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I checked with moderator Ped if posting this is okay. Thank you Chris for the green light. The Best sounding bass pickup of all time is the Gibson low impedance stacked humbucker that was used in the Les Paul Bass between 1968 and 1979. At least in my opinion. 😉 I really think they're amazing. Extremely silent. Magnificent dynamic response. Tight low end. Chrystal clear top end. And very versatile. For years I roamed Ebay and Reverb to score them to put in various bass guitars. But last few years they've become as rare as hen's teeth. And when you finally do find one the prices are astronomically high. Many times I tried to find a pickup maker who can replicate it. And many of them said they could. But in the end they all had to admit they couldn't. Until recently! I joined forces with Mike Rose from Gemini Pickups in Wales. I sacrificed an original and carefully dissected it. The pickup revealed its very unusual architecture. And step by step we reverse engineered it. The Brooks Gemini was born! I installed the Brooks Gemini into my Epiphone Jack Casady Signature bass. The bass previously sported an original Gibson lo-z humbucker. Here's the video demo of the Brooks Gemini bass pickup: a faithful replica of the low-impedance stacked humbucker that Gibson used in their Les Paul Bass between 1968 - 1979. Bass played by Dutch rock royalty Ivo Severijns. Straight into the desk. No compressor, No amp, No speaker, No speaker simulator. Just an honest registration of the sound of the pickup. What you see is what you get! Enjoy!

Oh my! It's here, and it's VERY VERY nice! More to follow...

Last night was one of those final rehearsals that was so bad, you just know it’s going to be great on the night!

Sooooo, spent a fun hour or so the other night taking my 2022 Rickenbacker 4003 apart and checking all the connections, pots etc to figure out why the volume for one of the pickups wasn't working. Put it back together only to find I couldn't get the tone working either. Turned out I was turning the wrong knobs. I've been playing my Gibson EB-2D a fair bit recently, and the volume for the neck pickup is where the tone for the neck pickup is on the Rick. I have now invested in a set of labelled knobs from Rickysounds. This is another reason why I like Precisions.

Playing at a local Wassail this evening. I'm right in front of the camera.

So, I may have just wondered over to Bass Direct online. Been wanting another 4 string super light for a while different to my current TT SL for a bit of variety…got the royal approval then this just happened below (under 6lbs)…Monday hopefully! Probably sell my 5 string SL TT - don't want to but I really don't use it…and someone out there will need that beauty.

Sorry but not under these rules. Selling to purchase is just funding the shiny new toys. Now if you were to start a separate "Buy and sell what you like but keep the net spend to zero" thread, that might be entertaining. You could have a totally over-complicated scoring system; the person closed to zero wins outright but after that the maximum standard deviation about that point gets points as does the most lopsided curve, etc etc. There is bound to be a statistician somewhere on the forum. 😉

It turned a few heads, especially the head of R&D who is a design sepcialist

Musicians. Generally 'kers.

With matching headstock of course

I think I'll commission a tort bass with a black plate. 🤔

I know it's irrational and it's all down to personal taste and I know I'm the d!CK here but this is s safe space right? Custom colour fender basses should have white/mint guards , look in the books , nearly all white guards , why oh why do people put tort on them, sunburst, yeah tort of course, Olympic white beautiful, fiesta red OK I'll let it pass there is the odd one (although more than likely a sunburst bass refinished by the distributor like selmer or kitchens to order when new) but Daphne Blue , all wrong .Candy Apple Red are you f***!ng serious, Shoreline gold, I feel sick Apart from looking all wrong the celluloid tort is really hard to replicate unless you drop a fortune on a spitfire, why oh why do fender put awful cheap looking tort guards on custom shop custom colour basses , with an aged mint guard you'd have to get close to tell it wasn't the real thing ,with a tort one it catches my eye a mile off Sorry everyone! (I must admit I'm part of the problem here, I too am complicit in the illegal fender trade, one of my 5 p basses is a surf green Custom Shop which has a 10 hole gold anodised,all wrong , what were fender thinking, it would look the nuts with white/mint and with the period correct bevel , oof , but can I find a 10 hole mint guard , can I f***!!)

