Leaderboard

It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets three chords again.

Carol Kaye... Take this opportunity to post something from her huge discography..

Been looking for a nice Stingray for a while but was unsure which colour to go for. As a Runrig fan I noticed Rory MacDonald plays a Translucent Teal one so have been looking for one in that colour as it looks great. Finally found one this week in great condition and had it delivered today. Got it from Classic & Cool Guitars, great service. And it looks as good as I was expecting. Pain to photograph to show the actual colour though.

Ok, here we go. My list is quite short despite playing bass for close on 40 years. 1974 Fender Precision, natural. 1st bass. Bought in 1983 from a music shop in Charing Cross Glasgow. Neck like a banana. Sold it after 6 months for a 1982 JV Precision '57 from CC Music Glasgow. Great bass but wanted 2 pick up, so sold it after a year for a 1982 JV Jazz, CC Music again. Painted it yellow, then blue, defret byJimmy Moon, EMGs. Sold on ebay 25 years later. Was my only bass until 1989 when I bought a 1987 Stingray 3EQ from Sound Control Glasgow. Replaced neck with a Status graphite. Didn't like it, went back to original neck. 1990 Epihone Semi acoustic. Moved to Paris. Thought would be there for 6 or so months [was actually 10 years]. Bought it from a Paris music store. Gave it away. 1978 Stingray. Always wanted a pre-eb stingray. Bought a great one on ebay in 2003 which I sold to a basschatter in 2015. Great bass but preferred the contours and the cutting sound of the 3EQ which was 1 kilo lighter plus I had moved to 5 string. 1990s Ken Smith Burner 5. Bought here on Basschat. 16mm spacing a no go, so sold it for a 1993 Tobias Killer B. Bought on Basschat. Amazing sound and neck. Crap balance and painful truss rod adjustment. Sold it for a 2000 Stingray 5. Bought 2013 on ebay. Still have it. Incredibly light. Will get a Status fretless neck for this in a few months. Then went the boutique route with funds from the 1978 Stingray sale to buy 1991 Ken Smith BT6. Ebay bargain. Was after a 5 string but hard to find so bought this instead. Looks great, sounds even better. But the heaviest bass I have ever had and don't need 6 strings. Not sure I will keep it. Also found out the circuit has been replaced with a Warwick one but sourced an original from Ken Smith himself this January. 1990s Alembic Essence 5. Neck heavy and small body don't mix. Sold to a basschatter. 1990 Ken Smith BT5. Bought from a basschatter. Don't use it as much as I should. Very light. Amazing condition compared to the BT6.

All this talk of Davie. If Davie was a smoking hot girl, would all these white middle aged derogatory comments be so present in conversations? You know as well as I do, it would all be a load of heart eyes emoji, marry me comments and rubbish like that. I think people have a problem with Davie because he is a better player than them, makes a mint doing something that looks like fun and isn't classed as a "proper job" - and has a certain level of celeb about him. I say fair play to him, he found an avenue for his skills and exploited it. Anybody who says that they wouldn't want to have all the musicality and technique is either in denial or just an outright liar. Put Davie on a gig and he would smash it - without having to slap a note. The slap thing, it's a catchphrase and a gimmick. And catchphrases sell merchandise. He's got the thing completely sewn up. Me? Slap? Yeah, I can do it - and do it well. Do I do it a lot? Not really - because most of the music that I play doesn't tend to require it. Do I like slap? Well, the answer to that is yes and no. It depends upon the song. I tend to gravitate towards songs rather than techniques. It's like all these things, technique is largely about building up muscle memory. Put in the hours doing it, the chances are, you'll be able to do it. A lot of people won't put the hours in though.

Recently found this amazing performance on YouTube. Joni Mitchell, who’s guitar work is pretty good, with Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius and Michael Brecker on sax thrown in for good measure. Jaco has a solo spot at around 24, but it’s his accompanying playing that I think is so good. He seems to be using a fretted jazz on track 1 before switching to the more familiar fretless. Enjoy.

I have just finished this one, it’s mine for a change. It’s an American Ash body with a @KiOgon loom and a Seymour Duncan quarter pounder pickup. In time I will probably change the neck but it will do for the moment. It’s finished in Aged Olympic White nitrocellulose and looks pretty good I think. I’m happy anyway Jon

More Than A Filling - Boston

I've been thinking about doing a single cut bolt on neck since seeing @Andyjr1515 build Heres what I've come up with so far....... Not sure on the body wood yet I really want to do a Black Limba top but we'll have to see if funds will permit me......... 👍🏻

Its voting time again and we have a great entry this month , 12 tunes to savour and regurgitate until the flavour of your favourite 3 just smacks you in the voting finger, and you subsequently cross up to 3 boxes BC Added Value a couple of notes are included to help shine a light on the entrants thinking when writing the tunes , deep dude, deep ! Based on the picture chosen by @Dad3353 who was last months winner. enjoy these voting ends on midnight 31st of March , good luck all 1 @Dad3353 I wanted a sort of 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' idea behind a Viennese waltz, to build up some suspense, without going too far overboard. I ended up with a simple enough theme, slightly developed, leading to the inevitable outcome seen in the picture. It was all going so well until... 2 @xgsjx So the quad biker is the lady singing the song. She jumps from the top of the hill & feels on top of the world. Hears a clink & feels like a drop-in. 3 @Nicko The inspiration for this is fairly straightforward - live for the moment and wait for it all to go wrong. I started with the lyrics and they more or less dictated an 80s AC/DC style song. Unfortunately I can't sing like Brian and I can't play like Angus but in parts it's what I wanted. 4 @Leonard Smalls The fact that the wheels have fallen off struck me as an exhortation to take to 2 wheels. Which for me means riding about on sweeping sunny roads on a 1000cc classic Italian Vtwin, so we have a lazy, not rushed beat, with a faint air of mild threat (as the film classification board would say) caused by the racket, the leather and the armadillo in the trousers. 5 @Lurksalot This one seems fairly self explanatory with the title, but the lyric, which while describing the event pictured, can also relate to my latest apprentice who has found his wings after 5 years, and has flown the nest as it were, ah well, just gotta break in a new one I guess 6 @Nail Soup The phrase "two wheels better" came to mind, in my case meaning bicycle rather than motorbike. The lyrics evolved to be from a female protagonist to subvert the old trope of a woman being interested in someone with a flash car. The Orwellian origin of the phrase led me toward the politically charged musical area of post-punk a la Gang of Four, Au Pairs etc. Not sure if I got there! 7 @skankdelvar It's 1957 again 8 @Doctor J The pic made me think of the classic TV show Kick Start and, from there, the other great theme tunes of youth TV programming from my childhood. I've gone for a TV theme tune of sorts. This is the show where things go wrong, though, so any chord progressions and melody must be wrong too. Curse my childless loins for not having actual children to exploit for vocals, so the tightest pants available were donned. I do apologise 9 @adamg67 I just looked at the pic and played what I saw, chanelling the Datsuns (the band, I mean) to get there: Adrenalin, speed, everything blasting along full throttle until... mechanical failure. 10 @MoonBassAlpha I started out under the influence of the Sneaky Little Devil type slow grooves, toyed briefly with cod-reggae and ended up here. Not sure where here is, there aren't any signs and I arrived here very quickly! 11 @SH73 Been a long time 12 @upside downer A simple tune with some hackneyed blues lyrics about purchasing a quad bike from a Mr. Osbourne of Aston, Birmingham.

I hate frantic neo-classical guitar solo's in the vein of Yngwie Malmsteen - the type of playing where the point seems to be to fit in as many notes in a bar as possible. Drumming wise again pretty much as with slap, a nice bit of tasteful double kick has its place - but when it gets to the point of silly-beats-per-minute Im turned off. Also with vocals. Mariah Carey and Whitney houston left me cold with the frantic running up and down the scales where a simple note would have sufficed.

Can't agree at all with @Nail Soup @PaulWarning @neilp or @TheLowDown, but hey - that's the joy of good, honest debate here on Basschat... 😁 Only my opinion of course, but Eleanor Rigby (amongst many of McCartney's other songs) is a work of absolute genius. No doubting the stunning foresight and incredible contribution of George Martin of course, and the very different, complimentary genius of John Lennon, but McCartney's place as one of the very, very best songwriters of the 20th century, is absolutely assured. In addition, his bass playing contribution is right up there too and as if that isn't enough, in 2010, he was ranked No. 11 on the Rolling Stone Magazine '100 Greatest Singers of All Time'.

Don't feed the troll.

I was quite nervous about the wood staining bit. I watched the videos and it looked too easy, people said it was easy... But people say fitting a bathroom is just grown ups lego, and my bathroom took a highly skilled bathroom fitter a whole week and he still managed to get water p!ssing through my kitchen ceiling. I digress. Wood staining, so far, two coats in, seems alright. It's a bit pink, not cherry red, but I've only done two coats. I haven't got all the woodgrain stained but I quite like it so far. I'm thinking it may be four coats then a few coats of the finish...

Cant say rock is my thang, but i have been known to put my foot down when this starts playing. Fab stuff

As already posted, I'm in danger of turning into a Sandberg fan-boy. Must say I don't find their website too easy to navigate though. As far as I can see (which isn't very far nowadays), no mention anywhere of a short-scale bass, even though I've got one!! A strange omission as it's one of the best shorties I've ever played. A super-light cedar-bodied s-s would be something. You'd have to hold on tight at outdoor gigs to stop it blowing away.

This line of thought - you don't like slap because you can't do it - is just a little bit silly lads, let's be honest. You wouldn't say "You don't like technical death metal only because you can't play it" out loud and expect it to be taken seriously, so let's accept that people have different tastes and move on. Statistically, yes, someone who doesn't like slap bass is less likely to be proficient at it you'd have to think that it's quite likely, probable even, that they haven't spent time practising the technique as it's something which doesn't have a home on the palette of musical things which give them pleasure. How many slap fiends spend time getting their Atheist or Obscura chops together in order to find out they actually don't like it once they master it? Not many, I will wager. Playing an instrument is supposed to be something you enjoy, no? It's interesting to see other techniques on guitar and drums mentioned. Just like slapping on bass, guitar shredding and double bass drumming have their time and place and I hope we'd all agree it's not all the time and everywhere. Also, like slap bass, they're frequently the party-piece techniques rolled out when someone wants to show off their chops rather than tastefully play a piece of music. A very brief scan of Youtube will back this up. As a result, it's easy to understand why people take a dislike to them as they frequently soil an otherwise pleasant listening experience. In the right context, however, they can have a very powerful impact but it has got to be musical, first, and technical, second. You see, slap isn't the problem, it's the many bassists without the good sense to employ it tastefully 😁

The big problem with slap bass is that people got too good at it. Back in the 70s old school slap ( which was actually new school at the time) sounded great on a lot of records. But as time went on slapping developed to the extent that it lost a lot of its charm . Victor Wooten can slap like a demon, but for my taste at least, his playing lacks the magic and distinctive character of Larry Graham or Chuck Rainey and the best slap players from that earlier era.

And another one. Struggled a bit this month to get a handle on it so it's a one instrument and vox combo with a tiny dash of effects tomfoolery. Blurb for voting thread/ A simple tune with some hackneyed blues lyrics about purchasing a quad bike from a Mr. Osbourne of Aston, Birmingham. Recorded using NCH Wavepad and Audacity, a four string cigar box guitar in G, a Danelectro Pastrami Overdrive and a Roland cube utilising a little bit of echo and reverb. Lyrics here.

Fancied one of these for ages. The prices on eBay are mental, I always bid to about £300-£350 but always get a shock that they hit £500 ish and I don’t play enough guitar for that. Anyhow. Facebook Marketplace delivered the goods today. 2.7 miles from home. Literally at the end of a main road near me. Needs new strings. And a clean. And a setup. Pulled all of the necessary tools and stuff out to do this. SOMEONE has tidied away the d’addario 10’s I had lying around. excellent. ”I might’ve binned them” - Mrs T excellent. but...it’s here.

You may not have the source to back it up but you are absolutely correct. The way the timber was allowed to grow, stored and worked makes a huge difference to the end product. Be it a bass, dining table or Timber frame house. Each is selected for purpose and fit for the job. Old wood, allowed to grow properly without the ‘need to harvest to make money’ is a different beast to the new crap available now ( look at the growth rings) I have lots of ‘source info’ for this. It’s my job.

Hi BC'ers! I've been out of the bass loop for around 18 months. I essentially grew tired of my own playing, the band I was in, just everything, really.....I really needed a break from it, so sold pretty much all my gear through the site here. No regrets. I've kept a look in occasionally, but obviously with COVID, all I've been doing is working 6 days a week, with no real interest in the bass world. However, of late, I've begun to look here on a daily basis.....browsing Bass Direct.....just getting a bit of a bug to play again. I'd done about 25-odd years before I stopped. An old drumming pal contacted me about some possible recording. Spotted a couple of items, the GAS has kicked in a little - I'd really like to almost start over, and really look at scales, technique, etc., which I never really bothered with before. Change my tone. My only problem that's holding me back is my own reservation - ie, the chances of playing out again post-COVID. Opportunities around here were drying up long before I stopped (part of my reason), and I couldn't face being just a home player. I've no interest in playing covers in pubs, either (done that xxxx times over). Not making this easy, am I?! Originals I love doing. Clearly, getting back in takes some cash, fine, but I'd want a decent bass - can't face anything less, as I'd only be selling it to upgrade weeks later! Apologies for the rambling post....I guess I'm just sounding out loud for some validation, and some ideas of what's possible looking forward. I feel I'm ready to start over, just a little hesitant that I'll end up back where I was before.

I'm basically a one bass kind of guy, and even if I own a couple now I almost exclusively just play one of them, here's my relatively modest list though, chronologically listed from my very first bass acquired somewhere around the mid 90's all up till currently 2021 (the ones that I don't own any longer in [Red Text]) : - Aria Pro II Laser Electric Classic - My first bass ever, 34" regular scale length, that I got used around the mid 90's, and which served me about 10 years going forward, except for a brief love affair with a Rickenbacker 4003, which I ended up hating shortly after, one of the last models made in Japan at the legendary Matsumoku factory, before they moved their production to Korea, still own it. - Rickenbacker 4003 - Bought at a whim for it's great looks at a point where I had that kind of money to spend, turned out that I hated how it felt in my hands, and it was exiled to a case under the sofa at the rehearsal place the band I played in at that time had, until eventually it got stolen, don't miss it one bit but for the resale money lost. - Jerry Jones Longhorn - My first short scale bass, which from that moment on became my preferred bass scale length, a high end high quality "butique" version of the Danelectro of the same name, played and sounded no short of amazing, and I loved it, though still I was stupid enough to sell it at some point, which I regret deeply to this day. - Westone Violin/Beatles Bass clone - Which I never really liked, neither the feel or tone, and quickly passed on. - Dan Armstrong Plexi Bass - Again a short affair, loved the look, hated how it felt and sounded, even with the two different flavor, easy swap, slide in pickups it came with, so ended up selling it relatively shortly after I had first acquired it. - 28 5/8" scale 4 string bass, build from Warmoth baritone parts - Sounded amazing with a Seymour Duncan Rickenbacker Neck humbucker pickup in the neck position and a Seymour Duncan Strat guitar Hot Rails humbucker in the bridge position, regret very much selling it to this day. - Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro Bass - My main, just 28,6" scale, bass for the last 10 years, from I got it in beginning of April 2011 and up till this day end of March 2021, which I love and find absolutely perfect for me, plays amazing, had perfect enough fretwork from stock to get the action exactly as low as I prefer it, and the most stable neck I ever had on any bass or guitar, it sounded amazing as well after I swapped out the cheap, but admittedly still pretty decent, stock pickups with a P/J set of EMG Geezer Butler pickups, I recently successfully transplanted it's amazing neck to a GSRM20B Mikro Bass body in Weathered Black finish (mahogany like the original body, but with a super thin finish that shows the grains of the wood, rather than the insanely thick poly finish of the original, also much lighter, more resonant, and with a much tighter neck pocket, in fact super tight, just exactly enough for the neck heel to fit in it), and currently I have just the EMG Geezer Butler P pickup installed, wired directly to the output jack socket. - Ibanez GSRM20B Mikro Bass - Had horrible unplayable fretwork, buzzing all over even at ridiculously high unplayable string action, but still didn't want to go through the trouble of returning it, but after just having laid in a corner unused for a couple of years, I eventually transplanted the amazing GSRM20 Mikro Bass neck from my main Mikro Bass to the beautifully Weathered Black finish and extraordinarily light weight mahogany body of this bass, which is more resonant and with a super tight neck pocket, compared to the original thick poly finish heavy mahogany body of my first Mikro Bass. - Egmond late 60's short scale bass - Was stupid enough to buy this used with no chance of trying it out or inspecting it first, and as it turned out it had newer, even from brand new, been an even just remotely decent instrument, made of the worst garbage quality multi laminated plywood equipped with horrible sounding pickups, and in it's current state frankly being the worst piece of crap firewood ever, totally unplayable with a stuck trussrod and a totally banana bend huge baseball neck. - Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro Bass - 5 string Mikro Bass, again just 28,6" scale, with an, of this kind of price tag, and even for pretty much any mass production, bass, unbelievably great fretwork, could get the action insanely low if I wanted to without any fret buzz whatsoever, literally absolutely dead on perfect fretwork, plays great too, however the 2 J pickups suck big time and a couple of the nut slots are cut too deep as well, so not getting any play before I have had the pickups and nut replaced (pondering on eventually having the 2 J pickup cavities routed out to fit 2 soapbar sized pickups and string it to be tuned it E to C). - Ibanez Ibanez SR306EB - A very short love affair, looked stunning and sounded great, I really wanted to love it but just couldn't get used to the full 34" scale, after almost exclusively having played short scale basses for so many years, and even less to it's wide 6 string fretboard, so had to let go of it and return it within the 30 days full refund return guarantee it was bought under.

People make stringed instruments out of plastic, resin, even concrete and they all sound good. People completely overstate the importance of body material on electric instruments.

Hopefully it will look good! I'm gonna try and put a MM in a ramp style pickup cover but I'm hoping to cut the square out of the top and then use it as the top of the pickup/ramp cover so the grain all matches bit like this..... 👍🏻

Plugging in has changed my tone immeasurably. I was amazed at the difference!

Hey listen if you aren’t interested in a thread there’s no need to comment! 😂 (I’ll show myself out)

You knew it was comning, didn't you? Tubular Bells Part Two – Mike Oldfield – Bilbo's Bass Bites

Oh dear, I recognise far too many of them for my own good! 😱😂😂

No - not quite. The strings pull the neck into a bow and arrow kind of bow - and the trussrod's job is to counteract that by trying to pull it into a backbow. If the two tensions balance, then the neck ends up straight. So if the truss rod has been left in its tightened state, but the strings are left slack, then the neck will indeed take on a back bow. Left too long like that and the back bow sort of sets into the wood. So if @Geddys nose does the opposite - leaving the trussrod loose but tightening the strings, then the strings will pull the neck into a bow and arrow forward bow. The plan is, if he leaves it like that for a while, then the back bow set into the wood will be corrected and the neck will be straightish when neither the truss rod nor the strings are tightened. That's the hope, anyway

The voting page is up guys , its a great listen through again

Obviously, anything by Motörhead - but also....

While we're with the joke, I'll add in this, from their second epon album, released in 2003. It's a belter.

"The renowned German violin virtuoso, Christian Tetzlaff, had this to say in an article from the New York Times (April 28, 2000) written by Anthony Tommasini: Last year, Mr. Tetzlaff did something that will either horrify or inspire other violinists: he traded in the Stradivarius he had on loan, valued at $2 million, for a new violin built by Peter Greiner, a German maker his own age, which cost him about $17,000. What possessed him? “The new violin is really terrific, with a full beautiful sound that is still able to fight the orchestras,” he said. “The Strad I had couldn’t.” Unlike many violinists, Mr. Tetzlaff believes that some of the qualities of the renowned instruments made by Stradivari and Guarneri are mythological. “There are big differences between Strads, as big as between the colors red and blue,” he said. “There are many Strads that are not really that good-sounding.” But when violinists touch them, he explained, charmed by the mystique, they see the disadvantages as characteristics for which they must simply learn to compensate. “But I have an instrument that I feel has no disadvantages,” he said. “When I first tried it out in Toronto, I told nobody about it. Everyone assumed it was my Strad.” Young violinists, who have been programmed to believe that the only fine violins are old, rare and Italian, should take heart. “There is no doubt about the quality of a good number of incredible Strads,” he said. “But what’s strange is that many people look for Italian instruments of doubtful quality in the range of one or two hundred thousand dollars, which is a lot of money and very little value.”" (I remembered this from long ago because CT is my favourite violinist, and a very well-rounded musician - he doesn't just play the big romantic concertos)

My bass players who changed the world, rather than just great players, list is a short one, Paul McCartney, James Jamerson and Larry Graham.

Yes it is, as long as the intonation is set correctly

As I've said I'm a bit taken aback by the level of anti-slap here on BC. I find it dymanic and exciting. I'm firstly a drummer and love the double kick drum sound you hear in a lot of metal tunes yet my own playing owes more to the funk styles of Zigaboo Modeliste, Mike Clarke and Bernard Purdie.

If I need to put myself in the right frame of mind for a meeting or similar at work, I usually reach for one of these three They gee me up into, normally, a better mood

The most recorded studio artist ever with more than 10.000 titles ! Happy birthday !

I remember having a Barron Knights skit of Boney M's "Rivers of Babylon" on 7" single when I was a kid. I seem to remember the lyrics started off: There's a dentist in Birmingham He fixed my crown And as I slept He filled my mouth with iron......

I think he’s a great bassist, when you think about what the bass did up until The Beatles, his melodic playing coupled with the fact that he was often singing while playing those melodic lines, well that to me is good playing.