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So the brown note is (very likely) a myth, but if anyone's feeling particularly mischevious, I am assured that the same effect can be achieved by pressing a certain nerve ending on the body. I used to know a karate instructor who took a voracious interest in the Eastern philosophies around the martial arts (mainly, we suspect, as a means to further his similarly-enthusiastic-and-possibly-not-entirely-healthy interest in Asian ladies...), and his studies had led him to a lot of theories and teachings about pressure points. Apparently he spent an afternoon with his brother (also a martial arts enthusiast) working through the points described in one book. Upon testing one point, his brother had told him to stop quite urgently, because he could suddenly feel his sphincters relaxing. He steadfastly refused to tell us where it was...

Totally unpredictable! Sometimes you can play a supposedly great venue which has an excellent reputation, and it just doesn't work out. Could be the band members, the audience, the equipment... On the other hand, you can end up playing somewhere that nobody really wants to play, maybe on a bad night (weather-wise, or a clash with some big event...) and everything just comes together to make an outstanding time! For me, it is not about money (although that is not to say that I don't want or need to be paid!), but the enjoyment comes from the buzz. Where does the buzz come from? Well, usually rapport with your bandmates and playing the songs well, a receptive audience who are genuinely enjoying themselves, a good sounding room with plenty of feedback (of the right kind!), an appreciative venue owner/manager, good lighting, the correct temperature.... I could go on, but it is very difficult to quantify. Mostly, I think, it is about the audience. The problem is, if you turn up expecting all that - it rarely happens. Most of my "great" gigs have been surprises!

Well technically it’s NTMBASHBD (New To Me But Actually Second Hand Bass Day). Alright, this was Wednesday but as close as damn it. I posted a while back asking for recommendations for a short scale lined fretless bass, @ikay was kind enough to point out that two fretless Rob Allen Mouse (should this be mice) basses were for sale on here. I feel very lucky to have purchased one of these from the scholar and gentleman @WishIcouldplay. Anyway, I had never tried an RA Mouse before, never seen one or heard one (apart from online, obv.) but I love the look of them from pics so With a pocket full of wonga I headed off to try it out. Just seeing it on its stand was enough, what a beautiful thing. I tried it as in slid one note up a tone on the G and I was in love. I dropped in on my musical collaborator on the way home and played our latest song using it, glorious. Yesterday I got home from work about 6 and went straight to the study, plugged it in and started noodling, when I looked up again I was surprised to see it was dark, a look at the clock, 10:44! I have never owned a hand made instrument before, what a thing, it’s like playing a work of art, bass lines and tunes are falling out of it, I am actually smitten... ...now I need a fretted one.

I am not a big fan of Moondance.

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At The Drive In's performance of One Armed Scissor on Jules seems to have disappeared off YouTube, which is a shame as its brilliant

A good gig is the band playing well and the audience enjoying it. A GREAT gig is when the magic happens. That all too rare night when everyone in the band is "On" and the musicians are almost telepathic. When everything you touch turns to musical gold and the components of the band fit together like a Swiss watch. When even one or two of the songs you have played for years, and are not that fussed about, just take off. The audience picks up on this and you can feel the energy flowing back onto the stage, adding more fuel to the bands fire and lifting things even higher. It can be in the local pub or the local arena, whatever, the feeling is the same, emotion and energy. That is a great gig.

Right, the Dunlop Flatwounds are on! Thought I’d give the fretboard a bit of a clean between string sets but it didn’t seem to need it. Really loving the added low mid thump the flats are giving me at every pickup setting. And of course they’re nice and easy on the fingers compared to the Roto Steels - not that the Rotos were particularly harsh but you get smooth comfort for free with flats, obviously. The tension isn’t vastly different from the Rotos and they have a decent amount of high end, giving me a nice clank when switching the preamp to active with the treble boosted. Very, very nice. So, at present my bass lineup is: Sandberg VM5 with Dunlop Stainless Steel Flats MTD Super 5 with Dunlop Superbright Nickel Rounds Sanberg Electra VS4 with LaBella 750N Black Nylon Tapes A lovely trifecta of tone machines!

Discovered a great big hole, and the exposed edge of the photo flame paper. I made a video about that too... ...and today I lacquered the neck with amber tint nitrocellulose, sprayed the scratchplate white, and ordered the headstock decal.

True, they had to quickly run out and buy a rock music record to cover the dreary wailing noise, good point

No, and no. Simply because the vast proportion of the sound of a bass (5 string or otherwise) which we enjoy lies well above 30-40hz in the frequency spectrum. Have a listen to the following videos and let us know if you still think the liberal addition of this to your bass guitar sound is of benefit to you in any playing situation. Take note that they are sine waves, meaning these tones have pretty much zero harmonic content or overtones. Note how, despite the volume of your speakers/headphones being set at a perfectly enjoyable and audible level for listening to other things (music, videos etc), these sine wave tones are relatively much more difficult to hear. “Why is that?” I hear you cry. I invite you to reread the thread and again take note of the several BCers who have attempted in vain to make clear the necessity of overtones relative to the fundamental in making notes audible. Especially the lowest notes. Yes, as a 5 string bassist we are losing something by not playing through a rig which can handle 30hz at gig volume. We’re losing a portion of our sound which not only makes mixing us more difficult but at the same time fails to increase our ability to be heard.

