Leaderboard

When the rest of the bass playing world wakes up to the fact of HB's astonishing ability to turn out flawless instruments and flog them at a 5th of the price of the competition, there will be more than a few manufacturers looking nervously over their shoulders. This is another beauty. Not 'good for a beginner' or 'OK considering the price point' or 'will do for a back up' or 'good as a start point for a mod' or 'might be OK once I replace every working part of it'. No. It's just great, straight out of the box, no qualification, no prevarication. It's beautifully finished, plays like a dream balances and sounds like a a P Bass. 42mm at the nut, no sharp edges, no dead spots, beautiful 3ply tort plate, no buzzing, no blemishes. And a laughable price tag. *sigh* in love again. Happens all the time.

Because the whole point of being a musician is mastering the creative ability to comply when punters come up to you at a gig and say 'Can you play the theme from Les Parapluies De Cherbourg? Not the original, I mean, the Metallica version. It's the wife's favourite and it's her birthday'. As for reading music, that's just cheating. When I was tympanist with the CBSO we all got creative enough that Simon Rattle could suddenly jump up on his podium and shout 'Mozart 38, D Major, GO!' and we'd nail it every time.

Well here it is, photo's of my Westfield EB3 Bass guitar, and my Warwick BC80 amp. Now just to start to learn to play the bass! The adventure begins 😀

Context; Like a lot of people, lock-down has allowed for a little extra "me" time, and, provided me the opportunity to indulge in my hobbies a little more... I've always loved woodwork, me and my Grandad when I was really little would spend a lot of time in his garage workshop making anything and everything from wood. Recently I have been wanting to buy a new bass, but while looking at loads of options I just couldn't shake the thought that I could just make my own bass? In general I know how things are made, I know how to work wood... I should maybe just give this a go... In may I started working on my design in CAD and subsequently built 6 basses from redwood, refining and working out the design. These redwood basses made me realise just how many things there are to consider while building the instrument and highlighted just how many things can quickly go wrong and destroy a build (Routers anyone?) , I highly recommend to anyone wanting to build an instrument that they start in cheaper and easier to work timbers and work the complicated stuff out before you chip in to your expensive stuff, it took me 6 attempts to get things worked out completely. So with the Redwood stuff done I'm now ready to start the final bass. Build; This is the basic CAD data for the bass I'm looking to build; I'm building this bass at the weekends and most evenings after work so I hope that updates will be pretty rapid and daily. I was keen to use a mix of my favorite woods on this bass, the neck is a 7 piece laminate, an Ovangkol heart, with a Wenge, Zebrano, Wenge sandwich either side. The fingerboard will be Wenge and the body will be Swamp Ash with a Wenge top cap or tone center, haven't decided yet as the swamp ash looks lovely against the neck woods and I'd hate to hide that with a Wenge top, while a Wenge slice in the middle would look lovely. I'll work it out later. First thing I did was rip the timbers down to rough size, giving myself enough tolerance to plane them to final thickness. I flipped the Zebrano strips to mirror each other which gives me, in my opinion, a really cool chevron look, This will be the bass body end so it's not hidden by the fretboard. I got the rip downs pretty accurate with the saw, could probably have cleaned them up with a hand plane, but I'm going to throw these on the planer thicknesser and give my arms a rest. I really love the sandwich, to my eyes it looks great. The Ovangkol heart is the perfect aesthetic compliment to the Zebrano / Wenge pieces. The Swamp ash was cut and planed and looks lovely against the neck woods, hopefully you can see now, why I don't want to cover this with Wenge! But... if I do pop a Wenge top on the Ash, this is the board I have bought for that, It has really lovely grain and is lighter in appearance than the neck timber Wenge so might create a lovely contrast. It'll only be a small top cap however, approx 5mm thick as this plank weighs a bloomin' tonne. This is the Wenge for the fretboard, fantastic grain, Think this will sand up and saw brilliantly, it's a fantastically stable piece. Got all of the neck laminates through the planer thicknesser leaving about 6mm tolerance in max width so I can pass the entire glue up through the thicknesser again to get the final thickness. Glue up of the neck is a bit of a nightmare, boards like to move all over and I had more than a couple of accidents in the redwood basses, so lesson learned here is to leave as much wiggle room as possible and then plane and thickness the whole assembly after. I Put as many clamps as i possibly could on the glue up and used belt clamps to pull the underside of the boards level as they love to move, on the next bass I build I'm going to look to bolt the ends of the boards so no movement can occur, but this glue up is definitely the hardest bit of gluing on the build, my coffee was well and truly cold after I finished gluing up so note to self and others make your coffee after glue up! The boards are sitting pretty well in the glue up, should only need minor work to get this face ready as my reference face and then I can whittle down the thickness tomorrow! So tomorrow, clamps off, quick clean up, plane, thickness, and then depending on how much time I have and how I'm feeling confidence wise I might start the scarf joint. Thank you for looking at the build and having a read.

