Upgrade Day! Anyone Else Upgrading?

Cool thanks for the insight. I’m gaining much knowledge while trying to figure out what I want to put into a short scale project I’m working on. I recently purchased a used Squier Bronco for cheap and want to make it sound better. I was thinking about going with a bridge T-bird humbucker and since short scales can be more on the darker side I thought a 500k might help mitigate that.

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Agree, and cheaper generally. Their smaller ones are great as well.

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Alpha, Bourns, and CTS are all good but Bourns are the easiest to get and better value usually.

Generally true for all the makers. There’s actually nothing wrong with the smaller pots. Gear snobs like to sneer at them but in reality they are just fine.

For a humbucker, which are rich and fat enough, I would definitely go 500k.

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Well the big ones don’t fit in many Fender basses, esp the MIJs

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True. Small pots can even work fine in tube amplifiers, with several hundereds volts. Marshall uses smaller pots since the JCM900 series (90’s), I think.

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The Lakland Geezer Butler got a proper clean, setup and a new set of DR Black Beauty strings.

This is my first set of DR strings and I’m impressed. They’ve a great heavy rock / metal sound with lots of mids coming through, and the coating feels great under the fingers. I really like the look of the black strings on the Ebony fingerboard too.

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Nice. For some reason I put tapes on my Aerodyne with Geezer pickups in it and really like the look but the tone - it’s fine but too specific. Maybe I’ll try these.

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Woohoo, upgrade day. Standard upgrade I do for SBV’s (preserving and storing the original parts of course).

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nice

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New hardware on, setup complete, strings stretched, intonated perfectly, ready to rock.

This combo is a nice improvement for SBV’s; the stock tuning machines are super heavy and combined with the katana headstock it gives moderate neck dive. Plus the hipshots are just better tuners too. This change fixes that completely and adds a nicer bridge with more intonation travel as well. Meanwhile, original parts are in a bag to throw back on there if authenticity ever becomes an issue.

The knobs are driving me crazy too, probably going to swap them out. They went from solid shafts/lockscrew knobs on the 500/550 to push-ons and split shafts on the 800MF, and they look kind of wobbly in comparison. I will probably throw them in the parts bag too and put on some pot-shaft conversion sleeves with similar looking lockscrew knobs.

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Ho-ly crap!!!

I received my shiny, new Sire Marcus Miller V8 this afternoon. It is nothing short of outstanding!

A full review is forthcoming, but in the meantime I can attest that it plays like a damn dream: the Roasted Maple neck is satin-y smooth, the Swamp Ash body is not at all heavy, the frets are dressed to a T (apparently PLEK’ed, according to Marcus Miller), the 3-band preamp sounds f**king killer!

The bass arrived not only set up perfectly but completely in tune! Apparently, it’s got some D’Addario EXL 170s on it that are absolutely fine, just as they are.

Pitbull Audio packed the Sire box in a sarcophagus of the heaviest damn cardboard box I’ve ever seen. It was so tightly packed, it was a bitch getting it out.

Anyway, here are some early pics.

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Very very nice Mike. Just beautiful, and glad that the stuff that really matters is supreme. Congrats and happy playing.

Edit: Oh yeah… “you bastard”

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:smile: :joy: :rofl:

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sweet dreams are of this

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Really nice looking bass @MikeC . Congratulations

But …………. No rug?:grin:

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Thanks, @Mac!

But, nope, I don’t do rugs. I do hardwood.

Much better tone. :wink:

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Wowza - that looks awesome and… no… I really don’t… I mean… uh… nope :joy:

Damn… congrats though, man!!

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Thanks, Joerg!

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That’s just beautiful @MikeC ! Congrats!

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You mean better tone wood, :joy:

Congrats @MikeC thats gorgeous it’s essentially a Sire version of the Fender Marcus Miller signature.

And oh! “You Bastard”

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