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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.

You're right there.. have a go at Rio.

Fixed / or...

It most definitely is all in the fingers. All other tweaking, messing about and GAS just proves you have too much time on your hands.

That looks a good joint!

Of course you can dislike Jerry Barnes. I don't mind him, but for me he gets way too slappy when the excitement rises. It is very tedious though to have to keep wading through dozens of, "It's not Chic without Bernard" comments. It is Chic if Nile Rodgers wants it to be even though Bernard isn't there. I like that Nile is still gigging and doesn't live in a timewarp, even though so many Chic fans seem to.

There's a Sue Ryder F/S at around £80 on here iirc. These are well thought of.

That will only put undue strain on your 2x15. Get a proper PA, because the lack of definition lies in the midrange and high frequency quality of the PA, not the lows.

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.

If a band becomes "hot property" for the music industry's machinery, production values come into play. As I understand it, you can have musicians who are only good in live situations with an audience egging them on. Others find studio work is their forte. Although bands do both for the most part, it is not uncommon for substitutions to be made in order to guarantee sales. This is usually done after consultation with experienced marketing organisations.

As an aside, got a set of fender covers spare just before I send them back. Looking at them, it now transpires they’re the right ones and I should’ve looked more closely...

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

RE: getting sponsorship. Don't approach any potential sponsors until after all the snags have been ironed out, the podcasts have been running successfully for a while, there's some firm audience stats, a planned 'broadcast' schedule for the next 3-6 months and some quality material available to be cut down for inclusion in a sales pack. One blows one's best chance if one goes to the market too early or unprepared

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

A couple of points: sight reading is a different (but related) skill to reading music. Sight reading is only really necessary the first few runs through of a piece and being good at sight reading means you save time - a LOT of time - in the initial phase. BUT orchestras don't perform music sight reading. They have the parts in advance; practise them, rehearse together then perform it. If you're reading something the 2nd or subsequent time, its not sight reading. Its only really advanced or professional orchestras where the amount of actual time rehearsing would become minimised (so they're more reliant on their reading ability, than falling back to the progress they would have made during many rehearsals), a subset of the many amateur orchestras and various groups etc which do typically read music. Also one of the main reasons why these kinds of groups read music is that its more complicated - rock/pop songs are typically a simple structure with repeating elements, a classical piece can be fairly unique from start to finish. So caution is required in drawing comparisons anyway. Secondly, for a beginner player, reading music is such an advantage because it probably means they'll save time in getting the right notes, and a good deal of the "emotion" or interpretation right first time, due to the dynamics, phrasing etc markings on the music in addition to the pitch and rhythm stuff. A similarly beginning player who has spent the time so far, improving their ear training (rather than learning to read music) would probably still get some of the pitches wrong - AND have spent more time in trying to learn by ear, thus having less time to improve it or apply "emotions"/etc