Leaderboard

I picked this up cheap because it's in a bit of a state and I felt sorry for it. It's not a particularly common bass around these parts, so I figured I could get it back to being hale and hearty again. It's pretty dirty - the tuners are green in places and I had to wash my hands after stringing this bad boy back up - boak! But that's just dirt. The main issue with this bass is the neck pickup. The coil windings have been... interrupted shall we say. Thankfully most of the coil is intact, the break is pretty close to the beginning/end of the coil so I'm going to try to unwind it slightly back to good wire then solder it back up and see if that works, failing that I guess I'll need to get it rewound. A wee project for the weeks ahead. Its mostly cleaning and polishing, the pickup to attempt to repair, and maybe some finish repair on a couple of nasty chips in the neck finish. Dunno if it's worth a build diary, so I'll probably just document my progress here. FWIW, the remaining pickup sounded pretty decent in my wee Laney 30W combo in the office here. For all the dings/dents/scuffs/scrapes/lacquer cracks, the bones appear to be solid and it feels quite nice to play. I think with a bit of work this will end up being a fine counterpoint to my BB1200.

Bingo! “Bigredx mentioning Gus in a completely unrelated thread” was the last thing I needed for the Basschat bingo game.

Well I did it! We went to view an AH300 tonight. I took my fretless jazz to try it and it sounded fantastic! Lovely condition, and it came with original manuals, sales receipt and the pedal board. Flippin' heavy though. Sadly my partner bought it for me for Christmas so no playing with it for a few weeks. ☹️ I have a couple of questions - did the 15" cabinets not have Trace Elliot badges? There's no sign it ever had one. Also the electro fluorescent front panel doesn't work, the seller said he thought it was deliberately disconnected, so that's something to look at. Any suggestions where to start with that? Anyway thanks for all the advice and opinions, I'm very happy with it! 😊

Yes, an Aria TSB 400 in the pic attached. My first bass bought second hand in 1988.

Picked this up yesterday for the website, man it's a beauty. Wilcock basses are killer. Im starting to warm to shorty's recently after not understanding the hype for them.

Streaming definitely benefits my band. It allows us to reach listeners all over the world. About 90% of our listeners are from outside of the UK. For better or worse it's where the majority of most artist's potential audience are. These days it costs next to nothing to be on streaming services, so why wouldn't you be there? Does it give a fair payout? How do you even begin to quantify that? Let's look at the "good old days" of record companies, albums and CDs... A new signed band might get 10% of the retail price of the record or CD, But that only came after they had paid off their advance, recording costs (often to a studio owned by the label), promotional costs like buying onto a major artist tour, making videos, paying photographers, record pluggers and all the publicity that a band with a record contract in the 20th century would have taken for granted. They would also have to sign with the record labels publishing company who would take one third of all their performance royalties. Most bands would never see any money other than what the label initially advanced them. And that was only for the very lucky few who actually got signed. If you were going to put out your own record, in the late 70s if you cut every corner possible like The Desperate Bicycles you could record and press 500 copies of your single for just under £200. Back then it took at least 3 months to get your records after you had sent them off to be pressed. If you were lucky and John Peel liked it enough to play it more than once and Rough Trade gave you a distribution deal and you sold all the copies, you could probably afford to make a second single and not have to cut every corner this time. Or if you were unlucky like my friend's band it could take the best part of a year from making the initial recording to getting your 500 copies of the single and then your distributor would go bust taking all of your stock with them never to be seen again. On the other hand streaming probably won't make any of the artists being streamed rich on its own, but if you do it right you should at the very least make back your aggregator's fees. Your music will be available for as long as the streaming service is running. Yes Bandcamp give you 90% of your download and physical product sales, but their reach is tiny compared with Spotify or Apple Music or Amazon. IME the people who do badly out of streaming do so because either they have signed a deal that gives someone else (usually their record label) the majority of their streaming income, or because they don't do enough promotion. The conservative estimate is that 20,000 new songs are uploaded EVERY DAY. So when you release your next single not only do you have to compete with the other 19,999+ songs released that day but you also have to compete with almost every other song ever released in the history of popular music. The charts (for what they are worth these days) have to apply negative weighting to back catalogue otherwise new artist would barely get a look in. So if you can't/won't promote your music how can you ever expect to reach an audience of more than your close friends and family? For me the short answer is that while I'm almost never going to make a living out of my music, at the moment my band breaks even overall in terms of what it cost us to be a band and what we make from playing gigs and having our music available to listen to or buy in various formats. And while it isn't a massive proportion of the band's overall income it makes an important contribution.