It never did Stravinsky any harm. Or Chris Potter. Its a non argument. The two disciplines are not mutually exclusive. You can do one, t'other or both. Some are creative because, some in spite of. It's all good.

There you go. No need to thank me.

In situations like this, I only start threads once the situation is resolved, or a brick wall has been hit. I don't believe that was the case when this thread was started, and that's a shame.

The only Jack socket worth thinking about is Switchcraft, nothing else. Full stop. The end. IMHO, YMMV, etc.etc. There's a reason why there are 50 and 60 + year old Fenders around still working with original components 😎 (Other makes of guitars and basses are available, apparently 🤣)

Hello, I learnt that thing about nitro thanks to basschat. I saw several Fenders vintage, even Highway ones as new, and never see that kind of shiny. I'm happy to learnt that 🙂 The customer said me It was probably my fault during the unpacking. Also the scratch in the back body 😞 For sure I want a new bass in perfect conditions. If not, as a customer, you have to help me. Thanks.

I’ve never posted one of these before but this just arrived today after a 7-month wait. Sadly it has a bit of an issue at the neck joint and some buzzing on the open D but I’m hoping a trip to Jon Shuker will sort that out. Luckily it sounds lovely and plays really nicely. The neck profile is wonderful. Here’s a clip: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CsIxUzVpni9GGTdnOjSyycjlzWIOn_PW/view?usp=drivesdk

After having joined a heavy rock/mild metal band, I felt that my Sunburst Maruszczyk Jake PJV, Godin A5 or 5 string double bass didn't really fit the bill, image wise, so the hunt was on for a Thunderbird type bass. I narrowed it down to either an Epiphone Pro V Thunderbird or a Jackson David Ellefson Kelly Bird V, and with the help of the good people of BC, and the fact that I found a mint one with upgraded pickups and preamp on Reverb, I went for the Jackson. It arrived this afternoon, so, after managing to smuggle it into my home office without anyone seeing (yes dear, I've had it for years), I plugged it in, switched on my Darkglass Microtubes overdrive pedal and launched into the intro to Ace of Spades. Now, I'm not a fan of battery power ie. active basses, but the upgraded EMG DCX (instead of HZ) pickups and 18v BTC preamp made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Oh wow. I was going to strip out the active setup and go passive, but I'm not going to now, this is so good. The strap buttons have already been moved (one to the body by the base of the neck, the other high up on the back of the body) so balance is perfect, with no neck dive at all and I also managed to buy a gigbag that fits the shape perfectly.

Came across some pics of my old basses circa 78-84 i reckon. WAL custom fretless (flame sycamore) Shergold 4 & 8 twin neck (Shergolds first 8 string adapted from their 6 string bass)

It will for those who know what a Coda is.

