Leaderboard

So the Jazz has arrived and snuck in the house and hidden away. Had to get rid of a buzz on the G string but otherwise seems really well put together! I've only had a few Fenders over the years so no expert so not going to make any wild claims but if someone had said it was a Fender for twice the price I wouldn't have thought anything of it. I'm a bit of a sucker for white and gold so I love the look but I did see a pic with a white pearloid scrachplate which looked lovely. Have an empty house later this evening so looking forward to having a wee blast!

To respond to the message I received calling me a liar, here is where the test conditions for normal conditions are defined in the IEC 62368 regulations (for the EU). The input power to be labeled is defined to be the input power under these normal conditions (or greater if the manufacturer chooses a more stringent duty cycle because of the application). For example, for the amps I design for bass and electric guitar, I typically use more than double the minimum required under the regulations but for acoustic guitar it will be a little less than double: Also, may I ask why there's so much rudeness here? For those interested in learning, I'm providing information that most players clearly don't understand or haven't been exposed to. For those of you who don't want to learn, why challenge the facts is such a manner?

Can't afford it, don't need it at all, I already have everything I need. Bought it anyway. headless bass itch well and truly scratched. Series S4000 I believe, serial number is 235... I have no idea how to age it though, any ideas? I had no idea these things were so heavy though! I changed the batteries and one of the connectors fell apart as I unclipped it, so it now has shiny new battery clips but everything else is perfect. Can't wait to wheel it out at a rehearsal.

Buy the best gear you can find. The stuff that just fits, feels right, looks good and sounds like a million dollars. If it's expensive or cheap, just buy it. . . . be happy, and know you're sounding good.

Got my model fet back on the board so naturally had to have a play with signal chain order. And here’s the reassembled board getting some QC from the cat. Forever faffing with pedalboards ✊

That's some super attention to detail in the EBMM aping then

Managed to get the IDE working on my Mac. Didn;t have to download any drivers from an obscure Chinese web site. That was never going to happen Copied all the code across to the IDE, compiled it, uploaded it and blow me down with a feather it works. No drivers setup, but I now have working keypad, screen and Mega 2560. That was rather painless. Suspect the CNC shield and stepper motors will be a lot more hassle.

Snot unusual - T J

How else will they get that "Weak G"? 🙃

Indeed, initially as an 'at home' way of keeping my hand in, but quickly moving on to 'giggable' kits. I now play a Millenium 850, bought in an as-new (still boxed..!) condition for 350€; it has excellent sounds, 'native', but I've coupled it to a laptop running Superior Drummer 3, and it's as good as it gets. The one downside, for me, is not being able to simulate jazz brush swishing with any conviction; other than that, I now play my acoustic (Camco...) to keep my hand in, but rehearse and gig with the e-kit. No complaints here, nor from the band, nor the audience, so...

From reading around on the topic, yeah I assume it must be - but you'd imagine their marketing people would want to turn that into a fancy-sounding feature like "space age lightweight multi-laminate hybrid core" 😆

What's the point of an expensive bass if you don't take it to gigs? An utter waste to play it solely at home. Not only that, what do people think happens to basses at gigs? I've never suffered so much as a nick on any of mine.

What kind of gigs do you play? If you're playing at places where you are fearing for your and your basses safety, I would recommend not doing those gigs in the first place. The cost of replacing my Mike Lull is about £4000. It has been one of my main gigging basses for 12 years. IMO there is no point in owning instruments if you're not going to gig them.

I think a significant difference is that Pino and John Giblin both had a much more formalised and conventional approach to playing bass than Mick Karn. That made them much more suited to mainstream session work than Mick Karn, who's style was probably just a bit too idiosyncratic for some artists and producers.

A heads up, for easily the best strings I've used in decades. Anyone looking to try something new, check them out. My Warwicks, my Thunderbird (main gigging bass) and at least half a dozen of my other basses are fitted with them. Sustain for days, piano like tone and good longevity, even with a sweaty bugger like me, and very reasonably priced. Order well in advance, because they're a small maker in Derbyshire, and it takes a couple of weeks to get them made and shipped. I am in no way affiliated, never met them (although I drive right past them often) and there's nothing in it for me...... just saying. absolutely awesome strings.

