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I am well chuffed to have taken delivery of this ACG Graft 4 today.

Hi All, After a week of waiting I finally received my Ibanez SR655e and I couldn't be more happy! It feels like the body was moulded just for me. As a bonus it also came strung with flats so I get to try flats! Excuse my poor photography it's not my forte

NBD Decided to pull the trigger on this, arrived today. New to Sandberg, wanted a new Fender Jazz to replace a Mexican deluxe a regrettably sold 3 years ago, but heard good things about Sandbergs and having shopped around saw this in sale (Bit of a bargain) had a quick run-though, one issue/possibly, it seemed a bit quiet, noticed the pick ups specially the neck was very low only about 2mm above the body and bridge maybe 4-5mm figured this was not right? So lifted them both 2-3mm higher and it sounded allot better., enough that I had to role volume back bit when boosting pre amp to about 75% strings look like Daddarios but label says Sandbergs own brand, can anyone confirm, they seem a bit on the higher tension side might have to change them, see if they bed in. add some real photos later, its much more yellowy:butterscotch than the stockings photo (not in a bad way) https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/product/sandberg-electra-ii-tt4-creme/

Went to the Earl Haig jam night and did a few songs with James Oliver, none of which I had heard before. "Do you know Nadine?" "Never met her!" I have jammed with him before, but still a bit intimidating as in the last month he's done gigs with Horace Panter and Norman Watt-Roy on bass 😱 Went ok though!

Spend a day each at Bass Direct and The Gallery and try anything and everything that takes your fancy. It's the only way to find out what YOU like.

ontop of having an avedissian tbird in the bridge and Dimarzio will power in the neck it now has a Underhill full English active 9v pre amp which is based on the wal mk1 so I have a Lpf rather than tones for the pickups and a pick attack boost video incoming

I found this fella on Gear4Music's Ebay site. It had got a bit of a bash on the rear of the body and was reduced from £419 to £230. It has a Jazz style neck and a 2 band EQ - I do like Jazz necks and I really liked the 2 band EQ that I had on my old USA built Stingray SUB - so decided to pull the trigger and pay £230 for what sounded like a lot of bass guitar for the money. When I received it I was pleasantly surprised that it's 2 band EQ made it sound very like that USA SUB I used to own. I also really like the Jazz neck, which had a really nice low action straight out of the box. The fit and finish is excellent but the fret ends are a little bit noticeable (not sharp just noticeable). I'm used to, relatively, expensive and old basses where the necks are rolled and the frets are filed via a setup, or just decades of use. I already own a USA Stingray but this sounds preferable to my ears and I prefer the Ray 4's neck as well. I can see it being gigged regularly. Here's the bass and the insignificant dent.

I've owned and gigged my Warwick Thumb NT for over 30 years. Admitted, I'm not a three gigs a week player, and I've always looked after my gear very carefully, so mine is as good as new having replaced the barrel jack a little while ago.

Bass Direct just received a Green one which I've just purchased (perhaps a bit rashly!, I almost always like to try a Bass first, and usually go second hand). My Bass maths to justify it is that I've got a Jazz up for sale which should sell for more than the Cort, so it's not a cost - it's a saving! Exciting times. Now the waiting game (which I hope is quite a short game - next day delivery). Will report back. Edit: After I'd bought from Bass Direct I had been speaking to Guitar Guitar and they mentioned they price match. Bass Direct are now sold out of the Cort Space for the time being (£699) but Guitar Guitar have them in stock for £749, so you might be able to get £50 knocked off that price, although perhaps they only do it if other shops have them in stock and available to buy there and then. Thomann have them listed for £655 but not in stock for months - I've noticed a tactic is sometimes with long wait times they have a lower price while it's not in stock to keep you hanging on and not buying elsewhere, and then when it is in stock they put the price up. Another Edit: Grrr Parcelf*cks! 'Unable to locate address' It's a residential street with nothing out of the ordinary, the house shows up on google maps etc. No attempt to call me to try and find the address if that's really the issue, just an automated 'not happening today' which makes me think the driver just can't be bothered. And Parcelforce customer service app/call seems almost designed to wind up customers, but at least I could confirm that the correct address is on the package, so it is slackness from their side.

It's absolutely sickening to think that a bass made in the 90s would be considered 'old'.

You do realise, I hope, that you have the blueprint for “perfect basschat wife” right there ? the most used phrase around these parts is “if I can sneak another one past..” followed by “well she does have a lot of shoes/handbags/kittens” you can quote me Now 3D print her

Sides are nearly finished. The final kerfing was glued in this afternoon....

Unusual but not impossible. The Audiovox 736 "bass fiddle" by Paul Tutmarc was around from roughly 1937, with the 936 bass amplifier. And in the 1940's Paul's son Bud marketed the Bud-Electro Serenader solidbody bass. They went largely unnoticed though, so when Fender introduced the Precision in 1951 it was widely but falsely regarded as the first.

This was the setup for Saturday. My first time setting up a full pa.

