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This is the L-series Jazz bass I inherited, following the recent death of a friend in the US. The friend in question was Bruce Barthol, who played bass with Country Joe and the Fish. The bass itself is unbelievably filthy and the scratchplate covers up a couple of sizeable routs in the body. The tuners are Grovers and the pickups are a set of Bartolinis. It weighs almost nothing and plays very well. Not a Jazz player really, but I am suitably honoured to be entrusted with Bruce's bass and it will feature in the Psych Unit. That's a band being put together to play songs by the various US psychedelic bands we have backed when they toured the UK. I will take it over to @rumblefish for his appraisal, and decide what I will do to get it back into shape.

These will be my weapons of choice this weekend. Spector Euro LX, GK Fusion 550, Barefaced Big Twin 2.

This is my most recent incarnation. The Q Strip is great, although obviously no drive option. In fact this was after sound check. I got bored waiting for 3 hours for the food service to end so we could do the Xmas party thing, so packed the tuner away and just had the Sansamp there using phantom power. Was in the PA too. The cab is an RCF Art 732a. It’s a bit too big for my liking, but that said it was a city centre gig and I was able to walk it all from the car park. See pic

Needed a pre amp pedal as quick as , for the weekend and ongoing , due to my Sonic Farm dying on me , and no one able to fix it that I can find . Checked various sites , and settled on a second hand Tech 21 Para Driver , from Bass Direct . Went online on Wednesday at work , and was ordered at 15:33 hrs . Got an E mail from Royal Mail yesterday at 14:09 hrs to say delivered . Can't fault that service at all .

My latest incarnation. I use IEMs and DI straight to the desk for live. Bit gutted the TU-3 isn’t in the same theme! 😄

I’d been looking at the G5123B since the original short run appeared almost a dozen years ago. They were never sold here in Canada.I recently came across a photo , showed it to Herself , and she said that I really should get one. So I went looking. I actually found three , two in California , one close to Boston. And snagged the one by Boston. So now after years of looking at them , I have one. And love it. The bridge is set about 1/3 into the body , so they’re big. And deep. And orange. The kind of orange only Gretsch could do. The neck is substantial. Medium scale. TV Jones pickups. More volume knobs than anyone could imagine. I love it. quick video goofing around , didn’t spin any knobs or flick the switch , so both pickups , all the way up , tone slightly rolled back , thumb and fingers , some nail , just using the IPad mic , poor wardrobe choice , and just goofing around in Dm , the saddest of keys.

Merchant City Music in Glasgow have just sent me a Reverend Triad in 'Periwinkle Burst'. Periwinkle Burst, is black around the edge and a sort of mauve/lilac, with a hint of grey, in the middle. Of the three colours currently available with the Triad, this is my preference. The neck and headstock are lovely. They are a dark roasted maple, which really fits the body colour well. The neck is a 5 part sandwich and the lowest part is a darker shade of roasted maple, to the others, which I think looks really cool. Appearance wise, I love it. It's well made too, I can see no blemishes or poorly finished parts. Using the bathroom scales, standing on with bass vs standing on w/o bass, it appears to weigh 3.8 kg The pick ups look like jazz single coils but they are, in fact, humbuckers, so there's no noise. I've been noodling with it this afternoon and I haven't yet found the position on the Strat style 5 way switch that I prefer. I thought I would find position 3 to be my preference, but maybe not, we'll see. The strings (D'Addarios, I believe) are new and I'll need to wait until they have lost their new round wound top edge before I really know what this bass will sound like, but so far, so good.

Hurtsfall release their Gothic Christmas song "December Snow" today on Bandcamp. It will be available on all the the other streaming and download platforms from Friday December 15th.

Pilates, pilates, and more pilates.

Picked up the MegaPara from Sine Effects, Ordered Wednesday arrived Thursday! Really tweakable and usable EQ!

This has been a really cool thread, to follow you on this journey. Now I'm just waiting for the bass version 😂 … Mark

Small but perfectly formed for this evening in Bristol. Bruce Thomas Profile into Veyron M, two magical 10" Elves pumping into the room.

Eternal Frame ～ The Bangles

This is actually the correct answer.

Frivolous..? Good gracious, no..! I'd pop it straight into the savings account, awaiting a thunderbolt from the blue. Ha Ha..! Take that, Fate..!

