These are nice! 35" scale. 18mm spacing. MIK. You can find them used for $400 and under.
Schecter Diamond P 5 (NBD)
Schecter Diamond P 5 (NBD)
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Looking for an affordable 5-string bass for home recording
- Thread starter TLBass
- Start date
-
- Tags
- 5-string affordable home recording
- Jan 12, 2011
- 4,578
- 2,460
- Disclosures
- Artist, Trickfish Amplification Bartolini Emerging Artist, MTD Kingston Emerging Artist. Artist, Tsunami Cables
I am a proud owner of an Ibby GSR206SM. $349 Brand New. If you are a guitar player you'd dig this bass. And this bass is a sleeper on many counts and should record well. Save your money get the GSR205. I liked mine so much I upgraded it. I found a steal of a deal and mine now has Aggie DCB's and and Aggie OBP3 pre in it. Can you say Keeper? The deal? I got the Pups and the Pre for only $100 from a Builder who ordered the wrong thing.
The GSR205 has unfortunately already been sold. The Vampyre as well, while the Streamer was apparently traded with some guitar shop. The dude told me to look it up on their site, and they actually put it for a bit lower than he requested (but it's not really completely unused, he was a bit misleading). I was actually pretty interested in the Ibanez and its super affordable price, but I guess the Streamer is my only reasonable option at the moment (if I'm passing on the Squier Jaguar I mentioned later, as I'm not sure 20 frets is enough for me). That shop doesn't seem to pick up the phone, currently, so I still have to check with them.
According to your budget you can get a used Yamaha TRBX505, passive mode is more vintage sounding while active mode is more modern, so pretty versatile for studio, and dead quiet. Yamaha TRBX305 is almost the same except selling for less, different pickups, but interesting preamp with presets.
It is an excellent bass for the money. I'm sure a good used one can be found for $300 or less.
Can't find neither locally.
And neither the Squier Jazz.
Well, as I said, the "W" logoed, 2-piece bridge RockBasses are apparently from 2010 onward, so it should be fairly new. But I did ask the shop which traded for that used Streamer what year is it and the seller on the phone told me "it's not a top-of-the-line model, you don't delve into production years with these. Just come and see it yourself". ***? So the fact that it's a cheaper model means it doesn't matter from what year of production and how old is it?
Anyway, I think I will end up getting the Streamer Standard as it's the most viable option for me. I checked with the other store with the weird prices, they didn't have a real explanation why different colors of the same model are priced differently, but they of course didn't have the cheaper color in stock. The guy offered me the MM SUB Ray5 instead, but I feel like paying the equivalent of $540 for a new guitar which costs $300-320 in the US is a rip off.
Thing is, I saw some Streamer Standard users say they felt its pickups' output is quite low, resulting in a smaller spectrum of tonal variety using the on-board controls. Does any user here feel it's true? Would replacing the pickups or the EQ into an active one likely be necessity?
Last edited:
Where do you live? It must be pretty remote. Have you tried EBay? There are several there.
If you're just looking to use the bass for home recording, you can always tweak your sound by using presets or by running it through preamps and compression in your recording software.
Haven't personally played the Streamer Standard, but here's a video to give you an idea of recorded tone:
Haven't personally played the Streamer Standard, but here's a video to give you an idea of recorded tone:
Also, if you're looking for a stronger instrument output and like passive + Warwick, keep your eyes peeled for a Rockbass Corvette $$. Dual humbuckers in series = super fat and loud. Not sure if that fits your budget though
D
Deleted member 165050
Guest
Yes I would agree, the Streamer I had had a simple volume/tone arrangement with the tone being just a passive treble roll-off, but it had a good basic sound and if this is purely for recording you can eq at your leisure within the DAW software...
Israel. And most eBay purchases of guitars aren't that worthwhile because the shipping rates are often as expensive as the guitar. And we have to pay 17% VAT for instruments in Israel, even if they're used, and it also applies to the shipping costs.
Well, the $$ does seem to have a bit more presence, but I don't know whether I'd want to add this amount of money.
