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Most things are these days...

We're providing acoustic background music for a posh fund raiser tomorrow night, 10/16. The real value with this gig is not our fee. This is a giant networking opportunity. All the town elders and business owners will be there. We got into The Bend Theatre from doing events like this and hitting up the real " money people" "Roots and Branches is Celebrating 35 Years of Beautifying West Bend! Honoring our roots…it all started in July, 1990. Maradel Sager and about 20 volunteers organized the West Bend Beautification Committee, now known as Roots and Branches. Join us as we celebrate “our roots” at our largest fundraiser of the year, The Garden Party, on Thursday, October 16, 5:30 pm, at The Prairie Center, West Bend. Tickets" Daryl

So, I am a sucker for Oly white Precisions and certainly for ones with dark rosewood necks. Big thanks to @Willfunk at BassBros for sorting me out with this Pro ii. Perfect weight, extremely resonant and has some serious grind!! And as per usual the service was nothing short of exceptional 😊

The bass looks really poor, I have to say. It's not just one issue here but several, which is what tends to convince me that the overall workmanship is poor and the builder doesn't care. Letting a bass go with one flaw and hoping it wouldn't be noticed is lazy and unacceptable but to send something out with a number of flaws like this, all of which are quite obvious, just shows contempt for the customer and the £2300 spent. The binding is stained. The paint is flawed. The fret ends look ridiculous (is one of them casting a shadow in one of those photos?). The scratchplate looks like it's been hand cut with an old tin opener. The neck and bridge are out of alignment, and the OP didn't even notice that! I am guessing the OP is in the UK given that he stated what he'd paid in £. I do often wonder if UK customers now are given short shift at times because of their apparently meek nature and the additional issues and costs with shipping in and out of the country. In this case, we once again see an OP tip-toeing around the issue of naming this botch-jobber in the hope that this would give him some bargaining power to get the bass fixed, unaware that bending the knee at such an early stage just signals defeat. FWIW, I wouldn't want such a sloppy bass back; I wouldn't want an ornament of insult sat around my house reminding me of the episode. OP, you're the customer and you're supposed to get what you want when you're spending the thick end of two and half grand. Grovelling and hoping the builder will deign to fix his issues is just... not what I would do. It reminds me a bit of the Letts bass saga, or the handful of posters on Talkbass clutching at straws and hoping Joe Zon would finally build them the bass they had paid for a decade ago. We've had it here before with dodgy builders like Cristian Grosu and Grosmann basses, where builders were named for sending out subpar instruments and it saved the community plenty of headaches in the process. Not here, but on Bass Upfront and groups like that, I was able to warn a few people to read up on some of the horror stories about Grosmann including one on this very site. I'd like to think I saved a few people some cash and some disappointment. OP really should name the builder in this instance to prevent others going through what he has had to put up with.

Hey Burns-Bass You'll have to excuse my mammoth sized pendatry 🤣 Not only will the string be quieter when further away from a pole-piece, it will have less 'transient' tone and lack more frequenices often described as 'punch'. (I'd say mid-range, but it can vary). You can test this by lowering your pickups in to the body as far as they will go and then record the bass (adjusting for overall volume drop). It will sound different. Adjusting for transient response (making it more even) is why Leo Fender moved from a single-pole piece on a 51/54 style pickup to two per string as per the Split-Coil as an example. This change in construction also changes the tone of the pickup too, but that's not what's being discussed. For bassist that bend strings, the distance from the pole-pieces makes a huge difference. I'd demonstrate with a bass I have just recorded video for, but it is all boxed up already. It was really noticeable when the string moved out of the direct field of the pole pieces - which, is why i personally much prefer rail or bar pole pickups. The transient response is much more controlled offering a better, (louder in comparison) "bloom" of the note and therefore a richer tone. TL/DR .. is relevant 😊☺️

Absolutely my all time favourite player, and he rarely gets any credit….. the bass lines for XTC on Drums and Wires or Black Sea, are absolutely outstanding and completely original. Nobody sounds like that…. go and listen to Roads Girdle The Globe from Drums and Wires, and give your ears a treat.

