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This one: Except I just did, today! @Raymanwhat were you just saying about "never say never?"

Saturday night. Back at the pub we did last year where you get a very small amount up front from the venue but then they pass round a collection each set to bump up your takings. It's a nice set up (not much space but OK for a trio) with their own PA and monitors which actually work properly and landlady is very helpful with soundcheck (they have to be careful with volume levels). Main drawback is it is a 60+ mile trip each way and with petrol prices being what they are it is borderline as a financially feasible venue now. Went down well though, landlady was happy and had good feedback from punters who upped the total take for the night to close to what we would normally get anyway especially the gigs via an agent taking 15%. They want us back later in year anyway so can't have been too bad. I got cramp in my fretting hand halfway through final encore, had to improvise using pinkie only but don't think it was too obvious.

I'm exactly the same. Although my response is the total opposite of many of the comments so far. I just can't see the point in having multiple basses. At least, not at my level of playing. I get it if you're a professional musician playing with several bands or recording and you need a certain sound for a certain occasion. But for a weekend warrior band it all just seems a bit silly to me. I found a bass I like, I play that one. I actually do own three, but one is a cheap semi acoustic I bought decades ago which is pretty much just wall art, then I own a 4 and a 6 string. I exclusively play the sixer, the 4 string is just gathering dust. I only keep it in case I ever want to revert. Despite endless discussions of gear and the every elusive "tone", which is nothing but subjective anyway, in a live band mix a bass just sounds like a bass and 99.9 percent of people wouldn't know, or even care about the difference. May as well just find one you like playing and stick with it as far as I'm concerned.

Been busy today, chucked this together but I still need a Blackstone mosfet overdrive to squeeze in there, if anyones got one in a drawer 😄

We played our monthly gig at The Lookout in Scarborough. Another full house of lovely people in the audience, it's my favourite current gig. First time I've used my Ibanez PNB14E short scale electro acoustic, and was well pleased with the result into my Fender Rumble 100.

I couldn't imagine selling my JV Precision; in part because I don't think I'd recoup what I've put into it - knackered bass + re-finish + new pickup and pickguard - but mostly because I genuinely love it. It sounds great and plays like a dream. The neck is the best I've ever ever played, and it's my favourite colour for a bass too.

From Saturday night in a busy pub, this sounds a lot better than I thought it did when I was playing https://fb.watch/b0VIjLHeDt/

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First gig with my new band, The Spacewasters last night. At a charity fund raiser for cancer in The Fiddlers Elbow in Camden. Seeing as our drummer has had two brain tumours, and had a kidney removed, and still had cancer of the renal gland it was close to the bands heart. Got there 5ish as had to work, fortunately there was a backstage room to store the gear whilst we waited til our slot at 6:30. Went on, provided amp stack of Genz Benz Streamliner with matching 410/115, so all I had to use was trusty Precision & Sansamp. Went really well, didn’t feel nervous at all, was just so happy to be back gigging. Lots of compliments afterwards about how my playing held the band together which was nice. I had a blast, I’m back!

I have been gassing for a Kiloton Tribute on and off for a few years, I was put off in the past by tales of boat anchor weight and the colours; brown or white, which I wasn't so keen on. Now G&L have started selling them in colours I like. @Jonesy lives in the next borough along from me and he invited me round to his to try out his new G&L SB2 Tribute. Thanks mate👍. I wasn't so keen on the SB2 but I could see that it was well made considering the price and wasn't heavy. @OllyW also confirmed in another G&L thread here that his Kiloton wasn't heavy. So I took a punt and ordered online. I've never had a bass delivered before, I always wanted to try them out first but I didn't want to spend a day (and spend on diesel) driving down to Guilford for a £379 bass. My first impressions are: I love the tones you can get from it. I've been mainly playing it with the toggle switch in the middle, which I believe is single coil (?) with the tone and volume on max. It has the barky sound you would expect from a bass with a single bridge humbucker but the E string has a depth and authority I'm very pleased with. I really love it but its new so I will see how I feel about it in a few weeks but this feels like a keeper.