A few months ago I moved to a house with a cellar, so I finally have a space where I can use some tools that's not a) my work desk, or b) the kitchen 😆 This gives me an opportunity to try some of those DIY things I've always wanted to have a go at, and I decided to start with learning to prep and oil finish a guitar body. I figured a good way would be to get a cheapy body to mess around with and worst case it's firewood. Gear4Music had a sale on natural precision bodies for about £35, so I bought one - keeping my expectations low! Although listed as "finished" I assumed it would be finish sanded or some kind of light sealer coat for that money, anyway turns out it's got a poly coat 😳 In case anyone has looked at these, I can say that nothing looks like it lines up, the blank was cut at an angle, and it may be an optical illusion but I don't think the neck pocket and pickup route are on the same plane!! Still, it was £35. And it's not a bad colour. I have no desire to sand off the poly but I'm keeping the body to try out another idea: For a while I've been thinking about a cheap hybrid Fender/G&L bitsa. There's something about trying to cross-pollinate the two that appeals. I snagged some MFD humbuckers recently so this seems like a good opportunity. Basically I want to try L-1000 electronics in a P body, implementing the parallel/single coil/OMG switching. A poor man's Wunkay, if you like. I have two MFDs so I could try a different arrangement if I felt more ambitious - perhaps add a bridge bucker in the L-1500 (i.e. roughly Stingray) position, rather than the conventional J position in the L-2000. To source a neck I may just buy a Harley Benton P kit. That would give me another body I can have a swing at an oil finish, and also attempt to carve an early 80s G&L headstock 🙂 These fellas on YouTube make it look so easy 🫣 I was measuring string spacing on the MFD today and as best as I can tell the poles are 23/32 apart (18.25mm), so 2" 5/32 from E to G. So something to ponder will be an inexpensive 18mm spaced bridge. (I think a genuine Saddle Lock bridge is out of scope for this budget!!) Or maybe it will be okay to fudge it with a standard 19mm bridge. Anyway, this is probably a bad idea for reasons I have yet to realise, but we'll see.. what have I missed? Why will this be doomed? Experienced builders please look away now!

hejirah by joni mitchell is as good as it gets ...jaco only played on four tracks but that's enough to seal the deal for me.

Unfortunately all these new products I have seen seem to be aimed at studio users, and if they are expected to be used as part of a live rig they have been designed by people who have obviously never been to multi-band gig at a small venue in their life. Too many mini-jacks, consumer-grade computer connectors, and external PSUs with weedy cables and non-locking plugs the low voltage side. Whenever a band we are sharing the stage with has technical problems at a gig, it can be tracked down to one of these "features". Also IMO anything not designed to be used on the floor needs to have mounting points for a microphone or cymbal stand adaptor on its base.

We played Grip more or less correctly for the first time. We also had a go at Nice and Sleazy, we can get to the end of the verse before the wheels fall off.

New home, Studio Shoe getting set up, recording in the future. (no, that's not all of them)

Ease but not fully solve. A possible solution for two historically aggrieved mismatch owners. Step 1. Agree a value differential between older stack and new[ish] stack. Step 2 agree value of present stacks as stand. Important if one got a a bit shabbier than the other or one is vastly newer. Flip coin. Winner gets to choose to pay other out to get the newer stack or get paid out and receive the older stack.

Just got in from first rehearsal of the year, last being over a month ago. Was really good, a few hiccups here & there as none of us have really played any of the material in the downtime, but no big issues, especially as we’re not a gigging band. Was great to just be in the rehearsal room playing some great songs and having a laugh. Used my Sandberg Lionel into the studios Ampeg SVT450 & 810 and it sat very nicely in the mix, very pleased indeed.

New simplified layout. Just got the Source Audio Aftershock and it sounds pretty good, it replaces 3 seperate drive pedals. Not got into the software side of it yet as I don’t have the right cable but it’s good so far.

So many great albums with great bass on them and many I'll check out. If I go right back to the start of my bass journey, Level 42 got me interested in the bass guitar but from there I remember buying three albums quite close together around '87/'88, three albums with great bass playing from the '70s. I bought Heavy Weather and Black Market by Weather Report but the one album I would listen to the most was Stanley Clarke's School Days. It's not just the title track, the whole album grabbed me by the doo doo and I would listen to it over and over again. I was into Stanley's music for a while there, it was a bit hit n miss but School Days, for a mostly instrumental album, BOOM! Just gorgeous.

Not a bad idea!

Current writing/rehearsal board. The Blackhole replaced the Walrus Lore, and has changed the way i play ambient. Just waiting on a Russian Bif Muff to replace the R.Attack for that warm fuzzy drive.

Well, you're the one who declared yourself out, I'm just going by what you said. I don't even know what one of those is, except what the words mean. Can you give us some detail about what it is and what it is used for?

It's torture, I tell you!

We allow straps, so a bag should be OK I would have thought?

