Guitar Nerds Anonymous

I bought one yesterday, arrives tomorrow hopefully! Have ordered a different string set for it to hopefully overcome the potential intonation problem with the bottom E.

First new guitar in absolutely years!

I think you'll love it. It's a brilliant songwriting and recording tool, and it's just so much fun to play.

The first person to set a two piece band up where they plug it into both guitar and bass amps will be on a hiding to awesome.

My indecisive mind is still struggling in buyer mode for a new bass and having flipped and flopped between the Fender Player Jaguar and the Yamaha BB434 for months now I've noticed the Sire Marcus Miller U5 which I've taken a bit of a fancy to. Never played a short scale before but at the price I'm tempted to just take a punt at it from Thomann who apparently will have stock available in around '2 to 5 days', imagine this would turn into quite a long wait though. Only Andertons look to stock them in the UK to try out and I won't be able to get there for a few weeks, if they've even got stock to try, the website says they're not available until September for them.

I've got a Gretsch G2220 which is great fun, but the guy I bought it off had purchased a u5 as he found it easier to play (he was a guitarist that was shifting to bass for his band and wanted to get comfortable with the stretch in his fretting hand/strenghtening little finger etc).

I've also got a Sire Marcus Miller P7, and its great quality.

Sire's get a lot of love on Basschat, I haven't played one but apparently the build quality is very good for the price.

I sold my Mustang bass in the end - was fun playing on a short scale but I found it easy to play songs you'd learnt on long scale on it but then if you learned something on the SS it was like having to re-learn on the full-size so wasted time.

Yeah that's my worry with the short scale. I'm so used to my Precision that I wonder if I might get a bit tied up playing it at first and then have the annoyance when flipping between the two. Might go to a London shop that stocks Mustangs to try out the short scale there and see how that feels and go from there.

What's people's setups for home recording? Have a friend who wants to dabble (he makes electro in Ableton and wants me to record bass lines/swap ideas via file sharing).

I would be using a mac air to save and send files so am guessing a suitable mic then somehow get it plugged into the mac? Have a line-in port on my monitor too so can input that way.

I did see a Bluetooth / wireless thing that clipped on the head stock and was for garage band but cant find on google.

Also on a budget so trying to balance £ and ease of use/setup with getting decent bass noise recorded. Would a USB mic be terrible?

Are you thinking of recording electric bass? Avoid the line-in port on your monitor, that will be low quality.

Taking the signal from your bass directly into your mac is the best bet. A cheap audio interface will do that just fine: https://www.thomann.de/gb/zoom_u_22.htm

I quite like my Player Jag bass (disclaimer: I'm a guitarist, not a bassist). Build quality is fine, satin finish neck feels good, nice range of passive P/J tones. Action was hilariously high when I got it though.

I've just about persuaded myself away from a Jaguar at the moment purely because it's the most expensive bass on my list. Think I could get the Sire and the Yamaha for the price of the Jaguar at the moment. Always known of the Fender premium but sure there's an extra £250-£300 purely for having Fender on the headstock these days.

Looks like a good option. Presumably use a line out from the bass amp into the interface?

Yeah, I think that's wise. I got mine in the sales but it was still a bit more expensive than I'd have liked.

Would probably just go straight from the bass to be honest, and then use a bass amp plugin in your DAW (Garageband or Logic would both do the job).

^ this, using the Hi-Z input.

I got myself an Epiphone inspired by 335 earlier in the year. It’s had an intermittent problems with the bridge pickup but rather than return under warranty (I like the feel of the guitar and don’t want a replacement) I opted to install a Monty’s Guitars 335 loom.
I made a couple of tools from cheap tent pegs similar to a violin tone post setting tool in shape and used an old jack and steel string to make a pull through for the jack. I opted to keep the original pickups.
Removal of the old loom, soldering of pickups, installation of the new loom, new strings and setup (including neck relief) took around 3 to 4 hours. The trickiest bit was the dental floss I used on each pot to pull through just got tangled and looped around other components so I mainly used the tent peg tools to manipulate the pots into place.
I’m really pleased with the result. My playing is the same of course but the tone has more clarity and sounds great.
Looking at the original loom it is tatty beyond belief. I could have made a neater job but then I’m not expected to turn out 20 or more looms an hour.
The quality of the new loom was spot on. Great soldering and everything the perfect length. Once installed only the neck pickup lead needed a little tuck out of the way under a sticky wire tab. Everything else is tight and tidy.

Treated myself to a Focusrite Scarlett from thomann and finally hooked it all up last night. Did try to use ableton lite as it comes with the Scarlett, but far too fiddly so used garage band for plug and play.

Really clean and simple being able to plug direct in from the output socket on the amp.

Thanks for the tips!

Encouraging to hear, I've been sitting on swapping my Casino's pickups for some time now, need to finally bite the bullet. Will be making the loom myself as that's the only part of the process I don't dread....!

@dsalmon I'd really recommend Proteus and NAM (Neural Amp Modeller) for in-the-box amp alternatives - they're both freeware and some of the models you can download sound and react great! Consensus seems that the well made ones easily compare to the much raved about Kemper and the likes, so to think it's all free it's pretty bonkers...!

Ace, will check those out.

Should also say, if you have a nice amp you might want to consider this gadget: https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_pa_100_power_attenuator.htm

Allows you to play without a speaker and go straight into the soundcard. Then you can just apply a cab IR and you're away. Keeps the feel and tone of a tube amp with none of the volume hassle, it's made me play my guitar so much more since I've had it!

Interesting. Just have an Orange Crush 25 and a Vox Pathfinder - both for home use so nothing fancy atm. Likely to change as going to start playing live in the coming months so will need to upgrade.

I’ve done this with an AC15 and now a Deluxe Reverb, and it definitely makes a huge difference to how much I play.

My suggestion is to use a cab IR pedal between the attenuator and the audio interface, to avoid any latency, or even to plug headphones straight into and not have to use a computer. I use this, got a cheap used one:

Is there any real difference between this and more expensive traditional attenuators? e.g. on Thomann there are oft-recommended Fryette models for 10x+ more money.

Appreciate Ox Box and the like have significantly more features

Do you really recommended this? I've been keeping an eye out for an attenuator for years but always been put off by the amount of choice out there. I really want a UA Ox but they're so pricey.

Neural Amp Modeler has been terrific for me but none of the tones come close to what I normally use so it's always a bit of a compromise sonically.

There’s resistive and reactive types. The more expensive ones are reactive load boxes rather than resistive, like the Harley Benton. Cheaper reactive ones like Torpedo Captor are either silence or a fixed amount quieter (i think -20dB), and the more expensive ones let you scale it down.

I had the HB above and while it was good for turning down the volume from the speaker, when used to silence without a speaker the sound from a cab sim in headphones was pretty lifeless and dull. Changed to a Torpedo Captor and it sounds much better.

Edit to add:
A torpedo captor X is load box and cab sim pedal in one, but expensive, like a mini OxBox. You can get a normal Captor for £190, use the free cab sim software or get the Mooer for another £120 and still be cheaper than the Captor X.

Bought my dearly beloved one of these for her 40th, she loves it! Not exactly like a 60s Fender Malibu but that probably isn't a bad thing going by what I've heard about them.

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