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Absolutely mental, very funny, and a great player.

It's his hat, right?

Has there ever been a cooler drummer than this?

Modding an Already-Modded P Bass... You may or may not have seen my Modded HB PB-50 (Version 3) - if not, it's here. All well and good - I liked it a lot... the single-coil vibe is nice, but sometimes you really want that mid-forward, split-pickup dual-coil 57-type P sound as featured on every recording since the Bronze Age. Consequently, I started looking for a bog-standard 57-type P Bass. There are lots and lots and lots of them available for sale... THEN, I came across the concept of the dual-coil 51-type four-pole telebass-type pickup... with that in mind I bought this Jess Loureiro dual-coil 51-type pickup with a view to fitting a switch to give me the option of series (57-type dual) or parallel (51-type single) coil pickups, both with the fast attack you get from a one pole-piece-per-string setup... hopefully negating the need to buy another bass, cart two basses around with me and change them on stage for different songs... I also fitted a new Fender American Deluxe bridge with part-threaded saddles. Stable, well-engineered... top load or through-body options... and way too expensive in the UK, which is why I imported one from the States. Even with import duty it was still cheaper than buying one here. Many thanks to Mr Gary Mac, without whose help and assistance I'd be in hospital suffering from soldering iron burns and crying. Thanks, Gary. Sound clips: Listen on good phones or decent monitors, etc. etc... Dual Coil.mp3 Single Coil.mp3

Blast! Well, based on it feeling like the fretboard has taken longer than the body so far, I'd better just remake the body and persuade Neil that learning to be ambidextrous is a real life-skill!

No worries Dave, I see what you mean. I took said claw hammer so that if I saw the person I suspected of stealing my bass, I could hit him with it. I was less reasonable in my younger years.

Great idea! Looking forward to the first one. ☺ Once it's up and running, can I suggest that we link this idea to the various regional Bass Bashes, where there will be opportunities to get some fantastic content for the podcasts. For example, the SE Bash has had so many good workshops and guest speakers over the years, much of which would have made for interesting and relevant podcast material...

I heard this on Radio 1 earlier and love it. Me and the wife's heads were bobbing away in the car. I thought we were listening to another station too be honest.

Garfield Fleming from the Delfonics was walking past a record shop and heard a record he wrote and sang.. They didn't realise who he was. Just an excellent moment.

John Taylor from Duran Duran gets my respect. I was never a fan when they were big in the 80's, I always had them down as a kiddy pop band. But some of his lines are incredible.

Last time I went for a 'well person's checkup' at the local surgery, the GP told me that for the health of my heart, I should do "1/2hour of intensive effort at least once a week that you enjoy and that makes you hot and sweaty" and then gave me a big wink. How the Dickens did he know I have a Veritas Pullshave??? Sure enough, 1/2 hour later, I'm hot, sweaty and pleasantly fulfilled: What a doctor! What great advice!

Buy a Harley Benton PB-50 from Thomann and put some decent flats on it. Sorted. https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_pb_50_sb_vintage_series.htm If you like P Bass necks, you'll love this. You get Thomann's 3-Year Warranty and 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee, too...

And when looking at it too, when my Custom Shop decal arrives!

It seems to work really well, especially 'in your face' through an amp. I'm no top recording engineer or producer, I did the audio clips very quickly. There are a few other dual-coil 51-type options available, notably from Lindy Fralin: https://www.fralinpickups.com/product/split-51-p-bass/ It is a lot more expensive that the Loureiro version, though. And the main selling point is noise reduction - the fact you can approximate the sound of a 57-type split-pickup seems to be totally ignored. As a split pup is essentially a humbucker yes, you're going to get less noise in theory, but I've had no problems in that area even with a single coil. My bass is quite heavily shielded with copper tape though and is just as quiet with a single coil or a dual coil.

It's interesting as I'd heard examples of the old S2 switch on past Precisions and felt that their pickup choice didn't seem to suit the function, whereas this sounds way better by comparison. I'd put it down to the qualities of this pickup. (The S2 is great on jazz basses).

Yes - but look where my mind's gone now, no wonder 😃

Thanks for the comment, Dan. Plugged the bass into my combo this morning and wound it up - The Loureiro is a quality bit of gear and no mistake. The previous Herrick pickup was a class act in itself, but as well as having the switching options, the Loureiro is a bigger-sounding, warmer pickup overall.

Ooooh it makes me wonder!

I think I met him once. Is this him?

What do you think are your chances of finding a buyer who appreciates a neck as you do? IMO I think it's pretty certain that you'll adversely affect the value of the bass if you start scraping off the finish. You've posted this so I guess the resale value is important to you. . . . in that case, don't do it.

And here is Happy Jack with that bass!

Very nice; but you appear to have made a left-handed fretboard!

Absolutely no prob re. getting audio from the bashes. I usually record almost everything on video, so adding a dedicated, good quality audio recorder will be no problem at all. Looking forward to this!

Well, it was a lot of work - but on a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfying was that?

I’ve got a Spectrum DX and it’s really decent. Maple body rosewood neck. High gloss black finish looks immaculate from several feet away though fairly dinged up on closer inspection. Single pickup is I believe essentially a p and sounds excellent. Unlike the Thunder it’s not a heavy bass. I’d definitely recommend.

