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I've been accepted now, the admin accepted me and now Mick's had his post removed but mine is up for all in the group to see/warn them away from Micky boy.

I have a bit of thinking and drawing to do on @Matt P 's singlecut before I do anything daft like cut or glue wood - working out control chamber size and position, weight relief chambering, back shape - so just to make sure that my hands don't seize up, a bit more progress on this. AHAH! I bet you thought I'd forgotten So, delving back in the memory, it was all about a potentially twisty neck. And out comes one of those tools that I rarely use but boy are they useful when you do. My mini hand router: What I am doing is levelling the tops of the rosewood packing/strengthening strips, flush with the top of the truss rod: Then I cut the free-bit-of-packing-waste rock maple to size: Then ran a thread of Titebond along the tops of them both and 'you can never have too many clamps': And finally, planed the strip flush with the top of the neck: And the neck is SO much more resistant to twisting So when I get another natural break from the single-cut, it'll be a refit of the fretboard - once I've worked out the best way to clamp it...

Very chuffed this week! I've wanted one of these for over a year. They allegedly only did 200 in this colour as a special run then discontinued them. So, when this came up I was very lucky. Took a chance and it arrived in unused immaculate condition, still with the plastic coverings on. The colour is stunning. Not obnoxious green, but not subtle! I have a fender player in sunburst so I knew what to expect, but the maple neck is lovely and bright and the whole bass is fantastically balanced and plays superb.

After a bit of a failed attempt of buying a Sadowsky MetroExpress I had some money burning a hole on my pocket. I’ve fancied a 5 string with a P pickup for a while but they don’t crop up that often so I just happened to come across the PMT sale and noticed they had this bad boy with £130 off. Off I popped to the shop and had a play, before I knew it an hour had gone by! The J pickup is a little underpowered on its own, and the sweep on the bass pot all happens in the last tiny part of the travel bit other than that it’s superb! I’ve never had a Jackson bass before and I’m not a huge Megadeth fan either, but this bass is superb! Really happy 😊

Ana Vidovic is quite good.

I visited a guitar tech in Denmark street many years ago which was down a narrow flight of stairs. While I was there Lonnie Donnigan came in and told the tech he was there to have a pickup fitted to his acoustic guitar. He didn’t have a guitar with him though which was puzzling — until a couple of minutes later when his missus entered struggling with a rectangular aluminium covered flight case containing the guitar in question. Perhaps you could keep your existing cabs and, like Lonnie must have done, tell the missus that you’re going to let her become your personal roadie.

But, did you see the same lad rip it up on a Zon? Both of you may have enjoyed it even more 🤷‍♂️. No disrespect, but this has been round the houses many times. Put a great player on a cheapo bass and he/she is gonna be great whatever. Put a crap player on an expensive bass and he/she will still sound crap.

Eddie Van Halen?

What irks me about articles like these and 'who's the greatest' polls is they assume there's no other music genre of note apart from rock. I could name scores of steel string acoustic, jazz, country, Flamenco and classical players off the top of my noggin who could've played the @r$3 off Prince, Hendrix or pretty much most other rock players. For starters let's go with Segovia, Paco de Lucia, Tommy Emmanuel, Albert Lee, Danny Gatton and Joe Pass.

It's a crowded field, but I've vote for Peter Green. In the early days he could make time stand still.

Did you have a gig in a quarry?

