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This post will come as a surprise to Andy, as he does not know me. But I owe him. A couple of weeks ago, Andy sold a Yamaha BB1500A and described it as doing the Marcus Miller thing. This came as a surprise to me, as my 1500 had never come close to that sound. But after absorbing that ad, it now does it very well, better I’d say than the MM signature Fender I once had. It’s true that I tinkered with the mid-cut preset to good effect, but I can’t believe that alone could have made all the difference. Is it all in my head? Or is my playing style now inspired by the faith that we CAN do the Marcus sound? Or when Andy Travis speaks, do all bass guitars obey? Perhaps he would say something encouraging about the Squier Jaguar?

I was at the last Stonehenge free festival in 1984 (rather aptly). I remember seeing burnt out cars. I remember seeing The Poison Girls I remember seeing this tent I remember nothing after that.. 😁

I wish basses would obey me 🤣

Justice must be, not only done, but seen to be done. A bit late, but here's your Certificates ... BC_Chal_Cert_2022_06_1.pdf ... which look like this (but bigger, of course...)...

Random course correction image.

I saw Chic in Cork on Tuesday, excellent as always. A staggering setlist delivered immaculately.

From "Bacon Sanwiches and Salvation", by Adrian Plass.

My Barefaced ST and ABM500 rig

Played a beer festival in Llanmaes. Bloody awesome, went down a storm.

4x1300 watt should have tipped you off. Yes, such amps exist, but only from the likes of Powersoft, and only for mucho dinero.

There's a lot of talk about boutique amps and a lot of money that can be spent on tubey stuff, but despite owning at one time or another the most expensive all-tube amps that both Mesa and Ampeg produce - silly money in the case of the former (north of £3000) - as well as loads of top end hybrid/non-tube gear by Aguilar, Mesa, PJB, Markbass etc (and don;t get me started on how many expensive cabs I've owned), without doubt the best bass tone I ever had was from an early 70's WEM 15" combo that cost me £300 🤔

mrs nekomatic once got the kids a pBone for a bit of fun (as they already both played piano and violin) and for a further bit of fun got someone she knows to give them a couple of lessons. Somehow a couple of lessons turned into a full on third instrument, kid 1 let it drop after a while but kid 2 recently got his grade 7, on a King we inherited from my late uncle who used to play in an amateur orchestra in Belgium. Kid 2’s teacher is now trying him out on some jazz, much to his initial reluctance but last lesson while I was working upstairs I could overhear him taking solos on Watermelon Man to a Jamey Aebersold backing track, and I may coincidentally have got something in my eye.

Well nearly got it.. Was initially looking at a P Bass but there just not my thing tonally. So looked for a 4 string Jazz to go with my Atelier 5 without spending £thousands.. This fits the bill. Have heard great things in as much as build quality etc. Didn't want to mod it, just pick it up and play.. I really like gold and white, not sure about the gold pick guard so will change that out for a dark brown tort maybe. I think these may be sought after in years to come maybe.? . Ill take it to rehearsal and see how it sounds through the Aguilar.. 😎

I've been quite busy hence the long gap since my last update. As well as starting back clinically at work (Bedside critical care nurse) the band I'm in are doing our first performances since covid changed our world ... this has meant loads of practicing (I'm not all that experienced so for me it is simple stuff I need to get right ... and I will be gigging with twiggy so I'm getting used to a 5 string fretless) but also offered me a power challenge! I've taken to using a Helix Stomp with an Ashdown Ant, lovely sound but it ties me to mains power (Or a too costly battery/inverter combo). We are going to "entertain the troops" getting ready for a Pride march next week and we have a b'day party garden gig at the end of July ... for both, the presence of mains power is doubtful. So I did some research and have built, printed a case for and assembled a multi-effects device (I call it effectlåda) that runs off a USB power brick ... measurements so far indicate I should get about 10h out of it on a single charge; my first Amp was a Roland Micro Bass (now glad I didn't sell it!) which can run of batteries also so I'm now good for power, and for our setup it should be plenty loud enough. An added bonus (That I have been trying to implement for a while) is the ability to playback simple drum backing to some of our songs, in fact I can plug in my USB midi keyboard and select from a wide range of synth plugins (FluidSynth soundfont based/DX7/DX10/Etc) ... effectlåda runs patchbox os on a Raspberry pi, this offers a slightly modified version of the Moddevices software (Tho a couple of versions older and not as powerful) ... the audio quality is not quite on a par with my Stomp and the tuners I've found so far for the system are rather crap but the combo of effectlåda and micro bass will do the job nicely for our gigs. Despite all this I've still made some progress with twiggy. I've now put a set of Rotosound tru bass black tape wound strings (60-135) on her and OMG ... they sound glorious! I had a bit of a disaster as my "head" mounting system started to fail; I had to redesign/rebuild it ... I was very fortunate to be able to do this without sacrificing the strings ... phew! Once I've figured out how to capture audio with the effectlåda, I'll post some recordings up. I've also modified the way I mounted the saddles, cutting slots to hold them (used my baby CNC machine, which did a great job). This has had the dual benefit of lowering my saddle action and also much reduced the risk of a saddle slipping out and getting lost. I'm now starting to get concerned about twiggy's neck stability, I might try to install a truss rod but I think I may have made the neck too thin at the head end to give me sufficient depth ... but I am now starting to look at moving onto Flo proper. Given my experience with twiggy I feel that a B0 scale length of 780mm works well for me and whilst twiggy is a couple of inches longer than I had intended for Flo, I will probably use a very similar layout for Flo, but with higher quality wood and most likely off the shelf tuners. I've reconsidered my earlier idea of using a pulley system to take the tuners to the rear (Both shortening the length overall and allowing me to hide the tuners); twiggy is really nice and light but dows not sit easily on my knee and there is nowhere to rest my (R) forearm ... I'm pondering giving Flo a body shape like twiggy's but adding in a fold out stand (Like the Steinberger Spirit) or implement the ability to affix a "body expander", bolting it to the rear of the "body" section of Flo ... this could be wood or even 3D printed. S'manth x

my glass is full , never mind half full 😁

Loud as flip

The Portamento isn't truly unlined, it has stub lines. Which is really handy above the 12 fret, but slightly defeats the object of being unlined.... whatever that is

