Bass Culture

Absolutely love that finish.  And the tort pickguard too - in fact, pretty much everything about it...except maybe for the spare string.

Most of the interviewees have a neat line in profanity too, I've noted.  Rock 'n' f**king Roll - phew!

I suspect some may avoid the non-music industry Ian Le Frenais interview but he's really good value too.

1 hour ago, lozkerr said:

I think I meet that criterion:

 

That Eden stack looks like it means business.

I couldn't find a dedicated thread about this podcast already so thought I'd start one (someone's going to prove me wrong and link to one straight away now, aren't they?! 😁).  I recently came across this when looking for something to listen to during my walk into work each morning.  It's a really simple set-up - Guy and Gary talking to a huge number and variety of people they've worked with over the years (I think culled mostly from Mr Pratt's address book) about their experiences within the industry.  The conversation is pretty unpretentious and pleasingly free flowing and they mostly do a great job of keeping out of the way and letting their guest do the talking.  I've listened to about 8 or so of the 30+ podcasts available.  Giles Martin was brilliant - insightful, enlightening and entertaining - as was Dave Crosby, to name just two.  Very strongly recommended.

Lordy, this thread still bubbling away is it?  Never thought we'd be able to drag it out again for 14 pages.  I must pop in more often.

1 hour ago, NancyJohnson said:

I keep trying to put something together to support prices US vs VS, but am struggling to keep it clear.  Let's initially agree that street prices for the Snowy Night StingRay are effectively double here against the US (Andertons; £3,000 against Guitar Center; $2,300/£1,750).  We have no idea what price Ernie Ball sells to Guitar Center for, nor do we know what they sell into Strings & Things for before they sell into Andertons. 

Truth be known, every business these basses go through will be adding a charge that ultimately gets passed onto the end customer, so in the US the distribution chain is likely to be short, Ernie Ball > Guitar Center, whereas over here it's more likely to be Ernie Ball > Strings & Things > Andertons; plus you'll need to factor in shipping, tax duties, $/£ exchange rates, to land these instruments here, so things will fluctuate.

I worked in retail finance (wristwatches) for ten years, one of the biggest watch companies on the planet, and was staggered at the levels of markup, the manufactturing/parts cost for a watch costing £800 street may only account for 15% of the selling price, so it's feasible that a $2.3k bass may only cost $300 to manufacturer.  The key thing here though is we don't know what ErnieBall sell into Guitar Center for, any more than we know the landed price to Strings and Things and what their selling price to Andertons is, but be sure that they won't be selling on for a £10 profit per bass.

 

This is why my most recent bass purchases have all been custom builds - I know what price the components are pretty much and I know how much time the builder spends making the thing, more or less, and I have some sort of idea of the overheads involved; and I can take a view as to whether all those factors, combined with the ultimate quality of the finished instrument, means the bass is 'value for money'.  As others have said, I know where I prefer to put my - in my case - considerably less than £3k.

15 hours ago, drTStingray said:

To indicate how far off piste you are with this, I found the attached invoice from 2010 the other day.... £700 for a new MM bass in 2010 would have been less than a new one in the early 90s so was an absolute bargain!! 

 

Thanks for this - thought I was going a bit (more) bonkers for a minute there!

9 minutes ago, TheGreek said:

Ten years ago £700 would have been a market value, not a bargain which is what most of us are after. Still, if it feels right it's worth every penny.

Might have been less then.  I do seem to recall noticing it was significantly less than RRP at the time.

I'm kicking myself more now reading this thread for not snapping up a brand new Stingray I saw in a shop in Liverpool when I was over there for a meeting about 10 years ago.  The shop had been struggling and were looking to just move stock on to generate turnover.  I recall they were offering it for about £700.  Fabulous it was, even had a slighter thinner than usual nut width - felt perfect for me.  I walked away, thought about it overnight and called them the next day, by which time, predictably, a less procrastinating punter with a keen eye for a bargain had already snapped it up.  And now we're talking £3k!  What a d**k I was...

10 hours ago, BassManGraham said:

Can any Aria SB aficionados tell me how to differentiate between Aria SB Japanese and Korean made Cliiff Burton tribute models.

These were prior to the official Cliff Burton signature Black  'n' Gold models. 

Apart from the bridges which can presumably easily be changed I can't discern much visual difference.

I owned a Korean CB/SB which I regretfully traded a couple of years back. It had snake eye inlays, I have seen an early Japanese model with dot inlays

Do later (circa 2007) Japanese models have snake eye inlays?

Aria seem to be of little help with serial numbers.

Any pearls of wisdom would be appreciated.  

You could try the Aria Pro II SB Basses group on Facebook too.  You'll find them a wealth of knowledge on all things SB-related.

