Not available for store pick up?

Tried out that Gretsch this morning, plays easy, action was possibly a little low, or the truss rod needs a small turn - but sitting on the wall in the main room, its not getting humidified. Sound was fine, thought the best overall sound was with both pickups selected. The tuners turned easily, thinking a very high turn ratio, and much smaller 'paddles' than the usual Fender monsters. Played through an Ampeg combo. None of the GCs in this area have the Fender Mustang Player in stock to try out. There was a Sterling/Musicman short scale that I tried for 20 seconds, sound was horrible from two single coil pickups right next to each other in the bridge position.
Went into the Acoustic room and was surprised to see 2 different Fender acoustic bass models - wasn't even aware of these. I've played acoustic basses before, the lack of any real 'oomphf' and low volume has crossed those off my list for a longtime. The Fenders had much more volume than I was used to, but they still would not compete with a dreadnaught acoustic without an amp. And geez are they big - I could barely reach the 1st fret without leaning over to the left.
So now I'll wait until I can try out the Mustang - or if a good discount coupon comes along.
We went through the same thing, all that your talking about. Finally settled with an Ibanez acoustic short scale bass. Great thin neck, easy to play and good volume. Much louder than say the Dean full sized acoustic bass at GC. Price was under $300.
 

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Earlier this year there was a big flap over the Junior Jet's advertised mini 'humbucking' pickups. Owner's were discovering they are actually single-coils. Well, this got spread far and wide through the internet and social media to the point where Gretsch re-did all their advertising.. changing 'humbucking' to single-coil. I don't know yet if any legal action has been initiated by misled purchasers.

Hell, I'm not worrying about them being single-coils. I like their sound.. and their looks.
 
You're right, I didn't even notice the change in descriptions online, it definitely said 'humbuckers late last year/early this year when I was shopping around.
I'll give it another day in the humid air here before adjusting the truss rod.
 
Earlier this year there was a big flap over the Junior Jet's advertised mini 'humbucking' pickups. Owner's were discovering they are actually single-coils. Well, this got spread far and wide through the internet and social media to the point where Gretsch re-did all their advertising.. changing 'humbucking' to single-coil. I don't know yet if any legal action has been initiated by misled purchasers.

Hell, I'm not worrying about them being single-coils. I like their sound.. and their looks.
The Junior Jet we bought in 2010 has TV Jones pickups in it, and they are definitely humbuckers. For blues and medium slow jazzy walks they are perfect. We played a newer one but didn't know they weren't TV Jones anymore. Which makes sense as TV Jones pickups are like $150 each, so $242 out the door new seemed like a bargain. Bass has held up 12 years under tons of abuse and heavy use in the streets of DTLA. We almost bought another but went with the Jackson Dinky X as it has a lot more tonal color.
 

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The Junior Jet we bought in 2010 has TV Jones pickups in it, and they are definitely humbuckers. For blues and medium slow jazzy walks they are perfect. We played a newer one but didn't know they weren't TV Jones anymore. Which makes sense as TV Jones pickups are like $150 each, so $242 out the door new seemed like a bargain. Bass has held up 12 years under tons of abuse and heavy use in the streets of DTLA. We almost bought another but went with the Jackson Dinky X as it has a lot more tonal color.
Interesting. The Junior Jet only came onto my radar a few months ago, I didn't know they existed before that. Your single (real) mini-humbucker is pretty cool.
 
Interesting. The Junior Jet only came onto my radar a few months ago, I didn't know they existed before that. Your single (real) mini-humbucker is pretty cool.
Here is a better pic. The old TV Jones are definitely fatter sounding, but the new single coils are for sure have more treble and high end bite. We didn't use that SWR stack very much more obvious reasons. We found a Crate 50 watt bass amp used that was small light and plenty loud. One of the great things about DTLA was if you want to play music 7 nights a week, you could. At least up until 2020.
 
Didn't attach for some reason. But don't think that street playing is a joke. We're on 7th street in front of the Macy's. First time we did that we made $72 in 18 minutes. Then someone asked us to play "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and they would drop a $100 bill in our tip jar. Another woman said play Mr Crowley, so we told them come back tomorrow. Any they did! We played those 2 songs back to back and made $150 dollars!!! That bass payed for itself Many times over.

