Leaderboard

Better photo from Rebellion...

in my defence I’m constantly unsupervised

Hi guys Since I had my '66 Mustang modified (Resto-modded, I think is the term) by the amazing @Andyjr1515 I have found it to be an absolutely wonderful instrument in every way - it's properly floored me, so much so that I sold my other 4 string basses. Now I'm looking to create a fretless version with the same sort of vibe. I say create, but I basically mean buy the bits and stick them together, and ask a competent luthier to fill in the vast gaps in my knowledge and skills. To that end, I have started a conversation with a recommended local luthier who will do some of this work. So what am I working with? Rather than de-fret a Musicmaster neck, I was lucky enough to score a Mustang (MIJ) neck on Facebook, which someone had already worked on. The truss rod has been replaced with an aluminium one and the fretboard replaced with ebony. The guy sounds quite experienced and I think it'll be a decent job. It cost me £200. As for the rest - well, I was always going to need a pickup near the bridge, which Musicmasters don't have. Either I'd need to get something routed or try and find something pre destroyed. This came up on eBay, Reverb etc from Rich Tone Music in Sheffield. I have spoken to them about it a bit and decided to go for it. I think it was slightly over valued but I think it'll be pretty spot on for my project. It's a 1972 Musicmaster that someone has put DiMarzio pickups in. The installation at the bridge is quite neat - indeed the neck is done quite nicely too (I saw pics under the scratch plate) but it is slightly wonky. But that's OK - I have a plan. So the neck will come off and swap easily. The neck pickup can be wiggled to straighten it (there's a bit of space around the pickup, happily not a massive swimming pool but just a slightly looser cutout than the bridge, looks like an OK job). The electronics are, weirdly, vol/tone. One vol for both pickups (no pan). I will re-wire it instead to blend/tone as per my Mustang. I say I will, someone else will with me pestering them. Once the pickup is repositioned I'll either need a new scratch plate or to work around it somehow. I have a plan for this too - reissue scratch plates have too many holes, and It would be nice to use the original. I don't have to be precious as it's obviously already been hacked away. I will widen the cutout to accommodate the moving of the pickup by a few degrees, then put a bezel around the new position, covering the gap left. Original guard stays on, and the neck pickup will gain a bezel, which I'll do in probably 3 ply w/b/w rectangle. Or, that fails and I get a new guard made using a tracing of mine. Next - the neck. I'm after a glossy finish, so we're talking about epoxy coating/polishing. Of course this can happen later if needs be. I will be using rounds, so something hard to compliment the ebony, but something that can be re-finished eventually. Finally - I might put a new bridge on, one with four saddle adjustability. I play in drop D (yes it works really well on the Mustang, even at 30") so independent adjustment for intonation is a must - I will probably need longer saddle screws for the fattest two strings, too. So the bits are arriving over the coming weeks - I have a couple of weekends away and so forth but I will update here as I go, if anyone is interested! I will see if my luthier is interested in updating here too, though if I'm able to move the pickup and do the pick guard bit myself he might not have too much to do except this kind of thing on the neck: So, a little bit crazy, potentially daft - but it went so well last time I thought why not? Cheers, looking forward to tops/advice/commiseration as appropriate! Crazy thing is that I'm not even any good on fretless

It's a slippery slope/vicious circle. They play too loud, cause damage to their hearing, turn up to be able to hear themselves, cause more damage to their hearing, turn up, etc, etc... Guitar players who wear earplugs are just as bad. They turn up because they can't hear themselves because of the plugs and wreck everyone else's hearing. If the rest of the band wears plugs in self-defence, the volume goes up even more because nobody can hear themselves properly.

Two more days were spent filling the exposed ends of the fret slots with lacquer, which is a slow process of dripping stuff in with a pipette and then filing it down. After that I was ready to start painting in my newly aquired (from Argos) spray booth/greenhouse. I was a little stumped by how to hold an instrument that has no tuning peg holes or neck pocket to use, but decided on a big M-10 eyebolt through the jack socket hole. And here's how it looks as of right now. Don't worry, this is just the first step in what will be a fairly elaborate finish.

