Leaderboard

Drop my bass at home after playing two small festivals in one day, then head off for the pub my missus is working in for what feels like a well-earned pint. There’s a lady sat at the bar and she starts talking to me about what a hard day I must have had, playing two gigs in one afternoon. I tell her it was a bit hectic, but worth it. She tells me her brother plays in a band and works really hard at it, but it’s worth the effort. I ask her what band he plays in, just in case I’ve heard of them or even shared a bill with them. “Oh” she says, “they’re called Iron Maiden”.

I visited an old buddy today. In the early eighties I sold him my first ever bass - a Westone Thunder II. I regretted it ever since, but at least it quickly found it's forever home. Sadly he doesn't play anymore but won't sell it back to me. I visited him today and played it for the first time in 30 odd years! That's him in the pic, not me!

Just a thought, but I wonder what the total asking price of gear for sale on here is at any given time. For example, at 9pm tonight (1st of August 2019) the total asking price value of basses for sale on page 1 of the ‘basses for sale’ forum totalled £38,000 and included some real high end exotic basses. I believe that accepted logic is a preowned bass sells for around 2/3 of original purchase price (subject to condition of course) so just how much money are we ‘wasting’ in depreciation in pursuit of our hobby? Please note: if anyone has the answer to this question, please do not share the results with my wife 😂

Wasting money on guitars ? I'm sorry, I understand each word, but when you put them together like that...you've lost me.

Joined 4 hours ago, drags a dead thread up 1 hour later. As WOT said, move on

The real reason for this nonsense is to keep prices high. A lot of companies do it - destroying last year's stock, less popular models and so on - because people won't buy current stuff if they can pick up older stuff at a bargain price. "Unsafe" my foot. Unsafe for Gibson's margins is what it is.

They couldn't have salvaged anything? Necks? Bridges? Tuners? Knobs? Nothing?

Gibson no-longer make guitars. They now just make gaffes. Anyway, I'm surprised that they needed that machine to destroy those guitars - normally you just have to look at the neck on a Gibson & the head voluntarily separates from the neck...

Kryptonite trussrod, atomic capacitors

Finally someone has pointed out the pointlessness of having a forum, on any subject. Moderators, shut down Basschat immediately! 😁

I wanted to just say publicly how much I enjoy this forum. I may not be a very active member at the moment, but I thoroughly enjoy the content on here, and especially the people. Indeed, a huge thank you to forum member Raymundo who, about 18 months ago now, saw my post on here that, due to financial difficulties, I had to sell my beloved Brook acoustic bass. Ray immediately got in touch and offered to lend me an acoustic bass to tide me over. I have just given the bass back to Ray (I still hope to be able to buy back my Brook shortly) but this lovely act of kindness will never be forgotten. I truly think bass players are the loveliest of musicians- humble, extremely musical, empathetic, and without any delusions of grandeur! An example of this is the thread on Depression. Such a thread is unheard of on other forums. Indeed, on a guitar forum I belong to, discussions of people’s mental health is positively frowned upon! The way people help and support each other in that thread is really quite beautiful. Anyway, just wanted to get that all off my chest. Hopefully, at some stage in the next few months I will have my bass back and continue with my project of exploring solo folk bass!! Robbie

Shim shimmery, shim shimmery, shim shim sheroo.......

Hardware update, Installed new tailpiece and bridge assembly from Winfield. Looks 1000% better, corrected the string spacing as well.

In the greater scheme of things that people spend vast amounts of money on, bass gear is definitely towards the more harmless end of the spectrum.

That non-slip rubber grip mat stuff would do it. I had a similar problem with some of those very light D class heads, this solved it.

To be fair to Bass Direct, at the time of my order, they did tell me that the Hipshot bridge I had ordered wasn't in stock and they would need to order it for me from Hipshot in the US, as it would be build to order. They gave me a delivery estimate of around 10 weeks from the date of order, which was 30th April - which took us up to 09th July. I have emailed them today again, the 3rd consecutive Thursday in three weeks, for an update and been told they reckon another three weeks from now...which, if is indeed the date, will take the delivery up to week 16...!! It's a "Hipshot B-Style Bridge, Aluminium, Chrome, 19mm spacing - FM2 American Delux String Thru" I've ordered, which is clearly labelled on the BD website for sale, retailing at £70.00, and even today it is still not saying they are out of stock. It could be ordered directly from the US, however the average starting cost I've found so far is around £80.00 and that's before postage and customs costs are added. I'm thon way, that I feel I've waited so long, I think to cancel now would just be cutting my nose off to spite my face...!

