Leaderboard

Turns out this bass building lark is very addictive isn't it? I've made a few basses (8!!) since I built my first one last year, mostly trial and error builds trying different scales, profiles, pup position, wood finishes etc, I've held off doing diaries however as they were never going to be things hung on the wall. This build however could be interesting and I want it for myself to play so I thought I'd share it's progress as I do it; 30" Scale 6 String 24 Frets Singlecut Neckthru Started with this block of Wenge, this will be my central section of the neckthru. I made a bass with part of this board and made the neck from a single piece of the timber, no laminations, mainly to see if it moved and bent under tension / environment and if it could keep straight, after a couple of months it hasn't shifted so I'm reasonably confident I can proceed with just a single piece, it had a truss rod and 2 carbon rods so I'll be doing the same on this. Here I've cut the neckthru out of the wenge block and paired up some European Ash for the wings. I really like the contrast of Wenge and Ash on some other builds I did, so again using it again here. I'm going to be making the bridge and nut from timber on this build and of course the knobs so I thought i'd start with the easiest bit first! They still need an ash dot inlaying in to them and a sleeve and grub screw installing... so plenty of opportunity to mess these up! I'll be doing the truss rod and carbon rod routing next! The journey begins!

I couldn't find a dedicated thread about this podcast already so thought I'd start one (someone's going to prove me wrong and link to one straight away now, aren't they?! 😁). I recently came across this when looking for something to listen to during my walk into work each morning. It's a really simple set-up - Guy and Gary talking to a huge number and variety of people they've worked with over the years (I think culled mostly from Mr Pratt's address book) about their experiences within the industry. The conversation is pretty unpretentious and pleasingly free flowing and they mostly do a great job of keeping out of the way and letting their guest do the talking. I've listened to about 8 or so of the 30+ podcasts available. Giles Martin was brilliant - insightful, enlightening and entertaining - as was Dave Crosby, to name just two. Very strongly recommended.

You could suggest she picks up one of your basses and learns to play too...

I've been able to find 4 string sets of Tapewounds but not 5 string sets. Really frustrating. I rang Dawn at Status and she was able to dig through some shelves and managed to find me a .40 and 2x .120s which I can use to make the full set with the existing sets of Status Tapewounds I bought a while back.. As always she was polite and really helpful. Many thanks, Dawn. FYI she has no sets, she has very few long scale (but not enough to make a full set) and a few medium scale (fine for 2+2 headstocks)

I don't believe we've met then, my name's James

Luke at his Hans he’s doing a Solo

Ha ha. So true. I once had to smuggle a copy of Bass Player magazine out of the newsagents hidden inside a copy of Razzle

Or if she has no musical or technical facility, she could become a singer.

I've played with the Tone Print editor for both the Sprectracomp and the Hyper Gravity and it's pretty much identical in terms of parameters, although I seem to the ink the SC had 48 different settings you can configure last time I looked, which admittedly was 2 or 3 years ago. My first reaction was bewilderment too but you've essentially got the same controls for each of the 3 bands - plus a couple of global parameters such as crossover points. If you have a little understanding of what each control does, your basic threshold, ratio, attack, release, knee then it soon becomes pretty intuitive to use and you can be creating your own sounds shortly after. For example, with my Hyper Gravity I set up a patch that was essentially a single band compressor, I set the low band to work as an adjustable high pass filter assigned to one of the physical controls and set the high band at a high frequency (<5KHz, IIRC) with a low ratio to work as subtle brightness boost on another of the physical controls. The mid band did the heavy lifting of the main, full band-ish compression. The patch resulted in being part compressor, part 3 band EQ. The other 2 physical controls were one adjusting the threshold of the mid band and a master volume which also brought in more clean signal as you boosted it. While dual and multi band compressors are technically 'better' for bass compression I do like the overt sound of single band bass compression, when done right I like the way that it clips the lows, especially when using a more immediate compressor type, FET designs being perfect for this type of thing. But you can do what you want with the TC pedals, everything from subtle and transparent to flat out squash. With the Tone Print app the world, as they say, is your lobster.

For the scarfe repair, we've decided to flaunt it! So the fill is epoxy mixed with ebony dust: @Fishman is going for playability rather than aesthetics and wants to go for a sanded neck silky feel rather than the flattering effect of a couple of coats of gloss (a little bit of gloss hides lots of things ). So the objective is a smooth-to-touch-and-no-sticky feel. This is relatively easy to achieve because the old Washburn finish is, of course, rock hard and you do not start exposing uncured nitro as you sand through the outer skin (unlike some other makes where is can still be like it years later mentioning no names but Gibson please note! ). The challenge will be more about getting the transition at the headstock and heel looking OK. After a scrape-flush of the epoxy, a progression of fine wet and dry, followed by progressively finer scotchbright has got me here so far: Playability-wise, objective already met - it feels great! But just to finish off I want to get the heel and headstock transitions looking intentional and bring out the colour of the original out a touch more. You see better what I mean in this shot here: So I will spend a bit of time tomorrow continuing the same treatment up to a masked line at the heel and headstock joint, and also run through a number of grades of micro-web which will bring the depth of colour of the neck itself out without loosing the satin feel.

Hi Folks.. Recently picked this beauty up!! A Vigier Passion 11 from early 1987..The Walnut body is truly stunning, In incredible condition for age. No major marks or dings. The neck is immaculate, preamp works just great..Very lucky to see the advert in gumtree! It had been used as Wall art for the last four years!! I have invested quite a lot of money and time in tracking down Vigier basses in the 12 years since owning my first one. An antique violin finish Passion custom 111, and it is over thirty years since first playing one in the Basscentre, Really!!🙈 Tempus Fugit Not every Vigier has worked out for me. I personally prefer the Passion Basses over the Arpege ones I have owned. Only played an Excess once, amazing necks on these. I can now say, having fortunately owned from a series 1 to a series lV Vigier bass. I am incredibly content.. All stunning basses! Though could not get my head around using a truss rod on a Vigier Arpege series 1 which I had recently, but quite possibly one of the best necks in bassdom!! A series IV Arpege four string, also stunning with an amazing Glokenklang preamp, but in my humble opinion didn't have the class of the neck through basses. So I am stopping buying or selling Vigiers from now on..Having GAS can be bad, but having Vigier GAS can be expensive!!! 🙈 The series 11 has a slightly bigger body size than the series 111 Weight much the same.The neck profile on my series 111 very very slightly thinner than the 11, but playability wise I can not choose one over the other..If you are quick on the button when one comes up, take the chance..I think you will incredibly happy..👍😃 Should we ever be able to travel again there are four passion 11 basses listed for sale in France on www.leboncoin.fr

That is absolutely brilliant!!!

Hi all...only arrived on planet Basschat last night. My mrs would like to know if there is a section here for bass widows...lol 🤣

Opinion is Opinion, fact is fact, by my reckoning @TheLowDown has stated opinion and not tried to push it as fact, so it's valid as their opinion even if I personally don't agree. Now let's all just agree that all 6 string bass players are incredibly handsome and excellent at all things in life and all 4 string players are terrible terrible people, surely that's a fact we can all agree on! 😜

Written by Greg Allman -

Only the ones who sleep indoors.

I’m back on the Linval Thompson again 😁 .Great Bassline

Strictly speaking this arrived yesterday, but I spent all day either in (virtual) meetings or annoying the neighbours with badly played Faith No More. So here it is. ACG TKO Classic - a non-standard model with a new finish Alan’s not done before - I think we can all agree he has done a bloody marvellous job. This was commissioned with a little inheritance I received following my final grandparent dying last year, and arrived two days after a good friend from Univeristy - who was a sometime-luthier - took his own life. He would have loved what Alan has created here and I will cherish it for both the memory of all my grandparents and Kieran. Not to mention cherish it because it is so damn good to look at and sounds exactly as I wanted - big, ballsy and huge but with a nice soft politeness if you wish. Limba body with an ash top, ash neck, rocklite board. 30.5” scale. Passive electronics volume/tone/pickup select including series and parallel options. Single coil in bridge, reverse P in neck. Immense. (Photos courtesy of @skelf)

I think I meet that criterion:

Is this not the guidance: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-safely-during-coronavirus-covid-19/restaurants-offering-takeaway-or-delivery#takeaways-4-5

My g/f may well get recruited as lighting operator!

I'm just bidding my time on this one - landlords have enough cr@p on their plates without being hassled by weekends warriors such as myself looking for gigs. Things will change but I'm in no rush to get out there from the word go

My mrs thinks my 3 basses, 3 guitars and drum kit is a lot. I invited her to look at pics of some BCers bass-only collections that run into multiple tens to see what 'a lot' actually looks like!😊

Why not just swap the 3 basses with Perspex bodied ones...?

No, but some of us have such massive bass collections that it will make her feel much better about your basses (presuming your collection is modest)

wash your mouth out! 😠 😜

-

The website just clocked 50.000 hits.

he would have been known by some already but after that track he just blew up big time. Fun/stupid story...I was out clubbing with some friends many moons ago, and Damien had a concert that weekend, so he dropped into the club with his peeps. So its late and we outside the club now jus' chillin' and Damien decides to leave and passes by us. My friend belts out 'Junior Gong!'. He proceeds to promptly drop his head, raise his fist and tell us the ubiquitous...'Blessssss...'.

Yeah definitely similar. That was also used earlier:

A little demo of the TKO - this is bridge pickup only, tone around 50%. All the burble

Where is the rest of the trumpet?

Benson & Hedges is better quality 😁

I just received my Warwick Gnome today. i bought it as a spare/rehearsal amp. My main amp is TCE BH550. The main criteria for my choice was that I wanted a small 200 watt (or thereabouts) head that could be put into the pocket of a gig bag etc, as a just in case for gigs. It also needed to be comparatively cheap. I considered the Trace Elliott Elf (too expensive and apparently has a noisy fan), the TCE BAM 200 (I already have a TCE amp) and the Gnome. I went for the Gnome because it is only £5 more than the BAM 200/and i have already given TCE a lot of my hard-earned over the years. Not the most informed decision but there was no chance of getting to do an A/B/C comparison. There are quite a few reviews online of the Elf and BAM 200 but I could only find one of the Gnome and that was released by Warwick themselves. I thought it might be useful to folks considering one to give my first impressions. The Gnome is available from the German box shifters for less than the two UK outlets I could find online: Andertons and Bass Direct but now we are out of the EU I suspect there would be duties to pay on an import. The unit I received from one of the two UK dealers turned out to be a European model and came with a two pin power cable, which was annoying. I have duly whinged to them and I hope they will be sending me a UK kettle lead. More importantly I have asked for reassurance that the manufacturer’s warranty would be honoured in the UK, should the need arise; so watch out for that one! My immediate impression on unboxing was that it had the look and feel of a high quality item. The top front and bottom of the unit seem to be made of a single folded sheet of thick brushed aluminium, with the rest of it being made of black painted steel. The controls, while dinky, appear solid and it gives the impression of something that can take punishment, and last for a good few years. Controls are limited to input gain (with a clipping LED that changes from green to red when the built in compression kicks in), bass, mids, treble, master volume and a green light to show the unit is powered up. On the back is is a pretty standard rocker on/off switch, socket for the kettle lead, jack socket for speaker cable (min 4 ohms) and a balanced DI with ground lift button. Although about the size of a thick A6 paperback, it feels reassuringly heavy for its size, despite being only a couple of kilos. I connected it up to my standard rig, which comprises two Barefaced One10 cabinets daisy-chained giving a 4 ohm load. I started off with all gain and tone controls at 12 o’clock and the master volume at about 8 o’clock. Wow! I was staggered by the volume and girth of the sound. I swear it is louder than my TCE BH550, which as the name implies is 550 watts, at the same settings. Still with gain and tone at 12 o’clock, I raised the master volume to the mid point also and it started to drive the One10s to break up! They are rated at 250 watts each but Barefaced say they will comfortably take 300 watts each. Now they are designed to break up when driven but I don’t think the BH550 drives them that much at half volume. This is certainly one loud 200 watt amp! At this point I decided to protect my hearing (enclosed test space) and not try to open the volume control anymore but I am absolutely sure it has easily enough grunt to keep up with my band’s drummer in a pub type gig. Warwick claim that the Gnome is designed to be completely transparent tone wise. It was hard for to gauge with the One10s because they are definitely vintage voiced (think Ampeg at a 10th of the size). The tone controls apparently give plus or minus 15 DB and to my ears they deliver. I would say that the mid is pitched around the low mids but that is pretty subjective and I haven’t actually looked at the frequency band but for those of you who understand that stuff, the data is freely available online. It would be nice to have low mid and high mid controls but there wouldn’t be enough room on the front panel without increasing the unit’s size. All in all I would say they were pretty good and give you a good tone pallet to experiment with. Although the fan kicks in pretty quickly in operation, you can barely hear it and it seems to be effective: the unit never got more than slightly warm to the touch. My summary (and this is pretty subjective): a very useful, tiny and surprisingly loud amp. It appears well made and solid. It feels like it will take a lot of punishment. It is a great fall back amp, in case your main amp goes fut at a gig. Perfect for practice, rehearsals and small gigs. I will continue to use my BH550 for gigs but only because it has low and high mid controls, mute, built in tuner and 2 X TCE TonePrint effect slots. I can’t say it is better, or worse than the BAM 200, or the Elf because I haven’t tried them but if you are in the market for one of these mini-amps, you should definitely have the Gnome on your short list.

I prefer to go higher rather than lower to avoid bending the wrist on my fretting hand, and tilt the neck at 45 degrees so that my plucking hand is kept as straight as possible. I'm not in the game to look cool, but to keep playing as long as I can without health issues.

You're right! Job done let's wrap it up there 😉

Today may 11th marks the 40th anniversary of Bob Marley’s passing , one of my favourite tracks, mighty Bassline

Slow and steady wins the race. Good job really as speed isn't so easily achieved when dragging an exoskeleton around at all times 🦀. But baby steps are the way to go, it's not something anybody will master overnight, take your time, experiment with the various controls, listen and feel to what's happening to the sound, how much more consistent and controlled the bass is, how it sits better with the instruments around it, how it becomes more punchy and so on. As a sweeping generalisation less is usually more, and embrace the fact nobody other than you may notice or care.

So some on here actually have wives/partners, then?

Don't worry about it. I know you're more a happy hardcore kinda guy! 😂

Those strings are on that bass for life. I'm not paying that amount of money for a set of strings ever again.

Its an air trumpet

Lovely! Mike does make rather wonderful basses doesn’t he

It was also used by Massive Attack: