Leaderboard

I believe the colour is far more significant than the material the pickguard is made from. Red will give you an angry tone, blue a more serene top end and gold is best for pulling and thumping. Curiously, both black and white guards do not alter the tone at all.

Many of you may have seen my Stingray Special I had up for sale recently but pulled down after there was a credible reason for mysterious appearing holes....wood worm, well actually they're not worms having since researched them to not quite death - they're more likely to be beetle larvae ! On closer inspection, what i thought were small chips were actually further holes - I've now counted approx 10 holes in total. 100% bugs and the little funkers clearly have the munchies. Great bass weight loss program! So I emailed both Musicman and GuitarGuitar. Both have been absolutely amazing.GuitarGuitar have spoken with Musicman who intend to replace the body and i will be sending the bass to GuitarGuitar (assume for assembly). Needless to say the bass is locked away in its case in a colder part of the house. I do remain slightly anxious the little funkers maybe out and about checking out my book case and woe betide any of my other basses - I will look to see if i can get anything that eradicates them at the weekend (tips please)...perhaps my closest religious affiliation is Buddism/Funkadelic but my inner peace will take a miss on this one.....the funkers shall rue the day! I shall await the next stages from Musicman but it's all looking promising....and it's looking promising that i won't need to sell now -sorry for all those interested, i never wanted to sell if I'm honest and i cannot praise GuitarGuitar enough for their support - always been impressed with their commitment to customer support. A further massive shout out to the BassChatter who alerted me to this known issue - i would have never considered this in a millipede years Bye funkers:

I know, i know... The floor IS filthy. @SpondonBassed i had exactly the same thoughts. Normally a volute is a really nice place to add details with laminations, when i first glued it uo i was kind of upset there wasnt going to be space for one but im happy with how it turned out! @petecarlton, thank you for following along! Im.glad youre enjoying it and thank you for the kind words. Hopefully ill get the chance to make a few more of these once lockdown is good and over! A big considerstion choosing the woods for this bass was cost, not knowing that a lot of these experiemnts would work out, all of the timber choices were pretty inexpensive. Now it looks like it'll work out the way i planned, i can't wait to have another go with some properly fancy woods

I bought a 6 String 36" scale Overwater on here many years ago. I wanted to try F#. It needed an awful lot of love from Overwater but they did it and it was a stupendous instrument. But the 6th string freaked me out so I sold it. However, it sounded SO good that I promised myself when a 5 string one appeared that I would give it a crack. It did appear and it is quite the machine. It is a 5 string neck-through Custom Deluxe Progress Series III. It will be 20 years old in a month from today. The clarity and evenness of response from the very bottom to the very top is really something to behold. I have been through WAY too many basses (but it was a lot of fun) and this is as good as the "best" it not better than all of them - but then subjectivity does come in at this level. There really is not much I have not tried and this is RIGHT up there. If it was built in the US then we would be laying eggs with excitment about them. The craftsmanship is all that and more. The marriage of pickups and preamp is beautifully balanced - it is whisper quiet and the shielding is bomb proof. The B string is so organically part of the instrument that it is adictive. I have has some great B strings (see the start of this paragraph) so am qualified to comment. The voicing is such that I can wallow around at the bottom for veses and verses and it does not sound remotely "too much" or out of place. If you ever get the chance then do not hesitate. What a machine it is.

