Leaderboard

My first bass was a Hohner Jack headless. It was bought as a Christmas present and hidden away, but in the weeks prior to the 25th, unbeknownst to my parents I used to sneak it out of its box and have a go every day after I got home from school. One afternoon, I broke a string and because they were headless they cost a fortune. I ended up selling half my railway set to the next door neighbour to pay for a new set of strings and my parents were none the wiser. I'm only admitting this now as they are no longer with us.

Never. Never!! "Borrow" some disco lights on a whirly thing and think it would be cool to have the mains plug sat almost in an extension lead ready for you to press it down with your foot at the end of the intro to the first song and send coloured lights swirling round everywhere like a budget Jean Michelle Jarre show. It will most probably look cheesy, but it 100% will result in your instrument cable being drawn into the whirly mechanism and being yanked out of your bass, making you look like a bellend. Kicking the lights to death doesn't help get your cable back either or continue the song. I learned this lesson so you don't have to.

And a kipper tie with milk and thray sugars playse

Nah, a Brummie thing would be 'like-land'.

Lockdown rig I threw together sometime in 2020. The mini SVT sounded pretty good through the 412 down the old garden shed!

And Wishbass is 'bagosh-height'.

This habit of answering questions before we have chance to show our superior knowledge by asking them must be stopped. It'll be the death of the forum.

I start at the and and work backwards. (The idea came from this very forum iirc.) This means that when you are learning a section, as you come to the end of it you are into familiar territory rather than a part you haven't learned yet. Works for me!

People laughed at David Icke when he claimed lizard illuminati were trying to take over society. They wuz wrong Farage An iguana yesterday

Been waiting a year for this, there's a build diary some of you have been kind enough to comment on. Awesome build quality, the pictures don't really do the complexity of the grain justice. Plays like butter, Alan commented that it was "very fretless" and he's bang on, tons of mwaaaa all day long. Absolutely love it.

Thought I'd share since the bassline is so badass 😎 The album as a whole is worth checking out if you're into funky neo soul/jazz/beats...

Has arrived, is awesome. What a finish, I'm used to bubinga having a grain to it and I think I imagined the feel of the bass to be more textured, but it's absolutely flawlessly smooth. Gong to take some time to get used to it and the filter based pre, which seems to be capable of some very wide-ranging settings. I'll out a few more pics in an NBD post in Guitars.

Here's my current collection: 1985 Stingray fretless - the only one I haven't bought via BC! Limelight Pino Sadowsky Metro Will Lee Nordstrand Acinonycx 1989 Stingray 4 MTD 535 2018 Stingray Special 5 It's too many really but.........

I can empathise with that - for anyone living in the Midlands in the 60s/70s, and with the hordes of US visitors to the area around Stratford, there were many irregular pronunciations to be sniggered at, including War Wick - and why not, hordes of our country folk have long taken the mickey out of some Midlands pronunciations (both East and West Midlands). However it seems the Americans have, at times taken this to a new level - a couple of examples:- Wal bass (Wall bass) Rickenbacker (variously Rickenbarker; Rickenbocker) There was a long running thread on Talkbass arguing how Rickenbacker should be pronounced. However having seen the Friends episode when they exclaimed ‘Happy Honikah Monica’ I could see where the problem lay 😀

And as Inti once told us, we are all clown whores. Which is good because I was worried it was just me.

This is why so many people visiting music shops don't use names but only point and say 'I'll have that one.' And then sell it a week later on Basschat.

I've been playing bass guitar for nearly fifty years. For the first forty years I was getting better. Now I am only getting older.

They’re all pronounced ”can’t afford it”

I saw MANGETOUT on FB yesterday and some one said it's MAN GET OUT!! 🤣🤣

Couldn't resist!

For about fifteen minutes I stared open-mouthed and couldn't look away. When I did look away it was a great relief.

If I knew who to kick to get another Rival Schools album, too, I'd be putting my boots on.

This hits the nail on the head. I would tend to agree that these are upgrades but, for example, if someone else has no interest in Drop D, then that is not an upgrade, and it's possible that someone prefers the original Squier pickups to the SDs. The idea of modifications is that it tailors the bass to your preferences, but it's important to recognise that this might be different other peoples preferences.

I explained to one of them once that they weren't trails, that was the exhaust of the Foo Fighter shadowing the airliner. He went quite quiet and didn't say much about it. I don't know why, he wouldn't tell me.

Just been watching a few vids on youtube, and this spring up. I know julia is a fantastic player, but this jazz (the blue one) sounds amazing. It isnt really mentioned - is this a sandberg?

Used my Spector yesterday during a rare studio outing. Looked particularly nice.

