Nice, those ones are pretty rare, 35 inch?
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Nice, those ones are pretty rare, 35 inch?
Some epoxy will probably fix that up. Should definitely make a close inspection though.
Yikes. That pic gives me the willies (a little bit) because I have a custom Sonus headless. Different hardware at the neck end, but the attachment method might be the same.
I got my headless in 2018. How old is your VB?
Best of luck with a fix.
How did you come across this link? Pretty cool info they are showing, I can't seemed to find this on there site right now.
Quite old. I believe it's from the early to mid 00's; i bought it from a friend in 2014. It's got the set neck attachment and I love it.
Question for everybody: is there any literature around regarding how to set up the VB series of basses? I struggle with restrings and getting the strings cut just right.
Through google search, looked like an unfinished beta, too bad cause the basses deserved a nice display
Not that I'm aware of. It looks like the threaded inserts in the neck just need to be reseated/glued. Should be an easy fix.
There isn't even any literature that comes with a Hyperbass- learning how to make adjustments was completely trial and error.
Around...2007? 2008? I forget. But he was trying to put a new website together. I sorted a billion pictures for him.
Do you still have the pictures? Can you use them?
It's tempting to build a nice "fan" page listing those beauties
NBD!
New to me this incredible one from the classified finally landed home yesterday!
From what I could gather it's a 2012 Koa Top 519-34 (19mm spacing & 34 inch scale), Bartolini Singles and the standard preamp with mid-selection. Pretty lightweight as well at 8.77lbs
It's a little bit more than 10 years old but it's in an incredible condition and could honestly pass for new, thanks for the previous owners for taking such great care and I'm honored to be next in the line of custody
Now it's killing me that my band is on hiatus because of our BL's paternity leave, can't wait to bring this to rehearsal or gig and put it in action
New to me this incredible one from the classified finally landed home yesterday!
From what I could gather it's a 2012 Koa Top 519-34 (19mm spacing & 34 inch scale), Bartolini Singles and the standard preamp with mid-selection. Pretty lightweight as well at 8.77lbs
It's a little bit more than 10 years old but it's in an incredible condition and could honestly pass for new, thanks for the previous owners for taking such great care and I'm honored to be next in the line of custody
Now it's killing me that my band is on hiatus because of our BL's paternity leave, can't wait to bring this to rehearsal or gig and put it in action
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- Dec 21, 2007
- 15,231
- 45,093
- Disclosures
- Lark in the Morning Instructional Videos; Audix Microphones
Hi all,
New to this forum - thanks for all the great discussions!
I got my Zon Special 5-string (left-handed) in November last year - and am through the roof about it - the playability, the tone, the beauty... It's an amazing piece of art.
As you might notice from the pic, I asked for fret lines and Joe now uses brown(ish) lines, which I think look better but are actually more difficult to see when stage lighting is not optimal. Also, as in his other recent builds, he now places the pick-ups closer together.
From reading the discussions, it seems that several have had to wait (and are still waiting) years to get their basses. For whatever reason, that was not my experience. I ordered the bass in November 2021 and in November 2022 Joe sent it to me. And the party began...
I have had two issues with the bass, though:
First, when I changed strings from the Zon set that was on it when I got it to a set of D'Addario EXL220-5 (40- 125), I got excessive buzzing on the A-string around 14-17 fret. I tried all the tricks in the book to get rid of it: adjusted the truss rod, adjusted the strings, etc. And I went through waaaay too many sets of strings. I even asked Joe about it and his response was that because of the epoxy coating, it is hyper-responsive and will react to any inconsistency in the string. That didn't really help me a lot. But I found that the solution was to find strings that are more flexible so that they touch the fingerboard less (if that makes sense...). So I now use the Dunlop Superbrights. No more buzzing but - honestly - I liked the tone of the D'Addarios better. Have any of you had any experiences with this?
Second issue is actually more of an aesthetic thing: If you check the pic of the fingerboard, you will notice some lines parallel to the strings, which could look like finger grease - but they are not. It's actually beneath the fret lines so it must be something in the phenowood fingerboard (I guess...). I asked Joe about this but so far no response. Did any of you ever see anything like this? Any ideas about what it might be?
