Leaderboard

Had to show off my new handy work to people who get it (the wife was pretty underwhelmed/didn't have a clue what I was talking about) Backstory: wanted a flat case style pedalboard, didn't want pay £££s for it. So I bought an old synthesiser case from Gumtree for 20 quid and relined it with mounting fabric. Then Covid hit😷, so I thought I'd do some tinkering..... So I've built in some features (cue a lot of cussing at the soldering iron😖). I've add a bank to the side with jack in and out with a true bypass to skip the entire pedal chain, power input and switch and a di (stole the innards of a Behringer 400p passive di box). Cost me total of about 50 quid *smugface*😁 The chain is Input (with bypass)>Boss limiter>polytune 3 mini>Ehx Tri parallel>output The 3 mix loops are subject to change as I've just stuck then all on into the order they fit with the patches I have currently. Loop 1: Boss bass chorus>Boss odb3 overdrive>boss ls2(as a bypass for the 105q tone suck)>Dunlop 105q Loop 2: Mxr blowtorch>agent 00 clone(custom built by BCs very own paul_5)>bass big muff Loop 3: Ehx soul pog(pog 1st)>Donner EQ seeker(effing great eq pedal for £40 if you can find one!)>earthquake dispatch master>dpfx echidna overdrive>boss syb5 synth Whaddaya think?!? I'm pretty chuffed with how it turned out. Any advice on chain or good custom length patch kits very much needed....

Yes - I think that is OK. Phew! Clearly, the fretboard will be eventually properly finished and the binding will be rounded - which I will do once the neck is carved. But you can see the overhang of the binding here (which will slim just a touch when they are rounded off) which should mean that sharp fret-ends won't happen even as the neck and fretboard ages. The demarcation stripes should also show up nicely once the neck is carved: Oh...and, of course, the obligatory mock-up

I was bored at home, and had some Seafoam Green, and custom mixed Smooth Mint (Fiat 500 car colour), nitrocellulose lacquer leftover from previous builds. I wondered how the colours would look together. So, I made this: 2 piece, double bound, Tele body. 1 piece maple neck. Gotoh tuners and bridge. Fender Pure Vintage 64 Tele pickups. CRL 3 way switch, Fender Pure Vintage knobs, and CTS pots. All lacquer finishing was applied here at home. (I masked off the binding on the sides, and scraped back the front edge binding using a scalpel blade.

Pick the one who tunes up with the volume off

So here’s a bit of good news...for once! After sterling efforts from the sender who ended up going the extra mile and also the PA to the CEO of Parcelforce my bass finally turned up today. This after nearly five months of emails and many phone calls and texts. The best bit and a tribute to a Fender is that despite it being unwrapped at some point the bass and case are virtually unscathed. A tribute to modern Fender build quality. It really was in tune too!

I never uploaded pics of my shorty. It's an ACG TKO Modern 4 string. 30.5" scale White Limba body with a Figured Maple top, stained black 3 piece Ash neck, with a reverse headstock, stained black Rosewood fingerboard Reverse Splitcoil pickup, with passive vol/tone Black Hipshot B Type bridge, Gotoh tuner Currently wearing TI Flats (not in the pictures though) Cheers, Eude

As with all these things I can never discern a difference. Personally, to me (and I’m sure I’ll sound like a heretic) a P bass sounds like a P and jazz a jazz, woods and necks don’t make much difference.

Did a dep gig with a 40's/50's band at a retirement village in Surrey on Saturday afternoon. First gig since lockdown. It should have been a dead easy gig, but when i arrived I found out only the guitarist and sax player were from the band's regular line up and myself, the drummer and the girl singer were all deps! Still, it all went OK and the elderly punters loved it. 😊 The girl singer took this pic.

Collected today from Jon Shuker ....😁

@marleaux62 & @GuyR - as you asked for my thoughts... The bass arrived today, I put some flats on and have had about an hour playing. It sounds fantastic, very clear and crisp with some awesome lows on the E string. I’m looking forward to getting to know it over the next week when playing it with less of that ‘new bass anticipation’ thing going on. The vintage vibe is there in buckets, and at times when playing I really did think I was on an old bass when I looked at the neck! It’s not a bass that’d fool a collector or vintage fan, but that’s not really the point is it? I think it’s a great value, but high quality and lovingly made, unique instrument. And throughout the sale John was awesome, especially while two couriers tried their best to screw this up.... but the Bravewood won, and I got it on time.