There was a story Jeff Berlin tells about listening to the Jaco record. Jeff said it his brother “I can play all that, it’s not that hard.” To which his brother replied, “yes, but could you write it?” I’m paraphrasing a bit but the essence is the same. Coming up with this stuff is the hard bit, there are plenty of others in the world who can play it.

It's one half of a pair of northerners carrying a ladder.

I'm definitely borderline artistic, or at least on the artistic spectrum

Certainly not from a work device 👍

Why buy a cheap one from China, when you can pay a king's ransom for one from America that's almost as bad? 😁

Maybe in its simplest for, music, acting, painting, performing, writing, photography etc. is a creative art and thus, one who does this is an artist. One who crafts things, for example builds, designs, repairs, constructs etc. is a craftsman.

A few small tweaks for tonight’s rehearsals. Pretty sure I’m going to be going back to the PedalTrain Jr Max to fit a few extra bits on, but for now, this is rocking!

The plural of Status is Statuses. A group of Statuses is called a reputation.

The 2 x Paul's (@NancyJohnson & @prowla) and I convened for a lovely curry last night..... and, as Nancy says... it was indeed a windy night Just had confirmation that Chris Childs (Thunder etc) will be a special guest and will do a Q&A, short career chat and demo at around 2pm on the day. We're also working on another guest or two (subject to their availability) as well as some fun stuff...

I don’t know what that is, but I know not to google something with that combination of words in it.

I've just booked into a hotel for three nights. The 'above lively music venue' was an attraction... I enquired and it's karaoke on friday and saturday...

Ponce. ...

Brilliant, we've Basschatted the thread 👍

I'm guessing Maruszczyk?

Chris is a top bloke and a very tasty player. I’ve seen him with Thunder, but mostly I saw him with local legends (when I lived down south), Bad Influence, when I making the jump from the 6 string thing, to the righteous instrument. I count him as an influence because of this timing. He also has a great singing voice too. Very much the complete package - so when I say top bloke, I mean utter, utter bastard . Seriously, those attending are in for a treat.

I guess right now, it's the Fazley Hot Rod. This is the result of my "£150 giggable bass challenge", and it has quite a story to it. Buoyed by the positive result of buying a bass for £150 (the Gear4Music LA Select bound P bass thingy) and then mucking about with it (replacement pickup, tuners etc., bit of fret work), under the banner of "how bad can a £150 bass be?", I decided to lower the bar further and set myself a new challenge of setting the entire budget of the project to £150 - that's initial cost of the bass plus any remediation required, new parts only, (postage ignored) because I'm quite mad. Back in September 2024 I spied the Fazely Hot Rod on Bax Music and thought to myself, damn, I like the look of that. Surf green, no pickguard, reverse P, single volume control. £84 at the time, perfect as the starting point for a £150 project. It was out of stock but I placed the back order anyway, knowing that it would take several months for a new batch to arrive. It's not like I don't have other basses to play after all. So the ETA begins to lengthen - was initially end of 2024, but the date kept slipping and you probably know why - Bax Music went bankrupt in April 2025. I am in the privileged position to be able to shrug off an £84 loss so shrug I did. In the interim, as I had pickups lying around waiting for basses to go into, I snagged an Epiphone Embassy Special IV locally for £150 and chucked an Entwistle neodymium pickup in it, and very nice it is too, but that's another story. To my surprise, rumblings of Bax Music being bought over and coughing back into life happened, and to my further surprise, I got an email at the end of May saying that the newco was going to fulfil back orders. Despite my scepticism, I played along, answered any questions they put to me (like opting to wait on the goods ordered instead of getting store credit now). It took a few months for them to get around to my order but to my amazement, a parcel was dispatched to me on 7th August and I recieved it a few days later. So it took the best part of a year to arrive - but was it worth it? Oh hell yeah. I honestly don't know how they did it. The only cost saving areas I could find were the comically bad pickup (which I was going to change anyway), the finish is a bit wibbly wobbly in places (like ripples in it if you look really close) and zero cavity shielding. Oh, and the stock strings were absolute thin, rough garbage. But the fretwork is great, it even has a subtle chamfer/roll to the fretboard edges. The tuners are acceptable at the price point, and acceptable as tuners go in general. The bridge was your bog standard BBOT, nothing to complain about there. So, to get it up to snuff, I replaced the pickup with a Tonerider Duke, shielded the cavities, replaced the bridge (didn't have to, but I had a £19 Guyker bridge lying around which has partially slotted saddles and hides the ball ends of the strings for a cleaner look), fitted a triple string tree (because I like them), and the finishing touch - a giant volume knob! Final tally was £144.67. I've only gigged it once so far, but it was great - I'm not much of a knob twiddler at the gig but there was this weird sense of extra liberation when there's nothing bar a volume knob to p!ss about with! I'll shut up now, but TL:DR this is currently my budget #1.

I've just PM'd the three of you about Matt Gleeson's slot. 😉

Lob a set of these in. 😎

I just noticed a post of mine from 2024 when my £200 Yamaha was my cheap but cheerful bass. Things have progressed. My current cheap one is Squier Affinity which cost me nothing at all - it was given to me in a very neglected state, with rusty strings, manky fretboard, and buzzy electrics. It had previously been refinished nicely though in an aged Fiesta Red nitro and a decent tort plate so it looked the part at least. I’ve since cleaned it up and installed a Tonerider Classic P pickup, a Fender Vintage 60s bridge which has been in my drawer for about 20 years, and some GHS Precision Flats. Ive used it at three of the last four gigs and it’s done very well - does that fairly rudimentary “P bass with flats” sound perfectly well, weighs about 3.6kg and is quite a joy to play, in addition to the satisfaction of resurrecting something and bringing it back into gigging use.

Bravo

L’Etts

It was me!!! I BUILT IT! And I'd do it again to! Dang those meddling kids for ruining my plan...

I don't know what the original is supposed to sound like for comparison but I couldn't hear much "synth" bass in that clip. I'd get pretty close to that sound with a bit of drive and EQ, and IMO it certainly wouldn't be worth all the effort of using a synth pedal to sound like that.

I've recently bought a Stagg EUB (courtesy of @Burns-bass). Regular readers may know I already have an Ibanez UEB, and this I took to quite quickly, no doubt helped by the 34" scale. The Stagg with it's 3/4 DB scale and no stand, is a different proposition altogether. I took it to rehearsal last night and tbh it's was a struggle. I tried it first with the fake body bits, then took them off for a while, then put just the one I lean on, and this was a bit better. But I'm still not sure how high to have the pin. With the Ibanez I have the nut at roughly forehead height. Should it be the same for the Stagg? I was often thrown by the bigger scale. Any tips appreciated. (Pic from @Burns-bass sale listing)

It’s all good. We’re in a world where someone will refuse to buy a bass because the string spacing is 1mm out, so precision definitely matters. I’ve owned lots and lots of vintage basses and the strings would rarely bisect the poles perfectly yet people now pay £20,000 for the same basses. Maybe the misalignment is where the magic is! The longer I play bass the less worried I am about all this stuff. I played the Royal Albert Hall once with a £350 jazz bass and that was fine.

We're on the same page. For my band, we do best with the venues with a "built in" crowd. Daryl

I'm more of a musical vandal than an artist.

MTV and Kerrang TV were on all the time in my house. I miss when they were music channels - programming by other people is a good way of discovering new stuff rather than just me picking things I already know about. Just like the R1 Friday Rock Show years before. Used to get a cassette out and record it from the radio. Happy days!

I suppose it just comes down to semantics but it is the amount of 'craft' or technical knowledge/training that many 'artists' have to have that got me thinking that it is often more about learning and applying a craft than being artistic. e.g. a Ballerina, no doubt it is a highly skilled thing to do and takes years of technical training, but when it comes down to it - how much is actual artistic expression, and how much is by applying what has been taught and doing as instructed? Me playing a cover version of a song on the Bass? I think that is almost entirely down to having spent the time to learn the craft of playing, I don't think I'm really adding anything particularly artistic. And even when I make up an original bassline - I think I'm just applying knowledge of all the other basslines I've heard and played and applying some music theory and technical playing skill, but art - from the soul communicating my inner emotions?!?...I'm not so sure! It's more 'minor key = sad' 'major key = happy' 'phrygian = exotic'!