Best purchases: A beautiful Spector Euro CST (Jap ltd version) in desert island blueburst, imported from Japan with the assistance of Bass Japan Direct.: My old Charvel 3B, which I bought back after stupidly selling 15 years ago... and now upgraded with EMG-X pickups. The fantastic LHZ HL-1 HAZard LAMPS preamp pedal. The sound of a classic US Spector Haz Labs preamp in pedal form. Brings all non-Haz loaded basses to life, particularly passive basses! and last, but certainly not least(!!) the amazing LFSys Monaco 600W 8ohm bass cab courtesy of @stevie. Lightweight, punchy, authoritative and loud... with wonderful dispersion. Worst purchases.... none that I can think of. I like to do my research before parting with moolah.... 😉👍

Damn, I was still waiting for "Leo got it right first time".

I'm not getting into discussion of room modes (the collection of resonances in a particular space) here. It merits it's own seperate discussion and is probably better suited to being in the PA section or studio recording. Science works by isolating single variables and investigating and understanding them one at a time. In this little bit all I wanted to do was explain a simple phenomenon which we've all experienced and can easily rectify. It's more psychoacoustics than physics. Maybe a bit of biology. Most of our lives are lived at modest sound levels (70-80db) and the frequencies that are most important for daily living are in the mid-range. The quieter it gets the more the mids are boosted in our brains. If we listen to music quietly we need to add a bit of 'loudness' or the balance sounds weedy. Bassists in particular need to know of the opposite effect; if we increase the volume above the 80db range then we need to apply anti-loudness, to boost the mids and cut bass (treble in this case is outside of the range of a bass guitar). This will restore the tonal balance that you have set up so carefully at home or in the rehearsal room. This is the bit you as a bassist are in sole charge of. This is about preserving your own tone It's the job of whoever is in charge of the PA to deal with room resonances (or room modes), though in a really awful room they might need you to help out by turning down or reducing you lower frequencies especially if you are using backline only for bass.

Even Jaco needed a P......

Bi Carb - sprinkle liberally then leave for 24 - 48 hrs, then vacuum out Bi Carb should absorb the damp and associated smell.

But without the Internet, how will you tell strangers they don't need the Internet?

Baffle cut and cab screwed together,( will glue and screw when happy everything fits ) Back panel cut , just need to wait for when the neighbours are out to check for any buzzing or rattles .

A day using the spray booth and I think I’m getting better lol. Walnut, Paulownia and Sapele.

Holy Mother of Overkill.

I’ve heard some people have had some success using cat litter ( unused, before the comments roll in…)

You must consider them along with the rest, as the final result is the sum of all the parts. Another consideration is boundary cancellations, which occur when the distance from the speaker to a boundary is 1/4 wavelength, and/or when the difference in the distance from the speaker to a boundary to the listener totals 1/2 wavelength. These cancellations typically are manifested relatively close to the speaker, which is to say on the stage. They diminish as you get further away. It's why your on stage sound can seem bass weak while it's too much in the audience. It's the source of the myth of wave propagation, the notion that one must be a certain distance from the source for a low frequency wave for the dB level to reach its full potential. Accounting for it and the rest is why you need to do a sound check standing where it matters most, in the audience, or as close to it as possible, when setting your EQ. As often as not perfect tone on stage can be boomy out front.

How about my Fender telecaster with matching strings! They also came in pink I seem to remember! Made in Japan probably early 2000's I used it in a blues trio with it tuned down a tone as a lot of our tunes were in D and I wanted that low root note. Played through an Ashdown ABM500 with 1 by 15 and 2 by 10 cabs.

Still looking like I can attend. I'll probably only be able to bring my Warwick Triumph EUB as I don't think I can fit that plus a DB and 1x12 cab(*) in the boot, though I might be lucky. (*) Orange OBC 112 with Orange Terror and TC Electronics BAM 200.

This tallies with my experience: when I mostly played live, I quickly realised the mids were key to the bass having any presence in the mix. If it was a shared/house bass amp, my first order of business was to find any kind of pre-shape/contour/enhance control and turn it right off! Otherwise it was all clacky treble frequencies and deep bass that got in the way of the kick drum. Conversely, as I shifted more to recording music, I realised I could take a lot more mids out without losing the "detail" of the bass tone - and actually get back some clarity. (And believe me, after all those gigs, it took quite a leap of faith for me to turn the mid controls down!)