@Drax speaks much truth.

Go with the one who smelled the least.

Just grabbed my bottle of hand sanitizer (70% isopropyl alcohol) and it did the trick! Thanks!

Struggling now - need to take this to pieces to finish it off but having too much fun playing it!!

Updates! Back from holiday and back in the garage! The Truss rod and carbon rods arrived so it was time to let loose with the router. I Want to have my truss rod access on the body so routed out this space first, it finishes outside the fret board angle profile marked in white pencil. Maybe the first mistake in the build, the truss rod fits really snuggly in the main channel, but I should have perhaps continued the channel with a 10mm bit so the truss rod end was also supported and not sitting free within the rounded access section, it's easy to locate the hole with the hex key but next time i'll do it differently. After the truss rod I installed the carbon rods. Snug! Scariest bit done. On to the bandsaw to cut the neck to size... which revealed mistake number 2... ...The outer wenge laminates are cut through when the neck is profiled, now this is either going to look really cool or terrible. Next time I'll double check the laminate thicknesses in relation to the neck profiles. Alot of this material is removed in the neck shaping profile so you might not see any of this but for right now... it's a bit of a disappointment. Had time to thin down and drill the bridge. I have ferrules coming for the string holes but can't install them until the bridge is mounted to the bass body. I'll only be able to slot the tree once the bass is being setup so that'll be cut much later on. In my opinion looks really nice on the bass, glad I decided to give it a go. Works well with the body ash too. Finally got the headstock wings glued up to the neck, two nice chunks of wenge to match the body at the bridge end. Next! I need to think about doing the fret board so that'll need cutting to size and then thinning down. Then there will be some CAD modelling to do, once I have the fretboard profiled I need to work out how high my bridge should be and how much of the body I need to cut away, it's currenty 42mm and this will be taken down to accommodate the bridge and the saddles so the action can be set nice and low, but this will all be modeled first before I go cutting. Before that the fretboard will need to be glued to the neck so lots of fun to be had. The neck laminate has bummed me out a little bit... but it could go either way it might finish really nicely.

A few points to add to this. What look like ports on the One10s (and all our 10CR models) aren't conventional ports - there's other stuff going on as they're Hybrid Resonator designs. Having the external resonator outlet (that thing that you think is a port) on the underside of the One10 results in a lower tuning frequency for that part of the resonator and a deeper tighter bass response. If you turn the cabs sideways then you raise this tuning frequency, giving fatter but less deep lows. Some people prefer this and it works better in some rooms. It isn't the default orientation because more people/basses/amps/rooms prefer the cab the other way around but it is a useful option. There's a lot of mythology about the coupling effect of putting a cab on the floor. Actual mechanical coupling is almost always a bad thing (despite Orange claiming it a benefit with the skids instead of feet/wheels on their cabs). Acoustic boundary reinforcement is usually a good thing but that doesn't stop when you lift the cab off the floor - it just shifts from acting on everything from the low-mids downwards when the cab is within an inch of the floor to acting on just the deepest lows when the cab is many feet off the floor. If your ears have had years of playing in front of loud 4x12" stacks then they're going to need all the help they can get! 😉

To clarify, I never said anything about being idiotic. There are certainly common tonal themes across most of the bass amp models, going back 50 years. That's bound to be the case of course, given that the designers of those models were consistent over most of those years. The exceptions are (imo and ime) the Carbines, Big Block and Titan (which were very much a more modern take on bass amps, paralleling the rectifier series popularity), the Strategy/Prodigy (which focused on a tighter approach to bass amp overdrive while maintaining the aggressive voicings of the Carbines), and to a lesser extent the Walkabout (which was distinctly different in many ways). I was brought on board to bring more focus into the bass amp/speaker products without the distraction and workload of designing guitar products at the same time. My goal is to take the best, most popular elements of a particular amp family and combine these with new features, new approaches, refinements and to update the products so that they meet the needs and expectations of today's players. For players this doesn't work for, that's fine. There is no shortage of good used amps of all types (and at bargain prices too... a bonus to players that these amps appeal to).

Choose the one with the least obtrusive hunchback.

There isn't any strict definition for vintage, but generally speaking for collectable items it's anything that is more than 25 years old. That now includes plenty of 90s basses and guitars...

Assuming the sniff test is inconclusive, who has the best availability? The best musician in the world is a p.i.t.a. If they can’t or won’t commit to gigs and rehearsals. So, you may have to do some investigation on job, family and other band situations.

I'll be stoned for this, but I can't hear any difference at all. If you hadn't put the graphic up and hadn't told us this was a comparison, I'd have assumed this was one bass playing the entire time.

Another dot/bound/lollipop 66 Jazz Bass! Super clean example that I got off pmjos on here a couple of years back. Absolute beaut to play, hear and look at!

So the back veneer is on and “roughly” shaped and I remodeled the bit near the neck plate. Tomorrow I have a good few hours to work on the bass, so the front veneer is drying and I should get it to a point where I can slowly start thinking finish.

That’s great! I’ve been fortunate to meet some really nice people in life, especially in music. In the early days there were a few people who really took a chance on me and gave me an opportunity. In the first band I was in I was really out of my depth. They were fabulous musicians and I was a bit younger and nowhere near as good, really struggling to keep up. The easy thing would have been to have gotten someone better (locally they were a decent draw and could have had their pick of players) but they gave me a go, taking me under their wing and mentoring me. Sometimes all you need is someone to believe in you, isn’t it. The guy who sold me the bass was a fabulous player - he’d played in a semi-professional capacity, backing all kinds of acts from Frank Carson to Englebert Humperdink on the cabaret circuit! - and was really encouraging. Never turn down a gig, he’d say, and of course he was right! He could see I was really keen on music/bass (to say the least) and just decided to help me along the way. The bass is special to me, and I’ve an agreement with my wife that (in the hopefully significantly distant future!) when I shuffle off, as long as she doesn’t need the money, the bass should be sold and the money donated to a charity for mentoring underprivileged kids who want to play music but may need a bit of a leg up... As I say, hopefully that’s a long way off yet!!!

First post my new Matamp GT200 with matching 4x10

I'm sure some of these close-ups are actually shower hoses...🙃

One last post - just had another hour on it, playing to tunes, drum loops and a recording a friend just made. This neck is just delicious and very special, the tone is wonderful and the overall looks and vibe keep making me stop playing and just check it out 🤣 I’ve known I was going to get another Jazz for some months, but was waiting for something special rather, than follow my GAS. Feel like I’ve been rewarded for waiting.

Lumping all 212s, or for that matter all of any speaker configuration, into the same performance category is as valid as saying all vehicles with 380HP engines perform the same. There's a big difference between a 380HP BMW Z4 and a 380HP 2.5 ton pickup truck.

I love my Fender Marauder, just the best guitar I’ve ever had. My epi ej200 is a real workhorse but there’s no great love there.

That's what Lemmy did when he auditioned Wurzel & Phil Campbell...! It is difficult for anyone to say if they weren't in the room. Assuming that they are equally matched as guitar players and both seem fine on a personal level then Candidate 1 might have the edge if he is more confident (not a bad thing for a lead guitarist). However, Candidate 2 might have a significant advantage on the visual front, which can be a big thing depending on what type of band you are. You just have to balance their respective qualities and then try not to pi*s off the guy you don't give the gig, just in case you need to give him a ring in a few months time...!

Go with the one you feel will be the best fit as a person - you're going to be spending a long time with them and working as a team. I think we're going to be auditioning for another drummer soon and I know personality and fit will be every bit as important as ability.

I’d be interested in what you’d have to say about the 414 into a Sad pre if you had/have a Sad pedal pre. Putting my 2 passive Maruszczyks through an SBP2 pedal makes them come alive and they weren’t exactly ’dead’ to start with. For something that, on paper, only adds boost @ 40hz and 4Khz, it’s an amazing circuit.

In 1979 I spent most of my summer holidays helping out at my local musical instrument store which was in the process of shedding its old "Home Organ" image, and as part of that process had become main dealer for Fender, Ibanez and Aria Pro II guitars and basses. I can remember the afternoon when the Fender instruments arrived, as it was a massive anti-climax. The predominant colours were stinky poo brown and a horrible semi-transparent white (which looked like a mistake with the spraying rather than a deliberate finish). All the 3-bolt necks were mis-aligned - some to the extent where one of the outer strings was no longer over the fingerboard at the top end of the neck and most of the others had some sort of QC problem. About the only person who was happy was the freelance guitar tech who was mentally counting up how much extra money he was going to make trying to get them into a saleable condition. Hung on the wall next to the instruments from Aria and Ibanez which had arrived the previous week (and were still in tune when they were removed from their boxes) the Fenders looked tired and lacklustre. If I'd been in charge, I'd have sent the lot back and told Fender to either send me some properly made instruments or give me my money back.

From the sublime to the ridiculous.... my new Harley Benton Shorty Precision. Mi gusto mucho. Not keen on the white scratchplate so I attacked it with a Sharpie

You'll see from my signature that I still have a Walkabout and a pair of M-Pulse 600's. I am probably not able to give a great comparison. That's because the Walkabout hasn't ever been used as a standalone amp, always in the combo. The physics of that (the down-firing radiator etc) mean I would be loathe to give a definitive view. Having said that, I love the sound of that combo so I'm perfectly happy with that. I went from a B400 to a 400+ (for the sake of clarity, I had both the 400 and 400+ - the latter had gone when this was taken) and then the M-Pulse. Aside from the fact I found the 400+ a little more detailed that the 400 I have found that the 'core' sound of them is pretty much the same. I describe it as a sort of Boogie dna (agedhorse may think that as idiotic). Every amp I have heard has had it. My decision to go for the TT as opposed to a WD was very much down to those extra valves and fact that they had made a conscious decision to replicate the B400 tone stack. I'm very old fashioned in terms of the sound I want (I tell engineers to give me Bohemian Rhapsody). I fell in love with the sound of my B400 and 2x15s in 1988 and have not ever changed (other than to buy lighter Boogie stuff). The picture shows that journey and comes from a session in a rehearsal studio when I took the two rigs in for a comparison. My ears didn't really detect any great difference between the two 'big' rigs. There are obvious differences (graphic eq and parametric) but that basic sound was there. I believe that the TT is going to carry that journey on without any marked change in the sound. I will do the same when the TT arrives and hope that I'm right.

If you hit Tamworth I could pick it up, but where would the next drop off point be? Down the M6, M1 or M5, living centrally means I could travel down all three.

I see you still have the same keyboard

Our 2nd time playing together since beginning of Feb, and as The Drummer is shielding we're using my phone instead 😁 And guitar is sounding mean through a Marshall Jubilee bass amp and Markbass 2x10! Hopefully we'll be OK for live streaming for 30 mins on 15th August!

If the audience enjoy it and your having fun playing it then its the right version. Dave

Would have been better with the basses playing to a blank screen. That way there'd be no chance of confirmation bias creeping in.

I always wing it...though as it's been in the set for years I have no idea what 'version' we do...probably our own take by now 😁 Looks like the only Whitesnake songs on our YouTube are Ready & Willing and All Your Love Tonight...and listening back again to the original my winging is nowt like it

The frets were de-tanged at either end, ensuring that none of the tang metal was proud of the un-bound fretboard. As usual, I fitted the frets with a teeny thread of titebond, hammered in and then clamped with the 12" radius block: The frets force the fretboard into a mild curve and so, to sand down the fret ends to the exact overhang, I first clamped it to a straight edge beam, with the fret ends clear for sanding: Then I could turn the whole assembly round 90 degrees and sand all of the fret-ends straight and accurately along my long sanding beam: This made it quite easy to get the fret overhang even along the whole length and accurate to 10th of a millimetre. I repeated for the other side and then rounded all of the fret ends. So now, if my calcs are correct, I should have the target width of fret, and the binding less than 0.5mm deeper than the overhang - which they are and which it is : So now I just need to plane the top of the binding so that the bottom feature line is flush with the bottom of the fretboard. And then glue the bindings on each side: So tomorrow, I should have: - a silky smooth set of fret ends - a teeny binding overhang to round off - a trio of feature lines to set it off against the maple neck Fingers crossed!

I think they are tiny, it says they are microtubes.......

Recorded at the last gig we played in December last year: