Leaderboard

So this weekend I got my third ever bass (first one for 19 years!). I've been oggling reverends for a few years now and felt the split coil /bridge humbucker combo to be the best option for me (I've never enjoyed the bridge single coil sound much). Every single sound is useable both pickups sound great, I genuinely can't believe how much of a difference this has made to my sound. I was always of the opinion that amps and pedals had a bigger overall influence on your tone but I'm very happy to be proven wrong. Even my amp sounds ten times better, which I have never been fully happy with. Overall very chuffed 😁

Do they do a Corbett Short Scale too? 😂

Our guitarist booked me one of these for tonight's rehearsal as a special treat. I have now popped my SVT cherry. 300W is plenty.

well im sure Lemmy stole his identity from the mayor in trumpton town, shocking 🙂 are there any more ? ?

Frets are in the 10” to 14” radius fingerboard.

haha grow them, you know you want to 🙂 Another Identity thief, prince defo modled himself on Jafar from aladdin 😆

Have been working on the headstock shape and blending in the volute today. The front has a small reveal of the mahogany. Also done fingernail access for the truss rod cover, just need to put some magnets in to hold it in place. Very pleased with how it is coming along.

The sample settings for the Bass Driver DI were done with a vintage Fender bass directly into a mixer and near field monitors. The Blend is usually set to 100% since the SansAmp emulates vintage tube amps that have no blend control. What you are plugging the Bass Driver into will have an impact on the final sound. It's best to use the Bass Driver into a flat response platform when you first use it so you can hear and understand how it works. Running through other effects or a bass amp with its own EQ curve will negate the sample settings and the way the pedal is supposed to work. The unit does have a midrange scoop by design and backing off the Blend or increasing the midrange can help if you require more mids. We also offer the ParaDriver and VT Bass DI's for players that want more control over the midrange content.

A Load/ReLoad single album with the fat trimmed off would have been great back in the day, although I quite liked Load as an album in its own right. Still think that era is the best they've ever sounded in the studio and live.

The good news is that I've got to the 'make a list of the final jobs' stage. The bad news is that I've only ticked off half of one of them in a morning's work. But that's better than going backwards I've tidied up the bridge pickup chamber, copper-foil shielded and earthed it, fitted it and modded the trial pickup ring to as thin as the chamber allows. Here's the shielded chamber, ready for sorting the fixing holes. I confess I am a little nervous of the un-supported outlet cable coming from the Gemini pickup. It's a heavy cable and those three teeny coil attachment wires are pretty fragile. It's a pity that there isn't any sort of cable secure - I would have thought a simple lacing through a couple of drilled holes in the base plate would have been possible. Still, it seems OK - I just won't take it out again! Also here is the slimmed down trial guard for @ped to see what he thinks. The final version - whatever shape @ped decides on - will have two small pickguard screws holding it in place, one either side of the pickup.

It was a serious reply - there's absolutely no money in it. We're far too old and far too ugly to "make it" so we just make some tunes, record them and send them out into the ether to absolutely zero plaudits because we must suffer for our art - and we're terrible at convincing other people to suffer our art...

Swingin' ～ Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Back in the mid 80's you could pick up a 60's 500/1 for, less than a new Squier or Tokai bass. I picked up 2 during this time a 1964 Violin bass which cost £175 which, I sill have to this day, & a 1964 Senator bass which cost me £150. I let the Senator go for a new MIM Fender Jazz in the 90's not one of my best ideas. My friend had the CT Cavern bass and it looked really good but I'm, amazed how much the German made basses cost these days it's like Fender CS money. The best £175 I ever spent on a bass guitar.

I prefer Precisions in every way.

Or what's the handle for

I bet you’ve never seen these two together in the same room. Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Repeats Rob Halford out of Judas Priest

Fork or five string?

Sting-Wal body and neck have finally arrived! Stupidly forgot a few parts so will be a week or so before I finally plug it in… Also slightly nervous to take a drill to it to mount everything so might take it to Denmark st…

there is a third part to this equation...

Depends entirely on the music I'm playing. For metal I like a jazz type but I don't play a lot of metal these days. For the stuff that I am playing now, a P or PJ can be the perfect thing. I could really do with 2 of them though - 1 with flats and another with rounds!

So it's good night from me....

Don't you think those cutaways add a certain 'je ne sais quoi' ? A bit like cooling vents on a Maserati

I'm no Metallica fan but TBH I don't get all the noise about them 'selling out' when the black album came out. In fact I'd say they got better, moving way from the tune-free first 5 albums etc to writing actual songs, you know the stuff that people can actually hum/sing along to. Load and Reload both have some good tunes and if they'd been combined on one album, this would by some way have been their best effort.

Harley Benton SpaceShip 80 :

Headsticks have done very well and are reasonable big on the gigging circuit, we're not in that league. We easily covered costs on our first 3 albums, which is all we wanted, we recently remixed our first album, , added some live tracks, we were never happy with the original recording and it had long since sold out, we have struggled to sell the 100 copies we needed to recoup the costs, which is what prompted the singer's wife's (too many apostrophes Dad?) comment. We can still sell T shirts though 😃

I’ve started using DR Hi Beams and I think I’ve found my favourite string. I love the tone, the growl and the feel of them. The tension seems spot on for me, not too firm but not sloppy either, they just seem really fun to play. No idea how long the brightness lasts but they’ve been brilliant so far. One trivial/purely cosmetic thing I also like about them is that they don’t have silk wraps, as I don’t like the way they fluff up and separate.

