Green Alsatian

Nice pic - the Squier and the Squire!

This whole album: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGOEWDYxAas"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGOEWDYxAas[/url]

[quote name='Highfox' timestamp='1373358627' post='2136525'] Like it.. The Cramps meets King Kurt Always fun at their gigs to. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt4Zhdoj65o[/media] [/quote] Beat me to it! I've got that King Kurt concert knocking about on vid somewhere!

Looks like the pickups/electronics have been modded/changed by the original owner. I've owned a couple of Squier VM basses and none of them have: - have used CTS pots. - used 'vintage' cloth-covered wiring. - that type of tone capacitor (the green thing). - been shielded with foil. - 'vintage' cloth-covered wiring on the - they're not the original DD pickups. Looks like good-quality parts have been used anyway. When you say that the volume drops when both pickups are on, does it cut out most of the bass frequencies? If this is the case, the two pickups could have been wired out-of-phase. If you can trace the wires, here's a diagram from the Seymour Duncan website: [url="http://cdn.seymourduncan.com/pdfs/support/schematics/std_jazz_bass.pdf"]http://cdn.seymourduncan.com/pdfs/support/schematics/std_jazz_bass.pdf[/url]

There's a Squier version of the Cabronita bass too: [url="http://www.keymusic.com/en/product/Squier-Vintage-Modified-Cabronita-Precision-Bass-Black"]http://www.keymusic.com/en/product/Squier-Vintage-Modified-Cabronita-Precision-Bass-Black[/url]

[quote name='timeworks' timestamp='1372799645' post='2130239'] [url="http://forums.fender.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=86876&p=978897#p978897"]http://forums.fender...=978897#p978897[/url] Read it ALL. [/quote] If you are another incarnation of LarryNJ, why do you care what the members of this forum think of your bass? You obviously love it and we don't care, because none of us can play and we do stupid things like playing basses other than Fenders and commenting on the aesthetics of a bass (something one can do without laying a finger on it). Silly us. Be a nice chap and bugger off - you wouldn't want your friends to think you were one of us BassChat idiots would you? In the meantime, we'll wait until somebody we've heard of reviews the bass without sounding like this: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU[/url]

There's a user demo of one on the Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfG2RUkVsI4

I've shielded many a cheap bass and it's a great help in eliminating noise. To save extra soldering (when linking cavities/strips of copper), buy copper tape/sheet with conductive adhesive. Make sure that you connect each cavity that you've shielded (eg. 2 pickup cavities and the control cavity) with wire or it won't work. If you're not too confident with soldering, an easy way to do this is to get your piece of wire linking the cavities, bare 1cm of it at each end and then use another piece of copper tape to fix it to the shielding, making sure that it's fitted as snugly to the bare wire and the shielding beneath. (a stylus is good for getting a snug fit around the bare wire). If you have a multimeter, you can check your shielding by setting it to 'Continuity Test' and then placing the probes in each cavity. If it reads '0', then you're sorted. If it reads '1', then you have a break in the shielding. Leave no gaps!

Gah! I keep clicking on this bloody thread!

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1372359359' post='2124884'] [b]SORRY YOU WERE OUT.[/b] We have tried to deliver your naked female bassist today. As you were out we have returned your naked female bassist to our central hub. Please call 0800 123456 to arrange redelivery. [/quote] Well that's just blinkin' typical. The delivery time quoted was for between 0:00 and 23:59 yesterday, so I set up a deckchair in the hall with some crisps and a keg of cheap cola. I waited. I was bursting for a slash all day and when my back teeth started floating at 23:58, I just had to go. No sooner had I tipped my head back and exclaimed "Ahhhhhhh!" in blessed relief amid the rising steam, when the bloody door bell went and a card popped through. I just hope they haven't punctured my NFB.

I reckon a sticky at the top of each sub-forum would sort out the visibility problem - that way those who are into it have an easy portal to it and those that just want to chat can ignore it. On a more serious note, I have a poison dart here, for the next to promise naked female bassists and not deliver.

