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I succumbed to my urge to get a jazz…and negotiated a significant discount from list. It comes with ashtray and pickup cover. I was surprised to find a CoA in the case - i thought that was a custom shop only thing. I haven’t told my band yet but I’m looking forward to their reaction at the next rehearsal whenever that might be….i suspect it’s not black enough for them.

Fear of a White Egg. Great name for an album...

Behold my collection of vintage Peavey basses! I’ve had most of these for a long time now but I’m moving into a stage in my life where I no longer play in a band, or gig at all. So realistically I no longer need these. Gulp. I’ve sold so much of my collection over the last few years, to buy things to use for home recording. Somehow these keep avoiding the cull!! those who’ve seriously trimmed down on their collection of splendid things… did you regret it?!

I'd be happy to get the ball rolling! My main music goal is actually the same both for me personally and the band I'm in: I'd like me and my crew to get "off book" so we can all play our rep without needing to look down at tablets or notes! I'm sure that this will improve our on-stage performance no end in terms of being engaged and communicating with each other, and equally with our audiences? Main hurdle: we've got about 6 hours of material, which gets rotated to keep things fresh for us and our audiences. Where there's a melodic element to a bass line or many chord pattern variations that actually seems to be quite a challenge, certainly for me! But I'm guessing making this a priority and maybe aiming to get chunks of sets off-pat will be a do-able way of getting there? The second goal for me, as band leader, is to add another 5 function gigs to the 15 or so we managed to do this year. For this one, the main "hurdle" is getting our 2025 showreel finished - and that's on me to finish up the video edits, and then getting signed up with a couple more agencies.

Yeah I never really thought about short-scale basses, even though I leaned to play on one, til my back dictated the need. I was expecting a situation of "well that`s what I need to put up with" but was pleasantly surprised at how well they work for me.

Last nights rehearsal for NYE gig. Epic. We played really well and sounded great 😁. Then we went and had a curry, and after that ended up in the pub. Marvelous 🙃🙃🙃

INXS UK playing Newcastle City Hall, Christmas Rocks 2025 with a guest vocalist; Jen from Alanis - Jagged Little Pill. WhatsApp Video 2025-12-29 at 9.21.04 PM.mp4

Pah ! A virtuoso speaks …. I’m still so rubbish that mice run away covering their ears and will even leave their cheese behind in their haste to get out of earshot

Hi all, I've got a roughly ten year old Harley Benton B550 (specs here) that's been sat in the corner for over a year. It's in need of new strings, new battery, a bit of TLC and there's a few blemishes and minor dings around the neck and body. That said, all the electronics work fine so it's still a working bass. I'm having a bit of a clear-out/tidy up, so offering it for free if collected from Liverpool but will happily hand-deliver around the North West if needed. Hoping this will appeal to someone as a start of a project bass or something along those lines

I tried a number of shorties at one point but did not find them comfortable for some reason, a shoulder injury meant I had to go down to a U Bass, and it was surprisingly good, as in usable. As it improved a bit, I tried my 34" and could reach the third fret, I calculated that to be like the first fret on a 30". Hence the arrival of a Hartwood Delta. I love it and will use it in anger for the first time at rehearsal on Sunday.

Necrothread bump: Admittedly I haven't been great at updating this thread as originally intended because it's just been one disappointment after another. I sold the Boss SY200 recently because the arpeggiation wasn't user programmable, the Source Audio C4 was sold last year due to connectivity faff and the Alexander Colour Theory and the Cooper FX Moment Machine both did pitch based arpeggiation but didn't do ADSR. So two steps of the same pitch and duration became one step of double the duration which meant it couldn't trigger a bass synth pedal with two notes of the same pitch...so 1/8 note pumping away was out of the question. And of course I could only uncover all of this after shelling out for them. BUT after 16 years...I hope my quest might be over. In August this year, a small company called Polyend released a pedal called the Mess which does virtually every kind of sequenced effect plus a load of delays and reverbs. I finally got my hands on one today and while I've had only a modest muck about with it so far just checking out factory presets...it's absolutely capable of pitch based arpeggiation with ADSR and user programmable pitch intervals. I'll post more in a week or so after I've connected it to the mimmo modded Freeze and the Future Impact. https://polyend.com/mess/

