Leaderboard

Fender jazz bass 1963

To keep the brass sealed I'll use a spray lacquer, this is the final result. These are a great functional bridge IMO, and I'm more than happy to keep this on the bass as I'm also replacing the nut with a chunkier brass version.

I'll finish off the radius of the nut with a final filing whilst the nut is fixed to the neck (I epoxy it in - it won't punch out again!) I'll then then cut the string slots once the bass is all put together for the final set up. Again I can use the old nut as a guide, but to give you an idea of the difference between new and old I put them side by side. I meant to say earlier in the thread, I bought my two black ribbed mats to work on from Lidl for 90p each! They are classed as doormats but I doubt they'd last very long underfoot. Under bass however, they are perfect! And I can just shake them outside when they are covered in bits.

I'd just let it go mate. You seem to have built up a resentment over nothing there, and its poisoning you. Why don't you share their social media advertising, saying that you played at the festival last year and you wish them luck for this year. You get promo, the festival gets promo, the charity gets more money and you get a nice warm feeling that you've done some good in the world. Everyone's a winner baby!!

I was away this weekend with my family for a trip to Chester Zoo. We stopped at a farm shop just outside for a cuppa and a nice slice of cake. There was an antiques place next door that had these slabs of wood - I'm told it is mahogany, and it certainly looks like it under the varnish. 45mm thick - a few screw holes but they can be avoided. Couldn't resist, had to fit a couple of pieces into the car boot as it was cheap (£25 for both bits) !!!

It's part of the same law in physics that determines you can only ever insert a USB product after flipping it over a minimum of three times.

After selling my board and 90% of my pedals last year I thought I might need to try again....

No actually it related to Mrs X at no.5 round the corner who wouldn't admit that her bell wasn't working... 😂

Here y'go...

This

Well, it's my first New NBD for a while and I have sold a lot of gear recently.... I've had one of these before and as much as I loved it, I couldn't gel with it for some reason. Still, I had a Ric-shaped itch that I knew I'd have to scratch again one day. I knew the 4003 wasn't right for me as I struggle with the top bezel edge digging in to my forearm. The 4003S is a totally different beast though and actually sits very comfortably for me. I heard recently that Rickenbacker was not going to make any more instruments in Midnight Blue, which to me was a real shame as it's a colour I love. Anyway, after a few fruitless Google searches I managed to find one: brand new at a ridiculously low price. Given the likelihood of finding another one any time soon, I decided I'd take a chance and order it online. Past experience has told me that online ordering is a bit like a reverse version of Russian Roulette, in that five chambers are loaded with not particularly well set up or well cared for instruments and I generally always try before I buy, especially with Rics and their, ummm, folibles. In this instance though I was lucky: perfect condition and finish (no QC issues here), low action, no tail lift, quiet electrics etc. As always, the treble pickup was a lot louder than the neck one so after a bit of adjustment I got that lovely warm "fizzy" Ric sound that I love and that nothing else comes close to replicating. I put on a set of TI Flats and it's a beaut. Haters gonna hate and all that, but to me this is the best Ric I've played and hopefully we'll have a good few years together. Maybe I should call her Taylor...

I'm in a desk job that, put frankly, I fecking detest, but if there is an upside I can just listen to music and switch off from the general crap that goes on around me. Never really been a fan of UFO's studio output, but would honestly cite Strangers In The Night as being my favourite ever live album. I threw together a playlist of their studio output from Obsession to Mechanix on the train today and just lost myself for seven hours. It's fantastic stuff. Honestly don't know why this band aren't higher on my musical radar.

Clearly he's a Sith Lord, Darth Funkious

A picture now before I start the cull.... Back Row: 1982 Fullerton-made Fender Precision (one of the good ones it seems), Ric 4003, Gretsch Junior Jet, , Fender USA FSR Jazz (#51 of 100 apparently and signed by the Production Manager. Whoop-de-doo), Sandberg VM4 Laid Down: Sterling Musicman (raffle prize won at the Herts Bass Bash, signed by the Jools Holland Band), Yamaha RBX370A fretless Front Row: Dingwall Super P/J 5, SGC Nanyo Bass Collection SB310 (now with passive electrics, Entwistle Pickups and a Roland MIDI pickup), SGC Nanyo Bass Collection SB310 (active with new pre-amp and pots), Dingwall ABZ 5/3 (now back in my hands after a brief holiday) I want to cut this down to five but I'm not betting that I'll be able to......

