Leaderboard

Recently it was my birthday. I posted a picture of a very cool Ibanez Jet King my Mrs bought, and it’s really awesome. This bass, is from my mum. Mum doesn’t really know about it, because she has advanced dementia, and it’s almost certain that when I went to visit her in the home on my birthday, it will be the last birthday I have with her. I wanted something special. I saw this online, used, and just couldn’t stop going back to it. I loved the looks and loved the history and vibe of the Reverend company. So, I took a punt on it. Today, I got it out finally to set it up, clean it and restring it. It was set up like donkey. I swear many people just do not know how to do setups, including stores. It’s used, 10yrs old actually, but in mint condition. So, a clean, a shim, a truss rod adjustment, a fretboard oil, a substantial bridge saddle adjustment and a new set of strings….. and it’s absolutely sublime. Beautiful piano like tone from the pickups, lovely low action (eventually), it’s fabulous. Thanks mum ❤️

Well, last Friday actually. Long day. I'd been awake since 4.00am after four hours kip (the Indian I'd eaten the previous night rumbling through my guts). Left home (near Reading) about 8.30am; satnav advises there's a prang on the M25 anti-clockwise, so I'm clockwise around to the M11 junction (about halfway round the M25). Weather was horrific, heavy rain, people driving like Richards. Arrive at Engine Room Studios in Bow around 10.30am for a video shoot at 11.00am. After filming (1.00pm), we decamp to an adjacent room and rehearse that night's set once. Pint of IPA. Drive from Bow to Lewisham, where we loiter for a couple of hours at the drummers house. 6.00pm (and remember I've been up 14 hours at this point), we embark for The Bird's Nest in Deptford. There's no load in, just a single bass in a case for me, to be told we're not on until 10.00pm. We sit around, talk to punters (who despite all sounding like Ray Winstone are just lovely). We go on late, but there's a curfew at 11.00pm. Good crowd, appreciative. We do the full set and we're done by curfew. We're in the car by 11.15pm. Drop singer off in Godalming at about 12.40am and drive home, in about 1.30am. I eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich, drink a glass of milk and give the cat some attention (no, this isn't a metaphor), bed at 2.00am. Been awake 22 hours at this point. My body has forgotten how to do this level of musical activity. My back aches. My right knee (surgery last August) aches. My hands hurt. I'm dehydrated. I feel alive. Awake at 9.00am and jetwashed the drive. Rock and roll.

Just traded some 5 strings that I really wasn't playing enough and fancied an 'investment piece'. Pretty happy, a '78 USA Jazz. Quite heavy like a lot of them were, I had a '76 once and that was as heavy. To be fair my Elite isn't that far behind it. Anyway, colour?? Who knows...nearer Tropical Turquoise off the Fender colour chart. Pretty mint and plays nice, has the 70's slap tone when you hit it. Anyone know the colour for sure or have any other ideas??

Hm. The Capo should be arriving this week; I’ve also decided to move on the Moog, tremendous cool chorus pedal but more than I need. It’ll be replaced by the Red Witch Empress Chorus… soothing to my OCD and that of some folk in this fine parish lol how it’s going how it should end… (what is end, anyways?):

Easy Star All Stars Tour https://www.songkick.com/artists/166255-easy-star-allstars Aug 12 Southampton, UK The Brook Aug 13 Brighton, UK Concorde 2 Aug 15 Norwich, UK Epic Studios Aug 16 Birmingham, UK Hare and Hounds Aug 18 OUTDOOR Buckingham, UK Stowaway Festival Aug 18 Farnham, UK Weyfest Music Festival Aug 24 London, UK Electric Ballroom

Just done something similar three days in a row for 2 weekends, see above ↑ Up at 7.00 am so I can get some work in and not be too far behind with everything after the weekend, I'm self-employed graphic designer and some of my clients can be quite demanding (but they pay me well for the fact that most of the time I can be straight on whatever they need). Have lunch at 12.00 and make a pack-up for the evening because I know from previous experience that I may not have time to go out for food once we're at the venue, and even if I do, I don't want to be eating fast-food crap three evenings in a row. Down at the rehearsal room for some time between 1.30 and 2.30 (descending on how far we need to drive and when the venue load-in is) to load up and then set off. We're based in Nottingham and this week were playing London, York and Bracknell (Thursday , Friday and Saturday respectively) so it's 2-4 hours plus any stops along the way. Arrive at the venue just as it opens. The tour is basically In Isolation (us) plus Gothzilla with Feather Trade (from Athens Georgia) and X-Superstar (Andy Cousin - previously of All About Eve and The Mission - new band) on selected dates and local supports on the others. All four bands have different PA and monitoring requirements so it's a bit of a nightmare for the sound engineer (especially when they don't appear to have received the technical rider for any of the bands). Feather Trade are using my bass rig and Gothzilla one of our guitar amps and it generally falls upon me to be around just in case there are technical problems during the soundcheck. Getting all the bands sound-checked before the doors open isn't always possible and at the London gig things were running so late that Feather Trade had to sacrifice song from their set in order to have 5-minute break between sound checking and playing. Now comes the bit that makes everything worthwhile - 3 hours of great music including 40-50 minutes when I'm on stage, followed by 15 minutes of audience members telling us how much they enjoyed our set. Sell some merch and pack the gear away before loading up and setting off. Get home sometime around 3 in the morning grab some sleep and back up at 7 the following day to do it all again. My legs ache from all the standing up and bouncing around on stage, and my Fitbit tells me that I did nearly 20,000 steps each day. Luckily this weekend's gig is local (but it is up two flights of steep stairs with nowhere close-by to park for the load in). Do I love it? Of course I do!