Saturday we played our much-hyped (and I mean much-hyped, I don't think as much effort has gone into promoting a gig since I've been a member) gig at The Hop in Wakefield. Our guitarist Jen is a local to the area (three of the others are all from over Bratford way) so had been going mad with excitement for the last month and there had been a great many posts on "the socials" including from her employer. She had gathered a huge list of shout outs that she wanted to do but which we had to quite sensibly curtail - I made the point that with the amount she wanted to do we may as well ditch the set list and just do shout outs! The venue was reasonably compact but a nice size, and the stage was a decent size. It was a warm evening so we managed to get the AC turned on above us, but it was pretty useless and so it was a pretty sweaty one. I decided to go with my Sire V7, Ashdown ABM and the trusty Barefaced cab, with the Elf on standby just in case. During soundcheck everything sounded OK but the on-stage sound during the gig was very hit and miss - there were a few songs where we were relying on some sequenced drum tracks to keep the drummer in time, and thence to keep the rest of us in time, but there were a few songs where he could barely hear it and so we went a bit wrong on a few occasions, notably during the bass solo of Club Foot where I made a right hash of things. For the most part though things went pretty well, playing-wise, and our newly-prepped track Shout was amazing to play live, as well as giving me a chance to break out the Mooer octave pedal I got for Christmas! The atmosphere in the venue was absolutely tremendous, and playing issues aside one of the best gigs I've had with the band. Our guitarist's husband even went so far as to say he thought it was the best one he'd seen of us. People were up and dancing and singing right from the start, and the number that did so only increased through the night. We played two encores and left them wanting more - I was at the bar getting a drink afterwards and two lads were talking to each other about whether we were coming back on or not, and were disappointed when I told them we were done. My next door neighbours came to see me and looked like they were having a great time, possibly too great as they left immediately after we'd finished. We'd priced ourselves as low as we'd normally go to get the gig, but from what I was told they took almost well over double behind the bar what they'd normally take on a Saturday night. We hope we'll be invited back after that, and we'll definitely be pushing for a bit more in the way of fee. It's an Ossett Brewery pub, and we were told that they would pass on our details to others owned by the brewery, so fingers crossed. I think someone from another pub may have been in that night because we got an enquiry over Messenger during our mid-set break. Hopefully this will lead to us getting a few more diverse gigs for next year.

Hi fellow Basschatters, this is my first post under this new account but I had an account here with the same name a few years ago. I've played a Yamaha BB for years and whilst I absolutely adore the thing, playing in a fairly extreme metal outfit always made me want something a little....edgier for the stage. I lusted after several pointy basses for a while and then happened to see this beauty listed for sale on Reverb for an absolute steal - think it cost me £350 in the end? I knew I just had to have it immediately - I'd never seen a bass in this shape before and the mere sight of the thing had me going absolutely crazy! Just look at that beautiful old school Jackson headstock. Couldn't find much info about it online but I've managed to ascertain that it was made in Japan around 2001-2002. Since it was so cheap I decided to splash out on some mods - most notably the gold Gotoh bridge, Wilkinson tuners, and some new knobs. I was going for the Subaru Impreza blue and gold kinda vibe there. The stock "Duncan Designed" cheapo pickups didn't sound awful, but the electronics were a bit dodgy when it arrived, the preamp had some kind of grounding issue. When this decided to die on me just as I was about to step on the stage for our debut gig I decided I'd had enough and swapped them out for an active EMG set, a 35DC in the bridge and a 35P4 in the neck. They really pack a huge punch and especially with some nice crunch they absolutely sing. This thing looks absolutely killer and sounds great to match. I've read this on here and various other places but it's amazing how different instruments make you play and even act differently, with this thing I just feel more lively and energetic and I even stand and move around differently while playing. The elephant in the room is the neck dive - it is pretty bad and is probably the only thing stopping me playing this thing week in week out. I've managed to tame it a bit by running my strap in front of that big wing on the body rather than behind it, and by attaching some car wheel weights to the end of my strap below where it meets the strap button on the body. But if anyone else has any tips on how I can tame this that would be amazing - it's a very light bass but the added weights do take their toll a bit... The other "small" issue is that this thing is absolutely enormous, the body is huge and because of where it sits on your body the first fret feels like it's in a different postcode. The neck dive doesn't help this either. But all told I'll happily accept these things just to feel as powerful as you do when wielding one of these things on stage.

