Leaderboard

Another morning after the night before post for you My mob Yellowhouse played the Essex Riviera with a dep singer. She's done a couple of gigs with us over the last few months with us and it's getting better each time. I think this is the best bit of video I've ever seen of my lot. The sound is great and the vocals are immense. It's an old Skunk Anansie song which I've always wanted to play and Susie blows the doors off here.... (Cort A4, Orange 4 Stroke, Laney Digbeth pre on the tube setting and a couple of Barefaced Big Baby cabs for the geeks)

Played at The Craufurd Arms with Stray last night supported by Bedford’s Thr3e. Really good home crowd and good sound thanks to our recently acquired sound engineer Stuart. I took my 77 Ric into a Bugera MOSFET and Eden 4x10. I always struggle to get a decent on stage bass tone at that venue but apparently it sounded great out front (thanks James!). Cart and Horses in London to come next Saturday!

Finally got an actual board to put my pedals on.

For once I’ve managed to post on the “How was your gig last night” thread, on the day after the night before. It was a lively night with the pub being pretty much full from when the host band kicked things off. It was the debut outing for my Rickenbacker. It got plenty of attention, in the main from the bass players, but a few of the guitarists and one of the drummers also oggled it. The singer will be back next month, so I’ll probably be back to the shortscale headless to avoid any whacks on the back of her head.

