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So, I was 50 last Saturday... treated myself.

Wasn’t sure whether this should be in here or in Repairs & Technical but here goes…. The restoration of the electrics on my '83 SB-R150 is finally complete and I'm very pleased with the result. Huge thanks go to @Prostheta for his wizardry and patience and also to Rautia Pickups for the pair of MB-1E replacement pickups. This bass was originally listed for sale on here several years ago although I subsequently found it through an ad elsewhere (EDIT - I was actually given the heads up by @Fionn of the ad on FB). Turned out that the BC ad was indeed still live. I purchased it because it was in such beautiful condition, including the original case. The big (very big) and obvious issue was that the original pickups and electronics had long since been removed and disposed of. After conversations with Prostheta as to what was or wasn't possible I decided to push on with trying to get it restored to as close to stock as possible. The first pictures show the bass as I bought it, then with everything stripped out. Note the packers that had been fitted inside the pickup cavities to take the screws for the previously installed Armstrong pickups. Fortunately after some careful chipping away I managed to clear the old glue off to reveal the original pickup screw bushings. As you can see the loom (including 6-position Varitone and preamp) that Prostheta provided is a work of art and it seemed a shame to have to try and cram it into the seemingly tiny electronics cavity in the back of the bass. It was a squeeze but it went in and it is beautifully quiet running. No humming, no buzzing, even sat directly in front of the amp with the volume up to gigging levels it is uber quiet. Finally there are a couple of pics with this now complete bass taking its place alongside my R60 and R80. I may look out for a set of black or bronze pickup screws as the silver ones do stand out a little but all in all I'm thrilled with it. It sounds great with a powerful preamp and a huge range of tones and I know it’ll be good for years. I'm a happy chappy and I hope you enjoy the pics showing the seemingly simple but oh not so simple transformation. 😀

When I say these guys are talented its an understatement. The guy on the left is just the best of the best drummers, ex session guy from London. Has to be heard to be believed as to how good he is... Far right is the lead guitarist from Dublin. Fantastic, into his Snarky Puppy etc. The guy in green is the multi talented play keys from his MacBook crazy guitar vocalist etc etc. Then there is the Bubingagroovebooster on bass with backing vocals. To be honest I was loosing faith in finding other musicians who love the same music as me. But here we are 6 months down the line. The music is all original. its latin rock jazzy funk.The thing is its just SUPER tight. We will go over a song 20 times. I told Dan that we need to go over and over it until it becomes more than perfect.. It becomes natural. I got that philosophy from Steely Dan and it works. We rehearse for 6/7 hours twice a week. Im very excited about this music/these guys. Got our own studio that we rent and are putting in a booth and PA etc. Just when I had lost hope in finding a band. Its a strange world.!

I've just dug out the debut album by The Police "Outlandos D'Amour' I havent heard it in years. Great simple bass lines by Sting before he became a monumental bellend. 😋

It almost certainly sounds better through the TV than it does there.

Second one done and I know relic is marmite but I like it. Took a bit of inspiration from a relic CS P bass but toned it down a bit. I like it and sounds epic! Nice matching/non matching pair 😁 Roll on two festivals this weekend 🤘

Played a standard pub gig on Friday in Bicester then today at a family festival in the grounds of Blenheim Palace. What a startling view! Always nice to play outside but it does test your rig when there is no FOH support for the bass. The sound guy appeared to be suffering from sunstroke, he was certainly very red, I hope he's OK. Made for an interesting afternoon/early evening. Here's a snap shot of our view as we played

Watched 57 seconds of the killers. He really isn’t a good singer is he? Oh well, that’s glasto’s TV coverage done for me again for another year.

The Glastonbury you see on TV is the one parents are happy to take their teenage kids to. Meanwhile Pilton festival carries on away from the cameras, where there is pretty much every type of entertainment one can imagine or wish for and some you've never even dreamt of!

Sheryl Crow and bass - amazing Charlatans - terrible but that Status Bass has decent crunch and was nice - definite highlight. Michael kiwanuka - always loved him. Stormzy - what a show and mixed up tracks and actually had live band sounding great. But I agree, here in TV land the bass has been great and I can’t wait for Kylie - Bassist uses Sandberg’s - so i will be happy and he is good. Bring on Glastontelly with cheap unlimited booze and habitable toilets in easy reach and a comfy bed

Actually it’s a 50/50 bass here’s a pic of what it ought to look like....

I’m hovering about signing up for the current 26 week accelerator............ Again. I think the last time an offer appeared for membership I was hovering and decided against it. I get confused by academy membership and enrolment in these specific courses. Why not have one membership and everything else is part of that? I hate choice 😂 What I have realised in my own playing is i have two modes of playing. Playing along to music - which had been my staple for many years mostly self taught with the occasional bout of lessons that I rarely kept up with. Much later on I picked up Scales, modes, arpeggios etc all from online stuff. What I've realised is I don’t play the same at all when doing these different types of practice. Most of the structure and form of my fretting hand goes out of the window when I play “music” and reappears when doing “scale” types exercises. I think it comes from years of copying whatever I’m listening to at the time. I wonder if I’m too long in the tooth to change my technique. Is it too embedded in me after all this time?

Just got my Thumpinator in the post. I don’t have a gig or rehearsal for a while to test properly, but had a play in the house. Banging all the strings lightly with the palm of my hand seems to demonstrate the inaudible effect of the Thumpinator - there is a lot less cone movement with the Thumpinator plugged in. I should think this will have a very positive effect on the compressor now too. Can’t wait for a gig now!

