Great job on the blue bass. Sounds fantastic!

Bass sounds great! That Tool riff was awful lol. Why the muting?

Great Video!

Did you wire the new pickup in series? I know the sbmm series is wired in parallel normally, which isn't traditional for a stingray. Thank you for the tips

I prefer the sound of the Wal-ish bass more! Blasphemy I know. 😅

As far as tone wood. The proof is in the pudding. A test like this is worth much more than opinions.

Makes sense that the neck, especially the fretboard, has much more influence on the sound. It will interact with the strings much more. So it influences the attack and sustain of the strings. The body may have more influence on the dry, unamplified sound because of its large surface, but this will hardly be translated through the pickups.

I'm ordering a new sterling bass tomorrow they are the absolute best you can get at that price point I'm getting a new pickup to put in it. I'm going with a certain bartolini pickup and I am getting an audere preamp

I got one celinder update p with brazilian rosewood fretboard

Hey Pete!! Just found your channel, sounding great as always! I'm still playing too, BurleighBluesBand

What tuners did you end up installing?

This series has been awesome!! It's the sort of thing that I would have done years ago if I had the budget. thank you so much for putting all that work in for us!!! Now if I may add my grain of salt: you've put loads of work into almost every single part of the bass, but one that, in my own experience, also makes some difference is the bridge. It might be a good idea to do some research into checking if the Wal bass bridge is made of aluminum or brass or even a combination of the 2 (maybe brass plate and aluminum saddles). Maybe even the weight of the bridge itself. The original bridge looks like it has some mass to it. I'm no professional luthier but I have built close to a dozen guitars and bases, and fixed my fir share more. Just some humble words from a fellow Wal bass lover. Thanks again!!

Thanks for making this video. I've had a love affair with Celinder basses for a long time. I wanted one but could never find one. Wonderful to see that I'm not the only one who thought so.

What strings are you using for this?

Your completely right... Stearlin4 is good enough... The 3000$ for a stingray is unjustified

Don't sound that close...

Bass sounds sublime. What's the name of the song being played on the fingerstyle?

Very insightful! I'm planning a custom build/mod as well. Not a recreation of a Wal, but kind of similar: A friend of mine builds low-impedance sliding pickups that pair really well with filter preamps like Lusithand's NFP. The pickup is very shallow, it slides above the pickguard but requires a sliding mechanism below. So a Sterling or OLP StingRay should be the perfect base. A filter preamp should be added because the pickups don't have a pronounced resonant peak. But with that combination, this would be a bass that could do it all, especially when I use 2 pickups.

This is an amazing bass! It's fascinating how the J formula works so well for such a wide range of different interpretations. I also always found Celinder basses to be one of the most beautiful takes on the Jazz Bass (especially that 3-pickup 5-string is sick!). But I didn't know about the special pickups and preamp - really convincing Marcus Miller sound indeed! I also play a modern J, but a completely different take: A Clover Apeiron H.5, still made in Germany before the brand was sold to NBE in the Czech Republic. It blends passive 60s Jazz with 70s StingRay sounds. The pickups and wiring is also special, featuring Delano TheHybrid pickups. Clover is another brand that almost nobody talks about anymore. Those are not nearly as boutique as Celinder basses, more comparable to Sandberg basses, but still awesome instruments. Hard to find, but if you find one, it's usually not that expensive. I have had mine for almost 15 years now, and I'll never sell it!

9.5 lbs isn’t really that heavy for a j bass copy, or a real jazz bass. Many are over 10 lbs.

That Celinder looks and sound amazing. Great job at displaying it's tonal range, and showing how the preamp compliments the picukps.

Gorgeous bass and awesome tone. You may not know it yet but the mistake you made was that you should have sold the child lol.

Pete thank you so much for all the hard work you've done. Wal's are basically unobtainable for most players, and I feel like their construction and working has been a sort of "forbidden lore" for many years. I think the Yamaha TRBX as a donor is an excellent idea. Do you know the pickup dimensions of the TRBX? I did a little research and I found that Bartolini claims the BC shape (100 x 32 mm) is a direct drop in. This is wider than the Turner Stingray shell, so it would appear that the mounting rings would be obligatory if you want a clean look with no gaps. Luckily, the Turner shell is much longer than than Bartolini BC, which should give you plenty of wiggle room to get the pickup locations exact. Is my logic correct, based on your experience?

Thanks for this!! Huge fan of John East stuff. For me, I favor Nordstrand Audio P/U

I am going to be upgrading my stingray and would like to install the bridge mute kit. Can you go into some more details on how you did that?

My Ray4 is finally completed. I wish I could show you what it looks like. It looks like no other. I’m into looks, so I did something extra special on mines. Lol

Longer scale brighter sound for same note. So if you took the electronics right out of your wal and put them right into your other bass it would still be brighter. Nice versatile sound though.

I might get roasted for this, but the RHCP example, I like the blue bass tone better, could be just the eq you have idk but it was brighter and had more snap, could also be the strings idk

Your poor Wal back there tho😢 lol this sounds like a pretty good success

Awesome video and experiments man! Now I'm thinking of modifying my trusty old Ibanez srx700 with this set up. The pickup spacing wouldn't quite be right, but it should still be awesome. And I already own the bass.

Man, what a journey! From a player that would love a Wal but would never pay a Wal price for one, I salute you sir!

This is so cool! I’m really glad you made this video series!! I’m excited to dig into what you found!

I think placing the pickups in different positions to the Wal is the missing piece of the puzzle. It would probably sound exactly like the Wal if they were in the right spot. Ever considered moving the bridge pickup?

Did you look into Rautia Multi-coil pickups? That coupled with the LusiHand preamp seems to be the go-to for people building Wal sounding basses.

Amazing journey! I had my modulus FB4 modded with the single NFP and the Rautia multicoil, trying to get the Wal tone too. I guess it sounds "Waldulus"?

I modded my Spector with a Lusithand Double NFP Special & a pair of Herrick multicoils some time ago. I think I literally managed to get the Wal tone after following through with your advice of rolling off the knobs to regain the treble. It's incredible how much difference that made vs having them fully open. Thank you for that!

Wondering if a G&L Tribute L-2000 might make a good donor bass for a project like this. The pickup positions are approximately right (although they'd need to be routed out because they're the wrong shape), it's got four control knob holes and a battery box, it's available with a rosewood fingerboard, and it's a high quality, well-constructed instrument in general.

I have a suggestion on a donor bass: there is a chinese manufacturer that builds wal fakes to custom spec. and the construction they use is the same as a original. so what i mean by that is a mahagony core on the body with for example birdseye maple facing and back. and a 5 piece neck with the same woods as a wal and rosewood fretboard. they even have the same huge electronics cavity as a original - really a faithful (and shameless) copy. the pickuppositions arent exact unfortunately - but they do build to custom specs, so i'm sure they can do the same measurements as the original if you provide them with it. comes stock with two MM style humbuckers and 2 band preamp. just gut them out for turners and the nfp and you're happy. the routing for the pickups isnt deep enough for the turners tho - i had to correct that, but wasnt really an issue. the bass costs about 600€ comes in either mk1 or mk2 shape i have that setup, quite happy but i wish i had the exact pickup-placement and the new turners. so thinking about getting rid of it again actually

Plays Tool with no pick. Lol Sounds not bad until the E string

Where did you get those control nobs from? I'm having a wall style bass made by Mike Walsh of zoot and I'm looking for some control knobs like that to finish it off.

Cool video! A question. Did you make any modifications in the bridge where the rectangular plate with the muters is located? I’m doing a very similar modification to my OLP’s bridge and I already made all the holes but I’m wondering how to put that plate because the original bridge has already 2 rectangular spaces made for that piece. Best!

another great video thank you 😁 great explanation and i will be doing my own this year, ive just made my own fretless bass out of an old fender pbass and added an humbucker at the neck just because i had it spare. cant wait to follow your lead and thank you again.

Character is is very close. I think the wal sounds a bit tighter in the low end. Although on marathon it's very close so that just might be how the preamp is set more than an inherent. The closest I get is with my g&l l2000, when you enable the treble switch and cut the treble knob you get a bit of the wal effect

Excellent job and sounds great! It’s been interesting to follow your journey. To my ears your bass has a lot more low end in comparison to the Wal, which might remove some of that mid bark a Wal has. I’ve tried the NFP myself previously and my biggest gripe was that it has a too wide frequency range, so either too bassy or too high endy. I also think that having some treble mixed in with the signal like Wal’s pick attack switch is key to having a useable tone when rolling down the filters. It looks like Underhill now sells a preamp that does this so would be very cool to check it out and see what you think. Keep up the Good work! 🙌

Marathon sounded almost identical with both basses… hmmm

I think maybe those wal pickups are a bit hotter, or something about it makes it sound hotter, but the character is really there in the clone. I think a decent overdrive with the slightest amount of grit/nasally mid boost will totally get you there, again it totally nails that rich mid range grind and character. Fantastic! You sir deserve more subscribers!

I tried making a set of knobs a few years ago. The engraving was a sticking point. It’s been on the back burner for a bit while I sort other things out.

Mission accomplished, I’d say!

Love all the information you shared, amazing videos! And I was thinking about the Yamaha TRBX304 (or if possible to find a good deal on the TRBX504) and replace the electronics with Lusithand and Turner, looks like a good option if you want like a "Wal-ish" sound as you mentioned!