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This is what I'm using with my Wal. Front pickup on 10, bridge pickup pulled and on 7.

For me, a great gig is one where the band is working well together and the audience 'gets is'. My first gig with the Grateful Dudes last Easter was a good example, everything slotted together well on stage, plenty of Dead-style jamming, audience dancing like dervishes, people queuing to buy shirts and shake our hands, that was a great gig. The 4 hour drive home was less great, but didn't take away the buss the gig left me with.

I would not worry about that. It's merely a pad switch. The label seems to imply active = higher output, which is simply not true. Active and passive basses come in all sorts of outputs and there's no hard rule about it. For example, my Stingray is not particularly high output, it matches a passive Precision / Jazz quite well... G&L L2000 in passive mode is one of the loudest things on Earth,, louder than any active bass I've ever owned. Neodymium Entwistle pickups make any passive bass scream... etc. Of course, if you boost the low end control to max on active basses, you're probably going to overload a normal input... In other words, it's not active/passive... but down to individual designs and what you do with them too. I always try the passive option first, and only if it overloads the input I switch to 'active' input. Engaging the 'active' input never sounds as nice, if the amp can take your bass in the 'passive' input, in my experience. I prefer amps with simply an input gain control (many these days)... then you simply adjust the input gain to suit.

I'm doing this remembering repairing kit back in the very early 70's, well 1970 actually. My memory may be a bit iffy at that distance. Compression is something valve amps do naturally partly down to the valves themselves but also due to the saturation of the output transformer. Basically they just peter out as the output rises giving a nice soft sounding distortion as they over loaded. Guitarists used this to create all the sounds of early rock music. Combined with the feedback you get at ridiculously high levels it also gave them a lot of sustain to play with. Everyone forgets that most of these amps were pretty unreliable and a band running four valve amps on stage plus often valve PA amps was experiencing a lot of technical failures. Plus back problems from carrying the amps. Having 20 KT88's on stage was a nightmare to be honest. Transistor amps were coming in by then WEM (not much more reliable) and later HH for PA followed by early guitar and bass versions. They were certainly cheaper and quickly became more reliable but transistor amps really distort unpleasantly when overloaded so we looked for a way of getting that gentle overload that the old amps gave. Compression was what was needed so compression on instrument amps started as an effect to give 'valve sound' The first compressors I encountered used ordinary car bulbs to compress the sound. At high power they get hot and their resistance goes up, put the signal through a bulb pick it up with a photocell and bingo, compression. The next stage was a voltage controlled amplifier. Take the output and use it to control the volume or gain of the amp and you get compression. These were often adapted from tape recorder automatic volume circuits and used FET's as the controlling element. By about 1974 integrated circuits took over thousands of components in a single package. You could get undistorted compression at will but you wouldn't do that complexity with valves. So you wouldn't simulate valve sound with valves for obvious reasons. They still make optical compressors as an effect but with VCA's you can get completely controllable compression which is largely done digitally nowadays anyway. Valve based computer anyone? If anyone is interested https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-what-optical-compression

That sums it up pretty much perfectly

Well, I haven't any specific plans, but I am pretty sure I will do by the time I finished! It is very enjoyable to do so it would seem unlikely that there wouldn't be.

No wall, but ready to hit the road in my trusted transit ( long base, double wheel btw) Happy days

I don't - holding a grudge is an important thing in life

Gentlemen, I can't help but admire your brickwork! I'm 2nd left circa 1994.

I am really enjoying the Wal tone on this video I did what just appeared on YouTube. It was di'd so this is the 'studio' sound.

Never seen the words 'stunning' and 'Bongo' in the same sentence before. However that does look rather pretty. The headstock shape does still remind me of Peppa Pig's head, though.

I would personally suggest trying your setup with a midi controller connected over USB, see how you get on, I predict you won’t have any issues. Don’t get too caught up with Din Vs USB at this point. Si

I squared up the neck assembly with a jack plane and then put it through the thicknesser to slim it down to 62mm width (the width of the neck at the point the furthest end meets the body). I also thinned down the swamp ash back pieces to the 40mm outlined in the drawing above. Note that the steel fret/blocks template also arrived today! Giving the outline a decent amount of wiggle room, I marked the sides out ready for cutting: ...and duly cut them: The bridge and lightweight tuners, both in black, are on order. For the bridge, I've ordered a Schaller 2000. I'm pretty sure it's one of those on @Chris Sharman 's gorgeous 5 string Shuker that I was lucky to temporarily get my mitts on last week. I was very impressed with the design and quality of the bridge I can't cut the neck side profile until I've worked out the neck angle, and I always get hold physically of the bridge before I work that out (I draw the neck joint position and angle full size, including the saddle lowest and highest setting points) so won't be doing that yet. Instead, I'll turn my attention to the fretboard. I've got just the piece of maple for that As always, thanks for looking!