This crowd say they ship worldwide https://www.sheethappenspublishing.com/products/sheet-happens-blank-tab-book-4-string-bass-4-string-bass-edition?variant=43034200703196 Sam x

Well, not today, more like a month ago, but who's counting? For your consideration a Kramer DMZ4001A kindly sold to me by @roger (excellent chap by the way!). I just got it back from a quick electrical service as the preamp was playing up a little bit, well a lot - a capacitor went (well after Roger sent it to me - it played fine at first!), and I thought it would be interesting to play through the settings. They are: series/parallel flat/tone 1/tone 2 And the way they interact is pretty mad: You're looking at the same line 6 times, straight into a UAD interface: parallel flat, parallel tone 1, parallel tone 2, series flat, series tone 1, series tone 2. By the time you get to the last you can see something is going on (excuse my playing!): Kramer no norm.mp3 Here is the same thing but normalised so they are all the same volume: Kramer norm.mp3 Playing into an amp you'd get radically different effect across the settings. I really like parallel flat and parallel tone 1. It plays really well. It keeps it's tuning really really well and compared to my 74/76 P-bass it has a much stronger fundamental tone, I assume because of the neck and how it's attached to the body. And I love the pickups - it has that P growl with extra body. Anyway! Who cares what it sounds like!? Here is what he looks like (I've named it The Winstone after Ray Winstone, because, let's face it - it's a sexy beast!): (that big grey cap is the one that went) - this is the only schematic I can find: http://www.vintagekramer.com/Electric/wiring-dmz4000preamp.jpeg - apparently not that trustworthy!

I don't know how the rest of you feel, but i think anyone who doesn't have a small semiconductor fab in their shed and a resistor winding station in their bathroom is just a poser.

I'd add Status to the list. Definitely works of art, not sure on the new 'non-carbon' models but the older graphite neck/through neck S2s crop up frequently and tend to hold their value.

KZ ZAR IEM ear pieces arrived today. Maybe they just suit my ear shape, but they are a better fit and, although bulkier, they provide a much better seal which was immediately obvious. The very much reduced "leakage" from external sounds is also going to have the added benefit of providing better ear protection, which is more than worth the entry price of these for me. I've just A/B'd with my Sennheiser IE300 which I found comparable to, if a little quieter than, my KZ ZS10s, and I can hear bass & backing tracks so much more clearly with this KZ ZAR pair. Very happy with them - already feeling like they could be a contender for the best bit of gear I'm going to get in 2024!

It's the only kind I'll get now! I'll settle for it 😁

I took the plunge with my first kit. Let's see if i can figure this out. It's a HPF/LPF clone kit from das musikding

I played a 4 string a couple of weeks ago for the first time in over a year since making the switch to 5. There were a bunch of musos at the gig with a possibility of someone else getting up, so I took something that wouldn't confuse them too much. It turned out that the only other bass player to get up was left-handed anyway and brought their Hofner violin bass with them 😁 Still, it was quite interesting to switch back for a night after my 15 month "immersion" in the land of 5 Oh, and I thought this thread was about 5 strings being a bit more mainstream these days? Well yes, they are. If you like/prefer them, that's good. If you don't, well that's good too. It's not a competition

So, for context, my experience is all from an infamous south London comp (most of the notable alumni on its wiki page are murderers) between 1997 and 2004. I did school music classes (as in the academic subject, not instrument-specific lessons) during my first three years at secondary school. We just had the one teacher during that time, who I'll call Mr Johnson. Looking back, Mr Johnson was a sad, haunting sort of a figure. He had a big bottle-brush moustache, side-parted brown hair and a pinkish face that was always shiny with rage-sweat. I remember being told that he was apparently one of the country's finest players of an instrument that there's absolutely no demand for – like a contrabass Saxhorn or something like that. He'd typically start his lessons by yelling at a volume that sounded genuinely painful. Once everyone had shut up, he'd start working through some rote lesson, interrupting himself at increasingly frequent intervals to do some more red-faced shouting. Eventually, there would come a point in every lesson where he'd completely lose his temper, slam the lid of the classroom piano down and scream "SILENCE!". Then we'd sit for the rest of the lesson in tense, terrifying silence. He'd glower at us; we'd stare at our hands; and the clock would tick away in the corner by the door. Sometimes he reached that tipping point less than 20 minutes into an hour-long period. It was white-knuckle stuff. I dropped music at GCSE, and I think Mr Johnson was encouraged to find a new career about a year later. I believe his last term of teaching was the one where the lid of the piano finally broke, though the actual final straw was when he gave a kid a concussion by repeatedly slamming his head in a door. --- There are two parts to this story though. After Mr Johnson left, he was replaced by an NQT – a guy who had done a teacher-training degree in his early 30s because he was fed up with life as a touring musician and cruise-ship performer. I'll call him Mr Smith. About six months after Mr Smith started, I agreed to record a bass part for a friend who was doing a music GCSE. I'd been playing for less than a year at this point, but this kid didn't know anyone better. I went in after school, set myself up, and we recorded a bunch of takes for a (truly dreadful) song he was working on. Mr Smith was around during this process, and came up to me after the session. He said he thought I sounded really good, and asked if I'd be willing to play on some other projects people were working on in the music department. I explained that I wasn't doing music, and he explained that this didn't matter. I ended up as part of a sort of spotty-teenager wrecking crew that backed singers and played at school events all the way through sixth form. Mr Smith led rehearsals and occasionally filled in on guitar, and also dispensed more musical education in ad-hoc explanations of chord changes or walking basslines than I think I'd gotten in several years of classes. When I started a noisy rock band with some other members of the group, he helped set us up with rehearsal spaces on the school grounds.