Agree, quite often those in the mix rich warm tones are, when isolated, middy, scratchy, gainy and clanky.

Glad to be of assistance. Now where's my share of the prize money?

I know that's said in jest, but the main reason I never recorded with it was because it wasn't as effortless to play as this: or this: Neither of which are remotely like a P-bass in looks feel or sound. (and for a lot of the songs I was playing it didn't have enough strings)

Anybody listening to music in the 80's will remember the loudness control on their cheap hi-fi. The magic button that made our music come to life, they are still around often with exotic names like Psycho Acoustic boost. The loudness control worked because it exploited a couple of simple bits of human biology. The same bits of biology that make any bass amp or speaker with a mid scoop fly out of the sales room. It's the sound we all love practicing at home but which sounds s**t when we take it to a gig. So to understand it on the graph a couple of simple bits of physics and then some biology which will hopefully help people with their eq. So Physics first: sound pressure levels are measured in decibels and are a measure of the sound's energy, how much the air is moving, kind of. It's what is measured by a sound meter and we use it as a measure of sound volume but it isn't reall a measure of how loud something is. Loudness is measured in Phons. The Phons are only the same as the decibels at one frequency 1,000Hz which is right in the middle of the mid range, sort of. Sounds at low frequencies or very high frequencies just aren't as loud for us as at 1,000Hz but at 3,000Hz they sound even louder. If you want hou can play with this online Here To understand the graph look at the 80Phon line; at 1000Hz it is 80db. Run left to 100Hz and it is 90db. To sound the same volume you need an extra 10db which is 10x the power from your amp/speaker run up to 7kHz and it is again 90db to get the same volume. The graph kind of shows how you would have to set the graphic to get the same perceived volume at 80 phons. As a bassist though the thing to notice is that the settings at low sound levels are different to those at the highest levels. At the quietest you'd need 70db of boost to hear any 20Hz sound at all. At 100phon you'd hear it easily and only need 30db boost for it to be as loud as it is at 100hz. This is where biology comes in, our ears and brain work together to give the most useful sounds. it's a really clever and subtle system of signal enhancement with genuine survival value. There are lots of quiet bass sounds our body makes, the rumbling of our gut and the grinding of our bones as we move. Imagine moving around the savannah's with the sound of our last meal drowning out the sound of something that want's us to be it's next meal The sounds we hear best are the dip in the curve 2-5kHz which is vital for understanding speech and screams and cries. Loud bass we need, it means something exciting and dangerous is about to happen, a large animal, falling rocks or something powerful and dangerous. The reason we like a mid scoop becomes apparent. by having the mids lower it sounds like the bass and treble are louder and you get the illusion of your bass coming from a much louder amp. When you turn the amp up to gig volumes you need a lot less boost to bass and treble to get the sound you crave. Loud bass is exciting, an adrenaline rush. So finally we get to bass guitar. Average gig levels are around 100db (as measured on-stage at Glastonbury a few years ago). 80phon is more like pretty loud music in a domestic setting and for sake of argument I'll say close to practice levels. From the graph you'd need around 15db boost to get 100phon at 50Hz and at 80phon you'd need 20db of boost for the same effect. That's 5db difference in the bass between gig and practice levels compared to the mids. So to take your carefully set up tone for the gig you need to turn your bass down 5db at 50hz or the mids up by the same amount to maintain your tone. Given that the mid scoop is often around 5-6db you've pretty much always got to lose it before you play at gig levels. This isn't the only thing you have to contend with at gigs, room acoustics and the other band members come into the equation too but you have to expect to re-eq when you turn up the volume for a gig to balance your bass and midrange. You'd have to do it for the highs as well except that there is very little hf coming out of your pickups. Cymbals through a powerful PA though......definitely the wrong sort of adrenaline!

Oh I see now!!!

My regularly-gigged MIJ Fender Mustang. I like it because it is light, sounds great and is easy to play. Had it for about 8 years. Unintended benefit of a short-scale: it takes up less room on a tight stage. I occasionally get out the guitar it has replaced; a 1978 Ric 4001, play it for a wee while and then put it away again.

