It's whinging time!

I actually like Lock, Stock better too. More subtle humor.

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Haha, I’ll allow “subtle” in the comparison to Snatch :joy::crazy_face:

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Very subtle indeed :laughing:

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One of my very favorite things in the movie is the title nameplate on his desk.

Harry Lonsdale
Pornographer

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'atchet 'arry :wink:

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It’s valid whinging, or here stateside, whining. It costs that extra few cents of production time to get the shielding right!

I’ve been lucky and not had that problem with mine. New Shecter and Ibanez production basses and a vintage Curbow custom. My gripe is knobs. Every new bass has had loose knobs. Including my Ibanez EHB that I just got from a sweet place that claims to do a detailed inspection (with a signed certificate!) before shipping. You’d think that inspection would notice wobbly knobs. Luckily, it’s an easy fix and while tightening the pot mounts up I decided to replace the ugly plastic knobs on this rather expensive bass with some nice ebony wood ones. And when I tried some basses at the major nationwide brick and mortar chain, almost every one had loose knobs - some so bad that the whole pot would spin around and only stop when stretching the wires. Those guys told me that “if you want to buy that one we can fix it.” Maybe if they tightened them up before damaging the wiring they might sell a few more!

Moral of the story: be ready to work on your bass, or find someone or buy from someone you trust to work on it for you!

Their 55 point inspection passed through some quite wobbly knobs on my new EHB. So I question how much value that inspection actually adds. There are many great local music shops that will be competitive if asked, and can order many items they don’t stock. I should have stuck with my local shop.

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I just watched Phil McKnight on 55 point inspection. It’s still a value added but it’s more beneficial to Sweetwater than consumers. SW sends reports to companies of their inspections. This to confirm their claims, I’m sure if the numbers are bad SW can negotiate even better deals.

Sweetwater’s doing such high volume both Fender and Gibson have their product manager working on site.

Knobs can get quite wobbly during shipping, don’t be too quick to blame them for it.
Even with pretty good packing. You need a real air buffer around them sometimes to have them not get knocked around.

I generally remove the knobs anyway so I can get the plastic easily off the pickguard, or so I can align the screws so they are all the same direction at “0”. So if they’re a bit wobbly not sure I would notice.

On my new FujiGen I also removed the pickguard screws so no bits of plastic would get caught when removing the plastic, took the strings off and cleaned and oiled the fretboard, and removed the buttons and put on straplocks, all normal things I do before I play. Well, first thing I do is play and make sure electronics are working, but that’s not real playing.

I will whinge about something. The strings on the FujiGen. I hooked it up to my Peterson and tuned it, and wow were they flubby. So much so I wondered if I tuned an octave down, so I brought the E string up slowly and got to C, and it was super tight. I didn’t like where this was heading so I just threw on a set of Boomers. I often put a new set of strings on a new bass, certainly all my Fenders, so this only bothers me slightly, but still.

Weirdly the Fender rounds on my bass seem ok. I don’t dislike them anyway. They aren’t NYXL’s but they aren’t bad. Kind of remind me of EBMM Slinkys.

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Ha, they are ok @Howard, but I doubt you will replace with a new set of Fender rounds when those are stale!

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Fender rounds tear up my fingers. I can do rounds, but not Fender or EB ( I just do not like the feel of Slinkys)

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I had a buzzing problem for a bunch of months- replaced a few things that didn’t take care of the problem. It turned out the buzzing was because I exchanged the electrical cord of my amp with what I thought was equivalent electrically, but was longer. Turned out the amp wasn’t grounded the way it needed to be. So - just sayin’ - buzzing isn’t always the guitar…

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Yeah, in each of the situations, I ruled out everything but the bass. Different amp, different cables, different locations, the whole nine.

And in most situations, I fixed the problem in the bass itself. Two (my new Kiesel Osiris and the aforementioned Fender Dimension) were because the pickup cavities weren’t shielded and grounded. One (a Carvin B4) was because the electronics cavity shielding wasn’t connected to ground. One (a G&L JB-2) was in the pickups themselves; I wound up returning that one. I never looked into the Squier Contemporary Jazz or the Fender Player Jazz I had, but I can confirm that in both cases everything but the basses had been ruled out.

So, hey! I figured I’d come back to this thread to say that the Carvin B50 I just received yesterday has NO shielding problems whatsoever.

Has the curse been broken?

I have no idea, and I doubt I’ll be finding out anytime soon. Another bass might get me divorced, LOL.

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Well I guess if you buy enough Carvin’s eventually one will be shielded :wink:

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The law of averages at work.

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So let’s see. Since starting BassBuzz a year ago, I have purchased:

  • An LB20
  • A B4
  • An Xcellerator X44
  • A B5
  • An Osiris (pedantically and technically a post-Carvin Kiesel)
  • A B50

So yeah, I guess that checks out. :smiley: Although now that I think about it, I don’t recall the LB20 having shielding issues. Other issues for sure, but that’s because it was pretty beat up when I got it. But I think it was shielded fine, I don’t recall any hum or noise with that one. So… two out of six. LOL.

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Dude I’m very happy that’s it’s worked out for you :+1:

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