Surely the best possible outcome, for everyone involved, would now be for Adrian (that seems over familiar but I can't write his surname) to come on and resolve this situation in public. He's been viewing this thread anyway. I don't think things would get nasty as the OP knows and admits his faults in dealing with this situation, and Adrian appears to want to clear this up and not appear the bad guy. Also everyone on this thread so far appears fairly level headed to act as mediators to help cross the language barrier. We are only getting one side of this debate and Adrian asking for this thread to be deleted is not, I feel, the best outcome for his business. Mistakes have been made on both sides which could easily be rectified in public, thus the OP getting a solution and Adrian's company regaining its credibility. Going back and forwards like this isn't helping anyone.

Rest well Tim. was fortunate to spend a good deal of time with the band around the heaven born album time. My favourite memory being invite to eat with the band at a show in at helens, than talking gear with him, Jim ( who is him?) and Jon Poole A truly inspirational musician and human being.

Love KT. She seems a particularly good egg too, and is hilarious to boot. My current -and likely future fave - the late, legendary Sandy Denny;

Emmylou Harris. One of the few people to cause me to cry tears of joy at a live show. She was performing with Rodney Crowell and they sang Pancho and Lefty.

Hello, I add a mail from 6th july I sent yo Adrian. Please, read It. Thank you.

I bought a NOS (not intentionally....it was literally new old stock) 65 Jaguar from Peach Guitars, and the guitar was perfect (and I still have it) but there were some nitro related stress marks like the one in this topic (probably smaller though). That was different. The whole batch of guitars were heavily discounted to clear out the Fender EU warehouse apparently. I was very lucky to get some a wonderful instrument for that price. However, on a brand new instrument that has just been manufactured? Nope. I wouldn't be happy. Also, it just seems the bass isn't quite up to expectations, and the customer service is absolutely horrific. I wouldn't buy one now. I would just offer you a full refund if I was him, and have the bass refinished or sold as b stock. Simple. No stress.

Nicely done 👍

Mrs T gets grumpy if we don’t. Happy wife, easy life. It’s no chore, plus if I don’t do it - the postman/milkman will...🤨

I think maybe it would be if the formal stuff is all you do, but if you want to spread your wings beyond that you'd have a much better base to work from. Years ago I went out with an excellent cellist, a really proficient reader, and very highly thought of among her peers. Fascinated, she showed me around the cello and tried to show me how to bow (roughly). The radio was on in the background and I started jamming along to the riff from Prodigy's Firestarter. She could never have done that, as simple a part as it was, just because it wasn't something that had ever occurred to do. Music came to her written, and that's how she consumed it, listening to music she liked was a separate thing in her mind, and creating something herself just wasn't on her radar. I reckon it's the case though, that had she chosen to turn her attention to that she'd have made me look like an idiot in no time.

If the proposition is that musical training and knowledge restricts creative talent, that doesn't stack up. There are very few examples of musically uneducated creative types, who are successful, and everyone of those guys will have an association with one or more people with extensive musical knowledge, to fill in the gaps. Unless you can afford to hire a full time arranger, work at understanding your instrument and the ways in which you can improve playing it and you'll produce far better music than any uneducated "creative" types you're likely to meet. You can't teach real creativity but you can be creative if you know how your instrument and music works. Most musicians are nowhere near as "creative" as they like to believe and most know less about their instrument than they think.

I think this is a medium scale, so maybe not worthy of this thread. Picked it up this week. Sold my Talman short scale and a Dano guitar so this cost me nothing really. €25 was the difference. 90s Samick. Very good condition. I might get rid of the pickguard. Feels on the light side. Strung with roundwounds, so there´s a bit of buzzing going on. Might look at flatwounds. I'll see. What about the bridge? Should it go and be replaced? I don't have an amp here to test it, so will have to wait

When Springsteen sang "You can't start a fire without a spark" he was displaying an absolute lack of understanding of auto-ignition temperature, pyrophoric substances and the basic mechanism of lighting a match. Non safety matches ignite due to the friction generated overcoming the activation energy of the highly unstable phosphorous which then spontaneously combusts, and its this that creates the spark. It isn't the spark causing the flame.

There you go, fixed and shorter

It's no more a barrier to being musically creative, than being able to read and write is to telling stories.

