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I've just completed another bass part ex / sale with Martin from Wales - we had lots of communication both ways throughout the process and have been exchanging a few texts since about the basses we swapped. And it got me thinking as I was writing his feedback and looking at the three pages of feedback I've got....basically (bar one specific example - exception that proves the rule?!) I've had nothing but overwhelmingly positive experiences ( a LOT of them!) with people I've never met. Often involving quite a lot of money / expensive instruments and therefore trust of this unknown person. It's a great community of people who really do give bass players an excellent name. I'm sure other forums for different instruments may be the same (I'm not on any so can't really comment) but this really is a lovely group of people on here and I"m chuffed to call myself a bass player knowing that there's a lot of lovely people out there who also call themselves bassplayers! All good!

Nice to hear this, glad you all like our little community. It’s been a pleasure to run and has been a massive part of my life.

I used to get grief many years ago when I lived with my ex girlfriend about the combo amp that lived in the corner of the living room of our small one bedroom flat. I had nowhere else to put it really but eventually managed to find room to accommodate it in the cupboard under the stairs (which involved building a shoe rack to put on the triangular shaped wall above it). Imagine my joy when I came home one night to find a running machine occupying the space in the living room where my amp had been...

If you're going to talk like that, at least have the decency to use 'your' rather than you're and put EVERYTHING IN SHOUTY BLOCK CAPS. Looks far more comically unhinged that way.

Bought and sold stuff here for years, never had a bad exchange, everyone's polite and the couple of people I've met have been friendly and honest fellows to a man. Only problem I've encountered is the lack of interest in some of the dodgy kit I've advertised sometimes...!

Watching The Selector on the BBC Iplayer at the Biggest Weekend in Coventry. The bassist is playing a Squier Classic Vibe Precision, how cool is that! No gear snobbery there. Good bassist too, although I think Pauline Black is the only original member.

Phew it's been a hot one today! Not happy I have a blister on my thumb! How you ask? I'll tell you how Started off routing a shoulder at the level of the top of the binding to give myself a clean edge to work to while shaping the tops, yes shaping at last WOOHOO!! After that I drew a rough contour map of the general curves I expected to get, after that well it was shaping time. I used a thing called an Arbourtech, a rather nasty carving attachment that fits onto a grinder, this is a method I do not recommend, it can reduce your guitar body to firewood in less time than it takes to blink. So why am I using one, I've had a lot of practice with it but even then it's a worrying procedure. After rough carving I used some small thumb planes (blister!! ) to just get it somewhere like a shape at the back, the front couldn't be done until the angle for the neck/fretboard had been cut. For that I just made a jig, basically a sloping bit of MDF at 4.5 degrees with a hole in it to access the top of the body. There was some spare wood the jig didn't reach so I whipped those off with a drawknife, a bit like a massive spokeshave then took a bench plane to flatten it. Finally I took the thumb planes and some tiny spokeshaves and tuned the shape to something that looked right, it's sort of an intuitive process, try it you'll see. After that I was tired so I still need to tune the shape on the second body but I'm happy with the first, that just needs the neck fitting and sorting any snags before sanding etc. Oh and I also checked the neck blanks for any movement, admittedly they are still blanks and any movement would be unlikely but if there is any movement at this stage then the blank is firewood. There was none but some of you may be interested to know how I checked. To see if there is any twist on a narrow board you used a gadget called a pair of winding sticks, these are basically two parallel wooden straight edges with two inlays on each one with a pair of black (Ebony) and one with a pair of white (in my case Ivory veneers from a piano), as luck would have it I couldn't find them so I used a pair of 12" rules one balanced at either end from which you can sight down to see any twist (wind) exaggerated by the length of the winding sticks. Handy thing to know

I'm a lifetime member of Scott's Bass Academy. Yes, some of the people in the forum ("Campus" as they call it) are a PITA. Much of the chat is all very... well... But I don't regret having open access to an incredible and growing number of lessons FAR out stripping ANYTHING on Youtube. The SBL paid-for lessons are much better than any Scott ever gave for free. You also have opportunity, once a month (?) to be at a live video-chat session with guest speakers, who are often teachers of bass at the Berkeley School of Music. No, no regrets here. Go grab a 14-day trial membership and try it for yourself. You have nothing to lose. If you don't like it Scott WILL give you your money back. https://scottsbasslessons.com/ IIRC the first year was about £100. Topping up, at the 12 month stage, to "LIfetime" was another £200. Compare that to 1-to-1 lessons with a mediocre teacher at £26 an hour? 10 lessons inc travel costs?

I personally prefer having the jack on the front for the very reason that it gives me the option of sitting or standing. I don't have an issue with the look of it either actually. I've just commissioned my first Fodera build - it's costing a fair amount but I'm obviously comfortable otherwise I wouldn't have proceeded. I play 6ers and my tastes are generally quite conservative/boring - I find they're one of the few builders who make extended range basses that I like the look of - I've gone for an Emperor 6 by the way.

aging hasbeen getting some publicity.* nothing to see here, move along. * I say this as a fan of The Who

Mooer'd right up mate...😊

Or marry another bass player! 😄

Have you tried offering to help carry the stuff to the car, you know, don't leave it all for her to do? I mean, don't strain yourself, obviously ...

Just having a little fun here.

I've said that I'm only a lodger too! Maybe I should give her the going rate for a lodger and stop tipping up it all!

