drTStingray

Omg this thread is in danger of morphing into a standard Basschat Rickenbacker thread 🤣 Once again @Bean9seventy is partially right - people in Mecca dance hall bands did sight read the stuff but only some played with picks 😉 The band I played in played more than one Parliament cover!! Not using a pick I might add.

I think you may have that wrong Mr @skankdelvar I’m pretty sure he was into bee bop - maybe Lindy Hop? 😏

43 is good as well 😏 https://youtu.be/JSj0PXJ6d5Q

You have to read between the lines (or the commas)!! We have had these threads before and whilst some is difficult to follow much is not that challenging… I get the impression he thinks some of us don’t get the points he’s making - which is very likely if you weren’t there - it’s extraordinary really that there was a whole U.K. dance scene based around several bands and really good dance music (with exceptional bass) in the early 80s - hence the responses……. 🤪

My earliest unlacquered roasted maple neck is on a 2014 Classic Sabre - the neck hadn’t discoloured on that - I’ve had an SR5 with standard oil and wax finish on maple neck since 2003 and that has changed colour - it’s basically darkened significantly and started to develop some figuring, which to my eyes is quite pleasing - it doesn’t simply look dirty though I know what you mean as they can do. Whilst neither have been on a world tour 😂 they have both been gigged extensively. As I said before, we all have our preferences - my Classic Ray with lacquered neck is equally playable on gigs than the other but in you get chance, try a Special - the necks are exquisite - they do pop up used occasionally though mine are going nowhere!!

Translation hidden back on p5.

Watching Jools Holland’s Hootenanny 😂😊 No NYE gigs or any other Covid super spreader events, thankfully.

Gentlemen, aren’t we a bit thread off topic? Where is @Bean9seventy when you need him? 😏😀 Unless Mark King or Boon Gould or someone worked at Macaroni, Chelmsford before Denmark St 😏 This thread has got me watching Level 42 videos on You Tube again - some great recent stuff around - nice lively Jaydee Supernatural bass - just as it should be 😀

The roasted maple necks of current Stingray Specials don’t discolour and feel absolutely exquisite - they also feel like they have a slightly narrower profile. Whilst I like my Classic Ray with its lacquered neck, the oil/wax roasted maple take it for me - I guess we all have our preferences. The BFR instruments with lacquered, figured roasted maple necks are quite stunning (the fretless variants have tempted me). However I do agree these late 80s/early 90s instruments are fabulous - and very good value.

Haha!! A lot of people do these days - even fitted with flatwounds (a la 1961). However, if this was 1980 you very likely wouldn’t have been 😏

Tchhhh - you guys and your semantics 🤪😂😂👍 I suppose I’d better join in - the Average White Band, by the late 70s, we’re using Musicman Stingray basses. Later still they were using Yamahas - (BBs I think) - in the early 70s, Alan Gorrie used a Precision and Hamish Stuart a Mustang - until the mid 70s Fender was still the bass for R and B.

You obviously were in with the wrong lot in the 70s/80s!! If you think this is bad you should have seen 1967 (quite a lot of people were in a parallel universe for the whole year)!!!! 🤪

You right there as well, @Bean9seventy

Not before they’d been ,,Livin’ It Up,, extensively 😂 coincidentally containing one (some) of the best bass parts known to mankind 😉

I don’t know about college stuff but I think you’ll find it was born in Birdland and the like which crossed over - the dance floors was all T Connection etc etc doing what they wanted to do in the late 70s - the Brit stuff was a bit later? And drew on all that stuff. PS the prog rock beard strokers had gravitated to the likes of Return to Forever (and brought their girlfriends who liked the funky stuff) by the mid 70s - moving on to the likes of Brand X - if ever a concert showed the gulf in audience it was Herbie Hancock at the Birmingham Odeon circa 1978 - the first half was jazz - and the place was virtually empty - I was amazed (the bars must have been heaving) - the second half was funk and the place was full and dancing!!! The Brit Funk stuff must have really got going in 1980/81, @Bean9seventy? I too have your misgivings about some about some of the ‘history’ taught in colleges and elsewhere but don’t chuck it all out the window!! The idea (which some people would have you believe) that Marcus Miller would use flatwound strings in the early 80s is plain barking - he had his bass modded to improve it (especially in the mid/top end) remember (or was that something I dreamed) 🥴

