2013 Squier Vintage Modified Bass VI

[rhythmjones]

Zunes...


were...


BROWN!!!

[Mad-Mike]

I'm sorry, Mad Mike, did you say your Zune?

Yep. I'm still using one of those old things. I've had very good luck with them. I'm EXTREMELY hard on portable electronics being a klutz myself. Currently I have 2 actually, a pink one with broken charge jack I use for parts, and a red and black one that I use almost daily. Both of them older Zune 30 models. I've also had an 80 and an HD when those things were new. Despite the silly name they were pretty good players with a good interface. I hate Apple and iTunes and refuse to use them - after all I've gone through backing up and restoring iTunes and dealing with Apple products over the years, I'd just rather not. About all I'll ever do with them is release my music on iTunes because that's a popular place to do it.

I had to google Ricky Wilson and was very confused at first...

Yeah, I have a musical interest in guitarists who did weird things in weird ways and sounded unique as a result. Ricky created his own thing entirey I must say. The B-52's have been a bit of a sonic obsession for me for awhile. That whole period of 1976-1983 has been my go-to hangout for years and I keep hanging there a lot because there's so much stuff to keep finding - right now I'm listening to The Cure and exploring their early catalog a bit (the Top Twenty/Jazzmaster with Top Twenty pickup pre-goth days).

I was really just going for a running gag of "also-ran" brands

Nothing will ever be a bigger running gag for me personally than my first MP3 player - the $10 Wal-Mart store brand iLo - this shitty USB 2.0 MP3 player that used AAA batteries, I only got it to work......once. And "work" means I copied one MP3 to it and got it to play for a minute. iLo - frackin hilarious name. Makes me think of the name "eyelet" for some reason.

Yeah, even when they came out, it was "oh, you have one of thoooose, what's wrong with you that you didn't get an ipod?" Which was just a damn shame because in every respect from specs to UI to the library software, they had apple beat. Too bad their marketing people didn't know what they were doing. I'm another who still rocks a zune. I've never owned an ipod because the zune has always worked better.

Through backing up and moving my Wife's music collection via iTunes to 3 different computers over our 7 year relationship, and all the music lost in the process, super-rare, hard to get, sometimes specially custom ripped for her music. I damn near want to beat the designer of any of the iTunes products with a baseball bat. Happens every time. I detest apple products just for that product experience alone. Just my experience, sorry if that bugs anyone. I don't like anything that converts your file formats.

The nice thing with Zune is I could record an album/demo/compilation of my own music, and sync it to the Zune without having to go through some format change that prevents me from ever having it in a regular format again should that wind up being the last copy available one day.

[JES]

I had to google Ricky Wilson and was very confused at first...

Yeah, I have a musical interest in guitarists who did weird things in weird ways and sounded unique as a result. Ricky created his own thing entirey I must say. The B-52's have been a bit of a sonic obsession for me for awhile. That whole period of 1976-1983 has been my go-to hangout for years and I keep hanging there a lot because there's so much stuff to keep finding - right now I'm listening to The Cure and exploring their early catalog a bit (the Top Twenty/Jazzmaster with Top Twenty pickup pre-goth days).

I liked them back in the day so this gave me a whole new way to listen to them--thanks for that. As a bassist, for me alternate tunings tend to just be on the bottom two strings but now with a Bass VI, watch out.

This was what I first found when I went searching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Wilson_(singer" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) . At first I was all like "it's just someone on a discussion board I don't know, but I can't believe they're suggesting a boyband singer." Then I found the guitarist from the B-52s!

[Johnny Alien]

Through backing up and moving my Wife's music collection via iTunes to 3 different computers over our 7 year relationship, and all the music lost in the process, super-rare, hard to get, sometimes specially custom ripped for her music. I damn near want to beat the designer of any of the iTunes products with a baseball bat. Happens every time. I detest apple products just for that product experience alone. Just my experience, sorry if that bugs anyone. I don't like anything that converts your file formats.

The nice thing with Zune is I could record an album/demo/compilation of my own music, and sync it to the Zune without having to go through some format change that prevents me from ever having it in a regular format again should that wind up being the last copy available one day.

iTunes has always allowed you to rip files to any format you want. I always used iTunes to rip discs to an open MP3 format. Apple ipods played then fine. Maybe in the very early days the ipods only allowed AAC file format. I can't remember...but it's been open to cross-use formats for a really long time. In fact iTunes can easily convert any format to another, it doesn't prevent you from doing that at all.

I haven't ripped discs in years though I am a Spotify guy.

[burpgun]

I'm impressed the Zune still works. Figured the battery would have totally burned out by this point. I've got a pile of old iOS devices going back years that were mainly felled by battery issues. Would love to know how many Zunes MS ever sold. I think I ever only saw two or three in the wild. Personally, I've never had much problem with iTunes and I've been using it since the first generation iPod. It's become a beast but it's always done what I needed on the music front, at least on a Mac. Does seem kinda nasty on a PC, but in my experience, that's the case for a lot of Windows-related software.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled Bass VI discussion. I've got the PSVI, so I'll show myself out...

[rhythmjones]

I played a Custom Shop Bass VI the other day and the riffs just started pouring out. I think I found my instrument. And it would go really well with the 60's vibe my band has going on. I think I'll save up and get one of the Squiers.

[Chippertheripper]

As seen on tgp, staytrem is back open and taking orders.
$89 shipped to the US at today's exchange.

[Larsongs]

As seen on tgp, staytrem is back open and taking orders.
$89 shipped to the US at today's exchange.

What's tgp?

[Chippertheripper]

A huge timesuck.

[JES]

Hah!

So I took my Bass VI to its first practice, played at volume, and now I have questions for the more guitar player types in this thread.

--I'm a bassist primarily, always used heavy gauge picks when I wasn't using my fingers. Is the consensus that this instrument responds better to lighter gauge picks? What are people using? BTW, I have the Labella 25-95 rounds on now. I might try the flats but I prefer the sound of the rounds up high.
--Any suggestions for reducing the "plink" factor? I find it's a little smoother with the volume turned down a bit, but it's already so low output compared to my basses that I'm loathe to do that. Would low value pots help?

On the plus side:

OMG CHORD COMPING
and OMG whammy bar. Where have you been all my life?
and this thing sounds amazing through heavy distortion or reverb.

--JES

[Chippertheripper]

I use green Dunlop Tortex picks for bass. Ymmv and stuff.
I can't really speak to the volumes yet, but I can tell you mine will see plenty of reverb and fuzz.

[Chippertheripper]

I just scrolled back a few pages and didn't see any discussion, but my wiggle stick is stiff AF. Is this a common setup quirk with these? I have a bridge coming, so I'm gonna rip it apart soon, but man, maybe I need bigger forearms.

[JES]

Hi Folks,

Took it to another practice and some things are becoming clear. This is my main issue, to quote myself:

--Any suggestions for reducing the "plink" factor? I find it's a little smoother with the volume turned down a bit, but it's already so low output compared to my basses that I'm loathe to do that. Would low value pots help?

Is this an artifact of the low sustain from the bridge? The brightness of the pickups? Pot values? Turning the volume pot down does help, but I lose too much volume. I'm running rounds right now and have a set of flats on the way, but my worry is that the flats won't have enough texture for distortion in the upper ranges (I like overdrive on flats on bass just fine).

Thanks.

[scottydanger]

Well then. I picked the right day to sign up for an account! Can't wait for this, hope to see it in 2013. Might have to sell off my Cyclone to cover one of these, but I think it would be worth it...

3.5 years later and I actually sold my Cyclone and bought a VI! It should be here tomorrow, I'm pumped!

[daysleeperjeff]

Got my Oly white last week! Played great right out of the box, but of course had a floppy Low E as I expected. Ordered a Staytrem to fix that.

First VI since my 90's MIJ which I loved, but at the time I only used it in the studio and couldn't justify keeping a $1,800 instrument around that I used only a few weeks out of the year. BUT I always swore if they made an affordable version I'd be in for sure. To be honest, I never thought they'd do it, but here we are. I always wanted an Oly white one too, glad it was a stock color on this round. I record at my home studio now so I'll be using this baby a lot.

Planned mods:

- Staytrem bridge replacement (ordered and on the way)
- Brighter Red Tort Nitrate pickguard (Stock tort guard is real ugly!)
- New Strings with the .095 Low E (Not really a mod but a must, stock strings too light thus the floppy E)
- Replace Nut? - maybe, I'll see how the new strings sit in there.

The body & neck on this thing are great! I play this like a guitar a la Robert Smith and I run a lot of pedals, I really like how these pickups handle them. After those mods I think I'll have a beast of a guitar on my hands.