Do you have "big hands"? There's a luthier (ahem) whose work sometimes features on here who may have just the thing for you 😊

First gig out with this rig yesterday, very impressed! Ashdown ABM 400 Neo 1x15 combo with matching 1x15 Neo cab. Easiest load in/out I’ve done for a full electric show 😎

I prefer right hand basses myself. 😎

D'addario pro steels.

Harley Benton seem to be on a bit of a roll. I do like these, I just wish I had a reason to buy one. https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_mv_4msb_gotoh_sb.htm

Autumn Leaves - Most jazz musicians

I got one of the sonic blue ones back in the day. To be fair, I modded & pimped it up quite substantially.... Mighty Mite neck, pearloid pickguard, EMG's. I guess the only original thing left was the body 🙂

Heavy metal isn't really about nice tunes you can hum along to. Heavy metal is supposed to be challenging to listen to, it shouldn't be easy listening background music. I've been a metal fan for a very long time and I have never listened to some Crowbar or Suicidal Tendencies and thought "if only this had a more catch tune and maybe a major key to cheer it up a bit". If I ever have those thoughts then I'll trade in my record collection for Michael Buble's greatest hits.

One Foot In The Grave ～ Eric Idle

Funnily enough that's the thing I like the most about it. I'm generally not a fan of Fender style headstocks. But the sunburst on this coupled with the gotoh tuners makes it look smaller and much tidier.

Well, I was so impressed with my first P bass from this builder I asked if he’d create a PJ unlined fretless for me. No problem. So, I eventually settled on a polyester-coated ebony board. It is currently strung with Labella flats and sounds really lush. Some pics:

Wow, I just received a message on IG from Schecter that I have won a bass. 😊

Well, I'm embarrassed to say it was the battery, which despite being pretty fresh and powering the preamp and PUP lights just fine, wasn't powering the LEDs. We live and learn! @itu many thanks, and many thanks to everyone who pitched in! I've never used these before, they are extremely bright, it's going to be interesting to use them live I suspect, can't help thinking I'd love a set of these on my upright

Well, that would be wrong 😂

CHRISTMAS HAS COME EARLY - if you're a bass player needing some festive basslines that is! The World's biggest FREE collection of online bass transcriptions - http://tomreadbass.co.uk - just got bigger with 17 charts added today, 15 of them being Christmas tunes - taking the total to 1121 charts! Most have been ordered by bass players around the world, and all of them opted for the half-price option, meaning that the charts get published on the website for the benefit of the global bass community. Some were part of band arrangements for a cruise ship band about sail for the festive season, and there's a couple of gospel songs too. Here's some of what's new: All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_4b5d857602d34f339d3451c01020f0bf.pdf Fairytale Of New York - The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_b32c891d51494df7bc3d5a65f17d15d9.pdf Gracious God - Jesse Manibusan https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_dee940de23674337b2d7e0f1e414c3c5.pdf Jingle Bell Rock - Bobby Helms https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_37e76b30dbbd4e55bc9af6127d74d5d7.pdf Merry Christmas Everyone - Shakin' Stevens https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_82933573a1424369ba2094990c4f0303.pdf Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree - Brenda Lee https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_863fb966956445d1aba2385d61448590.pdf Run Rudolph Run - Chuck Berry https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_99fd41a4043a487db51e7da31daa12ef.pdf Soon And Very Soon - Andrae Crouch https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_b418e7dc8e7e47bebb22515a07d533bb.pdf A Marshmallow World - Dean Martin https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_15d0d90c3d764769b4e21f394f20cfae.pdf Frosty The Snowman - Ella Fitzgerald https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_6173b1c8c85d4d8db6266282b6996991.pdf I'll Be Home For Christmas - Bing Crosby https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_ebe1719277ec4e95afbb0e4478e8533e.pdf Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow - Dean Martin https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_b2df9e0f31ce4477a9ae3f6d99dded74.pdf The Christmas Song - Nat King Cole https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_e531a4a989cf447baedb344071f32023.pdf White Christmas - Bing Crosby https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_246d685849d843e39fb4cb35fe8146e2.pdf Winter Wonderland - Bing Crosby https://www.tomreadbass.co.uk/_files/ugd/238d8f_0f21c01fb64642e99b22c43a446fa981.pdf The website is 100% free, with no registration or log-in required, and no limit to the number of transcriptions you can download. Just help yourself - and please share! A big thank you to those of you that have contributed to the resource via the "Buy Me A Beer" button - much appreciated! Merry Christmas!!!

I was amused by the combination of the car, its position occupying two parking spaces, and the small sign directly in front of it.

We had a gig in Portsmouth last night, bit of a schlep in pouring rain, but thankfully the rain had stopped in time for load in, we played a working men’s club and during soundcheck their was a table of oldies sat with fingers in ears complaining that we were too loud. By the second song the oldies that were complaining were in full flow, singing and dancing and it carried on that way all night😁 i was using my Trace Elliot RAH600 back up amp as my DB750 started banging and popping during rehearsal last Tuesday, heard something rattling in the case so thought I’d take the lid off and found a loose capacitor!? Guess I need to find an amp shop around Wiltshire or Bristol….☹️

The other two gigs this week were a Golden Wedding do at a local pub. Only about 30 guests, managed to get some up dancing to 50's / 60's stuff though, and home by 11.30pm so not too bad. Last night was the final gig of the year with The ELO Experience at The Corn Exchange in Stamford. Sell out crowd of 400 people, a lovely venue but a basta*d of a get in - everything into a tiny lift, then up to the top floor where it's then rolled down the steep centre aisle of the theatre and up onto the stage. Band played well, and our new sound engineer (and bassist!) Paul is fitting in well, with drums and bass sounding great in the room. ( Enclose a picture which shows my lovely bald spot which is increasing at a frightening rate - may soon be time for a new look I think.)