Acquired this from my friend who was selling it in favour of the big version. I’ve not long got into compressors after 30+ years of managing perfectly well without, but I’m doing more theatre-type gigs with IEMs etc and there was room for improvement in my sound. I was quite daunted to be honest by all the parameters you can alter, and hated the idea of being mister “all the gear - no idea” However I’ve quickly realised that a) the parameters are all useful things to tweak to really refine how your compression is working for you, and b) it sounds absolutely stellar live. A proper pedal I can just leave on the entire time now. The acid test for me has been the last song of our set where I go all 80s slap bass and chorus pedal, which prior to the Cali76 tended to vary between horribly piercing thru IEMs or just completely neutered by my attempts to rein it it a bit. But the last two gigs this weekend the sound has been sparkling, punchy and bright, but tamed and controlled and just frankly excellent sounding. It’s not cheap but it’s added a whole extra dimension to my onstage sound. Love it.

I gigged a Mesa Walkabout Scout for a decade and never used the parametric EQ.

Baby, come back! - The Equals

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Swamp Music

Ok, I shot some audio and video, not my best, but it's getting put together as I remind myself how to video edit and upload to Youtube. Will post ASAP The recordings are interesting. There is something of the Wal about it, a bit, and it sounds great in it own right. Very clean. The pickups I think are faithful to the system they have been installed in...I have been wavering here but am going to leave them in place for now. (I have spoken to Aaron Armstrong about custom wind Wal style multicoils and have that there as a backup if need be.) It's a perhaps surprising conclusion, but I actually think my next port of call is to change the neck. I've been considering this carefully as I explore options, and I give you below an interesting quote which helped me firm up my own thoughts. This is from Luthier's Roundtable in Bass Gear Magazine back from 2011 (Tone Primer section) about necks: Even though the body makes up most of an instrument's mass, neck materials and construction are important to tone. Some builders feel a single piece of wood is best, while others take the laminate approach. Some feel that reinforcing the neck with a stiff, light material like graphite improves tone, while others believe the best approach is to make the entire neck out of alternative material. Everyone agrees, though, the neck must be strong enough to withstand string tension. "Laminated necks are more stable," says Bob Mick, but " in general, a heftier neck gives better tone." Ken Smith believes graphite reinforcement evens out a neck's response, while Roger Sadowsky prefers unreinforced, one-piece flatsawn maple necks to laminate construction. "Every few years I make a batch of graphite-reinforced necks just to remind my self it doesn't make much difference, says Sadowsky." They still get acoustic dead spots, and they're not significantly stiffer than our unreinforced necks. However, the fingerboard wood is a significant factor in the sound. It's easier for me to hear the difference between maple and rosewood fingerboard than between an alder and ash body. Garry Willis avoids graphite reinforcement for a different reason: It raises the neck's resonant frequency, and he prefers lower-frequency resonance. Still some feel graphite (a.k.a carbon fiber) makes the ideal material. Rich Lasner says," A graphite neck eliminates sympathetic vibrations that either cancel or favor notes, because the neck's resonant frequency is above the range of the instrument's fundamental. The idea is to give the truest fundamental tone possible, and because of the material's greater stiffness, the notes sustain longer." I'm going make a bet that another key ingredient here is the stiffness of the neck raising the resonant frequency enough to give the sound a significant boost in the mids, giving at least some of the Wal 'punch'. That, plus rosewood or ebony boards, is part of the 'recipe'. It's testable, so let's do it. (As an aside, I note Paul Hermann flat out refuses to do maple fretboards on custom Wal orders, though Pete Stevens did do some during his time. I wonder if this is because it messes with the Wal recipe too much? Ah well, speculative....) I'm going to take some measurements of the neck - it's quite deep as well as having the slightly odd V shape - I would like to try and get as close as I can to the same neck stiffness whilst trying to make it perhaps a touch comfier. That may take some workings out about neck dimensions/volume. I've been talking to @Andyjr1515 about a neck and he's game. I'm going to get a quote from Chris McIntyre too. At this point, I may need to sell some stuff to fund the ongoing experimentation. You may see me in the classifieds more soon. Since I have the Lusithand preamp in hand, I will install that next + record clips whilst sorting out a new neck and then waiting for it to arrive. A new neck is likely to take a few months.

Touch of the Ventures. I think the Surfrajettes should buy it.

I like the demo players riffage, and I like that just for once we see a demo with what is obviously someone's favorite gigging bass rather than a brand new boutique thingy, but would it not have made more sense to demo this with an actual y'know like P-bass? I'm spared the agony of having to decide whether or not to buy one by the absence of an XLR out. I always go to FoH as well as my rig, so that's a bit of a deal-breaker for me. Yes, I realise that I could use a DI box. No, I don't want to take even more gear to gigs.

Interesting idea, might have to give that a go.

right. Now beer. need to remember that Neck pickup is right there. But this is a great bass with plenty of sounds. I’ll do Some better vids when I’m not brain dead and 24,000 steps into a day 😂

Something tells me you never held a job in sales.

It does look like just another ' inject tension ' into yet another reality tv prog that now seems to dominate our screens. Moving along, american Leburn is the most pro muso in the line up. Apart from him , and his band at the time , playing at my pals birthday do, i've seen him live elsewhere, like the Jericho Tavern blues night. I think he's already pretty damn good, regardless of whether you like his music or not.

Remember that bum note you played? Yeah, no one else does. Forget about it and enjoy the rest of the gig.