I have just completed the build of a new twelve string Thunderbird bass. The entire build process is documented here: https://www.enkoo.nl/brooks-tb-12.html Brooks TB-12 - Mahogany body wings - Nine ply Mahogany/Walnut set neck. Neck through - Opaque white (blonde) high gloss finish - Abalonoid binding - Ebony fretboard - Circle position dots - Jumbo frets - 34" scale - Buffalo horn nut - Three ply black/white/black pickguard - ETS twelve string brass bridge set - Two spokewheel double action trussrods - Carbon reinforcement strip in the neck - Lace Alumitone Bass Bar in the neck position - Lace Alumitone DeathBar in the bridge position - Allparts stacked pots (volume/tone volume/tone) - Mullard capacitors - MEC on-on switch for coil split (humbucker-single coil) - Gotoh GB 350 lightweight bass tuners - Gotoh Stealth ST 31 guitar tuners - 2 x Pure Tone Multi Contact jack output - d'Addario EXL 170 - 12 strings - Weight: 4.25 kg Wiring was done by BQ Music.

Early last year, I had a cull of basses I wasn't using. This resulted in me not having any standard 34" scale basses. Just shorties and my Dingwall. It was fine for a bit, but GAS got the better of me. After trying out a Squier Affinity PJ, I reckoned something in a PJ might be just the ticket. I didn't need a new bass straight away so held fire for a bit. Thought I might spot a bargain - and so I did! Got this Revelation RPJ 77 for £60 from Facebook marketplace. It's got some dents, buckle rash and I think it was never kept on a stand. But after some cleaning, new strings and a bit of a setup, it's come up nicely. Need to get some lemon oil or similar as the fretboard is as dry as a bone, maybe drier. It's a lovely candy apple red. Didn't quite capture it in the picture! Sounds alright as is, but needs the cavities shielding. The pickups are neo Entwhistle ones. I think they could be a bit more refined, but they'll do for now. Very pleased for £60! I think the first proper mod I'll do is get a black pickguard on it. Or maybe red tort... 🤔

Haha, sorry, I should have been arsed to read it properly then 😶

Make-before-break is sure one option that helps. It is also possible to use a 1 M resistor to ground. I had a preamp override in my Modulus, and the pop was negligible with that 1 M. By the way, Kubicki had a five position switch with stdby after off. That way the output did not crackle.

Pah! Anybody who says this will be their last iteration of a pedalboard is clearly delusional.

If both volume controls are on full a jazz bass will sound a little anaemic. Back one of the volume controls off about 10% (I back the bridge pick up off) and the sound gets beefier.

This is true, and i am number 97 😇 https://ampeg.com/support/ https://ampeg.com/pdf/Heritage_B-15_OM.pdf

Here's the links to the type of cnc I'm building 👍🏻

I own multiple basses (4) and deciding which one to play is in the same category of deciding which shirt to wear. Basses be bassy and they're all ones I like to play, having distilled my dislikes down into a concrete idea of what a bass should be to me. It's got nothing to do with "level" - I don't have to justify to anyone how I spend my disposable income, it's not a competition and I don't have to be a bass god to "deserve" to own multiple basses. They make me happy, and that's all that matters to me. Love, your friendly neighbourhood silly multiple bass owning weekend warrior

I think how much an instrument costs and ability to play it is a non-issue. 'Cost' is a relative thing anyway. The price of a Fodera would be off the scale for some of us, for others just loose change. When it comes to buying anything at all my mantra is if I can afford it, will enjoy it and want it I will buy it and I see it as no-one's business other than my own. Well, apart from my wife

The bass I drag out for our Status Quo tribute band gigs down the Dog & Duck.

I completely understand, but it's also why I'd hate to have a custom instrument built. I'd imagine the conversation would go like Luthier: So what wood do you want? Me: Um, nice wood please Luthier: riiiiigh. Pickups? Me: I think so, yes Luthier: (sigh) neck profile? Me: Yes, definitely a profile. Luthier: (puts down piece of paper) how about this one here I've already made? Me: Perfect!

