Fender Rumble 500 head and Rumble 115 cab. Great in a pinch and for most types of rehearsals. It's nice to leave it at one of my bands rehearsal spaces! All I bring is a bass and a cord.
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What is your Anti-GAS?
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
A book of Bach's six suites for cello.
I've issued myself a challenge. Until I can play each movement from all six suites on my current collection of basses I don't deserve a new one. Should I ever actually master those pieces on my current basses, that would support the conclusion I don't really need a new one.
I've issued myself a challenge. Until I can play each movement from all six suites on my current collection of basses I don't deserve a new one. Should I ever actually master those pieces on my current basses, that would support the conclusion I don't really need a new one.
- Most of my basses are old and have 'warts' compared to new instruments. I've recently committed myself to getting the most from and appreciating what I have. So I've downloaded Jerzy Drozd's free Ultimate Guide to Bass Setup, and have been making what I have the best it can be. This and practicing modes/scales and reigniting thinking about music theory.
Dunno really... There is nothing like the proverbial egg-laying, milk-bearing woolly sow 
Wish I had not sold some gear though
(not to speak of stuff stolen 
)
Wish I had not sold some gear though
(not to speak of stuff stolen )
You'd probably like that GK MB200 amp better if it had the boost circuitry that is on the MB500. I don't know why GK chose not to include it with their MB200 head as the boost circuitry is the lynchpin of the GK sound. I have an MB500 that I like quite a bit ... it has the heart and soul of the venerable workhorse 800RB head but with modern features, more bottom end and can be plenty loud when called upon. As a bonus (for me, anyway), it's very P-Bass and 15s friendly.
My BOSS LMB-3. I bought it years ago not really knowing what compressors (limiters) did or how to properly use one. I plugged it in, twisted the knobs and put it back in the box. I've been using it again lately and now know when it's on and when it's not...I actually took the time to figure out how it works. The big compressor thread in the effects section made me want to find a "better" pedal. Lots of reading made me realize that the BOSS is good enough.
Oh, good point. Well, all my stuff is flawed in one way or another, which I can list:
- my Tony Franklins: their biggest problem is the horrific neck dive. They have not only the old timey Plutonium Fender tuners on them, but also the Hipshot drop-D tuner on the E, which adds even more tonnage. I treat this by just sitting on the strap when playing seated. But they're basically impossible to play standing up because of that. If I had to gig with my TFs standing up, I'd basically need to replace all the tuners with ultralights at considerable expense. The other "flaw" is they are P basses, which aren't always what I want in terms of tone. It's a great tone, but sometimes I need something different.
- my Jacos: Their biggest flaw is, ironically, the tone. They're basically replicas of a 1962 jazz bass without frets. So they sound like a 1962 jazz bass without frets. Again, that's not a bad tone, it's a great tone, but it's not one that I use very frequently. They also have considerable neck dive, though not nearly as bad as my TFs. So they're not really playable standing up on the strap either. I live with that by playing them seated sitting on the strap like the TF's. The other problem is the thin JB pickup faces. Making "ramps" that fit over them to increase the area for my plucking fingers is still TBD. That will fix it, but it's a little bit of a drooper for me having to mod a bass out of the box (like a similar thing I have to do on my TFs).
- my L2000: It's extremely difficult to find anything wrong with this one. But if I had to pick something it would be the super high output of the MFD's. So to use it with my electronics, I have to turn the volume down to some extent. For example when running it into my Cali76 compressor, I need to turn it down quite a bit to keep from overdriving it. That done, it sounds great, but the tone does change a little bit when you do that. Also, my copy has an extremely tight truss rod, when increasing the tension. So I have to make the strings slack when I tighten it, a-la the Rickenbacker adjustment method. I worry that one day it's going to finally break at the TR nut end. I've worked it back and forth with the strings slack to see if there's any binding, and it seems to move relatively freely once I get it going. But tweaking it when tuned to pitch is scary how tight it is. This may just be a defective rod in my copy of this bass, because those rods are normally not like that (eg. in my Carvins, they were very free and easy to tighten even with the basses tuned to pitch). I haven't decided if I'm going to talk to G&L about this yet. Mine is also fretted, which is good news/bad news. The frets make it "precision" like the electric bass is supposed to be, but it sounds like a fretted bass. For example, doing the "Jaco" thing over just the bridge PU gives that characteristic fretted brittle, creaking sound of the fret slap/buzz on top of the "pop" which is otherwise amazing. But if it was fretless, that would get rid of that.
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Feel free to laugh AT me, but first imagine how this sounds. Last year I finally accepted that my studio monitors paired with small subs weren't cutting it for bass reproduction and I'd switched to keeping my rig set up in the garage for toss-in-the-car convenience. So what to do? Time to spend big? Got to thinking about my old Zu consumer speakers that I had boxed up and were waiting to be posted on audiogon. They're 16ohm, 95lb, two-way, two-tens with custom high-efficiency drivers and heavy tweeters. So one weekend I ripped out my entire studio audio setup, carried the two speakers up 18 stairs on my back and dropped them in front of my face. My interface monitor outs run through a used dbx venue 360 for crossover to the subwoofer, room autoEQ, and mic feedback rejection, then to consumer monoblocks that have balanced inputs, so its a full-on prosumer contraption. Skip to now: I can't imagine ever getting a better rhythm section in this room--you'd have to replace the bassist:
Easy, it's my parts Jazz bass. It has an SX 5 string Jazz body and I replaced the fretless neck with a similar SX 5-string fretted neck. Then I replaced the pickups, bridge, pickguard, strap locks, tuners, and nut. I added a roller-style string tree to the head stock. I added a preamp, which also required having a side jack cut to move the jack off of the control plate. The only original pieces left from the original bass are the unloaded wood of the body and the neck plate.
Although the finish is a decent looking sunburst, the pieces of wood in the body are completely unmatched so it looks really crappy. Also, I prefer a narrower string spacing on my 5-strings but this is a little too narrow for me at 16mm at the bridge. Spacing at the nut is a little tighter than I prefer, too. I'd also be unable to sell it as-is without taking a severe beating on price, even considering I bought many of the parts I used used, so parting it out would be the only way I could get close to what I put into it. It's definitely got some minuses to it but they're not complete deal breakers for me.
However, the pluses are how much I love how it sounds now and how versatile it is tonally and they outweigh the minuses. So I'm keeping it.
Although the finish is a decent looking sunburst, the pieces of wood in the body are completely unmatched so it looks really crappy. Also, I prefer a narrower string spacing on my 5-strings but this is a little too narrow for me at 16mm at the bridge. Spacing at the nut is a little tighter than I prefer, too. I'd also be unable to sell it as-is without taking a severe beating on price, even considering I bought many of the parts I used used, so parting it out would be the only way I could get close to what I put into it. It's definitely got some minuses to it but they're not complete deal breakers for me.
However, the pluses are how much I love how it sounds now and how versatile it is tonally and they outweigh the minuses. So I'm keeping it.
Smooth_bass88
vaxx!
- Oct 31, 2006
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No such thing for me. I've bought at least three more basses in the last 5 years, probably in the neighborhood of $5k worth, plus all the various mods, upgrades and setups I've had my luthier do.
