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Thank you Rich Tone. A 77. With the addition from the never-to-be-sold parts drawer of a pickup from a 66 P Bass and a set of old oval tuners, this one's ready for the next round of bar fights. Pleasantly light from this era of boat anchors too at only 9.25 lbs.

I love a bit of Maiden (who doesn't) so listened to this documentary while working. I now realise that everyone I ever met in a pub who said "I used to play for Iron Maiden you know" was probably telling the truth. I like how Steve Harris says about all the guitarists "yeah, he was a great guitarist"

Just got some progress photos on my Buzz order 😍 photos don't do the colour justice, it's very pearly and relic'd just enough so I don't stress about dings. Great proper celluloid tort pickguard, which I chose out of many. Big fat neck with lovely rosewood, DiMarzio pickup, nickel hardware. Alder body with pre-CBS correct lacquering procedure: fullerplast followed by thin nitro.

For some reason Reverb has started directing advertising at me with Orange Matamps being highly featured. How does Reverb know that back in the late 70s I bought a 100w one of these at an ex-hire place in Chalk Farm and that it caught fire in a rehearsal and that we put the flames out by pouring Coca Cola in it and that I sold the charred husk to a dealer in Denmark Street for £60 and that these are are going for thousands? How would Reverb know this? 😂

My “nobody is going to pinch it” ‘51 p bass bitsa it weighs 7.5 lbs. It has a DiMarzio Will Power humbucker at the neck with a coil tap switch, a Seymour Duncan 1/4 pounder in the middle position and 4-way switching: neck & middle in series, middle solo, neck & middle in parallel, middle solo. The neck is an Allparts licensed ‘51 and the most expensive part of the build. The body is Obeche. It has through body stringing and a high mass bridge from China off eBay. Machine heads are Wilkinson. It sounds pretty good to my ears, if a little bright, which I guess is down to the Obeche body.

I might make a short video of it compared to my 73. I've done this before with something else comparing it to my 73. watch this space lol

I probably should have added: TL; DR version for the hard of attention span/giving a sh!t - it's complicated, nobody knows, but it's definitely not what Matey on Ebay/Reverb says it is.

Thanks by the way. Thanks to everyone, cheers

I think this is one of those cases where the sound is more about his technique than the bass itself per se. So I'd say any bass, probably with flats, with a middly EQ will sound pretty close if you can get that style under your fingers. [Edit]: Just remembered that I saw this video the other day which should be helpful

I'm in the "as low as it will go' team as well, although I've experimented with raising the action slighlty on a couple of basses, and find that on some instruments I actually like it. Having said that, they're still set low. Almost more important to me is the neck relief - I run almost none and find for my tastes and playing style this almost always gives me the string response (for want of a better description) I'm looking for.

Ask Joey DeMaio. 😉

Jack knows how to groove!

When Bruce first joined they flew to Italy to do some gigs. My brother was in a band in Rome at the time called The Raff. He met Maiden at the airport and asked if they could support them, Sure they said and they opened for them in Padova and Milan. The B-side to The Number of the Beast was a Live version of Remember Tomorrow recorded at the those gigs IIRC I became quite a maiden fan at this point

I played on the Dutch national radio yesterday!

I ordered two of those 2x8" cabs rightaway. In rehearsals they kept up fine with our loud drummer, a JCM900 + 4x12 and Dual Rectifier with 6x12 stacks. In fact I still had some headroom left. I am using the cabs with a TC RH750 amp, the Elf doesn't have enough watts available and compresses way too much when it has to be loud. Elfs are nice for home use though. I chose to get two cabs after trying my luck with a Barefaced One10. My amp works better with a 4ohm load and any stories you hear about a single One10 OR a Trace Elliot 2x8 keeping up with a rock drummer are big and utter bullsh*t. They simply won't in any room that's larger than 10 square meters. One piece of advice to everyone struggling to get enough volume from their small cabinet: Use acoustic coupling! This means cab on the floor for an extra few db in the bottom end. Back against a wall for another few db of free bottom end. On the floor in a corner for max bass output. This means you can dial back the bottom end on your amplifier, which in turn means your speaker won't have to work half as hard and can utilize the watts it is getting in more useful frequencies. TRY IT you will be amazed. NEVER place your speaker on a stand unless you're a guitarist.

So bb450 vs 424x tonight. 450 is livelier, great for cutting through. 424x warmer, fuller. both absolutely corking.

This afternoon I sat down to find what might have caused both fuses to blow when coming out of Standby. My first hypothesis was a (near-)dead short from the HT to ground downstream of the HT fuse. I examined all the cabinet fixings but none would have contacted any conductors, and there were no signs of arcing there or elsewhere. I then checked both 6L6 valves on my Orange Valve Tester and they were fine. Next I worked through all the components ancillary to those valves, and again found no problem. I measured resistances on all the transformer windings, so nothing has burned out there, and there was no short to earth from the first HT node. I went away and sat down with the schematic, which was when I realised my error. Based on previous builds, I had fitted a a fast blow (F) 500mA fuse in the HT line. However the schematic calls for a slow-blow or timed (T) fuse. I expect this is because the first filter cap is a fairly chunky 47uF, which the HT rail briefly sees as close to a dead short when coming out of Standby - briefly, but long enough to blow an F-rated fuse. For 240V operation the mains fuse should be a T2A (slow blow again) but I didn't have any slow blow 2A so I had fitted an (unmarked) Medium fuse, which had duly blown in response to the inrush current. I have now fitted a T500mA HT fuse, and ordered a supply of T2A fuses. Once they arrive I will try again, initially with the dim bulb current limiter. In the meantime, if you suffer from insomnia you can read all about glass fuses here.

Could you be a bit more in depth with your answer next time please!

J'arrive! These are interesting, and subject of a lot of speculation over in MIJland. Prepare to be bored into a coma. Strongly Burns-influenced, but not a straight copy, there are several variations on this same design, indicating a number of different factories made them over quite a long period. What seem to be the earliest ones have a 2-a-side headstock & a pronounced German carve. Hardware & general features place these at mid-late 60s. As ever with this sort of thing, unless a brand name refers to a specific factory, ignore it: https://reverb.com/item/18207457-dynatone-guyatone-short-scale-bass-1960-s-aged-white There's also a guitar version of this style. Subsequent versions have the 4-inline headstock, chrome pickups, tort plate etc that @Lord Sausage's example have. Here's where a brand name is useful, up to a point - these sometimes turn up branded Sakai, which was an actual manufacturer, Sakai Mokko. They can also have build traits associated with Sakai. This version appear in an early 70s Aria catalogue (probably 73-4, not 1970 as the link suggests) alongside a pair of Kalamazoo KG copies, which are also thought to be Sakai Mokko guitars: https://www.vintagejapanguitars.com.br/en/aria-1970-catalogue/ This is where the mistaken connection with Matsumoku comes from - the incorrect assumption that all Aria/Aria Pro II instruments were Matsumoku products. It's interesting that the images are unbranded factory catalogue shots, and I can't remember one of these (or the KG lookey-likeys) being seen in the wild branded Aria. However while I don't think Matsumoku was connected with these, there are enough variations to suggest several other factories were - some have 6-bolt neckplates, some have mahogany necks, others maple, while still others have painted necks covering strip ply construction - a known Sakai trait. All these minor differences suggest different factories made them, or were involved in supplying components. This might likely point to the involvement of Matsumoto Gakki Seizou Kumiai, the so-called Matsumoto Manufacturers Association, a collaborative group building instruments sourced from various woodshops, hardware & electronics manufacturers in the Matsumoto City area. There are later, and slightly more crude versions of the same bass which were made in Korea, not Japan. This points to the migration of the manufacture of low-end instruments from Japan to Korea in the mid/late 70s, and demonstrating how specific established designs were exported. This one is branded Arirang (named after a traditional Korean song), a common 70s/80s Korean brand name. It's unclear whether Arirang was a manufacturer in its own right, as there's evidence suggesting it might have been a sub-brand of Samick. https://reverb.com/item/786783-arirang-short-scale-bass-1970s-olympic-white-mahogany-neck It's entirely probable that manufacture of this style continued in Korea (and possibly Taiwan) into the 80s, like many designs & styles that originated in Japan in the 60s did. Which coincidentally, leads me quite neatly to... Yeah - I can & they didn't! Well, broadly anyway. Excuse me while I rant incoherently: There's a tendency for people to look at anything old looking & Far-Eastern looking and go TEISSSCOOOOO!!! (in the same way anything late 70s/early 80s & stripey provokes MATSUUMOOKUUUU!!! - as though no-one else ever ripped off Alembic) whereas the reality is there were countless manufacturers making & exporting similar odd little guitars in the 60s. Many of these designs continued being made as starter instruments in the 70s, alongside the 'proper' copies, and later being manufactured in Korea & Taiwan through the 70s & 80s. Teisco was actually taken over by Kawai Gakki in 1967, and ceased manufacturing in its own right at that point, and a lot of what people try to flog as '60s Teisco' is actually 80s Taiwanese catalogue tat. And breathe. There. It's over. You made it. Well done you!

After enjoying a bit of faffing with the Harley B Acoustic that came out nice, gonna go up a level. Budget P Build... so searching the 'bay of eastern dreams' - P'Bay... machine heads, string tree, neck plate, bridge, strap buttons, jack knobs all in the basket and through the check out, strings are gonna be Adagio Flats again, I've PM'd @KiOgon about pots n wire... and even sorted a decal... Got to finalise the body details, and choose a cheapish neck... Style will be simple... Finish is gonna be plain Danish... Chrome won the Hardware coin toss over Black... Oh lord what have i done... gonna be back here for advice, but promise to use the search first... Gonna Stand me in more than a Harley B, but will be what i want and some fun, and hopefully not to much pain and frustration to do... Wish me luck...

Love this bassline from Leon on this Shalamar hit from 1980 almost as much as I love the dance moves!

Start Me Up - Rolling Stones

This thread has inspired me to dig out some old TAB for ‘There It Is’ and finally try and learn it properly. Harmonically very simple, but it’s all in the note/rest lengths, timing and feel. Quite good progress. Very satisfying to play! Great tune.

"Are you coming to our concert this weekend?!" citizen: "What kind of Music do you play?" "It's good Music, man!" citizen: I'll pass "Are you coming to the Goth dance-party this weekend?!" Azrael Abyss: "Heck yeah!" Azrael Abyss comes to the party in full regalia, including corpse-paint & a vintage long-tail coat first song played "Love Cats" by The Cure Azrael Abyss departs so fast his neck is aching on the walk home. Azrael Abyss cares about labels! most citizens care, but some are just using them incorrectly to 'niche' something they don't like

Ped has sorted it out and merged my old account with this new one! Very clever! Thanks everyone for the help. Andy

It's just been announced that my band Black Atlas will be playing Bloodstock this year on the new blood stage! I can't wait!

I clicked on this thinking you had a problem with your effects pedals. How silly of me.

I’ve tried pretty much everything you can at some point. However I naturally both pluck and fret very lightly - plus I like a tone with some twang, buzz and rattle in it - and high action has never worked for me. Can it sound good? Absolutely. But for the way I play, it just doesn’t work. I like a bass to be as easy to play as possible.

It's hard not to respect their longevity or success but at school I was the only long haired kid who didn't like Maiden. I kept getting told I'd have a Maiden phase but at 48, I'm still waiting for it. They seem like good blokes and I have the upmost respect for their career but it just goes to show that no band can appeal to everyone. In fairness, they seem to be managing remarkably well without my devotion!

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I loved these but I think they stopped before the point Bruce left, which is a shame because the Blaze years would be interesting for many reasons. Band members who left and then came back seems to be a very hard thing to talk about. The Anthrax story currently coming out on youtube is at such a point. Spitz and Belladonna coming back (temporarily) should be the next episode. Having been to one of those gigs you could see they weren't getting along, particularly with Spitz. Then comes Dan Nelson 😂 The less successful Maiden years would be an interesting thing to cover, too.

Mrs Travis “I was going to book that cottage For our week off, but when I went to book, our account had been emptied... payment to bass Direct... Andy we spoke about this, you promised no more basses,for a few weeks at least” Andy “well.... I kept my promise....”

Very nice! It always kinda bothers me when an instrument of that age looks pristine. This one certainly has some tales to tell! Enjoy!

Joking apart though, the great thing with making mistakes is learning. With the 5 string neck I made a hole in, I had an opportunity to try a couple of different techniques to rectify the fault which is something I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do. So I learnt something useful from it. The neck might be okay with the fix but I decided to make a new one anyway. What I will probably do is make two necks (fretted and fretless) for the bass- I haven’t tried a 27” fretless so another opportunity!!

The Peavey made Trace Elliot 2x8" cabs are some of the nicest I have ever owned. The Faitalpro speakers in there are simply amazing. I also own the Elf head and the Transit-B pre. The Transit-B is all you will ever need to get that Trace Elliot tone you know from the SMX range, minus the tube section in the pre but with an added overdrive channel. Peavey try to make great products when they throw the Trace Elliot label on and imho so far are doing a pretty damn good job! Eagerly awaiting the specs of this new TE-1200 amp.