I’ve tried the Noble/Cali combo and it’s a really good pairing. You’ll struggle to make your bass sound sweeter especially with the low cut engaged/bass boosted. It just adds the right kind of lows.

I will ask.

I can honestly say it has never occurred to me. I buy what I like and could care less whether anyone else thinks I’m good enough.

So yeah I was actually convinced after playing that red Sterling for five minutes so now I have this.

I’ve just joined a new band, 1st gig last night. I stick with the drummer and have had a good few comments about how I hold the band together. I’ve tinkered with adding a few runs in, but for me it’s understanding the space where to do it. I don’t want to get in the way of the singer, who has a great voice, no point in doing it where the lead guitar is playing a riff/melody associated with the song, and not when the drummer does a roll. There is still the space fit me to add stuff and I do, but I think it is self confidence/awareness to play where I can, not what I can.

I don't know if this will be of any interest to anyone.... After watching a fella on YouTube make his own cnc machine, Me and my dad have decided to build one which is going to have a 700mm x 700mm useable cutting area we we're going to try and go a bit bigger but there is lack of space in the workshop but I've worked out I will be able to do a bass neck on it going diagonally from corner to corner we've worked out the parts will come to just over £400 I'll be using it for guitars and possible signs and stuff and my dad will be using it for his model railway stuff With that in mind I've started trying to design some 3d models that I can convert to gcode and cut on the cnc, I haven't got the money to buy a copy of rhino or fusion 360 so I've started doing the 2d svg designs in Inkscape and 3d modelling in freecad which is still a steep learning curve! but to make life easier someone has designed a dedicated workbench for building guitars its called Mars Guitar Designs and as long as you label the parts on the 2d drawing body and headstock eg. contour, midline and pickups/control cavity etc correctly you can easily do design like this...... (This was just a bit of messing around doing a Meteora style bass) And once its like that you can adjust the parameters of the neck eg. Scale length, heel and nut dimensions, amount of frets etc I'm still learning so I'm still trying to figure out a few things like how to add arm and belly carves and how to radius the top edge.........👍🏻 We are ordering all the parts this coming week so I'll post updated pics as we go along.....

I can't be arsed to read through all this, but I've had a Fodera Monarch for about 14 years now. When I bought it (used) it was the most I'd put into a bass, flipped a Sei and a Modulus plus added some cash in to get it. I guess it owes me about 3 grand, but I reckon it's saved me a fortune as it's the bass that pretty much killed gas for me, and I had a serious churn of high end basses before getting it. Nothing else I've played feels as good, or frankly does such a great range of tones in a band context. I've no idea whether I'm good enough for it, and for all the times I've taken it out to gig (dozens and dozens), only one person ever has spoken to me about it cos they clocked what it was. Could I afford it now, no! And especially not for what they command these days. I'm not sure why they get so much stick for what they cost really, value is so subjective, and there are more than a couple high end makers charging close to Fodera money for what are in essence Fender variants. As I said in a thread a few month's ago, if you're offended that Foderas seem expensive, have you seen the price of bassoons?!!

@fretmeister sorry this is the best I can do for now, the glossy snap that Thomann kindly included! Will take some more for the (late) NBD post...

Yup, me neither! Thanks - it's gone to an appreciative home and hopefully for a fair price to both of us. All good, thank you matey! I know you and I are both big fans of the "which bass do I reach for?" test. I guess the bassist's equivalent of "mirror, mirror on the wall..." 😄 Well for the first time, since getting it new end-of-line in early 2018, this lovely bass was no longer being automatically reached for and a couple of others were, and my sense was that was not going to change. So it was time.

He’s just offered it to me at £825 with the following taglines… ”order one from Japan at £1100 if you’d prefer” and ”I’m in no rush to sell, try again if it’s still here next month…” I won’t. To either.