Though, once again, the Israeli shops make no sense. Invalid Link Removed, and if you'll look above they wrote "Regular price 3,745 NIS; Website price 2,379 NIS", which translates to <$620, cheaper than the US price. Other colors are once again much more expensive. It's past working ours, but I suspect the "cheaper color" will once again be "out of stock".
Either way, that's still about $230 more expensive than the used Streamer Standard the other shop has.
OK, but let's say one wants to mod their guitar and change the on-board EQ into an active preamp. How difficult/expensive is that usually? Would it require routing the wood or changing the knob layout?
A used Ibanez Soundgear 305, 405, 505, etc... are found everywhere and usually under $300 US. These usually have the active electronics and a guitarist friendly feel to them.
D
Deleted member 165050
Guest
That depends entirely on the pre-amp you choose, many of them are physically quite small but you have to fit a battery in there as well, however the control cavity in Warwick basses is usually pretty roomy. You can get away with two knobs if you use a stack knob for treble/bass and a volume with pull for passive, but again that depends very much on which pre-amp you choose.
Nope. It's from being thieves. Importation of musical instruments have no tarrifs, it's only subjected to the 17% VAT. I've actually ordered a Casio keyboard from Thomann and it ended up being even cheaper than expected, even with the €50 shipping, because our VAT is lower than the EU's (which is removed from the Thomann purchase when ordering to outside of the EU). The cheaper of the two local stores which advertised the keyboard (but didn't even have it in stock) was 16.5% more expensive than the final cost of my order. The second one, who told me (after asking them about their crazy pricing) that "the first store could never offer it this cheap. That's why they're 'waiting for a new stock' instead of actually having it", was 55% more expensive. I've just looked at the two shops, the first one raised its price by another $40 while the second one just lowered theirs to that exact price.
Do you just buy the knobs you like/need separately and than attach it all?
And the Streamer Standard has 3 knobs: 1 for the "tone" and a volume knob for each of the humbuckers. Let's say I were to retrofit it with a 2-band active preamp. I could just keep one volume knob per pickup and use a stack knob for the EQ?
I can relate some I guess. We have sales tax in my State here in the US. However we don't have income tax, so it's a trade off.
However, it costs me 9% more for just about anything I buy locally.
Then I still pay Federal taxes on income as well.
We have that as well on plenty of things, just not on musical instruments.
EDIT: Well, I now need to ask more specifically. I'm reading somewhere that the RockBass Streamer Standard has only 25k pots, which is apparently really not standard for a passive electronics guitar. As far as I understand, it would make the output weaker than it should and would take off a lot of the treble. I don't know whether all of their Streamer Standards are like this, because the post I was reading showed a schematic from 2009, but let's say they are - should changing the pots to 500k, or at least 250k, give the bass a more natural output?
Last edited:
OK, this seems to be the schematic for the RockBass Streamer Standard. All of its pots are only 25k, which to my understanding should be used with active pickups and not with passive like this bass has.
Also, someone told me on another forum that A pots are logarithmic, which should be used for volume, and that B pots are linear. I don't know why would linear pots be used even for Tone control when we hear logarithmically, but they should definitely not be used for volume. It also seems to be the case with my LP Studio, whose volume knob does nothing audible for 90% of its range and then kills the signal completely within the remaining 10%.
So my question is: for whatever reason they used these low-resistance pots, wouldn't it be better if I'll (in case I'll buy it) change them all to 250kohm? Possibly even 500kohm (I know electric guitars usually use 500kohm with humbuckers)? Doesn't having only 25kohm at the volume pot reduce the output's amplitude?
And is it really A=Log, B=Linear?
Also, someone told me on another forum that A pots are logarithmic, which should be used for volume, and that B pots are linear. I don't know why would linear pots be used even for Tone control when we hear logarithmically, but they should definitely not be used for volume. It also seems to be the case with my LP Studio, whose volume knob does nothing audible for 90% of its range and then kills the signal completely within the remaining 10%.
So my question is: for whatever reason they used these low-resistance pots, wouldn't it be better if I'll (in case I'll buy it) change them all to 250kohm? Possibly even 500kohm (I know electric guitars usually use 500kohm with humbuckers)? Doesn't having only 25kohm at the volume pot reduce the output's amplitude?
And is it really A=Log, B=Linear?
