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Hi bass thread, I recently got back into playing guitar after a long pause and I would like to try plapping around on a bass. I'm trying to stay on a real tight budget since I don't know if I'll ever get super serious about it and I don't have a lot of money. Most recently I was looking at the Ibanez tmb100, the squier jaguar modified jazz, and the Epiphone Thunderbird. The Thunderbird is a little more expensive and makes me nervous cause of the non bolt on neck would make it hard to fix if I hosed it up so I don't know that it's as serious of an option. There are also a lot of those Ibanez gsr200's sitting in used instrument shops around town but opinion on that one seems very mixed. The songs I would probably learn to play are definitely in the hard Rock/punk end of the spectrum so if something has a very aggressive sound but isn't amazing at other genres that would probably be okay. Do those options seem right or should I be considering something else?
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Jan 18, 2020 22:05
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 09:26 |
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Yep sorry meant squier jaguar bass, it was hard to find videos of people playing the kind of stuff I would on them but it seems like it's got a decent bridge pickup and would work well with twangy styles slapping or picking. Only downside might be that bass boost knob everyone says to avoid and that heavy giant fender headstock weighing the neck down.
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Jan 18, 2020 22:55
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FancyMike posted:If neck dive is a concern stay away from the thunderbird. I used to have an epi tbird and didn’t mind but it’s the worst balanced instrument I’ve ever played. I would've thought the giant rear end body would help balance it out a little but I guess everything on it is sorta giant lol And I feel the bad setups at stores cause I went to a pawn shop and looked at some $90 squiers they had and the things could a shot arrows, neck was bowed beyond recognition so it had unplayable huge action. Also had rusty hosed up pickups. There was a guy on YouTube who put the geezer Butler humbuckers in a cheap squier and it sounded dope but he said it was hard and I am not nearly savvy enough for something like that I think my mind might be made up for me if I just spend a day hitting all the guitar shops (im in the twin cities if anyone has a favorite to recommend)
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Jan 19, 2020 00:28
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Went out to the burbs to stop by a guitar buffet over the weekend so I could see/touch a wider variety of basses than at the little shops around town and the ones that felt the best to hold and play were definitely one of the musicman stingray basses (the cheap sub bass ones are at the top of my budget) or one of the squier vintage modified series. I liked the Ibanez talman but i didn't like that the neck felt thicker than most of the others Am I shallow for being turned off from the squier affinity basses based on looks? The materials they use are just so cheap looking that they look like toys. Also I was sad that I tried out an Epiphone Thunderbird and really didn't like the feel of it, especially the glossy neck on the ones they had. I had never slapped a bass before cause I figured it was a difficult technique and I would embarrass myself trying it for the first time in public but drat you just wang on it good and it felt easy to get a really nice sound I wanna do that a lot
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Feb 3, 2020 19:32
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I found a sterling sub ray4 at a music go round for $120. It seems like exactly what I wanted which was an affordable but good quality/sound bass that was beat up cosmetically enough to bring the price way down. All the stuff that actually matters is still in good shape but the paint is beat up and scratched, the pick guard was completely removed, and the original metal knobs were replaced with some awful plastic things with skulls on them. I'm considering either buying a pick guard and painting a design on it or leaving it without one and sticker bombing the whole thing. Still don't have an amp though cause they had a very narrow selection at that location, the orange ones seem great but are kinda pricey so I'm keeping an eye out for a fender rumble 25 or something similar.