The start of another year of Basschat music making, looking forward to it already. Congratulations to Skankdelvar on his excellent victorious cover for the December challenge, but the honour of the picture choice for January fell to @AndyTravis, who won the November challenge, and he gave us this picture ... 'There we go…a nice cheery image for new year 😂' So that's it then , it's time to listen to the entries and vote for your favourite 3 1 @AndyTravis “You’ll be sorry” - basically just the idea of Technology being introduced into everything… Will it take over? 2 lurksalot Happy families , I was hoping for a slight edge to it , but it's come out as a wholesome waltz! 3 @Leonard Smalls I thought I'd celebrate Albert Hoffman's Bicycle Day a bit early this year 😁😎☠️ In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed, I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. 4 @Wolfram Ok, here is my horribly unfinished entry - I'm out of time - away for work next week, flying early tomorrow. Imagine this with vocoded robot voice musing on not losing sight of having fun and letting life pulse by mechanically - being more like the children in the photo than the adults. 5 @Doctor J The disintegration of the family unit due to overindulgence in technological quick highs can only be stopped by those who truly value and embrace the human experience... or forget to charge their phones. 6 @SH73 What a shame , a brilliant picture, but will have to leave this one out, not enough time in a day. Unless a 30 seconds intro I started would suffice. Rather than watching rubbish on telly or having an early night, here we go. 7 @upside downer Robot holds kids to ransom and maniac father tries to pay the droid off with an unsuitable offering then threatens violence to the droid who just wants a bit of TLC, or something like that. Warning! Puntastic Chili Peppers outro lyric! 8 @MoonBassAlpha Robots in the picture looking liverish after Christmas. A bit of dubby electronica should cheer them up! There we are then, a quality bunch of tracks that really fit the brief and a great start to the year . Vote for your favourite 3 Voting will close at midnight on 31st January enjoy Lurks

I have been fortunate enough to have owned and gigged expensive custom made basses like Overwater, Fenders, Stingrays, Squiers and a Harley Benton Jazz I got for free. With some small amounts of adjustment almost all of them have been great sounding and playing instruments. At no point has a member of the public commented on my basses, how good or bad they sounded, and none of them made a significant difference to the sound of my band. Yes some fitted better with different genres or tunes but none sounded bad. Two basses stand out over the years. First was a Fender American Standard bass that was total horse-poop and should have been picked out and burned before it left the factory, and it cost over 1k new. The second was a Squier Vintage modified Precision V that I got for under £300 new. That bass was sublime, so much fun to play, looked quite striking in white with a tort guard. I gigged that and smiled all night long while I was playing it. Can’t remember why I sold it to be honest but I have looked for another since. Moral of the story from my perspective; most people don’t give a monkeys about your gear, you can get inspiring and fun instruments at any price point, buy what makes you happy if you can afford it. Losing people had taught me life’s too short to not enjoy the fruits of your labour as long as you can take care of yourself and the people around you.

Saliva and kicking. - Simple minds

this might not be a wood screw at all, if it's a fine thread it might be threading into a metal insert / tee nut, this is common for strap handles. a pic of the screw will show this, if it has a flat end rather than a point then it would suggest that it's a machine screw for an insert. the nut might not be in place but as i'ts likely to be steel it will be stuck to the speaker magnet. I've had a fair few cabs apart and i've never come across a strap handle that wasn't held on with machine screws and Tee nuts. Matt

@agedhorse Thank you for posting that snippet of the Standard. It is now close to 15 years since I retired, and with retirement I lost my access to the Standards Library at work. I should also confess that whilst Audio was the driver that led to my career in Electronics, I spent just about all my working life designing and testing Video products. While having the basic grounding, I don't have the earned experience that you have. In case anyone wants to see the whole standard, it is 425 Swiss francs or approx £400.

Affordaboard makes buying effects a relatively inexpensive bit of fun. My latest dip included this little gem: £25. Delivered. Bonkers. I have it set to give me an always on 'thickening' with just a bit of dirt around the edges. It does get fuzzier if you want it to, and has excellent tone controls. There's no loss of bottom end anyway, but it can be enhanced rather nicely. Pros: looks neat, sounds great, responsive controls, crazy cheap. Cons: stupid placement of power socket, absolutely blinding led.