Thanks for this - I don't know how peeps (on both sides) would feel about a closer link than that with the magazine? Feed each other content and promote each other to some extent??? Audio would be a perfect complement to the forum - I for one would enjoy listening to sound samples in the flow of a podcast which I don't bother to click on in a forum post. A good example of the value of audio but perhaps a bit extreme tech for some of us :-? Thanks to those who have offered to make this happen, I await with interest 🙂

As with all things bass-related; beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My first decent bass was a Thunder 1A in natural finish and what first caught my eye was the visible real wood - ie not hidden under solid paint or a plastic pick-guard. The other thing I liked was that it had its own look and wasn't a clone of an American design. Having enjoyed playing it for about 2 years I wanted to upgrade and a Thunder III was the automatic choice. Having owned that bass since 1985; I can only say that the build quality and components stood the test of time and I've never had any problems - the bass was 100% original until I did the electronics upgrade mentioned in my post above.

Apparently, if Wikipedia is to be believed, Bob Harris has been running his Country Music show since 1998. On the whole I think Bob Harris plays pretty good music on his shows. He also champions live music so he's a good'un in my book.

I use Simple Pure Fine Talc, as it's unfragranced. Mrs CP put some in a jar which I keep in the uke gig bag. If ever I get stopped on the way home from a gig and the police do a search it could be interesting....

For the avoidance of further confusion: England Flag UK Flag Flag of the Klingon Empire

Got some more done on these today and I'm quite pleased with how they are looking so far. I'm also having a variety of thoughts regarding pickups - I'm half thinking of installing just a piezo in the bridge on the burl top. I'm also thinking about making a 30" neck for one of them, though that may follow later. I've done the routing for the neck and bridge on both of these and I've also started rounding the edges. Next task is to route the two neck blanks for truss rods.

Is that Jonathon Ross??

So you're undecided then ☺️

Different alloys of metal react to different players sweat PH which can change depending on weather/climate/diet/etc, the amount of crud that comes off your hands, particles from the environment, how they were packaged, and whatnot.

Argh, you’re not helping here with that description! I often miss having an old school P, especially with heavy flats. The Loureiro webpage is now safely bookmarked, this could be the beginning of something

That looks a good joint!

well after much deliberation I went with Newtone and they are shipping today so will report back next week. thanks for the advice guys

Photo of the article, from the March 2018 issue:

I've got some D'addario NYXL's coming today. Can't report yet, but by all accounts they're billed as a longer lasting round. Going to stick them on a Geddy Jazz, looking forward to getting these on.

Well...the two littlest ones enjoyed a bath together which the wife took care of...so I did this. debating the bridge cover.

Please tell me you play in a folk trio 😊

I don't really know what you'd qualify this as to be honest. Bought a Squier Badtz-Maru here yonks ago, a bit of fun really. I think it was more Bronco than Musicmaster or Mustang. Decided to swap out the machines but it suffered a major headstock failure when I was trying to enlarge the holes. Junked the neck and the body sat under the bed for ages. Bought a '70s rosewood Mustang neck from the US, truss rod maxxed out, forward bow, so sold that on as a project and the body went under the bed again. Bought a loaded Squier Mustang neck from The Stratosphere, stuck a Hotrails pickup in it and changed that wretched bridge to a Mustang one, so at least it intonates now. Dunlop Straploks. It plays nicely, the pickup is hot, so that helps. I've used it tons on home demos...space is tight in the home room, so it's an easy thing to just pick up and play.

Regarding the Squier Jag SS. I've got one... will get round to posting some pics sometime. Crazy value for money. The only mods I've made are... Fender Jazz control knobs, Gotoh bridge (I just have a thing about bbot bridges) and fave d'Addario strings. I'd like to put new pups and electronics in, but finding it hard to justify. Might just get a pearloid scratchplate from Jack sometime. The winders look a bit flimsey, but they work ok and stay in tune. The neck and fretwork is very good. Hard to go wrong at the price.

Not cheap but ive had a couple from here. https://schneidermusik.de/shop1/advanced_search_result.php/manufacturers_id/3/search_in_manufacturers/1/cPath/397_66_100_1000255

Peripheral but interesting. I decided fairly recently try to learn to read guitar music. I am nearly 55. I have made incremental progress to the point where last week, I bought a book of easy classical guitar pieces. I have since read 85 short pieces of music cold, including notated chords. It's really exciting.

Here's the FBIV; a fortuitous early Sunday morning eBay purchase. I just think I was very lucky to bag it for less than £400.00. I remember seeing it, doing a panicky double take and thinking, 'No, it can't be. Noooooo, it can't be.' There was scant information online, so I eventually trawled through Ross Halfin's Motley Crue book and found some mid-80s pictures of Nikki Sixx playing one and did a Buy It Now about five minutes after first seeing it. It plays beautifully and the only maintenance required is a periodic truss rod tweak. I've no idea what the pickups are, but concensus appears to be they're unbranded DiMarzio. Irrespective, they do sound great. I was considering swapping them out for a set of those large-pole Delano sets, but there's no point really; it would only have been for aesthetic reasons.