Hey guys, I am starting a little thread for my tinkerings with the GSR206B I recently picked up. The goal is to increase the performance of the bass as much as possible on a budget.
This is purely for fun and learning.
I have no idea what I'm doing! But I'm gonna figure it out along the way. I'll screw it up a bunch, learn how to fix my screw ups and share it here. Hopefully it helps someone and I'm sure you guys will offer tons of advice along the way. I'll attach pictures along the way as well.
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Now a little of my background so you have an idea of my level (lack of) knowledge. I'm no aspiring luthier nor am I a professional musician. My biggest fans are my kids who are too young to know how bad daddy really is on "his big guitar" and my friends who thankfully don't throw beer bottles at me when I play around them. When I'm not at work and not playing bass I work/ abuse/ race cars and motorcycles. I'm uneducated in this subject matter but not incapable of learning.
Onto the Topic at hand. I'm planning on purchasing one of the EHB1500's from ibanez and I'm debating the 5 or the 6 string. I've never touched a 6 string before but I have recently begun studying theory and extended range seems like a great tool to have around. before I drop serious coin on an extended range I wanted to give it a test run for a few months so I took a trip to GC to get my hands on two basses, an SR 2405 ,similar to my 4 string SR1300 main bass, and an ESP LTD 6 sting. Well they didn't have the ESP despite online inventory saying they did, so i plugged in the 2405 and gave it some jam, sounded great felt great was heavier than I expected. then I noticed this little 206 and figured SR becks don't vary much in size and shape so even though it's their bottom of the barrel model I could get an idea of how much access I would have on the fret board. An hour later in finally unplugging the 206, went to plug the 2405 back in and said nah screw it. it sounded great, felt great, the fear I had about it being over whelming with the added strings and tighter spacing disappeared after the first couple notes. It was instantly comfy and playable. I Grabbed the sales guy to get an appraisal on a bass I had picked up on a good deal (1992 peavey foundation) and turns out I got a great deal and I was able to trade it in and talk the price down on this 206 so it didn't cost me anything out of pocket. (BTW GC isn't doing the 10% off with trade right now with covid, but I got him to give it to me as "open box" something to consider if you're going that route).
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I got home immediately put on the neon green eadg strings I pulled from the peavey before trading in (i have a 6 string set on the way for the B and C) and spent an hour or two setting it up making sure everything was snugged up. Went to put strap locks on and discovered the screws from. The factory are a larger guage than the screws that come with the locks. The top horn screw didn't even come close to tightening. So I put the stock button back on. I'm going to fill the hole with epoxy and give the slimmer screw something to bite later down the road. (if anyone knows a reason not to do it this way and can offer a better suggestion please chime in). Next low grade issue is the machine heads, well they're cheap and work but aren't the smoothest, I find myself shooting past and having to back off a lot. I solved this problem in the classified where I found a set of gold take offs from a Tune Bass that also came with some dome and concentric knobs and a bridge! I'm pretty excited about this, they're gold and I would have liked black but for $100 bucks I'm more than happy and the quality and performance increase in relation to the price.
View attachment 3907454 I'm going to swap the nut out as well and really get this baby singing. The next area of interest is the electronics.
