Leaderboard

Here she is in all her glory. Will take some more photos tomorrow when the light is better. Stingray Classic from 2011. Lake Tahoe Blue with an ebony fretboard and birdseye maple neck. Stunning instrument. Beautiful condition. Only issue is the nut seems cut a little high on the E string. Maybe it’s just me, I’m only used to P basses. This thing is solidly built and the finish is amazing. Was thinking about a Stingray Special with blue body and ebony neck, but when this popped up at bassbros I had to have it. delighted. Plugged in to my Ampeg SGT DI and it’s sounding mighty.

Abba are AWESOME and some superb bass lines too…

Are you insane?

Clean and very punchy. Cab weight is 10kg. 🤠

Righty then. On to the actual making of stuff. The first job was to cut the damaged headstock off the neck blank, which I did with a tenon saw, and to plane down the fingerboard. The neck already had its truss rod channel routed into it, but because the brass headpiece had its truss rod access hole in completely the wrong place (the reason, I suspect, why whatever project it was made for got abandoned), I plugged the headstock end of the channel with a piece cut from the scrap headstock and opened it out at the bottom for a wheel-type body-end adjuster. The fingerboard was a piece of Pao Ferro I'd bought on clearance and forgotten about. I planed it flat and cut the fret slots into it. I had no intention of putting frets in, but I like my fretless basses lined. Unlined fingerboards just feel like making life unecessarily hard for yourself. I marked out the board for cutting by printing the neck section of my technical drawings, taping them to the board using a centreline for alignment, and then scoring through the paper to mark positions. I cut them using a straight-edge and a fretting saw. After the neck was roughed out, I started work on the body. This is the bit where the lack of pictures is annoying, as the construction process here was quite clever. When I was designing this bass, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to go up to my wife's workshop to use the routers or pillar drills. As a result, the body had to be planned out with my limited tools in in mind – whatever I came up with would have to be doable with just a jigsaw, small drill-stand and chisels. I knew the drill stand wouldn't reach to the centre of the body, and I couldn't freehand things like bridge mounting holes and pickup routs, so I designed the body so that the two halves would only be joined together after all that stuff have been done. This is my blueprint for one of the body halves against the dimensions of the board it was to be cut out from. The vertical dotted lines are the location of the dowels I'd drilled laterally through to keep the halves aligned. (They didn't actually go all the way through, obviously). This picture is from the process of drilling the chambering into one of the body halves before I glued it up. It's about the only actual picture I have of the process. This is the finished body with the dry-fitted neck. The marks left by the drill show you clearly how I made those routs. The recess for the tuner access was roughed out with forstner bits, and then tidied up with a mixture of chisels, gouges and a massive amount of sanding. So much sanding.

Carpet? Luxury. Jaco only needed lino.

My hybrid 4 arrived today. The usual fettling with these but worth it imo

So my 2017 Sandberg Cali II VT4 HCA got some new pick ups yesterday! Went with the EMG GZR set. Their push fit set up is something else! Decided to go all passive, as I'm not a fan of on board preamps, and have enough tone shaping on my board. Also binned off the bridge pickup, I don't like how close it is to the neck pick up, so it never gets used... so away it went! cant wait to give this a proper blast!

Red Red Wine by UB40.

Wonderwall. I will go out of my way never to play that again. If it comes on the radio I will turn it off. I can’t stand it.

Brown eyed girl, Get Lucky, Valerie and Summer of 69. Mostly due to them being played and murdered by many covers bands (including ones I have played in).

So some already know I’ve quit playing live gigs and was selling all my gear. Ive decided to hang on to my American PBass and SVT112AV cab and today have ordered the Ampeg Micro VR head as a neat home only rig. The rest of my gear is sold or up for sale ( two Vintera basses ) but I felt I would miss playing at home hence the mini rig

Treated myself to the Sledge Hammer from Moose, lives up to it’s name!!! Always wanted a RAT like drive, this gets that sound and much more, the finish is perfect too. I think this is one of the first clean blends in a drive that I’ve actually liked the sound of. (Yet to try the MBD though) Thanks to @danbowskill for enabling my dirt problem 🙌

Not one I’ve ever been asked to play (thankfully) but Cher’s ‘Believe’ has to be one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. I’d probably put Beyonce’s new country tune in that category too tbh. Ghastly.

Not many songs I intrinsically hate as I tend to zone out if I'm uninterested but there are definitely many that have outstayed their welcome in my head thanks to radio saturation e.g 'Dont stop me now' (Queen), 'Alright now', 'Born in the USA', 'Livin' on a prayer', 'With or without you', 'Come on Eileen'. Oh yes, come to think of it there are 3 tunes that have me trying to rip my ears off...'Perfect' by Fairground Attraction, 'Young at heart' by The Bluebells and 'Real gone kid' by Deacon Blue.

Adding the 2x10 to my Rumble 800 was fun!

Looks like Thomann have very little stock of the old 5 string. This is about half what I paid for my late 2020 one although I think the headstock on this says 2019. https://www.thomann.de/gb/sadowsky_metroexpress_21_5_vin_mo_sgmp.htm Still very tempting. I did the usual to mine; fitted a VTC preamp, filed the fret ends and added a hip shot string retainer to mine and I love it. It’s sadly not my Ampeg rig in the pic though.

I've said it before, but I'm not a huge fan of the large pole piece Delano style Sandberg pickups. They have enough output, but are a bit flat and lacking in character and warmth. I reckon if you put a set of Alnico V pickups in there, you'd find it a different beast. The Glockenklang preamps are very uncoloured, so it should complement the core tone of whatever pickups you use.

I give you Dancing in the Street - the Silent Music video. No music at all - "It's like two drunk mates making their way home from the pub. " Watch it and laugh. . . . Dancing in the Street -- Silent Music Video - YouTube.url

I hate - Johnny B. Goode, but with a great great passion, because it's the best song as an alarm sound in my mobile !🤪

There, fixed it for you. 🙂

It's really good ! I had the waza airs and I'm not noticing any difference in sound qaulity (using good headphones). I hated the drift on the waza airs so always disabled ithe spatial thingy anyway. Well worth the money IMHO.

Sweet Child of Mine. Horrible screeching over tedious clichéd bad American rock music.

Indeed, the piece stands or falls on the end harmonics. Such a shame to ruin it that way.

I've played London a lot but a first for my current venture. I can't wait!

"What's up" by the 4 Non-Blondes I was in a covers band for 2 years and we rehearsed weekly. Every rehearsal would start with that song, and every week the guitarist would mess up the intro lead. Now every time I hear that song I hear him playing along in my head.

Way out at the front of the pack for me is Valerie. If I never hear it again it will still be too soon! Sam x

No. but it is an increasingly obsolete view. He, and others like him, have musical careers. They are getting paid to play. That it is not to your taste is irrelevant. That they are getting paid by advertising revenue rather than getting 2% of physical media sales is also irrelevant. He is not releasing music on 78 speed vinyl, he's releasing it on youtube and he has built an audience over years of hard work. And it is hard work. It's coming up with 4 or 5 new vids a week. Planning it, filming it, editing it. Dealing with copyright issues, etc etc. And that ignores the investment of the time needed to be able to play as well as he does. He's probably putting in more than 40 hours a week on it. That's a lot more than most musicians do, or even attempt to do. Complaining about modern ideas is a weird thing. We are on this forum because we play an instrument that has only been around for about 70 years and was laughed at when it was invented. I suspect that when Bottesini asked for a 4 string double bass rather than the traditional 3 string one the response was "Why? What's the point?" as well. Things move on. People like him do not affect the traditionalists ability to get pub gigs, or record what a traditionalist gatekeeper has decided is valid musical expression, or any of what has gone before. It's just something new to go into the pot. And like or not - he's inspiring people to play. 99.9% of them will never reach his ability. But they are playing and increasing sales of kit and making manufacturers invest in more product ideas etc etc. For some reason I had this view that bassists were somehow more rational than guitarists - many guitar forums are filled with people complaining that many new young guitarists say they were inspired to play by Ed Sheeran! Who GAF how they decided to pick up an instrument? The important bit is that they did! As for the amazingly dim sounding "I bet he can't play in a band" type argument.... ye gods that's a poor argument to present. Loads of the flashiest players spend most of their day doing sessions for other people. Just holding down the bottom end, playing roots. Marcus Miller does it. Billy Sheehan does it. There is zero reason to think that someone who can play like CB cannot play what a song needs. I used to play Classical Thump and Colorado Bulldog etc. And I had no problem joining a 25 member jazz big band and just playing what was written. I loved it just as much.

Often the case.

My latest pedal Sovtek EHX Small Stone in mint condition. The pedal was only taken out of its box for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

The Silent Music video: The official video:

Will at Bassbros was ace to deal with. Tracking info sent at time of sending. It’s been delivered today, waiting for me at home…roll on the next hour or so👍

Made the mistake of watching - or trying to watch - the Anderton's review, and remembered why I don't watch them anymore. Why oh why can't they do the bare minimum of research into the products they're promoting - one of the reviewers didn't even know how to pronounce Sadowsky correctly for pity's sake.

Mcarther Park (buy a new cake ffs!) Lady in Red Red Red W(h)ine Anything by The Housemartins Morriseys' entire catalogue 500 miles

Nooooo!! Now if you had said Superman, Black Lace I would have wholeheartedly agreed.

An active PA speaker might be the answer. I use a LD Systems Icoa 15a. Full range, 15" with coaxial horn and 300 watts. £380 new. Copes with my double bass, 5 string high C and my Ekit all at gig volumes and it's clear sounding.

Hello everyone, this is my pedalboard, I'm still experimenting with KMA. IMG20240327141541.heic

120 watts of Made-in-USA glowy goodness. Yes, it is heavy.