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OK - good progress this morning. Martin at SimS sent me the new switches at super-quick time - and they're in - and they all work I still have to pop the front strap button on, put the fixing screws on the back hatch (yup - magnets aren't going to cut the mustard ) and do the final pickup height adjustment but, basically, it's done This is why it will need screws - the hatch actually stays shut (see below) but it would only want the wires to 'relax' a smidgen and it would pop a magnet hatch right off: Here are some shots to be getting on with: Here, the hatch is just pushed on and stays there fine even without magnets...but after, say, changing the battery, it only needs one of the 47 wires to shift a bit and even with magnets, it would be off By the way - although the LEDs light up as soon as the jack is plugged in (there is no option with the SimS switches for them to be turned off) the pickups don't actually need the battery to work. So if you wanted to me a little less colourful, you can just take the battery out and it will still play just as well. As always, thanks for the tremendous support along the way, folks. I always means a lot

So thought I’d chime in with a new addition to my collection, a Serek Lincoln, made in Chicago. A very nicely put together bass with 4 way switch for a range of tones including series and parallel options. The sounds are very different to what I’ve come across in any bass I’ve owned and offer me something different to my Fender and Rick mainstay sounds. The craftsmanship is like nothing I’ve had before - sublime! Just need to get it out for a test run now and out of the office chair!

Lots of gigs I've wanted to leave early from, but it's generally frowned upon if a member of the band doesn't complete the set 🙂

Done, To be polished and reassembled now.

KFC?

Yep, it has that sound. Very thick, wooly & full!

Having read most of what @Bassassin has to say about Antoria and having recently bought an Antoria short scale EB-3 that I'm very pleased with, I saw an Antoria Precision come up on eBay. 70s. Black with maple neck. I didn't reach as much as I thought it would so is now here with me. So, 70s Antoria are Fujigen, which implies a certain quality (I won't say the word 'lawsuit'), and this would have been (according to Jon who Knows Things) the same as an Ibanez 2366B. No meaningful serial numbers so difficult to date precisely, Jon reckons possibly mid-70s. So, yes, a well used body, maple neck, aftermarket black pickguard. Was strung with rounds when I got it and sounded very much like a P bass. Tone fully open it can get quite brittle but rolled off a bit you get a lovely sweet spot. Weighs a decently lightweight 3.8kg, so about 8.3lbs. Nut width is 40mm but the neck is deep. Actually very comfortable. Nothing on the headstock other than a nicely done MOP Antoria inlay. Tuners are 3/8" shafts and a bit clunky. Under the hood is really messy and needs some work as someone with worse soldering skills that I have was let loose on it. I wondered how it stacked up against my JV Squier Precision that was also Fujigen but an '83. JV is 3.4kg. The body shamfers are bigger in the JV. The neck a tad wider at the nut 42mm but shallower. The headstock is a thinner bit of wood and the carving from neck to headstock more elegant. Overall fit and finish are better, the tuners are better quality 1/2" shafts. The maple has aged to a beautiful caramel with some slight figuring about it and almost holographic as you move it around in the light. The tone of the JV is more woody and organic with more character. Pretty much across the board the JV is better. And, tbh, I expected that. But, for what it cost I think it is an excellent bass and I am pleased I bought it. I would gig with it, no hesitation, as the differences to anyone but me would be negligible. But I won't be selling the JV any time soon.

The VAT and import duty situation shouldn't be a problem, so long as all UK forum members is aware that buying from EVERYWHERE outside of the UK is now the same. Add 25% onto the cost of the instrument plus the shipping price and you should be covered. I've bought musical instruments from all over the world and VAT and import duty alone have never put me off. I factor it in when deciding if what I want is good value or not and then make my decision. I just have to add this equation to anything from the EU as well now. The problem is now that if you can find a suitable service that is currently shipping between the UK and EU the prices have been significantly increased, and add to the fact that your bass may spend up to a month traversing EU and UK customs. Those are the things that are going to put me off.

