Leaderboard

" In the midst of all this public bickering, "Let It Rot" was released as a film, an album and a lawsuit. In 1970, Dirk sued Stig, Nasty and Barry. Barry sued Dirk, Nasty and Stig. Nasty sued Barry, Dirk and Stig, and Stig sued himself, accidentally. "

Having got the fretboard basically done, that meant I could work out the neck angle - a touch over 1 degree. I squared up and ensured that the through neck blank was completely straight and level. Then, having rough cut the body slot in the neck blank on the bandsaw, I popped it onto my routing jig and packed up the back end of the neck blank to get the correct angle: This then gave me the slot that the back wings will sit flush with and the top will sit in: Having got that sorted, I now knew exactly where the back wings were going to sit and could trace round, slightly oversize, the top and cut out the shapes on my bandsaw: So, when they are ready to be glued, they will sit flush with the slot in the neck blank: And, although it is AGES off being finished, at least it's starting to look a little bit like a bass!

"Nicks was angry that Buckingham smirked while she delivered a speech...". Children. They are like bloody children. Although TBH I wouldn't mind if they never played another smegging note. I've always detested their music. My idea of hell is being stuck on a desert island where the only available music is Fleetwood Mac and the Stones.

A woman walks into a bar and asks for a double entendre, so the barman gives her one.

Can’t recall if I said how much I enjoyed being a part of the last one. Bo was so easy to chat to so it made for a very easy Skype recording. He also has a great voice for radio... both live and listening to the ‘cast. Iwonder, like @ped said whether we should compile a list of hot/perennial topics to cover or discuss in the podcast? Such as... what's the best bass for metal? Lol! What is the role of the bassist and how has that changed whats the real value of gear above the mid-range price. Does it actually make a difference to anyone/the audience? reading - damaging to creativity, broadly irrelevant, useful but optional skill or essential? ....I’m sure more will occur to me

I just wish you had left that beta/alpha BS out...

Well spotted that man!! Well Identified! : ) I have two Reeve, this one: Reeve Twin Neck and the one that was made for Derrick Taylor, of Roachford fame and others, shown in the above link. Here is the whole Reeve feature: Reeve Story When you get to the bottom, click next posts and there is a bit more. The pick-up is Kent Armstromg - Kent Armstrong Reeve Pick-ups and the circuit on mine give a good range of tones. Cracking sound. They were made for Alligator Amplifiers - Alligator. I don't think you would go far wrong with it and being in Stevenage, it hasn't travelled far from it's place of birth. Nice!

Getting there .... The plate still has film on it I need to connect pup to pot need tug bar fitted i still need to get concentric knobs from somewhere BEFORE any one points it out 1. I know the first position block is slightly wonky 2. I know stack knobs didn’t have blocks and so are not strictly accurate

I finally was able to take time and check out BC podcast #2 (...thanks @ped for the slight nudge! ). Really enjoyed Bo's chat with @TrevorR about his love and history of Wal basses. Not made it to a Wal myself (at least not yet) although I did have one of the then new Hayman 4040's back in the day, as discussed during the chat. Also enjoyed Bo and Si's chat regarding performance, gigging, etc. Having just played a Prog fest in south Wales (roundtrip from Essex 350-odd miles returning the same day) I completely sympathise with Si's 800-miles-plus roundtrip gig north o' the border! So, all in all, another great job with the podcast, chaps. I have to say, at just over an hour, it was a little easier for me to make it through in one hit. Looking forward to Episode 3.

From what was, up to that point, a good series, I felt this was a lame episode, merely done as filler. However, there were some little nuggets of information that were interesting, but not nearly enough. I’m hoping for a return to form tonight (there is another one isn’t there?). For my own tastes, I would’ve liked to have seen Manu Katché, Vinnie Colaiuta, Stewart Copeland and Steve Jordan in the list, but that’s just me.

Nobody needs a Helix, but everyone should have one.

There's an interesting old Lennon interview in Melody Maker about Imagine: MM: So how did Imagine come about? JL: Well I'd just flown back from the States and I was sitting at my white grand piano in my country house, looking out of the window at my Rolls Royce and thinking: 'Do I really need all this stuff? Being rich is such a drag'. MM: How true, how true... JL: ... and Yoko was in the breakfast room, well, the summer breakfast room that overlooks the lake and she was staring at her grapefruit. I said: 'What's wrong with your grapefruit, Yoko?', thinking maybe it had gone off or she'd put too much sugar on it and she said: 'Imagine there's no grapefruit...' and I thought that was really profound, like. MM: So what happened next? JL: Yoko started screaming at the grapefruit in that way she has, y'know, like a Vietnamese woman who's just seen her village burned down by American soldiers so I went upstairs and got really drunk and did some cocaine, some LSD, a few bennies, a handful of Qualudes and a half-pound bag of primo grass. I was lying there on the bed, staring up at the carvings on the ceiling and I thought 'Imagine if there weren't any grapefruits?' (Pauses) The plural of grapefruit is grapefruits, isn't it? MM: I think it's just grapefruit JL: So one grapefruit is a grapefruit and and two grapefruits is two grapefruit? That's a bit ... establishment, isn't it? Bob Dylan would probably say 'grapefruits'. MM: So, Imagine? JL: Yeah, that's right. So, basically I started thinking imagine if there weren't any grapefruits and then I made a long list of things like streetlights and lawns and helicopters and in the end I came up with about four thusand things then I started narrowing it down and ended up with possessions and religion and war. And all the other stuff I left in. Then I went back to the piano and experimented with some chords but it was difficult to concentrate with Yoko screaming at her grapefruit and I went down to the breakfast room and asked her to keep the noise down because I was composing and she wouldn't give it a rest so I gave her a slap or two which shut her up. Then I went back to the piano and knocked the song out in about ten minutes which was quicker than Paul would have done it. He'd have taken about two or three hours. MM: And that's how history was made JL: Yeah, history.

I acquired a TE combo quite recently and found it difficult to get the sound I wanted from it. But with perseverance I got there. As said above, you need the gain way up, as you do with an Ashdown. And the graphic EQ works a lot better if you cut instead of boost - flatten everything then cut the low lows - you don't need 'em. And cut the presets, too. I also didn't need the high highs or high mids, either. Nor did I need 500kHz, which is a hurty frequency for me, but it cuts through a mix like nothing else if you need to! Trace amps are for gigging with. They don't sound so great solo. But get them in concert and they can sound very lush, with great power, articulation and slam. That's what they are made to do. Definitely not a Class D amp. Couple that with their legendary build quality and reliability and you've really got something. Modern mainstream amps are made to sound good solo in a shop, in your house, in your man-cave - and setting the EQ flat is usually a reasonable starting point. It's a sales thing. But that may not be the tone you actually want to be gigging with - in fact it almost certainly isn't. The EQ facilities on a Trace aren't there for show and time spent finding a sound that is best for you and your band is time well spent. I moved my TE combo on because I imagined it was too heavy, but I really missed it. So much so that I've just snagged another on the Bay and am picking it up at the weekend.

I am the lucky owner of a lovely hybrid bass head, with a valve pre-amp and Class D power amp. Recently I had to carry out a repair on the pre-amp, and it got me thinking about other amps - could an all-valve head be EVEN BETTER? For a while I had been ogling an EBS T90 Classic on Absolute Music's website. I had a gig in Longham on Tuesday night (only 3 miles from the shop), so Mrs Axe and I drove down early and I took a bass and cab in to try it out. It's fair to say I didn't feel the love; it sounded quite nice, but was a bit hissy, and I didn't think it went loud enough before running into distortion - I tried it in their big Live Room, you can't really tell in a demo booth! No sale. Then I toddled off to my gig. My own rig sounded truly wonderful So no more amp GAS then? No, I'm now thinking about building/repairing/modding a 'big iron' conventional transistor amp... And that, folks, nicely demonstrates the illogic of GAS

I found it quite quaint, like watching a really bad old 80s film and thanking god you never had hair like the dude with the mullet.

Fleetwood Macaroni cheese? Fleetwood Mackerel?

It's very personal, I guess. So, I'd go for something from Thomastik, like their Roundwounds or Superalloy. Straight from the pack - they're warm but they have everything you'd want from the roundwound. And oh, they are funky. To me anyway 🙂

I'm no authority on FM but if I was to go and see them on tour I would want to see/hear LB and SN, to me the core sound of FM. I reckon you could do away with Fleetwood and Mac and it would still sound more FM than if LB and SN were gone. I'm sorry this has nothing to do with fish or cheese.

And of course, the one where they are both stark bollock naked on the front cover. Some lovely tunes on that one. 😊

Serial over-killer

Can't go along with that, may not be his best by a distance, but worst? don't think so, he wrote some real stinkers after the Beatles split

Oh, you were serious? I thought you were having a laugh. Yes, I use a pick. Most bass reviewers don’t demonstrate pick playing so I can’t realy get an idea of how a bass sounds for me.

You know, I doubt it, as the new Trace stuff just isn't like the old Trace stuff... I could be wrong, though. Meanwhile, this just arrived...

I take the above picture was taken just after LB had the phone call!!

