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Kala UBass Megathread, Part 5

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#606
I didnt go with the electric version but my spruce top kala is excellent. I've had it for 3 weeks now and I've done 2 gospel gigs with it (one exclusively) and it came through like a champ! I love the chunky P-bass/upright tone. It's also good because I now switch back and forth between my 5 string and this 4 string to keep me sharp. Before buying the Ubass I had not touched a 4 stringed bass for 10 years. These are really top notch practical instruments with tons of actual gig application. I love mine!
 
#607
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#609
Just got my UBass yesterday and I love it so far. I've noticed that when I plug a right and jack instrument cable into the strap pin/output jack it makes the jack come loose after a little while. Does that happen to you guys too? It looks like there's a nut I can tighten on the jack on the inside of the bass, but it's a tight fit to get my fingers or tools in there to tighten it. Any tips?
 
#611
HeavyDuty said:
All of a sudden satin finish red SUBs are popping up on the evil auction site for $360 shipped.
Click to expand...

I bought mine, a fretted B-Stock satin red SUB, in December for $378 + shipping. At the time of my purchase, I just wanted a Buy-It-Now item because I wanted it to arrive before Christmas. I remember others listed around $360 buy they were auction listings. I'm still having fun with it. As you probably read throughout this thread, the frets from the 7th fret and higher are pretty much inaccurate. I just keep that in mind and stick around the low end. If I would have known this issue in advance, I might have gone for a fretless instead to negate that problem. But it's still fun nonetheless.

Eventually, I'm gonna pick up its U-Bass Ukelele counterpart. For that one, I'm gonna make sure to buy fretless.
 
#615
BassManPatsFan said:
Just got my UBass yesterday and I love it so far. I've noticed that when I plug a right and jack instrument cable into the strap pin/output jack it makes the jack come loose after a little while. Does that happen to you guys too? It looks like there's a nut I can tighten on the jack on the inside of the bass, but it's a tight fit to get my fingers or tools in there to tighten it. Any tips?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had the same problem about a year ago when I first got mine. You'll need to tighten the jack with the backing nut inside the body of the bass. It's a tight fit for my big mits but just be patient and take your time with a wrench or needle nose pliers. Be careful not to spin the jack shaft too much since it has wires on it which could come off. Mine has stayed put since I tightened it, I didn't put any loctite on it but I think others on this thread have.
The only other common quirks with these basses seem to be a very tight fitting "A" string that may require lifting out of the nut slot while tuning, I solved this for the most part with a little graphite powder in the slot. And the over wrap concerns with the "D" string on the tuner, you'll just have to tune and restring it a couple of times to eliminate this problem. All in all, I still love this thing and I'm constantly finding new songs that it fits well with.
Good luck.
 
#617
GBassNorth said:
Yeah, I had the same problem about a year ago when I first got mine. You'll need to tighten the jack with the backing nut inside the body of the bass. It's a tight fit for my big mits but just be patient and take your time with a wrench or needle nose pliers. Be careful not to spin the jack shaft too much since it has wires on it which could come off. Mine has stayed put since I tightened it, I didn't put any loctite on it but I think others on this thread have.
The only other common quirks with these basses seem to be a very tight fitting "A" string that may require lifting out of the nut slot while tuning, I solved this for the most part with a little graphite powder in the slot. And the over wrap concerns with the "D" string on the tuner, you'll just have to tune and restring it a couple of times to eliminate this problem. All in all, I still love this thing and I'm constantly finding new songs that it fits well with.
Good luck.
Click to expand...

I think a little of the non permanent loctite would work very well.

Without something like that, it's likely to perpetually loosen.
 
#619
I've got a fretted 5 and I keep having intonation issues (bass is fretted). At first I attributed this to string stretch, but after this amount of time, that is crazy talk.

So after some experimenting I noticed things sounded fine below the 5th fret, but once I started playing higher up things started sounding wrong and out of tune. I ended up whipping out ye olde tuner and compared tuning of open vs 12th fret and low and behold, the G, D, E, & B were A-OK (as close to matching as you can reasonably get) but my poor, poor A went very sharp when playing the 12th fret.

anybody else have experience with this sort of problem? I sent an email to Kala, will wait a couple days to see what I hear (I may cc my sweetwater guy as well, he may have some better/quicker contacts over there)
 
#620
threshar said:
I've got a fretted 5 and I keep having intonation issues (bass is fretted). At first I attributed this to string stretch, but after this amount of time, that is crazy talk.

So after some experimenting I noticed things sounded fine below the 5th fret, but once I started playing higher up things started sounding wrong and out of tune. I ended up whipping out ye olde tuner and compared tuning of open vs 12th fret and low and behold, the G, D, E, & B were A-OK (as close to matching as you can reasonably get) but my poor, poor A went very sharp when playing the 12th fret.

anybody else have experience with this sort of problem? I sent an email to Kala, will wait a couple days to see what I hear (I may cc my sweetwater guy as well, he may have some better/quicker contacts over there)
Click to expand...

I doubt it's anything wrong specifically with your bass. I think it's just the nature of the beast. We're talking about dividing up a very short scale with very thick strings.

One suggestion: give the Aquila strings a try. They intonate better over a longer range than the stocks.
 
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