Sorry but can't resist posting my Shuker graphite headless....................pride of the herd.................great thread, some good points made and educational for me...........

Not at all. Great that you can express those feelings in a song. It's the kind of stuff I'd find hard to say to them face to face I'm afraid ☹️.

Before I run out of my quota of 'thanks' emojis, many thanks for the very encouraging comments and feedback, folks

Utterly superb, and for me - out of all of your creations Andy - this is now my No1 favourite👍🏼 I love a headless anyway, but the skill and design that went into this just edge it for me as your best. That control cavity is amazing too 😳 I just hope we get some sound clips because the variation from those pups is gonna be incredible😎 As usual, an awesome, and brilliantly catalogued build diary from one of Basschats favourite gurus 🤩 Fantastic, loved it all the way from the start - thanks for taking the time to share it on here 😉 Well done indeed Sir. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 👌🏼

Are you 100% sure? Have you tried it? No of course you haven't. Hardly any of us have apart from a few people on YouTube and since their sample sizes are one of each and their scientific methodology is essentially non-existent, their results are irrelevant. Trying to pin-point a tonal quality onto one aspect of a bass is close to pointless. So is trying to make generalisations about the sound of a particular "tone wood" as every piece is different. The best thing to do is to take each instrument as a whole. Does it look, play and sound how you would like it? Yes? The buy it. No? Then look elsewhere. Job done.

Sometimes these discussions sound like people arguing about how many grains of sand there are on the beach exactly, while the rest happily play, sunbathe and swim on the sea.

No , just using the lingo of the BC massive

That's because they had Liz Taylor depping and she's not quite up to speed yet. 😉

@joseb84 The SR range would be your go to, I think. The SR370 falls under your budget and the SR500 just over. A secondhand SR from further up the range would be even better and secondhand prices are usually exceptional value for money.

I got Steve Vai's, caught it at the Astoria at the gig filmed for the DVD in 2001. It was mid set and he flicked it into the crowd and my hand just went up and came down full of Vai magic. 99 times out of 100 I would have dropped/missed it. So stuck it in a frame.

I'm not sure if it's been said yet, but I feel like the amount of cost and effort that it's justifiable to put into resilience measures (like backup gear) varies greatly with the amount of pressure and the money involved in a given gig. So I could picture myself taking a lot more precautions with certains kinds of function work than I would for a laid back set in a scruffy pub.

I’d assumed that it was a deliberate humorous mis-spelling by the OP. But that’s just the kind of generous, glass-half-full kind of person I am😀😉.

I caught something off a famous singers backing vocalist once back in the early 80’s (.77mm I reckon ) , I don’t have them anymore does that count?

Here is my entry. I struggled a bit with this and this is the fourth song I started so in the end it was a bit rushed. It's about my dad who died last year. He had a hard life early on and the picture just made me think of overcoming seemingly impossible challenges. I hope it's not too sentimental. Recorded in Cubase, mostly using Xpand with a bit of MT Power Drums and some very, very dodgy vocals.

I had a plectrum given to me by Scotty Moore (Elvis etc) that he gave me at a guitar show in Dallas. I gave it to my mate who was a massive Scotty fan, along with a signed Scotty photo that he gave me to give to my mate too.

Jesus... Alright, we can include famous drumsticks, if that helps? 🤣

The Solution is evident. Have the UK merge with Eire. No more Irish border problem, on land or sea. It's so obvious. ...

I loved Mouldy Old Dough when I was a kid.

Full frontal...

Our music from the 90's/00's? Bleedin' kids!

Why don’t people just say where they are based as a matter of course?

Since a long time I've been latently lusting after a proper EB-3 bass: shortscale, set-neck, 4-way rotary switch. With the emphasis on latently. The prices on Gibsons have exploded the last 2 years, with even playergrade late 1960's EB-0's fetching 4-figure sums, and since I'm a rather picky person, I wanted an EB-3 with the pre 1965 specifications (deep-set heel, wide control spacing), which would further bloat the price. I was aware of the Japanese versions of those (Greco, Burny, Orville, Epiphone), but those seldom if ever appear outside of Japan, and if they do, top-money gets asked for them. So I let that idea of owning an EB-3 for what it was. Then I started browsing eBay in search for a deal, and there I saw a Japanese Epiphone listed with a very short & poor description, but also at a rather low price (just a smidge more as a regular longscale Epiphone EB-3 would cost in the local store), located in Kyoto. Four people were advertising that bass so I had my suspicions it might have been a scam, as one seller had a low price, and the others were asking nearly double of it, more alike the other offerings of different instruments. So I asked the cheapest seller how that was possible, and he said that it's a central pool of instruments, and each independent seller can ask their own asking price, and the instruments are also sold locally outside of eBay. His ratings were absolutely perfect, with almost everyone saying his packing & protection was superb. It would need to be, because it's an all mahogany instrument with a Gibson-like neck (1 piece mahogany, 17° tilted headstock, big hole for the trussrod), and no case included. So after pondering on it for some weeks (hoping Epiphone would announce something for Winter-NAMM, which they didn't), I noticed 2 Sundays ago he offered a 5% discount on top of his already low price, so I thought to myself: "you know what, fck it, I'll bite. His ratings are good, I'm paying via Paypal, so I do have decent protection,...". So pressed the BIN-button, paid and then wholeheartedly expected to receive a message stating "yeah, it sold locally, I'm sorry"... But that message never came... instead I received a thank you for the payment, and a promise the item would ship on Thursday via FedEx. Could it be that that bass didn't get sold for more than 2 years, at that low of a price? On Thursday morning I received an SMS that FedEx received my package, and it was scheduled to arrive next Monday... Then a delay in Memphis, so it would be Tuesday, but on Tuesday no-one is home here, so I had to postpone to Wednesday... And on Wednesday, a white van stopped and delivered me a sturdy cardboard box (all hail FedEx' method of pre-paying customs & duties, so it clears fast). In it was a layer of bubble plastic, a layer of newspapers, another layer of bubble plastic, a gigbag (got that for free), and inside that a shape that reminded me of an instrument, in a layer of bubble plastic & foam... I peeled away the protective layers, and there it was, undamaged. I now also have enough padded plastic foil to last a lifetime. A quick test on the amplifier learned me the bridge pickup was cutting out, unless I pressed on it, meaning that a wire was shorting somewhere, but the pickup itself wasn't dead. So I opened up the patient for an overall inspection and a bit of cleaning, and saw an exposed wire touching the baseplate of the pickup. Insulated it, and the pickup worked again like it should... But then I noticed someone had been tampering with the wiring. The bridge pickup is the original GOTOH PAF-bucker with plastic-coated coax cable, but the neck pickup had been changed out for "something with a really old braided cable"... So I removed the cover of the neck pickup, and I was greeted there by something that was distinctly not a GOTOH-version of the sidewinder pickup. It was old, dusty, had a wooden spacer between the coils and measured 30k Ohm... Yep, that is a vintage Gibson mudbucker. So now I have a proper EB-3, with a really chunky 1960's neck, and the one thing the Japanese versions are considered "inferior" for (the weak neck pickup) already been replaced by a vintage Gibson unit that absolutely blasts. Ordered a set of shortscale flatwounds, will then further dial in and adjust to my likings. These crisp roundwounds aren't doing it for me. Also DIYed myself a string cover and wooden tugbar.

To me, single cut bass just look better! To me there's nothing worse than the same old bass shape time and time again! Its the whole Chocolate/Vanilla thing, 90% of bassist out there use Fender P or J basses, or at least P or J shaped basses. There is a whole wide and vibrant world of flavours out there, why only have Chocolate and Vanilla? P and J basses are more like a workman's tool I suppose, a Ronseal bass, it does what it says on the tin, no frills, no surprises, bang average! Single cuts have so much more flavour, granted you might not like the flavour, but at least its different! I can look at my ACGs or my Conklin, Bee Bass or De Giers as works of art as well as being unspeakably good basses. I just can't do that with a P or a J. Nowt wrong with either choice, it's all opinion, but I like a different flavour and my basses have exactly the taste I like!

