Jean-Luc Pickguard

... maybe this is the mustang David Byrne used for 'burning down the house'

I used one of the angled red neutrik "silent" plugs to plug into the bass for a cable I soldered this week and it is a revelation - no speaker thump when plugging or unplugging - I'll have to upgrade a few other cables with one of those.

Just the thing for a tribute act called coalplay

I have an enclosed strat cool rails double blade humbucker in a '72 musicmaster which looks just like the original pickup when its fitted and sounds fantastic. A similar but open hot rails in my other '72 doesn't work quite so well though - its a bit clanky for my taste.

I happened across this video: Looks like a good idea for any basses which don't already have rolled edges and smooth fret ends. Has anyone here tried this? Is the method in the video a good way to make these improvements?

Looks like a job for...

Who else had a go on the Eich bass board that was on demo? I'd quite like one for home but I'd just stand there hitting the open E repeatedly & enjoying the foot massage.

Looks great with the chrome hardware - much better than the black hardware of the one in the video.

I have a set of Gotoh GB640 res-o-lites (same as Gotoh GB640-R but not reverse winding) on my vintage pro thunderbird amd agree they are indeed excellent. The reverse ones would probably confuse me so being able to choose between reverse & non-reverse ones was good for me. They are noticably lighter than other tuners, turn smoothly & look great. One bonus to these over traditional reverse winding tuners is that the baseplate is flat so they don't have the protruding nubbins on the back which need little dimples drilled in the headstock to accomodate them. Now I have a second vintage pro I'll probably get another set of GB640 soon.

I didn't get to attend any of the performances or workshops so I can't comment on those but I met a lot of people (including some basschatters) as I was helping on the Chowny stand where it was encouraging to see several youngsters coming up to play the basses. I had a good chat with Tony Butler who was playing his ultra cool Chowny signature bass, and I met met Mike Upton on the Kala stand where I bought a set of flatwounds for my u-bass. I also got a comfort strapp from bass direct and an incredible little amplug2 fly bass headphone amp from blackstar. I was expecting the weekend to be loud so I had my earplugs, but I only needed them a couple of times on Saturday and not at all on Sunday.

That's weird. I had a 1990 MIJ '62 reissue, and I am certain the pole pieces were all flat to the pickup's surface on mine. When a precision pickup's pole pieces are staggered to compensate for a quiet A string, just the two for the A string are raised normally,

I think I sold mine for about £180 which I was happy with at the time as I only paid £100 for it a few years earlier.

I googled it for you: It is Hot Tone - https://www.hotoneaudio.com/support/FAQ_28.html

The look of the headstock & pickups are weird & fugly. I dread to think what the resale value is likely to be on these.

I play covers but don't stick to the original basslines as we're not a tribute act slavishly trying to recreate a recorded version. I'm all for constructive suggestions, but I wouldn't take orders to play something in a way that doesn't work as well as my alternative.

I'm a low note wrangler

Last week I saw a castle cases mustang bass flight case on ebay for BiN for about £20 less than the cheapest price I'd seen for the fender tolex mustang case, and ebay were also running a promotion where they'd pay 10% of anything over £100 ordered via the ebay iPad app. I wasn't sure what the case would be like as the pics didn't show the interior of the case, but I took a leap of faith & ordered it. It turned up today and I'm impressed witht he sheer size and weight of it. I'm not sure I'll be able to hide it from the missus, but the firm foam inside is cut to fit a mustang bass perfectly and it looks like it would survive a nuclear blast. Very impressed with the standard of hardware & construction for the cost. I'm keeping the CIJ in the case for now as one thing I'm not sure of is whether the dense foam used in flightcases is safe for the laquer finish of the JMJ. Is it likely to react with the finish if I kept the JMJ in the case instead of the CIJ?

At the moment my favourite is the epiphone thunderbird vintage pro with ernie ball cobalt flats -> Roland microcube rx amp using the concert 810 model, compressor on, efx off & gain set to 2 o'clock.

I had one of these in shell pink. It was a nice little bass to play - nowhere near as good as my CIJ mustang though, and the body seemed to be on the heavy side.

I don't normally bother with a backup bass but if something's going to fail it is more likely to be the output socket than anything else. Most bent 1/4" sockets are too flimsy for repeated pluging & unplugging and will eventually not spring back and so lose contact, but I've never had an issue with a switchcraft socket. On any bass that can take one but does not already have one fitted (eg MIJ/CIJ Fenders, Squiers) putting in a swtichcraft is the very first upgrade I usually carry out.

there's a fine line between being an exhibitionist and a flasher 🤔

I've not used anything yet, but think teak oil would be an appropriate choice compared to other options. Tung oil would be too much of a faff.