebody else’s mix.
I’m going to try mixing station at our next gig to see how that works and whether the UI24R drops its connection.

beaglesandbass said:

I’m 38. When I was in high school and going out for sports (2002ish), it was discovered that I needed glasses. I Wore glasses/contacts up until 2016 when I got LASIK. I’m not sure when my last eye exam was after that, but it’s probably been a few years. Anyway, after LASIK, I never got the corrective lenses requirement taken off my license. It was an in person thing and I always renewed online. Well now with Real ID becoming a thing, I figured I’d just get it off at my appointment, 2 birds 1 stone type of thing.

I’m not sure how other states have their vision test set up at their state’s DMV/MVC, but here in NJ, there are 12 boxes divided up into 3 columns/4 rows, with 4 letters in each box. With both eyes open the letters were perfectly clear, but the boxes in the left hand column were all blank. Not blurry, completely empty. When I closed my right eye everything showed up as it should, but with the right eye open, nothing in the left hand column. This has never been a problem with any eye exam until now. When I needed glasses before, it’s because my vision was bad, not because I had any kind of field defect.

They told me I needed to go to an eye doctor and tell them I have a “visual field defect” in my right eye.

So, anyone else ever deal? What was the outcome?

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Your doctor may have the equipment to do the test. It may be best to find out for sure to what extent you are affected, if any.
The source of such a problem might be organic or neurological.
If you have a diminished field of vision your driving priviliges may be affected depending severity. In a mild case you may have to learn to scan consciously your surroundings to assemble complete visual data. Sorry to hear you have to deal with this at such an early age.

lurk said:

At your suggestion I put the Superflex solos back on today and I like them! My daily hour of practice went by without any cramping and they sound good and don't feel flabby. I think on gigs I lose my marbles sometimes and start squeezing with my left hand. Something to work on.

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Cool! The longer they are on the better they sound.

JohnnyChatter said:

Yeah, If that’s your style I would snag that up. I played aerodyne for years but for some reason the binding started to get to me. I still have a few but I prefer curves on my basses.

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I am thinking about it. But info I have found also says it's an "entry-level" model? Not sure what that means, exactly. Also the shipping and tariff fees could make it north of $900.

For real...I hate that bound edge...whoever thought of that didn't sit down and play it for an hour before they settled on it! I found an Aero identical to mine a couple hours away. Has the badass bridge on it (which I love and mine also has), but missing the OG pickups (looks like they Aguilar DCB-4PJ pickups...don't know much about those but saw a couple poor reviews). It's pretty dinged up but the seller says the neck has no dings. Since I KNOW I love this bass, it already has an upgraded bridge, and it's dinged up, about snagging it, rounding over the bound edge and repainting it. WHITE! But leave the black headstock, bridge, jack plate, pickups....that would look sick.

Five or Six said:

The only way to answer the question is to play a comparison if possible?

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Yeah there aren't many of those MIJs lying around these parts!

I did some math. Their direct to market strategy is probably way more profitable and less risky than other methods. Fender could learn from them.

I had some fun with math today...



Selling 543 basses at a retail price of $599 generates $325,257 in total gross revenue.

For a mid-range offshore bass priced at $599, direct factory labor accounts for approximately $30 to $50 per unit (out of a total manufacturing COGS of ~$100 to $130).

Cost & Profit Breakdown (543 Units @ $599)​

Over the years I've accumulated quite a collection of electric bass books and study material. A lot of it I worked through 'back in the day', starting in the early 1980s with Chuck Rainey's 'Complete Electric Bass Player' series, and 'one-off' things from Clive Harrison, Rick Laird, Joe Hubbard, Adam Novik and the like. Others I've picked up more recently, as much out of curiosity as well as to try to keep things fresh. Taken alongside each other they all start to look very much alike - different takes on the same 'stuff'.

In terms of methods, the 'Complete' version of Friedland/Hal Leonard Bass Method (HLBM) sets the current standard, but over time and in a "GOAT Shoot-out", I would place the 1985 Chuck Rainey Method (book 1 in the 'Complete Electric Bass Player 'series) at the top. Both are Standard Notation and both include more than enough to get a non-reader going - the HLBM has slower start from a lower level so is probably better in that regard, but overall the Rainey book will take you further. Compared to the HLBM, the topics covered by Rainey go to greater depth and within each topic there are several exercises which start simple then go on to be more challenging than anything in HLBM.
The Jeff Berlin reading stuff is good material but really needs to be used either alongside a method book or under the guidance of a teacher - it is devoid of anything connecting the music on the page to the physical execution of the music on the instrument.
For someone looking to sight-read, the Sight-Reading Studies collections from Robert Anthony are excellent, and Rick Appleman's "Reading Contemporary Electric Bass" is also pretty good.
I have a few of the 'Walking' books (Pattitucci, Berlin, Fuqua, Tate, etc.) - the principles of Walking Bass are long established and largely unchanging, so any one of these would have done fine.
I have a handful of 'deep dives', such as "Standing in the Shadows of Motown", Ed Friedland's "Reggae" treatise, the excellent "Latin Bass Book" by Oscar Stagnaro & Chuck Sher and a couple of the "<Insert Name of Your Favourite Player Here>" transcription books that I would hazard everyone has and rarely opens.

Through all of this, whilst I've had a good deal of music education and training, I've never once had a bass lesson. Electric bass tuition didn't really exist when I started out, so Rainey was pretty much the only thing going apart from one-page articles in magazines. Thankfully, back then, Guitar Player had some pretty good bass contributors - Jeff Berlin, Herb Mickman, Carol Kaye, Stanley Clarke, Bunny Brunel amongst them. In 1984 they put out a book with all of the collected bass articles in one place, called simply 'Electric Bass Guitar'. There was no structured or progressive 'method' to any of it, but on some level or other it covered pretty much anything you could think of. By the late '80s it was out of print and the original 1984 edition is pretty much lost in time. But a revised edition was published by Hal Leonard under ISBN 0881889075. I suspect it is out of print again but IME is worth a look, if only for the Mickman stuff.

I just came to browse the forum a little bit today and got a bit nostalgic. It's crazy to think I joined this forum when I was still 14 in 2001. I got a bass clef tattoo when I was 21. Started playing guitar in bands when I was 22.

I'm 40 now, I have a 15 year old and a 13 year old. My kids don't have much interest in playing music, but they are big music fans.

I still consider myself a bassist at heart, even though it's my least played instrument lately. Heck, I hardly play anything lately unless it's at practice or getting ready for a once in a while show I play. I still have my first and second basses, a 1970 Fender P-bass, and my 1984 Aria Pro Explorer, but no rig to really run them through. I think eventually I'd like to do a mild restoration on the Aria with new pickups, but it still plays well enough to record with.

FSGrind said:

Put together a parts bass for the first time. After purchasing all of the parts from the forums here, I ordered a body from MJT. A few months later it was ready to go! A little disappointed in the finish work from MJT but the bass plays and sounds killer. Just wanted to share some photos of it … because it’s talkbass and that’s what we do here.

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What didn’t you like about the finish?