Leaderboard

And here she is, the object of my affections. One Y.O.B Fender Precision Bass (1976) Of course in natural with a rosewood fingerboard. This is a very specific configuration for a reason. Firstly, because I grew up listening to Queen. The late-70's mid-d80's era of John Deacon's "main" precision bass actually had it's sunburst finish removed to natural, rather than this one that came as is. Said Precion bass ended up having a refinish in black with gold hardware, which is rather sexy! Anyway, I digress... I've been trying to find this spec bass for ages and have never been able to afford one. (I've just sold lots of bass gear!!!) Also, many years ago, my mum helped me buy my first precision bass (which I tried to re-buy last year when it resurfaced some 25 years later on this very forum, but the seller wouldn't budge). I've always felt rubbish about selling it, so it will help put my mind at ease now that I have replaced it. - Funnily enough, same colour scheme! And, finally, to bring this long tale to an end, I have of course a huge thank you to make. WUNJO GUITARS https://www.wunjoguitars.com for being, frankly, bloody amazing in all of this. I've had so many conversations with Jimmy in the bass department that he's practically family now. They kept on at UPS every day and would not let this situation drop for a second. They've displayed a customer service that I've not experienced "when the sh*t hits the fan" and get my thorough thumbs up. I'd also like to thank Tom who stepped up to the challenge of recording me a whole bunch of videos so I could see and hear the bass in action as I was unable to get down to London to see it in person. Now that we are getting acquainted, me and the bass are gonna see if we hit it off together. We've just played through the whole of Queen's The Miracle from start to finish and that went pretty well.

Lest I forget it (not that you could ever forget such a shape), the Mouradian-esque built for @gelfin

Good advice on looking after 'em above, but just in case you need more cables another day, this site is the 'go-to' source for all the cabling needs, at more than reasonable cost, very fast service, top (and I mean top...) quality, run by our very own OBBM, a long-established, highly respected member here... OBBM cables ... What is my relationship..? Only that of a very satisfied repeat customer, for both standard and custom cables, nothing more. Just remember: Cables = OBBM. Hope this helps.

I used a V7 5 to record our last CD so I thought I'd take a punt on one of these. Hard to fault at the price I think.

I don't think it'd pay well anyway, moneys too tight to Maension

Well, in response to the Basschat FB page, I will relate the story of my newest family member - a 2005 Fireglo Rickenbacker 4003. I asked for your opinions some months ago about whether it was worth trading my Spector in for a nice Ricky. Almost unanimously the members of this group said no, and I am glad you did! The Spector is the best bass I have ever played, but I still felt the pull of a Ricky. As a lifelong Rush and Yes fan, I just had to get one. So, I finally took the plunage got the 4003. Well, for those who know, none of this will be a surprise, but for those who don't, here's my review. It looks great and it sounds great, but my Ged, it's a pig to play. I still haven't tamed it. Not quite sure how to get comfortable with it. I have tried it slung low and now have it up high, which is a bit better. But I am a fingers player and found it ridiculously unfriendly on the right hand, so I am learning to play it with a pick. This is a whole new technique to get my head around. Any advice on how to get the best from a Ricky, I am all ears! I do feel I have to add that I love it anyway! I will overcome this plank! PS. Anyone who mentions the shed, dies!

Just picked the bass up. Turns out he checked the electronics, truss rod, action, and set it up amazingly for £28. He had the bass for 9 days. The Sei now plays beautifully with the low action I wanted. I can't recommend this guy enough. His name is Lance and is in the Evesham area.. https://www.guitarstudio.co.uk

I've more often than not joined bands that were of a better standard than myself. The best and quickest way to improve IMO is by playing with people that are a step above you.

It’s almost as if there had been some kind of avoidable event where a third of the population had voted for something that meant the pound dropped in value...

Collection only

I just like big bottoms. I can not lie.

We're hosting a masterclass with the bass legend Victor Wooten. Click the banner below for tickets, they're going fast!

Not music related but I've always loved the story of the stand up comedian who started his act with the line, "Hello, I'm schizophrenic." A voice in the audience calls out, "Well, you can both f**k off, then!"

