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Gratuitous everything shot:

Ok to redress the grumpy old Bass-tard sound of the last post I’ll tell you about a 50th birthday party gig our cover band did once. Biggish back garden, marquee sort of affair. We arrived, set up and sound checked while dad, teenage son and chums watched us run through a few songs. Waiting for the guests to arrive we were chatting to the family and then after the first set remarked that the kids very interested and engaged in watching the band. She laughed and said, “Yes, they’re all just learning instruments with the intention of forming a band at school.” The were all really nice, polite, well mannered kids (the antithesis of the teenage yobbo stereotypes) so B/L threw me a nod... then said would they like to do a couple of numbers to start the second set. Son said lthat was really kind but all the other’s instruments were at home so it wouldn’t be possible. But thanks so much for the offer.” - in a totally genuine, non-angling way. B/L and I glanced at each other and said, “You could just use ours...” Kids nearly fell off their chairs! Of course their instruments were the typical teenage starter stuff... bottom of the range Squiers, Epiphones, Encores and the like. The looks on their faces when we slung a Les Paul, a Takamine and a Wal round their necks, plugged them into a valve Fender, an AER and a MarkBass rig and gave them the big “Hello Wemberley, welcome to the stage a brand new rock sensation...” intro over the mic. Seventh heaven, grinning from ear to ear as they hacked nervously through a couple of covers doesn’t come close. We certainly racked up a few positive karma points in our favour that night!

Hi folks, Couple of people suggested I share this trick which means I can play (mini)bass wherever I travel...having looked at a few of the headless bodiless travel bass options etc which didn't appeal and are still a bit long to get into a reasonably sized suitcase, decided to see if I could butcher one of these ultra short scale kids Samick Corsair basses (see pic). Picked this one up from gear4music for £139. It's a small bass with short 26.5" scale and takes a little getting used to, but sounds fine despite the obviously slightly flabby string tension. After removing the strings, I removed the neck screws, and drilled out the holes in the back of the neck to 7mm to allow M5 bolt inserts to be screwed into the wood with an allen key. I did the drilling very carefully, increasing the bit size mm by mm to ensure the holes would remain centred on the holes in the heel of the body. Once this was done, it was just a case of drilling out the holes in the heel to accept the M5 bolts, then reassemble and hey presto! The next refinement was simply to replace the bridge with a used one from a fellow BC-er that has slots so the string ball ends can be dropped in and out for easy removal rather than having to stretch out the machine head windings of the strings to get them through bridge holes. Needed to do a bit of hand routing to get the bridge height correct because the new one was a lot more chunky! Pics attached below. I've now disassembled and reassembled about a dozen times, with no issues of neck bolt tightness because it's metal on metal. Takes under ten minutes to reassemble, string up and tune. Don't have the neck length to hand right now but will update this when I get a chance to measure it. Not suggesting you try this on your favourite vintage full scale bass! But thought I would share as it works for me and allows me to groove and learn songs wherever I get dragged. Now I've lived with this one for a while I'm going to try it on a slightly larger bass with 31 inch scale with a neck that still fits diagonally in my bigger suitcase! Happy playing and fire away with questions 😉 Tom

Ernie Ball Musicman StingRay 2005 maple neck, H, 3band eq, Handbox R400 amp and Handbox Compact Ferrite 2x12 cab. Strings Thomastik Infeld Jazz Flats. Absolutely great rig!

Mastodon, your comments are fantastic. As a native New Yorker I have no problem with Ken or Jeff’s acerbic comments; people who criticize them fail to recognize our culture: two guys who are BENDING OVER BACKWARDS TO HELP WHILE COMPLAINING. This is what we NYCers do, the nice ones at least. I will sing the praises of Ken Smith, Fodera, and Pedulla basses til I cark it because they responded to my mails lightning-fast, even though I hadn’t made a purchase yet! Ken’s mails aren’t flowery; he got to the point, told me what the basses I was looking for were, end of mail. That was fine with me, and I appreciated his time answering each and every mail I sent over two months. I bought a White Tiger after I failed in trying to buy that beauty Sir Ped copped: gorgeous. The WT 4 I got is the best playing bass (for ME) that I have next to a Pedulla Buzz (I sold one I had purchased used and that was a horrible mistake). The quality of all the top makers’ basses are unquestioned, but Ken’s bass has the feel, sound, and look that works for me. Congrats to all of you and thank ypu for sharing!

I would definitely not modify it - if it worked when new, it will work now. Changing it will just spoil its period appeal.

Went down to Warwick intending to buy a MusicMan or a Warwick, came away with this. It just caught my eye and when I played it it was one of those 'you're coming home with me' things. First impressions it's a lot superior to the Fender equivalent I had a couple of years ago, I'm guessing due to the Aguilars and the preamp, and the neck is a lot more forgiving as well. I got up early on a Saturday to play it so there must be something there. Andy

I’m now on my third RM500. Bought one, moved it on, realised the mistake and bought another. Then Ashdown made the EVO II version which is half the weight but more importantly has a matt finish control panel rather than shiny, which helps on stage no end. So I got one of those and I find I use it more and more recently. On our mini tour of Germany I used it even though I had my flight-cased ABM600 with me. The stages weren’t big enough to demand the weightier sound of the ABM and the RM handled itself fine. They really are great amps, the only improvement I’d have would be a pre/post DI option.

Late to this thread, but happy to say I am the lucky owner of 2 Sadowskys 🤗 First one bought nearly new in 1996 is a NYC 5 string modern, 24 frets, chambered ash body and maple fboard, EMG soapbars. It's my best friend and a total keeper. Wherever I plug this in and start playing people's eyes light up, live or studio. It has a deep authoritative fat sound to which you can dial in punch or crispness easily with the onboard or amp eq, although the latter is rarely needed. The B string is the tightest I've heard, sounds like a piano. For me it's this balance of warmth and crispness that I love and makes it totally versatile. I've owned Warwick, Tobias, Modulus all of which I've liked for different reasons but always come back to the Sadowsky. I also like the fact that it looks tidy and smart but not ostentatious, so fits into a lot of different band styles. And the lightness of the chambered body makes a big difference on long nights...oh and...it stays perfectly in tune, regardless of temperature and humidity. My second is a new baby...well new old. Fell into a deep hole in Tokyo called Bass Center and climbed out with a 1992 NYC four string stuck to me! It was a bit pricey once you add on the import duty 😭...but playing for 30 years you kind of know when a bass feels right. It also has an ash body and maple fboard (my sound) with 21 frets. It has a wonderfully woody sound and feel to it, plays very easily and I would say more of a classic jazz sound, a little softer due in part to single coil pickups placed further from the bridge than the modern. Re bedroom vs gig: I kind of see what people mean - in the bedroom these basses sound very transparent, hifi-ish and perhaps that comes across as lacking character. In a gig that deep authority and ability to dial in crispness gives great punch and pitch definition which probably makes the sound stand out more. Probably we play harder in a band so maybe that also brings out the character of the instrument! To my ears there are no noticeable dead spots which also helps keep the bottom end tight and consistent in a band setting. This has been a problem for me with ash/maple Fender jazzes where certain notes just seem to drop out of a line. Re preamp: I agree with comments above that the preamp just shines more light on whichever part of a great unplugged tone you want. The character is there in the wood, the strings and your fingers! While in Tokyo I also tried Sadowsky metros, Atelier Z betas, and a couple of Laklands. They were all excellent basses and I could easily find my sound with them. In the end I went for the NYC probably for sentimental reasons as much as anything 😄. There is an Aterlier Z for sale right now on BC which I would have snapped up if it weren't too late, would recommend trying it if you can as they are rare and this one is a crazy bargain! Sorry for the long ramble, trapped in bed with a lurgy so more waffly than usual! Hope this helps with the GAS anyway. Let us know what you decide 😋.