I really want a Charvel Pro-Mod San Dimas PJ IV. Not practical for me as can only do short scale basses nowadays but love the look of these. https://www.charvel.com/gear/shape/san-dimas-bass/pro-mod-san-dimas-bass-pj-iv/2963068595

Shut up, it was no more than 23 years ago surely

I've seen 'How was your Gig' and 'How was your rehearsal', but could not find one for Jams (Apologies if this was simply due to my poor searching!) So ... I shall kick things off. A few weeks ago I posted a 'I play bass, can I come along' ... the response was 'We already have a bass player' 😕 Hmmm ... where in the rules does it suggest that only one bass player is the max!? Anyhoo, a week or so later I received a message ... "we need a new bass player weekly, might you be interested". Ha ... I was on it like a rash! So, last week I went along and whilst being a bit timid, I really enjoyed it. Feedback was good and the fellow who hosts it even suggested I should turn up the volume ... I like it!! This evening I went again ... OMG, WHAT a blast! About 10 of us, playing through a bunch of leadsheets for a couple of hours ... and all really nice folks to boot! I was not doing anything sophisticated ... root/fifth, with an octave now and then. Some chromatic approaches, varying the beat from time to ... time, even throwing in some thirds when it seemed appropiate. I really felt in the groove and it will take days for the smile to disappear from my face. Now I just need to find the magical sequence of plugins on my Dwarf to get a nice upright like sound ... Sam x

The shiny face of MDF isn't glue friendly. You can make it better by opening the pores, but that takes time, time is money, and so it seldom gets done. Staples are great, I use them all the time, but only to hold parts in place while the adhesive sets. They're not structurally sound like screws.

That's what I think too. Dating in the pickup cavity with pencil. Definitely no stamps. And like you said it probably shouldn't have a paint stick mark. Burst is also not correct. The other parts, if original; I think black bottom pickups? And a pickguard with wider bevel. Bridge is also consistent with late '60s/early '70s. I'm tempted to think that he doesn't have a partsbass, but that it's all original (based on the available pics).

Be aware that style of moulded plug usually has poor screening at the plug ends. Youi might not be bothered about it of course.

Very responsive Phaser, very fast too! Turned far down as you can see and still moving pretty quickly. No loss of bottom end, no volume increase or decrease. Rich thick Phaser especially with a bit of dirt on the bass

I use 50-130 roundcore nickel plated steel on my 34 inch scale ACG and they are nice and flexible, not stiff like Roto 66's and not quite as loose as other strings, feel is allot like DR high beams to me. Jonny

I posted these on another thread, but porn is often described as gratuitous........so I'll be gratuitous and post in 2 places.

a bit of progress today. While the neck seem to fit like that, I have started the shaping of the back control cavity which is not that easy I would say, but it is started at least. I plan to cover it with a 5mm deep wood cover screwed in (or maybe MDF would do?). I was also pleased that, even if the bridge moved a bit backwards as per previous posts, there is still a bit of room between the brodge and the end of the bas bottom, so that I, hopefully, won't be placed in the category "bass guitar serial offenders" hahahahahahahaha. So I screwed it in and checked the straightness of it and the neck the last and first string. And I put it in position. I will wait to route the pickups when I have them, to make sure I will not screw it up ... again!!! haha ... There is still a bit of work to be done in the shaping of the back cavity, and, obviously, in the overall shape of the body!

There are a lot more medium to higher range basses around. Looking at £1300-1600 that'll get you a serious amount of bass. Maybe that's what is skewing perspective. Still loads at £300-500, so I think it's just that there is a much wider range.

Newtone are excellent! I have nothing but good to say about Neil and the strings themselves. Indeed, my first introduction was back when Malcom Newton was at the helm and, with Jon Shuker, he produced the first .170 gauge strings in the UK for my 7 string bass. He'd cooked the recipe to suit a 34" scale (I know right, I wasn't aware of what a 37" scale could do for me back then ha ha!!) and, I still have one of the original F#'s here for posterity!