This will always be an unresolved argument, as it's entirely subjective. We all have our preferences and that's perfectly fine. It may be that people do, indeed, overplay at first. Maybe, when they find their own voice, they will play less - maybe more. We're all different.

I bought one of these red Kilotons from Andertons as well, just before Christmas. I have an SB-2 Tribute that I picked cheaply up on eBay a few months back, its very comfortable to play but the pickup shape left nowhere to rest my thumb (I’ve tried the floating thumb thing, lets not go there) and the rosewood neck made it hard to see the fret dots on a dark stage with my old eyes. I’ve gigged this bass several times and the body is very comfortable and I like the slim Jazz style neck and the sustain. I never use the bridge pickup so I just have volume and that’s it, which is OK as I prefer to have tone full on and use the amp to shape the sound, so lack of a tone knob didn’t bother me. The first Kiloton arrived with an unpleasant looking dark line in the grain along the top edge of the maple fretboard. Andertons were happy to change it but I had to pay the extra shipping as they said it wasn’t really a defect (?). The second Kiloton arrived with poor setup (probably not set up at all after leaving the factory I guess), and the tiny screw that clamps the bridge prices was missing so I swapped the screw over from the old Kiloton before that was collected. After some truss rod and bridge tweaking its better but has the same issue as the SB-2 had, where the G string is noticeably quieter than the others. I’ve raised the pole pieces but this issue is a work in progress. I changed the strings on both basses as the stock strings felt too rough and too bright. I had hoped the pickup shape on the kiloton would make a better thumb rest but it doesn’t, so I still stick a rubber adhesive block on the pickguard to rest my thumb, which need replacing every few weeks. I’ve been looking at ZeroMod etc. Unfortunately in a couple of our songs I play with a pick and the strings muted at the bridge with my right hand, and that makes the picking area directly above the pickup, so the Kiloton design isn’t the ideal one for me that I’d hoped it would be. Sound-wise I found the Kiloton to be a bit “meh” – none of the switch positions really float my boat and compared to my p-basses, they all sound a bit sterile. Like the SB-2 the body is very comfortable and I like the slim Jazz style neck and quality is good. At least with the maple neck I can see the fret markers! The body wood is soft, it already has a small dent and when installing Schaller straplocks I have already had to pad the holes with matches as they stripped easily. I haven’t gigged the Kiloton yet, for the last two gigs I’ve gone back to my lovely (but slightly heavier) 2003 USA Precision Deluxe. I’m not dissing the G&L’s as they are good quality and good to play, but mine may end up on eBay at some point.

a couple of three way switches would be fairly cheap... if you don't want to drill holes in the front of your bass it would be possible to get 3 way slidey type switches and install them inset on the back cavity cover. I did this on an old Yamaha SG I had to add coil taps. Not an ideal situation but lets you try it without any holes on (the front) of your bass.

My heart always sunk when turning up for a dep gig or rehearsal and there was a Marshall half stack in the corner.

Give me a collection of modest but decent basses over a couple of amazing ones all day long. My mood changes daily. One night I'm into flats, the next the brighter zing of active, the next passive honk.... etc. I want access to a choice of sounds and feels to cater for my mood that night. I definitely don't have a clue what my ideal bass is, not a clue.

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I with Doddy on this - there's a difference in playing busily and playing busily and grooving like a MF. Here's my exhibit A for busy but absolutely smashing a home run because you have your musicality and skills all suitably honed rather than playing around with pentatonic nonsense.

I don't think busy playing is a lack of self confidence. If you are confident in what you are doing, you can play busily and still make everything groove and sound great. Look at players like Rocco, Jaco, and Jamerson- all of them could be described as busy players, yet they all grooved hard. As you've changed from guitar to bass, it could be that you aren't fully in the bass mindset yet. That's not a negative thing, but it is a different approach. It could be that you need to focus a little more on rhythmic subtleties like note placement, and whether you are playing on top of or behind the beat. It's little things like that that make a big difference. If you are confident and know what you're doing, you can get away with being a busy player.

There is strong chance that this is the final one…. for some time.