Neck dive was invented by lightweight tuner manufacturers...

I have just picked this beauty up.

Marketing emails will have been sent using a bulk email service like Mail Chimp, and although it will have a Bass Direct "return" email on them, they won't have actually come from that address.

I’m going one step further. Currently investing in my future pedal endeavours by planting trees for carbon, mining ore for metal and have a couple of silicon and germanium saplings ready for planting out - It’s the only way you’ll get the authentic tone 🤪

You’ve clearly not seen some of the cars I’ve bought🤣

I've met Mr Mandrel. I claim my fame by once removed association. 😃

that's the PedalPCB version of a Broughton High Pass/Low pass

There's a cost to looking *that* good. I have paid my membership fees in the past and will likely do so again

Fame by association. You’re keeping good company there.

He's much better now, although he got hit hard by a virus a few weeks ago. Played standing up and was on top form.

Green Unions ～ Booker T & the MGs

In my 45+ years of playing bass and buying them, I've rarely (not saying it doesn't happen) seen a retailer that will specifically set up a bass for a customer... and that is new instruments never mind used. I know of a couple of bass specific retailers who say this in their info but without a customer sitting next to the guy setting it up, I don't know how that is achieved. To answer the OP - all frets wear but Warwick frets do better than most but be aware that they are a wide(ish) low(ish) fret when new and some folk used to tall skinny frets can get jittery and think they are in need of a refret; as a generalisation, if the bass plays OK, leave them. Barrels are £5 - £10 so no big deal and if it is 30 years old it'll likely have been done any way. Electronics are standard and shouldn't be an issue. However, check the preamp works OK as 'sometimes' they can die but if it operates normally don't worry about it. Battery compartment lid WILL be broken but a strip of gaffa sorts it. Truss rod shouldn't be an issue as shonky ones should all be sorted by now but worth looking at the nut/adjuster to be sure someone hasn't been chewing away and rounded it with a non metric key.

A used bass is a lot like a beautiful woman...

I recently prepared a PDF version of the classic double bass method book by Bottesini. It can be downloaded for free from here: https://yuvalnov.org/bottesini. Enjoy!

It didn't work for me either. But the material is available via https://archive.org/. Just put freebassparts-pv24.pagesperso-orange.fr into the Wayback Machine's "enter URL or keywords" box at the top of that page, then hit Return. The last entries in the Internet Archive are from 2023. It's a little slow, but I've just downloaded a pdf, so it works.

Some reverb and harmonics, maybe?

Winking smiley at the end! Want context? OK, because Dad was commenting on a "strange world" I got a vision in my imagination of an alien with a clipboard, tutting at our petty squabbles and making notes. It's my brain and I reserve the right to let it go to weird places sometimes...

Bit of an update! Pedals listed in signal chain order for those that care… Input > Boss OC-5 Octave > Montreal Assembly PURPLL > Fuzzrocious Li’l Fella > Fuzzrocious M.O.T.H > Dr. Scientist Frazz Dazzler v2 > WMD Geiger Counter Pro > Dr. Scientist Dusk (w/ Moog EP-3 Expression Pedal) > GFI System Synesthesia (w/ Triple Switch) > Hologram Electronics Microcosm > Source Audio Collider > Keeley Bassist Limiting Amplifier > TC Electronics Polytune Mini > Output Everything is cables with EBS gold flat patch cables, powered with a CIOKS DC7 + 8 Expander, and mounted to a PedalTrain Jr Max. The back row is all raised with PT Pedal Boosters and I added an OCD pedalboard input/output unit for ease of set up. I also use another two Moog EP-3's beside the board for recording purposes.

I settled on an Aria STB Jazz for a modding platform. It's cheap, made in china or indonesia, and, did I say it was cheap? I first checked fret level, and it was spot-on, no work needed. I rolled the board edges and polished the fret ends, set up the nut for 21 thou string height, and added a set of Hipshot USA tuners. The body got Dunlop straplocks, an Allparts vintage bridge, a pair of DiMarzio Area J pickups, Alpha concentric pots, a series/parallel switch and Switchcraft socket, and I knocked up a pickguard from a sheet of mother of toilet seat pickguard material. A new set of TI Jazz Flats and we're off. At just under 8lbs (3.6kg) it is a great weight and balances absolutely perfectly on the strap. It's one of the most comfortable basses I've ever had. Soundwise, in parallel mode it sounds just like a quality Jazz, in series mode it rawks! I had most of the mod parts in my stash drawer, so it's been a cheap build. Yes, this one is definitely a keeper!