I use Diamond strings on my P-bass and they sound mint - nickel, round core. They have a discount code for January as well: 2024

IME there are two factors that affect the effectiveness of electronic kits with a more "traditional" band setting. Firstly there is the skill of the drummer in setting up the sounds and their responsiveness to the individual's playing technique. This is the area where I think most drummer with electronic kits fall down. How the sounds respond to the drummer depends on both the sound and how it has been adjusted to match that particular drummer's technique. The best sounding electronic kit I have heard from a "semi-pro" band should on paper have no been brilliant because of the old technology used for generating the sounds, but because the drummer had matched the responsiveness of the sounds exactly to how they played it sound fantastic. Secondly there is a tendency for bands and audiences to listen with their eyes. I used to be a fairly high-tech band which over the years had a number of drummers each with different electronic kits. The one that most people though was the best was the one whose kit was essentially a traditional drum kit but with the shells heavily damped and bugs for triggering the sounds attached to the heads. Interestingly he was playing the same drum parts triggering exactly the same sounds as his predecessors who used more obviously electronic kits. Also he was by far the more "metronomic" when it came to how closely his hits matched a quantised 16th note grid (as we discovered in the studio). So looks do count for a lot. These days there are commercially available kits that look to the average audience member just like acoustic drums. I'd say get your prospective drummer in for an audition and decide when you've heard and seen them.

How cool do these new rootmaster and original heads look 10/10 from me on cosmetics. The RM has cab Sims too. I think they should have done the ABM Evo 5 in the same style. That said, here's an ABM with a blue/gray facia. Looking cool. Prefer it to all black

That´s because most are overpriced, even in the current market. I´ll use the late 70s Fenders for this example. Seller A has a high priced ´78 Fender for sale on reverb. Seller B wants to sell his ´78 and checks reverb for pricing. He decides to add a little to it for some negotiation room. Seller C wants to sell his ´78 and checks reverb and sees the priced of A and B, and is optimistic so sits a bit higher than those. And there we are; ´78 Fender Jazzes that are listed around 4k... Don´t get me wrong; I like the sound and playability of a good ´70s Fender. But I can´t imagine why one person would pay those prices while it can get you 3 AVRI basses and a few sets of spare strings. Realistically priced instruments will sell eventually. Some (non Fenders) will take more time probably.

In with a whole 2 hours to spare today! Stated about 2 this afty. Robots in the picture looking liverish after Christmas. A bit of dubby electronica should cheer them up! My good friend Phil Beavis kindly supplied some synth sounds and electonic drum loops. I'm playing newly arrived Rickenbacker bass, Telecaster and acoustic drums (including my rarely heard beastly china cymbal). gretsch drums, Rogers snare, Paiste 2002 and Sig cymbals. Recorded in Reaper. 1 take all parts!

Another vote here for it being the bridge being misaligned. Given the body would probably have been cut and routed using a CNC machine I think it's unlikely the pickups would be off, and the strings look slightly out on the neck as well. I imagine this will be relatively easy to remedy but it's still annoying.

From the vid in the OP, I get the new-to-me impression that Karn: - laid out the essence of the whole song in the bass part (making me hear complete songs when listening to isolated bass only), - left ample space for the other instruments. New to me, and I may have to reconsider, but my respect for him grew even larger now. Tmade me think of Bach's crafty and defining bass parts, but Karn took it up several notches as to the bass part itself. Luvverly stuff, and now I'll have to dig deeper into Japan and his solo output.

This. Or something close - possibly an RD artist too. Neither would sit right on me, but I love the Thunderbird and RD.

Ok, here is my horribly unfinished entry - I'm out of time - away for work next week, flying early tomorrow. Imagine this with vocoded robot voice musing on not losing sight of having fun and letting life pulse by mechanically - being more like the children in the photo than the adults. The tech stuff: All synths are u-he Diva, beats from Groove Agent SE, delays from Echoboy and a little reverb from Relab LX480 to glue it together, finalised with Ozone 8. This month's New Thing™: slicing a loop - never done this before. The mechanical noises loop is from a 1996 Future Music cover CD - I've been waiting 28 years for a suitable project to use that loop!

I thought I'd celebrate Albert Hoffman's Bicycle Day a bit early this year 😁😎☠️ In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed, I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. For a change we've got proper singing, a touch of rap and a relatively straightforward groove featuring the Wal as both guitar and bass, plus a Strat and a few found samples. Drums programmed with EZ with some Loopcloud drums as well. Keys are AAS, Iris and Clavinet and everything has been first daubed with 196 types of reverb and delay, then liberally rolled in Ozone 9.