Recent content by ardgedee

Is it fretless or fretted?

I mentioned the Line6 DL4 'cause that's my main tool, I don't have a whole lot of experience with other digital delays. Any of the oversized digital delays from Boss, Korg, TC Electronic etc. should also be capable of it, I was considering a couple of them when I decided on the DL4. Most...

Looks to me like the whole pickguard and pickup was somebody's hack job attempt at a repair, what with using a guitar pickup and the bridge being off-center relative to the neck. I'm not one to give estimates on collectibles but for $500 they should be throwing in one or two more basses, maybe...

It's probably going to be the more complicated digital pedals that do what you want. For example the classic Line6 DL-4 will let you control the length of delay, the number of repeats and dry/wet levels so that you can only hear the first repeat. On the upside, there are a LOT of pedals can do...

You're right and I agree, but at the same time it's got to be sized up in context of the music being played. If the music's intended to evoke an old-timey country vibe, that's going to predate the 1980s. @EdwardofHuncote makes an interesting point about bringing coffee table basses to these...

I've said it here before, but rock'n'roll is trad music. The early rock canon is over 70 years old now. People are going to expect to see Gibsons and Fenders at a rock show just like they're going to expect acoustic fiddles, banjos and an upright at a bluegrass show -- because it's tradition...

The US is just bigger. It's really common for people to visit here from Europe or east Asia and not have a good sense of how far away things are from each other and end up traveling three hours for something they thought was under an hour away. The US measuring distance in miles rather than...

Lead free solder's come a long way. The good stuff still requires a higher temp than a decent lead-tin but otherwise its eutectic and works about the same. If you insist on lead solder and live in the US, Kester still makes a variety and Kester 44 is cheap and high quality, better than antique...

It's amazing how well loved go-go is in DC compared to how obscure it is everywhere else in the US. I can't think of any other music genre as hyper-local as go-go.

I should add that these assumptions are usually made for 34-35" scale basses. Guitars and short-scale basses have entirely different issues regarding balance and reach. You don't see a whole lot of complaints about head-diving Les Paul guitars, for example.

Strap button placement is not purely about balance. It also affects the position of bridge and nut relative to your body. The most obvious example is: If the neck-side strap button is closer to the neck heel, the body shifts towards the nut and makes you reach farther to the first fret. There...

Yeah, that's weird and misleading -- if it's a footswitch the semiotics are bad, and if it's a speaker-out the label is bad. I don't have anything good or bad to say about Markbass amps, due to lack of experience with them, but their UI and support materials have quirks like this that I find...

There's going to be a huge qualitative gap between the items made in China with strict quality control and supervision, and similar items made in China to be as cheap as possible. This is clearly on the "as cheap as possible" side.

Is it this model? It was in production 2011-15 and BBS is one of the finishes: Blackberry Sunburst. The Ibanez fan wiki isn't perfect (or comprehensive) but their data is from official Ibanez publications whenever possible so I consider it reasonably trustworthy. You can look up the serial...

That's labeled "FSW". I think it's for a footswitch. The manual is pretty poor but does state there's only a single speaker out.