Leaderboard

A singer friend of mine and myself were starting a new project, writing songs together. We would meet at mine to write and record a bit of guitar and bass. I was playing guitar but I wanted to stick to bass, so we auditioned guitarists. This guy comes in, and within seconds we realise he can't even play. He was having trouble shaping chords with is fingers... and you could see he was feeling very nervous and embarrased. Singer is giving me this look like "we're done here"... but I felt sorry for him, so I took one of my guitars and showed him something simple to play, and I played another guitar and singer sang a bit... then moved to bass... and over all I taught him 3-4 little things and we played for another 30 minutes or so. Then he left, apologising for his lack of preparation and he laughed at how silly he was for thinking he could do it. Then he says he had only been learning guitar for 2 weeks... I emailed him a couple of days later to see how he was. We laughed. He was a cool guy, he just jumps into things with lots of enthusiasm and not enough preparation sometimes We became friends, I encouraged him and eventually he went on to form his own band. I played a couple of gigs with him as a dep, recorded a bit, I went to his wedding... so yeah, cool audition ha! stinky poo guitarist at the time, but I ended up with one of the coolest friends I've got.

Having reached the age when my kids should be going off on tour, somehow it is me that is venturing out for the first time! My band, Lee Ainley's Blues Storm, is heading out with Zoe Green and Eliana Cargnelutti, on a three female fronted band tour, Ladies of the Blues. A bit of a message for all of those who ask "am I too old?" "is it too late?" "should I/Shouldn't I", well the answer is go out there and do it, you never know what is around the corner. For any of you within striking distance of any of the dates, do come along, support your local venue and fellow Basschatter! Here's the dates.

My existing band is mid slow down due to lead guitarist/ vocalist just having had a baby (well his wife did). So drummer and myself have started a new venture, rhythm guitarist has played with us in the past, lead guitarist is well known to,us (I work with his wife) and his other band have supported us in the past, vocalist is mate of the rhythm guitarist and did acoustic set with us at a charity gig last year. First meeting was amazing, five people, no egos, all agree on amount of gigs we want and agreed half a set to get up and running with in no time at all. First rehearsal will be early next month and it’s exciting to be at the start of a new band again. Only thing we couldn’t work out was a band name, why does that always seem to be the hardest bit to nail?

This was my very first 5 strings bass, in black, bought new at the local store without knowing it had a low B. So once home, I decided to tune it in E, you know what kind of idiot you can be sometimes (or most of the time) and the G broke when I tried to tune it to C. I went to the store the next morning as I was working 50 meters away, but double ball strings were very rare at the time and a 5 strings set even rarer. They had to order the set : in 1989 there was no internet store... so I had to wait for a month. I called the only luthier I knew who was Christophe LEDUC and he said he had some, went to him and had the bass completely set up in the meantime. It was a totally different instrument after that, with good strings and a very good setup. That's with this bass that I learnt to mute the unused strings. So, yes there were some Hohner The Jack V with neck-trough and active electronics. I kept it until I bought my fretless... I think you have trouble to find one because its name is The Jack Bass Custom ! Exactly the same as this one :

If a paint job qualifies a bass for the thread - I have a first-run ('85) B2A in black & white, all original, had it from new. Keep thinking about selling it, then deciding - it's a Steiny clone, doesn't take up much room...

time for a very frightening part... cutting the binding channel... and then binding it! on that second picture it looks hugs, but in reality its about 3mm, which is just about right for the 3 layers of banding ill be using. te be honest, this part was fairly painless, the cocobolo machines pretty well so long as your router bits are nice and sharp. as you can see, the binding channel is fairly deep, and once the binding is installed it will leave about 4mm of the cocobolo top over the top. the plan is then to carve the top down to the binding, so that the body has a nice subtle shape on the top. The first layer of the binding, you can see how much of the cocobolo is going to be carved away... and aslo how close in coclour the tulipwood is without finish on it. in relaity, the cocobolo will darken a bit more once a finish is applied, so there will be a nice contrast. the second layer (the ebony) went on a hell of a lot smoother than the first... its only .6mm thick and the grain runs along it so its pretty resistant to splitting along the tighter curves. and finally... all 3 layers are on! theres a steep learning curve to doing binding, but overall im fairly pleased. i think itll look good once the top is carved and the binding is scraped. but if you think it was nerve wracking doing it on the body... this damn near gave me a heart attack. i couldnt quite put my finger on why... but i wasn't quite 100% happy with how the fretboard looked. i'd placed the inlays about 2mm away from the edge, so that if i wanted to i could bind the fretboard after the fact, and thats what i decided to do. and honestly... im super gald that i did. i love the way the padauk binding looks now that its sanded back. and the inslay survived the whole operation intact. it looks more like a picture in a frame now, and i like that a lot! its starting to look like a bass! ill be glueing the back in place today and then im more than a little nervous about carving the top next week. its slowly getting there....

Today I picked up my new guitar and thought I’d share some of the details. This is a review come biog so bear with me I started playing guitar aged 14 and only picked up the bass when our band found ourselves short a few years later. We gigged a tribute act (oasis) for several years in the 90s and then branched into originals. I had a lot of guitar knowledge but little bass playing knowledge, although not necessarily needed (?!?) for 90s mainstream guitar tunes. 18 months ago our band decided to reform and a MIM fender jazz came my way. As soon as I started playing I was hooked and could not believe the amount of resource available these days compared to even 10 years ago. Youtube is awash with talented teachers i.e. SBL, daric bennett, mark @ talking bass etc; whilst I’ve had modes down for a long time they really took me from being a guitar come bassist to someone who really focused in on chord tones, arpeggios etc. In 2017 An upgrade was due and to my surprise I ended up buying a guitar cheaper than my MIM Jazz - along came the Marcus Miller sure v7 vintage. An amazing bass which was incredibly easy to play. I gigged it for a year and in the end what made it great became its main issue for me... the 5 tone knobs (2 of them doubling up making a total of 7 tone knobs) just left me feeling a need for simplicity. A trip to my local guitar shop a few months back and I found my dream guitar... a fender bass precision American original. I’d been looking out (possibly) for a 70s, or earlier, precision as I became hooked on the tone and the two knobs! The original series ticked a lot of boxes and the lake placid blue with a tort pick guard, for me, is the best colour combo possible - smitten Here it is! I’m blown away by the pick ups, different to standard precision’s, and the overall feel of the guitar. It’s bigger, growlier, harder to play, but oh so damn amazing. It is taking some getting used to I.e. reverse tuners, clay dots, wider spacing on strings, neck dimensions, Phillips head truss rod etc, but my days of trying to play as fast as possible have been replaced with trying to play as smart as possible. It’s a joy

Ok, The Filmore House gig was cool. Small rural party bar. Nice people come there to relax ,party and get loaded and they love live bands. I arrived at 7:00 and couldn't even find a parking space and eventually had to park illegally. Overall it was a fun gig, the band sounded great last night. Very "old school" rock bar gig. Such a nice crowd. It was an 8:00-12:00 gig, the BL didn't call for a break until 10:15. So playing 2 hours plus without a break was a little weird. At one point I thought it was 1972. I had a fun night guys. Blue

1. 70'S HARD ROCK/EARLY METAL COVER BAND SEEKS BASS Being as I am currently jonesing for early 70's obscure hard rock with song titles like 'Woman Tamer' or 'Iron Gates of Hell' I'd look at this as a side project which I could twist to my nefarious ends. Doubtful if there's any money in it either way. 2. BAND SEEKING BASS PLAYER Annoyingly peppy ad yet strangely authoritarian at the same time. Probably a bunch of hand wringing snowflakes who want to be able to tell their friends they're in a band then they all go off and have quinoa enemas together. 3. BASSIST NEEDED FOR ORIGINAL BAND They shouldn't have a name unless they're already gigging. If they're already gigging it's a useless name. Influences: goth, punk, metal, grunge and other? Recipe for mission creep, there. Anyway there's no money in goth punk metal grunge originals in Milwaukee. Or probably anywhere else on the planet apart from maybe Saudi Arabia where there's a big market for that stuff, no, really, there is, why would I be lying, just to get some goth punk metal grunge guys locked up by the Saudi religious police and beaten with canes? 4. SINGING BASSIST FOR POWER TRIO "Blah blah blah good songs blah blah". 'Good' is a matter of taste which means that everyone will be stood around saying 'But me and Dawson think it's a good song and we think you're being toadally unreasonable saying it's a 5hit song and we should drop it, particularly as we're still playing that Bob Seger song Katmandu that you think is good but me and Dawson think is 5hit'.

Bit more progress on this. Tapered the neck to a touch oversize against the fretboard, installed the trussrod and glued on the fretboard: I also took a couple of slices off some poplar offcut for the headstock plate and the control chamber cover. Starting to look like a bass now

Still creeping up on the final neck and heel carve. Starting to get there but still a way to go: Once the carve is broadly right, I'm going to do an early string up and finalise the profile while I have some strings on so I can really feel whether the shape works or needs some slight adjustment. Still a bit more to come off the heel, but the transition is starting to look a little more elegant from the side: Oh - and just to get a view of how wide a sixer neck is, look at @eude 's next to the Swift Lite build: I'm really enjoying both of these builds - SO different to each other but both are very satisfying in a scary sort of a way

I’ve been playing music in many forms for many years - many different instruments, many different styles and contexts. I will never be a virtuoso, but I like to think from time to time I can do the right job in the right context in the right band. However, I firmly believe that the minute we stop learning and developing - whether through choice, laziness or arrogance - is when we stop being a musician. Hence, it’s always a journey.

I also owned this original 1970 Ampeg Dan Armstrong see-through fretless, pictured on the office floor in our previous home :

As a contrast to the Hartlepool gig above, our jazz quartet played a house party with about 30 folks in a woodworking shop that had been cleaned up for the occasion.We played two one hour sets to a very appreciative audience and had a great no pressure evening.Not your usual house party with people wandering in and out, these folks were there to hear us and were actually seated in chairs while we played-definitely different.I used my new Schatten Design Mini Pre with my Englehardt ES9 upright straight into the Bose PA and it was great and I got several compliments on the sound(not necessarily the playing!) from a couple of bass players in the audience.Good sound, good music, good crowd, good pay=excellent night.

For illustrative purposes, here is a map of the bass journey, tounge in cheek you understand.

Another NBD for me - this time a Stingray 5HHS. I picked it up earlier today - had a bit of a play in the shop and it sounds very nice - I was curious how the B string would sound with the revoiced pre amp - didn't need to worry as its a tight and focussed sound even with the bass fully boosted (and it's got a lot of bass boost). Anyway, after a 7 month wait here it is!

Fun gig for our jazz standards quartet on Saturday night, a somewhat rustic old fishing lodge on the shore of Lake Nipissing here in Ontario.We hadn't played there before and didn't know what to expect but it was a lovely big room that is a bar/restaurant and we had lots of room to set up beside a huge fireplace. Unfortunately on Friday night and most of Saturday we had our first real Northern Ontario snowstorm and although the roads were generally in good shape we knew some of our friends and band fans would not want to make a long snowy drive and so we were pleased with the 30-40 folks who showed up. Most would have had about an hour drive on a mix of highways and rural roads so we knew they would be an appreciative crowd. We usually play three sets over three hours and got through our first set and then passed out copies of our playlist (almost 150 songs) as we have done in the past in situations like this and after a couple of songs to start the set we played mostly requests for rest of the sets so the audience is involved and get to hear what they want and we play songs we might not have chosen for a particular gig.Everyone is happy and it keeps us on our toes. Meals supplied, good staff, plans to rebook us soon and an extra $100.00 on top of our usual fee.Everybody wins ! We were in good form and played exceptionally well and had a lot of fun going into our seventh year together.

Oh dear, everyone's as corrupted as me! It's what they got called in my workshops Back on topic

I've obviously led a sheltered life

But of course, it's Swing, innit..?

Looking great @Andyjr1515! If you think that neck is wide, it's only 16.5mm at the bridge, I believe Dave Swift's custom 6ers have 19mm spacing 😨 Eude

Maybe, maybe not. Unsupportive and/or controlling husband lets wifey audition for the role because obviously she's useless and (i) will never get the gig, (ii) can't possibly manage without hubby there to tell her what to do. Anyway, it'll shut her up for a while. Then gets all hurt and precious when it turns out that little wifey actually does just fine when he's not there to screw things up for her. Perhaps.

Mop up on aisle five please...🤤

NBD.

The bottom line here is that this is music and, like any art form, it is entirely subjective. OP and some folks like them, that is great. Myself and other 'muppets' don't - that's also great. There is room for everything, folks!

It didn't sound very good to me. Mind you, it was our very first time together. And the singers hadn't agreed the harmonies, And the songwriter/lead vocalist wasn't the best singer in the room and needs to pass that baton across to one of the others. And the song arrangement needs a lot of work. And the singers are not used to performing with a rhythm section. I've said I'd play with them on a sort of session basis. Once they've got the vocals sorted, they can be recorded on a phone and sent to me. I'll add the bass, and when everybody's reasonably comfy, we can meet up to play what's been agreed remotely. Songwriter not happy with that suggestion, and wants everybody to meet face-to-face "to grow the song(s) organically and cooperatively". That is so very different from learning your bass part in a covers band before rehearsal. My discomfort is probably a reflection of my need to know what I'm doing before I get to rehearsal.

Not sure how rare this is - a newly acquired Hohner Jack Bass II. It's passive with a bolt-on neck and PJ pickups. I knew that Hohner did a bolt-on B2, but I've not seen one of these before. Don't think these are the original pickups, but they sound very good. Tone pot does absolutely nothing though For those interested in old Hohners - found this recently: https://www.hohner.de/fileadmin/documents/service/guitars/Gitarren_Hohner-HistoricalModels.pdf - the Jack Bass II didn't come out until 1991... whereas the (more common?) 4-string Jack Bass was in production from 88 to 93.

Thanks - the combination of colour, black hardware and ebony board/roasted maple is quite striking. I may get a black pg for it as well though I like the white as it is - to be honest, I ordered this having seen a photo of one when they were first announced - which had a black pg. The neck profile and string spacing etc doesn't seem any different to me - however I have not had any instance of pushing the G off the edge yet - I find that playing a 5 I have to be more accurate - especially as the spacing is narrower. Ive also never had an issue with my Bongo 5 with that either. I have a gorgeous natural/maple ceramic pu SR5 from 2003 - now I do very occasionally push the G off the edge on that - usually after I've been playing 4 strings for a few weeks and go back to the 5 - that said, done once you just adjust and play more accurately - exactly the same as failing to mute the B properly, getting confused which string you're on - forgetting the ability to play two octaves across the strings. I saw Marcello's video and whilst it's definitely possible to do this, for me it's a case of adjusting your technique slightly so you don't bend the string the wrong way - anyone who plays Fretless will know that doing that on any string wrecks your intonation - so it's an element of the design and doing it continually is a technique issue - one I understand as it's very easy to get excited playing a groove and playing inaccurately in lots of ways (even hitting the wrong notes!!) All basses have compromises and I prefer the overall playability of the Musicman 5 string neck. Btw this roasted maple neck is so slick to play - the ebony and stainless steel frets possibly give a little more ring to the notes - slap sound is great as well - I'm very pleased with my pair of Specials 👍

A few more rare-ish ones in my arsenal.... '58 Gibson EB-2 (so pre-baritone switch, with Kluson banjo tuners and single-coil Bakelite pickup) '77 Ovation Magnum 1 fretless (rare, as the only factory fretless one I've ever seen) Early Travis Bean TB2000 '79 CF Martin EB-18 Late '80's Steve Smith (ex-Goodfellow luthier) long scale "EB-2"

I am always pleasantly surprised if the guitarists amp doesn't fail, he doesn't break a string, he doesn't have a lead (normally his fender replacement lead he insists on using) die, doesn't forget his strap or something else. I don't have a problem with any of my stuff, never had an amp fail, always have a spare bass but only needed it for an audition (and only because they hated the tone of the bass). I carry a lot of spares. Mostly, it has to be said, to give to the guitarist when his stuff fails!

Really looking forward to seeing the swift lite in the flesh!! I've got almost 6 months to make something worthy to bring with me!! 😳

Thanks gents, and yes, I'm under strict instructions from @Mickeyboro to keep a tour diary, so will post on here - stay tuned.

I must admit I am finding it hard not to crack a joke here.

Sadly, nowhere close to me this time but have a great time. If you have the time or inclination I'm sure a lot of us would love to read a diary/report of how it went. Good luck!

I feel that is rock is truly alive and well. Times have changed - rock isn't a mainstream thing that gets top 40 hits. That hasn't happened for a long time now. Plenty of original rock bands still out there, just don't expect to see them in the charts... it's why all these muppets keep mouthing off that rock is dead. It was dead in the 80s, 90s and 00s as well according to them.

Joe Walsh got a mention in the OP but his purple patch solo stuff was before he joined the Eagles. That isn't knocking him - I think he is one of the good guys - just adjusting the time line.

Discharge, Rainy still murdering the Kramer.

