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You're right. That does not make a lick of sense.

Lovely!! This is my collector grade '71 Jazz.......

Got one arriving tomorrow. I blame @Jonathan Bee for breaking my gear abstinence resolve.

Things have moved on since then! I'm not saying the £500 Indonesian bass was bad but mine was virtually unplayable as received with a stupidly low action and nut slots cut way too shallow. I could have fixed those things myself but the bass turned up in a Fender Squier box with internal polystyrene packaging that didn't hold the Vox securely and had virtually disintegrated in transit. As if that wasn't bad enough, it was obviously a dusty ex-display model and the advertised gig bag wasn't there! Basically, I just didn't feel like PMT deserved my money so I returned it - at a cost to me of £12!! I was so disappointed that I decided to phone Vox UK for a whinge and they ended up offering me a twin pickup active MIJ Artist at a massively discounted price. With a RRP of nearly £1400, this is in a completely different league. The differences are subtle metallic finish rather than solid black, premium Gotoh bridge and lightweight machine-heads, gloss maple neck, maple fretboard with mother of pearl square inlays, brilliant Aguilar AG 4J-70 pick-ups and OBP-2 pre-amp. It arrived today and it's the best s-s bass I've ever played.

I had a a stingray Special 5 of the first run as my second bass (a treat after years of guitars and acknowledging bass is where my heart is)… back then I wasn’t playing as much in bands, only a project, and whilst saving for house, wedding and other misfortunes, a SR5 Special felt a bit too much bass for me - sadly I had to let it go...: Drop dead gorgeous in Cruz Teal…! Some 20 basses later I still miss a Special and now I play in 2 bands, my 35th bday is approaching and got a new job/promotion so it all lined up for this beauty to happen 2nd hand from Kev in this forum: I am so excited about this - it’s jumped right up my #1 bass, feels like meeting with an old friend again, as you can see it is in perfect nick! I’m struggling to play any of my other 2 basses to be honest…! Having said that each will take the stage for the dingy gigs hehe Surprisingly the Stingray can do a great P sound with the bass maxed out and the treble zeroed… This Last preamp is super versatile, of course jazzy and slap/pop sounds are pretty easy to pull but most times I keep it all flat with minor changes. The whole family:

It’s not often I read the Sunday e-mail from Bass Direct. I kind of scan it and rely on looking at the photos of the used section on Monday to see what’s new. Well, I’m jolly glad I did read it Sunday just gone, because there was a Ken Smith BSR 4WT mentioned in the list that wasn’t on the site and I've been after one for a while now. I quickly e-mailed Mark and said I would have it subject to seeing photos and getting a bit more info on it. He came back to me quickly saying it was due in any day and that it was a 2015 build and in excellent condition. A home use ungigged kind of deal. A day or so went by and Mark sent me a couple of photos and it was exactly what I'd hoped it would be. There was a bit of confusion at one point when I received and e-mail addressed to someone else saying it was on hold. Apparently I was not the only one who was after it, so if anyone here was enquiring and lost out, I do apologise. Anyhow, I paid for it yesterday and it arrived just after lunch today - that’s under 24 hours folks! What a bass this is. Lovely weight and balance, plus the neck is just spot on for me - very Jazz like and not very deep either. It's set up quite low, possibly too low for me even, so I'll have a little adjustment session later. I haven’t had a chance to plug it in yet, but so far, so excellent. I know there are some here that don't like coffee table basses, but I think this one is quite understated compared to some.

So. Tomorrow the nice man in a van collects my bb1500a from the wonderful @tredderswho collected it for me from the seller who wouldn’t ship. I’m even more excited with the reports that it looks basically new, and plays perfectly. Worth the wait? We shall see…😋

At this point, i'd say he is. Many of the vast amount of popular bridges have customer feedback, which Sid doesn't have right now, and how many of those manufacturers brought videos out on how they improve on any previous designs ? They might be out there but i've never seen one. So buyers are buying on the manufacturers say so. So after Sid sells some, then feedback from buyers is where its at.

I've experienced that a lot, starting with Ringo/Sheila E/Greg Lake 20 odd years ago. It wasn't their fault, it was the PA FOH engineer. The EQ was so AFU that whenever Greg hit a note from C on down it drowned out the entire band, but when he hit a higher note the bass disappeared entirely. When Ringo went for a stint on his kit the kick was so loud that even back on his riser he felt it, and told the engineer on mic in the middle of the song to turn it down. Gosh awful. There should be a special section of hell where idiot sound men who have no idea what bass and kick drums are supposed to sound like should spend eternity: polka music 24/7/365.

I've a lot of love for the Schaller but have you checked out the Sandberg design? Many of the principles of Schaller inc roller saddle but it also has quick release string retention.

Ibanez just released a unique range of 50 one-of-a-kind custom shop guitars and basses to commemorate 50 years of Hoshino USA. Some are made in their LA custom shop, and some in their Japanese shop. Most are guitars, but there are some basses among them as well. They won't be available outside the US, and there's only one of each but I thought they were too beautiful not to share 😎 Each one of them has a story, and several detailed pictures. https://www.ibanez.com/usa/special/50th_Anniversary/50-guitars.html

I watched countless videos of single coil and double coils Ps and what sounded nicest to my ears were those with the Seymour Duncan SCPB-1, so that's what I went with in the end. No electric funny business after all, which is quite unlike me. The Warmoth stuff has been good to work with. The neck pocket is snug, though would have been too tight if I had sprayed the neck with lacquer instead of an oil finish. I've rolled the fretboard edges and had to slightly widen the output jack hole but that's the extent of the woodwork, pilot holes aside. Fret dressing and polishing was straightforward. It's coming together nicely. Schaller tuners, brass nut, old Gotoh bridge leftover from a previous upgrade to another bass, SD pickup and shielding done. Just the pots, output jack and associated control plates left to do from a functional perspective before I string it up. I'll add a bridge cover and Cabronita-style mint scratchplate for the sake of aesthetics too.

They were going to get Bill Ward to count the turns but he was lost after 4.

I may be a fan of rack mount pre’s too

I've been able to work a bit more on Mark's bass. Here are the latest update pictures.

Who told you that? Let me guess: a guitar player. 🙄 There's a common trait among the bass players who have the highest reputation, be it Jamerson, Sir Paul, The Ox, Bogert, Geddy, Stanley, Sting or whomever: they're heard.

If you decide to go down the route of a custom build with them I highly recommend. I’ve ended up with a bass far superior to a Fender at a similar price and I was able to choose the spec how I wanted (even though I went pretty standard)

Totally dependant on type of music and also particular songs. Some have a signature bass line/part that needs to be heard. I like myself, the band and audience to be able to hear what I’m playing and have my own space in the sound.

Best valentine's comment ever.

This is the killer punch..............both ways (EU/UK). Virtually killed the secondhand market unless something is extremely rare/desirable or the buyer factors in (and accepts) the extra 25% or so on the local asking price. I still look though🙃

As a consumer: A nicely designed 12" album sleeve and all the other associated packaging is a thing of beauty. Unfortunately the lump of plastic inside which contains the important part (the music) is more fragile and sonically inferior to a properly mastered CD. Vinyl is a lot better quality these days than than the crap we were being sold from the mid 70s onwards, but I'd still rather have a CD from a musical PoV. As a musician: I will make my music available in whatever format my audience wants. Last time I looked (about 5 years ago), for an album, vinyl wasn't significantly more to produce than CDs (for quantities of 500+) but the lead times were fairly horrific, and from what I have seen they have only got worse.

Dear Friends, a short update, the X5 Bass is finally back from my painter...

What... because I question your design's misgivings (IMHO pulling strings through a bridge is an awful design principle and tweaking string spacing is an advantage), then you profess that I know better than you! Rather than give a reasoned response to my comments on your design you expect people to just agree with you out of sympathy and not speak out? As far as business acumen goes you may need to step up to the mark as I'm hardly the worst obstacle to any success!

Very true! I'd love J'lo's bass 🥰

Had a rehearsal last night and we were auditioning three guitarists. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to compare three different set ups! So it’s an 80’s band and while there is scope for synth bass the keys player is doing the heavy lifting in that department. He suggested early on his left hand wasn’t gonna step on my parts but we could work who was doing what on tunes where it was basically multi layers of all synth goodness if that was needed. We both wanna make it fun and add a wee touch of our own sound to these classics. I had three set ups but only two players showed up so I used my pedal board and the ADAM. The Stomp wasn’t needed but I’ve dialled it in for this band and have a GK amp model with octave and an eq assigned to the FS’s (and a FX loop on all my patches so I can add in external pedals and do the parallel blend thing etc. - been comparing drives and stuff which has been fun). The pedal board is such a good solid tone. The Hyper Luminal is such a good comp and the ability to tweak really makes it three comps in one. I’ve all three modes set up differently and it means I have some options depending on what I want it to do. Even out slap parts, add punch, 1176 all in mode! It’s a quality box and well worth a look if you’re on the fence. The ColourBox is a cracking eq and sounds ‘full’ - you can hear the difference when you engage it - it’s got a transformer inside and you can notice the effect it has. The EQ has good scope and I found it very easy to enhance my bass with minimal fuss. My only criticism is the HPF is set too high (160Hz not the 60Hz which I had read in some literature) to make it work for bass but it’s no deal breaker. It was combined with the Fender Trapper, an amp style drive and it too worked well. I like the trapper and the clean blend with X-over is really useful being able to set the clean crossover freq and level. It’s another pedal worth a look if you want/need/prefer a clean blend and like a more traditional bass drive over the ‘DG’ sound. It can get gnarly but not super modern scooped. I have another drive but it’s been my go to with this band and it was fun to use the Trapper. The Trapper works and really nails that amp style drive but I’d say the B3K suits the band better as it sits well with the synths especially as the guitarist was using TS style drives and crunchy, amp like dirt too. The ADAM is a monster pedal and I think it sits really well with the synths/guitars. Even the clean tone is huge and the parallel signal path has a huge part to play with that. On Material Girl the bass part sits right between synth and bass and the combination of clean blend, synthy fuzzy drive, character control and some eq make it fill out that lower register while adding compression keeps it defined and punchy. It’s such a fun song to play. I’d say I can get away with a more aggressive tone for many of the songs and having keys/synth really helps with that as the bass can just add the edgy definition and support the guitar. It’s coming together nicely and a few little tweaks now we have found a guitarist should see the whole thing settle in and we can all find our sonic space. I may tweak the pedal board by changing the drive to my other unit and I’m still in two minds about keeping the ADAM - it’s a complete unit and but I do like the flexibility of the pedal board and the ability to patch in pedals on the stomps fx loop. At this stage I’m quite chuffed to have the options and I really liked getting a chance to compare them on the same tracks. Oh and we found our new guitarist too so that’s nice!

The bridge arrived today and its exactly what I was looking for! Wee bit of rust and matte finish. Looks the part.

It's a good idea to wire the ground to the sleeve AND the ring. This way it will power on pedals and active basses etc.

The hold-ups with the Geezer Butler pickups is often due to injuries sustained tripping over a pished and passed out Ozzy.

Whenever these pickups are mentioned I habe this mental picture of Geezer Butler in his shed using a drill to wind the pickups by hand, and then packaging them in EMG boxes. A couple of times a week Tony Iommi calls in to collect them and take them to the post office, but he skims a few off the top to sneakily sell in his own ebay shop. Please don't ruin the illusion!

Bedroom amp for my son Weird trade.

I have two of the active ones from different eras - one from 04/05 (red) which is just a straight active model and then a second from 14/15ish (green) when the active/passive switch, hi-mass bridge and 18v preamp were introduced. Both great, the newer model is probably the higher quality bass, but I’m less attached to it. Some playing videos with each below:

The logical extension to that school of thought is that a bassline composed of root note of varying length and intervals is sufficient. I am not of the school of bumpity bumpity bump. The bassline should be as audible as any other line that isn't the tune. In the traditional small ensemble the bass is much more often the bridge between rhythms of drums and the melody. I think non musicians struggle to isolate all the parts that aren't the tune. If I can't hear what the bass is doing then it's a bad mix! If all I can hear is bass it's worse but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Then UK made CHB-2 & CHB-1 semi-hollow bass images:

So the provenance is that in 1968 someone in a shop told the current owner that John Entwistle pxd this bass. And the bass itself has been refinished, repaired and modified, so it's compromised as a vintage instrument in its own right. 1968 is a long time ago and people's recollections can be unreliable, as can the information they were given at that time. I am sure that the seller is sincere in his belief that this instrument is as described, but for ten grand you need to be able to prove what you say, or else find a very trusting buyer. If I were in the market for a vintage Precision Bass I would pass on this one for all the obvious reasons, especially if I was after a celebrity-owned example. I remember going to the Bass Center back in the 1980s and they had several of John Entwistle's basses for sale, complete with signed certificates of authenticity. And they were reasonably priced from what I remember. Back in those days I wanted a shiny brand new bass with active electronics, and I thought to myself that if John Entwistle didn't want these basses why would I have them palmed off on me? In retrospect, that might not have been my best ever decision.