Another question: Do any of you have any thoughts on the difference sound qualities of single coils (like this one) and the soapbars? I have only ever played on this Zon bass but I am curious as to the difference with other kinds of pick ups.
Cheers
Morten
New to this forum - thanks for all the great discussions!
I got my Zon Special 5-string (left-handed) in November last year - and am through the roof about it - the playability, the tone, the beauty... It's an amazing piece of art.
As you might notice from the pic, I asked for fret lines and Joe now uses brown(ish) lines, which I think look better but are actually more difficult to see when stage lighting is not optimal. Also, as in his other recent builds, he now places the pick-ups closer together.
From reading the discussions, it seems that several have had to wait (and are still waiting) years to get their basses. For whatever reason, that was not my experience. I ordered the bass in November 2021 and in November 2022 Joe sent it to me. And the party began...
I have had two issues with the bass, though:
First, when I changed strings from the Zon set that was on it when I got it to a set of D'Addario EXL220-5 (40- 125), I got excessive buzzing on the A-string around 14-17 fret. I tried all the tricks in the book to get rid of it: adjusted the truss rod, adjusted the strings, etc. And I went through waaaay too many sets of strings. I even asked Joe about it and his response was that because of the epoxy coating, it is hyper-responsive and will react to any inconsistency in the string. That didn't really help me a lot. But I found that the solution was to find strings that are more flexible so that they touch the fingerboard less (if that makes sense...). So I now use the Dunlop Superbrights. No more buzzing but - honestly - I liked the tone of the D'Addarios better. Have any of you had any experiences with this?
Second issue is actually more of an aesthetic thing: If you check the pic of the fingerboard, you will notice some lines parallel to the strings, which could look like finger grease - but they are not. It's actually beneath the fret lines so it must be something in the phenowood fingerboard (I guess...). I asked Joe about this but so far no response. Did any of you ever see anything like this? Any ideas about what it might be?
Another question: Do any of you have any thoughts on the difference sound qualities of single coils (like this one) and the soapbars? I have only ever played on this Zon bass but I am curious as to the difference with other kinds of pick ups.
Cheers
Morten
Attachments
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Thanks for sharing your story - a very timely delivery indeed! Congrats & glad you're (mostly) loving the bass.
I must admit that the 'hyper responsive' story sounds strange to me - i wonder whether there might have been some small un-evenness in the finish. Or whether the neck has moved/shifted a bit. Despite being carbon - sometimes some of them do move a little. In any case, glad to hear you managed to get rid of the issue via string swap. And if it is a very minor bump in the finish, perhaps it can be polished out without going through the expoxy coat (how thick does it look?)
I've never seen parallel lines like that under the finish before - but then again, i've not personally played ay lined-phenomwood fingerboards with a recent epoxy coat. Typically the ones with the coating were either unlined, or had the plain-black phenolic. Your looks wonderfully similar to the old-school Rutland-plywood 'dymondwood' - my all-time favourite fingerboard material! The only thing I could think of is that some part of the fingerboard didn't get polished/finished to the same grit before the epoxy - but that is just speculation, so curious to hear what others say.
As to the brown-on-phenomwood lines, fully agree with you that they would be more challenging to see. I had a Greg Curbow fretless with a similar setup (brown-lined dymondwood), and found it hard to 'read' in many lighting conditions. I ended up putting additional markers on the side of the neck, since the fretlines from the side blended in with the lighter part of the texture of the fretboard.
Regarding the single-coils: it's the only thing I severely dislike about my fretless zon; they tend to be quite noisy the moment they're not exactly at 100% both. And mine being a 6-string, bartolini doesn't make split-coils in that housing size as standard (custom orders at this time would take a long time, and would be very expensive). Personally, I much prefer the Zon/Barolini soapbars to singles. If I had a 'special' pickup arrangement like on yours, I'd perhaps just have a series/parallel toggle on both singles instead of the blend, and probably leave it at that. I really do love a two-singles-in-series sound, and givent that I'm allergic to hum, both of these configs should be fully noise-cancelling. Alternatively, for 5-strings you could try a pair of split-coils, if the hum annoys you as muh as it does me.
Wonderful bass overall, though, and do keep us posted where you go with it next. And, of course, sound-samples always welcome
Rock on!
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Thanks for your quick reply!Thanks for sharing your story - a very timely delivery indeed! Congrats & glad you're (mostly) loving the bass.
