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Everyone beat me to the punch in uploading some really excellent pix from the day (sorry, work intervened!). But here's what Google decided to do with the pix I did take - shakiness down to them, not my subsequent whisky consumption! Midlands Bash Bass 040519.mp4

Picked this beauty up from @Moos3h last night... thank you so, so much, and I hope you had a safe journey to the Riviera This really is a 37 year itch finally scratched... these were all the rage when I started out playing, I'd always fancied getting my hands on one and now after all these years I have. Yes it has some issues, as James pointed out in his ad: the electrics are not working and one of the switches is knackered... should all be straightforward (oh blimey, that's the kiss of death isn't it ) and if it still doesn't work I've got a Yamaha 2-band eq I can put in there instead; there's a hairline crack in the neck... I'll flood some thinned glue into it if it needs anything, but it doesn't seem to affect stability or playability; it's got a few major league dings in the body as the pic shows... I'm not sure what to do with these really, a refinish would cost a fortune and I don't want to spend a shedload of cash on it. I might just seal the edges of the dings with glue to stop any more flaking off, and call it mojo The serial number places it in December 1982. The neck feels great and it plays well, action is fine and all the hardware works. The missing knob is present, I'd taken it off when I took the pic. I've not yet plugged it in so I don't know how it sounds, but from what I've seen on yootoob the 1A core tone appears to be P-bass-on-steroids. I have a feeling that my bitsa P is going to struggle to keep its place in my working group. Happy day.

Righty! We counted the cash and we’ve raised £186 that’s been donated nordoff robbins (in the mother’s name of course).

Billy was such an influence on me that my first "decent" Bass was a black Aria Pro II. Here's my 16 year old self throwing a pose with my Integra 😂

The Cure are massive. They filled Hyde Park at their 40th anniversary gig last year.

Can the classifieds just be divided into 'things I might be interested in' and 'things I am not interested in'? I'm sure that would be easy to implement!

Sooo happy with my new sound now.

It might quell the author's conscience a little to remember that purchasing a vintage 4001 such as this is a Hall-guilt free undertaking. Back when checkerboard 4001s (with crushed pearl FWIs & gap tooth bridge, of course!) were being made, little Johnny Hall would've still been in the back yard with his GI Joes, & half a gallon of gas siphoned out of Papa F.C's Studebaker, playing My Lai.

Whenever someone asks me if I'm on Facebook or WhatsApp and I say no, they always give me this expression like I've just told them that I want to slurp yoghurt out of their shoes while they're still wearing them. S.P.

I hate it when people summarise my ramblings into one pithy sentence. But basically, yes - well put 😀

Heavyweight Equals Fabulous Tone (HEFT).

Ill be honest I've listened to bits and bobs of FNM over the years, and the musical chameleon that is Mike, what I have listened to is great. then i got into Mr Bungle which is sooooo good. Girls of Porn being a favourite . I love this though. The bass line from Bill is really great and totally owns this recording. I know good music when I hear it. I think.

You realise that the cat now legally owns the bass?

That takes me back - I had a 1978 poo brown one of those in the early '90's, when I was broke but needed a cheap 4 seater. Plus was that with the leather and walnut it really did feel like driving a tiny Jag / Roller - minus points were too numerous to list, not least the hydrolastic suspension regularly leaking out so you'd come back to your parked car to find it listing to one side, looking at you like a sad but ugly dog. The rusting body held together with filler and glassfibre patches would have probably gone on forever, but one day the driveshaft fell off. I now have a 1982 Triumph TR7 convertible (harvest gold with beige tartan interior....) - will I never learn? Back to the OP - I know nothing at all about Mr Hall, but have owned 4 Rics (only one now, but a keeper - a '72/73 FG 4001). I'd say Harley-Davidson are a better comparison - they stuck with basically the same agricultural, unergonomic, fairly primitive but iconic design for their entire history - but it does what it does so well, and somehow just outcools the rest.

Too late. Soon as I bought the car, the girl used that picture for a "crash for cash" claim against me. She's saying I rammed into her from behind... 😕

and being Rickenbacker, square wheels

I thought the point with JH was that he’s changed nothing. He’d have put a square steering wheel on a car and tell everyone to go f**k themselves for 30 years

Mr Bungle - California. Great album.

^ A perfectly reasonable point of view and very well expressed ^ You may therefore wish to avoid the various Gibson threads on BC where for years some of us have been whaling on Mr Henry Juskiewiecz's ar$e like it was a dinner gong. By comparison, Mr Hall's had it easy.

I was going to say chopstick. 🙂

That's a chair leg he's peeping out from behind...

Hank's finishing up his time in a back office behind the photocopier room, staring at his executive desk toy (one of those dipping bird things) and thumbing through the sits vac pages, his lips moving as he reads the words. The new management are a squad of neo-millennial hedge fund wonks headed up by the bloke who used to run a jeans company, possibly Levis. The musical instrument world holds its breath.

I think that the configurator is there to display aesthetics more than to include every option (there's no Umbo for instance!). When the range of custom options is so varied then choices have to be made and one pickup looks much like another of the same shape.

In a period of considerable financial hardship some years ago, I considered putting my beloved Wal up for sale. I took it out of its gigbag, looked at it, picked it up, played it, put it back down, looked at it again, and said out loud to myself, "For fck's sake man, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?". Decided that I would probably sell a kidney first.

This is a fantastic game and one I regularly participate in. I've got Fairytale of New York and Jingle Bells into carol arrangements at Cathedrals, the Imperial March into the Sewer scene in Les Mis and one show had a nightly battle with the guitarist to get Led Zep quotes into Grease. I was doing well, managed Dazed and Confused, Ramble On and Kashmir in various places if I recall, until he destroyed me by launching into Black Dog instead of the regular solo for Grease Lightning. I valiantly acknowledged defeat.

I don't (and haven't ever) play either. What category does that put me in?

It seems to be ok - It's actually in tune! And a smidge under 8lb! I'm guessing about I'll save another third of a pound when I get some Hipshots on it too.

They've been ahead of the game with most things so that all makes sense to me. It takes a bit of time to get a safe site up and running. Making the new pick-ups was probably the easier part. The configurator is a nice bit of fun if you aren't buying to see what can be done on a bass of your choosing. It's also a great starting point for anyone thinking of getting their ideas down on paper All credit to Sandberg Dave

As an organ player, I stopped smuggling popular tunes into my improvisations during services at one specific point: a little child loudly sang along with the popular kids tune that was my contraband that day.

Think you're being a little harsh tbh. The Sandberg configurator is one of the, if not the, best configuration sites online. It gives you literally thousands or options using the stock electronics, if you're serious about buying a bass, a quick email to a distributor will let you know the additional cost. Don't forget, software development is very expensive, even adding a seemingly simple option can work out to be days, if not weeks of work, depending on how many parts of the site the change touches.

So, in summary, JH is a bit of a Rottweiler as far as defending his product, but probably not best suited to a role in Customer Services.

@Al Krow to roughly quote you and say I hate sounding like a broken record - (and no I don’t expect my posts to be doted upon) but I have said and others have said multiple times I am pretty sure there is no upcharge for Sandberg in house be they old of Black labels - there is an upcharge for Haüssel’s. Get your bass configured, copy paste the identifier generated - email Sandberg - and make any tweaks and and you get your answer, or to confirm if there is an upcharge, just email them. It’s pretty simple to get an answer, then most of the debate falls away

The Ned model is headless.

And would definitely fall over if you stood it against your amp. John Hall never made such a daft looking instrument.

This rectum: Also, yeah, clickbaity titles... One of my subscription channels posted a video a while back explaining how youtube had changed their algorithms so basically if you didn't have "NUCLEAR EXPLOSION FAIL LOL" urls, the chances of you getting views is like, none...

That's what Harley riders tell themselves anyway. Repeatedly, I'd imagine. Riders of other motorcycles may take a different view.

It's not one of their finest visual designs but the above was one of only a few pix of Chris Martin since he shaved off his moustache, an initiative for which we should all be profoundly grateful.

It's OK lads the question doesn't need any more answering. The man is happy with what he's got.

But to answer your question likely between £1 and £3.5k brand new

So I'd agree with @Al Krow that Delano's can sound a bit sterile to my ear too and wouldn't be my choice of bass tone either. @Al Krow shared a video of his band playing (the 'Livin' On A Prayer' cover from way back) and the bass tone was a tad sterile/MiDi like and I'm guessing that was a combination of straight DI and those pick ups and it didn't sound there was any 'post eq' or 'active eq' engaged on that video Al? I've also played other Sandberg basses with other pick-ups which I have preferred over Delano's - if the fit is right a change of pick up (and pre amp if desired) isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme especially if the bass and new pick ups/pre is picked up used. @mcnach posted a very sensible approach to trying and then ordering a Sandberg bass - have a pretty good idea of what you like, try some models out at a dealer if possible (make the trip to one if it means that much to get it as perfect as possible), note the models and get the shop/dealer to find out the spec and get your order made! Fender don't offer that, Gibson don't offer that. Maybe G&L and Sandberg are the two companies who spring to mind who do? (Don't add a list I'm not buying a new bass any time soon!) I do find it a wee bit of a stretch that someone as diligent as @Al Krow who keenly researches other manufacturers gear to the nth degree can't email a company as accessible as Sandberg and ask what the up charge, if any, is on a set of black labels (or any other offerings) whacked into a California VT5 would be but can wax lyrical on "chip set used", "frequency response of", "Xover point", "mA draw" etc. on a whole bunch of other gear. Maybe he's just cage rattling for sport However I will also agree with Al that the 'pick up option' would be really help if it listed the (additional) charges for other pick up brands V's in house but again a phone call/email could have that info in minutes/days.

Shag, marry, push off a cliff?

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I have an unbridled loathing of social media even though I have accounts with Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook though I hardly ever look at them. What gets me is this notion that if you're not social media savvy then you're some socially dysfunctional luddite. What's particularly insidious about YT is that it's brainwashed a generation of kids into thinking that being a You Tuber is a career. They've seen e.g. how young women giving make-up tips to teens has gained them millions of followers and the advertisers have honed in on this and made them stinking rich and celebrities to boot. When my youngest left year 6 her school published a hand-out which gave little bios on the leavers and what they plan to do with their lives. Of the 30 kids, just 3 or 4 had a proper job in mind. Of the rest, around 8 wanted to be You Tubers while many of the others saying they wanted to be celebrities of some sort/on the TV. None of them even wanted to be an astronaut FFS!

YouTube has a lot to answer for. It has created this online personality cult that even ordinary people doing ordinary things feel the need to lecture you about their humdrum daily life on Facebook as if they're teaching you ancient Tibetan wisdom, when really they just want you to "like" that they gave a homeless person a quid. One of my mates puts the most tedious crap on Facebook about sanding down his coffee table and we just slay him for it every time. Worse still is LinkedIn with recruiters spouting sanctimonious shite about how they were the only person who gave the unqualified sex offender a job in a toy shop when nobody else would and now he's CEO of Disney, etc. Some are obviously bots, some are spoof accounts, some are just young recruiters trying to create a noticeable online personality for themselves, but it's funny how many have exactly the same story to share about how nice and wholesome they are. The whole "unboxing" thing baffles me. I don't want to watch some ordinary person unpack a Kenwood blender or whatever, I literally don't give a dog's Richard. My nephews used to watch YouTube videos of adults unboxing toys like transformers and other weird videos of adults playing with kids toys. This is harmful in a minor way, the boys were then just playing out what they had heard on YouTube with their toys instead of using their own imagination. Life was better when we lived in relative ignorance and had only daily newspapers, four colour TV channels and taped songs off the radio.

There would possibly be an unseemly scuffle should one appear for anything less than Well Upholstered Collector Money...I've never seen one of those before, and I love it...

Ex-cuse me. That's the original Electric Xii headstock. It's known by many as a Smurf Hat headstock but 'droopy' sock works just as well. I love Electric Xiis

Also marketed as the Arrow and the Musiclander and using spare parts and hacked- up Bass V bodies. I'd have one of these quirky little mofo's in a shot. Then there was the Maverick which was basically derived from the Electric XII. CBS must have had a thing for band-sawing perfectly good guitar bodies. The bastards. Of course, Bass V's and Electric XII's go for mad money these days.

I would expect Stevie Nicks to personally scrub my shreddies for a whole year at that price!!