The non-bass player’s bass buying guide. (Please help me to help myself)

[Ermz]

Will have to wait till I change over the electronics, pickups and hardware, Christian. The on-board preamp on this bass is useless for recording because of not having any '0' detents. It's basically guess-work trying to get the natural tone of the bass with the pots at the moment. It definitely looks and feels the part though.

 

[crillemannen]

Will have to wait till I change over the electronics, pickups and hardware, Christian. The on-board preamp on this bass is useless for recording because of not having any '0' detents. It's basically guess-work trying to get the natural tone of the bass with the pots at the moment. It definitely looks and feels the part though.

Ok seems allot of work? Couldn't you find a Bass which met your requirements factory build?

Make a new thread when you are satisfied. Would be super interesting to hear the results

 

[Ermz]

The only stock basses which would meet those would be the USA Spectors, and y'know... look at the price tags.

 

[Josh Burgess]

Spector Euros are nice and all, but... they aren't the end-all, be-all. I had a 5 string Euro 5LX and it sounded great, but the neck is pretty fat and the playability, while good, wasn't amazing by any means...

I now own a high end 6 string Ibanez and couldn't be happier...

This one right here:

http://www.ibanez.com/BassGuitars/model-SR5006E

First, a much thinner neck and extremely nice to play... really low action... effortless. Second, the pickups are different sounding from the EMGs I was used to in the Spector, but they are great. Third, it's beautiful. Look at it. Also, I kinda like the 34" scale length, even though I play 27" scale guitars... it's comfortable and I never tune below Bb anyways... Overall, I'm much happier with it than the 5 string Spector Euro I had.

I think a cheap import version of one of these (SR506 I think they're called?) with an EMG preamp & EMG pickups would be an incredible budget recording bass for the money...

 

[Ermz]

Glad you're digging that - looks like a chunky bass. The woods on it are the complete opposite of what I find conducive to good rock/metal tones, but y'know eye of the beholder and all that.

 

[abt]

@Josh. Thanks for contributing. That looks sweet. I really like those saddles. I also agree with you on the Ibanez models being great value.

@Ermz. That's some nice bass porn. Are you really swapping out the pickups? I can understand swapping out the pots because of the problem you mentioned, no centre notch, but I would have thought the pups were pretty decent?

 

[Ermz]

The pickups are awkward to wire up with any of EMG's preamps. Ironically none of them are built for the kind of dual volume push/pull pots the pickups need.