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I came across Washington Miniaturas on Instagram and had my own mini bass made. Great comms with the guy who makes them, it took a couple of weeks and only cost about £120. It’s about 30cm long and even comes with a cute little stand!! I highly recommend him if you’re looking for a miniature version of your own bass (I mean, who isn’t?). Check out his work on Instagram, they’re brilliant.

That's literally what it is... I keep my basses on a multi-stand in an old wardrobe. Keeps them out of the sunlight and away from the dust, safe and accessible.

No gig last weekend, and the other proto-band collapsed due to lethargy/inertia on the part of two of the members, but the good news is I'm starting Satdy on a run of 8 March gigs with the 'busy' band...

Cher has a pretty extensive and credible (even if now unfashionable) history way before the autotune malarkey.

Left to right….. Tokai, Greco, Tokai. I absolutely love my black Tokai to bits… so much so, that I bought a white one today, and a sunburst 1990 Greco yesterday. The Greco will have its proper truss rod cover back on soon. Bring on the gigs. 🤘🏻

Long time since I took this one out of its case and played it. I must've been crazy! It does it all...and it only weighs 7.3 lbs.

Speaking of Cadbury, here's another company that would be dead to me if they weren't so completely unavoidable: Kraft. Cadbury's had planned to close the Somerdale factory at Keynsham, but a key part of Kraft's bid for the company was a solemn pledge they made, over and over again, that the factory would remain open, not a single job lost, blah blah blah. A week after they took over, suddenly it became 'financially unviable' to keep it open, and all its production was transferred to Poland. 400 jobs gone. The lying bastids never had the slightest intention of keeping it going.

It certainly didn't start out that way, but when a distributor changes their tune and takes advantage of a customer in their region, the laws of the host country do not really allow the manufacturer to step in because of the required arms length relationship between the manufacturer (who acts as a supplier) to the distributor of record (who acts as the in country legal representative of the manufacturer, who sets the terms of sale and service in that region). It's not a good way to do international business unless both parties work together and not against each other. Unfortunately, when the relationship deteriorates, the laws of the host country limit what the manufacturer can do about it, and even the ability of a manufacturer to terminate the relationship before the agreement ends. Either way, I agree that it's bad for the customer for sure.

Cadbury post-Kraft takeover Take your Oreo cookies and shove them where they look like they came from, rather than crumbling them up into what used to be a nice chocolate bar!

...like a hole in the head

Oh I do hope so. Anything that pisses him off is fine in my book.

Michael O'Leary is still raging about the cost of that one 😂

Loads...

I stopped playing this for quite a while because the John East circuit developed an issue on the mid-pot. It all worked, but periodically the bass would just emit a theremin type squeal. The thought of replacing the full circuit was a bit of a costly ball ache. At my wife's prompting, I spoke to John, he sent a replacement part and bingo, back in the game.

Cadburys. What is this slop now offered under that name?

My old Mam gave me this , bought from Guitar Miniatures' stall at Cleveleys' Market 🙂 OK the colour is wrong but she's 88 so gets 10 out 10 for not only remembering I play bass but that I own a Tele bass 👏

For many years I use to play and love a Warwick Dolphin Pro2, it served me very well. I know they have an interesting heritage, best summed up as ‘The bastard child of Warwick’ (coined by someone else), I sold it on here years ago. Fast forward to now, I found locally on Farcebook marketplace a pretty much identical model, slightly different colour scheme but same vintage. Picked it up last night from a lovely chap at a reasonable price, so brought it home. Fair to say, I could see the potential but it obviously hadn’t had a lot of love over the years. I fully stripped it back removed all hardware, and deep cleaned it, polished the frets (which were not worn too much at all, result) oiled the fretboard, several times. Checked truss rod moved. Tightened up all the machine heads, which were loose. Adjusted the nut as it had a bit of card under the G string. The jack socket needed replacement too, again, luckily I had one in my spares cupboard. Luckily I had a new replacement bridge in my spares as the original was very manky and all the saddles were corroded. I then put a new set if Warwick red label strings on it and did a full Warwick set up, stage by stage, ( forgot how much I enjoyed setting up Warwicks). All in all, 4 hours work, a new bridge, set of strings, a replacement jack socket and a lot of lemon oil and cleaners and duraglit later, and I have a sensational bass to show for my troubles, it has come out better than expected. Very pleased with the result, a really playable bass, and a world apart from what I started with.

I've owned this old P bass for 34 years this summer but have only gigged it once in probably 6 or 7 years. It's still my favourite bass but I (like Lozz) have gone JMJ Mustang due to neck/shoulder issues. It hangs on the wall in my studio

To my utter shame and embarrassment, up until last year this beautiful, extraordinary Shuker custom build had spent a good 2 or 3 years shut away in my bass-drobe while my Sire V7 got all the 5-string gig action. I felt that the sound of the Sire suited the gig best, but it wasn't until I sat down and properly experimented with the coil taps and eq that I realised this beauty worked even better. As you'd expect. I mean, as great a bass as the Sire is, it's not this. So now, the Sire is the one sitting in the bass-drobe. I occasionally wonder about selling it, but I won't for the moment because a} it's bloody good and b} we all need a Jazz in the armoury.

