Leaderboard

I’ve had short scale basses before but I wanted to try a medium scale so I picked up this early Ibanez roadstar in a hideous torquise blue, stripped it best I could, finished with Tru Oil and added some gold hipshot ultralights to match the brass bridge. It’s really comfortable to play, the 32” scale is better then expected beautifully balanced & light, lovely compromise between 30”/34”. Just need to tidy up the wiring.

Over the years, I've had every form of P bass, from starting years ago on a cheapo Vox White Shadow, through to Fender custom shops, CIJ, AV models, a couple of Shukers, several Laklands, and finally my current ones (a 73 and 75). The last two are the closest to P bass perfection for me. I've played another couple I really loved (Steve Amadeo's 68 P bass, and the one that Horace Panter played & recorded Ghost Town on), but thought I'd got as close to my ideal bass as I was ever going to. Rewind two weeks, and I buy Paul's (Shepster8316) Yamaha BB1200 for a very good price, as I've been wanting to try one of these for years. I get it home, plug it in, and....... it's bloody amazing!! Not only does it sound great (like a good P bass should), but the neck is superb - absolutely perfect for me, and has made me realise that its profile (wide, narrow) is exactly what I like playing. I find myself picking this one up ahead of all of my others, and keep sneaking off to play it "just for a few minutes"! Weird that after a journey of a thousand (or at least several dozen) Fenders, my ideal P bass turns out to be a Yamaha. A few of Paul's pics attached (hope you don't mind Paul).... Now I just need to find another one, to string with flats. Anyone looking to move one on, let me know 😊

Finally got this in my hands yesterday. The sale was agreed a week ago, but we needed to arrange a meet up. 2016 American Vintage ‘63 Reissue in faded sonic blue. The tort guard is a Fender guard but not the original, however the original is included. 8lbs 15 oz. It had La Bellas on it, but really heavy ones, so I’ve swapped those for some La Bella 760FLs. It needed a truss rod tweak to reduce the relief even after fitting lighter strings, some saddle adjustments and the pickup height. It’s now playing really well, very low action with no fret buzz, and sounding great. It has a piano like clarity unplugged which is really noticeable compared with my other basses, very resonant. I’m get used to the wider nut width and I think it will be fine. I’m really looking forward to taking it to rehearsal next week. Cheers, Rob

So today I was asked to join a punk covers band on the skinny stringed instrument, lead guitar no less. I of course said yes, I’ve known the guys in the band for years, they only do something like 10 or 12 gigs a year and all local so nice & easy. Just gotta learn how to play lead guitar I suppose….

Massive derail here Folks, sorry. Happy New Year from Japan to all you lovely lads & lasses. Thanks for being a constant through the thicks & thins of last year etc. Keep 'em coming. Our little company means so much. Have a cracking evening and a super 2023. Much love, Marc, Osaka Right, as you were. Let It Bee ～ Carlo's Crew

I've been asked regularly if I could supply ready-built crossovers for the BCIII and have always had to say no. The original hard-wired crossovers I supplied with the kits took me about half a day to build, and I don't have that many half-days available any more. The good news is that I've now invested in high-quality fibreglass PCBs for use in my LFSys cabs that can be repurposed for the BCIII design. So, if you have the woodworking skills to build a BCIII and would like me to supply a ready-to-install crossover, just send me a PM.

Should have credited BCH with the fine pic's he took and copied to me - thanks Bernard. Here's one of the East engine room:

Played the local Horse & Jockey last night. At least two other band sitting watching, which always gets the adrenaline pumping. Punters really enjoyed it, it is a cramped wee stage. Always a good night, just wish the place was bigger. Here’s to 2023 and the gigs that’ll bring, hope everyone has a good one.

Abascab - Genesis

Not sure if this counts as a small board, but it's clearly too small for the pedals on it so I'm going with that! 😬 I've been around the houses lately with this; been through a Sansamp VTDI, then an HX stomp in place of the Le Bass, and a Diabolik in place of the Sovtek. I also had an optocomp at the front of the chain. I Found the low end on the sansamp to be bloated and unrefined. I then found that I was shoehorning in effects and over complicating things because I could with the HX stomp and was never truly convinced against analogue counterparts (it couldn't even kick my hot wax off my board). I also just didn't like the flavour that the optocomp added. Reasons for losing the Diabolik were I just couldn't get it to retain low end (despite general consensus of huge low end retention) unless I had so much clean dialled in that it no longer sounded synthy. I suspect it just didn't get along with my basses though. The Le Bass is a fantastic pre, which I'm using as an always on sweetner, and fusion mode for a dirtier rock tone. Struggle to get A, B, and A+B all matched for use at the same time, but A and A+B are worth the cost of admission. The Sovtek is a hugely versatile muff with clean blend, and whilst not as synthy as I'd like, with the sweepable mids get me somewhere into that realm...

