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Finally! I had a right good moan about the protracted wait for this bass to arrive, but arrive it has. I haven't had a chance for war volume playing yet but from the time I've managed to spend with it I'm impressed. For those not familiar, this is Sire's take on the '51/'54 Precision. The horns are a little thinner/sharper than a regular '51/'54, kinda reminds me of a Cowpoke for some reason. Maybe a Cowpoke and a '51 Precision got up to no good... Really good fit and finish. Loves to be played with the thumb and palm muted - very responsive to that and there's a big difference in the sound versus fingerstyle. How wonderfully simple it is, just like a P should be. No noise whatsoever coming through either my USB interface or my Yamaha Sessioncake. The neck is lovely - the maple has been well roasted and doesn't even resemble maple any more. The front of the fingerboard is lacquered but the back of this neck feels almost unfinished and the rolled fingerboard edges feel very premium. Hardware is good - tuners turn smoothly and feel sturdy, the bridge is functional enough - it's a BBOT with brass saddles, what more can you say? Electronics seem fine, pots turn smoothly and the tone control sucks a good chunk of treble out at minimum. Bonus - setup was decent out of the box, intonation sounds like it's decent, if not perfect then certainly good enough. Weight - mine is 4.05kg - 8.9lbs. A good heft without feeling heavy, I'm happy with this. Balances no problem on the strap, no neck dive, for those who are annoyed by such things. It's just a simple, enjoyable, eminently playable bass. A successful modern twist on the OG Precision. I can see myself having a lot of fun with this one.

Can I ask if we can keep this thread for people who are thinking of building this exact cab or a direct variation of it. I know these threads get used many years after the initial post and there is a lot of patience involved in sorting out essential details when you get to 20+ pages. Many thanks

Despite everything, the humble Bassballs remains one of my favourite pedals to play. And I say that purposely; you really have to 'play' the pedal because it reacts so much to changes in dynamics. This is an example I just recorded showing it at about 50% sensitivity where you can get a nice synthy sound from it, and during the chorus I run it into an octave (it sounds better with the octave first but I was being lazy) This version in particular I really like because it has a far more open sound than my others, and partly because it's really rare to have a green one with the big footswitch. Anyway I hope you enjoy my filthy sounds

My new Jazz, together with my old Jazz

I should be more careful starting threads next time as I've almost started a ConFlagration! 🤓

It puts the no in ergonomics.

In general, the Pro versions of the Fane Sovereigns are on cast Aluminium chassis rather than the pressed steel of the non-Pro versions. The cast aluminium chassis are preferred in larger diameter drivers but for an 8". IMHO, there is no benefit. In fact, the cast aluminiom Pro chassis increases the weight somewhat. So in conclusion, get the non-pro version. Fane Sovereign 8-225

OK we are going for 12mm, the lightweights have it. I'll put up the dimensions for the 18mm panels too so you can build the one you prefer. We should have full plans next week and a cutting list to go with it. I'm going to rake through some of my old pics and put up a 'How To' guide, it won't be for this cab as you'll have to wait too long but it will show all the steps.

Well, it has indeed arrived in one piece. No time to have a heap of time with it tonight but from the few minutes I've managed to spend with it I'm impressed. Really good fit and finish. Neck feels nice. Sounds good through headphones/USB interface. Loves to be played with the thumb and palm muted - big difference in the sound versus fingerstyle. Bonus - setup is decent out of the box, intonation sounds like it's decent, if not perfect then certainly good enough. I'll do a proper NBD thread, but it probably won't be until Friday - got another band rehearsal tomorrow night. But I can call this delivery saga finally complete, huzzah!

Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done.

And in true internet idiot style I’m answering my own post as today Google provides me with a plethora of such images…

(Captain) Morgan a Woman - Bee Gees

the best pickup position is leaning on a bar

Come on Dad, don't ever mention the C word around Al Krow... ...that way madness lies.

Naked?! Imagine the scandal! 😀

Definitely. There’s fun to be found just from the sheer act of playing and performing. I’ve done it several times, I was in a classic rock band for a few years, existing in a world I know nothing of and didn’t care for, being introduced to supposedly famous names that I’d never heard of. It was ace fun. Same thing happened shortly afterwards with a metal band too. You only live once

And that 25% should be applied to the combined price of the bass and the cost of the shipping.

Sorry about the brevity of my answer. I was in the middle of re-jigging the cabinet shape to fit on a smaller sheet of ply to make a cheaper build and as @Downunderwonder said missed the bit about the baffle in between. So, yet that would work but probably isn't the best way to do it. Miss out the baffle and just double the volume and calculate a new port is better. A lot of this design is about the practical problems of packing everything in to a small cab. I'd prefer a bigger port but easily available plastic pipe of the right diameter isn't available. Creating a wooden port would make the build more complex and put people off, I wanted this to be the simplest build possible. If you double up you can use a bigger port and you have to re-tune anyway. If you decide a 2x8 is what you want then you could fit a 110mm soil pipe as a port. 11cm will give the same tuning. the bigger pipe will reduce the chance of turbulence and port chuffing to just about zero. That would give you a 4 ohm, 450W cab capable of 122db continuously capable of matching up with any drummer. You could probably keep the weight down to around 11kg depending upon whatever material you decided to build in. It would be a serious cab

The pumpernickel is a really good pedal, but a pretty fiddly build. Definitely not for beginners! Especially if you can't get a pre-drilled enclosure...