I must admit that the 'hyper responsive' story sounds strange to me - i wonder whether there might have been some small un-evenness in the finish. Or whether the neck has moved/shifted a bit. Despite being carbon - sometimes some of them do move a little. In any case, glad to hear you managed to get rid of the issue via string swap. And if it is a very minor bump in the finish, perhaps it can be polished out without going through the expoxy coat (how thick does it look?)
I've never seen parallel lines like that under the finish before - but then again, i've not personally played ay lined-phenomwood fingerboards with a recent epoxy coat. Typically the ones with the coating were either unlined, or had the plain-black phenolic. Your looks wonderfully similar to the old-school Rutland-plywood 'dymondwood' - my all-time favourite fingerboard material! The only thing I could think of is that some part of the fingerboard didn't get polished/finished to the same grit before the epoxy - but that is just speculation, so curious to hear what others say.
As to the brown-on-phenomwood lines, fully agree with you that they would be more challenging to see. I had a Greg Curbow fretless with a similar setup (brown-lined dymondwood), and found it hard to 'read' in many lighting conditions. I ended up putting additional markers on the side of the neck, since the fretlines from the side blended in with the lighter part of the texture of the fretboard.
Regarding the single-coils: it's the only thing I severely dislike about my fretless zon; they tend to be quite noisy the moment they're not exactly at 100% both. And mine being a 6-string, bartolini doesn't make split-coils in that housing size as standard (custom orders at this time would take a long time, and would be very expensive). Personally, I much prefer the Zon/Barolini soapbars to singles. If I had a 'special' pickup arrangement like on yours, I'd perhaps just have a series/parallel toggle on both singles instead of the blend, and probably leave it at that. I really do love a two-singles-in-series sound, and givent that I'm allergic to hum, both of these configs should be fully noise-cancelling. Alternatively, for 5-strings you could try a pair of split-coils, if the hum annoys you as muh as it does me.
Wonderful bass overall, though, and do keep us posted where you go with it next. And, of course, sound-samples always welcome
I actually forgot to mention that I took the bass to a great Danish luthier (after having consulted Joe Zon) to check whether there might be a small un-evenness in the finish. And he did find that it had a bump near the end of the fingerboard. But even after having carefully removed the bump, the buzzing was still there. pretty strange.
Thanks for the comments on the lines under the finish. I will send a question across to Joe based on your thoughts - and keep you posted on the response.
I had also read about the hum-problem with the single coils. But I must say that in terms of humming and noises, there are none at all. Absolute perfect silence. But I wonder if the sound somehow would be fatter with the soapbar - or if the sound would be similar to having both single coil pc's at 100%... I have found that I prefer to have it set probably at 5/6 in favor of the bridge pickup. That gives me the fattest and (to my ears) sound.
If it was still buzzing after the re-level, that is very curious.
Regarding the pickups: if they don't hum when you solo only one of them, then they quite likely aren't 'single coils' but may be 'split coils' instead. Those woud be hum-cancelling. Or maybe Zon has some new magic-singles in the works - all the previous singles i've tried, would hum quite noticeably if you solo one of them (even easier to check if you boost the treble a bit on the preamp).
Killer bass, happy to hear it was delivered timely! Can’t wait to hear some clips
re: the lines parallel with the strings on the fretboard: these look pretty similar to the fretboard on my 2007 Sonus Custom, i think that’s somewhat normal for ‘more recent’ ‘phenowood’ fingerboards
re: single-coils: I have one Zon with soaps (the Custom), and one with singles (519), and i was surprised how much I prefer the sound of the singles, they are not as refined-sounding as the soaps but they sound noticeably clearer and deeper
(Mine are not very noisy but do buzz a little at high volumes, they may be stacked singles or something like that)
congrats on the bass!
Thanks for the reply! I am really puzzled about the hum/noise that you both mention. I wonder if JZ has done something about the electronics... I just listened to the bass through headphones and there is literally no noise at all (or my middleaged ears are just fooling me - also a possibility...).
Could you upload a pic of the lines? I would be very curious to see other examples of this. Any idea why that happens?
I'll upload clips shortly!
Regarding the buzzing, could it possibly be the nut is cut too low?
^^ re: buzzing: nut issue would be my first guess also