If you learn Eighties then you get a 3 for 1 deal with The Damned and Nirvana thrown in. 😁

I have a pau ferro board on my Stingray and it looks fabulous but my favourite despite looking nowhere near as beautiful is ebony. Below is my pau ferro Stingray neck.

Great post and thanks for sharing, enjoyed reading about your experiences. I spent a good few years play a U-Bass in a 50's and 60's Rock 'n' Roll band and thoroughly enjoyed it. We were doing well over 100 gigs a year and at least a third of them were where we stripped back and played acoustic and I jumped on the U-Bass. They are such great fun and I got so much attention and interest from playing one. I started out with a Kala Sub bass which was really good and very well made but I wasn't a big fan on the looks. So I then got a Kala Rumbler which I absolutely loved. It sounded fabulous and was lovely to play. I had so much fun playing it but sadly the band stopped when Covid hit and we all moved on. I did toy with the idea of either getting a fretless or the California but as the band ended, I went the other way and sold both my Kala's. I however fancy getting another at some point and really like the look of the Kala Journeyman so maybe next year I'll start again with one. Anyway, here's a little video we did of a famous song in an American dinner.

I KNOW there are other U-BASS players here on BC, it would be great to hear your ukulele bass stories and some of your favorite examples Here is mine ... My first foray into the world of bass was with a U-BASS (Ukulele Bass). I was playing tenor uke in a uke band and I fancied a change ... so in 2017 I went down to GAK and walked away with my very first ever bass ... A Kala Exotic Mahogany U•BASS. It was great fun and I made my first stumbling (very) steps getting to grips with playing bass. It is a four string fretted electro-acoustic bass. Acoustically it is just loud enough to practice with solo but when playing with other instruments it really needs some umph, hence the correspondingly wee bass amp (Roland Micro Cube RX), battery powered and with enough output to allow me to be heard when playing in the band (6 acoustic ukes/vocals). Great fun and so easy to lug around. Its (and our) most ... prestigious ... gig was when we played the main stage of the Brighton Dome. We were rather chuffed when we were told we had the same dressing room as ABBA had used when they won the Eurovision back in 1974! UAS is a similar disorder to GAS and in 2019 I managed to get a solid body U-BASS. A Kala SUB. A different tone, a bit heavier but still a feather compared to a bass guitar and with a bit more "tweakability" as it came with saddle height adjustment as well as a truss rod (The electro-acoustic just has a truss rod) It was a couple of years later (Post covid) when I decided to try an electric bass to overcome some tuning and intonation challenges I was finding with the U-BASS (I've since discovered that an improvement in my playing technique has helped a lot with these). I trialed an Ibanez Mikro (Pictured below in the row of Tenor Uke, Kala SUB, Ibanez, Kala electro-acoustic) but I sent it back as it was just too large to play in the band. Sadly in August 2022 a fire took almost all of my musical gear, the electro-acoustic survived (As I had loaned it to a band mate) so I still have it today. The thing is that I have since fallen in love with 5 strings so it was with great delight that I was offered this beauty (An early model Kala California solid body 5 string fretless) a few weeks ago (Out of the blue someone said they knew of my love of ultra short scale and they were not getting on with this one and would I like it!) I could not believe my great fortune! I popped some Aquila Thunderbrowns on it (OMG!) and it has become my goto ukulele bass and will fit in brilliantly with the band when we start up again next year. For those of you who are unfamiliar with ukulele bass instruments, they are ultra short scale (My electro-acoustic is 21 inch scale and the solid body is 23 inch) and they use specially formulated strings (Polyurethane are the most common tho you can get wire wound with nylon core) to allow them to be tuned the same way as a bass guitar. Pickup wise they tend to use a piezo pickup under the bridge saddle. Why do I love the U-BASS? They are unbelievably portable being so small and light! The ultra short scale makes it very easy to move around the fretboard. And for me, I play in a ukulele band ... it is wonderful to see people's faces when they hear the big bass sounds coming from such a wee beast! Sound wise ... they do not sound quite like an electric bass, nor do they sound quite like an EUB ... they have been described as being somewhere in-between. With my lack of a decent mic or DI (and lacking bass skills) I am not posting any sound sample of my own, but here are some from the web. S'manth x

Had the timings been slightly different I may have purchased a LfSys bass cabinet, but I'm currently having a lot of fun building the BC 112mk3. Some things to note, in comparison to the BC110T cabinet which you may see photos in another thread: It is a significantly harder build than the BC110T. The tolerances are tight and there is not much margin for error. The battens round the edge of the BC110T proved invaluable to affix panels. The parts are harder to source. Even the wood, being of the 15mm variety, required me to search online whereas 12mm can be found in B&Q and Wickes. Clamps are essential, including great big fat ones as seen in the photo I don't own an LfSys, but as everyone knows round here, bass gear can be judged by pictures alone so that's what I'm going to do. The LfSys looks to have groove joints, presumably to save on weight and increase the inherent strength to the build. There is absolutely no way I am capable of making such joints. Secondly, the circular cut-out for the port I did with a jigsaw. I did the best I could but it's not perfectly circular so when I do install the drainpipe it's going to look a little messy with caulk round the edge. The LfSys looks to either be CNC'd or cut using a hole saw so the port tube looks very professional. When it comes to cost, yes this is a saving over a Silverstone, assuming you already own the woodworking tools. Using the back of an envelope calculation I think I spent around £400 on parts, although I see that the 12PR320 has gone up a fair amount since I purchased it, and I bought cheap 15mm hardwood. Anyway, onwards to victory! I have a panto in January (oh yes I do) so I have that as an ambitious target to get this ready. I haven't decided what colour this is going to be. Orange tolex with a red baffle may cause the universe to implode, so that's tempting.

Haven't got a story just dropping before I get too drunk to say Happy new year to all bass chatters. Wish you all a fantastic 2023.

Excellent. You can now throw all of those guitarist tantrums you had to endure as a bass player. Don't forget to remind them how irreplaceable you are.

Germoline - Dolly P

I went to BassDirect today to get it out of my system, came back with a 2nd hand bass and preamp for my RBX6JM. I managed until March this year, I am aiming for April this time. @AndyTravis can attest to my willpower.

And again.

Parked life. Blur

I'd Rather Go Blind - Etta James ... and you probably will

I had a Fender Urge 2 for years, and that had pau ferro. It was lovely. I prefer a darker wood for aesthetics, but ultimately aesthetics are just not important enough to be a decisive factor in buying a new bass. Can always use a good leather dye if it’s that much of an issue.

Was up at BCH's on Thursday trying - and buying - his modded s-s MM Stingray. I took my Mesa TT-800 along to play through Bernard's Monaco. In between chatting about the 'Ray and his other fine basses, there was much positive comment about the Monaco cabs that we have recently acquired. When it comes to cabs, we've both been round the block a few times, and we're delighted with what Stevie's done. Great job! 👏

The latest iteration of my 'do it all' board. I belong to two bands and I often dep with two others. This board will cover the two deps (a wide range of genres and styles) and the blues band. It is subject to change without notice. 😃 I am contemplating a separate board for the blues band with Behringer pedals - the Tube Amp Modeler would then go on that board. The Glowplug and the compressor are always on. I'm still fine tuning the Glowplug but it's close to what I'm after - warmth rather than overdrive. This goes into a Peavey Minimax 600 and a pair of 1x10" Trace Elliot cabs. The Hulla band board is much simpler, partly due to the songs and arrangements and partly because it's a large band (12-13 in total) and space is often limited. The Zoom gives me a chorus, a spacey flange patch and a defretted sound. As we add new songs or re-arrange existing ones the Zoom will provide most of what I may need. The Digbeth goes straight into the desk for the main sound and I take a feed to my TCE BAM200 into one of my 1x10" Trace cabs. With this band, I'm slowly moving to in ear monitoring and the backline is largely for confidence/back up. Both boards are home made from plastic fascia board off-cuts and copious amounts of black gaffa tape.

Thanks for a very informative review, Mike. I'd just like to comment on one small section of the review, if I may. A common query you'll see in this part of the forum (check out the Orange thread currently running, for example) is "my cab isn't cutting it, what should I do?" And the most common advice you'll read is: "add a second cab of the same type". It seems to have become accepted wisdom. In other words, if you have a mediocre cab, you should add a second mediocre cab to create a louder mediocre pair of cabs. Mike has pointed out some of the benefits of ditching two average quality cabs and investing in a single, high-performance solution. I hope it's provided food for thought.

I'd keep it simple. When I've done this, admittedly many years ago, I just treated the two instruments as a completely separate entity, bear in mind you've got a volume knob on the synth /keyboard to keep a bit in hand in case the pa bloke turns you down! ^nice moggy BTW.. 👍

Great thread ! Guys, have a great NYE,whether your staying in or gigging. If you are gigging load up early and arrive early if you can. I hope all of you have engaged crowds and the band locks in tight within the first few bars. It's the last gig of the year for most of us. Have a blast and get home safely. Blue

For anyone interested in these basses, thought I'd give an update... I contacted Thomann about the unusable tuners, they offered a new set or £25 partial refund. How they can do that on a bass of this value is insane, but very stand up of them. I put this on top of the Wilkinson tuner price and ordered some black Schaller tuners instead. Much better fit than the Wilkinson's sound, with only 1 hole per tuner to be redrilled. Embarrassingly, I made an absolute pigs ear of this after a good skinful; 2 sheered screws later and a few headstock dings later they were fitted. I suspect if I'd been sober, it'd have been an easy job though. the unbalanced string volume was infarct a string issue! Put some D'addario NYXLs on and it sounds awesome for the money. Going to gig it before deciding on the electrics!

Here's my new baby, bought from Bernard (BCH) on here complete with John East 3-band active mod 😊

A few semi random thoughts… Wals have always used proprietary electronics - right back from the Pro series models in the late 70s. The Pro series circuit boards are works of art in their own right. …but it was the Custom Series basses which brought in the filter based system from about 1981. Hugely, hugely versatile system and some amazing tones which can be easily pulled up. As to tone wood… Paul would say that the wood does have a bearing on the tone of the bass. However he would also say that it’s not as predictable as a people think because of the organic nature of wood and it’s variability as a material… I discussed it with him for the blog a few years ago… “The standard bodies all have a central Mahogany core and the facings add character to the overall tone. So regardless of facing choice there is a consistency running through by using the same core timber. As a general rule, the harder facings such as wenge/padauk (wenge being slightly harder) tend to be slightly brighter and punchier giving more attack and reflection - often selected for fretted basses. At the other end of the scale are the softer/less dense timbers like American Walnut, which is favourite for fretless instruments and players who prefer a rounder less aggressive sound.” Talking about preferences for fretless woods, “Yes, in general, but to counter the theory we’ve had some great sounding hard faced (like wenge) fretless basses through here – more aggressive sounding though. Also, you mustn’t forget that the density and grain structure can vary even from one end of a single board to the other. There can be a lot of variables even on two basses with exactly the same spec." Full blog here… http://walbasshistory.blogspot.com/2016/10/wal-woods-part-2-bodies.html

Did they discuss hats ?

Here's my board at the moment. I've had some health problems recently, which have meant a shrink down to one board - leaving off the super crazy stuff for now, just down to the essentials.

Get A Grip On Yourself - The Stranglers 😁

Very promising but still finding my way round it. Did my quick basic set-up yesterday but still not happy with the action up at the dusty end. For now, I'll just throw out a few random things. My knowledge of 'Rays is limited to: playing a used standard-scale passive MM FS in a shop a few years back and quickly finding a tonal sweet spot that was to die for; buying a SBMM s-s when they first came out and being very impressed - but not enough to keep it; liking Gail Ann Dorsey's 'Ray sounds in Bowie's band. Mine is fitted with round-wound strings (not EB Slinkies) and I have opted for flats on all my basses for a while now. I've not had a fat lot of experience with active basses. When I've decided where to go string-wise, I may need to play around a bit with the pick-up height as the E & A strings are dominating the D & G (could be the existing strings). I'm getting some great sounds but am a bit concerned at how dramatically the volume level responds to changes on the 3-band EQ. I want to make full use of the East tonal palette without faffing around with volume control. More later 🙂

For practicing at home I run a Barefaced One10. Great tone and with my TH500, louder than my neighbours will tolerate.

So famously in the unmemorable sense?

You are a bad, bad man! Great score; congrats.

It's been a revelation to me watching the design process for this and the Silverstone cab. I've been lucky enough to have had the chance to do some critical listening at various stages and be party to many of the tweaks that have taken place since the first BassChat design. I've listened to a number of different compression (horn) drivers in @stevie shed and a lot of different horns. TBH I was surprised by how much difference the final horn flare made compared to some respectable competition. However the real revelation and the reason I think this cab is so successful was the care that went into the crossover design. Minute tweaks exactly matching the bass and treble drivers together, then completely recalculating when the horn flare was changed. He still measures every frequency dependent components in the crossovers before they go in. Crossover design remains a bit of a black art with the software only getting you so close followed by hours of tweaking and testing. All that careful alignment across the crossover area would be wasted if the cab had an HF horn control