Yup. Fullerplast...

Everything electronic eventually gets cloned…especially if there’s no patent…I’m amazed someone in China hasn’t already done this. But the point of this build is that visually I’m going nowhere near the look, which true Wal-nuts would fetishise…I just want the sound. And therefore Electric Wood will remain secure in their future…even when I get the sound right, no true Wal fan would want it…it lacks the cachet and rarity value of the real deal. I don’t think prices of Wals will suddenly fall. However I think people who could not afford one will have a go a building their own. So a different market segment will be interested. My own build will have no significant resale value, if I was foolish enough to ever sell it. However it will be perfect for me, once we’ve worked the kinks all out. Side note, I heard some sound clips of the Underhill filter preamp today and it sounded great. It also had a gritty quality to the sound, which I did not expect. It may be another strong contender. However I don’t know if I can face another preamp test with the present one already waiting in the wings.

@Ander87 snap 😂 With the Rockboard 3.0 i can actually fit my Hyper Luminal underneath along with the Thumpinator. This would give me space for a HX Stomp or GT1000core etc in future, I'd love a LEM to go with the OFF1 however it's just a bit much for the amount I'd get to use it. I was trying to get my head around how I'd wire up the Capo pre/post fx loops with one of the compact multi fx units 2 fx loops and my brain melted. For now this is a pretty great functional board for gigging plus a few extra bits for fun in there. Just doing a dry run before I start connecting it all up and it sounds monstrous.

I’m not sure if I have posted mine on here. This is my 2000 Stingray, I have had this about 6 years now. I have mixed feelings about this bass, it plays so well and just feels so comfortable, but I have never been thrilled by the colour. I just can’t seem to bring myself to sell or trade it for fear of not getting another quite so good.

Heh... so, the "SPPP" variant that this was recorded with is the successor to the "SPSC" variant that Pete has in his Wal-ish. The series and parallel modes are the the same for both variants. The difference is in the other available switching options: the SPSC variant allowed for choosing either single row of 4 coils to effectively make a "single coil". The SPPP variant allows for either a "standard P" or "reverse P" option... think neck-side E and A coils in series with the bridge-side D and G coils (or vice versa). This clip was all in series mode.

Had the Stingray out for a play today!

I’m lucky in that I have what the optician said was an excellent technique for getting lenses out by squeezing the eyelid. Just a shame I don’t have excellent technique on a bass guitar 😂

A Good Word, maybe, for he innovative drumming, too..? Sounds odd these days maybe, but it fits the style of the day, and beats the modern 'One... One... One...' disco beat hands down.

Astonishingly, that red one was called the Tragic. The Tragic.

You was lucky! When I was a lad we'd work 23 hours59 minutes every day, then we'd have to go and fell a tree and make our instruments, mine some iron to make wire for strings and and fashion a large His Master's Voice type cone to make it louder, then we'd have to pay double our daily wage to go and play in a dark cellar stood up to our necks in raw sewage with no-one watching, and we were only allowed to play one song, Mustang Sally!

Probably Maui Blue from the international colour range?

Siouxsie & The Banshees today.

With the original currently being used for one of the most awful adverts on TV, I thought this was a refreshing take, and one I'm surprised I'd never heard before: Blood Sisters.

Unfortunately there's lots of different FretKings and navigating your way through all the variations can be difficult. I've got an original "by Eggle" Esprit V Guitar, from the days when they were being made in a workshop behind Musical Exchanges in Birmingham. This is just before Trevor Wilkinson got involved with the company. It's a wonderful instrument, and even though I asked them to do something slightly different to their standard built it has turned out to be everything I wanted. At the time I was after a Firebird, but the current Gibson versions were all horrible and an original one was beyond my means; this was easily a suitable alternative. When I had by big musical instrument clear-out all my guitars were sold apart from this and my Gus G1. However I did also try the prototype version of the bass with the same body shape and it was an unmanageable lump - imagine all the worst aspects of a Thunderbird ramped up to 10. Gratuitous photo of the guitar:

added a signal blender to blend my di outputs into the output of the bass rig so I can monitor them thru my cab at practice

The mosfet version power boards in these early ABM's are prone to failure if the caps are past sell by date which is usually around 20-25 years with regular use. There's usually a bit of smoke and charring if they do and for some peculiar reason it's the mosfets on the left side( from front) that usually fail. As the good folks at Ashdown will tell you, it's best to replace all six mosfets if you have a failure as well as the four coupling caps. It might be easier asking if they would sell you a current pre-built APC033 (issue 4) modern Bi Polar power board as a drop in replacement. It may be cheaper than getting a tech to rebuild the original board for you. Of course thats if the power board is the issue 🤔 Had the caps fail on one I owned and elected to rebuild. It was messy but worked out in the end. scorched board caused by two shorted caps finished board

Ooo - that ain't something you see very often! Pedant alert - it's an MC940 - the 824 was passive, fretted. Looks like the designations for these, the Studios & the Roadsters were 8 for passive, 9 for active & then the fret count - the earlier MC800 & 900 Musicians were 22 fret & the RS800 & 900 Roadsters were 21. Yeah, I know nobody cares but me...