Music that you like to listen to and music that you like to play can sometimes be two completely different things. There are literally 2 songs that my band plays that I would listen to in the car or the house but I enjoy playing all of the others. I'll never forget learning the live version of Crazy by Beyonce, the one where it goes into Crazy by Gnarls Barklay in the middle - it was excrutiating listening to it. Sounded like a bag of cats being tossed off a bridge. Yet I really enjoy playing it. As long as you enjoy the playing element then that's the most important thing regardless of whether or not you'd listen to it yourself.

Angels of Death - Hawkwind

The Aguilar arrived , it will be going home to be parked on an Aguilar SL112 cab , but for the time being it’s getting a good workout on top of my tiny PhilJones. And it was making that SG sound wonderful!

Back before the days of internet tabs & YouTube, tab books were expensive and I couldn’t really afford them. So I did what I think anyone with an ear did back then. I listened and worked it out. Big glides until you land the note help 🤣🤣🤣

I've been doing a bit more planning for people who want to build this. The original as I've said was built to match the form of an Ashdown combo. There's no need to do that and by tweaking the shape a little I can get the panels cut out of a 1220x610 sheet of ply, the sort that are sold by the big sheds. B&Q in particular offer a cutting service at most of their stores. I can pretty much keep the same shape if I change to 12mm ply, a cute cube that will save a few pounds and a few grammes but the cab may need stiffening with some braces making it a slightly harder build. If I stick with 18mm ply I don't think it will need bracing and 18mm is what we've tried. It will however have to be 54mm taller. My instinct is to go for 18mm in the recommended design and let those who want to save weight work out the bracing for themselves. I think this should be the simplest design possible but with plenty of notes so you can modify if you wish. The good news is that the 18mm ply is £19.97, the batten is £7.37 the speaker £44.22 and the connector £12.50 if you go for the most expensive ready wired version so that is £84.06 for a basic box plus speaker. B&Q will make 5 cuts for free. I've found that if you are nice they don't really count the cuts if they are simple. Does anyone have strong feelings about 18mm v's 12 mm ply

Yes, recently saw this on a tv music channel. Never had a clue. Considerable talent, singing playing and dancing simultaneously. I can barely do any individually 😄

I get surprised every time I get referred to as a bass player...

I did an exercise where I resized a number of popular basses so that the scales were all equal, in order to show relative positions.

Ain't no law says you can't be in two bands at the same time. Playing a genre you're not fond of will broaden your horizons much more than doing the same old.

My brother does a lot of business with Japan selling and buying records, the friction is lessened as his wife is Japanese, but in thousands of transactions (some in the thousands of pounds) he has never experienced a problem. I’d trust a Japanese ebayer.

I would absolutely love it to be a G4M. As Geddy's Nose said earlier in the thread - that would be proper Punk Rock.

I think i'll be in transit.

I tweeted Tony this morning who tells me it Japanese, plays great but didn't tell me the maker

I've found that as I've got older, I've got more tolerant about the kinds of music I am happy playing. Up to my early 40s I would have never entertained the possibility of playing in some of the bands I've joined since then.

Aura things she said she said. Simple Minds

I'll have the tempura squier, please...

I used to do a 4 way blend using a POD Pro XT Bass, an Ampeg SVP-BSP into a Yamaha P5000S power amp and a pair of cabs. There were additional compressors and octaves and stuff as well. After a lot of tweaking I found the secret was multiple compression stages, but with the most important being on the cleanest tones, set to match the note decay times of the distorted ones so it sounded like 1 complex layered tone rather than 4 separate basses. It took a lot of work to get the natural decay of all 4 tones to fade away at the same time. It was amazing, but the rack was so damn heavy. Never again - unless I can have roadies.

The most I've done in the music scene is when I joined a hip hop band. Wasn't into hiphop and I almost certainly wouldn't have went to see them. But we saw a bit of the the world, played some huge gigs, supported some massive acts and recorded some highly liked music in the scene. If you think it will be fun then go for it!

Shameless plug for my Markbass Mini CMD 121P combo that's in the amps and cabs for sale section. Really great for the double bass, I've used it in jazz and music theatre and it's been brilliant. Plenty of power and easy to transport.

I would and indeed do. As has been been said above - better to be in a band than not, and if something more up your street comes along then go for it.

Depends how good the bass player is

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

Maybe he'll enjoy playing with the boxes when you've opened them, the ones here certainly do. All the best to the old chap anyway 😁

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.

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.