If you could add one simple feature to your bass...

Side Fretmarkers that I can see in low-light.
Illuminated or reflective side dots that are easy to see in low light.
So this idea came to me one night when I noticed one of my daughters glittery fingernails. Since the dot markers were very small on the Bronco necks I have on my parts-basses, I used some red glitter polish on the side of the neck. They are easy to see in daylight and stage lights reflect well off the glitter. They have held up really well for about a year now. I just used some alcohol to clean the "smuck" off the neck and applied it carefully.
This. I’d love glow-in-the-dark side dots. But much could be done by ensuring proper contrast.
I used to put big number stickers on the back of the neck to denote the fret markers. I’ve also cut out reflective dots for the same function.
This is what I came to say! So glad I am not alone...seems like a popular request in this thread!
Luminous fretboard side markers on all my stringed instruments, please. I thought playing on dark stages or at night was a common case, but perhaps all other the players on the planet are in direct sunlight or lit up with bright stage lighting at all times?
I also use my daughters nail polish for side markers on some of my basses that don't have good contrast. :)
My cheap fix for this problem: Fishing lure stickers. Designed to reflect light in low-light situations, and with adhesive designed to hold them in place under water. I've had a set of stickers on my bass for about 8 years. I can take them off if I want, but they're not coming off by themselves. I fold them over so they're half on the fretboard and half on the side of the neck. I get them on ebay for just a few dollars.
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My cheap fix for this problem: Fishing lure stickers. Designed to reflect light in low-light situations, and with adhesive designed to hold them in place under water. I've had a set of stickers on my bass for about 8 years. I can take them off if I want, but they're not coming off by themselves. I fold them over so they're half on the fretboard and half on the side of the neck. I get them on ebay for just a few dollars.
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Cool idea! :) I'm not much of an angler myself, but I'll check it out.
 
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the time is LONG overdue for these instruments to be sent to the hands of industrial designers. There's a middle ground between Ned Steinberger's designs and a reissued-for-the-umpteenth time Precision where more traditional seeming guitars could be mightily improved. No more deck dive. No brick-shaped neck-joints. No hardware that snags your hands. AND NO NECK HEAVY basses.
I agree, but I don't think there's anything wrong with Ned's original design anyway. The only reason most people tell you FSOs are ergonomically good is they're so used to them, anything else feels odd.

I love EMG's and have deep respect for the Turners, but golly-gee-whiz: Why in the hell can't they engineer a push-pull pot that would TURN THE ELECTRONICS OFF WHEN YOU PUT IT ON THE STAND, instead of having to PERPETUALLY unplug the thing.
I do my own electronics and did this myself once, then had someone else trip on the lead and pull the bass off the stand.

This is in no small part a LARGE contributor in that other pandemic, Grown Men in Mortal Fear of an Itty-Bitty Battery.
I laughed.
 
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Last month a Traveler TB-4P moved into my digs. It's well built, great for practice (headphone jack, AUX in) and easy to carry on the bus/train/subway (small form factor). But... the preamp, including the controls, is an integrated circuit on a card, and runs on two AAA batteries. Those last just a few hours, and as they expire you first get distortion, then no signal at all. Which can be quite inconvenient.

So what I'll do is install a simple mini-switch to bypass the electronics and route the pickup straight to the output jack, while retaining the active option for headphone practice. This should surely have been implemented originally.
 
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From the perspective of a builder developing new instruments, this thread is gold! :woot: :D

My response to all of these is below:














Truss rods do the majority of their work on the first around 6 frets of neck. After that, the neck is much less bendy and relief is harder to adjust. Putting the adjuster knob on the body end of the neck puts it further away from the spot that needs the most articulate adjustment. In my experience, I can get relief better dialed in with a neck-adjust over heel-adjust truss rod.

I can't think of any reason to use a spoke nut on instruments like Fender, Sadowsky and EBMM other than tradition. There are those who also prefer the relative simplicity of adjusting a spoke nut with any old tool they have laying around to do the job, but that's not enough to put my TRs in the heel.

The weakness at the neck end is not solely due to having material routed out - it's also dependent on the design (lookin' at you Gibson). If you carve out a huge hole, combine that with too much tilt-back in the headstock (14* is 9* more than necessary), and build a tilt-back neck without a scarf joint so that the grain runout is tangential to the face of the headstock, then yes, you can expect a jillion headstock breaks. I've repaired +++ broken headstocks, and nearly 100% of them were Gibsons, or instruments that copy their building methods. I will admit that a handful were when someone drove over their Jackson, etc.

Flame suit on. :smug:

funny enough, i'd never thought of it this way. ya learn somethin' new every day..

I know I have adjusted many basses with this style adjustment to perfect set up, so it can be done it's just less ideal?

on this topic, something else I wish was standard was to make it possible to replace truss rods without complicated surgery.

I'm always confused why electric guitar/bass makers don't use hot hide glue for fingerboards. In the event of a truss rod failure, replacing it would be a lot less with this way. I know they don't fail that often, but when they do it's a big deal. I had one break and a maker insisted on making a whole new neck rather than trying to replace the rod!
 
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My Ibanez GWB205 is perfect in every way. But I would like to have a passive tone control. When in passive mode the active EQ is bypassed. Should be an easy fix, but requires drilling a hole in the body.
Can you swap one of the stock pots with one of the same value and has a push/pull switch?
Pull for preamp bypass. It's pretty common
 
It has a push/pull volume to put it in passive mode, but the passive mode has no tone control.
Another push/pull with a dual wafer?
In, stock on wafer #1
Pulled, passive tone on wafer #2

Heres an example: the one on the right is a single wafer push/pull
The one on the left is a dual wafer push/pull. Just watch the values.
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Or a concentric pot with the passive tone stacked with the stock EQ control?

Just a thought
 
The single most astounding feature I've found in a bass is a volume/tone bypass switch. I would have it on all my basses.

I've gushed enough about this bass on TB, but here it is again:
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This a Japanese bass built upon the Fender Bass VI, and instead of the bass cut switch on the original, they went with the V/T bypass. I had no idea what this switch would do before I bought it (I suspected it might be a high cut), but this was a very pleasant surprise to discover.

The volume/tone bypass is great for two big reasons.
1) The strings on this bass are the ones that were on it when I bought it 6 months ago, but flip the bypass switch on and they almost sound fresh out of the package. There's more treble, obviously, but the bypass also recovers some very nice mid content that is otherwise dampened even with the controls at max. This is especially apparent in the neck+middle and middle+bridge positions, which are RWRP and thus scooped. I can't even imagine what it'll sound like when I actually put new strings on-- I'm either gonna go with flats or a mid-centric roundwound.
2) One might argue that no-load pots could do the same thing easier, but one ace the bypass switch has up its sleeve is that it lets you essentially have two tone presets. Bypass on is full beans, and bypass off lets you set the volume and tone wherever you want, and then switch between the two. I can set the bypass on as being a gutsy tone for choruses and then back it off for verses. I can use a compressor and overdrive pedal to approximate a tube amp response, where rolling my bass volume up doesn't significantly add volume but does add distortion, and then have a clean and dirty channel switch on the bass itself. There's really a lot of fun options.

So, yeah. Volume/tone bypass.

100% agree - I love my Grass Roots Bass IV for exactly the reasons you stated. It is a great sounding, great playing - very versatile bass. I was going to post something similar as I scanned the thread. The V/T bypass would work on any passive 2-pu bass. The only other 'simple feature' (which this bass has) is a 'kill-switch'. On this bass, if all pu & bypass switches are 'off' - no output. Great design.

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