The amp is just a Behringer KX45 three channel keyboard amp. I'm playing a box stock First Act guitar. We all plugged into that and rolled it around in a buggy we made. Our drummer would sometime join us with a busking set he put together and used at his spot.

I told him come join us and we will give you the entire tip jar the first time. We played a couple hours and the tip jar was packed. I told him count it, and there was $139 and some change. That's $70 an hour. He about crapped his britches, lol. No bar or club in LA is going to pay you that.
 

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We would go down to USC Village and give music lessons in the Starbucks for $20 a pop. We're both classically trained and reading and writing music is nothing to us. The kids would say they learned more from us in one lesson than they learned in a year at USC. Yeah l know only 3 strings. Sometimes that happens but you got to keep going.
 

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That's just a no name classical guitar l bought at the goodwill for $20 to give lessons with. It didn't have fret markers so l cut up a Target sticker and made fret markers so the kids could see my fingering position easier. They don't do stuff like that in college classes. But same thing, that Ibanez acoustic bass payed for itself 10 times over. And the kids went nuts over us, they still text us to this day.
 

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I have a $79 Rogue (China) acoustic, new from GC I bought about 6 years ago. I like the tone better than my Taylor Big Baby. I adjusted it so it plays almost as well as the Taylor.
 
Finally got the chance to record my new Gretsch bass, just fooling around in the studio:


That's really cool man!
I have a curious question unrelated to the thread point. Why do the drums all seem to be late? I am getting the feel that all other tracks are rushed, or there is some type of latency going on here. with the drum track.
 
I've been playing a short scale bass for many years now, very easy to just pick it up without having to stay in top bass playing form just to occasionally track. Very few of the short scale options are any good nowadays (quality/materials), but with some setup I got mine close enough. Now playing an Ibanez mikro, but have had a couple others over the years including a Gretsch which was my favorite but fell out of intonation and ended up just moving on from it. It's definitely a market the manufacturers seem to be only reluctantly producing any product.
 
That's really cool man!
I have a curious question unrelated to the thread point. Why do the drums all seem to be late? I am getting the feel that all other tracks are rushed, or there is some type of latency going on here. with the drum track.
Sloppy playing! I tracked with speakers, no headphones, so there were times, specially in the last few recorded tracks, where I couldn't hear the drums that well, but the worst seems to be at the tempo change.
 
I've been playing a short scale bass for many years now, very easy to just pick it up without having to stay in top bass playing form just to occasionally track. Very few of the short scale options are any good nowadays (quality/materials), but with some setup I got mine close enough. Now playing an Ibanez mikro, but have had a couple others over the years including a Gretsch which was my favorite but fell out of intonation and ended up just moving on from it. It's definitely a market the manufacturers seem to be only reluctantly producing any product.
The only choices I saw at GC were the Gretsch and a Musicman which I didn't like at all when I plugged it in. The Fender Player Mustang hasn't been in stock since 2020. I found it easy to adjust the intonation on the Gretsch once I did the truss rod adjustment.
 
The only choices I saw at GC were the Gretsch and a Musicman which I didn't like at all when I plugged it in. The Fender Player Mustang hasn't been in stock since 2020. I found it easy to adjust the intonation on the Gretsch once I did the truss rod adjustment.
The Mustang was discontinued. I had Sweetwater send me two of them in 2017-ish I think, both were trash out of the case and I refused to spend money paying someone local to get them setup right so they both went back. This was after Sweetwater had supposedly done some basic setup and testing prior to shipping.

I suspect I was not alone in that assessment, leading to them giving up on it.

Although I'm pleased with the cheap Ibanez, I'd be tempted by a quality $500 short scale if someone made one I could play before buying (to verify it doesn't need $150 more spent on a pro setup).
 
I've got almost enough stashed for that Junior Jet Bass and an amp. I was looking at the Ampeg RB-108 but I think I'll move up to the RB-110, which has an XLR Direct Out. I have no business playing live in an apartment, but I have recently been scanning the local musicians sites for possible hookups of one type or another - I would definitely need a new amp for that.
 
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