neepheid

I suppose I should let the cat out of the bag now. This arrived last Thursday, but I wanted to keep it a surprise for the SW Bass Bash. So there. I was speaking to some folk on LowEndLobster's discord server and someone shared a video of some coverage of Harley Benton's stand at the recent Guitar Summit show in Germany. They were showing their prototype stuff, not set to release until next year and this semi-hollow beastie caught my eye, the HB-50. Looked nice, sounded good when the guy in the video played it. The conversation moved onto whether or not it was long scale and how it might compare to Harley Benton's extant semi-hollow bass offering (the HB-60) so I idly went on to Thomann's site to look at the HB-60. Lo and behold, listed next to it was a B-stock HB-50, only a single piece of stock, hadn't even been photographed. I quickly realised that this was Thomann selling some of their show demonstrator instruments. Long scale indeed, semi hollow, looked like a great mod platform, so... tae me! Enough effin' preamble... First impressions - Good - "light signs of usage" means fingerprints (phew!), looks great, very well made, doesn't feel cheap, fret ends are inboard of the neck binding so absolutely no sharp edges, 22 frets, uses a standard pickup shape (MM) so easily modded, tuners feel fine - turn easy with no play, plays really nice. Bad - pots are garbage (taper is dreadful, like only the last 10% of the turn does anything), pickup switching is lazy and pointless (north coil, both in parallel, south coil - the differences are imperceptible to all but the pickiest of listeners and I'd challenge any of them to hear a difference in a band mix), pickup is too far from the strings so it's a bit quiet and it won't go any higher - screws just come loose. I intend to rewire this. I think the pickup sounds fine - according to the specs it's an Artec of some kind - I wonder if the finished pieces will have their frequently used Roswell pickups instead? But it needs rewired. New pots obvs, but thinking of replacing the switch with a rotary of some kind for series/parallel options. Fixed the pickup height issue tonight - there were a few paltry squares of foam under there, but nowhere near enough to push it up to where I want it. I had spare springs from my Epi Les Paul black and gold nonsense, so I put springs on the screws, now I can have the pickup as high as I want it. Seriously, it was at least 5mm lower than this when it arrived and unable to go higher.

Gee whizz, where to start? Let's limit it to currently owned basses... Epiphone Les Paul Standard bass - well, it's on its third configuration. Obvs it started stock with 2x Epi humbuckers and VVTT. Then I EMGed it out the wazoo with 2x EMG-HB pickups and and EMG-BQC 3 band EQ (and fitted a pickup selector switch to it). Then I went "meh" on active basses in general so I revamped it with 2x DiMarzio X2N-B pickups, rewired back to VVTT (but with push-push pots on the tone controls for series/parallel, and gave it a black and gold makeover, so it got gold Wilkinson tuners, a gold switch (with a custom "poker chip"), black pickup rings and a gold Babicz bridge (because I couldn't find a gold three pointer for a sensible price and Gibson/Epiphone wouldn't sell me one, despite continuing to use them on the Allen Woody sig. D!cks.) I'm done with this one now. G&L Tribute LB-100 - the initial idea was to swap out the stock pickup for a split MFD to make a cheapskate SB-1, but I ended up liking the sound of the stock pickup. I did change the tort pickguard for a white pearl though, after a year and a half of humming and hawing about it. Reverend Triad - stock 5 way switch replaced with a Freeway 10 way switch, for extra pickup options like series and parallel combinations. Future plans - The Harley Benton prototype HB-50 that I snagged recently is getting an electronics makeover. That will be an upgrade in the genuine sense of the word, because the pots in it just now are garbage (not so much the feel, but the taper is useless!), and the switch is pointless (north coil, both (parallel), south coil - why bother?) There's heaps of stuff gone before, like swapping the black hardware on a Gibson NR Thunderbird for chrome, changing the series/parallel switch on a G&L Tribute L-2000 to a 4PDT on-on-on switch to give series/single/parallel, adding an Artec preamp to an OLP MM3, I could go on - I'm an inveterate tinkerer!

Thanks for asking - I made it home in one piece. Just want to echo what has been said already - thanks to our organisers/instigators-in-chief, to our wonderful providers of food/tea, and thanks to everyone for the warm welcome. I had a lovely day, got my hands on some tasty basses and had some great nerdy chat with a bunch of you. Now, bed! Good night!

Right, I'm in Taunton. Kinda. Anything happening tonight?

England, consider yourself invaded...

I'm invading anyway. You'll have to try harder than that to keep me out.

