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Hi everyone. Got together with @warwickhunt, @cd_david and Tim yesterday for a bit of a plunk and natter. Here's some pics.

standing in for @spongebob band 'Heroes' tonight Dover to Aylesbury, Dartford tunnel on Friday afternoon Spent a lot of time in the band van tonight, love the guys, they're so easy going and apart from the guitarist (Liverpool fan,) we're all hammers fans) Great gig, mod/sks/new wave. The HW 4003shines on some of these songs I've been away from home for 11.5 hours, got 240 quid and had a blast not about the money for me these days, it's about the adventure But it's now 03.57 and I'm still wired, supping a bottle of Rioja Sometimes I love gigging and sometimes I hate it Tonight was a blast

A slightly quieter night than usual at the Black Horse in Whitwick. Still, we had a great time with the crowd that were there, especially the landlady's mother, whose birthday it was. Stingish bass again, GT-6B, Rumble. Converse feet. The cheese and onion cobs from the bar were fabulous! The guitarist is off touring now so I have just one gig in the next six weeks.

Good fun last night if not a bit odd. Our 5th gig and definitely our strongest one so far. None of us have been the ones who've sorted out the sound etc so it's been a steep learning curve. Last night we felt we'd turned a corner. Set up quickly and the mix and sound was much better than previously. It was also our strongest performance as such. It was one of those though where people told us afterwards we were great and loved the set, but didn't really get up and have a wee jig. We enjoyed it nonetheless

Played to a packed out crowd at Didmarton Bluegrass festival. Lovely gig and people.

I just returned from a trip to the USA, and brought my very first bass back to Europe with me. I'd not held or played the bass in 20 years, and had sold it to my former PhD supervisor just prior to moving to Europe in 2005. He kept the bass all these years, gigging it, etc., and then recently offered to sell it back to me when he learned that I started playing in a band again. The bass is a Fender JP-90, s/n 001999 (or 666-100, as I like to say 😈), and was purchased as new by me sometime in 1990. The bass has both P and J pickups and is the fundamental reason that (even today) I like the J/P configuration of Warwick Streamers, as well as the neck/bridge configuration of Rickenbackers). The bass chose me, and the story goes as follows: My cousin visited me summer of 1990, bringing along his P-bass. He let me goof around with his bass for a bit, and I decided that I really liked the instrument (I played piano and alto sax at the time). I thought about buying a bass for myself, and asked my cousin what brands are good... he said 'Fender'. I visited a local music store and started looking at basses, ultimately plugging in this Fender JP-90 playing on it for a bit. The bass wasn't super expensive, but a good chunk of change for me at that time. I decided to give the purchase a bit more thought, and hung the bass back up on the wall. I turned around, walked away, and heard a loud 'CRASH'--the JP-90 had fallen off of the wall. The finish chipped in one spot near the strap button, but was just fine otherwise. I asked the guy in the store if I had to buy it now, and he replied, "No, but but if you do it will be greatly appreciated and I'll give you a discount." This remained my only bass for a long time, and was gigged by me while playing with my first band in the early '90s. Then I got busy with university... life happened, I moved abroad, etc. I just played this bass again for the first time this morning... after 20 years. Thin / fast neck, and super light. The J pickup still sounds great. I'll gig it again at some point, which will be pretty amazing, considering how much time has passed.

If he's 20 but with a face relic'd to look 70 with a file and screwdriver then I may accept that his guitar is acceptable.

These days, it seems quite a popular deed, so here is mine. Music Man Stingray EX, ebony fingerboard, originally 3EQ preamp. The latter is now replaced with a 2EQ M05400 (once again, thank you very much @Hellzero). The treble pot is C500k. Strung with Ernie Ball Extra Slinky 40-95.

Ta daa! Up with the lark etc. Everything works as it should, however the neck (like my other one) needs a little shim to angle the headstock away just a bit. Annoyingly, the pickup rout is a bit of a mess because my router conked out (it's been in a box for about 18 months), so I simply reverted to the drill/chisel method. The reverse P (and the pickup location), offers quite a bit more whump/thump than in a regular position.

My ability was never going to justify the cost of a 'real' one (or the amount of use it'd get). So, a Chinese SUB with a Stinger preamp and Nordstrand MM4.2 pickup, converted tounlined fretless, with a new rosewood fingerboard. Close enough for me to noodle on at home. Now, wherever did I lay my hat?

Another fun day of basses, brews and biscuits (fig rolls and ginger snaps for the curious) 😋 A few from my phone.

Looks like Fender CS are doing a limited run of an Adrian Younge signature bass, which has got to be one of the quirkiest designs I've seen for a while! Seems like it would be a bunch of fun to play, and clearly works for Adrian! But definitely a niche instrument! Jazz body with 50% fretted, 50% fretless jazz neck Precision middle pick-up Curtis Novak bisonic neck pick-up Built-in fuzz and tremolo effects https://www.fendercustomshop.com/basses/jazz-bass/limited-edition-masterbuilt-adrian-younge-jazz-bass/

A Thursday night gig for The Desperate Cowboys at The Golden Eagle in Derby. There’s not much space for bands to play in, but as a three-piece it was bearable. A good crowd for a weekday night, car parking right outside and a ten minute drive from home. Taylor mini-bass through a TE Elf and Barefaced One-10.

This is a slightly delayed new bass day report on the Hartwood Satellite bass. Hartwood is a new house brand of Gear 4 Music. Here is a link to their website for the colour I have gone for: https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Hartwood-Satellite-Bass-Guitar-Metallic-Blue/6TIG. However, some of the specs are incorrect, so I will correct them below. This is a medium scale (32”) budget bass. It comes in at just under £200, so I guess the nearest competition is the Squier Affinity Jaguar HB, which comes in at about £40 more. They have quite a lot in common in that they are both single pickup basses with jazz style necks and offset bodies. On the whole I feel the Hartwood is slightly better made (based on my memory of owning the Jag). The best feature of the Satellite is the neck: claimed to be roasted maple. It might be but it has clearly been stained to emphasise the toffee colour, so the jury is out on that. It was carved from a single billet, rather than having a scarf joint at the headstock. Time will tell if this is susceptible to cracking if bashed but it seems pretty strong at the moment. The frets on my example are really well finished but quite shallow. There are no sprouting, or high frets and they are cut a little back from the edge of the fretboard, so it was easy to roll the edges by running a sanding block along them. That is not to say that it was sharp or rough to start off but I prefer the feel of rolled edges. The fretboard wood is laurel which seems a bit softer than rosewood and it was quite dry but was easily revived with some lemon oil. The nut, which is 38mm (not 40mm as claimed in the specs) was a bit too high and not that well cut. Easily remedied as well. Really nice touches are the fretboard markers that roll round to the edge of the board, so can be seen easily from above and the wheel truss rod adjustment at the heel. An adjustment bar comes with the bass and the correct size Allen key for the saddles. Sticking with the neck, the headstock is reminiscent of the the Sire shape but smaller and not as fuggly. It looks pretty good IMO. The machine heads look like standard pattern vintage Fenderish items in the photo on the website but in reality are tiny (see photo below). The shafts are just under 10mm and the baseplates only 35mm long, even smaller than the smallest Gotoh Resolites. It may be difficult to find replacements that drop in but that said, they seem pretty robust, operate smoothly and seem to hold their tuning. They can’t be heavy either, which must contribute to the reasonably good balance on a strap. The body is an interesting shape. A bit like an extended, offset Tele. It has the weirdest shaped scratchplate but it grows on you and does fit the vibe of the bass, which is a bit 60s throwback. It is quite a big body, which also contributes to the balance. I haven’t weighed it but the website claims the average weight is 3.75kg, which seems about right. It’s not as light as say a Nordstrand Acinonyx but not a boat anchor. I don’t think it would cause much discomfort on a long gig and unlike a lot of shorter scale basses, it has decent body contours for both belly and forearm. On the back the neck is retained by 4 individual screws (a bit more upmarket than the standard 4 screw plate) and the lower edge is cut away a bit to give better access to the upper frets. The Precision bass style pickup is set quite close to the neck (more about the sound anon) and has simple P style controls of vol and tone. The jack socket is mounted on an oval plate on the side of the lower bout, like a Tele, or 51 Precision bass. The bridge is BBOT style but is more substantial than some I have seen on cheap offerings. It has rudimentary grooves in the baseplate to keep the saddles pointing in the right direction. Spacing is 20mm. I took the Satellite to a blues jam the evening it arrived (but after fixing the nut, neck relief and intonation). It seemed to sound pretty precision like through the house rig (Ashdown ABM 600 EVO head and a custom made 2 x 10 cab). At home I played it through my FRFR rig of Markbass LMIII and LFSys Monza, which really gives you a pretty uncoloured reproduction of the sound of the bass. I found it a little disappointing with EQ set at equality. A bit too clanky and low mid focused and a little lacking in outright lows on the E string. This seemed counterintuitive given the placement of the pickup up but at least it wasn’t muddy and indistinct. This was probably largely due to the OEM strings which are pretty horrible. Very rough feeling and incidentally 45-100, not 40-95 as claimed in the spec. It was also very noisy with hands off the strings. I always expect to change the strings on cheap basses and normally change the pickup and electrics as well. I also prefer the look of higher mass bridges (even if the jury is out on how it changes tone). Consequently I set about putting a Tone Rider Duke in it with CTS pots and a Pure Tone jack socket. It was harder to find a cheap drop in replacement bridge because of the two front, two back retaining screw pattern. I eventually found something for about £14 which is a bit beefier and had the 4 retaining screw pattern. It would have been much easier if Hartwood had used the ubiquitous 5 hole Fender pattern. On opening the thing up I discovered why it was so noisy: no shielding at all, apart from a bit of tin foil under the pots (see photo). This is pretty much what I have found with the Squier Jaguar, Ibanez Talman etc. Graphite paint would obviously break the budget! Anyway easily cured with copper tape. It’s now as quiet as a church mouse. The control cavity is massive, so no problem fitting in full sized CTS pots (unlike the Squier Jag that barely takes mini-pots). In fact you could easily fit an active pre-amp and battery in, should you want to. Pot spacing seems to be pretty standard Precision bass pattern, so you could use a pre-wired harness, if you don’t want to solder yourself but you will need to have a long wire run to the jack and be prepared to solder that yourself (because of the placement). An indication of the speed of assembly came when I changed the bridge. The original retaining screws had been forced in at an angle. Obviously not pre-drilled because the finish was chipped off around the holes. I had to fill the holes and drill them straight to get the replacement bridge to align properly. These things are made to a price and I guess a lot of the budget had gone into the quality of the neck and body. Now that I have done these mods the bass sounds really good. It’s like a Precision with a bit more bottom and top. It has plenty of punch and definition. TBH I reckon I could have got a lot of this just from changing the strings to something decent. I have put D’Addario nickel rounds 45-100 on it but I think it would work really well with some chrome flats as well. I don’t regret changing the pickups, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary. The OEMs look pretty cheap: bar magnets fixed along the bottom, instead of magnetised pole pieces. Tone Rider Dukes (or SP1 Classic) are only £35 and punch well above their price point, so almost a no-brainier upgrade for cheap Precision style basses. Conclusion after all this waffle: a very nice playable and good value addition to the medium scale market. The neck could be off a much more expensive instrument and the body shape is interesting. It balances pretty well and it’s not too heavy. Change the strings for something decent and it sounds pretty good OEM. Spend £35 on a Tone Rider pickup and it sounds excellent. Incidentally, G4M do a Hartwood full size gig bag for £30, which the Satellite fits into pretty well. The body is quite long, so there isn’t a huge amount of bag flopping around above the headstock and it has a neck retainer pad and strap, plus pretty thick padding. Finished article with replacement chunkier bridge.