Lol too many 🍻 for me this afternoon...

Looks good stub , I too would recommend the stack knobs , they would look good on yours 👍 , having separate individual control over both pickups is great, @KiOgon rewired my shell pink jazz controls for me to give deeper/warmer tone , it’s superb 🙂

Well, we talked about earplugs a few times on Finnbass, but I don't think this issue ever came up. Is there hearing damage that can occur via another mechanism than excessive sound arriving at the cochlea, wahtever its transmission route (and not including physical damage to tympanum, malleum, stapes, or the other one)? Because if it's sound arriving at the cochlea that causes the damage, you'd hear the sound. So if something made the sound a lot quieter, it would reduce the potential hearing damage. As an experiment, I tried talking to myself. When riding a motorcycle at 90mph on a closed private test track, failing to use earplugs results in excessive and painful noise levels, thus demonstrating that a helmet does not act as ear defenders. When wearing a pair of Howard Leight's finest Maxes, the level of noise is considerably reduced. This allows me to talk to myself at a volume lower than normal conversational volume and still hear myself without having to ask myself to repeat myself. Obviously this is possible through bone conduction. As the noise level is considerably reduced, surely this demonstrates that earplugs, even of the 50p a pair 33dB orange bell variety, are effective. All tests conducted on a closed private test track by a rider who hears no internal voices.

The overnight job was gluing the fretboard to the neck. I use radius sanding blocks as my cauls - you can put a huge amount of clamping force on them and they apply the pressure to the sides as well as the middle. Ready for neck carve The neck is bolted on with stainless machine screws and some decent threaded inserts. Once It is all set up, I may well be gluing the tenon too - bolts alone work well, but I do find that the heel blocks can relax a touch over time and therefore can have a tendency to slacken off a touch. Easy to re-tighten but not ideal. In that the neck should never have to come off, I've come to the conclusion that using the bolts to ease getting all of the angles and fit right - and then glue and bolt - might be the best of both worlds. I did do a dovetail once. But my GP told me that I must never do that again because the emergency services are just too stretched to cope with another self-inflicted heart attack... Here are the inserts: Got a few household things to do over the next day or two but the next big jobs are the binding on the top and the neck carve.

You might be worrying unnecessarily Quick back of 'fag packet' estimations. Treating the screws as 3mm steel (pretty small?), each one can take about 2000 N in shear (2 Tonnes). So for two screws say 4000 N. A heavy gauge E string is about 188N tension, say 200N. Four E strings (unlikely) would be 800N. First failure mode: Screw shear. We have a shear reserve of about 3200N so no danger of shear failure in the screws. Second failure mode: screws pull out of wood. In the worst case this would be on the same longitudinal axis as the screw. A 3mm screw with 16mm of thread in the wood has a characteristic pull strength of 370N, two giving 740N. The string pull over the bridge can be estimated (worst case) at 45 degrees, so we have the normal loading (pulling the screws out) at Load Force = 800sin(45) = 622N. This is well below the 740N (and it is unlikely that a bass is strung with 4 x E strings). Third failure mode: direct shear of the metal pressing / string anchor. Assume the worst case, the string anchor is made from 1mm thick steel plate and the 3mm screws have a contact area of only 1mm2 . Mild steel shear strength is about 345 N / mm2, thus we have about 700N shear force as a possible maximum at 90 degrees (worst case). At 45 degrees, as calculated previously we have a potential maximum shear force of 622N, this is below the 700N maximum. All calculations are worst case scenarios, the real situation gives much greater reserves. The security of the screw / wood interface remains unknown without direct investigation (i.e. the holes are not damaged). If these are in good condition, I think we are safe, however a tidy non visible upgrade would be insert nuts for the tailpiece screws/bolts. All in all no need to worry. My G&L L1505 5 stringer (as does everyone's unless they have made the upgrade) had the bridge held on with two puny wood screws. It worked, it terrified me and I thought / think it was a very poor build feature lol. Guess what I did until recently If there are mistakes in this analysis I can only apologise and state that the 2015 St Emillion was rather good.

Well it was Tuesday actually. I had been fancying a P bass for a while now so popped into Gear4music to check out a Player series P. However they didn't have any on display so I checked on their fancy screen thingy & spotted the Vintera range,mmmm had to check it out. To me it looks beautiful,seems to be very well made,plays & sounds excellent too.(it was also substantially cheaper than the classic 50's P bass they have in stock) Over all I am very happy with it,although I've yet to play it with the band but I'm sure it will be mint 🤣🤣

@Silvia Bluejay and I just love Trader Joe's in Pasadena. So does Lee Sklar. Guess it's a bassist thing.

Unashamedly nicked from a thread on that terrible Talkbass. . . . . Damn, I've got to practice harder! Ex-Prince bassist Sonny T stretching out. . . .

*cough* Adam Clayton *cough* (just a joke before that can of worms opens up - I rate AC) Ah. Yes. I thought Mr Sarzo had played in Whitesnake and Ozzy just of the top of my head. More than I’ve done, fair play. Also led to believe he’s a nice bloke.

XTC. I put together a 30-odd track playlist to accompany the book Complicated Game; it just cherrypicks tracks from White Music through Wasp Star.

I've depped for many function bands over the years and have to say that, at least, around here, I would say that in ratio, bands play fewer similar songs to each other than differing set lists. Maybe I just got lucky, like the legend of the Phoenix.

Check out the amazing Jimmy Haslip too.

Lol my bad...

And add in a Seymour Duncan Hot Stack for the bridge. Hum-cancelling, big sound.

As ever, all good stuff here and nothing at all that I'd disagree with. One strong recommendation, though, would be that you try out as many DBs as you can before making a decision and a purchase. Use this forum to find DB players near you who would be willing to offer you an hour playing their DB (and a cup of tea, and maybe a digestive biscuit). Different basses obviously feel and sound different, just like electric basses, but the differences can be magnified with DB simply because they are so physical. You will usually find also that string choice is even more significant than on electric bass, so a bass that you try and fall in love with may be because it's strung with Silver Slaps (my personal favourite - blame Clarky) whereas the others you played were strung with steels.

^This x 100^ Put your 4 string bass(es) away and use the 5 for everything. You'll soon work out little shortcuts to the B string and be hovering around frets 5-7 where before you'd be fretting on the lower frets of the E. You can then make the choice of where to play notes according to what sort of timbre you want . The extra low notes are the bonus, even though they start off being the attraction. The, if you feel you can't get on with your Jack V, sell it to me as I'd like one muchly

Aye - maybe it grew back...?

Sam: Quote of the month!

Thanks for all the advise everyone👍 Thanks to you all I have managed a what I consider fairly proffessuonal cut and body route on my Ash Blank.

I think this comment explains a lot. You are looking at how some one else has transcribed it and tabbed it out. This doesn’t mean it’s correct to the recording. Also I have seen the best advice you can get about 5 string playing said several times on this thread and I will repeat. Don’t be looking for songs with the 4 extra low notes, use the B string where you would usually use open E or or F (1st fret E string). The main reason for the B is efficiency and not having to move up and down the neck to get notes you want as they can be under your fingers.

Bass Direct do, as do The Bass Gallery Andertons do on some - mainly Dingwall. Peach do it on the more high end models Thomann and GuitarGuitar will get it out of the box and weigh it if you ask.

That looks very cool. Do the stacked knobs thing. I did it on my 60s reissue (thanks to @KiOgon) and its taken it to a different level.

Here's a simple experiment. Unplug your bass and pluck the a-string. Not very loud is it. Now press the headstock against the bony part of your head or even a tooth and pluck the a-string. That's at least four times louder, plenty more than 20db of attenuation. Bone conduction is very inefficient - as you might expect, otherwise we wouldn't need outer and middle ears... (Also... as you can use bone conduction to pick up sound from anywhere on your head, including your jaw, I don't see how ear defenders are going to stop it - you need your entire head in a sonically isolated bubble... ear defenders work by sealing better and attenuating more than earplugs, bone conduction has little to do with it.)

You have a rig that sounds so good you have to put "awesome" in capitals!! And you want to change it for a combo and you didn't say what that sounds like. Half a dozen reasons and the sound wasn't one of them! IMO this is not a good move unless you hear this combo and decide if you can live with what might be a less than "awesome" tone.

.... and not forgetting the wonderful Mononeon ! 🤗

Love this Bassline 🙂

Well... I was nervously waiting for you in Wirral Park Rd... Were you there at all, or did you somehow end up in the Townsend Shopping Park?

It's good to challenge yourself and expand your experience, but forget the extra string, it's only a bass. Play all the bass lines you already know. There are no 4 string lines or 5 string lines . . . . . they are all bass lines and you can play them all on this bass. Put the 4 away and concentrate on becoming comfortable with a 5 string. If you get lost work through it and it will happen less frequently. As others have said, a 5 string bass is not just about a couple of extra notes, it's about changing how you play to use less hand movement. A 5 is very flexible but don't look as a different instrument. It isn't.

Anything. Don’t treat it like that. Play low E at the 5 fret, F at the 6th etc. Play across the fretboard, rather than along.

Thanks all, so far so good. The drum sander is probably my favourite machine. It just does what it does well. I bought it on eBay for £350 as water damaged stock. And it was. It looked as though it had been standing in a swamp. But it is rock solid. I've had it for about 3 years and I've adjusted it once. A slow feed rate and a very shallow cut and it will do a marvellous job till the cows are at home, feet up, drinking cocoa. It was just one of those ebay bolts from the blue. It was cheap as chips and was 3 miles from my house. Never will that happen again. For the benefit of @Jabba_the_gut here's a photo of the beauty in its natural habitat: The vacuum bag is less impressive, but I have to say just as effective. Here it is gluing on the matching mahogany veneer headstock for a tele that is finished bar the fret levelling: So here's where I am. Both ash plates glued on. Still completely rough cut, but some lovely side grain. I'm half tempted to leave it as it is, rather than gluing on the walnut veneers..... Oh, and @Andyjr1515 you'd be really welcome. Your scarf joint expertese would be pure gold......😁

You can join me on our new site sonnytruinedbassformechat.co.uk

The site was the inspiration for this one and there’s a huge amount of experience and some great people on there. With any site that size you’re going to get some arses who like the sound of their own voice but imo if you ask a good question and don’t give them any room for stupid replies to generally can find what you need.

Prompted by your question I've just had a quick look at these. You can buy the head for £225 and the matching cab for £279, so the combo that brings these together costs £579. Really? Makes more sense to buy the separates. Makes even more sense to buy the head for £225 (I have one, and it's a very useful backup plus rehearsal tool) and a Barefaced One10 for £369, but that's just my opinion.

Take one 2001 Squier Jazz Bass... Add proper knobs, red tortoisehell 4-ply scratchplate, bridge cover, tug bar, oil the fretboard. Interestingly a new scratchplate for my mid-70s Maya dropped straight on. The Squier one was slightly the wrong shape and I had to plug 8 out of ten screw holes to fit a 'proper' one. Still waiting for a pickup cover. Yes I've found and fitted the missing scratchplate screw! Pretty close to a '63/'64 Jazz now. I was born in '62 so tempted to add a stacked pot control plate...

Wow, hope it sounds as good as it looks!

I’ve never seen one of those for sale, it looks kinda nice 🙂

I was doing so well with that up to a point, as lovely a thing as it is, but I was resisting the envy...and then you had to throw the 5'er into the mix, didn't you?