Ah, cool - that’s easy to DIY!
I see that you have a string-through bridge. I am also thinking about getting my Black’n Decker out, drill some holes through my bass and install a Gotoh 404BO…
I wouldn’t if it were my bass
Don’t get me wrong, I like string through and mustang bridges are among my favs
On a practical level, string through changes the string size from short scale to medium scale. There’s a lot of choices in strings for long and short scale sizes, but very few in medium scale. I can only readily get D’Addario EXL160M and LaBella Deep Talking Flats 760f-MUS
Which works for me. Gotoh bridge would be nice, but I would keep top load
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Ah, I copy&pasted the wrong bridge - it will be this one: Allparts Bass Bridge Badass II
That is top load!
I thought about string through because of two reasons:
- Better choice. But accoding to you that is no valid reason anymore.
- Better “contact” of bridge to body … !?
All things being equal, I prefer string through
D’Addario are my go to rounds, and LaBella my go to flats, so I am good, just pointing it out
And I prefer top load … (on a bass, but not on a guitar). Here it’s something quite personnal, both are good really but a bit different. It’s quite similar to the high mass or low mass bridge thing.
String through will make the bass more resonnant, but less violent and less raw.
Hard to tell that one is better. That’s different.
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Ah, did I mistake the Allparts and the Gotoh? It was a long day and a short night…
RESET!
The Gotoh 404BO has:
- string through option
- top load feature
- 5 + 2 screws
That sounds perfect, right? I
In general mellow is my tone, but if I need raw/sharp I have my pink manly mustang with the ceramic pickups 
which is top load with a himass bridge, which was chosen to offset the neck dive not as a tone feature.
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Seems a good choice. Having both options is best. One thing I don’t like about the mustang bridge is there is no top load option. So Herbie is not perfect, I know, makes me sad to admit
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that’s her personnality
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Racing stripes make everything better. I am glad to see you are rehabilitating here
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Agree, I love the Gotoh bridges but that stock bridge looks great.
Me too. No guaranteed difference but I think it’s a cool feature.
For sure. No clear advantage really but preference.
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Drilling it is!
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drill baby drill!
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Yeah, I have two 32" medium scale basses and can attest to the much more limited choice in strings. I have GHS Precision Light (45-95 ) Flats on one and D’Addario EXL Chrome flats on the other. Can’t really make a sensible comparison as one is acoustic and one electric!
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Picked up one of the new squire sonic pbasses. Gotta say it’s pretty dang nice for the price point. Swapped out the pickups for Emg geezers and a nice parchment pearl pick guard. Pretty happy with it!
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So what do you think of them?
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The tone and color is way improved for the most part. I feel like it lost a bit of the lower end, but I may just need to put some flats on it. Running it through a preamp/sim I can get it where I like it though.
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That’s an excellent pickup. It sounds like you would expect from a classic Precision Bass. Not sure it’s very different from other vintage-specs pickups but it has a very impressive clarity, a lot of harmonics and a lot of “air” in the treble. For that reason I’m thinking about changing the tone capacitor for a 68nF one (47nF currently).
Compared to the DiMarzio P, the Fralin has way less output level, which my '92 SVT seems to greatly prefer. The light crunch zone is much more manageable. Also the DiMarzio had a lot of low mids, which is cool, but I wanted something more balanced and the Fralin does that. Also the DiMarzio is more punchy but the Fralin has a more complex midrange.
I’m really happy with the Fralin so far, I’d say it’s perfect for someone who seeks the bright side of the vintage/classic P sound. For a darker P sound, there would be better choices.
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Can you explain this a little more?
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