Humble, compared to some of the Apollo flight desks here

Many changes over the years but nice and settled now. Fu Fighters gig board.

Remind me never to get Bazzer the Bodger to never do any work on a bass of mine. Not to say that the butcher job is down to Baz. Maybe Macca owned it in the 60`s? Could be worth a fortune....

Unfortunately the Columbus SG Chop is the only one of my victims to survive! That experiece sort of taught me to look after my gear...

When I get to shaping the heel, it's useful to already have the screw recesses in place: The carve along the heel line will be radiused to cut into the recesses - if I get it right, they should follow the angle of the machine screw ferrules. I probably will get the neck to a stage of being temporarily fitted before I sort out the carve of the end blip - this one will be more about feel than aesthetics, and you can't really do that until you are in a position to be able to play 'air-bass' with it. Next job is carving the chamber for the pickup cover to fit into (which, incidentally is at this very moment winging its way to Kent for Aaron Armstrong to do his stuff) and carving the controls chamber. While that goes on, I'll carry on reviewing and tweaking the body carve until it's 'right'

All they need is some white paint for at least two sales... 🤔

Errr, interesting one on Saturday night... Private Party, supposed to be us headlining, one other band and a few people having a bit of a busk/jam earlier in the evening. That's what was arranged. Week before the gig our trumpet player realises she is double booked, luckily just round the corner so as long as we go on at our allotted 11:00pm start all is good. Everyone is there for the soundcheck, no sign of the geezer that booked us, sound guy already very stressed, venue owner is at least as stressed and already talking about shutting the evening down - he has been waiting for about 3 hours for some comms with the booker. Meanwhile every ten minutes another couple of chaps turn up with guitars or drum kits or what have you. All the signs are there, the wheels have well and truly come off this one! We get on stage to do our soundcheck and lo and behold the PA has a desk with 9 functioning channels!! We are a 7 piece band FFS, we run 18 channels into our mixer for a pub gig (IEMs require this kind of thing for everyone to be happy, but its worth it in our experience). There will need to be compromises, sure, but really! I choose to forego the PA - with a Big Twin II and a Quilter, I am very confident that I have got enough grunt for the quite large venue. This is absolutely the only thing I am confident about at this point. At this point a couple more full bands turn up with a ton of gear each - the sound guy looks about ready to quit... An hour after this our man turns up, with a full entourage of party goers. He is in no fit state to really organise taking a leak, and can't cope with the immediate barrage of questions. I hang back, two groups leave with their kit. I pin him for the fee, and he pays half up front. He then explains that he is charging £5 on the door - for his own party (?!?!?!?!) - to recoupe, we will be paid the rest of our fee when its been made. Hmmmmmmm.... Really? I explain we will be going on at 11:00, because that's what we agreed with him, and that none of our gear is to be used by anyone else (because we haven't agreed to that at all and this is well out of hand and there is no way I am going to let a bunch of unknowns have a crack on my gear - the amp is borrowed anyway, its not mine to lend). He then proceeds to play a set of terribly performed covers of Beatles songs with some of the aforementioned busker types. Dear God. I am not keen on the Beatles' efforts on their own songs, but this is some new and truly awful Hell. The single worst effort at Hey Jude I have ever heard. No amount of money is worth this! Whilst this is going on two more groups of buskers and another band walk. Thinning the heard is a very good thing, so ta-taaa! So there is a lot of people milling around with assorted gear, this makes me nervous, we ensure we have a watcher over the kit in the green room and another over the kit on the stage for the entire evening, how tedious, and rotate going for food. But at least things are moving now. And we can see the people turning up and turning away when they find out they aren't coming to a party, but instead coming to a gig played by a bunch of buskers having a dodgy jam. Another band storms out, the herd is fully thinned down now Finally a band proper goes on, they are a glam rock covers band, and have all the gear on to make that very obvious, lots of Sweet, T-Rex, Bowie, good singers, great rhythm section, its not my all time favourite set, but they are very good at what they do, and people start actually coming in to the venue, handing over cash, even having a boogie for a bit of the set. Things may be looking up. When they come off its clear they have had a great time too, really nice bunch too. Birthday boy has another crack after them, couple of bluesy tracks, way better than the earlier effort, then it our turn. He hands over the remainder of our fee just as I am setting up my pedal board. Result! After all this utter chaos and uncertainty (we would have walked too to be honest, but to be fair it was a long drive to not end up playing), we ended up starting our set at 11:02pm! Good God! Our set is completely redesigned and re-organised for this gig, we only have an hour and half rather than the usual 2 and a quarter hours to fill, so anything that isn't a funk monster track has been binned, the transitions are great fun and a nice change. We don't know quite how this is going to work but we have a decent idea it should really work. And, it really really does, we get a bunch of people dancing from the get go really enjoy the entire set, couple of squeaky moments mainly because the onstage sound is pretty much garbage (two monitors, and nothing for the drummer so he can't hear a damn thing properly). Come the end of the set we sell a few CDs have a chat to the revellers, and for the first time I can remember 3 people come over and talk to me specifically about the bass sound, which they reckon was immense, and superb. Kinda make up for a lot of the grief! Like I say, a really weird one, and we have decided we aren't going to do another party again without some very specific conditions, and if that means we never do another party again, I will be fine with that!!!!