I have an Andertons Factory Special Run LPB Bass VI, which I bought soon after they became available. I fitted it with a set of LaBella flats and set it up as best I could without dismantling the bass. While it was fun to play, it was ultimately a little underwhelming. One problem was that the E string touched one of the bridge screwheads, causing a sitar-like buzz. To fix this, I wedged a Herco nylon plectrum under the string at the point of contact. Another issue was the trem — it had no usable travel and was essentially as much use as indicators on a BMW. The strings also felt disappointing: too floppy, lacking tightness and definition. Trying to get anywhere near the Wichita Lineman tone was pointless. I’d occasionally take it out for a noodle, but I’d never recorded with it or played it live. Today, I wondered whether a thicker shim in the neck pocket might help. I cut a few pieces from an Amazon brown card envelope, put a capo on the neck, loosened the strings, and carefully removed the neck screws. I was able to ease the neck out of the pocket, fit the shim, and reassemble it. I then spent a little time setting it up with just the tiniest hint of relief. Because of the shim, the bridge had to be raised considerably. I had no idea which Allen key size was needed, but after some trial and error, I found that 1 mm did the trick. I also raised the pickups. With the greater break angle, the strings now feel tighter and more focused. The E string no longer vibrates against the screwhead, and the trem now has useful travel. I dialled in a twangy 60s Fender amp sound on my Fender Mustang GTX100, with tremolo and spring reverb, and spent a couple of hours playing. It’s amazing how such a small change in neck angle has completely transformed the bass. I’m now looking forward to recording it, and plan to use it in this month’s Basschat composition challenge.

The only time I've had anything approaching a musical collaboration with my dad was when I used some of his ashes in an old 35mm film canister as a shaker. He never had a sense of rhythm when he was alive but I gave him one after he died. 😂

The point is (been made by a couple of people now) that the L-2000/ASAT should already have one, if it's wired properly. Don't need to fit anything, just fix what's already there.

Regarding the pricing if USA EBMM basses v the import ranges ect, it's a complicated situation. So much is about marketing rather than what you are actually getting for your money. Manufacturers are becoming more aware that part of what gives their instruments value in the minds of their potential customers is charging a high price for them. Putting up the price can actually attract punters to buy your goods because of the new way they perceive them. It's all about how you present the package. EBMM tweaked the Stingray into being the Stingray Special and simultaneously put about another 30-odd percent on the price. They wanted to start putting their USA-made instruments in a different marketplace and the redesign gave them the perfect excuse.

I have a reasonable spl app on my phone. Itsy not be spot on but it does useful comparisons. Alice Cooper at an arena gig about 20m from the main pa. About 97dB peak. Typical bands in my local club at about 10m from the pa 90-100dB peak. Average levels about 10dB down. The band who needed their valve amps hot to get the right tone - over 110dB. I suspect it reads high, but seriously, no pub/club band needs to be louder than Alice Cooper.

That is at odds with my experience - admittedly with a Tribute L-2000 - it would play fine in passive mode even with the battery removed, never mind dead. In that case, the active or active with treble boost settings on the switch became an effective kill switch.

That exact thing happened in a band I was in, guitarist put in ear plugs to “save his hearing dudes” then proceeded to turn up 3 times louder than the rest of the band cos he couldn’t hear himself.

There's nothing at all wrong with ceramic pickups, but in this instance the point is that neodymium pickups are the essence of the Bongo's unique tone. It was the first EBMM bass to feature those magnets, and was probably one of the first basses anywhere with that type of pickup. Allied to that four band preamp, those pickups give the Bongo it's incredibly powerful output and tone. Without that formula you are may well be left with just a funny-shaped bass that ain't that cheap. I love the Bongo, always have done. At these prices, like others have suggested, I'd look out for a used USA one.

i should pop my new'un up. A bit of a rare bird... details here:

Some people are just dicks

I was doing a gig with the blues/rock band yesterday We only usually do one a year but the BL decided to do a warm up gig in what was a great venue but. They've taken the carpet out 3 Guitarists stupid Bose PA right behind me I had my ACS custom moulds in and by half way through the 2nd set it was hurting my ears The guitars just kept turning up and up During a dreadful rendition of Heroes by Bowie I signalled to the BL that I couldn't hear and it was too loud H e wound the song up early and I said I'm done. It's loud, it's hurting me and I walked off stage I'm not a diva but I actually feared for the hearing I have left I'm still fumimg this morning

Leo himself did in 1960. If I was forced to choose just one bass for the rest of my life, it'd be some variety of Jazz. Not much you can't do with a J.

You guys think you have it bad? My dad's a ... lead guitarist. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. Nice guy though. Shared the stage with him before.

You could always get a bypass switch fitted. Easy enough for a techie to do.

I call them "dodgy routing covers"

I have a cheese grater called "AGHyafeckinbastid!"

Just come across this thread. What a wonderful ad for the friendship and collegiality that characterises the best of Basschat. Makes me proud to be a part of it.

I exaggerate a bit, but we can get a lot of rain here. Flooding is awful, even if it only damages property.

