Leaderboard

Hey Folks! i hope you’re all doing well. I thought this one might be of interest to some of you! it’s my all original 66p! The lacquer checking is pretty special right?? She’s the perfect weight too at 8.5lbs! 👍🏼

Not really, but I recently put an order in with Thomann and added some Harley Benton flatwounds in to get over the free delivery threshold. When the parcel arrived I forgot I’d added strings to the order but I put them on my Jazz bass today and they’re surprisingly decent. Certainly an upgrade on the Fender cables they replaced. Didn’t expect them to be as good as they are. Not as smooth as La Bellas or Chromes, and certainly not as pricey, but sonically they’ve got a good old thump to them. No idea how long they’ll last, but as I’m not gigging, probably a fair while. For the price of a couple of pints of Guinness in today’s money these are definitely worth a go. 👍

I wasn't planning on buying another bass any time soon, just got a CS Jazz with which I'm very satisfied but when this showed up... I've always wanted a late 60's/early 70's Jazz, with the TV logo, block inlay but with 60's bridge pickup spacing. I drove 3 hours, picked it up, took it apart (and put it back together) and took it home. It's a 1970 Jazz with replacement pots, bridge and case. It's also a refret and refin. But it's a lovely refin, the frets are good, the sound is thunderous and the neck is to die for. So, the 50th bass I've ever owned (yes, I keep a list) is my third vintage Fender. The colour is very hard to catch. It looks Lake Placid Blue, but it's more aged Ocean Turquoise. 1966 vs 1970: 1966 vs 1971 vs 1970:

I’m a pretty experienced bass player. In a band and also the house bass player for a couple of local jams. However, I attended another local jam just as a player and got asked to play for this ‘interesting’ guitarist/singer. He wasn’t even going to tell me what he wanted to play until pressed, at which point he said it’s a song from the latest Sparks album and would probably know it! 😂 With that he mumbled a few chords, which I didn’t hear and he proceeded to start straight away. After about 15 seconds of this car crash waiting to happen, I casually unplugged my bass, mic dropped the cable to the floor and walked back to the bar. It felt wonderful. 😂

Are Iguana Go My Way? ～ Lenny Kravitz

At last the day has arrived & I’ve taken delivery of a shiny new Roland Jupiter X. been playing with it for the past hour or so & what a superb bit of kit it is.

New pickguards on the Sabres Black abalone for the natural And white pearloid for the sunburst

Blubbery hill - fats domino

Half the reason we buy all this stuff is we read about it on forums or watch you tube and think we should have the next best thing… That aside we do change tastes too. I love my p bass but on a real jazz bass thing just now and have been playing jazzes exclusively for at least 6-8 months. Plugged in the p bass in the other night as I wanted to change the foam under the pick ups and tweak the heights to balance output between it and the jazz bass and did I not instantly play the bass bass for the next three days as much as I could 😀 Sometimes ‘different’ from what we’ve grown accustomed to is enough to make us think it’s the new best thing ever and make us rethink our rig. How many folk have pulled out an old dusty pedal only to have an epiphany moment that it should never have left the board but in six months time the one we took off the board will suddenly sound amazing again. TL:DR We’re fickle.😀

Arriving yesterday as a birthday present from my very generous bass playing brother, a black cherry Spector Coda from his overgrowing collection. He has a penchant from luthier built and out of the ordinary basses so he offered this to me instead of the more usual birthday gift of a CD or shirt. I have previously owned 2 Spectors and I’m always impressed how well they are built and how good they sound. This is no exception. It has the Spector Tone Pump Jr and EMG pickups, what’s not too like.

Off topic... I've never understood why so many Mac users seem to be content having having the dock at it's enormous default size and positioned permanently at the bottom of the screen. On all my Macs it is shrunk down to a size just big enough to make out the what the individual icons are and the applications I don't need on a daily basis or are easily accessible another way (like System Preferences) have been removed. Then on my desk top it is positioned vertically on the far right of the second display where it's not in the way of my actual work - especially as on wide screens where there is plenty of width, but vertical space is at a premium. On my laptop it is hidden and only appears when the pointer is moved to the bottom of this display - if I could find a way to hide it permanently I would.

Oh, that's excellent - haven't seen that one before 😁 Here it is :

There's nowt stranger than folk...

ALmost as good as the old Craigslist ads. Pocket Bass Player

It's a Christmas miracle! Thankfully, my package is out for delivery, so fingers crossed for an NBD today!

