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I have officially joined the club. Here's my new (to me) 1985 BB1100S. My first Yamaha, first vintage bass and my first Japanese made bass and its really very nice. This is the one @Burns-bass shared the link for.

Got a message from my contact at the Tampereen Musiikki guitar store that they shipped my new Sandberg a couple of days ago, so now I will be furiously clicking the refresh button on the tracking page until it arrives (shipped from Finland to Norway, so I probably won't see it until at least the end of next week). 35" VM5 in Virgin White with a rosewood board. Not a superlight, but still only weighing in at 3.7kg (8.15 lbs). Should be a good one.

Email from COATs:

Yep that was me! Whilst my Wilcock bass isn’t actually short scale (it’s 32” as @ezbassmentioned) it does get you in the ballpark and plays/sounds very much like a short scale bass. Plus being medium scale it’s very easy to switch between that and my regular 34” basses. I actually bought it last year from a fellow Basschatter specifically to play on a few tracks for the latest DC album and it ended up on every track. It’s since become the number 1 bass on the UK tour and will be going all round Europe with us in the spring. It really is a joy to play and is incredibly responsive under the fingers. Previously I had a JMJ Mustang that filled the shorty role but it was nowhere near as versatile as the Wilcock. And it sounds awesome with a pick. Does the clicky palm-mute thing better than anything else I’ve played.

NBD! Back with Yamaha again but went with the Ice Blue BB434. Sticking with 4s now. Might get a clear pickguard or a vintage white. 3.4kg bass, my shoulder is happy!

Tom's Guitar shop in Greenwich Market has a 1956 Fender P Bass for sale, I've just seen the photos below on Instagram but it looks stunning, don't know the price but if anyone is looking for one !! John 😄

ok i briefly have the whole lot out of storage together so i took a quick pic! ...so rare to have them all in one room these days on account of the wife..

The action is now a respectable 3mm at the 12th. However the strings are bottoming out between the 22nd and 24th frets because of the shimming (which is still quite extreme). So I'm going to remove one of the shims and see where we land, but I think I might need to take a little bit of material off the heel of the neck.

1. Proper vintage Aston Martin DB5 – ejector seat n all 2. Lifetime supply of Laphroaig 18, no blended shite 3. Private island off the Hebrides, windy, quiet, zero neighbours 4. Full workshop, every tool known to man (and a few that ain’t) 5. World peace… or a mute button for the group chat 😂

I’m hoping to spend some time with my brother at Christmas. He has stage 4 cancer so I don’t know how many more goes I’m going to get. I don’t need any more gear at the moment.

Thanks to @Paulhauser for giving me the heads up on this stunning limited edition Spector Euro CST! Ordered and paid for last night and due next week... 1 of only 6 total made in this colour (3 x 4 string & 3 x 5 string). Ash body with Poplar Burl top, Ebony board with Abalone inlays, black hardware, EMG X pickups and DG Legacy preamp.... and that beautiful Purple/Black finish... 💜🖤

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.

Yep, almost exclusively with these 2 little demons….

Your ability to highlight in such straight lines is extraordinary.

Following on from my SillyStratocaster Bass hack. I Picked up a mid 80’s Applause (by ovation, allegedly m’lud) P Bass for £50 at a junk shop for a pub bass, honestly I nearly didn’t buy it because that was the food money for the week, but I thought it was Worth a shot and I could probably explain to the wife why we would just eat porridge and beans. The Fretboard was partly delaminated but truss rod sound. Now to ruin it with my epic luthier skills that i got for xmas last. 1- re fit fretboard and see if it plays. It does neck is nice but the action is vile 2 - will it play nice? hmm not really, better but still a bit shit frets are all over the place. 3 - de fret, because re fret is just silly. And I really fancy a fruitless because I used to own a Doug Wilkes percussive fretless in the mid 80s which I lost at a gig because I got so drunk I left it there and we parted ways, what an idiot.🤯 Some of you might remember this bass from the “has anybody got a scratch plate” in wanted ads. well i got the scratch plate sorted thank you to @walshy @rwillett @Shepster8316 then like a fool I just went down the old fixit wormhole and went full project on it. had a busted 80’s Benedetti from a Viger had that I had rewound perviously by Bloodstoneguitars (Dave is great). Got a veneer sample from ebay for £3 good shout from this excellent basschat thread watched a bit of YT and procrastinated for over a week. I then bit the bullet and took all of the frets out “carefully” after learning that patience was key and I’m not a very patient person so I was very patient or as patient as I could be took the frets out waited about a week for the maple to come the Maple didn’t come then I asked the guy where my maple was and he said oh I’ll send you another bit and then he didn’t send me Maple he sent me Royal Ebony instead and so I used that, because serendipity. (The maple did arrive eventually, so if you need some hit me up) Glued in my shed Finished in someone else's actual workshop Interestingly the ebony is striped, so i put the lighter stripe at the top end of the fret so i have markers, which helps. Griller glue for inlays and super glue to seal the board! Who knew! Finished with Gun oil because it was there. when I put it back together again, I think the old wiring loom was really shot. It would not stop buzzing no matter what I did and the pots were just dead really so I just wired in series the pick ups directly to the Jack while I save up for a @KiOgon VT VT Loom it works okay it’s a bit weird not being able to turn your base down or adjust any other tone, but it’s quite liberating in some ways not having to fiddle with your knob all the time 😁 routing for the B was a bit scary but i managed it with out too much damage. now I have a pretty well playable fretless PJ hybrid thing and yeah it is a lot of fun actually but I’ve gotta get some flats for it because all my other basses are two aside and I don’t have an old set that fits and so this is currently sporting a totally mismatched set of horribleness. Again I gotta save up because I don’t have any money to buy strings. I have to buy food and pay the gas bill.😩 i suppose I could ruin/modify it to a 3/1 to use my old sets but i like the fenderesque headstock. So prolly not.