V-v-v-voted. Some lovelies, some funky, some creepy but one of them really entertained me, capturing my vote! This is my absolute fave thread on BC - it's like getting a free album every month and you never know what you'll get on it. There deffo should be a sticky at the top of every sub-forum to increase visibility to it.

The overly simplistic answer is 'because he can - the clue's in the URL!'. A returning topic isn't a new phenomenon for any internet forum and the challenge, is rather than post in a well-worn topic to decry it, create a new topic with yet-to-be discussed content. It's not easy - how many times have we talked about our favourite film/book/food/etc. among friends? If anyone wants to declare their undivided love for a brand, what's wrong with that? I'd rather read about someone loving something rather than hating it. Yes, I really like Fenders a lot too. I also like other brands, but they're for a different thread.

As plenty have said, the Zoom multi-FX units work great for headphone practice. I'll also throw in the Korg Pandora for Bass, which is pocket-sized and carries an array of amp/compressor/effects to play with - the older ones can be had for as little as £30! I was selling my PX3B recently until I started tinkering with it more and more and decided to keep it.

I'm going to cheat my way into this thread with my £50 pink Westfield. I had a P-pickup from an SX bass which I modded and sold last year, so I thought I'd give it a go. I measured up, fired up the Dremel (with router attachment) and [i]nearly[/i] did a job neat enough to not require a cover to mask the ugly underneath. I forgot to take into account that the P-pickup split would be slightly further apart at the bridge, to align with the strings. Dremel out again and by then had resigned myself to using a plate, so I gave myself a bit of extra space in case anything else went awry. I cut down a blank Strat backplate to act as a surround for the bridge pickup, offsetting the middle screws as I had to chop off the end and didn't want both screws closer to the controls. I wired it up using bits from my parts sack - a hideous twisted mess of failed tinkerings when I was learning soldering (I'm still not the neatest, but improving each time) to find another mini pot to use as a second volume control. I wired it up Volume, Volume, Tone, like a Jazz and used a .047 cap I salvaged from a previous harness. Put it back together and hmm... the volume on the bridge pickup wasn't shutting off fully. I thought it was my hotch-potch of pots and bits, so I ordered two cheap mini Alpha 250k volume pots and a 250k tone pot from CH guitars. Wired up again and still met with the bridge pickup volume not fully dropping and affecting the neck pickup when soloed. Fearing it was my wiring (the Seymour Duncan setup), I checked it with two Wilkinson Jazz pickups I have knocking about - no probs. It was then that I realised that it must have been a difference in the two P-pickups. The SX pickup did seem to overpower the Westfield pickup a bit, so I decided to go with two matched pickups. I then spotted an Alnico 5 P-pickup from Seco guitars for a tenner, so I bought two of them and wired it up again - all working fine. These pickups are more evenly-matched and a less 'brash' than the stock Westfield and SX pickup. As I feared, as these pickups are 'Fender' sized - the SX and Westfield pickups are a bit longer and have larger screw mounting 'ears', leaving me with gaps in the main scratchplate and the bridge pickup surround. Oh well - I'm not a craftsman, so function wins over style this time! Soundwise - I've no means of recording at the moment but this is a different sound than a PJ-bass - a bit beefier. It's also naturally different from a Jazz - there's still that 'scooped' sound when both pickups are on, but voiced differently. With the neck soloed, it's the regular P-sound but the bridge soloed has a bit more 'meat' to it than the single coil. Obviously, the D and G strings are a bit thinner-sounding than the E and A due to their proximity to the bridge, but still perfectly usable - more than you'd expect. I'd have liked to have gone reverse-P for both, but went for the easier option. I definitely like the double P configuration, especially as it was for a bit of fun on a cheapy! It's getting gigged next Saturday.

