Thoughts on my first order :)

[patsnavy]

Hello All!

I recently decided to try out having a bass built for me, instead of going with the off the rack stuff and I was wondering if I could get some thoughts on the package I put together.

The body is the short scale z bass made out of swamp ash  with a rio grande dark star ds3 in the bridge position and a rio grande powerbucker in the neck position. I decided to try to incorporate the aguilar two band eq. (the guys at warmoth dont know if the dark star is an active pickup or  not.) I also ordered the warhead neck (30" scale) made out of flame maple w/bloodwood fretboard and abalone inlay, 6105 stainless frets, and a Graph Tec string nut.

The body is finished in Inca Silver and the Hardware is black.

 

[line6man]

I decided to try to incorporate the aguilar two band eq. (the guys at warmoth dont know if the dark star is an active pickup or  not.)

The Darkstar is a passive single coil pickup.

Active pickups are very rare, aside from EMG, MEC, and a few offerings from Seymour Duncan.

FWIW, the Aguilar preamps have a 1M Ohms input impedance, which is fine for most passive pickups, and certainly fine for any active pickups, as actives have a lower output impedance than passives. The Aguilars also do not interact with the pickup's LCR like, for example, some of the Auderes, so you should theoretically have the same results at any impedance.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

I have the Aguilar OBP-3 on one of my basses with a Nordstrand MM5.4 humbucking passive pickup.  Works great.  The pre is very nice at shaping things without changing the sound too much from the pickup.  The passive bypass is always a good feature if you are like me and forget about batteries.  Sounds like a fun build.
Patrick

 

[stubhead]

I though the Dark Star was made by a company called Hammon Engineering, not Rio Grande?
http://www.hammoneng.com/

I've been tempted by them, if only because they were a starting point for the one bass I really wanted and knew I could never get because it was a one-off custom, following what the pre-Alembic wizards had done to a hollowbody Guild. They basically duplicated it in a solid body, and it still has four or five of the best bass sounds I've ever heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmiOBYJy2vk

 

[patsnavy]

Whoops--Sorry about that typo: The dark star is by hammond engineering. In any case im chomping at the bit to start building it.