I didn't think about Pickguardian haha. My factory pickguard doesn't fit the best because of the Bassmods preamp the previous owner installed. I may just trim and sand it to fit, then send it in to pickguardian.
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SX Ursa 6-string Jazz bass
- Thread starter Figbassist75
- Start date
I didn't think about Pickguardian haha. My factory pickguard doesn't fit the best because of the Bassmods preamp the previous owner installed. I may just trim and sand it to fit, then send it in to pickguardian.
- Jan 27, 2010
- 4,141
- 471
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: Genz Benz Amplification
The LEJ is around $2500-$3000 more than the SX, depending on what options you get, and IMO the price difference is entirely justified. The only question is whether an individual player can justify the price difference for their situation/skill level.
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That is a question but it's actually more than that. No question an LEJ is a top instrument and worth the money, but the problem is when you don't know if the Fender clone 6 string idea is for you. Given my Fender Deluxe V the IDEA of a 6 string passive Fender-style jazz bass appealed to me. But given the price of an LEJ that seemed rather excessive when I had no idea if this idea would work out for me or not. And that's especially true given I'm not a huge fan of old school Fender basses anyway. I also mulled over the idea of a FRETLESS Fender-style jazz 6 string. Seemed like that had lots of possibilities too. But A Steve Bailey is a pretty good chunk of money too and now discontinued and I found none used.
So how could I stick a big toe in the water to see how cold it is without dropping three grand? SX provided the easy answer with their Ursa 6. I bought three at about $200 each which is still WAY under even a Steve Bailey. I modded them to look and play cool (see avatar) and created one with flats, one with rounds and one fretless. I'm not $3000 sold on the idea yet, but I am about 90% sold. And this is given I'm not a big Fender Fan and I pretty much prefer 24 frets on 6 string basses. But I'm not done yet. There is still an audere preamp to try and maybe a few other brands of strings and things. Maybe Hippo pickups. But somewhere along the way I'll have to decide if this idea is really what I want $3000 worth, or am I not enthused enough to move beyond my SX bar basses. Right now I don't know the answer. But I presume one day I will. But in the meantime I got a lot of "learning" out of those SX basses for not many bux.
WELL stated! And a point not mentioned often enough wrt SX, IMO. People are always wondering "should I get/will I like" something, when there really is only one person who can answer that. And Sx gives people a chance to "try something", live with it and learn about it for not much coin.
For me and my skills, thousand dollar instruments will likely never be justified, but the education I have gotten/am getting from my SXes is more than worth what I paid for them!
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If anyone cares, I emailed Kurt about 6 string fretless SX basses and he has them on order, but no ETA on delivery.
Sorry for the large picture. I said I would update as soon as my new pickguard was ready. This is a DIY pickguard: 1/8" 3-ply birch panel with several Varathane coats. The design is inspired by the Fender MODERN PLAYER TELECASTER® BASS. Now my bass don't look so cheap (black body, white pickguard...): under lights, it looks like a blend between a blonde poly finish and an anodized pickguard. Really easy to do for the DIYers here.
I got the birch panel at Omer De Serres, a retail store here in Quebec where they sell DIY stuff, paint, glues, photo stuff, frames, etc. They had several sizes and I chose a bigger one with a great grain. I cut the contour on a vertical saw. The pickup hole is made with drills and a lot of sandpaper (damn sharp corners)... I could not do a bevel angle on the contour because the panel was chipping, so I rounded it with sandpaper instead: it looks great and it feels great for the thumb near the pickup.
My only concern is that varathane is too soft for hard nails and will scratch overtime.
For those interested, I have a .ai file of the contour, but I cannot guarantee it will fit your bass, since all SX pickguards are drilled in place (let say "custom pickguard" instead...). I originally planned for a laser-cut polished aluminium pickguard, but it was too expensive and too metal/djent looking.
My only concern is that varathane is too soft for hard nails and will scratch overtime.
For those interested, I have a .ai file of the contour, but I cannot guarantee it will fit your bass, since all SX pickguards are drilled in place (let say "custom pickguard" instead...). I originally planned for a laser-cut polished aluminium pickguard, but it was too expensive and too metal/djent looking.
WOW! I really LIKE that! I may have to do that on my next plain black bass! I'm with you in that I always change the pickguards on my SX to get rid of the black or white cheap pickguard look.
One of these days I REALLY need to photograph and show off my SX herd with the tort and pearloid pickguards in all their glory!
jzbass6
One Nation Under A Groove
jzbass6
One Nation Under A Groove
Are there any direct replacement pickups for the SX Ursa 2 6'ers, please forgive me if this has been answered before but I've searched the tread as best as I could with no definitive answer?
Thx, JZ
Thx, JZ
From what I understand the only drop-in pickups are made by "Hippo." I know the stock pickups get slagged quite a bit, and maybe I'm just lucky, but I'm perfectly satisfied with them. Of course they're not Bart's or EMG's, but the instant I changed out the stock strings I decided to keep the pickups. I used DR Fat-Beams, which are pretty high-mass and the output increased dramatically - at least 5db. After that I stripped it down and did a full setup: full level & crown, shimmed the neck (angle was too shallow), filed, cleaned up, and shimmed the nut, then balanced the pickups. The action is super-low (I don't have a ruler precise enough to give you an exact measurement, sorry.) and the sound is well balanced and bright, from the low B all the way to the highest frets. Chords ring out nice and clear, and it can get nice and aggressive when need be, which is a nice benefit of the 34" scale (35" B's sound too stiff to my ears - I like a little slop without drop-tuning.) But overall I play with a fairly light touch, and it responded quite nicely.
