Yeah... bit of a long title.
And it will be a bit of a long post, but I'm hoping others will chime in and post their own reviews of gear that is bargain priced but does the job well enough to gig..... or in some cases better than expensive gear. I'll be posting all the prices in New Zealand dollars (including delivery) with the approximate US dollars in brackets. In most cases the US price will be even less due to much lower freight costs compared to shipping to the bottom of the world.
This all started when I bought a Nordstrand MM4.3 pickup for a dirt cheap price. I was debating whether to buy a router and hack into my cheap travel bass to test it out when this Samick PMB-41 showed up on the local version of Ebay for $120 ($71 USd). I went and had a look at it and it turned out to have a pretty decent neck with no fret sprout and no obvious ski-jump. I thought it may have a high fret or two but at the price it didn't worry me.
I installed the MM4.3 and found out that it ONLY works with the MusicMan basses with the three way switch. It did make some sound but not much, so I marked that up to "lesson learned" and sold it on only losing $5.
I really wanted to get rid of the RHCP logo so started sanding a bit and ended up finding the original colour of blue underneath. I thought I'd live with this bass for a little while before committing to a full refinish and so I put it all back together with a crappy finish.
I found that I liked the feel of the neck and after a 6-8 weeks or so realised that the neck is really stable. Pretty much as good as my two Warmoth necks and my Ibanez SR1200 Premium in that it holds tune and doesn't react to humidity and temperature changes any more than those other much more expensive necks.
There were a couple of high frets causing rattle up the dusty end of the fretboard so I got a luthier to do a fret level for $60 ($35 USd) and was then able to get a really nice low action.
It was at this stage that I started looking at some bargain hardware in black and a pickup. There was nothing wrong with the stock hardware at all, I just wanted something different. Similarly there was nothing wrong with the pickup, and with the tone rolled off it had a really nice honk when plucked near the bridge, but it is a two wire humbucker and I wanted a 5 wire to play around with coil splitting and series settings.
I've heard numerous people saying that Wilkinson hardware is decent for the money, and it appears that the Korean made stuff was very good value, but all I could find online was their Chinese made stuff. I took a punt and ordered a Wilkinson bridge for $24 ($14 USd).
It seems decent enough. All parts adjust as they should and nothing has stripped as yet. I did make a mistake on the first screw when using the cordless drill to screw it in and damaged the top of the screw a bit showing metal through the black coating. A bit of permanent marker hid that mistake. Definitely good enough to gig.
Next were some Wilkinson tuners that look like a dupe of the Hipshots. These were $56 ($33 USd).
When I first got them I thought "well, you got your money's worth and not a bit more". Turning them through a full rotation of the post showed they had some stiffer parts of the travel. Once installed I found that they had a very sticky action particularly when trying to make small adjustments. They did however do their job of getting the bass in tune and held tune as they should. (So they are already better than those installed on the recent $1300 USd Purple Sparkle SBMM Ray's black tuners that chew themselves to pieces as reported in a TB thread)
I ended up pulling them all apart, made sure any foreign matter was cleaned out of the teeth and the winder, put the tiniest smear on all moving parts and put them back together. The result..... they now work as well and as smoothly as my Gotoh Res-o-Lites and even the tuners on my Ibanez. I'd rate these an absolute bargain but I'm sure there is a lot of manufacturing tolerances so if I were to get another set the result may not be the same. I'd rate these definitely worth a try and good enough to gig.
I was leaning towards getting the Wilkinson MM style pickup but they have a four wire setup and not knowing much about electronics I wasn't sure this would allow me to do the switching options I wanted. I ended up getting this no-name pickup for $25 ($15 USD).
This thing was a real surprise. It appears to be built well enough and comes with screws and springs. Wired up as parallel/single/series it sounds quite good. The parallel setting is quite decent, the single (bridge coil) sounds like a single coil should and the series setting really roars with a nice grind to it. Playing it for a couple of songs last week in my studio with the band and they all commented on how good it sounded. The guitarist who used to play a MusicMan Stingray was really surprised at how good it sounded. I'm definitely calling this one a win and more than good enough to gig.