It's a hard life lesson for us, eh? 😁

They do… you just say “pssst … hey fender/Yamaha/Gibson/rickenbacker bass … wanna come and live at my house ?”

Nothing like having the correct tool. However, someone here said a paint can opener will do the same job. At just £1.80 from B&Q (other diy stores are available) I thought I’d give it a go. The tip needed a little more angle and a a little filing for a better fit, but it works really well.

Interesting thread... I'm looking forward to the 'How Andy Travis changed the s/h bass economy' thread, with a special foreword by ped.

I’ve always called them ‘fretless trumpets’, which clearly makes zero sense. Except in my mind, where, like many things, it makes perfect sense. 😂

Stewmac do a truss rod wrench, a big phillips doesn’t fit because it’s a cross slot and there’s no hole for the point if you know what I mean, I’m guessing if you’re good with metalwork it probably wouldn’t be too hard to make something

I’m taking it the jack plug socket is around the back possibly inserted whilst bent over 😂🤣

They're a solid sheet of aluminium (I guess), similar thickness to the normal pick guards but with 90 degree edges rather than beveled. They have a visibly brushed finish that I thought would feel horrible but actually doesn't. Think I prefer them to plastic now, I'd assume you can get them anodised any colour you want too.

There’s a trace Elliot ah1200 at my practice room. That thing has it’s own gravitational pull. I’d hate to drag that to any gig! Most A/B heads are fairly light though - an Abm 600 is around 12kg, handbox r400 is even lighter I think and as much power as anyone would need. If you’re driving to a gig, I don’t see it as too much of a hardship to use a class a/b head if that’s what you prefer.

Dunlop’s possibly

I like it when the technical side backs up the circumstantial or qualitative. We knew something unique was happening with the electronics and it seems that this is indeed the case.

It’s ok - the wal preamp is two transistors and 3/4 of a 4opamp IC that’s not in production any more and crazy hard to find

I had a Selmer T&B 50 valve amp from the mid 70s until the mid 80s - never left me down and always sounded great.

Here is my Epiphone classic pro that I had changed to a single pickup. The wiring is obviously different to a 2 pickup thunderbird so turning down the bridge pickup on a 2 pickup model doesn't give you the same sound as the one pickup does. Overend Watts used to have a shop in Hereford and I spent many hours talking to him about music and basses. He always said he felt the single pickup Thunderbirds cut through better than the twin pickup models. That to me sums up the difference perfectly.

Not the right guitar? Says who? There is no right guitar unless you're in a strict tribute band. Crack on, I say.

When you are trying to sell some otherwise terribly put together piece of crap.

Beautiful!! Almost a roasted look, I love that. I can’t wait to hear if it makes a difference to the sound of the build, as I hope. @Bass Culture’s build was fascinating to see and the sound clips/videos he did recently were interesting to me. Mainly because I still thought the sound he got out of his Wal clone was cleaner/less low mid heavy than I expected, even with all of the attention to Wal-like detail. (Sounds great BTW) This raises the possibility again of the sound mostly being the pickups/preamp, as alluded to by many on this thread. Alan @skelfwas clear to me that he thought the Wal sound mostly was in the preamp. I guess this is how R&D goes. At least I can share what I find publicly…my successes and failures… The chaps working back a Wal Custom preamp schematic from my photos tell me the topology is different to what has been generally thought. I quote them directly from a recent message: ’The thing that struck me the most was the filter topology used in the original. Most people on the net assume that the Wal uses a "state variable filter" topology. This type of filter is a bit more complicated (more components), but can easily change cut off frequency and Q factor (boost at the cutt off freq) independent of each other. From what I can see, the original uses a Sallen-Key topology - which isn't that flexible at all. It has fewer components, but gain, freq and Q can't really be adjusted independently, maybe to a degree and with some wild twists. And the original Wal is using all those wild twists. The Attack function is also very interesting - a signal is taken from one of the pickups (I think it's the bridge pickup) and passed through a high pass filter, leaving only the high end of the raw pickup signal. Then later at the end of the signal chain, that signal is added to the total mix for the attack effect. Really clever idea!!!’ I briefly note in passing Alan’s use of a similar idea for adding treble back in for the ACG EQ-01. Though his lets you pick which pickup to take the signal from. I attach a draft very early version of a preamp schematic, though without values or second pickup yet added, for your pleasure.

One I picked up off BC last September. My first Spector. Extremely impressed - loving the Tonepump circuit!

When I was in school, probably about 9 in 1979, I wanted to play trombone and spoke to my parents and music teacher about it. Music teacher told my parents I'll never make a musician as I don't have a musical bone in my body. Quite pleased that I proved him very wrong.