45 minutes ago, 51m0n said:

I think the neighbours may have gone off me - turns out they aren't very keen on Sledgehammer (probably fairly badly) through a Barefaced BigTwin until the windows rattle...

Oops

Philistines! 

Shergold Marathon and Guild B-302

I've been a member of Basschat for nearly 14 years.  Now, I know I'm knocking on a bit but I'm pretty certain this isn't the first time this subject has been discussed.  To save me the time and trouble of reading this whole thread, can someone tell me if anything's changed since the last time?

16 minutes ago, Hellzero said:

Isn't it : Asking for a friend who is talking in my head ! 😎

Or little devil on my shoulder.

Asking for a new Zoot build that's taking shape in my head. 

Does anyone know what the precise nature of the QC issues is?  Are we talking manufacturing or set-up issues?

4 minutes ago, Phil C said:

Yep. I think you are right. I suppose if you wear out your Nickel frets with stainless strings you could consider stainless frets when re-fretting! Anyone know of downsides to stainless frets?

I've got another Zoot custom in preparation at the moment so I'd be interested in this too.  The last one had Jescar Evo gold fret wire, which I'm really liking - no idea what they're made of but they look pretty!

On 30/03/2021 at 22:02, Mister RLP said:

I tried transcribing this today so that I could try and play it. Nope. No chance. 

Here's his website...

http://www.rogiervanwegberg.com

...and who he has played bass with:

http://www.rogiervanwegberg.com/artists.html

I think this guy is brilliant - plays exactly how I aspire to and fall so considerably short of. 😊

10 hours ago, Phil C said:

I took my 1977 Precision in for some TLC from a "luthier".  He told me to ditch the steels, as it was wearing out my frets. I'm pretty sure he said something about they are great if you have stainless frets....  It was a while back, and I switched all of my basses to Nickel - which I found were fine, as long as I changed them fairly regularly (Ernie ball hybrid slinky).  I like a bright sound and play mostly with a pick. I should add, that maybe he said that because the bass was otherwise 100% original, and the lacquer on the fret board may have been compromised with a re-fret.

 

I never really get the thing about steels and fret wear.  I mean, whatever strings you use (round wound anyway) there's going to be metal on metal contact and some wear involved.  If you keep a bass long enough it seems to me a fret change every 10 years or so falls into the category of reasonable maintenance.  Not using strings you prefer the sound of because of potential fret wear seems a rather self defeating deprivation to me.

I much prefer steels but now all my basses are medium scales (32") the choice is very limited in my preferred (stupid light) gauge.  I tried the Roto medium scale steel strings recently but found them very rough, so just stick to Newtone strings on all my basses as they're made to order.   I can't say enough about them, they're terrific.

Beatles /...Oasis? 😉

16 minutes ago, Acebassmusic said:

They're Ken Smith TCRM strings which I've used on a lot of my basses over the years. Even though I do move my right hand around over both pickups I've not had the problem of paying over the taper. To get so close to the bridge would feel a bit strange to me. 🙂 

Actually, you're quite correct - I'd probably be just within the non-tapered part on the occasions I do wander that close to the bridge now I've looked a bit more closely.

Bloody love Roscoes.  One of the dumbest things I've done in recent years was to sell a beautiful LG3000 I had to fund an ACG build.  I know there's a lot of love for ACG here but I can't think of one way in which the Roscoe was inferior to the bass that replaced it.  Anyway - what strings are those?  It looks like the tapering starts well within the speaking length of the string.  I address the string so close to the bridge sometimes that I think I;d be playing the tapered area!

On 08/03/2021 at 15:25, NancyJohnson said:

IF you're familiar with recording to a PC (ie plugging your bass into an audio interface), it's a piece of cake.

Cassette deck > Audio Interface > PC.  I tend to use Cakewalk (it's free), but any DAW will do the job.  You'll need to get RCA/Phono to 1/4" jack cables to connect the cassette recorder to the audio interface.

Just point your DAW to the audio interface and arm two tracks to pick up the mono left and mono right inputs, hit play on the cassette deck to determine input gain, adjust until you're happy and then hit play on the cassette deck and record on the DAW. 

To be honest, it's probably simpler to just let your cassettes run for the full side length (30/45 minutes), mix those to your requirements and then break up/split the recordings into single tracks thereafter.

 

 

Cheers NJ.  I've actually finished the project the inquiry was made for now.  Did pretty much what you suggested but simply used Audacity as the host programme rather than a DAW (I've got about 4 or 5 between my PC and Macbook and can never really decide which one I find most usable or intuitive - because, you know, reading instructions is for lightweights, right?).