Fair enough. All I can say is that ceramic magnets certainly wouldn't put me off any bass in any price range. The think about ceramic pickups, like any other pickup, is the magnet is only part of the equation. The wire, bobbins and shielding can also influence the tone. I've got an EBMM Reflex bass that has ceramic magnets like a USA Sterling with Stingray wire wound on Bongo bobbins going into a tweaked Bongo preamp that's switchable between series/ parallel and active/passive. Not surprisingly, it sounds unique.

If it helps, I can source these Spector branded Gotoh tuners for you here in Germany - 50€ for the set:

It's a bit of a weird one from a market segment POV. Ernie Ball will know the price of used basses. A new USA MM of any sort has gone up a fair bit, with Sterling being "premiumised" and the SUB being not so budget anymore. So you can have a new Sterling for the same price as a used US model, in probably more interesting colours. They are probably getting it right, but the best selling bass from Music Man recently was the Joe Dart budget range...make of that what you will.

Looks like your wiring has been modified. With the original wiring in passive mode the switch bypasses anything to do with the battery and routes the sound from the volume control straight to the jack socket.

Defies logic doesn't it 🤔

Exactly this, but perhaps s/he knows from experience that some people simply can't be told, largely because........ For a lot of musicians it's simply habit learned and reinforced over many years, initially driven by either ego or poor understanding of audio. But usually ego. There's a reason people choose to be a lead guitarist, especially in certain genres, and it's not to contribute to an overall well-balanced sound

Gentle rest strokes all the time for me. IMO gets a better sound, with a lower action, better flow of notes and uses less energy than trying to pluck the strings.

Wales is famous for its rain frequency, Daryl

Rest strokes are when you play through the string, so that your right hand fingers come to rest on the string below. Free strokes are more like spanish guitar, where your fingers end up in free space (or on your palm).

Hi BassAdder60, I actually managed to speak to one of the tech guys at Dark glass, He said they did replace any amps with failures , so at least they did that without argument, I must say these amps sound incredible and for recording taking the direct output via XLR sounds fantastic and it is the effected sound , what I like is, the sound is track ready , you just have to amplify that sound via software on the track EQ etc to bring it up to a level that would fit with other instruments I record my bass with drums only normally, so it is easy to control everything that way, works for me, The Graphic is just incredible on that amp as is the Compressor, , hooking up to the Dark glass suite is cool too, you can change cabinets and mics, there are 3 onboard presets that you can save with a press of a button, I am pleased with the purchase, but must admit when I started reading about the issues from the past , I was not too happy, but glad I didn't cancel and felt much better after speaking to Chris at Darkglass, they are using new power modules on the latest versions, so all should be good.

State Fair Park a few hours after we left. 14 inches of rain. They closed the fair on Sunday. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19UAzxynQP/ Daryl

Righty. So I've made more progress since the last update, but I'm afraid I've not been very diligent about taking pictures. When I last checked in, the new frets were in the board, but that was about it. The first big job after that was to trim/file them all to the right length. This is a painstaking process because you're filing and filing and filing for ages, but you're still having to maintain enough control that you don't accidentally gouge a chunk out of the fingerboard. I did one half of the fingerboard one day, then came back and did the other half of the fingerboard the next day. I've learned from experience that if you try to do the whole thing in one go, you're going to end up with a cramped-up claw hand. I didn't take any pictures of this process, partly because it's really boring and partly because I was listening to something interesting and got distracted. Here's the finished fingerboard. The little shiny spots you can see here and there are a mix of glue and sawdust, used to fill the tear-out from the fret removal. As I said, I didn't do the neatest job of that, so these are sort of like bits of tissues paper stuck on after a really inept teenager's first shave. Next comes the leveling and crowning. Again, not many pictures of this process. I did what I always do, which is mark the tops of the frets with a sharpie, then put some 320-grit self-adhesive paper on my 1-metre engineering straightedge. I only had to take a little material off here and there because the fingerboard was nice and level and the frets went in cleanly. After that I roughly rounded over the frets with my crowning file and then tidied them up with a three-corner fret dressing file. After that, it's polishing time. Which involves lots of 2500 grit wet/dry paper and a lot of patience. Here's the finished neck. I'll oil up the fingerboard when the rest of the work is done.

Sounds to me that venue acoustics meant the guitarists couldn't hear themselves, so they all kept turning up. Instead, the band leader should be taking control and telling everyone to turn down. It's not a difficult concept to grasp. I saw a band on Saturday night. They complained about the sound. The guitarist and bass player had amps set on stun, the sound guy had to turn off everything in the PA except vocals. At one point he went up to the stage and told them all to turn down. Which they did, but 2 minutes later, turned back up before the sound guy had a chance to sort it all out properly. I didn't see their soundcheck, but you wonder how they'd got to that point.

