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In Tua Nua's Vaudeville album, despite them being an 80s Celtic folk / indie-rock crossover band there's some shockingly funky bassmanship from Jack Dublin. Stand out track for me is 'Heaven Can Wait'.

I am in this kind of mood this evening. Jimmy Bain's bass part for the tune 'Tarot Woman' from the 1976 Rainbow 'Rising' album. Don't you just love that synth intro? https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/tarot-woman-rainbow/

Standing On The Top - The Temptations

Yep, Richlite is basically layered paper infused with resin. So is ebonol. They're very stable though, and do sound suitably "woody".

It’s a good page 👍

Many fibres are more than functional with resin: wood, glass, carbon... even paper (phenolic resin fretboards).

I have three JMJs, but the bass sitting on a stand next to me at the moment is a Player (not the II version though) PJ mustang bass in Sienna sunburst with maple fingerboard. This bass is a lot of fun to play and offers a bit more tonal variety than the JMJs. I did do a fair amount of customisation to the PJ when I bought the bass secondhand at a very good price. This included shielding with adhesive copper tape and building a new loom with CTS pots, puretone socket, switchcraft switch and orangedrop capacitor. I also put on Fender hi mass bridge, hipshot HB10 lollipop tuners, and a fender thumbrest in the same position as on my JMJs. I also put ion a set of short scale Ernie Ball cobalt flatwounds. The pickups sound good so I didn't consider changing them for something else. The only changes I made to my JMJs was to apply copper shielding and put on some medium scale D'addario chromes. Having the spaghetti logo on the player II rather than a 70s-looking logo on my original player looks wrong to me, but I tend to get irked by inconsequential things like that. I don't know if Fender has improved how they wire up the player II mustang bass, but the original player mustang has a circuit that reduces the volume when rolling off the tone unless the volume is fully open. I used an alternative circuit when I rewired mine to prevent this from occurring. You can read about my adventures in rewiring here:

It's a monster, and I may be able to bring a cab for it, but I could maybe bring my Trace V4 amp in its Zilla head form (used to be a combo). The thing is ridiculously heavy though. Otherwise, I'm thinking I bring the SRAS7 hybrid bass, maybe the Ashbory silicone string bass too. Some curious! I reckon my new filter pedalboard might be interesting to some, too.

Well I'm still on page 11 so no pressure from over here…

https://www.daddario.com/globalassets/pdfs/accessories/tension_chart_13934.pdf

It's a secret (oops!) long-held ambition of mine to play these on bass one day, but setting up an instrument in 5ths specially seems a bit like cheating to me 😄 I guess one could play around with the D’Addario string tension calculator (there seem to be various string tension calculators online but as far as I can tell they all acknowledge D’Addario’s data), or just try some out. If you started from a standard 5-string set you could do BFCG using the B and G strings at pitch and the E and D strings respectively tuned up and down a tone, or from a 6-string set EBFC in a similar sort of way. I do possess a 5-string fretless that I haven't settled on a stringing for yet, and a variety of secondhand strings, so I could have a go at some point and report back. I haven't properly started trying to learn fretless yet though, so I won't be sharing any attempts at playing Bach on it for a while…

I’ve had better luck buying used—it saves money and you can often get higher-end gear for the same price as new entry-level stuff. Just check condition and return options.

Stopped mid/ late ‘90s . Then one of my best mates who taught me,and got me gigging , pushed me into doing a gig for my 40th birthday.Then I got motivated again, and played in a couple of bands. Got fed up when bands imploded like they do in about 2010, so stopped again . Last few years got into synths ,and started recording rubbish on soundcloud. As I’m old , I should be downsizing the bass collection but for some reason I’m thinking of getting one more bass that would be the dearest and hopefully best . I seem to have more fun noodling without any pressure to learn anything , which for some reason means my playing has got better without thinking about it .

Grab a SA Aftershock and have every drive at your disposal.

I hardly touched a bass for the entirety of the 90s, having got into using a computer (first the Yamaha CX5M, then the Atari STE) and synthesisers / drum machines etc to make music. When I decided to get back into playing bass I ditched using a plecky and forced myself to get good at playing fingerstyle which I was unable to do well before.

I stopped playing during the COVID lockdowns. I don't get much joy from playing bass on my tod, so I didn't. Honestly, it was 50/50 whether or not I would go back. Then I gave my head a wobble, treated myself to a royal purple G&L CLF L-1000 and got back on the horse.

I took about 2 years out a few years back, my kids were small and I just wanted to be with them and not be thinking about gigs etc. I always used to play to earn some money and that was a bit motivation to keep playing. Since starting up again I don’t worry too much about money (my job is decent and I’m not counting pennies these days), the big thing for me is getting out of the house and seeing people, having a laugh and just doing it because it helps my mental health.

I have had to abandon two transcriptions this week because, having got half way through, something derailed the transcription and I had to abandon (essentially, I tried things that I couldn't hear the bass part properly, even after a MOISES re-mix). So, in an effort to keep things moving, I have put together an easy one that most of us have a chance of reading, the complete Jeff Berlin bass performance on the tune 'Small Wonder' from the 1988 Kazumi Watanabe album, 'The Spice Of Life Too'. https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/small-wonder-kazumi-watanabe/

A taster. Enjoy 🙂