I didn’t really give them the time of day until I randomly bought my Mustang. A/B-ing with my two main basses at the time (Celinder J update and L2000) I found it consistently cut through the mix better, sounded fatter, more expressive, more comfortable and lighter weight! I’m really enjoying them now, and like you say, they’re easier to have around the house, noodling in front of the TV or in the office. With different strings and pickup options they can sound every bit as growly and alive as a normal scale bass, ime. I had written them off as dead and plonky but I must admit that the Musicmaster will be pointed towards that sound which I have come to appreciate more and more for certain music. I’ve gone from roundwounds and graphite sizzle to tone rolled back warmth with occasional toan bombs poking through when pushed.

I might have just bought this and some labellas 🥳

Seriously?!? I wish they’d told me about it! They could have at least sent me an email?! I’m totally sick of being stuck in one area of the fretboard..!

Not in a standard musicmaster - one tone, one volume, one tone cap, one pickup, one socket, and thats the lot - built the cheapest it could be.

Being a prog rock fan, I can't decide whether to aim for 5/8ths decent or 7/8th decent. 😂

I bought the Ibanez Talman for my kids to learn to play, but after they cast it aside have found it to be a nice round the house bass, also because being quite cheap I don't worry about keeping it in a case to avoid knocks and scrapes (unlike my other instruments). It is very playable but I think the cheap electronics do not do it any favours (as multiple failed jack sockets over a relatively short time have proved). Indeed I now most often play it just acoustically. I suspect one of the main problems with short scale basses is the fact that the majority are fairly low end to cater for children/beginners, and hence they have a reputation for being low end.

This one with flats

44 years ago, after my summer job as a 16 years old student, I bought a second hand ... electric guitar with an amp, and not knowing a damn thing about their value I paid them more than the new price, but it was locally, so I had IT! The seller showed me how to play the Smoke on the Water riff and I played it every day trying to learn the rest of the song and some chords on an out of tune guitar as I had no tuner except that kazoo thingy producing an A, but my ears weren't that good back then, so it was an equal approximative non Bach tuning... 🤪 Then 2 years later a friend of mine forgot and lost the pile of records I lent him in the train, and the Chrome (remember that band?) Box was impossible to find as it was a limited edition, so he gave me his Maya EB-2 as a compensation and it started it all. I made a few hundreds gigs over this period, but never reached @Happy Jack 1000 goal (see what I did here). But a few months ago, I definitely focused on piano, and never touched a bass again, and certainly never will again. So 2025 has been a year of musical changes for me. That's life.

I think it’s a Musicmaster with that bridge and control plate.

I first picked up a white/white/maple p bass copy in 1990. I carried it all the way from a music shop near Colchester castle (in its box) to the train station (seriously long way) and then by train to Chelmsford, where I once again walked ** … all the way across town to my flat where I played it acoustically for two days before I decided it sounded crap without an amp. More saving up … ho hum … ** there are those with supportive parents who would be thinking “this is 1990, not 1820… surely a parent could…” no. They never encouraged or helped in any way whatsoever (will someone please stop playing that f***ing violin?)

Without that day, no venturing on to BassChat and no meeting @Silvia Bluejay. Everything was meant to be

I’d fallen out of love with pop music in the mid-80s and simply stopped listening. Until my daughter started playing ‘her music’ in the car on long drives, I’d never heard of Nirvana or Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Lenny Kravitz or … or … or … But that’s OK. I’ve spent the last 20 years playing almost exclusively the music of 1955-85 and I’m really very happy with that. I haven’t yet played my 1000th gig but it’s getting closer – two or three more years should do it. It’s hard to over-state the impact that Thursday afternoon was to have on the rest of my life. I didn’t have a clue at the time, obviously, but that decision to go up to my daughter’s bedroom led to a new interest and obsession, an entirely new friendship group, a divorce and a re-marriage, early retirement and a new career. Oh yes, and Basschat.

Shaped, sanded, black grain filler and first coat of Liberon Finishing Oil.