That's exactly what the wife said when we ran over a giraffe at Longleat 😆

Over the last, say, 5 years I've been gigging less and less (used to make a -frugal- living out of music some 15 years ago). So I've progressively switched my attention to my bass stable (that at one point would consist of a dozen basses) and how to have a "reduced" one. So I've spent these last 5-6 years selling and trading some stuff (hadn't moved away from my Stingrays and Fernandes Gravitys for the previous decade), been thru' Maruszczyk, more EBMMs, Yamahas, Ibanezes, Schecter, Warwick, even some (cheap) DIY adventures. I was aiming at 5 basses, ended up being 6 because I changed my mind about a real chamaeleonic bass I was about to let go (Schecter CV-5), I've got a rented place where me and my musical partner for over a decade now have built our own studio, so thought it might be useful to keep (and really wouldn't sell for that much money). I'm pretty stupid, but not too stoooooopid to say I'm rehabilitated from GAS in any way (I'm just eyeing an Epi EB-0, need to take care of the short scale dept). But still, for the first time in 30+ years, I have a diverse enough bunch (at least for my needs, still lying as I really DON'T NEED 6 axes, few people do really). Must say I'm not "avant garde" at all, I'm in fact sorta' "rustic" when it comes to "modern" bass tones. I love me a good bass tone, no matter the bass, but I find many attempts real generic sounding, thus not interested. If it doesn't sound in the ballpark of traditional/"established" timbres (most of my bass playing has been on Musicmen, so that, P, J, RIC, EB-0, etc.) or has a marked personality of its own in some way (i.e. WAL) I just end up not getting it, paradoxically "getting old" easily on me. My fault, definitely. So, I wanted to make a video of each of them and finally did so over the last couple weeks. Tried to be as creative and diverse as I could about covered songs (there were no previous bass covers for 4 of these, so 66% achieved). One of them is from a band I sometimes do sub gigs with and another one is from my band (Bitter Mambo, and yes, I'm the one singing there, my condolences). Here's the playlist with: 1997 Stingray5 with Magma Ultra Flat flatwound strings 2011 Warwick (Korean) ProSeries Star Bass 5, strung with Warwick Red Label NICKEL roundwounds My rat rod DIY J (parts from a "donor" bass -38€ used, neck&body unusable- and the cheapest body& neck y could get from AliExpress -add 51€-), also on Warwick Red Label NICKEL roundwounds Schecter CV-5 (poor man's Roscoe Beck V -and not just for metal-), same Warwick Red Label NICKEL roundwounds My DIY P/J fretless 5er (originally a Harley Benton P style kit, highly modified), strung with LaBella LTF flats 2003 Stingray5, and yes strung with Warwick Red Label NICKEL roundwounds (best bang for the buck nickel strings around)

So the gold hardware came today. Loving the look compared to the previous Chrome that the bass came with

I decided to keep the maple fretboard but the neck has been painted Satin Black and its going to have block inlays aswell Next job is the control cavity........ 👍🏻

pedalboard version #$%^%$## Had a big reshuffle as I needed to raise money,so got rid of a few expensive pedals, but bought a few new ones 😂 Classic 2 pedalboard version 2 Custom Pedal boards mini patch bay - got fed up with plugging leads into various points,so now input/output conveniently in one place. SEND goes Into- Cali76 CB - I've tried most of them and love this for versatility while still being intuitive to use. It has fantastic natural tone,which just makes you sound better This then goes into the main input of a Boss LS2,so all channels are massaged by the Cali76. Ls2 Loop A Cog T70 triple Octave - 3 channel octaves with its own loop. Two separate T65 octaves which ive set 1 for a clean smooth octave and another for a synthy octave up sound, utilising the filters (usually with the Red Ripper engaged, so the B channel is more of a synthy deep distortion). It has a third "sub" channel which has no clean just octave. The filters can get this fairly close to the OC2 sound. The loop on this enables "parallel" octave so any effects used have the octave clean underneath, in this loop I have Tech 21 Red Ripper -very dynamic and synthy fuzz/distortion. Has as 3 band EQ and can cop muff fuzz sounds for creamy rock tones as well as the quasi envelope Filtered synth fuzz. Ls2 Loop B - Standalone effects Zvex Mastatron - A variant of the mighty Wooly mammoth! Has an input impedance control so it works great with active basses. The benchmark for synth fuzz. Has a variable subs control so it sounds huge and deep. Source Audio C4 Synth - Absolutely fantastic synth pedal that can do so much more!! A fully fledged Eurorack in a pedal. It can also cover filter/octave/chorus/phaser/tremolo. I thought I'd be happy with the standard 6 presets, but this has so many great presets it's impossible to pick 6 so I bought Disaster Area DMC.Micro Midi controller- so I can now access 128 presets as well as Expression control. MXR Bass Chorus Deluxe - fantastic warm chorus/Flanger. I have it set to affect only the high end,so subtle but a lovely sound. I particularly love the Flanger setting. EBS Dphaser - very funky and versatile phaser with loads of control and various stages (switchable inside) 3 modes 4/6 stage, 8/10 stage and 15 stage (this sounds very flange like) Hotone Krush - I keep buying expensive bit crush/sample rate reducer s and only use it for a bit of sample rate reduction to use with s parallel octave. This does the job and is tiny 😁 These two banks of effects can be run parallel via the LS2 for more tonal options. The LS2 main channel goes straight to Tech 21 VTBASS DI - industry standard Ampeg simulator capable of clean 3 band preamp or smooth overdrive to full on distortion. Great DI and used for a slightly dirty preamp tone or a stompable overdrive depending on the gig. Then back to the Mini patch bay, for the most part my sound is the Cali76 into the VTDI Backside shot! Not as neat as some on here. I don't know how they do it 😂