It’s time to listen through this month’s fine selection of toonage folks, based on the picture chosen by last month’s winner Mr Smalls ( and …. Ahem …myself!) This picture then , chosen by Lenny himself, in his usual eclectic taste, offers a little insight into the image. "A Zulu delegation who came over to the UK to honour those who'd fought at Rourke's Drift, one of whom was my great grandfather (whose grave you can see in the pic).." . 1. @xgsjx I took inspiration from the pic, listened to several Zulu songs & then got the vocal samples from Splice. 2. Lurksalot I've gone for a simple tune this month , I couldn't really get my head around lyrics for it, so I've left it quite empty deliberately, but tried to get the feel. 3. @Dad3353 A solemn occasion, so a sombre mood seemed appropriate, to commemorate the Fallen. A tribal tribute, with a military tinge, and weather to suite. Not really dance-hall stuff; more for reflection on the wisdom of taking the Queen's shilling, or following the Witch Doctor. Sad days for all; there are never any victors. 4. @Nicko I had to look up the battle and when I realised it was what the film Zulu was based on I couldn't get "My Name is Michael Caine" by Madness out of my head. That lead me to doing something vaguely inspired by the UK Ska sound - not sure whether I got there or not. There are two famous paintings of the battle both called "In Defence of Rorke's Drift" which have both been criticised for glorifying empire. I've tried not to make comment on the rights and wrongs of the battle. 5. @Leonard Smalls For some reason this made me think of all the tiny wars going on in our cities - where kids feel the only way they can survive is by carrying a blade... 6. @lowdown I have always had a fascination with the defence of Rorke's Drift, along with the punch up over at Isandlwana earlier in the day and have read dozens of accounts, watched various documentaries and generally, been curious about the whole episode that happened over those two days. This goes back to when my Dad took me to see the opening of the film 'Zulu' in the West End, back in 1964. KwaJimu' is 'Jim's Land' in the Zulu language.. 7. @upside downer The title translates as "Thank you, my friend". The few words are along the lines of "Hello again" and "Thank you", taken from an online English to Zulu site so I apologise if the quality of the translation isn't up to scratch. 8. @Nail Soup I abandoned early on any attempt to incorporate Zulu-based music. Also abandoned an idea to have a narrative based on Leonard's Great-Grandad's story. But two ideas did come to me ...... the "Zulu" in the phonetic alphabet and the reconciliation process which the UK and Zulu descendants have been involved in. These combined to lead me to the young persons word of apology, which in phonetic alphabet is Sierrra Oscar Zulu Zulu. Disclaimer: I didn't, and haven't, checked that those are the correct words for S, O or even Z! One word from Leonard's GGD's life story survives in the lyrics - Himalaya, the name of the boat he sailed to Africa in. Well there we go , another fine selection Voting closes at Midnight on the 30th April ,

https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2021/04/22/old-school-1986-westone-the-rail-bass/

Andres Segovia, Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, Chet Atkins, Larry Carlton and Steve Howe

Good that he’s out working again and has a legitimate way of repaying everyone what they’re owed! 🙂

I just joined that group as well. Noticed a friends band has put themselves forward. Have messaged him to delete it.

I've requested to join the group and will be posting the link to this thread and the shared posts from Facebook in to the group. Hit him in his pocket before he hits someone else in their's.

Agree, over the last few weeks I’ve sold 3 basses and 2 guitars, only took a hit on the one that I bought new, the rest all went for approx what I paid for them.

Personally I have found if you buy stuff secondhand and at a reasonable price you will get back what you paid for it give or take a couple of quid. Over a long period you may even make a fair bit. Compulsive buying particularly new stuff on the other hand is another matter.

I’m out 😋 After many years fantasising about getting back my old StingRay, I saw it on eBay and just won it back. Huge sentimental value, bought as an 18 year old and was my first proper bass, used for 12 years with loads of good memories. Sadly sold in 2009 when I was having a hard time and made one or two bad decisions. I hoped to last the year in abstinence, but couldn’t be happier now 😁😁😁

No such thing in any sphere. Ludicrous notion. Individual favourites, yes. Oh hold on....news just in...my wife is the greatest wife of all time.

There can be no one greatest of all time IMO. However, there can be those who are great because they changed the guitar playing landscape. For me these would be: Les Paul, Jimi Hendrix & Eddie Van Halen. This is not to say that others weren’t doing what they did before them, or did it better. But it’s these guys who influenced a bigger majority, altering the way the instrument was played and/or perceived on the wider stage. That said, if the greatest guitar player of all time (to date) was someone who could play in all styles and could leave you slack jawed, I’d have to say it’s Guthrie Govan. Obviously, he’s not a household name, even amongst those who play, but he is truly amazing in his technique and wide ranging abilities in so many styles.

I don't believe Stingrays are made by a small tight-knit team of highly experienced craftsmen. Apart from the size, Fender's Corona plant and EBMM's SLO factory are surely pretty similar: semi-skilled, low paid factory workers building the same sort of products out of the same materials, using the same machinery and techniques.