I'd never have dreamt that was possible. It's a way to make my Roadie look like a higher end Jaydee with the real laminate construction. He's done that previously and also did another bass with the purple tint around the edge. I asked him to combine both and I think it's turned out well. It also has a new bookmatched Walnut - Maple - Mahogany headstock facing now, whereas before it was painted black.

You say the nicest things Thanks. I have to say, it's one of my favourites.

🤣🤣. Let's do it!

Got some free tickets for the “Chelsea Daggers” band The Fratelli’s? yeah, 2 songs in...drum solo. We got the bar and then walked out. ”you can’t return once you’ve been out” said the doorman at Manchester Academy... ”it’s alright, we don’t want to return...” came the reply.

Sorry I forgot to add on my earlier post the definition of "build" is to make something by putting bricks or other materials together so if you buy parts ie body, neck etc as long as you are putting them together then technically you are building a guitar etc there is no mention that you have make the materials I think maybe people mistake the word manufacture for building as they are completely 2 different things and as the threads come under the sub heading "build diaries" then if you put parts together or make your own parts then they are in the right place and good luck to anyone who wishes to build a bitsa or from scratch they hold exaclty the same amount of merit IMO! 🙂 And also if you have commissioned a build then its still a build so them threads should go in there aswell!

...and the complete disregard for music from the 80s too.

Name change to chunkymike? 😀

Especially for Doug I've done some weirdybeardyjazzyoddness... It's a celebration of the cheap Action Man substitute (Little Big Man) I got as a kid. It came with a parachute - song is in 3 parts as that's how many bit LBM broke into when I tested his 'chute! https://soundcloud.com/leonard-smalls/little-big-man (edited to add, strangely, it won't embed so link instead...)

As long as the finished product isn't sold as something it's not does it matter? There are various levels of "build" going on here , all valid in their own way, some interest me some don't . I started out assembling parts, there's a lot to learn doing that, I'd advise anyone thinking of trying a first build to go down that route.

Worth also mentioning budget multi-fxs (e.g. the Zoom B1-4). I've got some very usable dirt settings on mine ranging from DG B7K through to decent RAT patch.

I use a chinese ammoon/eno/whatever eq7. Under 30€ from ebay and mini-sized. The frequencies are perfect for bass in my opinion (63, 125, 250, 500, 1k, 2.2k and 5k). And it's not noisy unless you crank the treble channels.

This isn't an effects unit per se, it's a device to allow foot control of an Android pad with Bluetooth which I think would also work on an iPad. Two buttons, allowing page up and down, and with a menu to allow changing the functions to line up/down and next/previous window. Not up to the immaculate production standards of the other items here. It uses an ESP32 on a development board, programmed with the Arduino IDE, and a backlit 16x2 display with parallel interface, powered through a bridge rectifier (to avoid issues over supply polarity) and a step-down to 5V converter. Top view (note badly sized window for display): Inside view. The ESP32 is soldered to the board and there are female headers on the board just outside it. I put them on both sides by accident, but it came in handy as the unused side, with a few male pins with the board side of the pin clipped off, worked as a spacer. The thing in red on the left is a 10k trim pot to adjust contrast, and the power supply is in clear heatshrink on the right. The display is held in place by four nylon bolts with built-in spacers glued to the inside of the case (you can just see one nylon nut): Connecting to pad: Connected - page up/down: Long press to bring up menu, right button to go through menu, left to select or long press on left to exit menu:

I’m looking for a fretted match for my recently acquired Fretless So if you’ve got one to spare, lash it over.

OK, I'm taking the plunge and making first entry to the competition. Don't Push Me by Nail Soup (Lyrics are in the hidden contents)