Lots and lots of sanding , a few blisters and an understanding of why they call it 'hardwood', I have sanded the veneers to about 0.9mm. I then glued these to the front and rear of the headstock and clamped in place. Once set, a quick sand of the lip and marked up the centre line ready to cut the truss rod channel.

Tortoiseshell scratch plates*. *How can they be pickguards if I don't use a pick**? **And even if I did, it would be a plectrum.

From my recent experiance with my Harley Benton Acoustic Bass... and ya happy to do a bit of fettling... Go Harley Benton for half ya budget! Quite a few yo choose from P's PJ's J's... plus other model bassed shapes. Just remember reading some of the Delux range may be a little heavy, or that may just be some older models... They do have some more expensive models, have you seen the £250ish Marquess https://harleybenton.com/product/marquess-4-black-stain/

I've had a few of these pass through my hands in recent years and found them to be very capable and underrated amplifier heads. The Trace Elliot GP7 SM 150 heads were almost an entry level TE amp head of the late 90's /early 2000's and typically came in an enclosed metal case which was fitted in a wooden sleeve covered in green carpet covering. The RAH heads could be rack mounted ( assuming you had purchased a set of TE rack ears ) but in my experience most of these amps came in the green carpet covered wooden sleeve. The amps were fairly straight forward design with either a Mosfet power board or a Bi-Polar power amp board ( The Bi-Polar Bear) and were fan cooled. Output was 150W RMS, 300 Watt peak. The input stage was a standard 7 band graphic with pre-shape buttons and a graphic output knob and an EQ balance knob. A DI option complemented these features and an effect send/return and line out completed the front panel options. On the rear panel was two speaker jacks and a tuner out. In use the amp has a fairly characteristic Trace Elliot tone using the pre-shape. Using the graphic EQ in conjunction with pre-shape 1 gives a fairly wide option for tones and its not difficult to get a useable tone for almost any musical style. In use these amps are very versatile/toneful and their output will more than cope with rehearsals and small gigs even with a good 8 ohm cab. With a good quality 4 ohm cab they can be very loud and remain stable for an all night gig lasting several hours. I haven't experienced any issues with cutting out or overheating with prolonged high output usage of these amplifiers. Pro's Trace Elliot classic pre-shape sound Quality pre-amp tone shaping abilities 150 old school Watts is deceptively loud cheap to purchase used easy to repair/maintain Good build quality Great amp for punk/metal tones Cons fairly heavy for a 150W amp head rack mounting options limited as TE rack ears unobtainable these days cooling fan can be noisy as tend to run very fast Watch out for crackly/noisy examples. There is an issue with some builds that don't have a locking washer on the power amp ground post(mounting screw can shake free after years of service and cause noise/crackles). For the amp aficionados and techies, there are a couple of simple mods for these amps that can improve their usability. Changing R21( GP7SM 150/300 schematic) on the pre-amp from 10K ohms to 4.7k ohms transforms the input sensitivity and overall volume responsiveness of the unit and makes a huge difference to how these amps perform. The same mod was carried over to early Clive Button designed Ashdown MAG amps to also increase the pre-amp sensitivity and overall amp performance. For examples with a very noisy and fast cooling fan, you can mod this by fitting a series resistor on the fan positive to drop the fan voltage( usually a high 16v rail). In my experience, a 5 Watt 82 ohm or 5 Watt 100 ohm resistor will reduce the fan speed without adversely affecting cooling ability. Thermal cutout on these amps is designed as 100C so you really need to be thrashing them to death to cause a cut out. Always consult your amp tech before applying any mods* Overall, nowadays these are great budget amps that we're still built up to a spec and not down to a cost. The sound and performance from them is still valid today and I'd give a good example 8.5/10 - in my humble opinion.

That tempted fate didn't it?!!! Not entirely sure how, but the chuck must have not been tight enough and router bit moved out putting a hole in the back of the neck. Time to build another neck...... I actually needed to build another two necks for another project so I've started making them all at the same time. After thicknessing all the neck blanks I used a bandsaw to cut the angle for the scarf joint. After lots of very tedious sanding (I really must build a jig to make this easier and quicker) I ended up with these: It pays to take time and get this right as it makes for a nice, tight joint. These are the three necks prior to gluing: The worst thing about wrecking the original neck is that I need to make new veneers for the headstock. I bought some ash veneer from different places but it just didn't match to my satisfaction so I made some by cutting thin slices from the offcuts from the body then sanding to thickness. That took ages the first time and now I've got to repeat it!! Oh well, it will be worth it in the end. Cheers