I wired it up using this DPDT on-on-on switch that I got two for $9.45 ($5.60 USd). Can't even find them for sale here in NZ for less than $40 each.
I first wired it up treating each coil like a separate pickup with single(neck)-humbucker-single(bridge). Everything worked fine on the bench so I tightened up the pots and switch. The switch nut was not that tight when it got a LOT less tight. I thought I couldn't possibly have stripped the thread and I was right. What actually happened was that tightening it too much literally ripped the guts out of the switch. Luckily I had the second one handy. I rewired it and now nothing worked. I took the switch out of the circuit and it still didn't work. I left it for the day and the following weekend completely removed all wiring and rewired it from scratch in parallel/single/series. The only thing that I didn't get right was I wanted the single coil to be the neck coil but it is selecting the bridge coil. Oh well. It's working for now and I'll probably rewire it when I do a refinish. I'd rate these switches as "cheap and nasty" and probably wouldn't trust them enough to use on a gigging bass. The chances of them breaking are too high for me. If I were to want to gig this bass I'd get a much sturdier three-way blade switch.
Finally, I got a large piece of three-ply pickguard material 43.5cm x 29.5cm for only $26 ($15 USd). I have read a lot of negative comments online about trying to make your own pickguard and what I learned was.... they are right. It is bloody hard to do... particularly when you don't have a router or a dremel or even a decent jigsaw. I did manage to get it to fit using my really crappy jigsaw, a Leatherman file, sandpaper and a box-cutter blade but did make it more of just a pickup surround to make life easier. It looks decent at a distance but don't look too closely.
Overall I was surprised at how usable these parts are. So far, including the fret level, I've spent just under $300 ($180 USD) on this bass and there will be about $20-30 more in paint to do the refinish. I'll also be sanding out some dents in the back of the neck and refinishing in Tru-oil so another $10 or so to buy that.
When you consider that a Squier Affinity bass here in NZ is $600, I think I've got a great playing and sounding bargain that is unique.
And it will be a bit of a long post, but I'm hoping others will chime in and post their own reviews of gear that is bargain priced but does the job well enough to gig..... or in some cases better than expensive gear. I'll be posting all the prices in New Zealand dollars (including delivery) with the approximate US dollars in brackets. In most cases the US price will be even less due to much lower freight costs compared to shipping to the bottom of the world.
This all started when I bought a Nordstrand MM4.3 pickup for a dirt cheap price. I was debating whether to buy a router and hack into my cheap travel bass to test it out when this Samick PMB-41 showed up on the local version of Ebay for $120 ($71 USd). I went and had a look at it and it turned out to have a pretty decent neck with no fret sprout and no obvious ski-jump. I thought it may have a high fret or two but at the price it didn't worry me.
I installed the MM4.3 and found out that it ONLY works with the MusicMan basses with the three way switch. It did make some sound but not much, so I marked that up to "lesson learned" and sold it on only losing $5.
I really wanted to get rid of the RHCP logo so started sanding a bit and ended up finding the original colour of blue underneath. I thought I'd live with this bass for a little while before committing to a full refinish and so I put it all back together with a crappy finish.
I found that I liked the feel of the neck and after a 6-8 weeks or so realised that the neck is really stable. Pretty much as good as my two Warmoth necks and my Ibanez SR1200 Premium in that it holds tune and doesn't react to humidity and temperature changes any more than those other much more expensive necks.
There were a couple of high frets causing rattle up the dusty end of the fretboard so I got a luthier to do a fret level for $60 ($35 USd) and was then able to get a really nice low action.
It was at this stage that I started looking at some bargain hardware in black and a pickup. There was nothing wrong with the stock hardware at all, I just wanted something different. Similarly there was nothing wrong with the pickup, and with the tone rolled off it had a really nice honk when plucked near the bridge, but it is a two wire humbucker and I wanted a 5 wire to play around with coil splitting and series settings.