The look of resigned weariness that says "How the hell am I going to get that out the other end?!?"

Case closed!

A snippet from a set we did a couple of years back covering music by Ernest Ranglin, Monty Alexander and Bob Marley.

Well, thats what you get for not listening to the instructions. Was it, "go and listen to some guy isolated on youtube"? No, it was "go and listen to spotify". If you had done that you wouldn't have been able to hear the bass properly and you could convince yourself you were doing the right thing The only time I have had to relearn is when I have either hashed a version together as I had to learn 20 songs in a week for a gig, and it got ingrained (like moondance), or if I join another group who are doing the same song, and it has turned out that over the years of doing it in another band you have drifted so far from the original it doesn't fit, which is the situations I find myself in. I think both are a bit tricky really, once you have learned a song, changing it is really really hard. After all, I have no idea how I play those songs, I just tell my brain we are playing that song, it tells my fingers and then we get on with it

Just got home from the first proper all Hellborg amp/cab gig. I love this amp and the cabs. The sound was full, tight, clear and warm but if I wanted more note articulation I could just dig in a little and the notes popped out. Versus Class D amps I feel more comfortable with playing into the older technology of solid state amps. I feel like they can deliver a more solid sound and manage with a range of dynamic playing from soft to heavy fingerstyle playing and heavy slapping. It just seems to respond better and deliver, and I used to use a posh miura M2 compressor to but I find that unnecessary now. I have been using iem for the last year and tonight I decide to give the Hellborg a go, minus the iem and I did not miss them at all. In fact it felt a lot more natural to me! Yeah it's heavy... But I loaded all my gear in to the house in under 5 minutes at 2:30am with little hassle. Definitely worth it... Also definitely enjoying not using pedals any longer as well.

I think Abba were in a golden age of great bass lines to be fair. Never played them myself but I've heard them many times... An ex made me watch Mamma Mia 6 times when it first came out. I could sing it better than Pierce Brosnan too 😂

Gotta agree with the consensus here. You did a great thing by playing at last years festy, and animals, like children, always need our help, so big back pat for that. Forget the poster. Its just getting you in a frazzle over not much at all. You can do better and more important things with your time

Yup, just buy buy buy, wrap in plastic, stick it in the loft. Take it down when you fancy a look and wonder why you bought it

It's no secret, but in the early 80s I accidentally murdered my very first guitar, a Columbus SG copy. Undeterred, I murdered it some more until it looked like this: And it still looks like that now.

To be honest, yes! Using a photo of an artist from a previous years event to promote this years is perfectly normal. Reading between the lines - You sound like your nose has been put a little out of joint by not being invited to perform this year. You can't expect a promoter to have the same bill as last year. That's not how they work. Imagine Glastonbury 2019 having the same line up as 2018.

You certainly know a Yamaha player when you hear them talk about models going back to 1984 and refusing space age models 😂

Exactly, you can't rush perfection! I spoke to Chris earlier as he was asking me about cases, and he said it should be going for final setup this week... so not long at all!

That was a massive bargain. I've owned a Laredo and Cheyenne 4004 - they're nice enough, but I never gelled with them as they just didn't feel Ricky enough for me. Just look too 'modern' for my tastes - and they came out in the 90's! 🙄

Aaaaaaargh...... You cruel b....... *Sobs*

Haternity Mospital? I don't get it...

Yep - I was chatting with the new purchaser (they just outbid me); it was from the same seller I bought my midnight blue Laredo from too!

....I'll get my coat 😂🙈

Were you expecting it to recover?

I’m with Cato! Buy stinky poo!

Some mock-up pic's from the internal structures. Still some filing to do to make everything fit really well but it's going to right way!

Very nice Nick, nicest colour on a Rick by far.....I am a bit biased though.

I assume it's a UK based festival? As I understand it, in the UK you do not own you own image - as peculiar as this may seem. This means that if someone has legitimately taken a photo or video of you then they can use it - in fact the person that took the photo or photo actually does own it, which is why you can't just take one of your professionally taken wedding photos into Jessops and ask them to make you a copy. Even though you have paid for a copy of the photo, and even though you are in the photo, the copyright to the photo belongs to the photographer who took it.

I once searched YT for a bass cover, and the one I clicked on turned out to be me doing it. I'd forgotten I knew it already. None of that's true, but it would be funny if it was. 😬

I am seeing them Monday at Wembley. My wife doesn’t want to go so I’m taking the landlord of my local 😂

In situations like this, I would recommend three systems... of course, all driven by budget. Mackie DL16S XR12/16/18 Touchmix 16 Here are the key differences...if you want a built in interface, Touchmix is the only one (although you can add on sliders to control the XR18 with sliders) But that's also the most expensive. Touchmix is iOS. Mackie is iOS/Android (Mac and PC controller software coming soon - mid year apparently... although that has drifted from end of 2018). Behringer is iOS/Andriod/Linux/Mac/PC. Interface wise, I'd say Mackie is the easiest to use straight out of the box, (especially if you are coming from an analogue desk) followed by the Touchmix, followed by the Behringer... although like anything, once you've got used to it, it's pretty intuitive. FX and routing wise, Behringer is the most comprehensive... if you want to delve into that. Most bang for buck is XR18 - but do factor in cost of external wifi router... as the built in one is fairly ropey. To be honest, I'd never trust any built in wifi... as it's just usually the cheapest 2.4Ghz that a manufacturer can find to tick a feature box. There's a reason why ethernet enabled pro mixers don't have built in wifi... Personally, I think like this - 340 quid for the XR18 from Gear4Music... well, for the cost of it alone, it pretty much cements itself as the nobrainer choice out of the 3. Depending upon your requirements, you may even get away with a XR12 or XR16 - the key thing to watch though, is obviously how many inputs you need and crucially the number of auxes - as you only have 2 on the XR12, 4 on the XR16. (6 on the XR18). However - £625 gets you the X32 rack... which I would defo take over the DL16s (£645) £1099 gets you the Touchmix... and the same for the x32 producer (basically the x32 rack with some sliders to fit in a 19" rack). So depending upon your budget... the X32 is more than most bands will ever need... but give you everything you could ever want... and the ability to run a large number of auxes (if stereo in ears ever becomes your thing). If you can afford the X32 Rack and it doesn't take up too much room in the car... that mixer will future proof you whatever route you choose to go. There's also a raft of add on cards... Waves, Dante, etc... so from that point of view, it certainly cements itself as more of a pro mixer than anything else in the price range that it is at. The other thing which it really cool, is that you can utilise affordable digital snakes (SD8/SD16) that is run from a single ethernet cable... so cabling up things like mics on drums can be kept very, very neat. Nobody likes a rats nest across the stage. Hope this helps... give a shout back if you want me to expand on anything. Oh, or course, you can get things like the QU16 - which is a good mix of traditional faders... but also has wifi control... but you will be looking at more like 1500+ for that - similar for the fully physical fader loaded X32. How much are looking to spend?