Leaderboard

Tonewood. Only tonewood.

Finally got the new rig set up in our rehearsal studio. Hopefully I'll get to put it up on a stage very soon

I'm still on with the final settling down and tweaking of the fretless and the Wal save but I have another live project on the drawing board - a single cut shortscale (30") for our very own @Matt P I get the impression that this has been gestating in Matt's mind for some time and, to be honest, Matt has done a lot of the hard work - which is great - that is, designing the concept and broad shape in the first place. This is my rough cobble together of Matt's sketches ( there should be round bits where my rubbish Inkscape attempt has given me sharp corners) with a broadly scale neck (albeit this shows a 4 string width rather than the correct 5 string width). This will have a headstock - this is just a quick full-scale view mainly of the body length and positioning for me to check out one of the critical design criteria...that is must fit into this: ..which is a 6-string electric Fender Jaguar guitar case. It will be a - through necked - single 5-string SimS Super-Quaded - Hipshot bridge and tunered - Ebony fretboarded - Mahogany backed - Laminated necked - top to back demarcated - sucked lozenged carved - 7lbs beauty - with this top: And I'm VERY excited

A great bass player. 😎

Two of the stranglers drink at my mates local where its over £5 a pint. That's not punk.

A morning pic of the family 🔥

I recently acquired a set of Geezer Butler EMGs from @doc40hz of this parish, with the intended recipient bass being my newly acquired Hamer Cruisebass. The Cruise was still fitted with the 80s DiMarzios and two of the three Hamer stamped pots; clearly someone had been in the body cavity at some point as there was evidence the tone pot had been replaced. Half of my basses are active, either from stock or John East and I just fancied to keep the Hamer passive, but didn't really like the DiMarzios...they just seemed to toppy and shrill. Installation was easy enough. The J-unit dropped in without issue, but the P-unit was too deep for the existing cavity - the push-fit connectors cause the pickup depth to extend 2-3mm outside of the casing, so chisels out. Took the opportunity to shield the cavity. Connection was simple, fun in fact. I took the opportunity to replace the barrel jack as well (the old one was very noisy). Tone. Aah, subjective I know, but mother of god; while I tend to generally play with everything full on, here I doubt that will be the case. I've tried this with the DG A/O head and the dUg stompbox...the P-unit is off the scale tonally; phat and beautiful...the bridge pickup is more complimentary; toppy and there to roll the volume up to achieve the right amount of clank to sit behind the P-unit. Damn, these are awesome pickups. The only negative thing is the Hamer's body rout mean from a visual aesthetic, the strings don't sit plumb centre of the poles, but I doubt this has any issue other than the visuals (I can always break out a Sharpie if it annoys me!). 5/5

Final set up and tweaking always takes longer than you think but my target is that by the end of this weekend, this can go safely in the 'finished instruments' cupboard waiting for when Covid allows @Fishman and I to do the hand over. Most of the past few days has been related to one of @Fishman 's ideal that we can achieve a very low action. First step was to sort the shim to be able to keep the saddles nice and low. I got some 1/64" ply and sanded the required angle by attaching it to a piece of thicker, flat ply and sanding it over a piece of glass (old glass shelves and similar are great things to have around for using as the base for sharpening plane blades, etc and for this kind of job. You can see how the sanding has gone through a number of layers of the ply: This got me to the point that the saddles flat at the bottom put the strings onto the frets and the maximum I should have to lift the saddles will be c. 3mm And that has got me close. I have a very playable action at 1.7mm to 1.5mm (I would normally set for starters with a bass at around 2.6mm to 2.2mm) but if I dig in hard, do get a bit of buzz at the lower strings. So I have set my challenge to try to get to 1.5mm to 1.3mm (we are talking gap of the bottom E & the top G measured from the bottom of the string to the top of the 12th fret - with the string fretted at the 1st to eliminate nut effect) with no buzz. Which is lower than I would even set a 6-string electric... I checked the relief. The neck is actually dead flat - so, while there is no back bow, there is also no measurable relief. And this is a single-action rod so I can't introduce relief by screwing it anticlockwise. And the neck is as stiff as a board. But I could do with a gnat's whisker of relief (although we are talking 'just perceptible' )... So the answer is to take the neck off, tighten the truss rod a teeny bit and then level off the hump in the middle of the fretboard. It looks more than it is - we are generally talking tenths of a mm: So the theory is that when I take the tension back off the truss rod, I have a neck that now has a smidgen of relief in it. I will know when I reassemble, but while it's off I'll take the opportunity to finish off all of the other stuff on the 'still to do' list.

It is an interesting discussion. Before they invented the microphone, singers could not cope with musicians and a lot more music was instrumental. Once microphones and amps became available, the bands became peripheral and instrumental music became the exception rather than the norm.

The next one. We ALL know that to be a fact.

Hi Bass freaks, attached pics from the final Bass Bridges

Have you ever tried down tuning that mandolin, putting on a ton of gain and smashing out some heavy riffs? We tried it with an electric violin left in a practice room and to be honest, it sounded terrible.

A Goodyear for the Roses - Elvis Costello

Another gullible and stupid person here too 😂

Maxwell Murders. Top that bad boy!!!

Comedy Gold..!!

Have been thinking the same, but decided to just get furniture, electrics, heating and light up to the building, but not store anything. I’d be too worried all the time. We have a Rottweiler, but she’s likely to “cute” an assailant into submission currently, things will change in a few months mind. Is the building near to the main house? That is a factor.

Just received the exciting news that my new bass is in transit....

To say that I'm excited about this is a bit of an understatement! I have been thinking of a bass like this for quite a while and seeing the triple Sims-pickup build just pushed me over the edge. This is my 40th Birthday present from my parents and my wonderful wife, it's a dream bass build really. Matt

I remember working for Probation in Epsom and there was this lovely admin lady nearing retirement; very sweet, very quiet and innocuous. We were chatting one day and someone mentioned Marshall amps. Turned out the admin person was asked out on a date by Jim Marshall when she was a teenager and used to hang around with The Who. 😮

And the 303 was definitely not invented to meet a demand for rave music. In general musicians find a way to abuse the inventions.

Matt Freemen of Rancid had done some 'Bass Bunker Session' just love his busy melodic bass lines !!

what makes a great bass easy snake oil

A simple break down of the potential cost. Used Sandberg approx £850 HB £350 approx -preamp and MM pick up upgrade -£250 approx for -tuners £120 fitting and set up £150 approx or more at London prices. Buy a used sandberg and change out the pre or pick ups if it’s not 100%. Retain the originals and if you decide to sell it return to stock and sell or keep the upgrades. Upgrading the hb with your track record on moving basses will only result in a loss or you’ll decide to upgrade to a Sandberg in about three months after buying the HB 😀

Don’t start that again...

A luthier, next question.

For me , the neck profile and shape makes the biggest difference, if I don’t like the feel of it I don’t buy it and I almost know instantly whether it’s for me or not , as far as the sound goes, the choice of strings can make a massive difference ,it took me a long while and a lot of money to find my ideal string, and also a good setup to your preference can make a bass feel totally different , I used to pay for my basses to be setup and I always had to make further adjustments, so I now set them up myself 🙂

Here's a diagram of the crossover. It doesn't get any simpler than this. I've assembled the circuit using a (chocolate block) terminal strip. So - no soldering needed. I'll post a frequency response of the finished system and of the assembled crossover later today. The Pulse 10 is wired directly to the input and this circuit connects to the HF unit.

The Continental - Maureen McGovern

+1 for the Minutemen, and “Public Image” has to count as one of The great punk basslines

Gotta Gettaway by SLF. Got me into wanting to play bass, all those years ago. Still a great, catchy bassline.

Most Stranglers bass lines.

Fat Mike chooses a few here:

Looks good and would work nicely as a headless, especially with one of those gorgeous bridges @Sidlanir has posted in his thread recently

Jane Munro of the Au Pairs came up with a few interesting lines.

Been posted here before but for example the invention of mics/amps for gigs was just intended to make the voice louder. But it actually made crooning possible. It was not demand for crooning which led to mic/amp invention.

I fully fully believe you can get a very very good bass for not much money, and also think that there are quite diminishing returns for spending more... But with the basses you've got... which are very nice, but how much will you actually play the HB if you drop the cash on upgrading it?

Journey To The End Of East Bay is my favourite Matt Freeman bass line. I've not managed to play it quite at full speed. If I slow it down to 95% it's fine but that last few bpm is just too fast.

Babylon’s Burning by The Ruts is pretty decent, and worth checking out Booze & Glory - mainly the Chapter IV album - their bassist at the time, Bubbles, was a very busy bassist.

And.. so what? Your job isn't writing transcriptions so that other bass players can see what you were doing, you are doing it because people have asked (neh, nagged!) you too, as a favour. Before you did it, there wasn't a definitive version, now there is. The world has gained something. If the transcriptions aren't right, and it bothers someone, they can just take those transcriptions and redo them now they are on the internet, or they can just ignore them. But for those of us who wanted to see them, they are fantastic, and we can listen to the tracks and look at the transcriptions and know how to do it, and it keeps us going waiting for your video lessons