Leaderboard

So many things in life are just designed to get in the way of what you want to do. The last two weekends we were away, this one i had 3 gigs! During the week I did get to do some sanding, all at 1200 after the colouring, and I found the joys of lintfull paper. If you rub it down with a paper towel, it only leaves lint where something catches it, so that is the bit that needs smoothing. I did all the final holes I needed for neck screws and jack socket. I messed up with the jack socket but luckily it didn't do any harm and didn't show. After having to go and get stuff I managed to put a coat of oil over everything. It looks a lot darker, I really like it, even the line down the back. Like this:

New rig finally sorted.

I put a teeny bead of titebond along the tang, then hammer in the fret and then clamp a radius block on until the titebond has gripped: Here's the board now with frets trimmed and chamfered:

Look like a whisker above 2mm at the 12th fret

Well, quite, but I came to this thread to watch/listen to a band I knew nothing about, and so gave it a go (otherwise why post these topics at all..?). It turns out that, like Lenny, I was, let's say,.. unimpressed, and chose to post in that vein. It's just my opinion, and for my part I have no wish to change the view of anyone at all, but it's comment on an open forum on a subject of interest to several. I'd have thought that all loyal views would be welcome, whether for or against. I'll post again in the same spirit on any similar subjects if I feel inspired to.

And we have frets! Ready to trim and bevel once the glue's fully dried. Then a demarcation veneer and then glue it on the neck

We also have a coffee machine now! Pop round any time @Quilly

Got a bit more done today, Headstock cut started to redo the taper and took some of the bulk off the back of the neck aswell

I had a rehearsal yesterday and our guitarist said he had bought the flagship Helix board to try instead of his pedal board and valve amp. He went straight to PA (we all go through FOH live) and it was incredibly good with none of the stress of mic’ing up amps and noisy pedal clicks etc. For me it is an excellent live solution and if you read /watch interviews with bands most of them will say the same about Fractal/positive grid/kemper. There isn’t enough difference live to warrant the pedal boards, and big expensive valve amps that need maintenance and care. I think there will always be the pureists, and I love a valve amp as much as the next guy, but in the gigging world I think the nuances of the analog kit is lost.

Little-known makes that deserve to be better known? (Speaking as a hard-core lover of GMR basses 🙂 - I wouldn't swap any of my three for a Maruszczyk any day.) Now that I've thought of it I'll start a thread in Bass Guitars.

Tuesdays. You can use them on Tuesdays.

Don't have enough space or time to contrast and compare my amps. Plenty of good reviews and youtube clips about but a quick summary. Edit: I have been using Markbass Cabs for over 10 years and more recently (last 5 years) Vanderkley or Barefaced with all the Class D amps mentioned below. Have used MARKBASS SA450 and Little Mark 500 for around 15 years, both excellent amps, the SA450 no longer in production. Little colouration so sound of bass very evident. Lots of tonal choice and VLE and VPF controls are great. Plenty punch and power. No mute Switch. Good DI out. Good value overall. GENZ BENZ ShuttleMax 9.2 and Streamliner 900. My preference is for the Shuttlemax which I have been using the most over last 5 years or so and I marginally favour over Markbass. Great sound, two channels, loud , punchy, excellent DI out feature laden but which I very rarely use. I find my Shutttlemax cuts through mix better than the Streamliner which is a great simple little amp particularly for warmer older school sounds, three valve preamp and far less features than the Max, Sadly Fender pulled the plug on the amazing Genz Benz range over 5 years ago. I have little doubt that the GENZLER MAGELLANs are excellent just waiting to try one out. GK 500MB, bought as a back-up, but excellent amp as first choice. More colouration than other amps here with a distinctive GK sound (which I really like), seems very loud for a 500W amp.great overdrive and boost. High end can be a but hissy and a little noisey Good DI. Great value for money. Phil Jones Bass D400 with C8 cab. I love the PJB stuff of which I use a variety and the D400 is most recent. Excellent clean HiFi sound, great for studio and practice. Nice low B for such small drivers, excellent for acoustic instruments. PJB gear does cut through the mix nicley, but to even begin to compete with other amps here and loud drummers here one would need to consider the D1000, which is close to a grand! SANSAMP RBI and CROWN XLS 1002 power amp. Great set-up, classic Sansamp grit for Ampeg-like tones, 1100W of power.but getting into rack gear here. QUILTER BASS BLOCK 800, Portability, great tone punch and power at a very competitive price, only Markbass and GK come close at this price point. The Depth and Contour controls provide all I ever need.( Siimilar idea as Markbass VLE AND VPF). I was very pleasantly surprised by this little beauty at under €500!! The QUILTER DI/line out is great and DOES vary with Gain and Master volume. Not overly impressed with T.C ELECTRONIC great fun TONE PRINT stuff but sound a bit synthetic and under powered to me. Had two combos, both with unusable humming DI outs!! Have gigged with HARTKE gear nice punchy sound, like the old HA3500, if it didn't weigh a ton. The new TX600 is nice but seems very quiet compared to GK, QUILTER, MARKBASS etc. Used an AGUILAR TONE HAMMER 500, very good indeed, nice gritty punch but cost quite a bit more than the QUILTER. I started out 45 years ago, with HIwatt 100, then Fender Bassman135, and then Acoustic Control Corp 220/406 which was my favourite. Have used HH, Peavey, Laney, Trace, Carlsbro (less said the better), but am now firmly in the Class D club, for portability as much as anything. In summary the QUILTER is a USA built unit that should be seriously considered by any player. BTW I have no connection, allegiance or affiliation to Quilter, but think I know a bargain when I see one. Hope my self-indulgent ramblings are helpful. Cheers