I approve of those choices, except for the sunburst/black combo. Mid-to-late '70's Fender is a rational prejudice as far as I am concerned. I hope you didn't pay a lot of money for it!😄 If you like I could be really annoying and regail you with what I could have bought that bass for back in the eighties (£200 tops). Myself, I can't abide red basses with tort guards. It's too much redness, like it wants to give me heartburn.

I’m thinking of maybe having the dots like this on my bass. I’m visiting Overwater next week so I’ll make my decision while I’m there.

Tort, white, black, gold aluminium - you pays your money and takes your choice. Some folks will love some of these and others will hate them.

Only if they then burn it (or beat a guitarist to death with it, and then burn it) so no one else is ever afflicted with the agricultural object

They did! The earliest models, from 1978 until 1982, had REALLY big necks, both thick and wide. I've had two MC924L's from that period. They were great, but incredibly heavy and while I was comfortable with the big neck, I prefer a thinner and narrower neck these days. Which is why I've only got my 1983 model anymore: it's the later model with the bevelled edges, and PJ pickups in soapbar casings. Coincidence has it this is my year of birth, the serial number dates it to December 1983 which makes it only a month younger than me.

Just got back in from this week's episode of the Crown at Shard End. I was using (as I have been for a few weeks) my Tecamp Puma 900 with the home built cab powered by an Eminence Deltalite II, except that after 20 minutes to half an hour it ceased to be powered. I was also being sent through the PA, so my fabulous bass playing was still audible. I wasn't sure what had gone wrong, whether it was the power stage in the amp or the speaker, but when I got it home it became evident that the speaker was the culprit. I know I'm using a 900W amp with a 250W speaker, but it was barely ticking over. So much for "Made in USA" as a mark of quality, I'll stick to Chinese from now on. Anyroadup, a couple of people dropped out so there were slightly more songs per person than normally, and I finished up accompanying three of the acts. Some really impressive singing by the four women who sang (I shall draw a veil, mercifully, across the young girls who are always there and absolutely exemplify that clause often seen in adverts, "enthusiasm more important than ability", though a couple of them do show a little promise). Mrs Zero was unwell so I decided not to inflict my voice on the assembled masses.

Nothing but great experiences with Ashdown here. Have had a couple of very pleasurable telephone conversations with Dave Green. Sent my 12 band 600 for a service because Sound was fading in and out, it came back six days later with new input Jack new input gain knob, new fans, and sent back to me with absolutely no charge, they didn't even charge me for the shipping

Most probably his GMT neck - made by Rob Green when he was making the Strata guitars and basses, which later became Status.

There's no point to the wretched things. They're only there to cover over the front routing, and if the control cavity was rear routed instead, they could be done away with. They're just there to show that your expensive bass has been made as cheaply as possible. Harley Benton can manage rear routing of a bolt-on bass for £155, you'd think other makers could do as well for basses costing ten times as much.

I haven’t posted on this thread for a while now, mainly because my gigs are often residences and subsequently fairly similar, rinse and repeat jobs etc. Usually in a duo these days too, with the occasional dep here and there with other bands. I did just short of 100 gigs in 2025, ( so much for semi retiring etc.) so still doing a fair few. 2026 is looking around the same so far which is good. Anyway, couple of recent ones worth a mention. Scarborough Yacht Club was an interesting venue, located on a pier in the harbour and part of the lighthouse building. Needless to say a challenging get-in, where we nearly drove the van over an old bridge which wouldn’t have held the weight! (See pic 1 below) So we had to carry all our kit on foot, with heavy rainfall not helping. The gig went well, although a very boozy do with plenty of audience ‘interaction’. Been promised a return gig in the spring so think they liked it. Played a nice gig at a lovely hotel just outside York in December. It was a trio, headed by wonderful saxophonist / flautist and singer Jon Taylor. Jon has played in many bands over the years, and is a great character. First time I’ve played with him, and a thoroughly enjoyable gig, at a great venue. (Pic 2). We did our annual Christmas gig at Beverley’s ‘The Sun Inn’, where we get invited guests up to sing with us. As last year, we had some mega volunteers, including landlord Paul and also Dave Hemingway from ‘The Beautiful South’. Dave did a version of Bowie’s ‘Starman’ which was really good, and the pub was rammed with a ‘one in / one out’ policy to avoid overcrowding. (pic 3 shows the group shot). My go to rig for most of the gigs has been either a Fender Kingman electro acoustic, or a Squier Jaguar SS when I know it may get a bit loud and lairy. Then one of two Rumble V3 combos, either the 100 or 500. Shoes have varied but often black Chelsea boots.

What’s Going On - Marvin Gaye Peak Jameson for me, what a record!