I am two or three sessions away from completing the next album with my duo, so that’s been the focus. Away from that, I was humbled to be approached about joining an established tribute band (sorry to be cryptic but it’s not official yet) so I really need to pull my finger out and make a proper attempt at learning the material.

#1 More gigs for the Glam band. #2 Look at getting an Agent, tried them before but they've mostly been poor at their job and no great help. We got more gigs on our own. #3 Possibly look for another 2nd band to fill in the gaps. #4 Sell of some of my basses that aren't getting used. I have 3 in mind so far. Fender active PJ Mex, Godin Shifter, Overwater J4 (built by the team at Overwater and not a Tanglewood version) #5 Have a look at the Maruszczyk Jazzuz basses and have a try with the WAL style pick ups and pre-amp preferably. Dave

Me & my partner/bandmate are currently 3 songs into a concept album, LastDay, ideas for which have been kicking about for years. Obviously the plan is to generate a few more ideas, & knock them & the remaining years-old ones into another 6 or 7 songs, in a sort-of organised & flowing-into-each-other sequence, sometime before the heat-death of the universe and hopefully by this time next year. It feels like a vain hope but I'd like this to actually be properly mixed & finished, and released out into the world in some tangile form, rather than languishing on my hard drive with 'sod it, that'll do' mixes, and a couple of YouTube uploads with 25 views between them. Not sure how to achieve that, but that part still feels reassuringly distant. Prior to that, progress will be accelerated by good weather - as my co-conspirator has been absolutely snowed-under by work for the last year or so, generating lyrics has fallen to me, at least for 2 of the 3 new songs, and I find I often come back from long, aimless, moderate intensity bike rides with fully-formed, functional lyrics that we both actually like! Who knew? But not in the howling wind, biting cold & pissing rain... Otherwise I'd like to finally find the motivation to offload a bunch of guitars & basses that are gathering dust, finish an unspecified number of seemingly abandoned projects, and maybe, just maybe -get in the practice room with an old ex-bandmate who's back from living abroad for a number of years. Jazz Odyssey is inevitable, but finding out if we still get on as musicians could be fun!

Complete and release my band's album. We have 4 songs finished, another 4 that are currently in the process of being mixed and 5 more that still need vocals recording and then mixing, plus one instrumental that needs a bit of additional production. That's almost 60 minutes worth of music. However once we've got over 40 minutes complete which means getting the vocals recorded for 2 of the songs that currently don't have them, then we'll probably release those and save the rest for the next album which hopefully won't take another four years to complete!

Shipped! Fingers crossed for Friday!

Twenty years ago today, pretty much to the minute, I started playing bass guitar. I went up to my daughter’s bedroom, picked up her bass and practice amp, guitar lead and teach-yourself book, and carried them all down to my study. Plugged it all together, tuned the bass, opened the book to Lesson #1 and started. Just like that. There’s a back-story. Obviously there’s a back-story. As a pre-teen, my daughter was one of those annoying people who could learn any musical instrument without any apparent effort. She was also even lazier than me and would abandon said instrument as soon as anyone suggested she put some work in and get really good. By the time she was 12 she had already been through flute, piano and guitar and then she announced that what she really wanted was to play bass. So I tole, I dun TOLE that girl, I’m getting fed up with this and I won’t keep doing it … if you do the same as you always do then I’ll come and take that bass and I’ll learn to play it myself. You know what she said? “Yeah right, Dad, like that’s gonna happen.” So she played the Badass off that bass for a couple of months (Blink-182 and Green Day, mainly), then put it on its stand and abandoned it. That would have been about October of 2005.

Those weights are absolutely insane. I wonder if the quoted units are wrong, though? If the 112 actually weighs 23.4 pounds, that would be around 10kg which sounds like a more reasonable figure.

The first lot of five strings like this and the BB5000 seemed to have really skinny string spacing!

Great story, Jack, and Happy 20th Bass Birthday ! 🍻🎸🎶🥂 It's almost a 'Happy Jack, Lord of the Strings - or there and back again' kind of epic tale... Just goes to show why - when it gets under your skin - music, playing bass and this place, can become so all-consuming and life changing. Ronaldo says he's going to retire when he gets to a 1000 career goals, but compared to your gigging ambitions Jack, he's clearly a bit of a lightweight!! 😁

Hey! I wondered where you’d gone! Hope you’re well? Here are some more pics of that one. It’s a one off Peavey made for Ken Achard (head of Peavey UK operations at the time I think) who was the author of the book The Peavey Revolution. He included a pic of it in that book, and I’d been lusting after it for years. One day it came up for sale and I just couldn’t resist!

To me, this was a good starting point https://support.fender.com/en-us/knowledgebase/article/KA-01903

I've wondered about doing this for a few months and never had the time to think this through. Background As part of the Basschat 8" speaker thread, I needed to attach a speaker grill to some risers. I wanted the speaker grill to be easily detachable without using any tools, such as an Allen key or a screw driver. I did look at quick release fasteners but they didn't quite work for me, so I thought I'd make some gnurled knobs using M3 bolts. I've made loads of these type of knobs before and have always followed the same pattern, design the knob, then insert a bolt after printing and use a little plug to fix the bolt in. Here's an example, the bolt goes through the hole and I simply glue a plug on top. Dead easy BUT it requires glue and a plug. So I wondered if I could design a knob that has the bolt put in as part of the printing process and not afterwards and therefore no plug is needed? This technique might be useful to somebody else so I thought I'd document it so somebody else can benefit from it. This is a little advanced in the number of steps and it might well be partly Prusa specific and Octoprint specific. Solution And this is it. This is a cut away of the knob and you can see where the head of the M3 bolt would sit. It looks like there is already the screw element of the bolt already in place, this is the long column underneath the knob head and this is actually never printed, though it is exported to the slicer. The column is there to position the knob head correctly in the vertical axis in the printer slicer, in my case PrusaSlicer. There are actually two different bodies in Fusion 360. The long column is 3.25mm in diameter and the hole in the knob head is 3.25mm as well. In this case it's a little under 16mm long as I will use an M3 16mm hex headed bolt and part of the bolt is in the head. Technically the knob head has zero surface overlap with the sacrificial column, this is important. Both bodies are exported to PrusaSlicer as a single component. In PrusaSlicer they are then converted to Parts, not Objects in the right hand mode pane. If you convert them to Objects, the head loses it's vertical position. This is done by selecting the component and right clicking it. The bottom of the knob head is painted for manual supports, that's the blue bit below. I used a "Smart Fill" and as the knob head base is flat, that works well. If the edge of the knob has a chamfer, the "Smart Fill" gets it wrong. Select the sacrificial column in the main window and in the right hand Mode Window add in "Infill" and "Layers and Perimeters", using a mouse click. This creates these options JUST for the sacrificial column. This presents these two options at the bottom of the Mode window as well. Change the settings to 0 for everything in these two windows. This tells PrusaSlicer not to print anything for this specific part, the sacrificial column. The column is still there holding the knob up, but doesn't exist for printing purposes. It's worth exploring what these options can do if you change them. Change the support options to "Generate support material" and turn off "Auto generated supports". This is really important, if you don't, PrusaSlicer will generate support material for the inside of the knob where the bolt head will slot in, this means you can't put the bolt in. Press the "Slice now" button and you get this. However your job isn't done yet. You can tweak the support material settings if you wish, I tend to just leave them as-is for this. Using the layer inspector, slide down the layers until you are one layer below where the head of the bolt would be The picture below is one layer higher and you can see the blue indicating an "Overhang perimeter" in PrusaSlicer. If you can see the blue layer, you need to go one layer lower. Right click on the Layer Inspector and select "Add Custom G-Code" You need to add in specific G-Code here to tell the printer to pause. I use Octoprint and a pair of Prusa Mk4's (not the MK4S). The below works for me, but if you have a Bambu or an Creality this might not work, The gist of the code above is: a) Move the printer head to X=10 and Y=200, basically away from the part you are printing. That's the G1 element. b) Make three 1.5sec beeps - That's the M300's and is used to attract my attention. c) Disable the stepper motor timeouts - This is needed for Prusa's but I'm not 100% certain as to why I used this command as I wrote this a few years ago I think that this was because if the stepper motors timeouts aren't disabled, then if I wait for too long, the stepper motors are disabled or de-energised and so aren't fixed in position using a steady current and if you knock the the printer at all, the printing head won't go back to the exact same position. d) Energise the stepper motors - Put some current in the stepper motors to fix the position of the plate and the head. e) The @pause is an Octoprint command which displays pause on the Octoprint (and Octodash) display and then allows you to press "Resume". This is the bit where you then insert the bolt. Kinda important. An email is also generated in Octoprint and sent to me so I don't have to watch the printing. The email is specific to Octoprint and uses the notifications plugin. d) The M105 returns the print head to the correct temperature after the pause (and the insertion) of the bolt. When the printing head temperature is back to the right temp, the printer carries on. I turn off the temperature as it might be an hour before I respond to the email. If this is left with the hot end hot, the Prusa shuts itself down as it thinks there is a problem, safe but not what we want. You now have a knob with an M3 bolt embedded in it, no glue, no plugs, so it's a lot stronger and neater. This looks like a lot of fuss and steps but it's probably 90 secs to go through to setup. Once you've set it up, you can then "Add Instance" and you can create four of them in a few seconds. Hope this helps somebody Rob