Now, I know I popped off ad nauseum at the price of the Grabber. Because it was effing ridiculous. But I'm not so outraged about this one. Why? Because they seem to have done a better job of this one in the following ways: Functionality identical to the OG bass (in terms of pickups, controls etc.) Strung through the body like the OG bass Bridge is WAY better than the OG bass The pickguard is still wonky, but the silverburst kinda hides it - I think because the pickguard follows the shape of the burst, giving it some context instead of it just floating there I think I'd like to get one, because it ticks all the G-3 boxes which a former (and very regretful) Gibson G-3 owner would be looking for, and while it may well still be a tad overpriced for what it is, it'll be a damn sight cheaper than trying to procure a Gibson G-3 now, or commissioning the likes of Decibel or Baard to make me one.

Sorry to hear about your brother. Remember to pass up no opportunity to laugh when you are together. And, if you haven’t already, tell him you love him.

Damping absorbs midrange frequencies that will otherwise reflect back to the cone at various angles of phase, causing response peaks and valleys. The back is the critical place to apply it, but for best results all the surfaces should be covered. It may not make a major difference, but it's so inexpensive there's no reason to not do so.

I guess that I’ve been a bit derelict in my duty of keeping y’all up to date with how things are going on the worship team… well, I guess I’m now officially on the worship rotation, playing two evening services a month - the first and last. It’s with two different worship leaders with quite different styles. One leads from the grand piano while the other brings his own Nord keyboard to lead from. They both choose a nice range of choruses, drawing from more contemporary stuff but some oldies and oldies, which is great. The “cult of the new” in worship gets kinda tiring and there are many fantastic songs which were written ages ago. I like the mix. It’s our local(ish) Anglican church and the evening services is more of a modern format with just the band leading worship. Morning is a family-based service, again with a worship band and the traditional, organ-led hymnal stuff is done at a 9AM traditional service. The bands are similar - leader on keys/piano, a couple of singers, bass, drums acoustic guitar and occasional other instruments - in particular a saxophonist. All a really nice bunch. There are a couple of other leaders but I think they mostly play the morning family services. It’s hard for us to get to those as we’re ferrying our teenage boy to and from his theatre classes on a Sunday morning. The set list for the 26th October was as follows: Start 1. I could sing of your love forever (F) 2. Firm Foundation (He Won’t) (C) 3. Hallelujah (Be High and Lifted Up) (Eb) Response Song 4. New Wine (C) Communion Songs 5. Trust in God E 6. Only By Grace C End 7. The Potter's Hand G 8. Living for Your Glory C The following week, 2nd, it was… Start Break Every Chain Bless God Waymaker Response song I Will Offer Up My Life Salt & Light End Give Us Your Courage Worthy Really looking forward to getting to know everyone better (musically and personally) as I play with them more. Nice to have found a new spiritual home where we feel at ease.

I can't remember where we got ours but they're a great way to get people to the merch table. Tell the audience theres free badges and they'll be straight there and you'll sell twice as many t shirts or records.

What’s the SFX Micro Energiser? Si

None of the Brooks basses tend to be neck-heavy. Thanks to a combination of carefully selected materials and their arrangement: - Super light tuners. The modified Schaller GrandTune tuners for the octave strings weigh only 17 grams each. And the Gotoh GB350 tuners for the bass strings weigh only 39 grams each. - In addition, the rear strap-button is positioned well above the center of the bass, which shifts the center of gravity.

Potential Walnut control plate finished for @HeadlessBassist walnut jazz bass build. Just waiting for his graphite neck to land and the assembly will begin!!

Ongoing neck and back issues forced me to sell both my basses over 8 pounds, leaving me with these two lovelies. A very mojo'd 1978 Shergold Marathon and a CIJ Mustang bass (recently acquired from @Lozz196 and with added black/cream/black scratchplate for a more punk/rock look than the brown tort). Both super light, both ready to gig. Just need to find a band!!!

So, I've made a start at restoring this bass (or at least minimising my chances of catching ebola from it ). The pickup is with an electrical technician at work to see if it the coil can simply be reconnected, we got talking about it and it turned into a "give it here" type situation. This suits me - he's got much better equipment than me (much finer and temperature controlled soldering iron, magnifier light thingy) and well, it's his job so he's less likely to make an arris of it than me. As for me, I've dismantled the tuners and put them in a cola bath to try to clean them up, remove tarnishing etc. I've made a start at polishing up the tuner bushings (E string done in the photo). Going to do them in situ rather than pop them out - I dislike press fit bushings at the best of times and these old things are in there nice and tight. If I pop them out then there's no guarantee they'll go back in as nicely, so they're just getting polished as best I can where they are.

You shouldn't because the screws on the terminals don't clamp down as efficiently onto soldered wire as they do onto stranded. If you are talking about actually soldering the wires in the mains cable to the contacts in the plug, then the heat required to do this would most likely also melt the conductor insulation on the mains cable.

Good question. 1: NeuralDSP's Mantra all-in-one vocal plugin. I tried the demo and found it very useful and easy and as someone who often gives up at the vocal stages of writing it got me to finish a few in the 14 day trial period. 2: A good random orbit sander and polisher as I have 2 bodies to do. 3: A set of good Filtertron type guitar pickups. Lollartrons or Oil City or something like that. Nice and twangy and dirty. 4: Some good fretwork tools. Fret rocker, files, that sort of thing. 5: The "never gonna happen" prezzie - I'd love a shed big enough to be a little workshop, with power and lighting and so on. At the moment I use my work desk to work on instruments so I can't leave anything overnight on a weekday as I need the desk to earn money. It's very frustrating. A big shed would be ace. Alternatively my kids could move out and I could use a bedroom!

It did. I drove him to the hosptial a couple of times and it was great to be able to help and actually get some proper time with him and my sister - had a few laughs as we drove into UCLH and back. We lost him in August. Two teenage kids left behind. It's not been a great year for our family but they're strong and supported amazing friends - it's been incredible to see people pull together to get through.

Nice bit of crazed fusion from 1993, featuring Tuba Bass!!

Last Christmas me and my partner came down with full-blown flu a couple of days before Christmas and we were unable to join my family. We knew it was my brother in law's last one (he was in the same situation as your brother) but we were both so unwell we coud not join them. We got to spend good time with them after but I hated missing that holiday with him. I hope you enjoy your Christmas.

My wee band that do a gig about every 12 months will be doing a big show in Glasgow next year. Movie themed rock covers.

Sounds great, but damn does that pickguard piss me off.

I only look at FB on a desktop browser using FB Purity.

Actually it has a Neve preamp, rather than the Darkglass..... and sounds much better as a result.

Canadian price. I'm guessing it's even worse in Australia.

Reminds me... after my dad died, we wentfor a brotherly breakfast. One of my brothers found a photo of the three of us with dad. "We look like a country band!" said my other brother. "No!" I cried "we look like a band of c..." and the words died as I remembered the elderly couple at the next table.

Thats BCer @simonlittle! He plays bass for The Divine Comedy and regularly gets shout outs from Viv Wilcock on his Instagram page!

Not a transcription (sorry!), but a lot of my students seem to get easily overwhelmed by set lists for dep gigs, so I made this: Yes, it's common sense, but it's amazing how much time I've wasted running through songs that I've already gigged 100+ times.

Peace and harmony for everyone on the planet. Peace of mind; I've not been too much of a burden to the planet. Piece of Christmas pudding this year with the family, lit up by blue brandy flames. Piece of my birthday cake when I reach 100 (coming up faster than one thinks as a teenager...). Piss as I did when I was a teenager.

Exactly. Inconsiderate of architects and builders in the 17th century not to anticipate our need for somewhere to put the PA, eh?

So, after a few difficult weeks, my wife decided today that I should have a mandolin. Since I was smart enough not to argue, a few hours later we found ourselves in a music shop I had never been to before: Dijkmans Muziek in Breda (NL). Highly recommended if you're ever in the area: a huge selection of guitars (both electric and acoustic) and basses, and a handful of Eastman mandolins. I already had an Eastman parlor guitar and am very impressed with the value for money of their instruments, even in the more affordable segment. The mandolin (at 460 euros, incl. nice gigbag) is extremely well made, sounds beautiful (to my untrained ears) and plays wonderfully (again, admittedly, given my lack of experience). Off to practice now ...