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Feb 5, 2020 03:19
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gently caress, poo poo, if I had been a little more patient and willing to spend 50% more I could a gotten this ray instead that I found while scouring the internet for pick guards  E I think mobile imgur killed the thumbnail but here's the url. http://imgur.com/a/XqG72SR Wowporn fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Feb 6, 2020 |
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Feb 6, 2020 19:41
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The talman was my second choice after the stingray when I was bass shopping, only thing I didn't like as much on it was the thicker neck but otherwise it seemed good I am slowly trying to learn John the Fisherman and my fingers hurt
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Mar 3, 2020 02:25
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That sucks, fingers crossed for the Warwick I am super curious to see if you can save it. making GBS threads on someone who just lost most of their possessions cause they prepared slightly less well for an unpredictable disaster seems like a pretty garbage thing to do imo, not that anyone is doing that yet but
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Apr 4, 2020 22:40
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I recently got a focusrite and it does work good with my bass but getting the drivers downloaded was a pain in the rear end and they bluescreened my PC a handful of time in the first few days after getting it setup. All fine now though but maybe be prepared for some turbulence
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Apr 19, 2020 00:44
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Learning how to control random noise is so much harder on bass than guitar and if you practice too much acoustically then plug in it’ll be kind of an unpleasant surprise, at least it was to me. Like I practiced mostly acoustically the first few weeks I had it and was bemoaning how hard it was to make finger picking sound clear and good then plug in and everything was so loud, it takes so much more effort to mute strings properly on those thick rear end strings. My weak guitar fingers are so limp and useless
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Jun 1, 2020 20:12
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tarlibone posted:The Vox Amplugs are fine. Anyone who complains that they are hissy and don't sound good is probably also the kind of person who pulls the patty off of a McDonalds hamburger (the basic, small one), puts it on a plate, eats it with a knife and fork, and complains that it's not the nicest steak that he's ever eaten. I dunno I had pretty low expectations and I even do most of my guitar playing with cheap headphones already, but even then I was surprised how disappointing my ac30 amplug is. Not because of any hissing or noise or whatever, but it totally murders all the character of the guitar I plug into it from like inherently bad EQ or something. Maybe if I went with a different one the higher distortion would help mask some of that but as is I don't really use it
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Jul 25, 2020 23:40
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I guess that's the point I'm getting at, I don't really use it cause to me it sounds worse than just playing it unplugged. I guess it would be useful if I had some songs where I needed to practice muting strings/noise control but otherwise I just dislike it. Very anecdotal experience though I could just have one that's lovely in a different way than other peoples' are
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Jul 26, 2020 00:05
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I liked the tmb30 but the neck on the stingray bass felt the best out of all that I tried. If I ever get another bass I'd probably get that classic vibe jaguar
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Jul 30, 2020 18:34
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My sub-ray4 or whatever it's called weighs eight million pounds and I feel like I could cave in the roof of a cop car with it, which is kinda cool but yeah not great for the shoulders
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Aug 25, 2020 00:24
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Yeah my snob meter has a hair loving trigger, especially for people who went to private $100k music college but Adam Neely has never annoyed me from what I've watched of his. He's also in my mind one of the few people who talks as much about music as he does and can actually produce interesting music. It helps that he can be critical of music history/academia/whatever. Or maybe he just smokes enough weed to smooth the edges
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Sep 28, 2020 17:57
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I think it's easy to get scared out of sharing your own music when you've spent a ton of time teaching/analyzing music cause you know some amount of people are just waiting to tear it apart
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Sep 29, 2020 19:30
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Playing guitar and bass feel way better to me standing up. The exception might be playing a big fuckin acoustic guitar cause it feels like the front of it is like a mile in front of me standing up.
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Oct 17, 2020 19:40
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I'll buy it from you if you're driving distance from the twin cities
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Jul 31, 2021 04:36
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I might be swapping a cheap stratocaster I don't use for a cheap P Bass, if given the choice between a sub $200 bass would Tagime or NGW be a more trustworthy option? I know Tagime has some cool offset budget guitars but I don't know if their basses are as good as those are
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Aug 2, 2021 18:26
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I ended up swapping for a b stock Gretsch junior jet, it's so little it fit in the gig bag I had the strat in. What's an affordable set of flatwounds that would suite it well? My other bass is a stingray that does the super aggressive overdriven sound well so on this one I'm going for a good thumpy muted tone
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Aug 5, 2021 02:27
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BDA posted:Flats are pretty much always going to be expensive but the good news is you basically don't ever have to change them if you don't want. For maximum thump you might also try some tapewounds. I hadn't even heard of tapewounds but people online seem to say they're the choice for trying to imitate an upright bass which sounds kind of up my alley so I will probably give those a try
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Aug 6, 2021 16:18
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Man no stores near me sell tapewounds, trying not to order stuff cause I'm moving soon so I guess I gotta wait a minute E: I got impatient and bought a set that say they can get here in like four days, we'll see how that goes Wowporn fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Aug 7, 2021 |
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Aug 7, 2021 23:06
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Well my first set of tape wounds got lost in post office hell so I finally ordered and received a different set of the Labella copper white tapes. They look cool and sound very rubber tube-y compared to the rounds, slides especially sound way different. They feel super crazy to play after never playing flats, like I’m playing on jumbo udon noodles
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Sep 24, 2021 05:30
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I extremely don't need another bass but they make me wish I had a fretless, they seem like they'd be perfect for each other
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Sep 24, 2021 15:14
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I got a B stock Gretsch Junior Jet for like $230 earlier this year which seems like an amazing price for that nice of a bass if you can find a similar deal (even new I don't think they're much more than that)
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Nov 19, 2021 00:16
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I have some tapes on my Gretsch bass and it feels like they sound like really rubbery flatwounds on the low end but still get a lot of high end on the upper strings or if you play really attack-y. Versatile, I guess??? They sound real good doing slides and they feel like big udon noodles
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Nov 25, 2021 05:28
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I have a beat up Sub ray I got for like $120 from a secondhand shop and I like it a lot. My only gripe is that I am a guitar player pretending to play bass and it feels gigantic in comparison to my guitars. On that topic, I am avoiding the desire to get a 5 string jazz bass by just tuning down my Sub ray to C. What string gauge would I want for dropping down 2 steps like that?