OK - so onto JIGS AND FIXTURES NEEDED BUT WHICH CAN EASILY BE MADE 1 Top and Back Radius Dishes Messy job, but relatively easily made with a couple of MDF or plywood boards, a router and a swan-neck scraper: Bit of schoolboy maths will allow calculation of the depths of the routed steps. Usually the back is dished to around 15 feet and the top to around 25 feet 2 Go-bar rig Easy to make with a couple of stout boards (I used chipboard but it's not really strong enough - 20mm ply would be better). 4 threaded rods, some nuts and wingnuts and you have the rig, then dowels or fibreglass rods to apply the pressure. I think I got the fibreglass rods from a kite parts supplier. 3 Mould Various ways of making these from solid wood sections to this lightweight 'does-the-job' version 4 Routing rig for tenon and mortice or dovetails I modded an old workmate and fitted it with some G&W templates 5 Jig for applying pressure to bridge wings when clamping I'm sure there's stuff I've forgotten. I'll highlight if I come across more in the build

That'll be just their normal quality control procedure before they get sent out surely? 😏

How exactly could a guitar be unsafe unless that was the special edition with the hidden bear trap and headstock that shoots poisoned darts at the audience?

Gibson have made a statement: “The Firebird X destruction video was an isolated batch of Firebird X models built in 2009-2011 which were unsalvageable and damaged with unsafe components. This isolated group of Firebird X models were unable to be donated for any purpose and were destroyed accordingly.” If the components were unsafe, what about the components in the ones that suckers people actually shelled out $3K for?

I always get home from gigs having played for free and paid for transport, food, beer, and any other related expenses like batteries and strings as well as a per-gig share of the yearly cost of instrument and liability insurance. But we're an originals band and we all have jobs that pay the bills, so it's a hobby and if our songs are good enough to have complete strangers reacting positively then that's all the payment we need from music right there. A personal 'loss' of maybe £60 a gig in the name of enjoying myself is perfectly acceptable to me, but I totally understand that it may not be to many others. My own view is that the different ways of approaching gigging shouldn't have to hurt each other; if you need money from music to support yourself and/or your family I actively want you to have it; have the money that they didn't pay me for my originals gig on Thursday night for your covers or tribute gig on Saturday night, but please do something for it that I didn't because I was too busy at work and too tired when I got home. Advertise it better, do the social media thing and hype it up, fill the place, drink the bar dry, make them some real money and keep the venue open with a better reputation for good bands as that's all to my advantage as well. It just seems to be that from talking to a few venue owners over the years, they offer very little because it's the amount that they can afford to lose if a band turns up having done no promotion, draws no punters and scares away half the regulars. Instead of saying it's disgusting that they're paying a pittance, maybe take the gig, do the promo, absolutely storm the place with the full-on lights and smoke package and then say "we'll come back x times a year and do that every time, guaranteed, but our normal fee is higher - we took this one as a bit of a promo to show you we're worth hiring and can help your business".

Sure there are plenty of music schools who would have been grateful if Gibson (or whoever mashed them up) donated them instead. Better publicity too.

By the way , I’m not a full time musician . I’m actually a plumber

The PJ pickups still look comically large against the smaller body The smaller, original sized pickups look more natural. It's like the bass version of this:

I'm sure there's been a few threads about this but oh my god, this kind of hyperactive attention whore-ishness represents everything I hate about the internet. I see that annoying face and the awful clickbait every time I look at YouTube, there is just no getting away from it. You search for anything to do with bass, and bang, there he is, with 4 thousand novelty party trick videos, pulling stupid YouTube faces and pointing at 12 string novelty basses. "Finally, a funky fretless 19 string slap bass jam! Leave a comment, like and subscribe LOL etc smiley face" ad infinitum. Jesus christ. Yes I'm sure these guys are all very talented and special, but when I see this stuff, all I see is a bunch of ballerinas prancing around for attention. Anyone remember a time when people got laughed at for being attention-seeking show-offs? Those days are long gone. Now I know this is a rant and I'm being rude, and I'm obviously in the minority, because 1 million followers blah blah, and I know it's a 'business model' blah blah.. but it annoys the living crap out of me personally. Stock Aitken Waterman was also a business model, and their pinnacle was 'The Reynolds Girls'. Just because something is a 'business model' it does not mean it's good. There are people like Adam Neely out there who also have a trillion followers, and they're not resorting to this stuff. No disrespect to anyone who loves it obvs, just my personal view. /end rant (I also hate 'Remco Hendrix', and that german guy with the ridiculous massive beard, and every other o.c.d. novelty internet show-off out there).