Shake n vac to put the freshness back, remember that 🤓

Also props to @andruca for the write up on their SB500S which helped push me over the edge and snag this one - cheers! Nice playing in the demos you put up, btw. https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/502833-nbd-pretty-nice-1981-yamaha-superbass-exemplar

Nah, I bet he overplayed a mush of too many notes on it 😜

There are many branches of Physics, and some can be detrimental where understanding acoustics is concerned. The main obstacle for most, irrespective of their level of education, is realizing that sound waves and light or radio frequency waves are totally different in how they function. Light waves in particular are easy to comprehend, because you can see them. There is almost nothing intuitive about how sound waves work, and even at the post-graduate level there are few courses of study available. One very good source is here: https://blog.soton.ac.uk/soundwaves/

Sure!! Here are a couple. Sadly, no.... they do not glow in the dark. 😆

Ampeg V4 B.

I think what we can't be clear about with this bass, is whether this is a problem that's developed over the years, or whether it's always been like this. This is a Korean-made bass from the late 70s, a time when factories like Samick (who made this) & Cort were upping their games but still not achieving the QC of the more established manufacturers. I've had a few Korean-made through-neck basses from this era which had unadjustably high actions simply because they came out of the factory that way, rather than deterioration. Here's a Samick-made Satellite I had, which some previous owner's corrected by routing the bridge about 5mm into the body: I think before suggesting any remedial action with the SD Curlee, I'd need to know whether we're correcting an age-related problem, or a manufacturing flaw. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the former.

My unscientific measurement suggests that the string spacing at the bridge of my AGBR200 is 18.5mm with an overall width (outer edge of string to outer edge of string) of 57.5mm.

link to album - other streaming services are available

In those days I would go and see bands I had heard and liked on John Peel's Radio One program, or someone who looked interesting in the music press (mostly NME and Zigzag) or even a local band that had an eye-catching poster. Most of the bands I heard on Peel lived up to their recorded promise at gigs, the others were a mixed bunch, some excellent, many terrible. The great gigs made it all worthwhile. These days none of those things really exist. What is left of the music press on-line is depressingly mainstream, there are no radio shows as eclectic as Peel's, and hardly anyone puts up posters for gigs and those that do are mostly dull. The internet has given us access to bands from all over the world and that is both its strength and its weakness. I get to hear loads of interesting new bands but lots of them are not from the UK and are unlikely to be playing here any time soon. I could order a CD or record from one of these bands and hope that it reaches me in an undamaged state, but with the current postage situation regarding UK and US in particular, this is becoming more and more difficult. From the other side of the transaction, I have had to stop selling physical copies of one of my previous band's back catalogue to addresses outside of the UK, because for the last 5 years not one has reached its destination and those that did eventually get returned were no longer in a condition here they could be resold. In these cases streaming whether it be Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube is the only way of being able to hear these bands. Each stream may not add up to much but at least the money will eventually reach the band. If I buy a CD the chances are that there is no profit to be made once international postage and Bandcamp have taken their cuts. And so I ask again how do you discover new bands?

I have never regretted buying one. My biggest problem with it is that I like flats and rounds on it and I can't afford to get another one so I don't have to keep changing strings!

Yes, that was my initial reaction, but as @Hellzero suggested, you could shim so the bridge end lifted increasing the neck angle, but then shave down the end of the neck the bridge mounts on so that the bridge if effectively lowered. The bridge mounts on the centre section/neck. The body itself is completely unneeded other than to mount the controls (and the outer pickup screws).

I thought I would have a go at some early Joe Jackson songs, started on Different For Girls, lovely tune and reasonably easy to learn. The next one was Stepping Out, flippin eck, this is way beyond my capabilities, bass players must get a real feeling of satisfaction when they crack this one.

Thanks guys. I'm going to get everything ready to assemble the bass then do the body. I'm fitting a rosewood neck from a '95 Mex P bass, pre-CBS Gotoh tuners, Fender hi-mass bridge, Aerodyne PJ pickups and just using chrome knobs as the control cavity is rear routed. I've got a solderless Jazz bass harness as I'm useless at soldering! Once I have things more organised I'll start a build thread. Cheers Paul

Never considered sparkles... but got this and love the finish so much!

I absolutely hate AI. It's theft.

Just had some work done on my 2001 Warwick Thumb BO by Jon Shuker. Neck reprofiled, frets levelled and dressed and a brass nut fitted. This man works wonders. If you need any work done on your bass I can highly recommend that you take it to him.