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Jun 26, 2022 01:22
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Are ghs strings decent quality? They have a set that goes to 115 that seem like they'd split the difference well. I am used to filing nuts and sometimes bridges to put really short scale guitars into the same tuning so that should be no problem I would love to get a 5 string fretless jazz bass and slap some flatwounds on it but I 100% cannot justify such a thing at this time as a not even bass player
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Jun 26, 2022 07:33
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Hell yeah monoprice amp, almost all my instrument playing goes through that I can't justify having a second setup just for bass so I just use my guitar pedals, imo my EHX hot tubes and Beringer compressor work well with it. I also have the dod carcosa which seems popular among bass players
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Jan 17, 2023 01:20
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I’m re-falling in love with my ehx hot wax using it on bass thanks to the blend knob. Being able to dial in like 30% of a tube screamer is very helpful trying to keep these tape wounds plucky sounding without crossing the line into really wobbly sounding overdrive
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Mar 31, 2023 00:06
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Being a primarily guitar player and picking up a bass feels like being handed the power of god
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Apr 4, 2023 20:38
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I will play rhythms and notes that serve the correct function to the song if that’s what you mean, but I am def still playing with a pick
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Apr 4, 2023 22:51
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I also just like picked bass the best, I like it to still have a plucky attack to it
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Apr 5, 2023 19:45
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I was getting frustrated by not getting the exact sound I wanted so I broke my no gear while between jobs rule and got the Caline Wine Cellar, a $30 Sansamp knockoff. Only been using it a day but it seems good, it took a lot less fiddling to get a clear, punchy sound out of it than through my guitar amps. Once Im working again I might put together a small, super budget bass pedalboard with it
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Apr 23, 2023 22:59
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JamesKPolk posted:was wondering about that! I have the behringer one and it's lovely and noisy in ways I can't figure out (and my legit Sansamp guitar pedal isn't) The main reason I picked the wine cellar instead of the Behringer despite loving my behringer pedals was that I figured it would have more of the kinks worked out just due to being newer (also helps that it looks much nicer and has a metal enclosure). It is surprisingly un-noisy until you crank the drive, which the drive knob is hilarious because it barely increases until you get to like 3 oclock and then it goes from 10 to 100 in a hairs width of a turn. I’m still learning how to get the right amount of harmonics to sound good without sounding too pick scrape-y but in lieu having an actual bass amp due to poor it is pretty good
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Apr 24, 2023 19:08
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I'm a huge shithead and I want to graft a P bass pickup into my Sub Ray4. My reasoning is I only want 2 basses so having my bass tuned to C have a neck pickup too will make me not want to get a separate P bass just for that sound, and if I go with guitar fetish I can get a no-solder required P bass pickup and pre-soldered drop in wiring harness for $50 total Obviously the difficult part of that is there's no routing or controls for a neck pickup, so I would need to route out the spot for it (on the cheap SUB brand stingrays the pickup is not attached to the pickguard. I don't even have a pickguard on it because it didn't come with one, bought it for pocket change totally beat to poo poo and missing parts from a MusicGoRound) and create some kinda new control plate/plug in jack cause I am gonna avoid tryin to hook anything up to the preexisting active EQ having bridge humbucker. I also don't have a router or a garage so I will likely be just drilling a bunch of loving holes with a large drill bit and creating a monstrosity second jack/control plate near the lower horn out of a spare pickguard. This all sounds like an awful idea but it is the cheapest way to get what I want and I am a fan of horrific DIY instruments so I am kind of dead set on it. Is there anything I should know before doing this stupid thing? Less weirdly, I have been playing this stingray more this week than I have since I bought it and jesus christ my back is killing me, all my guitars are featherweight tonka toys in comparison how do you do this for a lifetime
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Apr 27, 2023 03:34
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My gretsch junior jet is way more manageable but the stingray feels like noticeably heavier than the less Paul I used to have which was I think 11ish pounds?? By the time I'm a senior I will have replaced all my instruments with Danelectros for the weight benefits, doesn't hurt that they look and sound dope
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Apr 28, 2023 00:11
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When I first learned to replace pickups I got the cheapest $12 iron on eBay and it didnt tin properly at all and was so lukewarm I had to hold it on the solder until the whole pot I was working on had gotten burning hot just to melt it. Replaced it with a $35 thing from Dick Blick's and that works fine
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May 6, 2023 02:34
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The sub has the detents too... Tho mine no longer does cause I have done a lot of things to it
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May 16, 2023 03:44
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 09:26 |
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Why do people want extra long basses I like short scale Me guitar plare
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Jun 17, 2023 03:25
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