Not at all. You asked what the "usual" position was, so I told you what is the most common. Alembic, Status and Gibson basses have that position as do virtually all other basses that have double humbuckers. Musicman are the outliers here. The only one more ridiculous is the double buck Warwick where they're almost touching each other in the middle of the body. Maybe you missed the word "prejudices" in the title of the thread. For every single thing someone has listed, someone else will have that as their favourite thing ever. Ironically, I've played double humbucker Stingrays and they've been fantastic to play, but I can't get the snap out of them I'd want due to the pickup positioning. So, for every person who has listed something, it's all an opinion or something that won't work for their technique, hand size, tactile feel, appearance, sound, or whatever arbitrary quality standards they expect when buying an instrument.

Sure, clean it up a bit, but I'd definitely play it as it is!

Just spotted this on Andertons' website. Thought it might interest some people here... Doesn't look too shabby! https://www.andertons.co.uk/brands/soloking/soloking-mj1-classic-4-string-bass-in-lake-placid-blue

Oh yes, a trolley. I use it for everything, have done for years and am now on my 4th. 20ish years ago when I turned up at my first rehearsal with my current band, oh how they laughed at my trolley... Now, all the gear-luggers have got one...

At the age of 59, I can still lug most things about and play a full evening with my five-string Fender Jazz, but I do have to be careful moving things like Hughes & Kettner PA cabs and my Eden Metro. I tried to move a Trace combo in a rehearsal studio some months back and felt strain in my back. I took that as a warning to take it a bit easier.

Perhaps they have an ex Sadowsky employee working for them

Well. Tomorrow is my last gig with the band. It’s a multiple ensemble show and aside from the big band I’m playing in a couple of the others as well. It’s definitely the right decision to leave as I don’t actually want to do the gig at all. But of course I’m not an @rse so I will give it my all. Hopefully find some greener pastures after a break.

Muscle mass diminishes as we age, but with proper resistance training you can slow the decline. Use it or lose it!

I specifically bought the Waza Craft tuner because it matched my preamp, but then I bought a white compressor... 🙄

The Waza Craft flavour on might get you a littl closer...

Read this without my specs and initially thought, 'Blackbeard, Captain Hook and Long John Silver'. I get worried about myself. Sorry.

New England - Billy Bragg

I'd definitely have Bob Babbitt on that list. Did a whole lot of stuff that people thought was Jamerson.

I’ve just bought a ticket! I’ve wasted money on worse! 😂

Absolutely rat-ärśêd blind drunk on a combination of local champagne and bipolar meds. If there’s any change left over, maybe some more champagne. Or a plectrum or something?

There is also the problem of both the band and the audience listening with their eyes when it comes for electronic drums. I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. I band I used to be in had over it's lifetime several different drummers as well as a couple of periods where the drums were supplied from programmed samples and loops. The line-up of the band our audience enjoyed the most was the one where the drummer had what looked like a normal drum kit, except the shells were filled with damping material and the heads fitted with bugs to allow him to trigger EXACTLY THE SAME SAMPLES that the other drummers with more obvious looking electronic kits had done. He was also by far the most metronomic of all our drummers based on his MIDI output.

I finally took the plunge and purchased a (black) JMJ Mustang. Out of the box it was good, but not great. It felt good, but the E string never gave a consistent pitch - looking on an accurate tuner it was quite variable (a bit like a flabby 'B' string). In addition it was all rather noisy in my EMC test lab (also known as my study right next to the solar panel inverters). After shielding, and changing the strings from the factory long scale fenders to the La Bella 760F-MUS flats, it is even better. E string now gives consistent pitch, string to string balance is better, and there is no noise. I can see what all the fuss has been for the last few years - the JMJ Mustang is indeed a nice piece of kit. It might even be nicer to play than my 1970 Guild Starfire (although with slightly less character)! Cheers, Phil

Luthier tools to do my own fretwork etc.. Would pay for itself eventually!

Had it and already spent it! Bought a Two Notes Le Bass preamp pedal. Once you get the hang of what it does best it's great. Best dirt / preamp pedal I've had.

ACS Custom moulded earplugs and some strings.

Yeah - it’s not like the American thing where it’s a paid gig. Generally you become part of a church and then you volunteer to make noise on some Sunday mornings. some churches it’s playing along with just one other instrument, some it’s Freeform and improvisational in terms of song choice, some church it’s a more polished and practiced and you get given the exact dots you need to play. And everything inbetween. As long as you realise it’s part of a community expressing something, with all the flaws and foibles of any community made out of the foolish things it’s fun.

Agreed - give it a good scrub but otherwise leave it as is - a tribute to its original owner & a piece of history.