Thanks again as always guys, really glad you're enjoying the thread! @Kiwi Im hoping that the hollow areas inside the neck will contribute to a nice low weight and good feel. the rods in the neck aren't solid carbon, meaning that a fair amount of space inside the neck profile is hollow space. youre right im sure getting it right is trial and error, but thats what this bass is, all experiemnts! as for the filter sweep range, i think the balance really is going to be getting the range without the controls becoming over sensitive. you8r point about the 250 hz low end i think is pretty much spot on. that experimental board i showed a couple pages back let me try a bunch of different sweeps, and i learned 2 really key points: 1. the low end being too low wastes a huge amount of the pot travel. with the low end down around 100hz about 1/4 of the whole pot turn makes almost no difference to the sound without boosting the resonant peak to ridiculous levels (18+ db), which, as @Hellzero pointed out, at that low in the frequency range isnt very useful 2. the top end of the sweep being too high means that diling in midrange-boosty sounds is really tricky, as a tiny amount of pot travel results in a huge difference in the tone. im sure there are people for whom this would be ideal, but for me its a bit too tricky to dial sounds in accurately when working with 2 seperate pickups and preamps. Thanks for the heads up on the fret noise! alongside this setup i was doing some work on a multi-filter (low pass, band pass and high pass filter modes) with a pick attack, and i was surprised how low in the frequency range the boost needed to be to get the growly pick attack noises that still sound natural. Back at the workbench- ive started work on the headstock (finally!) the headstock is going to be farily simple in terms of its look, but its a look im absolutely in love with. the Bolin steinberger bass headstock is my personal favorite of almost any bass, and the relatively low break angle of the strings means that it works well for tuning stability using the bigsby the first step was trimming the back of the headstock flat, and then planing it ready to accept a redwood cap. on the back i want the walnut/purple rope to run all the way to the top of the headstock, with redwood either side, and then a simple redwood face on the front. I picked a nice piece of my redwood offcuts to make the front and rear faces out of. on the headstock i want the grain running vertical up and down, with the ripple running straight across. The rope patteren actually extends up into where the rear cap will be glued in place, but im hoping to create a nice carve in the back of the headstock so that the pattern matches up perfectly at the top. this will involve a lot of carving, but so far ive enjoyed all of the carving so a little more is no bother! on the front, i also needed to add in the small wooden blocks in the gap between the rosewood that makes up the sides of the neck. this is the point of no return for adding extra stiffening to the neck. up until this point the circular holes in the carbon rods were exposed, and wouldve let me run additional cabon down through the neck and set them in place with epoxy to increase the stiffness. i even went so far as to buy some solid 8mm carbon rods, and som 8mm cabon tubes with a 2mm wall thickness, but ive decided not to add them. this neck with the ebony fretboard in place is now noticeably stiffer than the hard maple neck i used on the last build, and so theres no need to just add extra carbon for carbon's sake the first piece has a hole drilled through to allow access to the truss rod nut. most of this will be carved away: this piece and another block are glued in place and planed flat. this picture was taken for reference so that when i cut the central hole there would be a good reference picture for me to use. and then the facing is glued in place (with 2 layers of black and white veneer to demark it from the rosewood) and then the rear stripe is once again cut and planed nice and flat The first step after this was to start the archeological dig to expose the rope pattern again ive got a good idea how i want the rear carve here to look once its finished. the thickness of the neck and headstock at this point, along with the fact that the carbon extends about an inch beyond the end of the pattern into the headstock means that this area should be plenty stiff and strong regardless of its final shape! my first cut through the headstock was a very conservative one. you can see here how the front cap will need to be cut away beyond the nut. the face is pretty mcuh flush with the top of the fretboard, which is a little different to the steinbereger ones, but i think it'll add a really nice smoothness to the overall shape, as well as meaning the headstock won't appear overly thick when seen from the side here you can see the carving shape im going for in the back, the walnut and purple stripe will be a sharp peak in the middle, with smooth curves out to the sides. i want the stripe to really look like a rope with the the rope pattern wrapping around it. a bit artsy fartsy i know, but just a little touch that adds a bit more interest to the transition where there would normally be a volute. this is where it ended up: im pleased with this overall, the colour difference between the rosewood and redwood should add to the look here once finish is applied round the front i rounded it over quite a lot, giving it a nice soft shape. you can see the hole for the truss rod here, as well as the white and black veneers that sit between the redwood and rosewood. this need quite a lot more smoothing and the tuner holes drilling an d things, but having removed nearly 3/4 of the length of the rosewood block with the hole, a normal allen key fits in there and is able to do about a 1/4 turn at a time on the truss rod. i think its subtle enough and in a dark enough wood that a cover won't really be necessary, result! now we're getting towards the routing of the body cavities for the pickups and controls, and then onto final sanding and shaping! the end is slowly approaching!!