Trying for a more vintage tone, I slapped on some Chromes I had left over from another project. Terrible decision. The C string sounded choked, and the playability suffered enormously. I put them back in the drawer where they belong. On a whim I tried some Rotosound 77 flatwounds, and whoah. It sounds bright, but not too bright. The action is still super low, and high-position chords still ring long and true. Mind you, each setup did take several days - in spite of the dual truss rods, the neck has moved on me a bit, but that could also be attributed to Arizona's rather extreme climate changes. I haven't been able to get the humidity in my room above 20% in about three weeks, so I can't attest to that aspect.
Basically this is a long, convoluted way of saying I wouldn't bother changing out the pickups right off the bat, unless you want to sink some (comparatively) serious cash into it. SX instruments are infamously unreliable between batches, so maybe I got lucky. I ran it through a Yamaha DAW into Cubase and the unaltered output levels were almost identical from string to string. Playing it through my Ampeg BA-112 (yay apartment life!) I haven't needed to move the EQ knobs more than three (hours? degrees? you know what I mean.) If you're dead-set on making major alterations to the tone, and if a proper setup doesn't get you where you need to be, I'd suggest starting with an Audere pre-amp. At least then, if that doesn't work out, you can slap it into another J. Not so with the Hippo's.
jzbass6
One Nation Under A Groove
Thx Apolicious for taking the time to answer my question, I have changed the string and had it set up. It's now strung with DR Hi-Beams and honestly the setup was not bad right out of the box so I didn't have a lot to do. This is my 2nd SX Ursa 6 and you most be fortunate because my pickup output is extremely low on both.
My plan is to drop a Bassmods preamp in first and see if that will do the trick and if I still have a issue I might try the Hippo's (Ebay) or have my bass guy route it out for some Norstrand or Bart soapbars, but that will be down the road. I purchase it with having it modded because it's so hard to find a Fender like 6 string. I have a LEJ Classic 24 that is fantastic,just wanted a less expensive backup.
JZ
If the problem is low output and you have those SX pickups with ceramic magnets on the bottom, I'd give the neo magnet mod a try. (there's a thread here somewhere on it) The mod didn't do much on the pickups without the ceramic magnets, but they have an output high enough to live with. At least one person who tried the mod didn't like the sound, but I'm totally happy with it and it REALLY increases output which greatly reduces single coil hum. It's cheap and reversible!
Give it a try.
Haha, well that's an excellent plan. You're obviously willing to sink more coin into yours than I am into mine. I didn't know you already had one, otherwise my post would've been much, much shorter. But yeah, I guess I am lucky because when I run it through the passive input on my bass it's just about the same level as the -15db padded input. A little EQing makes it almost identical. If I could afford it the first thing I'd do is drop in a set of Nordstrand NJ6S's and an Aguilar OBP-3 into mine. Or maybe just buy a LEJ 6
The six-string Jazz market seems vastly unexploited. LEJ's and Fender Steve Bailey's are way out of my price range. SX's are, well, SX's. If I could find a mid-range, run-of-the-mill 6 Jazz, I'd be on that like a pig on stink. Fender obviously isn't willing to do it, Ibanez refuses to make anything designed before 1985, Schecter won't do anything without humbuckers it seems like, Dean seems to only care about metal players these days... and Gibson is Gibson. MAYBE Squier will toss us a bone with one of their nicer series.
Either way, I'll keep playing the lottery. Or learn how to make the damn things myself.
You have hit the nail on the head! Fender is odd. You'd think since they call it a "jazz" bass the First Thing they'd sell would be a 6 string one. Instead they seem to have some innate fear of more than 4 strings. And when they do stick a toe in the water (Steve Bailey) they scamper off into the underbrush at the first loud noise. And everybody else seems to be following Fender's lead.
Of course the best lessons in how to make 6 string Jazz basses are available cheap from SX! It's my great low-cost way to learn. You start with real tonewood (alder or ash) and add an nice fender-shaped body already decently finished, plus a nice maple neck with two dual-acting truss rods and then the rest is up to you. Which is why I've got 3 of them. You can experiment all day with bridges and hardware and pickups and electronics and even throw it all away if you don't like it and still not come close to price of an LEJ or the like. My fretless SX -6 is almost where I want it! About the only thing left is to get rid of the single coil hum when a pickup is soloed. I have high hopes for the new Audere preamp with the dummy coil.
- Jan 27, 2010
- 4,141
- 471
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: Genz Benz Amplification
I don't really blame Fender for not offering a 6 string bass. The market for anything more than 5 is pretty small when you consider that most of their sales are from beginners or hobbyists. And my personal observation is that most people who would be interested in a 6+ string bass tend to gravitate towards more modern designs.