Hello there, As I some of you may know, I am an amateur bass builder. I have no formation and I am self-taught. Randall Wyn Fullmer (may he rest in peace, he past away 2023) gave me a lot of tips and shared his knowledge without limits. Before presenting my basses I'd like you to take a look of the documentary made by Mike Enns, : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNACNx5UlR8&t=2092s&ab_channel=Restrung Such a nice guy Randy, not like some others luthiers, if you check the Restrung channel you'll see he shared with Mike 16 videos "How to make a bass". It's really kind regarding the number of people who wants to "hide" their secrets. Anyway, I almost always was the tech guy since my youger ages, from electronics, amps to guitars and basses... If a friend had a need he came to me for a repair, a restrung, or something else. I think there's only a few of my basses I didn't touch and keep them stock. I learned by making a lot of mistakes, and now as I'm 40 I realize that mistakes are almost the thing that make you progress the most amongst everything, even if I have to admit some tools are almost mandatory if you want to achieve very nice job and you are a demanding to yourself person like me (and also impatient) :') (SECURITY RULES APART OF COURSE). I have to skip all the mods I've made, there's too many of them, if you want to check my Youtube channel you'll see some refins, probably one of the thing I like the most when it comes to get my hands on a bass. So after (a tiny bit of) thinking, I directly bought good woods to make my first bass. At the time I had one router (Elu MOF96) and some basic tools. For obvious reasons I made a fretless bass, 36" inches scale (why not?) with a flamed bubinga top, padauk back, and a hidden neck-thru construction (can't see neck from both sides) made of Wenge and bubinga. The fretboard was african ebony: I still own this bass today, it is far from perfect but still 100% functional and my first attempt too... As you can see I've putted Hipshot, Schaller, Seymour Duncan so only good stuff on it. I called it "Infinga" which is a mashup between Infinty (Warwick) and Bubinga. As a second bass one of my best friend just make me an order (to support the cause also) for a five strings. I choosed the woods carefully with a touch of "rare" wood ; a flamed ash top. Wings are made of ovengkol (or amazakoue) and the neck is 3 piece bubinga/mahogany with an amaranth fretboard. I fretted it by hand and hammer. I had a radiused wood bloc and a little bandsaw this time. Fortunately, I didn't screw up this one at all, and it is still used today. Originally pickups were SD SSB5 but my friend wanted more mojo so I've switched for Delano DCB5 quad coils with Glockenklang pre. Schaller tuners and ABM monorails. Then I wanted to realize a new shape a start to carve the wood and I created the Amani, which was a sort of simple cutaway bass made of maple with a bubinga top an ebony fretboard. I went with wood covers for the pickups (what a pain...) and wenge inserts in the neck. Still a neck through design. But as you may see, I pay some attention to carve the rear of the body by hand to make a lightweight and nicely curved bass. On the stand it might look akward but in hand it was very nice IMHO. The fretjob wasn't perfect at all so after a period I changed for an amaranth fretboard, fretless. I really love this design but it's not easy to make and doesn't please everybody. Pickups were, again, Delano (at the thime I had a company and I worked with Delano directly). Schaller tuners and ABM monorails. I finally sold this bass in its fretless version to a belgian mate. After this alien, comes the Infinga some of you tried, the one that made a passaround in UK. It was (yes it's dead) a birdseye maple body top with walnut babk, neck through contrsuction, and a neck made of walnut with maple inserts. It had this lovely Delano twincoil that remains, IMHO, one of the best pickups on the planet. It can cover a lot of sounds and has a nice warm and powerful tone. Despite the images below looking good, the fret job wasn't really good, I've made a mistake in measurements and the neck was thin too far inside the body. I broke a chip of wood and had to fill it with epoxy too. It went fretless for a long time before I recently burned it because I needed more room and I had too much unused basses and stuff. Routings weren't very clean neither. After this one I came back to the Amani model for one of the finest build I've ever made ; I sold it on this very website and if the owner is still here I'd love to have some feedback on it today. The recipe is once again a proven one ; flamed maple top with maple back, neck through maple/wenge neck with amaranth fretboard. The inlays were wood inserts of maple and wenge. I just used saddles from an ABM bridge and made a kind of string thru stop tail myself. Schaller tuners with custom amaranth keys, Delano DCB pickups, passive operation. I barely remind it so if it's somewhere it could be very nice to have some feedback on it. Speaking of one of my most beautiful build, I made another Amani 5 fretted, this one featured on Notreble.com (just google Elwray Basses notreble). It is a freaking great bass. Sold to a french guy who, I believe, still play with it. Despite the used woods it was very light because of a partially hollowed body (I routed two cavities on the back so it can handle any preamp with 4 batteries if needed, even if I decided to use a passive mode with "coils blenders" (just a pot that blends between the coils of each pickup). It's in french but the test is the first video on my Youtube channel. The body was made in afzelia (Warwick used it for some very firsts Streamer's), afzelia neck with maple inserts. Schaller tuners and ABM bridge. The fretboard is a very weird piece of padauk really hard and with differents colors in it. I took inspiration in the Warwick Thumb for the pickups placement; but even if I don't use Delano no more, the cost of these Delano Times Square pickups with tofferite magnets was outrageous ; 200/pc at the time an now I believe it'es close to 300. But they have a unique character I'll let you judge in the Youtube video. Then I decide to "innovate" with a bolt-on model. A simple Infinga 4 made of 50 yo dry belgian maple top and padauk with maple stripes back, thuya burl electronic cover, and a maple/padauk neck with same maple fretboard. I went for a Musicman style with a single EMG pickup. All the hardware was the Schaller vintage copper from the passarounf Infinga 4... A unique bass for me and it was bought by the same guy who bought me the Amani 5 above ! Following this one I've made an exact same setup (Infinga 4 bolt-on with Schaller hardware) but this time with an afzelia body and a P/J EMG X configuration. The neck was excatly the same, with same woods. I can say today I prefer bolt on, it's easier to made for me, and I like the idea to switch bodies and necks. On the pictures you can see the Amani 5 fretless (the first one) that became a fretless amaranth one. This bass made me love EMG pickups. I still think they are a very good option for recording setup and wide tone spectrum with a big choice of different pickups in a same enclosure (EMG35,40,45). Sold this one to a guitarist friend for not much. Then I used Leo Fender famous technique (joking, I don't know if it's true or legend) of "use chunks of woods laying around the workshop and make a bass with them", so I came with a bass with so many problems that it never has been finished and I burned it with the Infinga recently. The truss even crack through the back of the neck lol. Padauk body with afzelia and oak top, 9-ply neck (lol) with maple/padauk/afzelia. Nothing special about it, it stayed for many years like that. I retrieve the truss rod, although. Then I went in a period without real build, but I've made a lot of restorations in guitars and basses. Like a lot. An honorable mention although; in a trade I get a Rockbass Corvette $$ I completly transform into in a "better-than-custom-german-made" Warwick ; that's the only picture I have of it stock : Then I went a bit crazy and I completly made a new top in thuya burlwith a P/J configuration (Delano), all brand new hardware from Warwick, and a Crovette Proline '97 wenge neck : After all this like I said I quit bass making due to house works AND not enough money AND time consuming job. I continued restoration and reparations. But now after 4-5 years I finally get proper tools, new big bandsaw, fret tools of all sort, a Mafell router, a design I've been working on since 2 years. So if you read so far I'll tease a little bit before making a video (or maybe not in video, my english is just okay-ish) As I don't know yet when I'm goin' to make this video to introduce the "WN4" (stands for WalNut), I will try to explain briefly how I end up with the actual "classic" configuration of my very last one: I mentioned I had the chance to put my hands on a lot of basses, with the restorations and my GAS syndrom, so I worked on a design for about 1 year to have a classic but modern style (whatever it means something). Here's my points: - The body design is unique but still not too ostentatious, and small but ergonomic (small to avoir overweight, I didn't want to exceed 4Kg max, the proto is 3.5Kg) - Even if I'm a 5 string player, I designer a 4 string as it can interest more people in a first time - In my very personal experience with woods, I found that the type of wood is not the most important but the chunk itself is. I still wanted to go for walnut because it's rarely bad souding and it's a bit ecologic as it's coming from France. - For the neck, flamed maple and walnut inserts of 3mm seems to me a great solution to nail a quality tone - For the fretboard I went for an african ebony with stanless steel frets to have a "dry/clean?" tone - I choosed EMG35 size routing as EMG offers jazz, precision, dual coils, ceramics, and all brands are available in this size. - Despite the "classical" design, it is unique (I guess) because as a Warwick Infinity, (hard to explain here) the fretboard is starting where the body stops so the access is really, really easy to high notes and it's not a sort of commercial shitty argument. - I'm still torn because I like abalone but for ecological resaons I think for the future ones I'll go for fake white pearloid inlays, 8mm. - After trying a thousand bridges, I decide to use a Hipshot A style. But finally I went on the B style for two reasons: it's the same as MTD uses and it's simple and reliable (brass version) - Tuners HAVE TO be Gotoh for me (I know some ppl prefer Hipshot), so GB350 Res-O-lite. - I see no reason to not use a Graphtech nut. I had to replace a FODERA brass nut because it was poorly made (yes true) - I choose a passive operation even if I'm reasonably open to active. - Like I said bolt-on is easier to make and I like the idea of switching bodies/necks - truss rod is reversed (nut towards bridge) and in the future should be musicman style, way easier to setup. - 23 frets because not 24. 😅 Well, we will discuss all that on the appropriate post, but here's the prototype (in the video I'll introduce both proto and prod 1) for a bit of teasing : I do not intend to make a business but maybe if I can sell some to continue making basses that will be okay for me. Thanks for reading, Marco