Well if we're posting our own, here's my "Nozcaster" thinline tele - my first and only completed build so far

Thanks,! The gold bass is a one off, started out as a 4 string. I rerouted the neck pocket and dropped in the neck from my BigBottom 12er when I was developing the current 12er bridge/tailpiece. BigBottom and NR 12s

These are my roasted maple neck Musicman basses - 2014 Neptune Blue mahogany Sabre with roasted flamed maple neck, and 2018 4HH Special, Aqua Sparkle with roasted maple and ebony board. They both have stainless steel frets. Note the back of the neck colour is consistent, and although the headstocks are darker (lacquered) there's not a huge difference. My 4HH Special was a customer order placed on 14/4/18 with Andertons - so you can get the colour you want if you persevere - the same was true of the Sabre, and various other 'odd colour' Musicman basses I've bought new. Note the new tuners have a much thicker tip area - feel really comfortable to use. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder - but think my 4HHS looks great. Ive used it now in two gigs with a fairly loud blues/R and B band (v loud drummer!!) - outdoor gigs. The bass sound has fitted the mix very nicely (generally using the dual humbucker or single bridge humbucker settings). I've used the outer single coil setting a couple of times but it simply encourages me to play Marcus Miller quotes. A couple of things I've really noticed - using the classic single bridge humbucker setting, even cranking the mid range (yes, to hear myself v said drummer on occasion), the sound simply becomes more focussed but retains that Stingray Bernard Edwards type sound. I rarely crank the mid on my regular 4HH in H mode as it sounds too much to me - that bass needs a bumped mid in dual H mode though as it naturally scoops. Altogether I'm really pleased with this bass - super playable, light, sounds great, big range of very usable sounds and also turns heads - Saturday night, under a lighting system our lady singer danced over playing an item of percussion and said 'is that a new bass you have there' as it shone in the multi coloured lighting - and then proceeded to make female Kenneth Williams/Frankie Howard sounds of approval - she looked well impressed!!! 😂

My builds.

A great result, congrats on finally being united with that fine looking instrument. What a debacle though! However, it may be that all that angst will actually add to your enjoyment of it. Thanks for sharing the experience, I think we all felt somewhat invested in the outcome.

Goodness me, thank you. 🙏 That’s really thoughtful Aside from this debacle I’ve not been “in a good place” for a while now, so these words mean more to me than you realise. This bass is to remind me of where I came from. Ey, no pressure ‘76 P, alright?

That is an ending I like May I say Dood, although we never had many (if any) dealings on this forum, I've always respected and valued your considered and knowledgable input on many topics. So I probably speak for most if not all of basschat that you absolutely deserve this positive ending. I'm positively thrilled for you!!!

Happy for you Paddy. I've had a couple of CL heads ( not the svt2) and you just cannot better the All valve ampeg sound imo. And man! What a price

I started work a couple of weeks ago, and have taken some pics so I'll start a build thread soon 😀

Because it looks like that😂

Supported 'The Blockheads', chuffed isnt the word, met Norman Watt-Roy and he signed my pick guard 🙂

My Main gigging rig. Mesa Titan and powerhouse 210 + 410 cabs. the markbass on top is for emergencies.

I've been listening to Fields of the Nephilim a lot over the last few days. I loved their gigs back in the late 80s/early 90s. These tracks flow into each other. Tony Pettitt is very underrated

Playing in bands with people who are even better than they are, of course!

Bore oil, fingerboard oil, lemon oil, linseed oil, walnut oil all do the same job, pretty much. I don't need advice about what to clean my fingerboard with. I was just wondering if I could get some more of what I already have. Seems like the answer is either "no" or "here's the answer to a question you didn't ask". Internet...

Started the neck carve. It will probably take the rest of the day off and on but the bulk is removed: Other than checking the neck thickness with some calipers, I'm carving this one pretty much entirely by feel - sitting in a chair, holding it like a back-to-front cello and using a variety of tools including spokeshave, cabinet scrapers and microplanes. I often tweak the shape in the same way once the guitar is fully finished and strung up, just using a cabinet scraper and finishing off with sandpaper, followed by a quick reapplication of tru-oil slurry and buff.

I like that!

Nice playing - sounds great - I saw Ronnie Laws around 79/80 - great gig 👍 Encore eh? My son still has one of them (was his first bass many years back) - has used it to record several times and people have asked him what year of Precision he was using to get such a good sound!!

Learn to coil them properly, always remove them with the jack, not the cable. Thats it pretty much.

Option 2 Mother of Pearl is a natural product and natural products vary...otherwise they don't look natural. Those blocks look perfect

Here's a couple of mine..... (Edit: Mods, am I alowed to post my own? If not, please delete!😁)

Shed's alright but the trainers clash with the bass. 😜

Fnar, fnar.

BLOOD The very first pub gig I ever played was at the Salmon & Ball in the East End, a corner pub with doors onto Cambridge Heath Rd and Bethnal Green Rd. Maybe the area has been gentrified since then ... it certainly wasn't bloody gentrified when I played there. We set up with our backs against the East wall of the pub, between the two doors, and started playing. Halfway through the first set a couple of black guys came in, bought their drinks, and sat peaceably at the back of the pub. Some of the white skinhead types at the bar were giving them the eye, and the atmosphere went thoroughly rank. It didn't help that our keyboard player was black. Sure enough, after a while a couple of these East End good ol' boys decided to start something and headed to the back of the pub. There were some verbals, and then one of these idiots decided to do it like they do on telly and knocked the end of his beer bottle on the edge of the table = instant lethal weapon, right? Erm ... no. I come from a family of coppers going back to Victorian times (believe it or not) and one thing I've heard plenty of is that when you smash a glass or a bottle like they do in the movies (with a prop made of sugar), the most likely outcome is that you end up with a handful of broken glass. So tough guy idiot #1 is now standing there with blood spurting out of his hand, tough guy idiot #2 looks like he's going to cry, the two black guys seem unimpressed, and the landlord takes over. This being the heart of the old East End, the guv'nor looks exactly (and I mean exactly) like Grant from Eastenders. He drags them behind the bar so that he can run the cold tap over the damaged hand, then produces a mass of that blue kitchen towel they use in pubs and gets tough guy idiot #1 to mash it up in his hands, finally escorts them to the Cambridge Heath Road exit and shows them the way to the nearest A&E. He's done this before, hasn't he? We're still playing. Next, the guv'nor starts taking tables and stools and builds a barricade (seriously, I'm not making this up) against the newly-bolted door onto Cambridge Heath Road. Then he goes to the door onto Bethnal Green Road, which is actually a pair of narrow doors. He closes and bolts one of the narrow doors and takes up position in the narrow doorway that he's left open. His white t-shirt has been liberally sprayed with the blood of tough guy idiot #1 which makes him look a lot like Bruce Willis in a Die Hard movie, and there he stays for the rest of the set. People in the pub are allowed to leave, people outside the pub are not allowed in. Unsurprisingly, by the end of our first set the pub is empty apart from us, the guv'nor, and a barmaid. He pays us off, apologises to us (!), and we very sheepishly break down and leave. The most astonishing thing about this story is that I ever played another gig.

What's the betting JPJ never played Lemon Song exactly the same twice!!?

Seeing as it is a recreation of how a jazz bass would be after 57 years, I would say there is a reasonable expectation that it would last at least half a century!

I've got an AG700 plus 2 Markbass Momark amps (500w and 800w). The Momark is a modular design and I've used these with a tube and solid state pre-amp. There's plenty of headroom in the above for pub and larger gigs and they've worked well for me doing rock and pop covers paired with a Berg AE410. Both the AG700 and Momarks are clean sounding amps and I've spent a bit of time trying different dirt pedals to provide drive (eventually settling on a Darkglass VMT). The tone controls are intuitive and make it easy to dial in a good sound with either amp. As with anything, it's your ears and opinion that count so I would try them all before deciding if possible. Alternatively you could possibly look for a used one that you can move on without losing much if you need to.

A few of mine

I drove a band (who shall remain nameless) to their first European gig at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. Having set up and soundchecked I gave the band the usual warning (that probably doesn’t apply these days) about being wary of the higher quality weed there than back in Blighty and said I’d meet them back at the venue before on stage time. I get back only to find the drummer has a) over indulged in said weed and b) managed to bring a very old bottle of Kaolin and Morphine with him. Now Kaolin and Morphine, if left alone for many years, will separate out and the clear liquid at the top is (I’m led to believe) the morphine. Apparently the drummer had ‘had a swig or two’ of this clear liquid and was now on a sofa in the dressing room and in a deep sleep. I managed to get him sitting upright and conscious (barely) but his reactions and responses were massively impaired, as if he were in slow motion. At this point I realised I was going to have to be the drummist for this gig, I had a general idea of how all the songs went but lacked the knowledge of the finer points, but it was a punk band, how many finer points could there be? Anyway I did the gig and it was ok, I just hit everything hard and started and stopped in the right places. The next day on the way home the drummer finally regained his senses somewhere near Ghent, he thought we were still on the way to the gig and was actually quite angry that I’d taken his place. I pulled over at a rest point and dragged him out of the van. Held up against a tree by his throat being assured he would be left there if he carried on seemed to restore a modicum of democracy to the proceedings although he did kick off again when he realised I got paid his cut. I’d like to say it was a good lesson not to over indulge but if it was then it went unheeded, this behaviour continued and eventually he was kicked out. Little did I know that this lesson in dealing with idiots in bands was just a taster of what was to come!

Could it be a Schecter? Logo has similar looks.

Get Rob to break out the termites and put some LEDs in it.

This. The weird alchemy of plucking something tangible out of thin air, something that also has the potential to move people. Magic. I've been fascinated by it for decades and still am, it's why I keep doing it. There really is nothing like it.

It does make you wonder though, how courier firms have been able to get away with such poor service for years? People aren't making up their reviews after all. Yup, I really do feel like we "literally have no options to choose from." Yes, couriers do hundreds of deliveries a day, but I am sure that a Dentist wouldn't last long if he'd managed to mess up 10 people's mouths out of every 100 check ups. A cashier in a bank wouldn't last long if they were handing out the wrong amounts of cash. example, example, example.. yet we are all happy to keep playing courier lottery. Too many people are having bad experiences verses those who are lucky enough to have never had a problem - and man, genuinely I am pleased that you have received a great service!! I welcome the balanced discussion and there are certainly points to be taken from it. @discreet's post helps to paint a wider picture that sadly will probably never get addressed, much like this situation. For this particular situation, We're all playing the game of "well it might turn up", if it hasn't found its way to CashConvertors yet?

Extraordinary to see such negative vibes, and I'd wager none of you have seen one of these in the flesh let alone played one. Go and try one before you comment. I have one (more details to follow tomorrow) - the revoiced preamp does sound very musical even on full mid boost. The weight loss is very noticeable - I have a light Stingray and Sabre and this is noticeably lighter than them. The output is huge. The changed body and neck contours feel really good. Oh and flawlessly constructed and the roasted maple is the slickest neck I've ever played. What's not to like (other than the price - but this is easily as good if not better than say a Fender CS) Regarding string to string volume - this bass is very balanced - The pre amp is revoiced - I don't think people will have an issue with that even if the EQ settings are abused. And the slap tone remains wonderful - clever eh? Just to correct some errors in Misdee's post - there was an issue with quality control from CLF who made the pre EB basses initially, which affected amongst other things necks on pre EB basses - indeed rigorous quality control was instituted as dealers rejected the instruments and eventually this created a relationship breakdown because CLF were either unwilling or not capable of producing a product which would meet MMs requirements (this was the 70s!!!) - it's all readily available in print - the issues included inoperable truss rods, dead spots (at the very top end of the neck), rattling truss rods and worse. Those in circulation didn't have those issues.

I can see I'll have to do a note-for-note demonstration! Although when I've played it in the last 15 years, I've tried to stick to the recorded version, when I recorded the song the fills were just improvised, so on another take they would have been different. If it's played too fast, which is often the case, some of the fills become impossible to play properly, which is frustrating. Although I am not an expert jazz, blues or funk player, I had enough of those influences to bring some of that to my rock playing, particularly in 1978-82 Whitesnake, as the songs allowed for interesting bass parts. When the songs don't permit that style of playing, which is mostly the case, I have to be more straight-ahead. Neil