I've heard numerous people saying that Wilkinson hardware is decent for the money, and it appears that the Korean made stuff was very good value, but all I could find online was their Chinese made stuff. I took a punt and ordered a Wilkinson bridge for $24 ($14 USd).
It seems decent enough. All parts adjust as they should and nothing has stripped as yet. I did make a mistake on the first screw when using the cordless drill to screw it in and damaged the top of the screw a bit showing metal through the black coating. A bit of permanent marker hid that mistake. Definitely good enough to gig.
Next were some Wilkinson tuners that look like a dupe of the Hipshots. These were $56 ($33 USd).
When I first got them I thought "well, you got your money's worth and not a bit more". Turning them through a full rotation of the post showed they had some stiffer parts of the travel. Once installed I found that they had a very sticky action particularly when trying to make small adjustments. They did however do their job of getting the bass in tune and held tune as they should. (So they are already better than those installed on the recent $1300 USd Purple Sparkle SBMM Ray's black tuners that chew themselves to pieces as reported in a TB thread)
I ended up pulling them all apart, made sure any foreign matter was cleaned out of the teeth and the winder, put the tiniest smear on all moving parts and put them back together. The result..... they now work as well and as smoothly as my Gotoh Res-o-Lites and even the tuners on my Ibanez. I'd rate these an absolute bargain but I'm sure there is a lot of manufacturing tolerances so if I were to get another set the result may not be the same. I'd rate these definitely worth a try and good enough to gig.
I was leaning towards getting the Wilkinson MM style pickup but they have a four wire setup and not knowing much about electronics I wasn't sure this would allow me to do the switching options I wanted. I ended up getting this no-name pickup for $25 ($15 USD).
This thing was a real surprise. It appears to be built well enough and comes with screws and springs. Wired up as parallel/single/series it sounds quite good. The parallel setting is quite decent, the single (bridge coil) sounds like a single coil should and the series setting really roars with a nice grind to it. Playing it for a couple of songs last week in my studio with the band and they all commented on how good it sounded. The guitarist who used to play a MusicMan Stingray was really surprised at how good it sounded. I'm definitely calling this one a win and more than good enough to gig.
I wired it up using this DPDT on-on-on switch that I got two for $9.45 ($5.60 USd). Can't even find them for sale here in NZ for less than $40 each.
I first wired it up treating each coil like a separate pickup with single(neck)-humbucker-single(bridge). Everything worked fine on the bench so I tightened up the pots and switch. The switch nut was not that tight when it got a LOT less tight. I thought I couldn't possibly have stripped the thread and I was right. What actually happened was that tightening it too much literally ripped the guts out of the switch. Luckily I had the second one handy. I rewired it and now nothing worked. I took the switch out of the circuit and it still didn't work. I left it for the day and the following weekend completely removed all wiring and rewired it from scratch in parallel/single/series. The only thing that I didn't get right was I wanted the single coil to be the neck coil but it is selecting the bridge coil. Oh well. It's working for now and I'll probably rewire it when I do a refinish. I'd rate these switches as "cheap and nasty" and probably wouldn't trust them enough to use on a gigging bass. The chances of them breaking are too high for me. If I were to want to gig this bass I'd get a much sturdier three-way blade switch.
Finally, I got a large piece of three-ply pickguard material 43.5cm x 29.5cm for only $26 ($15 USd). I have read a lot of negative comments online about trying to make your own pickguard and what I learned was.... they are right. It is bloody hard to do... particularly when you don't have a router or a dremel or even a decent jigsaw. I did manage to get it to fit using my really crappy jigsaw, a Leatherman file, sandpaper and a box-cutter blade but did make it more of just a pickup surround to make life easier. It looks decent at a distance but don't look too closely.
Overall I was surprised at how usable these parts are. So far, including the fret level, I've spent just under $300 ($180 USD) on this bass and there will be about $20-30 more in paint to do the refinish. I'll also be sanding out some dents in the back of the neck and refinishing in Tru-oil so another $10 or so to buy that.
When you consider that a Squier Affinity bass here in NZ is $600, I think I've got a great playing and sounding bargain that is unique.
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