I'm liquid and funky! "overall live bass duties are taken care of by band member Ely XXX, whose liquid yet funky and distorted basslines tie together the diverse styles displayed on the record...

You mean like this one? : Sorry for the bling, folks, but - in my defense - it was a pretty dull dinted black Squier when it started...

Some progress! Learned from my mistakes - will be carving the neck and doing the majority of shaping on the body wings before glueing up this time.

I learnt by working out and playing along to my favourite songs. It helped that my favourite band was the Ramones so the learning curve wasn't too steep.

I appreciate everyone's response and advice! My lessons are every Saturday in the morning and I talked to my teacher today and express my concern and he completely understood. Today he started teaching me a few other things and I feel like I learned more today than I have in the past few weeks. I'm going to keep at it for a bit longer and see if it improves. My teacher is one of the coolest and most understanding people I've ever met and he was one of the highly recommended and most regarded instructors in the area.

I did, and for a second I thought I'd fallen through a wormhole into a seaside postcard from 1972.

Here's mine:

Always good to see a Ric on this thread. Stick with the Ric and tell the singer to move over or move forward out of your way. You'd think a few dunts on the back of his head would be hint enough but i guess that's singers for you Dave

Seen in the second hand section. I think some kind of reverb, maybe an early prototype but I was not able to try it. Both pedals are connected to the water cooling tower in the middle - I assume it means it runs really hot.

I feel your pain, I do think modern programming is so much quicker than all the low level stuff I remember. Started programming on a ZX81, so yes I remember when memory was tight, men were real men, programmers were real programmers and small furry creatures from Alpha Centuri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centuri.

Fretless again. I'm sensing a theme. 😃

You can say that again. What a great voice - loads of character!

Does the fan have to stand there all night? What happens if they need to use the bathroom, or get a drink from the bar?

Play that funky liquid, white boy ...

Ricks for main and support acts last night. Me on the left hamming it up with support band ‘Thr3e’s’ Dom Rentle. Not sure what Dom’s is but mines a 77 Burgundyglo 4001.

I'm sorry but that body looks like particle board. I like lush coffee table tops on basses, this looks like a 'build your own bass in six weeks at your local luthier's workshop' project.

Just put the sodding embedded nuts in to the last big piece. It's 00:11, so pretty much on time and when I expected it to be, however I really want to be in bed. Spent the last two hours staying awake trying to debug serial code on my guitar winder, not sure the 0.5L of Chablis helped, but suspect I may now sleep well. I do hate programming serial code, I forgot how much I hated it, everything has to be perfect for two systems to work. Network code is so, so much simpler, write a packet and send it. Oh well, perhaps a good nights sleep will help me. Rob

Is it wrong to be proud of the fact I made my drummer physically sick with the high SPL of my Trace Elliot TE1200 + Barefaced Super Twin rig? 😲

The finishing is ...finished. This is 100% prototype, so I've not too worried about imperfections. Both the french polish and the Osmo I think have worked nicely. I'll do a proper write up on the finishes another day. There's still a bit more setup to do. Albeit with only a tiny amount of curve in the neck there's no fret buzz, so I may not bother fret levelling, they're level enough already. And the neck joint I designed to have shims inserted to dial in the correct bridge height, but again it's pretty much spot, none needed. There was a lot of new stuff for me in this build, including a pretty complicated neck joint, so to have the geometry all line up is really satisfying. The nut and saddle need work, and there's a bit of tidying here and there, but mostly it's done. I'll try taking some proper photos not under the clinical lights of the workshop, but here it is warts n all:

No option for "absolutely f*ck*ng filthy" then? What is this "clean tone" to which you refer?

Hi All It's been a while since I've posted anything here. We ended up moving to Italy in the middle of the first wave of COVID. We've been re-structuring a house and finally, 4 years later, I've got a workshop set up in the basement. Sooo..... I'm making a fully acoustic bass. I've been planning it for what seems like forever. The idea is to make an acoustic bass that is designed to be amplified. It's not designed for acoustic volume, for that the body needs to be much bigger. My thinking though is to make the top as flexible as possible, then amplify the movement of the top with a K&K piezo, stuck on the inside of the top, under the bridge. It's a 'flarchtop'....So the spruce top is pushed into a tight radius (15 foot) by the braces, it's not carved like a normal archtop would be. It will have an archtop style floating bridge and tailpiece. I strung it up for the first time yesterday and the top didn't immediately collapse. Which is a good thing..... I didn't take pictures along the way, never got round to it. It still needs sanding, and heel cap and a few other bits, but the end is definitely in sight. A couple of pics....

I gig with a couple of bands, one plays well known rock covers, including: Led Zeppelin 'whole lotta love', AC/DC 'highway to hell', Free 'All right now', The Cult ' She sells sanctuary'. Give them a go, honestly it doesn't take mastering the bass to play a lot of the most popular gigging songs.

A bit of theory sooner or later is good, but You must also get some own feel about the instrument You are trying to make friendship. As i understood You got it with Your brass, so now think how You could make it with bass.

For bass especially, playing with other people is incredibly important. It's like the bass part doesn't hold meaning on its own. So I'd recommend finding someone or more than one person to play with, as the best way to make progress.

In order to fix the bad work done on this body, I will start all over again. Phase 2.0 with the below setup in terms of body. Top in poplar (15mm), main middle part in pine (20mm), bottom with unknown from a scrap set of shelves (15mm). Total thickness is 40mm. I have built for this case a better hard platic template for the jazz pickups in order to avoid the first bad job done already, or contain the mistakes.

Just reviving this one as I tried it today, I fitted a new set of labella Low tension flats to one of my jazzes and played it for a while, then I took them off to clean the fretboard and adjust the truss rod, I wiped the strings with Vaseline and cleaned them with a clean cloth and refitted, you can’t feel the Vaseline at all and the difference in tone is considerably noticeable, a much warmer sound but not too dull, it’s what I was looking for so really pleased

Now i don't want this come off as self promotion. Im in ireland and we arent planning on coming to the UK anytime soon. So I'll share some tunes. I'm really happy with my bass tone on this one. This is on my homemade SG bass. I built it from scratch. All raw wood! this one is all heavy distorted bass. I believe it's my modded MIA jazz through a moose electronics sledgehammer And this One has some liquid-y bits. Lots of layered bass and heavy bass effects. Even a tiny bass solo. It's not my favourite track, but i love the clean tone. This was probably my graphite necked warmoth P.

They’ve been “going bust” for years - I worked for a chain until 2014, we nearly went bust a few times while I worked there. We had a a turnover of about £4m in my shop for 7/8 years which started to drop off rapidly. They took on some managing director to turn around the fortunes of the company - an “expert in retailing” not a musician who knew business…that was a HUGE error. Things proceeded downward. They set up a side company to combat the online scalpers, the punters knew what the craic was and would (rightfully) get us to match our own prices off the discount site…absolutely mental. They invested heavily in own brand budget stuff, some was excellent for the money, some was absolute garbage - the failure rate on the digital pianos for example was 40% - meaning after all the effort, they would’ve been better off investing that cash in bulk kawai/Casio/Yamaha deals where we would’ve had recourse with warranty support…instead, it all went to the skip. After I left, the company went into the hands of an asset management company who sold the headquarters building and a warehouse they owned. Big accounts were left unpaid, Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, Roland… they then closed 4 out of 12 shops, bit by bit each shop closed, think they had 4 by 2019. Then at the last bell, a local musician/shop owner bought what was left - the “Iceberg” had already hit and there was no way to turn it around. Online orders unfulfilled, stock was old, arriving damaged with no way to replace as accounts with companies were locked/closed/on hold. The profit margins were shocking, Fender/Roland was 10-15% Gibson was 35% if sold at “street price” but you had to spend/order £50k a month to get that mark up - they would take that £50k a month from the company even if we didn’t order - they would send whatever they had if we didn’t specify. And if we didn’t sell, we had a massive back stock of stuff we had to put in “sale” at 10-15% margin thus rendering the big spend pointless…the 120th anniversary models did not sell well at all (they put a banner at the 12th fret on all models which nobody seemed to want) we sold every piece at a loss…eventually. I’m not surprised music retailers (big ones) are dying off. I went to look at a job in PMT and I think the starting wage was £14.5k plus commission, so you’re never going to retain good staff. I’d been on £15k plus commission ten years previously at the other shop, I’d finished on considerably more. i think specialised retail will survive in pockets, but it’s a risk I’d not be willing to take - I think the target audience is dwindling as guitar-based music is not at the forefront. A good while ago, I was offered the GBBL business - I’m in no position to become a business of any sort (big mortgage, young family)…the romance was definitely there, but realistically the prospect instantly scared me half to death. “How do you make a small fortune in the MI retail industry?” ”start with a huge fortune” Apologies for the essay…

"Liquid Funk", maybe an idea for a future album title, or a solo record. On a more serious note, congratulations.

I assume that you’ll be dressed as Mother Superior (not much change there then) in order to lull me into a false sense of security. It’s a disguise for me but a lifelong habit for @Richard R

Absof***inglutely, what a mess. Add a old school BBOT bridge, remove the PUP cover, and it would be passable, at present it all looks like an afterthought as opposed to a plan

Just a weird mish mash of style with no coherence to me. Why the pick-up cover but not a bridge one? Why the modern hi mass bridge but 60s rest? Why the lollipop tuners? Weird.

This was our closing song from my Ric’s 1st night out - last night’s Jam Night at McCafferty’s Epsom. I think the videographer (Mrs C) did a good job of getting it front and centre. It got plenty of attention from the other bassists, with also some “ooh a Ricky - nice” type observations from the guitarists and one of the drummers

You can check out, but you can never leave.....

Agreed, although I’m not that enamoured with his guitar playing either TBH. Loses all the simple beauty of Mike Campbell’s original by playing silly OTT flourishes. The female singer is rather good though.

Reading this thread makes me realise what a great forum this, with everyone trying to offer help and advice. There's another bass forum I can think of, where they'd be at each other's throats by now. Friday glow of contentment settles over Chez Snorkie.