Awaiting velcro and appropriate length leads...

Have you tried growing a pair. I did and now sing with a very high voice. I guess sacrifice is part of being in a band. I'm lucky as we have 4 bedrooms too. The smaller being my bass cave and any other hobbies i might have. She has the 2nd largest spare room for her "stuff" and like you even the 4 cats have a spare room that is bigger than mine. Conservatory is common ground tho. I like the view that everything else in the house is hers. I tried that approach once and stated that everything was hers and i was just a lodger. In fact there was no evidence i even lived there. No pics with me in them and all more feminine artifacts and ornaments around the house. Over next few months i noted pics with me in them appearing. Harley Davidson ornaments that had been in a box started appearing in corners and even a small Warwick Thumb copy bass was eventually put on display so that might work a bit...........or she could ask you to leave altogether. 50/50 on how that goes Dave

I do like thumb planes. Very handy. I've never used a (?) thumb shave before - that looks useful too Nice work btw

I have a Mike Pope FlexCore 4 band in my MTD Kingston. I initially upgraded the stock preamp with the USA spec Bartolini but that didn't last long after I found the Mike Pope.

Their coming on very nicely!! I use one of the carving wheels on a grinder when I’m doing the belly carve, they are definitely unforgiving!! 😀

Seems the "get well soon" messages we sent from BC worked then...

You've got to hand it to them. They are very supportive of this forum, but not in an in-your-face-buy-me way, and their service support is legendary. This has to be applauded in an age where many companies think that a website FAQ can substitute for friendly and knowledgeable support staff. I can't imagine there are many bassists who haven't used their products and some are better than others, but I'm currently very happy with one of their amps.

In the 16 years that I've been a member of Bassworld, Basstalk and Basschat buying and selling kit or selling cables I've never had a problem. I even had a BCer send me a Sadowsky Metro from Poland without payment until I had checked it out. However I recently advertised for something I wanted and received a PM from a just registered new member who wanted my email address so they could send details and pictures. I declined and suggested they put them in the PM. I've heard nothing since so it pays to be wary.

Lots of copies of the same album perhaps ?

Jolly good choice. Enjoy muchly 😎🎸

Roger is a great front man, but an utter berk who talks a load of rubbish on many subjects. Best just to ignore what he says and listen to the music.

Yep that would make for an interesting read McNach. For me it would be Rush, Arjen Luccassen, Deep Purple and Bowie if he can be classed as Rock which i would think yes. Dave

Because that and gigging is his day job.

The only thing around here that's peaked is most of us!

I've always thought the Roger comes across well. By all accounts a very nice guy, and extremely down to earth. Amazing career, and does some extremely important charity work. Recently gave his time to open a new cafe at the end of the railway near here. ....and that's before you get to the list of songs performed , and brilliant vocals recorded with The Who. At least his point has got people talking about rock....even if the consensus is that he wasn't that far off. Incidentally, I love The Who By Numbers, 4 years after the...ahem...peak!

AT LAST! Thank you @skankdelvar Three whole pages discussing the merits before anyone references David Hepworth’s book. Read it last year and I loved it. Packed full of great stuff and Hepworth’s writing style is really engaging. He puts forward some great arguments that 1971 is not the greatest year in rock necessarily but certainly an annus mirabilis given the album’s created and released. He also has the decency to concede that his view is strongly influenced by the fact that he was just the right age in 1971 to think this. Highly recommended if you’ve not read it!

Perhaps Mr Daltrey has been reading David Hepworth's book 1971 - Never a Dull Moment which (surprise) asserts that 1971 was the greatest year for rock music. Mr Hepworth's core contention is that '1971 saw the release of more monumental albums than any year before or since' and when one scrutinises the list of albums (and singles) released that year it's difficult to disagree with him. Clearly, this doesn't mean that no significant albums were released in other years. IMO, 1969 was a pretty good year. Jon Savage makes a persuasive case for 1966 as being a pivotal year for pop music. Perhaps one might compromise and say that 1965-1977 were the golden years of rock music as an un-ironic, non-self-referential cultural force. Before then it was all Larry Parnes showbiz pop and thereafter it was downhill into re-cycled posturing for cash with some good music thrown in.

So basically the other guy's made a £60 profit on a voided transaction, the 'justification' being a couple of vanilla set-ups. Nice work if you can get it. Really, everyone needs to learn how to fettle their own guitars. It's not difficult; the basic tools are dirt cheap; forums like BC are full of helpful people with bundles of experience; there's tons of information and vids out there; and even a little practical knowledge helps when trying out prospective purchases.

Just a quick pic with the rest of the family........

It is all a ruse. You don't need books, CDs, hifi system, magazines, videos, DVDs or TV...all you need is your laptop and a subscription to lots of things at only £9.99 per month each. Oh, and cloud storage for all your backups at £9.99 a month for when your laptop breaks. "Why am I so poor?" the junior office worker mused, listening to Spotify though bluetooth headphones on his iPhone X while clicking away at his laptop. His £4.20 large coffee with cream from Starbucks cooled next to him.

Or a chrome bridge and knobs. The “all black” look is a bit too rawk for me...

Ah, now I see where you're coming from. That was way ahead of its time. Steve Lawson is my biggest influence at the moment and I can hear the same sort of format in his music to Bill Nelson's. Shall have to look into more of this. That's the value of social media, endless inspiration for new directions.

It's a more expressive instrument, played well.