I didn't know that Chief Ten Bears out of the motion picture The Outlaw Josey Wales was Welsh. I did - however - think that Josey Wales was Welsh, because obvs. How odd that two characters in a Western movie would both be Welsh. Bears, Wales, Wales, Bears* * Copyright: The Estate of the late Mr Tommy Cooper

Utter, shameless pack of lies. Completely despicable behaviour simply because to sell off an unsuccesful model cheap - indeed to admit to having an unsuccesful model - somehow devalues their brand. Oblivious to the reality that their brand is rapidly becoming a laughing stock.

I'm packing up to go on holiday, guys. So we'll have to discuss speaker power handling another time. And I'm not saying those of you who are using this combination are not getting a good sound. Just that if you have a 400W cab like the OP, it's not a great idea to buy a 200W cab to run it with. Better to get a (matching) 400W cab.

There's a very steep learning curve involved but, as the saying goes, if I can do it, anybody can do it

Paddy McAloon is a genius.

Readily available from the Australian cricket team 😀

Here's an update. Mike aka Chimike has now produced some really nice CNC drawings for us. I used these to approach a number of suppliers for quotes (again). I've now selected a company and ordered a single cab, which I'll check thoroughly before ordering the first batch ot ten. I'm not expecting any problems, as Mike has managed to produce a cab from the drawings on his own mini-CNC machine and tells me it goes together perfectly. If he sees this, perhaps he'll post a few photos on the thread. I'm about to go on holiday for ten days, but the cab will be delivered when I get back, i.e. around 12 August. I'm therefore expecting to send the first cab kit, complete with all the parts that I can supply, to Funkle by the end of week beginning 12 August. If everything goes to plan, I'll be sending the first batch of ten out at the beginning of September. Orders for a second batch are building up, and I'd expect those to go out at the beginning of October. I've spent some time trying to sort a grille out for everyone. I managed to find some very nice expanded metal, which is fairly lightweight, but I've been struggling to cut it to size. My tin snips aren't good enough and a jigsaw proved useless. So my next step is either to get a local engineering company to cut them up, or to do the job myself with an angle grinder. I'm not a big fan of angle grinders, as I value my body parts, but I'll be looking into it when I get back from my hols. I really appreciate everyone's patience.

If you zoom in on the side... I'm sure thats a PJB vent on the C pillar.

Suck on that, John Hall.

Exactly. Complete cobblers. A lame excuse following a stupid publicity stunt gone wrong.

Very nice bass - and obviously well treated over those 30-odd years. That looks like a Westone case too if I'm not mistaken? Still loving my modded '84 Thunder III, - it was just a slightly younger version of the Thunder II when in original spec. Only difference from the T-II was black pickup and truss rod covers.

Just a slight diversion. A few folks who are or have been considering building an acoustic bass or guitar have asked during this and previous builds what specialist tools and jigs are needed for such a task above and beyond those that most builders will already use. I would be delighted if other Basschat builders had a bash - whether bass or six-string - and it can be a bit daunting, particularly with so much expensive 'stuff' you see on sites such as Stewmac and LMI, so happy to feed back those things I've found pretty essential Well, as always, this is just my take based on the four acoustic builds to date of: - what you really need to buy (not much, but very difficult to get a successful outcome without) - what you really need, but can make (compared to a solid body, there are quite a few pretty essential jigs and fixtures involved with an acoustic) - what you could buy, but - with care - you can also cobble together reasonable DIY alternatives As always, there are a number of ways of doing things. Clearly, I can only show you pictures of the ways I do it but will, where possible, refer to the common alternative methods. ESSENTIALS BOUGHT, BEGGED OR BORROWED: 1 Bending Iron or Rig Yes - I made one for my first build, but that involved pointing a gas blow-torch through a metal tube straight towards my stomach. So, in the interests of safety... I now use an electric bending iron and hand bend: These are very expensive. There is an alternative. A hot silicone blanket and former arrangement (I think these are sometimes called Fox rigs?). These are large, one size and very, very expensive...and almost impossible to get hold of in UK 2 Bridge Clamp It has to reach in the sound-hole to the bridge and be shallow enough to fit inside the body. 3 Spool Clamps Clever people make these themselves. I buy them. 4 Some way of cutting a binding channel on a spheroidal back and top Various ways of doing this, from the cheap (but skilled) double scalpel tools, to this that I use: Not the easiest to use but relatively cheap. To the palm router rig that people like LMI sell. Good (although quite tricky to set up) but eye-wateringly expensive. 5 Dremel radius jig If you have a Dremel, you probably already have one of these. 6 Thickness calipers I'd love some dial gauge ones but they seem to be inordinately expensive. These are cheap but only JUST do the job (and not really well enough) Next post I'll outline some of the jigs and fixtures - most of which can be made.

Thanks in no small part to Tom's advice to ditch tabs and learn music notation, I've just started reading and transcribing too... At least for me starting out, the free "Sibelius First" is doing the trick, along with usage tutorial videos e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrPvjCknrPM . The playback feature really helps learn the acccidentals. Very pleased to be finally learning notation. Seems the best thing about tabs - that they tell you where to put your fingers - is also the worst thing about tabs!

Damaged and unsafe how? More unsafe than a cheapo Chinese knock off? I'd have gladly risked it as a music head of department and used them as decoration if they really were that bad.

This coming week should see a bit more progress. I have the fretboard radiusing blocks and stuff arriving today (Matt wants a 16" radius) and have recently received the pickup systems. I'll go over the pickup considerations in another post but there is a critical-path sequence of events that I have started preparing - especially as my sequence will be a bit unconventional. Basically, I will be routing and dry-fitting the mortice and tenon neck, so I can dry fit the bridge, so I can fit some of the electrics BEFORE I fit the back... The short term sequence will be: - thickness and radius the fretboard and - dry fit the bridge which then lets me - work out the neck angle (up/down and side/side) so I can then - rout the body heel block mortice and - rout, chisel and sand the neck tenon to be able to - dry fit with bolts and threaded inserts to be able to - confirm the fit which lets me - glue the fretboard to the neck and then - confirm the position of the bridge (not glued yet) to - fit the bridge plate mic and transducers to be able to then - glue the back and - rout the channels for the binding while also making a start on - profiling the neck to templates off Matt's favorite guitar This morning I've done one of those tasks I've shaped the underside of the ebony bridge. Remember - the top is not flat. It has a spherical radius of 25 feet. And so the bridge needs that too. First task was to approximate where the bridge is going to fit: I then used a variation of the 'engineers blue but using chalk' technique, using the scratches off a sheet of emery cloth (which has the flexibility and weight to settle into the 25 foot shape) when the bridge was sanded lightly up and down the body length a couple of cm, which showed me where to scrape (using a single-edged razor) until the scrapes on the bottom were even over the whole of the bridge. This was it getting close, with just a remaining low-point on the leading edge: Ref the radiusing of the fretboard, I've finally bitten the bullet and ordered a G&W jig. Concept is the same as my homemade one which has served me well - but I would have needed to make another carrier to accommodate the 16" radius and it was easier (and probably more accurate) to get a machined aluminium setup like the G&W one. This was my homemade rig - I'll take some shots of the G&W equivalent when it arrives:

It's a visual metaphor for what they're doing to their reputation currently. Twerps!

So is this. And it's less that twenty quid.

Very much so ! Or Fizzbin, if you're a fan of Captain Kirk's nefarious card sharkery. Ahhh, Soundcloud is it ? OK, I'll see if I can let that through my TinFoilHat browser setup.. which I do believe is indeed set to Samizdat mode

All you pineapple on pizza loving filthmongers are going on "The List" for the revolution!

I have a HB jazz and yeah it's heavy but it sounds fine and the neck is gorgeous. My longest owned, most reliable amp is a Behringer BX4500H. I bought it back when anti Behringer fever was at its height, but mine has outlasted a fair few more illustrious brand names. Oh and it produces a wonderful tone. I have a Red5 microphone which cost me less than £50 brand new and easily outperforms mics costing 3 times the price. The best bass I own is a Bass Collection Bruce Thomas Profile. I would not change any part of it. And yes I have had more expensive instruments and sold them after acquiring the Profile. Not averse to an Ampeg through a couple of Barefaced cabs but happy too with a Bugera Veyron through an old Trace cab loaded with a metal coned Behringer 15" speaker which I bought about 15 years ago and still sounds great. Best pedal bought after a couple of years of pedal buying selling and swapping is an Ammoon cheapy. But I don't feel safe without @obbmcabling between me and my amps and cabs. Never, ever failed me. 3 Rick copies have scratched that itch, no need to spend thousands on the genuine article I'm content to use what I enjoy and can afford regardless of price or label.

We are blessed in the UK with some great bass builders. Makes me wonder why people buy mass produced instruments from the big companies.... Support the little man and get something unique....

I think it's cool that people make videos to give their thoughts or share knowledge. But from what I can tell, he just dumps his YouTube links on basschat and never contributes to the forum. For example, in this thread there have been many very good and detailed replies with more information, from people who know what they are talking about, but he does not return to discuss any of it. Something about it seems against the spirit of a forum.

I did two double bass gigs on the same day yesterday. Four one hour sets and three set ups and tear downs. No pain, no strain - all perfectly comfortable. We get there in the end, don't we?