JB4 Batch 1 #2.2.mp4 This evening I started to inspect the necks in person. This is #2, your neck @Phaedrus01 . I'm going to be sending an individual video or two to everyone on the order list in private just to check in and so we can confirm shipping details and final balance. Hopefully I can send away towards the end of neckt (aha) week as I need to find individual shipping boxes. JB4 Batch 1 #2.mp4

Got my XS-1 yesterday. It's good, but not astounding, but then I think that's just the nature of these pitch shift pedals.... It does a reasonable job up to about a tone/tone and a half detuned then the artificial sound becomes too overbearing for my taste. I also have the Digitech Drop and that's as bad/worse. Under layers of distorted guitars it probably wouldn't be noticeable but solo'd it becomes a distraction imho. Advantages of this pedal (beyond tuning down with a good sound to C#/D) are the extra ability to tune up/add higher notes, the octaver and the 'secret' chorus setting.

So what they are effectively saying is that if your bass is made solely from Paulownia (as some basses were) it isn't very good and lacks 'bass'! LOL Sorry but the tonewood thing is a minefield and while interesting, isn't the be all and end all. Some basses sound good despite being made of (what is considered) inferior types of material and some basses made of top quality materials can sound conversely poor. Personally if a bass body is made of wood it should be well seasoned and resonant... though it doesn't have to be so resonant (for me) that it rings too much.

I think people's expectations are just higher in the south-east around London. Plus we are a miserable bunch. The further you go from London the more relaxed people are.

I found this photo of me playing my Overwater Original some time in the mid to late 90s. As you'll notice the strap button position doesn't seem to be a problem at all:

Not sure if this is exhaustive, but these are the ones I can remember having: 3Leaf Audio Chromatron Doom Doom 2 Octabvre Mini Octabvre MKII Octabvre MKIII Proton MKII Wonderlove Aguilar Filter Twin Octamizer Ampeg SGT-DI Arion Stereo Chorus Behringer BM-13 phaser Boss AW-3 LS-2 OC-2 OC-5 Broughton Audio Fliptop Josh Wah Chase Bliss Wombtone MKII Wombtone Billy Strings Cog Effects T-16 (v1) T-47 (latest) Emma Electronic Okto Nøjs EHX QBalls Enigma QTron (big box) QTron+ Glou-Glou Avant-Garde Rendez-Vous Steak Heavy Procrastination Industries Mortrix Iron Ether Subterranea Xerograph Moog MF-101 Low Pass Filter MF-103 12-Stage Phaser Morningstar Engineering MC6 MC6 Pro MC8 ML10X Mr Black Fwonkbeta Mu-Tron Micro-Tron III Micro-Tron IV MXR Bass Chorus Deluxe Bass Distortion Bass Envelope Filter Bass Octave Deluxe Phase 90 (block) Phase 90 (script) Phase 95 Vintage Bass Octave Origin Effects Cali76 Compact Bass Cali76 Bass Compressor BassRig ‘64 Black Panel BassRig Super Vintage Panda Audio Future Impact I Future Impact v3 Future Impact V4 Future Impact V4 VIP MIDIBeam MIDIBeam 4Control Shift Line Cabzone X Flex Olympic MKIIIS Singular Sound Beat Buddy Source Audio Aftershock Artifakt Atlas Bass ZIO C4 Collider Encounter EQ2 Gemini Lunar Manta Mercury Neuro Hub Nemesis Nemesis ADT Spectrum Ultrawave Beta Ventris ZIO SushiBox Grand Slampegg TC Electronic Sentry Spectracomp ZVEX Mastotron

Inga is going for the title of Monarch of the Zombies.

Love this. I wish we did stuff like this. I'm into to it, however my bandmates don't seem to have much interest in video or social media promotion. Daryl

That's Claudia Winkelman.... and I claim my £5!