I'm happy with my basses, Fender Jazz AVRI 75, Fender CIJ 66 Jazz, Fender Mike Dirnt Precision, Musicman Stingray 2EQ and Kala Rumber UBass. I love my Fender Precision 70 FSR but I've not been able to get the sound I want from it yet but I think its more my rig than the bass. As for my rig, a MarkBass LMIII and 2 x NY112 cabs, I am not sure. I mean its ok, does a great job but doesn't blow me away and lacks dynamics. I think the head is fine but its the speakers that are letting me down so I am going to change these over, just not sure what for yet.

I have 19 bass guitars, they all sound different.

Some years ago I purchased a B stock bass amp from Muziker. Plugged it in and nothing. I contacted them, they asked me to return the amp and sent me a brand new one at no extra charge. Highly recommended.

I wish I hadn’t read this thread 😕

Good time for them to call it a day and head off to their retirement complexes in Palm Springs and why would anyone be bothered!

I am grateful both to the OP and to Mr Buckingham's legal counsel for this information. The next time some shonky front-man tells me he's booked the band into a free charity gig I shall sue him for "intentional interference with prospective economic advantage".

Popped my neck off tonight making adjustments, took a pic just for you!

I've not met Andy in person yet! He was once at LBGS when I was performing on a stand and thus I never had the opportunity to catch up, but we have "spoken" many-a-time online. Diamond guy! I'd also love to meet Carey Nordstrand too.

It looks as though we have scared the OP off... So just in case they come back here is a sensible answer they their question: "Tone Woods" make a lot of sense when it comes to acoustic instruments. They are all about the transfer of the vibration of the strings through the top of the instrument to the air inside the body and projecting those vibrations out. Everything about the design and construction of an acoustic instrument is about getting a good tone at a usable volume. The shape and volume of the body, the thinness of the top the way the bracing is just sufficient to stop the instrument collapsing under the tension of the strings and the top sides and back are joined together with the minimum of contact to allow the maximum resonance. No compare that with a typical solid bodied electric instrument. The body is a big solid 1.5" thick lump of wood, and more often than not on mass-produced instruments 2 or 3 separate pieces glued together in an ad-hoc manner to produce a blank big enough to be cut to the desired shape. Its main purpose is to provide a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing platform for attaching all the other component parts - neck, bridge, pickups etc. None of the tone wood properties that are so important in an acoustic instrument matter very much in a solid body. Here the overall construction is far more important. I'm not saying that the choice of wood is totally irrelevant to the sound of a solid-bodied instrument, it's just IMO the least important factor and one that is impossible to quantify. Every single piece of wood is different and two bodies cut from blanks that came from the same tree can produce two different feeling and sounding instruments. So after all that what are the important factors when picking a piece of wood for a solid bodied instrument? 1. Strength. It must be capable of holding together under the tension of the strings and being hung from a strap. TBH pretty much any hardwood will fit the bill and even some softwoods. It might be worth considering long-term wear. Have a look at any solid-bodied instrument made 40 or more years ago, and you'll see the actual wood has worn away in several places due to contact while playing. 2. Weight. Overall the average weight for a bass should be somewhere between 4kg and 4.5kg, the closer you can get it to 4kg the better. 3. Appearance. If the wood is going to visible on the finished instrument then it should be something that you find aesthetically pleasing. And that's it. Good luck with you build!

Hope I'm not breaking any rules, but since you asked here's a song from my band (posting a link since it's not really a specific genre, you could say heavy rock I guess). There's no overdrive on this (just a little from the B|Amp), hopefully I'll be using the Locomotive on the album version of the song, when we're ready for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfx5KtuT6Vo

It has two serial numbers!

Used to have a Glockenklang Heart Rock which I loved, preferred it to the DB750 I had tried back then which sounded a bit wooly... but years went by and I didn't want to carry it any more. I tried some of the newer class D Glocks but they felt like a clear downgrade. Got a Bergantino B|Amp as my last attempt at class D and wow. Still love it after a year+. Not exactly better than the Heart Rock, but a worthy replacement for me tone-wise, plus the weight and versatility/various options are delicious. No amp GAS after that. Just cab GAS 😅 - which, after a small journey with Aguilar, Vanderkley and Bergantino, seems to also have been cured after I got an Audiokinesis TC212. I'm very happy with this setup. Broke, but happy!

I'm enjoying the lawyer-speak of "...going back to late 2017 when the group began plotting a 2018/19 world tour." What, with Malice Aforethought? 😀

Remember my almost endless list, have owned around 200 basses and still have 11. They all sound different of course, but not when I play them. It's a hard to admit fact : you'll always have the same sound whatever bass you will play and I'm not speaking of tweaking the amp sound, I'm speaking of what gets out the bass when you play. That's why you are human and not a robot. Make a simple experiment with a fellow bassist, play a bass at a precise position where both of you hear (quite) the same sound and then let your pal do the same : there will be a huge difference because you have both your inner sound that you'll always tend to hear, which is affected by endless factors including your technique, of course, and even weirder ones like education and what you eat...

I used to have one of these a few years back. Really liked it, and portable too. I thought for a 15” it had good projection but was just a little on the boomy side for me in a 50/60’s soul type function band so switched to MB 2x10” travelers. But the 15”, coupled with a MB Jeff Berlin combo made for an awesome reggae rig.

Almost forgot about this beast too: Claimed he hadn't ever listened to Jaco, that's some BS...

Make sure you listen to Dave Lee Roth's Eat 'Em And Smile too, Sheehan and Vai on TOP form (Elephant Gun)! 😉

Corsica at Elephant & Castle Omeara in Borough sometimes the Vaults under Waterloo station does stuff, but that tends to be corporate hires these days Somerset House in the summer

Lovely question! I want to take a historical perspective on this issue. First of all, bass has not so much to do with violin, NO! It predates from the gamba family. They are fretted or fretless, several strings, can be played with fingers and bow. Their size became bigger, while these bigger bands were founded. Symphony bands, that is. Double bass or contra bass is the big thing that may have frets (yes, there are fretted instruments, there) but the most common are big, fretless boxes with 4 or 5 strings. You can find a double bass with 3 strings or 6. During 20th century we were given lots of electricity and that drove people to create electric stuff - and basses. Paul Tutmarc, Leo Fender et al. did a great job. So if we take a quick look in inventions on electric ones, I would like to point out few specialities or inventions (at their time): Tutmarc's instrument was probably one of the very first commercial trials, although his success among few others was less than modest. So in 1951 Leo F. came out with his Precision. I do remind you, that his instrument was so new, that it took around ten years to build a solid market. Many players still relied on double bass - or its electrified version with an Ampeg mic (amplified peg). So at that time if you wanted to be in the forefront, the best option was a Fender, also because competitors had very similar basses. Another reminder: the Precision was relatively cheap, as the parts were well thought out (i.e. simple and easy to fit together) and could be done in big series. For example Rickenbacker has a through-neck that is far more complicated to produce. Model 4000 had a price tag of U$D 280 which was U$D 60 more than a P. That was nearly 30 % more expensive in 1957! A Volkswagen Beetle cost U$D 1500. So if a brand new Ford Fiasco today costs approx. £ 14 000, this would equal that a Ric would cost around £ 2600 (Thomann: £ 1800) and a P £ 1900. A new Squier P costs under £ 200 and this way the bass is practically available to anyone. During the sweet 60's choices were somewhat limited but you could buy a 6-string bass - maybe it would be called a baritone guitar today. There were semi acoustics, a Thunderbird and a Fender V but still the selection was pretty limited. 1970's changed a lot: rock trios wanted more! And people wanted to be in rock bands. This meant that many players wanted instruments and some of them wanted something different. Dan Armstrong made their plexi glass thing, Alembic started the active era, G. Gould played with graphite. And before the decade turned to furry animals, Stan and Jaco came to town. You should not forget studio aces that wanted more, like Jimmy Johnson who was one of the first bassists that wanted a low B. The eighties were filled with hair. Oh dear! If you needed a special shape to your bass, you probably could find it. Some of those instruments can be seen every now and then but I think that they belong to 80's. Because more was the thing at that time, luthiers produced more of those beautiful wood creations - with more strings. It was time for the 6th string to become a standard. On the other hand, while aluminum and carbon fiber were introduce during the previous decade, the designer Ned Steinberger draw this minimalist L-2. It was ready in the late 70's but manufacturing started in 1981. No head at all! After those 1970's "incredible" innovations and 1980's multi-string creations, there were still things like a working MIDI bass (thanks Steve Chick), acoustic bass guitars, and different scale lengths. So lots of opportunities, far wider selection than ever before. To raise one specific area outside the actual instrument during 21st century is the (relatively) low cost digital music production. New players along with youtube and other world wide wait stuff have given people lots of possibilities to find their own bass sound. May it be a keyboard or a 10-string exotic wood smörgåsbord, a pad or "just an ordinary P". My favorite and best instrument is bass. Simple or exotic, it's my choice. I drive an Alfa 33, 1990. It is black.

I think that when the moderators / Ped see this post they'll be in touch to help you out. The members of this forum are lovely and I'm sure will do everything they can for you. I'm sorry for your loss and I hope that you manage to sort everything out. Hugh @ped @Dad3353 @Hamster @Rich @Cat Burrito

That Grace Jones one is great!