Lots of bits of electronic music in a film about pioneering women in electronic music: https://sisterswithtransistors.com

I’ve only had one, a red Forty-Eight. It was great sounding and beautiful to play, but it felt odd to play standing up. I’d love one of the MM/P models one day!

Gross. Sadowsky appears to have become such a confused brand. I know this gets mentioned every time the brand does now, but they’ve gone from a simple, easily identifiable product range, where there was guaranteed quality top to bottom to something where the bottom rung is/was a catalogue of errors and a top line that’s not even made by the master luthier whose name is on the headstock.

There are companies coming up with new ways to produce existing effects, e.g. Gamechanger Audio do a pedal that uses plasma discharge to generate distortion, and one that uses light to enhance reverb. And there are new ways to control existing effects, like Rainger FX's liquid-controlled overdrive, various gesture-based alternatives to expression pedals, etc. But genuinely new effects? I reckon we may have exhausted them all. What can you do to an audio wave? Change the frequency, amplitude, and phase - that's your pitchshifter, your tremolo/volume pedal/compressor and (almost) your phaser. You can add in some noise with harmonics and clipping to get your various flavours of dirt. You can introduce additional copies of the wave, to get delay/echo/flanger, and then phaser if you change the phase on the copy. Isn't everything else just some combination of these? EQ/filtering is just adjusting the amplitude of specific frequencies, instead of all frequencies. Add in the ability to apply that EQ differently based on the incoming signal amplitude, and you've got an envelope filter. An octave pedal is just a copy of the wave with the frequency halved. And so on. Once you move from analogue to digital and you're sampling the wave, you can do things like fiddle with the encoding to get a bit crusher effect. And some things probably just can't be implemented in an analogue circuit, like the harmonisers itu mentioned - you might be able to get a second signal at a different pitch, but I'm guessing not the smarts of having it change the interval based on the pitch of the input and the selected key. My hunch is there are still plenty of interesting things to be done with sound in the digital world, but it's all combinations of effects that already exist - just applied/combined/controlled in new ways. Things like shimmer and granular particle reverb feel "modern" to me, but even those have been around for donkey's years now. Well anyway that's my 2p. I am not an expert and could be talking out of my derrière!

Speaking as an IT guy who pretends to be a musician 😉 I freely admit that I’ve thrown too much money at questionable upgrades. As a result, experience tells me that a Sterling Ray35 can sound miles better than a ‘proper’ Stingray 5, that a MIM standard Fender P can have more tonal variation in one passive potentiometer than a MIA deluxe P manages with a spare J pickup and a full onboard preamp, that you can have a bass made for you by a very well respected luthier which is an utter disappointment, and that you can pick up the cheapest Ibanez in the ex-demo discount pile and find a genuinely nice instrument which weighs less than a Sandberg SL but has been ignored just because it’s finished in what Dulux might call ‘gravy brown’! Go on an open-minded cheap bass hunt - you never know what you might find! 🙂

Bass Collection or maybe a Bass Collection. You will not get s better "bang for your buck" than a second hand BC. Crated in Japan, Gotoh Hardwear and light as a feather.

Unexpectedly found 2 hours to rough carve a neck. With the “flared” heel it is slightly more complex, as I need to very carefully carve the heel to match the contour of the body. So next week when I have time again I will fix the neck to the body and finish the carve. The neck will have a SS zero fret and I will notch out the fretboard so I can angle the strings down into the string clamp. The clamps will sit on top of a 2mm thick piece if ebony that follows the shape of the mini headstock ( a few mm smaller in diameter to still show the maple/wenge). Also did the 20” radiusing. Happy so far in any case. Note the neck is a few mm thinner on the flare than the neck, clearly I needed to create a little elevation to get enough clearance for strings/pickups etc. This flare design is either going to be very smart or very stupid 😂

Love both of those. Another favourite from 1985 is Husker Du’s Flip Your Wig

Price is invariably equated with quality, and marketing people know this all too well. Unfortunately, a lot of consumers don't. This is why I do my research and buy a bass or other at a reasonable price to get the best quality at the lowest price. Nowadays you really can get an awesome quality bass at a low cost because of the level of technology available and manufacturing centres in the East. Therefore, all of my basses are each under £200. There is literally no reason why I need to spend above that that will offer anything more than the basses that I have already. I don't really see the point of paying £567 for a packet of biscuits when I can get good quality biscuits for significantly less, although some people buy into the idea that a £576 packet of biscuits with a prestigious brand name on the packet will give them the best quality biscuits that money can buy.

What we don't necessarily appreciate is how good "budget" gear is today compared to what was around when we started playing. I started playing in the early/mid 80s and TBH a lot of the used gear that was available was garbage. Nowadays, I keep finding budget gear that is surprisingly good. Like many here I am financially stable with disposable income so, for me, spending it on myself and my hobbies is completely justifiable. Whenever I've had high end gear I've been too precious with it so had trouble justifying having it sitting in a case rather than using it. I believe that there is a psychological benefit from using high end gear - having nice gear makes me want to play more and I get more satisfaction from playing. I'm glad that young people have access to resources that weren't available when I started playing. Anything that highlights the Bass guitar (over geeetars) is a good thing in my mind.

Cheers @Frank Blank it's always a pleasure. And thanks for not grassing me up to the feds for public indecency regarding the err, bush incident.

Started using a Messa Subway 800 and 2x Barefaced 110's. Super light, very portable and sounds great. As the head goes down to 2ohm, I've always got the option of adding more cabs. Another pair of 10's would do nicely. Modular and loud enough to play most stages.

Ana Vidovic is quite good.

Allan Holdsworth is my personal favourite, closely followed by John McLaughlin and Shawn Lane. Prince was evidently very good indeed and also pretty good on Bass. Then again he could also call on people like Mononeon for Bass duties.

I used to pop-in occasionally as my office is just across the road. I think I was greeted just once. I only buy bits and pieces, though I'm a generally interested punter, and very occasionally the shop has something that might be of interest, for example the Precision Special. The general lack of interest in the customer (and apparently in sales) is odd, and I'm a little surprised that the shop has survived this long. Given its location, it's a prime target for another take-away. I'd be sad to see Johnny Roadhouse disappear given it's place in Manchester music history, though I wouldn't be at all shocked. And that Jazz... has it been toasted/barbecued? I quite like the '75 look but there's a lot needs to be done to get that particular example back into decent shape

Transcription for guitar can work very well...

The Fender factory in California turns out more guitars than EBMM, but it isn't half as big as you might suppose. It is inaccurate to portray Fender as churning out a vast number of lesser quality instruments in comparison to an EBMM factory which produces small numbers of high quality artisan- made guitars with a superior degree of integrity. I've had a fair few new EBMM basses over the years, and some of them were great, some not so great in terms of their construction quality. Just the same as my experience of the USA Fenders. May I ask, how do you know that EBMM are experiencing greater production costs and supply chain problems due to fallout from covid? Is that what EBMM have said or is it something you are supposing ? Business models, supply chains and the like are the concern of the manufacturer and their dealers. If they make a mess of things and can't get their goods to market at a realistic price then it's not the consumers role to make up excuses or explanations on their behalf . Are EBMM subject to these alleged increased costs more than other manufacturers of a similar size, such as G&L, for example? ( I mention G&L because I have consistently found them to be better made than EBMM basses with equally good proprietary hardware and their own signature sound, just like Musicman. )Why aren't all the others following suit and jacking up their prices to such a degree? I totally understand (and share😊) your enthusiasm for Musicman basses, but because you have been a repeat customer over many years ,EBMM owe a debt of loyalty to you, not the other way around. Ultimately as buyers we will look at three grand for a new Stingray and then look round at what else you can get for that money. In my estimation the 2021 Stingray Specials are overpriced by about a grand (certainly £800-£900)for the quality of guitar that they are.

Im in a similar situation. I can now afford the basses I dreamed of as a teenager. The sad thing is the teenager could play them better and would have used them far more!

I don’t think you can have a bass that is too good for you, if it’s something you enjoy and you can afford it and it brings you pleasure, then why not own nice instruments , I’m sure there’s people out there that can play them better than you and I tegs, but it wouldn’t stop me buying what I want 🙂

I’ve always found Roto B strings to be awful. Daddario steels and Dunlop flats are my choice for B strings.