It's done! I went to the Mech Engineering Workshop at work today, because I needed some help to get a hole through from the new pickup route to the cavity. Yes, they had a sufficiently long drill bit to be able to enter from the neck pocket and drill through, into the new route then onwards and into the bridge pickup route... Bridge pickup is foam suspended, so the foam will simply deform around the chunky multicore wire. After that, it was pretty much just a case of wiring it all up. Except it wasn't - because there were a few wrinkles in the plan (isn't there always?). First thing I learned is that the T-40 pickup, while splittable, doesn't give you access to all four ends of the coils - it only has three wires plus a shield coming out of it, so all you can do is series/single by shunting one coil to ground. So I had to change from a three way mini toggle to a two way. Then gotcha 2 happened - the new switch had less of a threaded section on it than the previous switch, so out comes the drill again with the forstner bit to remove a little more control cavity to make the new switch poke through the top of the guitar enough. With those little issues out of the way it was just a case of wiring it up... Quick tap test on the pickups made me suspect that the pickups were out of phase when both engaged, so I swapped the wires of easiest one (the bridge pickup). Then I tested it for real. IT WORKED! I am delighted with this mod - I've had to learn a lot of new things, and I hope to never have to route an already finished bass ever again

Superglue one of these to thier speaker grill

If it was too loud for the members of the band, imagine how the punters felt.

What would sort it out - but they won't do it - is to go and book a hearing test. These are easily available on the high street. Then they might understand that they've got a problem, or will have one soon... That would determine frequency range and sensitivity.

9AM start for me yesterday to pick up the guitarist and a bunch of gear, then a long drive through constant traffic to Blackpool. A bunch of jobsworth's checking the gear at the load in bay which is unusual for Rebellion. One lad stopped me "I need to put a tag on your hardware case" What's the point of that? "It's a security measure, it shows that it's been searched" Do you want to search it then? "No, I trust you, you don't have any drugs in there do you?" No mate, the drugs are in my other bag 🤷‍♂️ Then the stairs. So many stairs. All the way up to the Opera House to play our first set. It's such a massive stage and they barely even line checked us. The sound on stage was abysmal. They had the guitarists' amp modeller clipping so it was just a horrible fizzy mush. We struggled through but seemed to go down really well. I've seen some footage since and the sound was fine FOH so they must have had separate feeds on the guitar. Very reassuring! After that were more stairs up to the Almost Acoustic stage. So many stairs. For this "acoustic" stage, the only hard and fast rule is "no bass drums". I'm sure I've posted on here about this before but my work around is to put a mic in a tupperware tub and hit it with a standard kick pedal. It's so weird that they prefer to plug in this contraption than mic up an acoustic bass drum, but it is what it is, and we've done it loads of times before, so we cracked on. This room is a nightmare for sound. A very distinct slap back echo on everything. It's OK when I'm in charge of the groove but when the guitarist is on his own it can put him off. Anyway, once again, we seemed to go down really well Lots of new fans, sold loads of merch, and had a good laugh. So many stairs on the way out. Then the lift was broken at the carpark. I was on the top floor. My legs would like a rest now Ace to see @Leonard Smalls sounding tight AF, trousers in full effect!

After our Rebellion afternoon gig went and watched @cheddatom 's band Headsticks - they were, as usual properly excellent... So following some refuelling with pizza, tiramisu and double espressos we carted our gear 200m to the Washington pub which was surrounded by punks watching Year Zero (decent band!). We schlepped everything (actually, twas only Raph's bass amp, our instruments and cymbals) through the throng, set up and proceeded to play. And we made far fewer mistakes - slight speed errors here and there but starts, stops and changes were perfect. Good thing we'd had a rehearsal at Rebellion earlier 😁. All seemed to go down well, folks jigging about and no complaints when I did unnecessary slap'n'widdle solos. Which was nice! Gear and clothes exactly the same as earlier, apart from provided big Ashdown combo that sounded pretty awesome once I'd tamed the feedback. And the rest of the band went to watch Bad Manners in the Strictly Ballroom while I had a Glenfiddich 15yo in the hotel bar...

After a bit of hiatus, Instagram threw this up for me. The Corsell Ventura

I said it wasn't elaborate. I bought a bass on here, stripped it, and had it resprayed in Gulf Racing blue. I wanted to add the orange strips, but not on the bass itself. However, RightOn didn't sell a black strap with orange stripes (although they do sell a blue /orange Racing one, but only in 6cm width). So I asked for a black strap, 8cm, with orange strips, and they duly obliged.