WWYD: Series I has "nasal" tone?!

[gregslegs]

As far as the pedals/boxes are concerned, I second that emotion.  My feeling is that if the instrument does not essentially sound good w/o the boxes, you're fighting a losing battle by adding pedals and gadgets.  They can however make a good instrument sound better, or maybe different is a more apt way of putting it.  For example, the Sadowsky DI's do a great job with passive Fender's. The aphex box is pretty neat, but it seems to add a lot to my ears, and I usually try to keep it simple.  For some reason every SansAmp that I have tried was kind of noisy, so I've not really given them much of a workout.  The Zoom boxes are way too noisy.
 
I'm noticing more and more how much the fretboard makes a difference. I prefer the brightness of maple fretboards overall, but I'm really getting into ebony now. It seems to combine the best of rosewood and maple, strangely.
 
I also use a 1x10 for practicing.  It's a cheapie SWR, but it's great.  It also does a great job for smaller cafe gigs.
 
Sometimes I really have to admonish myself for getting too gear happy.  I go back to two big influences on me, Jaco and Jamerson, and look at their basses.  On the one hand it's a testament to  how good Fender basses are/can be, and on the other hand you can say, Wow! These guys made beat up pieces of crap sound unbelievable.  My feeling is that 85% of the sound is in the hand.  The equipment does the rest.  
 
By far and away the best pedal out there is the practice pedal.

[kayo]

Gregslegs
 
You are quite right about the difference that the hands make in tone, and how much this makes a differnce on overall sound.
 
When I was younger and not quite as good at playing as I am now I used to go to Music stores a lot to see the shiny new equipment that I could not afford - and often would see someone play a bass and would really like their tone.  I would wait until they put the bass back and then pick it up and play the very same bass out of the very same rig and (most) often it would not sound the same..... then I started noticing how Jaco Pastorious could play a piece of crap and make it sing...... and then I started taking stand-up lessons with the bass player for the Chicago Symphony and found that there are literally dozens if not hundreds of different tones that can be derived from the bass (the contrabass has the widest dynamic range of all instruments).  
 
Finger position, the envelope (attack, decay, sustain, release), the way one strikes the string, what portion of the finger is used to strike the string, the angle of the finger when stringing the string, whether one plays at the neck or bridge pick-up - and I would go so far as to state that even each individual's unique spirit all contibute to the ultimate tone that is generated.
 
One time I was at Guitar Center and I had picked up a Music Man and was playing out of a Crate combo and a whole crowd gathered and people commented on how great that amp sounded..... but then someone else plugged into it and I realized then that the tone was coming from me, not the amp.