Currently sitting and relaxing in the break. It’s going well, lots of dancing from the get go. However, the nature of the set up means I can’t hear myself particularly well . I’m going to move for the second half and see if that helps. Gear is my usual Phil Jones rig but with my custom fretless Maruszczyk Elwood L. Footwear is the usual Adidas Samba types (it’s a mod gig after all).

Today I got stuck heavily into the cosmetics. Headstock: Still some wobbly bits to sort out (the white neep logo was NOT fun to paint - very fiddly) Also made a start on the French polish - this is the first layer - I guess I just build it up until it more or less matches the surroundings... Not all good news though - there is an area of damage and discolouration on the bottom of the body. Turns out this must have been where the bass was sitting on the shed "floor" (ie. the ground) and i think moisture has gotten in there - thankfully having to fight gravity as the bass was upright. Unfortunately, this area is basically Swiss cheese - the little holes are me being able to push a cocktail stick in with minimal force... It's not structural, but I'll have to decide what to do about it. The obvious answer would seem to be cut it out back to good wood then glue in a patch, but I have no idea what wood this body is made of...

That's the long term plan, but for her buying things is apparently a very intensive process, fraught with second guessing and indecision. Possibilities have to researched, options examined, costs scrutinized. I, on the other hand, tend to go "ooh shiny" and get my card out.

It'd be hard to compete with @tauzero, but the second place is mine for sure.

