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It’s finished! It’s beautiful! I can’t wait to ruin the hi gloss paint with my greasy finger marks!

Come on now, we've all had a few drinks, let's not spoil it for the bride and groom.

Lovely gig with a lovely bunch of people (most of whom can really play their instruments and sing) in a lovely music bar. I walked in (sans bass), and the lady behind the bar looked at me and said "You must be the bass player, would you like a beer?" My kind of bar

I must admit the music leaves me a bit cold, too. I love funky playing but it’s like Vulf try and be SO retro/hipster that it puts me off. That and he’s better than me and that’s not fair.

Thought I'd share this with you. An Ebow on a fretless bass through lots of effects. Somehow it doesn't really sound like a fretless bass.

I bet we'd find you've got a hex core if we took a cross section through you.

When I used to have an office job, many years ago, whereas everyone else had photographs of their children on their desks, I had pictures of my basses. I kinda did it on purpose at first to see if anyone would notice.. but they kinda looked cool, so I left them there.

Ok to have lot of grind, but make sure you don't increase the heft too much

Amazing what you can do with crayons these days....

Here's a shot of the back of the headstock.

Haha! Excellent topic. We're a two-bassists household, so we have a lot of bass gear! I can often be seen going around the house dusting those basses that are on stands, as opposed to in cases. Sometimes I wipe them down with a damp cloth, if they're particularly grubby! I include fingerboards and the 'underside' of the strings. I have a large makeup brush (I don't 'do' makeup, anyway) to dust pickups, bridges and headstock tuners. I keep an eye on the state of my basses' fingerboards and oil them when necessary, even if I'm not changing the strings. Same with cleaning the frets. On the basses I use most, I regularly check action/truss rod, saddle height, nut height (on the Warwicks) and intonation. I have been known to be OCD enough to tighten a tuner's screw if that tuner is slightly looser than the others. I have changed hardware on a couple of basses, and turned an electric upright from righty to lefty, but I don't feel confident enough to change pickups, or to do heavy duty cosmetic work such as sanding down the lacquer and changing the body colour. I'm @Happy Jack's strings and general setup tech... 😎

🤣🤣 Darrin Huff Scroll Bass

Blimey, I haven't listened to the Bozos since school days. Off to Spotify! 😁

Thanks for the comments about the poster. TBH it was just a question of being in the right place at the right time. It was part of an exhibition at the Greenwich Mural Workshop in the 80s, that must have taken the V&A's fancy. I had several other posters in the exhibition but none of them were taken. And now something even weirder. One of the bands I play with wrote a song about the Trappist-1 system and made a video to go with it that got sent to various scientific bodies involved with the discovery. As a result our singer is currently in Liege presenting the video and talking about writing the song, and has just posted footage of the video playing to the other serious academics at the conference, including a couple of seconds of me throwing some serious bass poses...

The nerd room at Ez Towers.

I just knew the Dave Grohl fact would be in there! 😛

My daughter genuinely thought that the Bass Clef was my own symbol. She still calls it "your symbol" even now.

If the pickups have the normal high-density foam under them, two things can happen: - the foam can lose its spring - the foam can stick a bit to the bottom of the chamber or pickup or sometimes the chamber is a touch tight Either way, take all the screws out, then rock the cover back and forwards or side to side. Then do the same while trying to lift. It should gradually ease free. I've also used the windscreen sucker off my old sat nav holder in the past...

When I got to get change out of my pocket in the shops, I have to dig through the plectrums to find the right coins.

I think the answer is in the question. If you decide to go ahead it would be fun to try. If you have both cabs and an amp happy to drive into 2ohms, why wouldn't you try it out? If the cabs both have identical drivers then the sound won't be that different, you'll lose a little of the mid/highs off axis but you've already lost a little by using an 8x10 so it probably won't be a dramatic change. If you mix cabs with different drivers in then the sound outcome is less predictable, you may like it more or maybe less. I'd think volume won't be an issue anyway other than the possibility of damage to your hearing, I don't suppose you ever drive your 8x10 flat out, but of course you are going to try it Buying a 6x10 as a smaller rig is 'interesting'. The footprint on stage is going to be the same and it's only a small saving in weight. If you want to buy just to have the look of a vast rig or because you really do want more volume then another matching 8 would be a better bet if you are planning to use the two cabs together a lot but that's a personal choice of course. If we are honest most of us will try bass through every cab that passes our way given half a chance.

He doesn't tap dance, but is actually telepathic. Shame, I heard he was in line for the lead in 'Scanners: The Musical"

I've found one of the Mickey Mouse Tele endorsees...

And your/his point is? A good musician plays for the music. Sometimes all you need is your instrument. Sometimes you need a load of sound shaping devices. Knowing when and where to use them is one of the things that sets a good musician above an average one.