Hi folks You may have noticed a new forum in the marketplace called 'commercial items for sale' Currently it's just a bit of a test, but ideally I'd like it to be an area for used bass shops, luthiers and small scale companies to list items they have for sale, so you can look through all the stock directly on BC. We'll see how it goes, and I'll be adding some companies as we go - I will over the next few weeks be talking to small shops and dealers to sign a few more up. Ideally I'd like items posted there to be automatically tagged as 'dealer' but I'm working on things like that, so it's still a work in progress. I hope you like it and find it useful - let's see what happens. Cheers ped

Cats and string Height, not a bad evening

Blues song played backwards: my best friend's wife left him for me. Then I went to bed. Country song played backwards: My dog came back to life. The cows milked themselves. Everything is brilliant and I'm loaded.

Try the diagram below, just leave out the tone pot and cap. https://www.seymourduncan.com/wiring-diagrams?meta_params=bass-options,2-pickups,neck-pb,bridge-jb,1-volume The difference between leaving the pot and cap out or having them in with the pot wide open is impossible to detect with 'normal ears'. If you don't like it you can soon drop a cap in to tame the top end. Cheerz, John

Last band I was in we went through three or four singers. First one drank way too much and was trousered before gigs started. Second one was a great singer but an unreliable derrière of a man. I wondered why he'd been in so many bands locally - until he we turfed him, and other musicians started sharing their stories about him. Then we got a girl in to sing. Our drummer, a great player but somewhat starved of romance for over a decade, instantly fell for her. Should've seen that coming, really. Eventually they formed a little clique and refused to compromise their now shared opinions on tunes, gigs to refuse and so on. So they had to go. Now they travel round the area doing "sound bath" evenings for the spiritually gullible, with Tibetan bells or something. Me and the guitarist got a new outfit together, borrowed a drummer and found a bloke who was a bit of a karaoke nut, but had never sung in a band before. Turns out he has a tremendous voice and always learns new songs before the next practice. He might still suggest Don't Fear The Reaper, Layla, and other things which apparently go down well at karaoke evenings (who knew?) but we hope to have him educated soon. In short, the atmosphere has lightened considerably,and the first few gigs we've done have been fantastic fun.

Very true. If all you want is to ask others for TABs and know just enough to busk your way through a few covers and, then SBL isn't the place for you. TABs is something that simply doesn't get a mention on SBL.

Ultimately you can play whatever you like. You'll know if it's right or not, because you'll either be lauded as a genius or kicked firmly in the scrotum.

Well, I usually come on here and boast if I have had a particularly good gig. So I suppose it's only fair that I should own up to a real stinker! Doing a set of country/rock covers and a couple of originals. First song went well , but then it all started to collapse from there. Singer/LG missed out the second bridge in the second song...the rest of us managed to go with him but it was a bit unsettling. It was my first time doing BVs with this band - I sounded very nervous and warbly. Horrible really. Then in the next song Singer/LG seemed to hit one of those awful mental blocks. Just dried up and stopped half way through. He definitely knows this song, we've been rehearsing it for ages. We started again and he dried up at the same point! We decided to move on to the next one, but by now were all a bit shaken and there were bum notes and hesitations all over the place, including from me! We staggered through to the end and slunk off somewhat embarassed. What made it worse was there were two other bands on who were really good!! Luckily this was in a nice quiet pub with a regular crowd who were very polite about it all. No abuse or rotten vegetables were thrown. I'm playing the same place again next week, but with a different band (and not doing BVs this time!!). So I may have the chance to redeem myself! 😥

The consensus is crap. Have a listen to John Giblin, Mick Karn, Percy Jones, Alain Caron, Pino's work with Paul Young, and tell me they're playing it like a fretted bass. Nah.

I'm sure I won't, which is why I'll get my tech to do it 🤣

We once played a bike rally where the generator tripped out every two or three songs, and it turned out it was whenever the burger van tried to use their microwave. On another occasion playing a rally for the National Chopper Club the sound man rushed to the stage near the end of our set to say there was enough diesel left in the generator for lights during the load out or an encore. Needless to say we loaded out in the dark!

Eight posts up ^^ from this one, added to my earlier post. I can't see how to link to a specific post in a topic, as in the previous version of the site; sorry...

I took the plunge at the start of the year with a Sire V7 fretless. The bass is great. It sounds lovely on the rare occasions I manage to to get the fingers on my left hand in exactly the right positions on the fretboard. My only tip, as a novice myself, is to record yourself playing along to songs you can play easily on a fretted bass and then listen back. Only then will you hear just how good or (in my case) bad your intonation is.

Vintage V300, new for not much more than your budget, and second hand should be easily achievable.

I'd be worried about dislocating my thumb if I played like that, but if he had done that at least he would have been able to listen to this track in the hospital's elevator.

My Yamaha Bex4 sounds wonderful whatever I plug it into. I've always liked the playability of Yamaha basses and loved the look of the Bex4, especially the tobacco burst one, so snapped one up when it appeared on here. It had the same soapbar as in my BBG5s in a P position and a underbridge piezo so I reckoned it would sound alright but I'm blown away everytime I use it. Our soundman thinks it's the nicest sounding bass he's heard. Less than £300 as well.

Yup. The Gallery in Camden and Wunjo Guitars on Denmark Street cover a lot of ground as they both have quite a lot of stock and pretty broad selections. Something for everyone in these two shops! The guys in Wunjo in particular have bent over backwards to help me out on a few occasions. They’ll often do deals on things too. The Gallery probably leans more toward the “boutique” end of the spectrum. Also, the staff in both establishments are friendly and happy to let you try stuff out. Don’t be afraid to ask!

That was mine, but it's sold now!

I’m very much in this camp, however taking a closer look at the Helix family in particular has made me realise that Yamaha/Line 6 put a LOT of work into creating a user interface which is almost as simple to use as individual pedals. I’ve watched several demo videos where the “presenter” has just received the unit and is effectively working it out on the fly, yet they are able to set up patches quickly because it’s just so intuitively laid out. To be fair it’s never going to be as simple as a small board with a handful of analog pedals, or something like a Tech21 Fly Rig, but that isn’t an apples to apples comparison. To be able to match what the Helix (and similar systems like Headrush etc) can do in terms of number of available effects, routing options, inputs/outputs, you’d need a board the size of a dining room table for six. Example provided below

Good luck to both of you. Although i've been thru a few bands in past couple of years i've not gigged since early 2017 and current band is in rehearsals at moment. Only half way thru our set list of Glam Rock covers but that's because guys all have other commitments with other successful bands and are trying to slot this project in the gaps but hopefully will pick up once we start gigging. The talk within the band is that this band will take over as the main band for them all so that's nice.

I had been considering joining for a while and this thread renewed my interest so I joined up last week. I'm finding it very helpful so far and have already watched a number of lessons. Very well laid out web site and the tutors including Scott are very likeable and easy to follow. Downloaded some of the podcasts too to listen to in my car. Like has been said above you need to put the time in to get your moneys worth and I'm fortunate now that my wife is out most evenings so once the kids are in bed I can have an hour on my bass every night.

This. SBL is well worth it if you've got the time to make the most of it.

Without doubt Mick Karn was once of the most original players out there, that Japan catalogue still sounds like nothing else on the market. Lovely fellow, sadly missed.

I get a little annoyed when a band member leaves right after a gig leaving an hour and a half of tear down to the rest of the band. Blue

Liberace was alive back then and all... hmmm.

Here's a CODA Effects Black Hole PCB, a Model T inspired preamp (4 x J201) with a boost (LPB1) in front of it. The boost was meant to be on a DPTD switch (or footswitch) with an internal trimpot to set the level of the boost. I decided to have the boost always on and moved the potentiometer to the front. I also put C1, C2 and C7 into sockets, so that I could easily swap those caps for more bass if needed. Although, using the 3 band EQ, it can get pretty bass heavy with the stock values. The pilot light didn't function as intended via the footswitch board (from pedalparts), so I had to run more wires than planned first ... Anyway, the light works now (and is red, of course). This could have fit into a smaller enclosure, sure, but I wanted to put numbered knobs and a jewel light on there to give it a bit of an amp like appereance - and I like big pedals!

Have you come over from GuitarChat to insult us, or what..?

Get them sent to one of us then we will forward on to you

Pimped a Squier Bronco I got recently. Changed the tuners (elephant ears), bridge and added a hotrails, cream pickguard and pickup cover - to be extra pimpy!!! Super fun to play, the neck is very comfortable and fast. Gets big and thumpy. Depending on the amp can get a nice 60s p tone thump, but it can also dig in and growl when I want it to. Think my full scales may be taking a back seat for a while.