My experience is opposite. And I've seen and been in plenty of originals bands where the singer is not the lyric writer and manages to learn the new song or 2 every week and not need a stand. It comes to this - if a tune is SO new that all the players would need a stand (pub gig / rock gig etc, not orchestra) then that song is not ready for performance at all. However if 1 person in the band needs a stand and the others do not - then that 1 person is letting the side down. Doesn't matter what instrument it is. Guitar / voice / drums / keys, flugel horn. Doesn't matter. They need to do more practice. Like the other band members managed to do.

Three beautiful pieces of timber came through this morning from David Dyke - glued up and clamped in my meaty bench clamps and their metal friends, two pieces of maple with a centre walnut splice: Next job will be to thickness the swamp ash back timber. This needs to allow for the concave curve of the back and so, even though the bass body, including the top, will be sub 30mm, the back blanks alone will need to start off at 40mm: In the meantime, the fretboard fretslot and block inlay template is due today so I suppose I'd better get on and work out just how I'm going to use it!

Ah yes, that band classic. Of course, the only reason that we don’t hear it being played in pub bands is because that 30hz is unachievable with most bands equipment!

I take it that you used a b&w photo in order to tone down the loudness of the Hawaiian shirts...

Taken round about this time last year just after I'd joined the band. L to R: Deb, Spen, Yours Truly & Mr Paz

This is very pleasing.

The "wall" behind is the shortly to open M1 junction 25, circa 1965/6, me behind the kit

The best thing about this is that roasted flame maple neck!

Dean Friedman , lucky stars . The only reason to thank them would be if the radio wasn't in a thousand pieces after a kicking off the scaffold if it got played !

My other band 'Just Jovi' pic taken in my garden with a little jiggery pokery with the colours. Singer Noel has perfected the smirk, I think.

Ooh, that neck. Flamed and roasted!

I tell you this Configurator tool is dangeroous! Would love to own a Sandberg, this would be about as close to a dream fretless I could get (or maybe with a dark brown coffee table body):

My red set of KZ's have just arrived now. I've plugged them in for a quick ten minutes before my next student arrives and I am already surprised! I may tweak the EQ a little but they are rather impressive for the money!

Thanks for your kind words, they really add something to this thread.

She’s here!! Obligatory family shot: Have just been having a play for the past half hour or so, going through the available tones and I’m very very happy. Classic Precision growl with the split coil, more trebly bark from the bridge humbucker and blending them together kind of smooths out the characteristics of both for a less aggressive sound, at least to my ears. 2-band preamp with a treble knob which functions as a tone control in passive mode. All basses should have this IMO. So far I’ve got the preamp set identically to my Electra VS4 - treble up about 2/3 of the way and a very slight bass boost in active. Switch to passive and everything mellows out by default. Lovely. Previous owner strung it with new Rotosound Swing Stainless Steels 45-130 which I’ve never tried before but I like them well enough. I’ve got a fresh pack of Dunlop Flats which have gone churlishly unused for over a month so I’m considering putting them on. Action is perfectly playable but just a touch higher than I’d like so I’ll be lowering that at some point either today or tomorrow. The neck is somewhere between a satin and gloss finish, but more on the glossy side of the spectrum. May have to get that taken down a bit but so far it’s not nearly as obnoxious as a typical “true gloss”. There’s a scratch on the back near the neck bolts which I knew before buying. A slight downer but who’s seeing the back anyway?? What a back though: And there we have it. All in all I got a bit of a bargain for an incredibly well built, unique bass. I’ll be going on tour for a year with a theatre show from July and I can only take one bass with me. This is definitely the one. Now my MTD is feeling a bit of sibling jealousy .

Yes, it was the three-knob version I had. I'm fairly sure that the mini toggle switch was only two-way on the one I had (active/passive), but can't be certain. I can now also remember that I had to send the first one back (a really lovely purple-y/red finish) due to the electrics being really noisy/buzzy. The pic that Bassassin has provided is the one I was referring to with the Wal/Aria style headstock. As I say, it was a really nice bass and, whilst not massively cheap, was an excellent value-for-money active bass at the time - the black finish ran all through the bass from body to headstock and looked lovely. And don't get lost doing that wah type thing..!

Fairytale in New York is my favourite Christmas song, because it's not all about what a wonderful time we should be having because it's bloody Christmas bah humbug

I wholeheartedly agree.

Every time this comes up the people that say it's criminal are normally those in bands playing the same 30 songs they were playing 30 years ago yet still mess up the middle eight in 'alright now'.