That's not an amp problem, that's a lack of roadies problem...

Well, that definitely makes me vintage then... not that I was fooling anyone anyway

I think you'll get a different answer from everyone you ask to define such a nebulous term.

No regrets - anything I've bought that hasn't worked out has helped me understand what I do like a bit better.

Yeah, I would have 100% had the purpleburst Triad if it were available when I bought mine. Korina burst was the next best thing - the Alpine burst one with the maple fingerboard looked a bit daft to me, like the neck was there by accident.

I only started using Designacable since obbm retired. Had a few XLRs from them, happy with them so far.

Well, that's me given all my basses a dicht (wipe) - they're all now somewhere between concourse condition and "you won't catch ebola off it"... Also, I have a small contribution to the raffle... An EHX Bass Soul Food overdrive pedal and a FuzzDog Fat Furry Freak fuzz pedal (assembled from their kit by yours truly). Just had a quick test of them and they both seem to be in working order. Don't mind if you raffle them separately or as a job lot.

Almost every Gibson bass I've ever owned...

G&L did a purple wunkay, sorry, the current colour choices are natural, baccy burst, blueburst, matcha green. * Who, me? 😈

It's not outrageous - I know I'm of zero use in this instance being neither near London nor in possession of a Reverend Decision P, but I'd get the kettle on for any BCer wanting to try out a bass of mine for research purposes. Although I would say that distance selling regulations are your friend in this respect - you know what you want and it'd cost you a lot less than a trip to Glasgow to send the bass back to Glasgow if you decided it wasn't for you... Good luck!

FECK YAS MIN

Can't help you, sorry, I've got just enough stands for what I'm bringing. Maybe someone who isn't bringing any basses could help out? Also - a week to go... (less from my perspective - leaving on Saturday) - excited!

Last night was an interesting one. The second time we've played the Black Abbot in Montrose. We were through in the bar this time instead of the lounge - a smaller room and we were worried that we'd be a bit loud but it actually sounded OK. Back to earth with a bump of course compared to Friday night, having to set up everything, move stuff out of the way, all the normal shenanigans of a pub gig. It wasn't very busy, had 20ish folk in with a further few coming through periodically from the lounge for a few songs then disappearing (but they kept coming back, so I'm counting them!) but the folk we did have were really into it - warm applause after each song (it was more like a concert than a gig) and some dancing. We got some nice comments after, and it was a nice early gig (8-11), so got home at a reasonable time for a change. Played the Sire D5 last night, it's a great bass - absolutely no nonsense '54 style P action and the neck is lovely. Small room so the amp got another easy night. We've got October off due to various holidays/work commitments, so that's all from me for a while!

New venue (for me anyway) last night - the Harbour Lights in Peterhead. What a different experience compared to the usual "wait a mo while we move the pool table, then you can set up everything" - an actual stage, with a drum riser, house PA and a sound engineer. Guy did a good job too - sound on stage was excellent, lots of monitors and good levels all round achieved with minimal fuss or input from us. The gig itself wasn't super busy, but we had folk up dancing and it picked up in the second half. It's been years since we played in Peterhead (not since pre COVID days) but some of our old regulars came to see us which was really cool. With big PA support my amp had a leisurely time turned up about half way instead of the usual 3/4 ish. Really cool gig, I hope we get asked back to play here.

A more palatable link, perhaps: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66965766

I was delighted with the service I got from Schaller when restoring a Gibson Victory Artist. It had a broken M4S tuner. As I was not the original owner (plus it was made in 1981 and technically Schaller had the working relationship with Gibson - who in this instance were less than useless of course), Schaller had absolutely no obligation to help me out at all. I ended up in an email chat with the head honcho of Schaller, and they sent me 4x the parts I needed when one would have done, a sticker and a bag of plectra, and took no money from me - I did offer to buy a whole M4S so I could strip it for the parts I needed, but they took no money from me whatsoever. Speaking of Gibson - although they deny all responsibility if the thing in question is too old as outlined in the above example, on modern stuff they were on it. I had an EB (2014) and its bridge pickup went faulty. They sent a replacement to me so I could sort it myself, no questions asked, didn't want any proof beyond the serial number and didn't even want the old pickup back first. Solid performance, I'd say.

I have never told anyone how to play the bass. I'm probably doing it "wrong"...

Oh well, as long as you're managing OK, then everyone must be managing OK, right? I'm sure there are people on the Aspergers/autism spectrum who are having a lovely time with this right now.