I find that if there is tab on the page as well I never learn the notation - I suppose I am distracted by the easy option. To the extent that in my official tab books I have put tape over the tab to force me to use the notation only. But sometimes I write the note names, particularly if it is in a key I'm not very familiar with - even just the odd note name here and there to remind me of sharps and flats in the key signature. Like any other language, it needs to become automatic. The best description ever given to me was to compare it to reading English. We start by learning phonetics of smaller bits of a word and then stringing them together. But as we get better at it we don't do that anymore, we recognise longer patterns instead and can read an entire word as 1 pattern of sound. We don't sound out the smaller bits anymore, but we still have that skill for an unfamiliar word. Music is like that. We identify each individual note when we are beginners and the sort of stumble that note into the next one. But eventually we recognise patterns and each bar of music becomes 1 pattern / word in conjunction with the key signature. The real secret is how the practice is done. 5 hours on a weekend is pointless and tiredness / frustration gets in the way. 10 mins per day is only 70 mins per week but will lead to far greater advancement because there is daily reinforcement. One of the best things I ever bought was a bunch of used Double Bass sample sight readings examples / tests for grades 1-5. As they are part of the classical double bass process they are in multiple keys and time signatures, and they are usually only 2 or 3 lines long. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1860960340/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (there's a used one there for 1 pence (+£2.80 postage)! I just started working through them from the easiest ones as slow as I needed. Flipping between them is important as I wanted to make sure I was reading rather than remembering. I didn't write the note names on these as that would defeat the object but I did have the note names on a bit of paper that I could turn over if I was stuck. Some of those types of books come with a CD or a download link to hear them done properly, but there's also smartphone apps that will use the camera and scan it and play it to back. It just needs 10 mins per day of dedicated reading practice and in a year the progress that is made is beyond what anyone hopes for.

The Housemartins. After a lot of success, ‘the fourth best band in Hull’ split meant two of the band, Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway, went on to form The Beautiful South, with Norman Cook morphing into Fatboy Slim as well as forming Beats International and Freak Power. When The Beautiful South split ( due to ‘musical similarities’ ) Paul Heaton continued to record and perform with Jacqui Abbott.

Was this another Nilorius post?

Just had a very pleasant conversation via email with Joe at designacable and bought one of his right angled xlr-1/4” cables for my pedal board needs. Helpful and interested Joe went off and did some deep digging in relation to a query I had about one of his products and was checking manuals of the gear I mentioned to check compatibility and making sure I was getting the product I needed. I had gone off and did the same thing once I had a break at work but it’s testament to the guy that he took it upon himself to do the leg work. Cable is due this week and I look forward to rigging things up. It’ll help keep the pedal board tidy and give me back a little bit more space on my board. https://www.designacable.com

Maybe not a Bentley...but Rust Wraps do exist ...😁

Got to say that most of those "bassists" look very uncomfortable with a bass guitar.

Well I hope the outer packaging soaked up the worst of that! Find out later when I get home from work...

You'll never fool an expert. The F is the wrong way round. 🙂

A reasonable solution turns out to be: 1. Keep Guitar Pro 8. Its not perfect but its fine on the Mac and borderline usable on an iPad. 2. Steal back by Mighty Nux Pro from my daughter. She gets a VOX AC30 headphone amp to replace the NUX. I'm too nice to her. 3. Connect the NUX up to the iPad and make sure the second Bluetooth Audio channel is connected. The first Bluetooth channel controls the NUX from the iPad, the second Bluetooth Audio channel sends sounds down to the NUX from the iPad. 4. Set up a quiet bass config on one of the seven NUX channels. e.g. gain on the AGL amp is 9% and the master is 24%. 5. Turn the volume up on the NUX Mighty Pro. This is why I brought the Pro and not the older version. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you... I now have a practise session that works well. Still working on drum patterns but thats not an issue. Extra cost £0 so thats nice as well Rob

@fretmeister You are absolutely right and I should learn, I have too many things I need to do, work, 3d printing, learn guitar, work, treasurer, play with kids, lose weight, work, get fit, coach (did I mention work) that I'm struggling to fit things in. I feel like this most days I'll try and see how it goes.

Good to know others have positive experiences. The right angled xlr worh selectable ‘orientation’ is a such a simple yet desirable service!

Depends on the bass. On my Spectors I pretty much max out the onboard EQ.... gives me the bite, growl and punch I love.

I joined an established duo, 1989. I didn't know most of the set. I had to wing it. I listened very closely to the first verse in each song, knew the key. There could only be a few notes in the progression. I worked it out as I went along. I became quite good at busking and have done many gigs like this. (but not for a while now)

I got that one's bigger brother the Tube MP Project Series preamp, that among other stuff also features a switchable HPF, fixed at 40Hz. And I can attest that it easily drives a poweramp, plus will give you some tube warmth, as well as some nice tube grit if you wish, depending on how high you got the gain turned up. I'd recommend swapping the stock preamp tube though, which is a cheap Chinese one that is a bit thin and fizzy sounding, swapping for an EHX 12AX7EH tube was a notable improvement in sound.

I always avoid "flags" of ANY kind

Peter Gabriel and Genesis - the band were still ok for a bit, and PG went on to massive and better things.

This is the one I have. Also great to plug into a FRFR speaker set up.

All good advice up there ^ I am going to be 'that guy' though - if you are getting lessons, then learn proper notation while you are at it. It's not difficult and it will open up so much other music options for you. You don't need lessons to read tab - that's the point of it. But it doesn't give timing / rhythm information, only the note. I resisted for many years and then got thrown into a big band. No tabs available. Changing keys (one does not retune a bass in that circumstance, and there's no time between songs anyway) and sometimes having to work something out from a written part for a different instrument. It's definitely worth your time.

It annoys me that someone went across the desert on a horse and didn't even have the decency to name it.

According to Mick, he's not playing anything at all 😂

What a lovely pair.

Actually it's no such thing. It's potentially an infringement of copyright/trademark, however I doubt that in 1973 Fender would have felt too threatened by a kid putting a sticky label on his bass. They had bigger problems to deal with back then - such as every Japanese factory turning out Fender clones that were infinitely superior to their own lazy CBS-era crap.