Bass Culture

Tried a few Nickels in recent years but, more recently, thought I'd give the Newtone SS Diamond strings a go. That's it, search over - I've got them on my passive, active and fretless basses now. Maybe those formative, early playing years with Roto Steelies just left too much of a mark.

If budget can extend a bit further I still think of the John East circuits as the Rolls Royce of preamps. I have a fretted Zoot with an East Uni-Pre and fretless with a Noll. Similar (active) controls - Bass and Treble cut and boost and a mid cut/boost with sweepable frequency. I've no idea why but I prefer the East by quite some margin; it just sounds more musical to me.

Saw this in the flesh yesterday - looks fabulous.

Question from an ignoramus here - are 'torrefied', 'roasted' and 'thermally modified' all one and the same thing?

The other thing I'd suggest is concentrating on the fundamentals (for me these are playability and sound, yours may differ) and talk to your chosen luthier about his suggestions for best delivering them. This might mean you need to be open to considering different woods, perhaps, or maybe pickups or preamps/tone controls. My earlier custom basses were two pickups, coil tapping/phase reversal, three-band active EQ - the whole shebang - all of which I would carefully play with for all of about half an hour after I got the bass home, before sticking all the controls in a position from which, thereafter, they would never deviate. Now, my favourite Zoot is passive with the simplest control array possible. Heaven!

As others have said, there are quite a few options. I own three of Mike Walsh’s Zoot basses and out of literally dozens I’ve owned over the years - including ACG, Roscoe, Overwater (why no mention for them yet?) and Les Evans customs - they are my favourite. In that they are the basses that have delivered my personal preferences most completely in one package - but that’s as likely because they are the most recent and I now have a much better idea of what works for me and what doesn’t. They are also the best value for money. I couldn’t say they were ‘better’ than the others though, because the concept is almost fatuous between the list of exceptional makers mentioned so far - you’d be happy with any, I’m sure. I suspect the Sei will be most expensive because of Martin’s circumstances (location, customer base, overheads etc.) but that doesn’t they will be ‘better’. If this is your first custom spec, one thing I will say is this: it’s almost 100% certain there will be something about the finished instrument you will do differently if you ever commission a second. Enjoy! 😉

Looking sweet. Beginning to regret not having blocks on my last Funkie. This is getting the brain going about a new build myself.

Can only add to the tsunami of praise heaped upon Tim by previous buyers and sellers. He had my BF110 off me a couple of weeks back and was a delight to deal with. Took the slight delays I had in dispatching in his stride and was unphased by a minor issue with the cab itself. Top guy and a pleasure to deal with.

Recently purchased a Hartke Chorus pedal from Tobie. Excellent communications throughout and pedal was dispatched, well packaged and in excellent condition, as promptly as you could hope for. Yet another sound as a pound seller in the long tradition of Basschat.

I was looking forward to last year's Christmas works do as we were booked into somewhere with a band on. That was until I heard said band launch into their tired rendition of 'Johnny B. Goode' quickly followed by 'I Saw Her Standing There', in which the bass player decided Macca had missed a trick by not slapping his way through it. I wanted to throw a chair at him...

Great tone, dreadful taste in stage wear...Reminds me of seeing Pastorius at the Capital Radio Jazz festival back in the 80's - his choice of sky blue M&S-type 'golfing slacks' led to a serious reappraisal of his place in my list of influences and affections.

Have sanitised the mild swearing in my original post after the profanity filter rendered it as 'Sir Richard head III'. Brilliant! 😄

This will be sacrilege for many here - and hate would certainly be overstating - but I never really clicked with my ACG Custom Finn 4. It was a bass I appreciated but never really loved and I always felt the filter pre-amp lacked a bit of personality and 'soul' (if anyone else wrote this I'd be shouting 'D**khead - how can a preamp have personality?!'). I tried, I really did, but I knew the game was up when it went back to Alan for a new neck to be fit and I picked up a Tanglewater Jazz which I added one of Kiogon's wiring kits to, to tide me over, and found myself unable to walk past it without playing it every time. Never had that with the ACG, unfortunately.

My first set of Newtone roundwounds (steelies, round core) went on my Zoot passive last night. Bloody fantastic! Had been using D'Addario nickels recently and forgotten how much I like the extra zing of steels. Very flexible (went for the 42-96 gauge), feel good under the fingers too - bit of 'feedback' but I've still got the skin there after an hour or so of playing last night. Early stages but I think I'll be getting more for my other basses.

Ha ha - that must be some sort of record for brevity of ownership!!

I had a play on this fiver when I was there. It's superb! Did it stay in South Wales or go back to sunny Essex with, Mike?

Well, drove down to South Wales on Saturday to collect this from Mike and meet up with Daryl Cook, the friend he was staying with. The weather was fantastic so the drive was really spectacular. Daryl turned out to be a lovely bloke and a great player himself. Mike was in good form too. The bass itself is simply superb. The East u-retro is very powerful and, in truth, probably overkill for my usual 'set and forget' preferences. But, because it's so powerful it does enable me to dial in precisely the sound I'm after. Tiny tweaks can have significant impacts on tone so I'm finding I really do have to be careful. But the playability of the bass - my God: it's simply fantastic, an absolute dream to play. And it looks so fabulous when I'm not actually playing it I find myself just staring at it! Anyway, if anyone is considering a custom build I would strongly urge you to think about a Zoot, and I'd be happy for anyone who wishes to, to pop round to Chez Bass Culture to try mine as a 'taster'.