Three connected songs currently in progress, in varying stages of completion/disrepair. Today, we are mostly trying to work out what the hell the guitar's meant to be doing during the verses of Song #2, which may or may not be called Hourglass, or Seventh Season, or something we've not yet thought of. I will be consulting the Parasaurolophus Of Prog (currently working out a synth line for the instrumental intro) for advice but I'm pretty sure he'll tell me it's going to need a guide vocal before everything falls into place. Which is tricky as Lovely Singer has a horrid cold and is croaking more than talking. Never mind singing. The real mess is, as ever, in my head.

. . . . or you could give it to me. I'm a lot younger than I look. . . . really!

Quite enjoyed checking these out 😊 Mine’s really simple. Under the desk is my headphones bass practice pedalboard, guitar pedalboard,and MacBook and Scarlett which i record stuff just for fun using headphones.

I cast you out, unbeliever How dare you suggest selling stuff? Don’t you know that all right-thinking basschat members have covered every vertical surface of their hovels** with basses ? MGGA make GAS great again ** there may be a connection here between hovels and having lots of ba…

For the record, I think you should keep it. I'm not a nostalgia inclined person and I'm not overly sentimental but if any inanimate objects have a 'soul' (no I don't know what that means, I'm not religious and I don't think I have a soul) then it's musical instruments and cars. If something has been with you whilst you've made good memories then I think that's important. What's it worth? I've always wanted a birth year bass and Stingrays are amongst my favourite basses. If you decide it's going then I'd be tempted to buy it, and you can buy it back for the same price whenever you want. Stingray porn, although you'll need to upload your face these days...

I cobbled this board together for a couple of gigs last week. Ok, the switching is a bit random atm but have a Morningstar MC6 to integrate when I have the time to get round to it.

That is actually illegal under UN convention on torture you show it, but it’s not for sale. you bastard - I assume you’re off now to drown some kittens …

@Lozz196 I would like to make it clear that I entirely hold you to blame with all this enthusing about how great your SL is to play, and how good it sounds… so with the years advancing and all my long term basses being heavy (if wonderful) lumps I’ve been eyeing up Sandberg SLs given how much I love my new VM4. I think your posts were what finally pushed me over the edge. So there was a rather nice TT SL in Blackburst on the Musicstore (AKA DV247 or Digital Village if you’re old) and I’ve pulled the trigger on it. Should be here around April next year or hopefully a bit sooner. I had been looking at the red sunburst one on Thomann, which is very pretty, but being a VM4 that seemed a bit redundant. The bass should look a bit like the following but with ordinary pickups rather than Delanos. Can’t wait… Of course this means I ought to get rid of one of my other boat anchor basses. I suspect the time may be right to realise the capital in my Mk1 Wal Custom since I’ve just not been using it in the last year or so. Gulp. Still, that will pay for the Sandberg and also bolster the retirement fund!

Are you a fishmonger?

Price - $14,500

Really depends. I can't imagine Another Brick in the Wall any other way.

While I'm sitting around, periodically applying more coats to this polyurethane toffee apple, I figure I may as well sort out a few of the remaining issues with the instrument. The big thing to sort out is the damaged front pickup. These basses have a slightly unusual pickup arrangement (for a bass, at least) where the guitar-humbucker-sized soapbars are mounted to pickup rings. The pickups were originally held in place with what my (American-born carpenter) wife identified as No. 2 machine screws. These are anchored into brass threaded inserts that are cast into the tabs on the sides of the pickups. On the back pickup these are still intact and have the appropriate hardware still. On the front pickup the treble side tab has snapped off. I can only assume this happened during the process of fitting the midi pickup system, as I can't see how this fairly sturdy tab could have broken other than if it was dropped onto a hard surface. The previous owner attempted a fix using self-tapping M3 machine screws and a lot of epoxy. They tapped out the surviving bass insert to 3 mm and cut a thread through the oddly rubbery plastic of the makeshift tab they'd glued on. That home-made tab seems to have failed pretty quickly though, and it was broken when it reached me. I have some M2 machine screws and associated threaded inserts to hand, so I'm thinking I'll just cut away both the epoxy tab and the surviving (but retapped) tab and replace them with a single piece of wood or plastic across the bottom of the pickup with M2 threaded inserts. Like so. The pickup rout is flat on the bottom, so I don't need the gap between the tabs. As an interesting aside. The hardware used on this bass is almost all imperial, despite it being a German-designed instrument made in Korea. I'm guessing they were bound by the terms of the Steinberger license to reproduce the hardware exactly, including the No. 2 machine screws for the pickup mountings and the No. 6 woodscrews that are used to mount the bridge and headpiece.

This has made my day 🤣🤣🤣

Bass players are always right. If we weren’t, we would be playing guitars

Ooh, lovely basses, and a proper rig 👍

If I see a relicd guitar or bass on stage, im not hanging around to hear the band. If I see a video thumbnail with thumb about to slap string, im not clicking on it. I don't like bass solos. If I see a fish sticker on the back of a car, I will expect the driver to be incompetent. If anyone calls their kids "dude" or "guys" then their children should be immediately taken in to care and the parent should be put in solitary confinement in Broadmoor.

I haven't had anything done to mine, no. Just bought the stock item. I bought the reveal version as they are more flexible than the lyric cable that DG uses. As he does, I also bought the speaker cables too. There's no suggestion from me that they're better than any other premium cable. It was just my decision to use that which was used by someone could use anything. Better is subjective, clearly. The Evidence cable proved to be more even across the fretboard.

You hit the nail on the head regarding my edit. Yes, he was affiliated with the Harrisons. I worked for them but left when their illegal activities became clearer and I literally had evidence in my hand - this was years before their conviction (and when I left I went from managing a shop I helped set up for them to being unemployed, it was a 100% moral decision for me). But then it’s hard for Clive not to be affiliated with them in his position, the vintage guitar world is a small one. And despite Rick Harrison’s obvious criminal flaws, he was a very charismatic man that people were drawn to, and of course he had his good points too. I was in the trade from 1993-2010, starting aged 15 at Andy’s in Denmark St, so I was in the vintage world for some time - I say this because I have no doubts there are authenticated frauds out there, from vintage gear down to a small amount of faked custom shop instruments and their certificates. IIRC correctly, but don’t quote me on this, Clive may even have authenticated a Gibson that later turned out to be a fraud. I’m not saying that he or other dealer’s authenticate incorrectly on purpose as I know of some very cunning foxes out there, but some sure as hell have.

First coat of black on the headstock... that took over an hour... Also made a start on the French polish - testing it out in an inconspicuous area first - the neck ferrule holes...

I've moved a couple of redundant basses over the last month and took a punt on this gorgeous Lakland 44-60. Cracking bass, first outing is rehearsal on Thursday 😊.

This has been on the site a few times, not least last month when I tore it all apart to install new racks, cabling and new toys, so it's a bit neater than usual. Too small to let it get messy though.

There was a gremlin in my last post . 🤦‍♂️ Anyway , I started to go through the mess a few days ago. Then midweek , the heatwave made things unbearable 🥵 It all started with a fight with very large tv and soundbar boxes which I purchased a few months ago . Yesterday, I purchased a Mac mini which is connected to the tv in the front room.. Hopefully I can purchase a MacBook on black Friday/ Christmas time . This means I can do away with the 2017 iMac , and have 2 places to record my GarageBand efforts when I’m inspired/ not too lazy ..

I have a feeling I'm the winner. The actual area I generally use for a workbench is the bit of the keyboard drawer between the mouse mat and the edge, although I do occasionally move the keyboard to give me a bit more room. The settee to the right is a two-seater submerged to the same level all the way along. It looks very slightly messier than normal because Mrs Zero's watch is sitting on the keyboard being charged.

I have been delaying posting this because I was hoping to include photos but none have surfaced so far... Weird gig at the weekend. We played the Newark Festival, which I was disappointed to find was not the big "rock" event on Newark Showground happening on the same day, but a series of gigs spread around several pubs in the town. We were down to play early evening at The Castle & Falcon and due to our synth player being somewhat under the weather we arrived just as the band before us were finishing. Surprised to find that the actual stage was outdoors in the pub courtyard, which hadn't been mentioned at any point when we were being booked. I'm never quite sure of the effectiveness of these events for us since we're not a "conventional" band, and in the past some of the similar gigs we have played have been more than a bit "meh". However this was one of those exceptions. The audience seemed to be really up for our set of "melancholy bangers" and even more surprisingly we sold several T-shirts and CDs including a couple that we had the sign. Compare that to our previous gig where we were playing to our core audience and we sold just one T-shirt. Bit of a break now until the end of September which will give us a chance to work on some new material and recording for the album.

The second gig of the weekend yesterday for Top Deck. At the Great Northern pub, Langley Mill in Derbyshire. A nice old pub overlooking what was an important meeting place of three canals back in the day. The so-called Great Northern Basin. We played outside on a raised wooden stage area. Thankfully with some shade. A jolly Bank Holiday crowd, that included several children. So, we avoided using some of our jokes.

The high quality of modern instruments puts me off buying a vintage instrument.