A New Tuner Makes It So Much Easier.

I finally retired my Boss tuner. It had been blinking out on me for a few months. After a lot of research, asking friends and trying out tuners (such a non-exciting purchase), I decided that the Korg PB-2 was where it's at. It's another pedal tuner with an accuracy of +/-0.1 cents, which is as good as those Peterson machines. However, this one has a nifty BIG easy-to-read display with lots of modes that seem to work well for nailing down a pitch (haven't used 'em all yet). It's also got two inputs and true bypass (no more "blanket over the amp" buffered output sound--I've been on a crusade against that since I left the RC, and started plugging in directly without a tuner). It wasn't cheap, but I used some found money to pick it up. I still haven't burnt through my revenue from playing for the last year, yet.

A couple of months ago, it rained and rained for what seemed like a couple of weeks. Suddenly, the orange one developed a lower action without any adjustments (I sort of freaked out one day at practice). It's a 2005 model, so it was due to settle down. Now, it plays as effortlessly as the black ho. Unfortunately, I don't bother to measure out the specs on either bass, but they both feel good now. The orange one I had setup a year and a half ago when I got the frets dressed. It was good, but not perfect. The black ho's setup was the result of a lot of drinking and dinking with the truss rod after I switched out the bridge and pickups several years ago (it's been holding those adjustments for 5 or 6 years). Neither of 'em is really worth a crap as far as slap bass goes, but that's just fine by me.

The orange one had developed a bad intonation problem with the suddenly lowered strings. Everything was really sharp. A few minutes with the new tuner and a screwdriver, and we're back in business. I really ought to tweak intonation more often. It sounds brighter for some reason and the chords really "pop".