bassbiscuits

New pickup day - is there such a thing? I’m slowly doing up a bitsa P which used to belong to my brother. It’s mostly a pretty ancient Squier Affinity P with a few upgrades and changes over the years. Bit the bullet and bought some Tonerider Classic P pickups for it which i installed today. Wow. Absolutely chalk and cheese compared to the cheap nasty pickups that were in there (somewhere amid the grime and rust.). In fairness I’ve been gigging it with the original pickups over the last few weeks: it’s sounded thumpy and thick but hey it’s a P with flats. But suddenly yeah it’s like a blanket has been taken off it. Suddenly loud, bright, articulate, punchy. All the good things you’d want. And didn’t burn myself on the soldering iron, which itself is progress. Top marks. Best £35 I’ve spent in a while. Gigging it tomorrow so I can’t wait to hear it. Here’s a pic of the finished work, which admittedly just shows a bass with some pickups in it…..

Fantastic stuff - thanks Lozz

Yeah man definitely. It was decent though, enough room onstage and we had a few dancers. And getting a round in didn’t break the bank either. Lots of the right boxes ticked 👍

First proper outing of my project bitsa P bass on Saturday night at a gig in the Griff and Coton Social Club in Nuneaton. First time there, small crowd but filled up as the night went on. Torrential horizontal rain and high winds during the load out at the end which was annoying. No pics unfortunately as I spent most of the time away from the stage nattering nonstop to people at the bar. Gear - the red bitsa Unfender P, Little Mark 2 and MB Traveller cabs etc.

Hiya, Im looking to replace the rattly machine heads on a bitsa bass I have. Can anyone with a standard MIM fender bass tell me the measurements /spacing between the screw holes etc? I can’t find that info online and I don’t have one to hand to measure myself. Ideally the spacing between each of the top and bottom holes, and their distance apart along the length of the machine head base plate would be handy. cheers Chris

I've stacked a pair of Markbass STD102HF cabs vertically and horizontally. Both positions sounded and looked great. I can't say I heard a difference either way, probably because I was too close to them to appreciate such subtleties.

Depping gig inside a church for a wedding near Hinckley. I was worried about the acoustics of playing in a place with high ceilings etc but no problem at all. The audience were really up for it with lots of dancing, plus one guy who came up and sang a couple of songs with us (I think he knew the singer 🤷🏼‍♂️). Good catering too courtesy of a pizza oven thing out the back. Winner. Took a small rig of just one Markbass 2x10 cab, a LM2 head and a Yamaha BB604 bass. Pared down the effects board to just a tuner and a compressor gaffer taped to the top of my amp head.

I have different bands: My main band - a fiery soul/blues trio in which I share lead and backing vocals alongside bass, work on songwriting with the singer, and have a fairly free rein creatively to bring whatever I bring to songs. I also provide the PA, lights and transport. My solo gigs - I choose to do (or not do) whatever I like, as it’s just me. No one to have to run anything by apart from my wife in terms of gig times/dates. My PA and my gear, mix of my own songs and covers, all sung and played by me. Tribute band bassist - all the publicity and marketing is done by the band leader. I just learn my lines and show up, and do my bit on setting up, taking down and transporting kit. Dep bassist - again I have little to do with promoting or influencing the band’s direction, and just turn up when they need me to provide bass and backing vocals, and help set up and take down the gear.

If we get a dep drummer into my own band from time to time, we tend to streamline the set to focus on stuff that’s easy to get thru with me cueing him for any unusual stops / starts etc. If it’s just the occasional gig with someone stepping in to help us out, it’s probably not the time to debut some horribly complicated track. As ever, good onstage communication is a wonderful thing.

To be honest it’s got the same strings it came with, which I’d imagine are short scale and then cut down. The Tanglewood probably ain’t what you’re after for a season of proper gigging. Something like a secondhand Squier Mustang or Ibanez Talman etc are much better more solid basses (the Tanglewood was for my son to learn on.)

At the very cheap end is a Tanglewood Elfin bass, or Squier do a mini precision bass. I have a Tanglewood Elfin and it’s merely ok, rather than brilliant. It’s something like 26” which is really short for a bass. Cheap and fairly cheerful tho.

Flats are good on any bass. Different sound and feel to rounds, but plenty of good things to be had with flats.

If all works well, depping isn’t for one-off gigs; if you do a good job people tend to ask you back next time which makes it more worthwhile putting in the initial effort. In my main depping job, I cover for a bassist whose side project clashes with some gigs, so it’s steady depping rather than one-off depping. Much better.