When I was a lad I KNEW that unless you were playing in Weather Report, Lizzy, Floyd or Purple then .......... yeah.......... not really worth the effort. I knew for a fact that Madness were a bunch of clueless chancers who were clearly just there for the Craic. As I have realised in many aspects of my life, I was wrong. What did I know? Not enough, clearly. I have even read Suggs's autobiogrpahy and it was all "yeah, the lads were learning how to play as we went, we made it all up etc etc". That is clealry a narrative and not the truth. What there is, is a set of really well crafted songs with solid playing and good production values. There must be tons of good stuff I have missed over the years.

But the seller doesn't know who autographed it https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Autographed-2005-Squier-Affinity-precision-Bass-Guitar-Make-Offer/363328100133 I like the idea of the bass having a cereal number - perhaps it was signed by Tony the Tiger?

I vote nothing at all because it helps the 'wood' breathe 🙂 🙂

l change em when i change my flats...

Well... Hopefully Itll take some planning but the process of building this one has given me plenty of ideas on how to.improve next time around. That was kind of the point really, this is the prototype, the future ones will be an improvement. Ive learned a lot and need to reflect on a lot of it... But cometh the hour...

@Beedster's dog doesn't like slap bass either.

No

+1. There's a big misunderstanding that tweeters are only for tap and slap. Without them, there's a lot of harmonic content being lost!

Waiting on the satin lacquer ! In the meantime I started on a fretted version. This will be walnut/ash/walnut with Birdseye fingerboard. Keep on the lookout for a new thread.

Agreed! This is a very friendly and polite forum. I've been a member since the previous 2 versions, so almost 20 years? I've given stuff away for free and been touched by receiving a Stingray scratchplate free (MB1) and a set of strings free (Chiliwailer). It's a great place. I've made myself unpopular with my anti-lockdown views, but even then, the exchanges have been polite. Long live basschat. Frank.

It's been a long journey BassChat Then BassChat Now

I've read about one other on the Internet - I think they replaced the bass as it was brand new (had a small hole appear in the body). No wonder they stopped using ash and will definitely keep an eye on my recent ones.

It's certainly one of the least pleasing things you can do to a bass to make it make a noise as far as I'm concerned.

-

For quite some time my GAS list has only had two items on it, both of which are totally unattainable for me at the moment anyway. I don’t see that changing unless I manage to find a ‘65 Jazz or Wal 5-string for £150.

I've cracked . . New bass arriving tomorrow 😔.

This is one of my first posts on here and just wanted to preface it with a thanks for all the info on here. It’s a great forum really. My question is - I have a weekly community radio show about music and am thinking of doing a special on essential bass players and their tracks (or track) that really shows off their style and talent most? All very subjective of course but very interested to hear who people would suggest. If it’s been asked before my apologies!

It is the actual bass line that is iconic and as the op already stated, he's not even looking to replicate particularly "that" sound. I agree that certainly in this case, any number of vst synths could provide what the op is looking to achieve. The original song is *not* massively bass heavy, and as I already stated above, if this is to form part of a band project, you most definitely don't want to be wrecking a mix with speaker blowing levels of low end anyway.

Good point, Owen. I’ve always said that expressing a preference means you miss things too.

IMO a great sounding bass isn't much use if it doesn't feel good to play. I know this is a first world issue, but as I said before, my preference is to buy great sounding basses that are of a similar spec, rather than having to work at changing my playing style for every bass. If anyone wants to call that a lazy attitude, then I'm happy to agree with them. I'm mostly attracted to Fender style instruments, so I really don't have to look too far for excellent basses that fit my preferences.

Its just you.

If only Fender had released a hollow bodied bass in the past.... #FenderHMT

Thank you yes! Click on my signature link!

All done! Check out the edit on my post. mine isn't anywhere as neat as yours,Especially as I use pre existing patch cables (struggled with this and had to buy more) and daisy chain quite a few. Careful Moley6knipe you're starting a pedalboard "upskirting" trend 🤣

Once we get more BCers posting vids of themselves lip-synching to Taylor Swift songs, BC could almost be as good as Tik Tok

Definite thumbs up for the mxr bass chorus deluxe. I can’t see mine being displaced from my main board any time soon.

Pains taking doesn't do the level of time and hand work you're putting in justice. Looking forward to seeing the the next update.