How old fashioned to go to a 3 day festival in a muddy or dusty (trench foot or sun stroke) field for the artists. The people I know who go to Glastonbury go for the event.

Good for him! Sadly I think the rest of the band just weren’t on it. They didn’t seem interested. I am not the biggest fan to be fair but have always liked them in a ‘ turn up the car radio’ sort of way so it was disappointing to see such a lacklustre performance. Tell him he is wasted on them 😉

Who's Tom? 😉

Boutique basses - especially multi-string are definitely out of kilter with the visual and sound aesthetic at the moment. In these days of rock, funk and jazz now all minority or specialist music forms creates a perfect storm of redundancy for these old world tools of exploration and growth. The UMG music fire, mainstream adoption of urban and dance music and the Spotify/iTunes industry shift is creating a mass extinction event for rock music and bass within that. Shorter less pretentious answer is boutique not fashionable - sell but at high price to recoup loss whilst Fender has the mojo at the moment so sell opportunistically at a high price. Any way, it's a buyers market for boutique basses...

I don't think much of this Oasis tribute 😐

Foals are sooo boring.

I do like an Antigua bass

Do you know I had it on watch. But knowing others here are after it - I’ll not bother. im already in another bidding war. 🤦🏻‍♂️😂

Following on from my earlier post, here's my now restored SB-R150 with it's siblings. 😁 I've created a thread in build diaries showing the loom, pickups fitted etc.

@Si600 attached a sketch of the bridge ...

Only seen Michael Kiwanuka's set but thought the sound in general was a world better than anything I've heard on the Glastonbury TV broadcasts for many years.

That folks is a Hayman 40/40 or Shergold Modulator body with a cheap Japanese neck transplanted to it and a custom pickguard and pickups. Note the Perspex bridge. The lacquer cracking is typical of a Hayman, looking closer it has F holes so definitely a rare Hayman 20/20 ?semi acoustic body. It’s something I will definitely be having a bid on!

We can only lisetn to that for another four months, Then we have a diet of this...

Looking at the bass model, the bridge looks pretty normal format, so I'd look at a replacement bridge with piezo saddles. Hipshot do them, as do Schaller, probably others too, depending on suitable dimensions. Don't forget string spacing!

Firstly, do you know it's the speaker or it could be the x-over. To test the speaker a very quick and dirty method is to use a 9v battery across the speaker terminals. don't completely connect it, connect 1 leg of the battery to 1 terminal and quickly touch the other terminal in an On/Off motion. If the speaker moves and a dull thud is heard, the speaker is doing something. Regarding impedance and crossovers. What the x-over does is channel certain frequencies to the different speakers. So in a hypothetical case, if you had a x-over that was designed to send anything under 1KHz to the bass speaker, 1-2 KHz to the mid and above 2Khz and above to the horn, only 1 of the speakers is in circuit at any time so if they are 8 Ohm drivers, it's an 8 Ohm Cab. It's a very basic explanation.

Next time You see him, please ask him if he finds Tom’s Page Boy haircut as hilarious as it is horrific

That one is quite weird , Martin is a good friend of a friend of mine , and I bump into him at family event that my friend puts on . It is very odd to see this down to earth brummie, who you really wouldn’t know in the street, rocking it out to 30,000 dudes who are singing along to your hits I don’t know why it should be odd , but then, I don’t have much social interaction with the stars

Maybe it would be more accurate to say high-price... since any bass over about £500 is an expensive one to me! I would still consider a 'correct' vintage Fender or ealrly Warwick etc. to be extremely desirable though - in fact I'd take them over most of the high-end basses by your definition, although it's all academic - I was only window shopping 😉

Cheers Neil, One of the few benefits of practice! 😀 It's one of those that needs to be bob on, and I'm not quite there with it yet... quite interesting, when I picked it up the other day - I can't play the main bit across the strings without it sounding rough, so I played it just on the D string... I assume that's how the original was played, but with the addition of a little palm damping. Funky little line, though. 👍

Ooooo, I hadn't seen this one...here's mine 😀

Jon sent me a few pictures.

Hi all. Mark here introducing myself. I last played with anything like regularity back in the late eighties. R&B, pub rock, some ska influenced stuff. All for fun and nothing very serious. I hung up my bass when kids and family and work took over. i started out with a short scale Burns bass dating back to the early sixties. It was a dreadful thing with very high action. Scarey what it would be worth now. Sold it and bought a Shergold Marathon in 79 which had a great neck if a bit neck heavy. Now I am on the verge of retiring and the nest is almost empty I am thinking of having another go. i was always a bit of a trial and error bluffer. Maybe this time I’ll try and learn to play properly.

Ha! That would be just too delicious, Fender suing Gibson over the Les Paul body shape

Frankly, I think it's time that the estate of the late Mr Paul Bigsby (1899–1968) sued both Fender and Gibson. Below: From 1947-1948 (four years before the Les Paul and six years before the Strat). Nice headstock and body shape, eh? and this two pup Bigsby: It is a fact that both Leo Fender and Les Paul knew Bigsby, sat around and discussed guitars, saw his work, etc. Suck on that, Gibson bread-head dudes.

I don't know, my son is learning piano mostly by book/online and there really is no substitute for someone hands on making sure he has the right technique.

Probably not any use now youve bought it but I have both a lined and unlined and find the unlined much easier to play. I only have side dots on the fret positions (The usual 3,5,7 etc). I, probably like most people, thought it would be the other way round but nope. Those lines and dots just confuse you and keep you in your fretted 'box'. So if your up to buying another I would go for nothing but side dots. Fretless makes you think about what your doing. Which is a good thing edit: They look soooooooo cool as well A