Good interview. I heard an interview with Wilko Johnson a while back. When he was asked if he used pedals he answered: "What do you think I am, a cyclist???"

Full interview

Did an hour's practice this morning with some backing tracks. Definitely sounds different to the TI. Thicker sounding. Feel is also very different - the La Bellas are smoother. The E string seems a bit wooly compared to the others at the moment but I seem to remember in the mists of time that after a week or so they will wear in and be very similar. And anyway I tend to turn the Tone control down to at least 50% for this sort of music so there's no clank even on the higher strings. Tension / suppleness is very different too. I am liking them.

Someone else has pointed this out to me farther up the thread. Explains why I was so blown away by how authentic a 'facsimile' it was. What still surprises me is there's no fuss made about the presence of the tube on the amp itself. These days manufacturers have tiny windows cut into the fascia so we can watch the little thing glow. Or at the very least a picture of a valve and the word tube somewhere prominently displayed. Makes me like Ashdown even more.

Nicely put. I’m not too-cool-for-school and can really appreciate the technical side of it, just emotionally doesn’t hit me. If he’s inspiring people to play (and isn’t Flea) then good for him, and for all bass players.

BTW this is in my Harley Benton amp i changed the speaker on a while back... First experiment: take the front off, shove a pillow in there. Result: less honky mids, but a bit dull. Took it out again. Heard neighbours crashing about, decided to watch the Handmaid's tale instead.

This is my 58 precision sorry about the pics I'll put up better ones later.

Seriously now... I can understand wearing a Vulf tee... but a Joe Dart tee? That's some niche uber bass geekery. I can picture it now. "Hey, nice tee. Who's Joe Dart?" "A bass player." "Riiiggghhhht."

Second prize two T-shirts 😈

I'm always nervous about posting my shoddy technique!

Well, it might be a mistake on my part, but let's release this into the wild. A bit of laid-back funky jazz for you....please ignore the feedback at the beginning!! Here's Nomad, back at the start of the year, playing my tune Blue Soul. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJFJE0rXK58 Be kind, please...…..!! (Not least of all about the headgear).

That's (almost) better 😀

Thank you Sam, It's a shame my time is always short to build it.

Darn tootin'! (no TLRTs )

Great name for a band!

I also have a bass I bought in 1990 I have changed the strings many times. It was set up when I bought it in 1990 It has Jimmy Page's phone number in the neck pocket (we phoned it, spoke to Jimmy who denied it was ever his and told us never to phone him again) I never clean it

This is true, I have an effects pedal (a vox) that has a valve hole at the top with a little glowing valve. The irony being it is a cold cathode valve, so the only reason it glows is that it has an orange LED behind it It is good that it is there for the sound, rather than for the marketing, but that is pretty much like ashdown. Although it has to be said, they make the valves pretty prominant and showy in mine. A CTM100.

Yeah agreed, they also have double stop levers so if you did need to drop lower, you can drop further

I own two Ashdown heads - a Little Bastard and a CTM-100 - and both are wonderful. Sorry to be the exception to your rule: I'm a frightful ar$e.

I used an Ampeg in a rehearsal room once and thought it was pants! The Ashdown I've fallen for seemed anything but special to me on its first outing. It was only after pairing it with a BF and discovering that magic 'grind' nob that I was smitten. Of course one man's nut roast is another man's beetroot salad as they say. Also I seem able to love Behringer, Trace, Ashdown, TCE, Ampeg, solid state, hybrid, all valve, class D, so I think I'm just really lucky.

Never owned a fretless before, never played one, just had a massive GAS for one in the collection, now I have one, no idea what to do with it! Anyway, without further ado.... As I believe, started life as a black, fretted squire MB4, neck stamp is feint but looks like May 2002 has been defretted, and body stripped of its blackness, the color of the body now is closer to a dark butterscotch than the pictures will allow you to see, some age related marks and the defret job doesn’t look the nicest in places, although smooth all round, but nothing to quibble about considering the price I paid for it, it works action needs sorting out, currently 5.9mm at the 12th and 6.7mm at the last fret, action at the nut seems about as low as it’s going to get, I suspect the action is mostly due to the massive saddles on the bridge, will see if I can get hold of something smaller and see how that works In in the same day, also acquired, for an equally good price an Ibanez SR300, I originally learnt to play bass on an SR800le but have since become a precision man but figured this’ll be nice for a little variation and familiarity, it’s in good nick, all works, some minor body damage but nothing to concern myself about, again, considering what I paid

Can't remember if I've posted to this topic to not, and not abut to wade through 117 pages to find out! So here is a pic of myself on stage with the Grateful Dudes in Putney three weeks ago. Bit of a tight stage with two drummers, but we managed.