It must have been a similar shock when the first players to use an electric bass turned up, leaving the Luddites drop-jawed when they realised that there was no 'bass fiddle'. The Stratocaster looked a little strange, too, when it started to replace the Dreadnought folk guitars everyone was using. It's just the wheel turning, s'all; it's all done with software on an iPad now, anyway, so even these new-fangled novelties are 'old hat'. One gets used to it all after a few generations.

I would say so, but then I'm biased! Unfortunately, here in the U.K. very few shops sell reverend kit, just a shop in Scotland and another shop to the east of London. The Scottish shop are the main dealers of Reverend in the UK, I had to bribe my missus with a spa break in Scotland to get up there to try them out. That was when I bought my Decision P. I had this delivered, because I live over a 7 hour drive away, but I tried enough Reverends when I was there to be comfortable buying sight unseen. As you say, it was likely to be one of the best in the shop.

There are worse reasons to buy a TU-3w I guess

Similar. Last year I gave myself a hernia and when the consultant examined me he found a second one hiding on the opposite side. It prompted me to investigate smaller/lighter options for all my kit and resulted in me ditching the Laney RB7 combo (about 25kg) and 15" cab (around 20kg) in favour of two 1x10 Trace Elliot cabs (about 8kg each) and a TCE BAM 200 (some grammes). I also dabbled in making my own small cabs based on the designs published on this site, resulting in two 1x6" cabs which I now use for practice and occasionally as a monitor. I had both hernias repaired at the beginning of this year but I like the idea of lightweight, and the 1x10 cabs sound great with my kit, so overall a win. Indirectly, the search for lightweight kit also got me into IEM and currently I don't use any backline with the Hulla band. In terms of instruments, I avoided the Sterling 34HH for a while and used my Spirit headless and/or my short scale acoustic bass - although in my case the weight of the bass didn't really risk worsening the hernias. I just wanted to be cautious.

...great, innit?

The bass guitar will be after the new year. Still need to finish this one off. Had a chat with James from Home of Tone yesterday about the wiring loom and that looks fine. The wiring needs to be custom made with quick release connectors. No idea what it's going to sound like, that's part of the fun to be honest. James is very helpful. I'm looking for a bass neck with tuners. Was hoping for a medium scale as I think neck dive will be an issue. I'll look over the weekend for any maths around centre of gravity and levers. If anybody has a bass neck they want to get rid of, let me know.

I've never been a fan of bass drums sounding like an explosion and taking up all the sonic space and the Ekit has really given me control over the kick sound. I'm currently using layered sampling to get the best of both worlds and use a combination of an 18 and 22. And if the PA is not up to it, the yamaha has a 'compressed' sounding vinyl kit and I use the BD from that as it's very mid eq'd. Also enjoying the variety of snare drums which is probably the thing i change most during a set to suit the song.

Sorry for resurrecting this thread, but... I hear you, three! I've been through Hellborg 4 power amps, all three types, and yes, they do distort. But it's not your common distortion (signal clipping, tube amp "harmonic enrichment" etc.): it's intermodulation distortion. I sent in my original mono500 three times, under warranty, fortunately. Warwick Germany looked "into it", couldn't find distortion and returned my amp without replacing one thing. The third time around Warwick sent me a different amp in exchange - which distorted the same way. Yes. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to communicate that the problem was IMD. Then again the technician who worked for Warwick (certainly not *at* Warwick) did not speak German at all, only broken English. So some Warwick help desk employee "translated" my notes/E-mails into "English" for the technician... (They were so proud of this process, they even sent me a video of it.) I may have to mention that: I do not (/cannot afford to) play Alembics, Foderas etc. And yet, I regularly got IMD out of all three types of Hellborg power amps with every single bass I picked up. Passive, active, flat eq-ed preamp, different preamps, extreme eq settings, different strings, eq by onboard preamps only (active basses directly into the Hellborg power amps), different loudspeakers, different rooms. I was able to record it off of a loudspeaker with my iPhone7, too! Then I recorded the same "sonically critical" riff from my TC looper through another power amp as well. A/B-ing the two recordings showed the differences almost as clearly as the difference between night and day. Store staff could hear it through gear at their store and we could discern the two recordings on my iPhone7 (back then...) through their boom box behind the counter. So, it's not our ears. It's about the technicians who don't look with their scopes and what-not for the correct *type* of distortion. I plan on contacting the company in Germany which designed and built(!) all of the Hellborg amps for Warwick, and ask them about possible modifications that may, hopefully, eliminate the problem. I reckon it may soon become somewhat awkward, as I will be coming in as an end user hitting up those seasoned engineers about some of their "old mistakes". Why do this? Because I totally dig the sound signature of the power amps - minus that freaking IMD, of course.