Fair enough. If we assume the Bugera is a well designed class D amp with an efficient power supply and draws 880W from the mains and can run continuously at that level then it is probably around 80% efficiency and can supply about 704W. That's with an undistorted sinewave within the passband of the amp. That's the value of what is normally described as the RMS or continuous value. If you look at section 3.2 of the Wikipedia article then you see the peak power of a sine wave is twice the average power. So if it is a 704W amplifier than the peak power is 1408W. If you look at a range of amp and speaker specs you'll see that there's a fairly consistent description of things described as 500W continuous 1000W peak, 200Wrms 400W peak and so on. It's a simple mathematical ratio which enables those who want to boast that their system is 1000W but allows for fair comparison. Actually it is meaningless as it is always double so no extra information is being given. If any other figure is given then as the Wiki article says about PMPO there is no accepted way of calculating the figure and it is without merit. Basically the sums don't add up. you can see my disquiet if you look at the advertising, here for example https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Bugera-Veyron-BV1001M-2000W-Bass-Amp-Head/1WNV lot's of mentions of 2000W no mentions of peak power here, I suspect both Gear4music and Music Group know people will choose this amp on the basis of the 2000W and it looks a lot better than the Little Mark 3 https://www.andertons.co.uk/bass-dept/bass-amps/bass-amp-heads/solid-state-bass-amp-heads/markbass-little-mark-iii-bass-head In practice I suspect they would produce very similar power levels. Even if the Veyron is 700W and the LM3 is 500w that difference will only barely be audible. Sensibly you'd decide on tone (I hope!) reliability, after sales and price rather than power but for someone with no technical ability that 2000W looks so tempting. If we accept this then Markbass would eventually be forced first of all to sell their amps at peak power of 1000W and then start making up figures to compete. I think it's a better world where honesty is rewarded and we ask for proper measured ratings which can be compared fairly.

Kool, lots of information in these pictures and notes. Thank you, sir. Had to look after the Cyberbass/Midibase -thing and I found this from Talkbass: "My name is Mick Donner and I was the design engineer for the Midibase and Cyberbass projects while I was at Peavey. Hopefully I can answer some of your questions. There wasn't actually any trademark conflict with the guys at 360 systems. We just talked about it and came to a gentleman's agreement that changing the name was the right thing to do. There were several reasons for the physical changes from the Midibase to the Cyberbass. The Midibase body was based on the Peavey B-90 which had been discontinued. We wanted to bring the Cyberbase in line with the current bass shapes which were like the Palladium and Axcelerator basses. The Midibase note on and velocity sensors were built into the bridge pieces. Steve Chick and I found that if we moved the sensors away from the bridge pieces, we would get a more accurate read of the string so we put them into half of the bridge pickup. The software had several upgrades including a total reset, faster tracking and a "fretless" mode that blurred the note on/off triggered by sliding from one fret to another. Bending from one fret segment to another on the neck was done in the software. This was partially accomplished by making the cuts in the fret at a diagonal which caused the string to connect with both frets for an instant. This told the engine that the string was moving to another segment. This was not available on the Wal or Valley Arts versions of the basses that had cuts perpendicular to the frets. You had to play accurately. During my time as a product specialist for the Cyberbass my technique improved a lot because it had to. I still have one of the first Cyberbasses along with a rack full of Peavey sound modules and everything seems to be working just fine." AND this one (question was about suggested string types): "The two concerns with Stainless (steel strings) are the excessive overtones generated by the SS string and fret wear. The bass just seemed to track better with the nickels because the center of the note seems to be more dominant. As you can imagine, a fret job on one of these would probably be beyond a nightmare. The nickel strings are softer than the stainless so it would take a lot longer for the strings to be part of the problem."

A (hopefully) humorous observation that on a fretless, much of the metal has been removed.

Spending time on a British forum has taught you well Blue.

Surprisingly the nitro is drying quite well despite the cold and no sign of blooming, very handy as I'm getting more on than I hoped. Today I put on a couple of coats of clear gloss after cutting the sanding sealer back, then had a long walk on the beach before returning to put on the gold metalic, a day earlier than I imagined. I did the edges first after resetting the gun to output a very small amount in a narrow pattern. After they had dried I feathered in the faces spraying onto each corner at 45 degrees, it took two or three passes to get the right amount on. So tomorrow I can spray the black burst on the two Ebony dragons and the red on the Maple to finish the candy apple burst which I think/hope is looking promising

Some years back we were in need of a new drummer, so set up auditions. The first one to turn up, spent an age setting up his kit, tuning it, fiddling with drum heights etc. We finally launched in to the first song of his choice and he didn't do a thing, nothing. Claimed that he wasn't quite ready, so we started again, same thing, although on the very final note he wacked the snare drum and asked us what we thought