MB1. To Start................ ............Judie Tzuke................. Bass Player....John "Rhino" Edwards... Now Playing Bass For Status Quo

BEAD is a great tuning but this whole discussion made me want to go try out a Yam TRBX or a Cort Artisan B5. Today I delivered Mrs S to meet a friend of hers in York. First time they’ve met since lockdown began so I offered to make myself scarce and let them have some proper catching-up time. What to do with a few hours to kill in York? Zip out to Gear4music, that’s what... I tried the Yam. Very nice but didn’t really excite me. No Corts in stock so I had a little go on an Ibanez SR305 (similar weight, same string spacing) thinking that if I like it I might take a punt on a Cort mail order. And very nice it was too. So nice that I started trying some of the other Ibbys. All very nice but the one that just spoke to me as soon as I picked it up, the one that absolutely sang when I played it was this one... SR1345B Premium Nordstrand pickups, narrow spacing, reasonably light weight, bloody lovely Hence, this is now a NBD thread.

First Aid Kit. Amazing voices and harmonies.

Just from a rough guess, based on the letters on the headstock, I’d say it was a G U I L D something

In 35 years of playing, I realised this is only my second white bass. Sadowsky Metro Express, we are getting to know each other.

just under 100 quid posted

I think we've established that you can be creative and / or successful with or without formal training.

I think we can go around and around on the rights or wrongs of the buyer's approach. The bottom line as far as Adrian is concerned is that buying musical instruments is often an emotional process, and the logic underlying a buyer's decisions is often very far from what common sense dictates it should be. This thread has not perhaps changed the way we think about the basses in question - we all know stuff happens, errors are made, even the best people have bad days - but I think many of us feel differently about the business that makes them, and those feelings are the critical factor in the market place (look at What RH did to people's feelings about Rics). As is suggested above, given he runs a big business, Adrian is naive and/or arrogant for not recognising this simple fact of sales, for not saying "OK, let's get it sorted", and for doing so irrespective of his views of the objective rights and wrings of the situation. In fact, he is arguably acting not just arrogantly but irresponsibly (see the Ratner reference above), especially given that all indicators suggest that the market is about to get a whole lot harder. Is the bass worth what the buyer paid? Probably. Does the builder have a case? Yes. Is the buyer happy? No. The ultimate aim of a business is its happy customers.

Yup, indeed i've woken up in Lanark, also Helensburgh and Balloch. I've boarded the train in Glasgow and woke up on the other side of the platform after going round the Hamilton circle back into the town.

And to the fret slotting. Another good buy from G&W that has done a decent number of fretboards over the last few years: The red on the bench isn't blood - it's some red stain from Rog's recent veneer job The unit is screwed down to the bench and the top dog clamps on my bench are a bit of a godsend to stop movement during the fairly tough and vigorous sawing. Note also the packing pieces, again to stop the fretboard/template assembly from moving at all. And don't fret (yes, I know ) about the 25.000" etch - it's a two way template. The side I'm using is 25.500" And this is where the fretboard will join the body - at the 16th fret: The next task is working out what the next task is

I'll take two thirds of 3 sets.

Basschat doughnuts! nom nom. I'm in.

Hiho, Have you thought about an Epiphone t-bird pro iv. The neck through one which is active and has the schaller 3D type bridge. Discontinued now so might get a deal S/H. I have a transparent black one had it for years,great bass with plenty thunder.

We had our rehearsal/practice yesterday and the others all thought the UB804 was “fantastic” in looks and sound. To them it sounded like a double bass!! Everyone happy. Now I’ve got to decide if I sell my leftie Rick4003, because I can’t see when I’ll need it again. Thanks again for your help, guys. 👍👍

Can you configure the Nitro cracks anywhere on the body, or does it need to be same as the OP's? 😏🤨

Access to higher frets? Burn him for he is a witch/wizzard/non-gender specific magic person.

8 replies in and this thread has already descended into complete and utter reasonableness.

You kept Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da?!

Dusty Springfield. has anyone ever sung a song better than this? Chaka Khan - the melody still lingers on: