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Yes - little by little it's getting there

The reason it's so difficult is because the UK side didn't want to allow reciprocal arrangements.

There are now enough coats of hardened oil to be able to do a light flattening. I use 2000grit with plenty of water on the paper and regular spray downs to prevent the sandings clogging the paper: This gets rid of any specks, bubbles, minor dips and also prevents the build up of application ripples in the surface while sanding only the oil and getting nowhere near the wood underneath. That done, I pop it onto a wiped down shoe box to get it away from any dusty surfaces, wipe it down with a clean microfibre cloth (I use the ones they sell for cleaning windows with), open a new bottle of tru-oil so I know there is no dust contamination and apply the first of the finish coats wiping it on with a clean lint-free soft cloth. This process may happen three or four times until I get a coat that looks right...and then I STOP

Aye.. I definitely aspire to double denim and a moustache last seen on the hunk fixing the washing machine for the scantily-clad lady in that dodgy movie. 😁

Had my eye on one of these for years now, but either found them too hard to come by or out of my price range. And then one gets posted on an online guitar raffle site (I won’t post the name just so it doesn’t look like I’m promoting them but I’m happy to say which one by PM). I’ve bought tickets for various draws over the past couple of months but never had any luck. Was all prepared to give up and then I go and win this bloody beauty! Absolutely over the moon with it, it’s beautiful and a dream to play and so light! I just need to make the tricky decision to restring and set it up for either Drop A# or Drop C!

Recorded with the 424x today https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hOBgdbTuD7BR_2UqcVARaW-1v-hbnTi6/view?usp=drivesdk

How to get a perfectly decent topic locked, Lesson One ...

The UK ended FoM, ending it was one of the linchpins of Brexit. What many failed to grasp was that we weren’t just ending it for EU citizens, we were ending it for ourselves too. We could have opted to remain part of the SM - a Norway style agreement - that would have solved the problem with NI, it would have solved the problems that exporters are facing. We chose not to though. The UK was offered visa-free travel for creative industry workers, we would have had to reciprocate though, so we said no. This is despite the fact that the creative industries employs 3.2 million people, or 10% of the country’s workforce, and contributed some £111 billion to the economy in 2018 (source ONS).

Ok here's a wee mod i done to my 48, for as much as i love this bass i just couldn't get on with the covers as my comfort zone is thumb hooked in behind the neck pickup and there wasn't much room between the covers so i decided to do away with them, moved the neck pickup 10 mm towards the nut sent a template to B. Pilanz who made a guard for it and here we are, sounds rather utterly smashing with the 2 Nordy big singles aswell

Test fit of eyelet boards (one partly populated) and most front and rear panel components.

Don’t get it. why is the body a trans finish but the headstock is LPB. Looks like it was bought on a holiday market stall…soz.

As a tour manager, who actually has to arrange these things for the artists and crew in the touring party, and has to manage the budget for making the whole thing happen, I'd be inclined to disagree. Whilst we don't need visas or permits for EVERY country within the EU, there's a fair few we do, and some come with stringent requirements, fees, and lengthy processing times, as well as interview visits to embassies, usually in London, for all applicants (which incurs travel costs and a day's pay for each person required to make the trip). Countries that don't require a visa still place a limit on the number of days you can work in said country per year. This might not affect you if you tour Europe once a year but if, like many crew or session players, you work with multiple artists and hop from one tour to another, you might find yourself in hot water when you realise you've used up all your days in one of the countries on the schedule. On top of visas and permits, there's now tax complications in each territory as we're no longer part of reciprocal schemes. There's carnets for your equipment which big tours crossing all of Europe would have had professionally arranged, but smaller DIY/low budget tours would do without and just not drive through the couple of territories which required them when we were members. They're now needed everywhere in Europe. I'll do my best not to delve in to the political aspects of a clusterfck that one third of the electorate voted for, as politics isn't my business. Touring, however, is my bread and butter, and it's been made more challenging, more expensive, more difficult to drop personnel in at short notice if needed, and generally more of a pain in the balls in many ways by our new status as a third country.

The memories of Lars denying thrash (as early as 1988) had me thinking fondly of this BBC Arena documentary, which I watched countless times as a youth. I still have the old VHS tape of it somewhere. It's well worth 60 minutes of your time if you like the heavier side. Great days.

Changes are afoot! I made the bridge with the neck through detailing running through to match the pickup cover but really didn't like it so made the blank again in Ash and then made a new pickup cover from the same piece and really love the look of it being just ash, looks a lot less "try hard" At least for the next one I can plan all these pieces to ensure they all sit seamlessly with each other, but they still don't look bad as they are!

You haven't read the gov.uk link I posted above about foreign entertainers working in the UK. If you did you'd see that: a) the UK market is a protection racket, they don't want foreigners earning money in their closed market b) the UK has spectacularly removed its own nose with a rusted and blunt scythe in order to spite its own union jack-bedecked face, only to whinge that said flag was made in Poland...

Very droll. Here's some rather more useful ones:

Did some work on the “n0b machine” Rough carved the neck …. Still lot’s to do, but rough shape is all good.

Would @Reggaebass be allowed the complete works of Robbie Shakespeare?

So this started life as a fairly normal Harley Benton Jazz bass kit. However, yesterday I finally screwed the new iteration together and set it up. Man, this thing rocks now! Wilkinson PJ pickups, Wilkinson tuners and bridge, an Artec SE-2A preamp and a switchcraft stereo jack. The pickguard is from WD Music - their Blacktop Jazz model. I love it!

Update from me. First time playing in a year or so coming up tomorrow at church. Was practicing at home on the four string. I'm still ambivalent about the five string, in that I don't feel the need to own a 5, or identify as a "5 string player", my 5 is good enough to keep regardless of the fact it's a 5. BUT I just found out that playing the five string has majorly improved my ability to play the 4, learning the fretboard far better, and bizarrely creating more melodic lines.... so that's good!

Rutgar Gunnarsson - it doesn't matter what pose you strike, what bass you play, what you wear , you'll never be as cool as the guy playing bass for ABBA.

The angle of this photo makes it look way more tapered than it is, but tapered the fretboard this evening with the plane. Rightly or wrongly, my plan is to use it as a "template" for routing the neck blank to width once I've taken it something like with the jigsaw (once I've routed the truss rod slot - that's the next job I think, and the scariest so far)

Can I rejoin the BB club please? With this wee number: BBG4sII in white. Theres a story to this. My Dad and I visited sound control in glasgow around 96 looking for my first proper bass. I had been playing a cheap p bass copy which was OK but i wanted something a bit special. I picked this out, and my mum and dad got it for my christmas. Regrettably, around 6 years later, i thought it would be cool to put a bass trem on it, strip the paint, then defret it! I also painted a red stripe on it. I then sold it on ebay. Anyways, I've been hunting another one down for years for nostalgia sake, but it seems they mostly came in different colours other than white. This one came up on Facebook marketplace so had to go for it! Getting this in my hands make me regret mutilating the original even more! It's actually a very capable bass! feels great to play, and the hardware is solid. Sound-wise lets it down slightly. possibly because I'm used to having a mid EQ, but because it only has bass treble you're kinda limited - but it's easily giggable, which hopefully i will soon! I love it. brings back some seriously nice memories of jamming to tunes in my bedroom, through my hifi, with my big earphones. I wonder if theres some muscle memory going on which makes this feel better than it actually is, because I played this ALOT! haha

Two albums dropped here today; Wolfgang Van Halen's 'Mammorth WVH' and another from past Chez NJ house favourite Garbage, with 'No Gods, No Masters'. The Garbage album is just awful. The Wolfie album has been on rotation since 9.00am...4.5/5.0. it's a great shame that these fanboys just want another Van Halen type album, which this isn't; it's just a great slab of modern AOR. Production is top notch.

Yesterday I received a EBS TD650 from Bagsieblue of this parish. Only had a low volume play through of it so far, but very impressed with what I've heard. I bought it to replace my HD350 which has an intermittent fault, and I've had a Fafner in the past, so I knew pretty much what to expect. Straight away was that glorious, powerful, crystal-clear sound that EBS are famous for; first impression is that it's a little tighter and more refined sounding than the HD350, probably because of the bigger power stage. However, it's early days at low volume and I've not actually used the HD350 in over a year, so make your own mind up about how much value there is in that comparison 😀 First gig will be a wedding on the 26th of June, assuming no more restrictions, can't wait to use it in anger.

In your situation tho I would keep the shur

I watched that documentary so bloody much back in the day.

Predictably, I’ve had nothing further from the seller 🤷‍♂️

Lacksley castell

Spector fans! Here is a cool video for you to watch. Ish guitar's Jesse Wilson visited the new Spector custom shop facilities. Very interesting. Check it out!

Ungigged might be a more accurate word as it has been to one band rehearsal but I'm looking forward to giving my new Epiphone Embassy a run out at a gig soon.

This caught my eye on the Facebook BB owners group. In the “so bad it’s good” category

I agree, some of the QC issues mentioned such as the rising fretboard that meant the action couldn’t be set very low are more comparable to the steering on a car not working properly rather than not having power steering (to use the analogy on here). It wouldn’t have been acceptable then and wouldn’t be now. Also, not all CS Fenders are supposed to be exact relics from the 50s, 60s, 70s etc. I’ve briefly toyed with the idea of a CS Fender and I’d probably just go for a non-relic with a scale length, colour, pickups, pickup position and tone circuit that suit me. I’d be furious if I spent £3k+ on something like that and it had QC issues.

Yup - seen a bit of that myself recently! In other news, a rash of phone calls over the last week has taken both my bands into double figures. Quite frankly, I never really expected to reach that point this year. Even more bizarre is that I'm now running out of available gig slots. Each of my bands prefers to play no more than three gigs a month (so that would be six for me), each prefers to avoid double-headers (defined as playing gigs on consecutive nights), and obviously each band can only play on a night when the other band doesn't have a gig (no deps, unless they're drummers!). With 17 gigs in the diary for the second half of the year (four already played), it turns out that I can only accept another eight gigs for The Junkyard Dogs and eleven for Damo & The Dynamites, and there's a rapidly-shrinking list of dates on which those gigs can be played. Get your orders in soon, guys ... 😂

Especially if you then need to spend £250 on pickups etc to get it sounding right. This is my point really. For the cash that you have to spend, and even for the man hours going in to the build, surely you want it to sound good... I know that's a lot down to the beholder but really!

It’s pretty unlikely; they are very invested in their separates idea.

I've never heard of Mamoth WVH, but just checked the album out on Spotify, on my phone. Two things struck me: excellent album cover, the sort you would be excited to walk out of the shop with, hoping the music would be good too; 10s of the first track says there is no point in playing this on the phone so I'll have to get up and play it properly loud. Thanks for the heads-up. 👍🤘

Exactly right, the Performer whlist it was a very nice bass was a bit 'sterile' the JMJ is full of mojo and tone still love it and I've had a PJ MiM, MiJ, Performer and the JMJ is a keeper

It took me a while, but I worked it out in the end

Picked up a Spector Performer in a trade. Glad to have a Spector back in the armoury.

I'd take a volleyball, paint a face on it and call it Wilson. I'd have someone to talk to at least

I think he's got it dead right. Be in one of the biggest bands of all time, make shed loads of cash, live anonymously ever after. A plan I'm following, I just missed parts 1 and 2 off.

I just want to say that DI Joe is a brilliant name. Carry on.

Not sure about undeserved but on overdrive pedals I’d like to gear them with a touch of break up rather than full on. Additionally I’d like to see demos of pedals with Jazz or Precision type basses rather than coffee table type basses. Nothing against those basses, it’s just with a Jazz or Precision I can get an idea of how the pedal would sound for me, whereas demoed with a bass that I - and many I’d guess - have no experience of it’s difficult to gain an understanding of how the pedal would work for me.