Yep - totally hacks me off; it's like they're looking you straight in the eyes whilst they're ripping you off! I've taken to shopping at Costco, where things are BIG! It may or may not be cheaper, but try finding that size in the supermarkets. (I haven't bought a tin of those, BTW.)

Foreigner should be in. Ozzy maybe. The rest, nope....

If ever proof were needed, then here it is. Mondeléz own both Cadbury and the Kraft/Jacobs/Suchard brands; Hence the Toblerone debacle in which they put greater spaces between the triangles. May sound trivial, but such was the uproar that they relented and went back to the old Toblerone form factor.

I put a set of NYXL's on my Sadowsky Jazz in 2019. I was going to change them but Covid came along and the gigs stopped. I have a new set of NYXL's ready to go, but there is still enough top end in the old set to give good definition and the mids and lows are now sounding nice and mellow. I currently have no plans to change these strings, even after 6 years!

My Ellio Martina Forza was my absolute number one for a few years, and still is one of the finest basses I own. For my bands however (mostly metal), other instruments were more appropriate tonally so it's mostly sitting in my rack unplayed. In or around 2013 I bought a Warwick Streamer LX5 that has been my live bass ever since up to about 2020, and currently it's a Status Graphite S2 Classic. Every time I do play that Forza, though, I am in awe of how nice the neck (and neck profile) feels, how great it sounds and what a wonderful range of tones I can obtain from it. I'm not a huge fan of the Aguilar OBP3 preamp that's in it, I may want to change it to something more basic and add a passive tone control.

This topic has made my mind up what bass I'm taking to rehearsal tonight.

I'm afraid so. Mondeléz have been running them into the ground in the name of increased profitability.

Spent the last 2 days in the studio recording with this setup 😍 Ampeg V4B into the 810av. Thankfully the V4B is already mine but playing through that cab has really made me want one, but my back says no.

Because I play in a Joy Division tribute act, so it's expected that I play something that resembles a Rickenbacker 4001. Peter Hook played a Korean made Hondo copy, and I did the same for about five years until the neck snapped near the heel. I now play a genuine Rickenbacker, and the Hondo was a far better instrument to play even if it was made from plywood.

It's been that way a long time across so many retail sectors, cars, clothing, furniture, it was only a matter of time before it hit music, and in fact has been there a while with some music brands e.g., the Yamaha store in the West End. But why is a brand store selling to the wealthy while Thomann are not? You can spend some serious cash in Thomann et al? Music is, and always has been an expensive game And that's part of the problem, like you we all miss the local music store, but they went under for a reason, we all wanted more choice and lower prices.......

She'll probably dump them all on your side of the bed... you won't need it, you'll be kipping on the sofa...

Peter Frampton was in two well established bands prior to his solo work, The Herd and Humble Pie. His Comes Alive album has achieved 17 million worldwide sales, definitely worthy of a place in the hall of fame.

What a fantastic idea, in fact I liked it so much I've just the same, don't where the wife's going to put her clothes though !! 😛 John 😎

Music is not competition. It really shouldn't matter who is being inducted into the "Rock n Roll Hall of Fame" and who is not. Ask yourself this... If you had been a moderately successful musician some time in the previous century, and now mostly forgotten, mostly known for a hit or two from 40 years ago, would you not take the opportunity for the publicity and the possibility of reviving your musical career?

Is there anyone who doesn't believe Ryanair is just a massive cash grab? Michael O'Leary is pretty damned mercenary.

So just to get this straight, the two basses(?) you're talking about are the ones pictured below? I haven't gone as far as to check scale lengths, the depth of the neck pocket or how far the neck pocket sits towards the bridge, so there may (obviously) be an issue with intonation and action height (which one would hope could be resolved by adjusting the bridge or by utilising a shim of some sort in the neck pocket). The other thing is the holes in the neck and the ones running through the body sufficiently line up and whether they'll need dowelling and redrilling; given the propensity of neck plates being more or less identical, the neck holes will likely align with the body holes, it's just questionable whether they're in the right place. These are the most obvious things. If you're confident of setting the instrument up after, then go for it, I say! I've not seen much in the way of neck swap posts, so would be interested in seeing how this pans out. I do wonder whether manufacturers just carry out wholesale copies of instruments allowing for easy swappage between manufacturers instruments.

The Cadbury family for selling up to Kraft. Bastards.

I have a Precision Elite which developed a fault in the stereo jack input. I bought a replacement a year ago and still haven't installed it. A G&L L2500 tribute which sounds fantastic but I don't really need a 5 string for the Blues band I play in. A MM Stingray which sounds great but is a bit too aggressive sounding for my Blues band. A MIJ Precision which doesn't sound aggressive enough for my Blues band. Plus a couple of others that don't get played for one reason or another.

Since I’ve gone short scale I’ve neglected my fave US Fender Precision. I’m on leave this week and have picked it up a few times, reminding myself of why it’s my fave bass so have made a pledge to myself that I shall play it every Sunday morning at least.

None, I play all my basses on rotation. Any basses which aren't getting played aren't killer and are sold.

I'll be there on Saturday, probably aim to spring out of bed early and be there at the start - hoping to ignore all the guitars and try some multiscale basses and saying hi to @Manton Customs Looking forward to it, should I leave my wallet at home?

Hmm... he and I might have crossed paths. Or perhaps swords. BT could only deliver the contract they'd won by employing a shed-load of contractors, many of whom were incompetent wastes of space. Some of them ended up in manglement positions where they did a hell of a lot of damage. Others were in more lowly positions where they hoarded their knowledge and became deliberately obstructive. I ended up spending a lot of time devising strategies to circumvent those guys so that their contracts would not be renewed as their knowledge had been secretly transferred to permies. I even came across what I still think was a deliberate attempt at sabotage. If it had succeeded, almost every NHS system in England and Wales would have gone down. So yeah. The over-reliance on self-certifying chancers was a massive risk that TPTB were happy to take. I can well believe that an incompetent clown who was fluent in bullshit could have made (and in many cases did make) a packet at the expense of the British taxpayer.

So many pointless questions... can we get a spam filter on basschat? 🙄

Also today I managed to get the back-seam-joint-inlay-thing (BSJIT for short) done. You can buy these for a fiver....But....it then won't exactly match the binding that I use for the perimeter of the guitar. And if I did that you'd all throw things at me. So I take the slightly slower option and do it myself. Basically it's a strip of the bindng, then a 0.5mm strip of white veneer, then a strip of 0.5mm black veneer. They'll get glued vertically into a channel routed into the back: You Routing the channel I use simply run the router along a straight edge taped down to the back. It's difficult to get it exactly centred so one trick is just to keep adding strips of tape to the side of the router base till you get it exactly right. You can see from these test routs that I got it right on the 3rd time (ie 2 extra pieces of tape). You can then happily rout knowing it's going to be exactly centred... Once the channels done, it's they just a question of sticking the strips of wood into the channel, then gluing it all generously with superglue. Then make some lovely shavings: And hey presto! It's done..

Happened to me about ten years ago. I had been playing with The Wirebirds for a year and a bit, getting plenty of gigs. My mother -in-law was living with us back then (no longer around) and had a carer come in a couple of times a week to take her to the shops, etc. One day, there was a new carer putting MiL's shopping into the fridge, and MiL mentioned that she (the carer) liked singing, so I naturally mentioned the band and she asked if she could come and sing with us sometime. Then she mentioned her previous band and the tours, hanging out with the guys from Led Zeppelin, etc, and I was sure she was a dreamer. Anyway, she came along to our rehearsal a week later, but then I had found out who she was and told the band, they basically said it was just a fantasy on her part. Then she came in to the rehearsal room, tiny, shy, no way a rock star. She asked if we knew 'Rock Me Baby' (well, we wouldn't have been much of a blues band if we didn't!), she asked if we could do in A, which was our usual key for that song. We played the intro, and I could see the rest of the band waiting for her squeak out a few words, then she grabbed the mic and our jaws dropped. She could sing the blues like Janis Joplin. We were getting better gigs on the back of her being with us, people were bringing her old records to our gigs to get them autographed. She was Jenny Hahn, front woman for Babe Ruth, and we played dozens of pub gigs and local festivals with her. Her she is singing Janis's 'Move Over'. I'll never equal the thrill of standing a few feet from that voice!

When it comes to replacement parts, if the distributor holds the import license and is ultimately responsible for following the import laws of the region, they are the ones who set the terms of the business in the region, not Mesa. In the case of Italy (and later with the EU) as an example, since there was a registered (with the government) importer of record. This is the entity responsible for following the import laws and also set the prices they charge and the terms of service. They are independent of Mesa, they are local to your region, we have no real control over them or the prices they charge other than discontinuing our relationship with them once the contract term expires (which I believe we ultimately did). This is one disadvantage to using distributors, but going forward we will be distributing through our parent company Gibson-Europe so we will have more control over both distribution and service terms.

Decided to pull the trigger on this Vintera II today. Picked up secondhand at GG for about £250 less than the new price but it's still got the cellophane on the pickguard and neck plate. We are getting used to each other this evening. Initial impressions are very good : super easy to play, wide range of tones. Nice and light, my back and shoulders will thank me after long gigs. I'm feeling like it needs a lighter right hand touch than my long scale basses. Have ordered a set of LaBella 760F-MUS strings. Rehearsal tomorrow so will see how it fits into a band setting.