I noticed that myself - looks like Pete's playing one of Roger Glover's Ricks in that clip - he produced Nazareth's 'Razamanaz'. Roger had a couple of his Ricks modified so - he's had the mod reversed (sort of) on his black one: [url="http://www.rauenguitars.com/pages/roger_glover.html"]http://www.rauenguitars.com/pages/roger_glover.html[/url] You can hear his black one here with Deep Purple: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AL73LYo64A"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AL73LYo64A[/url]

Does our keyboard player's left hand count? If my bass breaks, I'll just clap my hands and play my duck whistle. In reality, as we gig so infrequently, there have been periods this year where I've had no bass and just bought whatever I could get as cheaply as possible on eBay and fix/set it up properly prior to rehearsals. My current (and only) bass is the £50 Pink Westfield. Prior to all this, I used to gig my Fender AVRI '62 Jazz without backup, followed by a few years of using my home-made bitsa P-bass - never broken a string as I play with a relatively light touch, despite having hands like shovels. Nige has probably offered the best advice - have your backup sound as similar to your mainstay as poss.

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NQphQZXhFM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NQphQZXhFM[/url]

Oh, and I prefer his version of the Starsky & Hutch theme: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtKOSsmKPfE"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtKOSsmKPfE[/url]

There's a real menace to the Dirty Harry soundtrack, paired beautifully by Andrew Robinson's superb performance as Scorpio. This tune sends a shiver down my spine: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp8DGoaDZ5k"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp8DGoaDZ5k[/url] I'd also struggle to find a Lalo soundtrack that I don't like - Enter The Dragon's another favourite of mine.

I was only a kid when it kicked off, but I do remember seeing gangs of punks in town in Liverpool in the late 70s. I'd often see them in the 'Punch & Judy' cafe which used to be outside Lime Street Station. Wasn't aware of Eric's, but my old man was - he was in his late 20s then and at home, he'd play Beatles, Motown, Soul, Beach Boys - mostly 60s music. He hated all prog and disco, but did like the first wave of punk bands and the pub-rock bands dragged into it - Pistols, Clash, The Jam, The Stranglers. Being into my 'evvy metal in the late 80s/early 90s, it wasn't until a new wave compilation came out called Sound of the Suburbs which had some of the more radio friendly songs from that era, but it was enough to expand my music collection into as many punk bands I could get hold of. Some were sh*te, but most of it was either superb, or at least pretty decent musically or lyrically. The main ones that really struck a chord (pun intended) were the Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, The Exploited, The Adverts, and although not strictly punk, XTC, The Jam and The Stranglers, all of whom I still listen to today. Although the metal I'd been listening to up to that point was more aggressive musically, the punk stuff had far more attitude and sang about subjects that often wouldn't equate to 'polite conversation'. I could relate to a lot of what the punk bands were singing about. One thing's certain though - a lot of the punks went on to bigger and better things. XTC, the development of the Clash, The Jam, The Stranglers, Magazine, to name but a few. Waffling aside, Punk to me was always giving the youth of the time a voice in music and that you didn't need to be a technically proficient player in order to start broadcasting that message. Doesn't have to be jagged guitars either - one of the most 'punk' songs I can think of is 'The Message' by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Ask the recipient to post it back to you - you might have to cover the price of a stamp though!

Yep - there's something about cheap P-basses that guarantees that any replacement you buy [i]will not fit[/i] ! I first learned this when trying to replace the shattered plate on my Kay P-bass in 1989. Even a build a couple of years ago on a supposedly Fender licenced body didn't fit! It's either: - the lower horn goes right to the edge of the body, looks too sharp - the neck cutout doesn't line up - the control cavity is exposed I got the last two to fit with a bit of work - one on a Vintage V4 (earlier model) and the other was on an SX, which I put a mirrored one on (and has done the rounds on here!)

Flats are on, nut filed down to drop the action at the first fret, shielded the cavity yesterday and it's now silent, except for when I pluck the strings but I found that if I turn the first of the two silver knobs fully one way, it stops even that noise! Aye, not bad at all for £50 - I was toying with the idea of putting a cheap pink pearloid scratchplate on it. If in doubt, tort.

Aye - I had a Badass II on a P-bass.