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EBMM Game Changer - What Happened?

Even for an old school guy like me, The Big Al is pretty awesome. They didn't sell very well. But IMHO, as they become better known, coupled with the inability to buy one new, the Big Al's will appreciate in value. In particular the SSS model. I was hoping that they would become clearance bargains: No such luck, good luck finding one...

Yeah I should reply by clarifying. I LOVE tr Big Al. Had one for a moment and foolishly returned it to GC over a cosmetic flaw that ticked me off. I kick myself. Got it for a great price.

Oh well...
 
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Yeah I should reply by clarifying. I LOVE tr Big Al. Had one for a moment and foolishly returned it to GC over a cosmetic flaw that ticked me off. I kick myself. Got it for a great price.

Oh well...
:thumbsup: I know what you mean. I did the same thing, luckily I found another one. But it wasn't my choice in color. I'll live with sky blue though, it's still the real deal.
 
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There used to be a video on the Bass Central site with a guy they call Grasshopper (he works there and is a monster player).
Sounded great with a ton of different sounds.
 
Pretty sure when it was first introduced, it didn’t need outside support and the idea was that you could pre-set a bunch of changes for mid song EQ adjustment
I’m thrilled to get 1 great sound in most rooms and 2 pups with active EQ is plenty

PS - Don’t let Big Papa know you didn’t think it was a good idea. In fact, don’t mention P bass or even Leo on that forum.

Funny thing is, without Leo, Musicman wouldn't have existed.
 
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Yup
Leo created Fender, Musicman, and G&L; that’s a pretty good run.
I wonder if the Stingray is still the best selling MM bass?

I like the original Stingray and the current Classics with the 2 band EQ but with what they're asking for them now I'm not interested. I used to use EBMM 3 band Stingrays and Sterlings in the '90s, and later a Bongo, but I moved on.
 
I thought it sounded interesting...until I learned more about what it was, how it actually worked - and then saw the sticker!

Crazy expensive and way more complicated than most musicians would want to have to deal with - unless you're one of those multi-keyboard/control surface types who lives for technology and complexity IMHO.

If I was going to drop in the neighborhood of $5K for a single instrument, I'd be out shopping for something used in the boutique or custom shop section. I wouldn't be looking at some unproven high tech instrument that needs a computer to really do its thing.

It's one thing to be ahead of your time. And quite another thing to just miss the boat entirely.

Can you say Edsel?
 
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I had to Google it:



That review is terrible. I still cant figure out what the various controls in the app are doing.

When the coil is green it must be on. But then they had a blue coil? What's that mean?

The bottom little control too with the green lines you can draw between six different dots? What the heck is that doing? He just drew on it and never explained what he was doing.

If you aren't paying close attention it also gives you the impression you need a computer monkey to change settings on your bass. The guy actually saved one of the web app settings to the bass so they could recall it later. That part is neat, however they'd better not be using a web app as the only way to do that. Companies (especially music industry ones) have a terrible track record of supporting software longer term and it's kinda stupid to require an internet connection to set up the bass.
 
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Pretty sure when it was first introduced, it didn’t need outside support and the idea was that you could pre-set a bunch of changes for mid song EQ adjustment

The way I understood it was that you only needed the computer connection for initial setup on the different wiring options.
Basically you mapped out which coils were on/off/out-of-phase/series-parallel to each of the 5 switch positions and that was it.
Once you did that you didn't have to connect again unless you wanted to remap how the switching worked.

To me it makes sense to be able to do custom switching on an HSH guitar setup, but not really for bass.
Not that either justifies the price.
Either way, I think even if it was free 99.99% of people would fool around with it for a week, get it set up the way they wanted and then never change it again.
 
Plenty of conjecture and opinion in this thread however not too much fact regrettably.

One if the points of this bass was being able to share settings - so for instance you could load Tony Levin settings to your bass if you wished.

Not sure what's going on with the Gamechanger but there was a guitar version as well I think. Although the Reflex bass (which was quite a nice bass with the 4 band EQ, active/passive, series/parallel etc) was discontinued with the recent EBMM changes the Gamechanger wasn't.
 
Interesting aside - the fancy 5 position switch EBMM puts in their two pickup Stingrays and Sterlings can be wired up for arbitrary coil configurations. This switch is essentially four 5 position rotary switches built into a single lever switch - a separate rotary switch for each coil.

You need a soldering iron to "reprogram" the switch, but you should be able to do anything (or at least nearly anything) the game changer's 5 position switch can do without shelling out that sort of cash.
 
Interesting aside - the fancy 5 position switch EBMM puts in their two pickup Stingrays and Sterlings can be wired up for arbitrary coil configurations. This switch is essentially four 5 position rotary switches built into a single lever switch - a separate rotary switch for each coil.

You need a soldering iron to "reprogram" the switch, but you should be able to do anything (or at least nearly anything) the game changer's 5 position switch can do without shelling out that sort of cash.
I've been looking at 4 pole rotary switches for exactly the same reason. With 2 4 ways (per pickup) and one 6 way (to control how the two pickups combine), I think can get every possible interesting combo for my "2 bigmen revjag" project.