Just post your question here 👍

People want different things from music, bands and entertainment in general. I would imagine that many people go to your gigs to relive a part of their youth, maybe dress-up, have a few drinks and dance around the proverbial handbag. Nothing wrong with that, they're having fun and being entertained by you. But for many, it could just as well be a UB40 tribute or watching Mama Mia! Plenty of people love watching blues bands and are probably more connected to the music than they are music from their past. I'm not saying that dancing never happens, and it is always good if any band work on entertaining the audience, but you will have a different atmosphere to a glam band gig! Still people are there enjoying it, so it's still all good. With the best will in the world, I don't see your BL going onstage and knocking out Wig Wam Bam anytime soon! But that's cool - just work with the band you're in and be as good as you can within that remit. I've played all over the UK playing blues festivals and had great fun - I would jump at the chance to do something similar again!

20 years ago was 1974 to loads of people here? 😂

I'm 22 years deep and am worse now than before I started... both as a general human and at playing bass.

Support home grown businesses, buy from Strings Direct for example, pay a little more, but get genuine products and customer service. I would also highly recommend Newtone strings. Order in advance as it takes a little while to make them and send them out. Also, IMO, don’t buy from Mr Bezos. I have, twice, both times the strings were fake.

oops, bought one of these too experiment you understand

December 29th 2005 was my 49th birthday. I took the family out to a nice restaurant for a celebratory lunch, had rather too much to drink (yes, we walked back), and by mid-afternoon I was sitting in my study when I remembered the bass. I played honky-tonk piano as a teenager and the cowboy chords on guitar, sang in several choirs, so the musical background was there but it was all 30 years in the past and included no bass EXCEPT I’d always sung along with the bassline of songs. While my friends were miming Paul Kossoff’s string bends in the solo to All Right Now I’d be going “ba-bum da bum-bum bum-bum bum-bum” with Andy Fraser – stop laughing, you know the bit I mean. The bass was a Dean Edge that my daughter chose at Macari’s in Charing Cross Road – I took her there specifically because of the Beatles connection. I remember almost nothing about it because I traded it in p/x for a Hofner 500/1 1963 Re-Issue within a few months. The practice amp was a generic, lightweight thing with (IIRC) an 8” speaker. At the time, and in my tiny study, I was impressed with how loud it was. The tuner was one of those Korg plug-in types that everybody used in those days and carried on using until a year later, when the clip-on tuner exploded onto the scene. And the teach-yourself book? Well that was by Basschat’s very own @Stuart Clayton … Crash Course, and I can still remember (and play!) that very first bassline. My intention was solely to be able to play along to my favourite songs, especially Macca’s basslines for The Beatles. I had genuinely no interest in playing with others, still less being in a band and performing live on stage. I hadn’t been to see a band play live in years at that point (family, career, family, career) and the only pubs I ever went into were the newly-invented gastropubs for the occasional Sunday lunch with my family.

As I don't have Facebook, I'm assuming the increase in price is from £1 to £1.10? I know firewood prices have gone up a similar amount...