Usually I agree with @Deedee, that's why my Stingray is his (one of) old Stingray. However, I really like the colours just as they and I don't say that about many Ray's without maple boards! It's a cool lookin' bat!

Haven’t heard this in a long time, all time classic from Desmond Dekker

There's a "hard life" for us in the West and a "hard life" for those in other parts of the world...

Because the vast majority of players are concerned with the ability to drive the lower impedance phones, something many headphone amps can not do well. We will look at updating the manuals at the next revision cycle to change this to include higher impedance phones too. I had to design a headphone amp for another product (guitar related) recently and the big issue was to be sure the new headphone amp could drive low impedance phones because more and more are going this direction. Many modern digital devices have limited voltage swing therefore can’t drive high impedance phones to more than a low volume.

Mustang Sally..................you win ! you had it worse

Got this a few ago ,a used Harley Benton MV4 Gotoh jazz.Never owned a bass since last year I wanted a cheap jazz just to mess about on in the house,very impressed.

My pedalboard has grown keys! (Akai MPC Key 61) It's not exactly portable!... but can plug the Bass into it and use it to add live effects (including compressor, amp and cab sims, modulation, complex delays etc. all are as good as any other multi fx I've used), it also has a tuner. Can only apply 4x effects to the live input channel at one time, but can add another 4x to the main output (and can quickly change presets). And obviously can also use the keys for synth stuff, and the drum pads for drum sounds and samples, and can record and play loops etc. It's not practical for all situations (although some pedalboards seem a similar size!), and I don't fancy stomping on it! But I'm moving house so am bandless for now and it's great for home Bass practice and I reckon it could fit in some band situations - especially if there are songs that need synth bass/pads/samples/loops etc. and can switch back to using it like a Bass multi fx for other songs. I also have a Boss GT 1000 core but it has been sidelined since I got this so I think I might sell it and go back to a trusty Zoom B1 four for backup/portability etc.

Act Like You Know is such a cool bass line. Good song choices, both great parts! Bass sounds nice.

Really - mass produced to me smacks of robots and machines making and fitting most of the parts together on a production line with little human input (rather like a car). And what do you call ‘mass’ in terms of volume? To me, a run of 100 instruments put together from non standard parts, with levels of skilled human input to various elements, but in a factory, is not ‘mass’ production. As others have said, it’s also not cottage industry - however I’d wager if you attempted to select options from Fender on your Custom Shop selection something akin to this would put you immediately into Master Built territory, with prices well in excess of what’s being asked here. I personally don’t get the analogy with cheaper import instruments - of course you can buy a serviceable cheapo entry level instrument (copy of a more expensive one) for the low hundreds of pounds - you could in the 70s with Antoria and others. That might float some people’s boats but frankly, that’s not the sort of audience/demographic that basses like this are aimed at. In the same way people have bought bog standard entry level Ford Capris, for instance, in the 70s, others (probably enthusiasts) bought the 3 litre version at a vast mark up - they both functioned perfectly well as cars, but the most expensive gave the owner a lot of added value (and performance) the owner of the cheapo one likely couldn’t afford. But were enabled to enter the market by Ford offering an entry level sporty looking vehicle. You can substitute any type of car (including modern day) in this analogy), or many bass guitars. Any argument that the more expensive one was not worth extra money because the cheapo one did the job was so much pi**ing in the wind (or even the type of argument young boys engaged in talking about their father’s cars in the school playground). I can understand guys buying entry level (perhaps student) guitars where they might be newbies to playing an instrument - however I do find it a bit odd when long standing players buy cheapo instruments with the idea they’re somehow getting a bargain and demonstrating a post rationing, early post war austerity mentality (I’ve come across a lot of enthusiast guitar players like this - who then buy a hard case for their entry level instrument which then scratches up the inside of their higher end Mercedes cars when they take it out somewhere). Equally, I find it even odder when those people moan about higher end instrument prices as being not worth it. These are really nice basses in my view, and in a similar way to some CS reissue instruments, probably appeal to people like me who prefer new pristine instruments rather than playing something that cost a small fortune but looks like it needs a good paint job, amongst other things!!

Got this used MV 4 Gotoh jazz few weeks ago,never owned a bass since last year.Cant believe how Thoman make these so cheap. Me messing about

It seems that everything a bass player does that doesn't fit the closed-minded mindset is frowned upon. Capos are brilliant and can be useful. If you have some songs that are in Eb or D standard and some that are in E standard, tune the bass to D standard and use a capo on the first or second frets to "retune" the bass between songs. It also helps to teach you to not rely on the dots on the neck too