This forum is legendary for its quite elderly demographic so it’s probably the wrong place to be saying people weren’t even born in the 70s - too many of us actually were - even in the 60s (dare I say it - 50s)!! Anyway 1976 is famous for lots of things but the most memorable were the hottest summer anyone could or can remember in the U.K., and of course, the introduction of the renowned Stingray bass 😀👍

For the uninitiated, Mark King was originally a drummer - worked in a London music shop (Macaris says @Bean9seventy) - the IOW stuff predated this AIUI. It was only when someone pointed out to me he was playing drums on bass that I suddenly got the principle. He borrowed a Gibson (EB2?) bass for their first recording session doing Love Meeting Love. The band I was in at the time covered that song (I think the keyboard player had a 12” single of it). MK was turned on to the Jaydee Supernatural bass by Gary Barnacle’s (sax player who played with them and recorded with them - did lots of sessions in the 80s) brother’s white Jaydee. If you buy Stuart Clayton’s excellent tab/manuscript books on Level 42 there’s a lot of info on the band history and Mark’s instruments.

At least they didn’t move to Kansas City, and can still employ the services of a milkman if they so desire.

Yes Return to Forever was still considered jazz rock in the mid 70s - but pieces like Sorceress were pure funk. I saw the Jeff Lorber band at Pizza Express Soho, about five years ago - what a fabulous gig (and on a par with the Fatback Band at Ronnie Scott’s, NYE I think 2019 - just pre Covid).

Yeah I agree Mike - do the fretless Wals command the same sort of prices as fretted in the US?

Really? And yeah - having been asked to play a couple of Santana bass lines from the mid 70s he played some very tricky stuff - I found it quite difficult to play some of it tbh. I misunderstood Bean9Seventys posts thinking it was Pops Popwell…… to be fair it does sound similar, presumably because of the playing style and use of a Precision.

Wasn’t he that Uber tw*t who physically threw (or escorted) that other id**t John McCrirrick off his live afternoon talk show because he thought his comments might upset his core Women’s Institute audience?!! 🥴

Interesting - I listened to the Santana track and it does have elements of the Level 42 sound, even beyond the slapped bass - but there again they took influences from jazz funk and other genres - so pop became very funk orientated in the early 80s, another Brit funk band being Freeze. I saw Pops Popwell a couple of times in the late 70s with the Crusaders - a monster of a bass player and not just slap, although he was great at that. However it was extremely unusual that such a player would be playing a Precision by that date as other basses far more suited to slap style (and fatter sounding for finger style) were available by then - you were as likely to see, in the U.K. at least, a decent bass player playing Musicman, Yamaha, Alembic and subsequently Ibanez Musician basses - not many using Precisions. So I think you’re right @Bean9seventy. You’re also right that the “accepted history of bass playing” tends to overlook significant “non Fender periods” and the extensive “no flatwound strings available” period - all rather laughable tbh. It’s almost as if LA 1960s - early 70s and Motown 60s and early 70s have a monopoly of all recorded bass for the whole of time - good as they are, they aren’t the be all and end all. Ive personally started to watch more of Level 42’s performances, particularly the fairly recent ones - this has fuelled a new found gas for that archetypal British bass, the Jaydee Supernatural - joining gas for that other archetypal British bass the Wal Mk1 😀

My Ray fretless from 93 has a neck virtually the same as that (sans skunk stripe) - you are right, most Rays up to 2002 or so have figured maple necks - in fact the Classic series basses were based on the late 80s spec largely AIUI. Whilst we’re talking fretless Rays here’s my 93 - snapped up off EBay around 12 yrs ago for £751!!

Noting you mention the ebony, of course we all know wood makes no difference to the sound (so say some 😂 ) however you have a fine trans red Ray there, which is almost certainly on an alder body - and alder bodied Stingrays have a certain warmth and mellowness which the ash ones have less of (note this, ‘wood makes no difference naysayers’) - unless you’ve tried them back to back, you won’t know. This also reminds me that the Stingray fretless is one of the best fretless instruments which used to be available - and occasionally is in limited numbers from the factory. I still love mine and go all fretless every so often! Fabulous bass you have there, and the neck job looks excellent.