Jean-Luc Pickguard

During the lockdown my chain is: Fingers or thumb (not slap) Status hotwire medium scale flatwounds Guild Starfire II bass (flamed maple ) Fender curly tweed cable Roland Microcube Bass RX

There's a language selector dropdown thingy in the site header to translate it into 'English Simplified' aka 'US English' The vegan straps look tasty - I wonder how you cook them

Dunno about that but the link shows that one person is asking that much money for one. I'd be surprised if anyone would be daft enough to part with £260 for it, but then again in 2016 I thought only the terminally daft would cast a vote for an orange reality show conman.

Most of these prove to me that less is indeed more.

The only two iconic ones (not necessarily the best though) I can think of are mu tron iii ehx bass balls

just to throw another option into the mix - my danelectro longhorn has an aluminium nut and instead of being glued it is held in with a screw.

The tuners, neckplate and pickguard are right but I would expect a '76 Fender to have solid shaft pots and a ceramic disc capacitor. The blurb states that the neck isn't original. Can't tell from the pics whether the body, bridge or pickup are genuine.

I bring a spare SM58 so if my bass amp breaks down I'll be able to sing the bass lines. Luckily the amp has never broken down as my singing is terrible.

The line: "The new owner needs to know what this is and how to deal with it" Makes it sound like he's trying to rehome a pet komodo dragon.

That's easy - Howard Grimes. I love the feel of all the stuff he played on at Hi

I don't think I'll ever part with my cherry sunburst '81 Precision even though it weighs as much as a small planet. I bought it new in 1982 when I was 18 and worked all summer in bejams, hating every second I was there, to save up the £260 it cost from Rockbottom in Croydon.

The fake serial number decal on the back of the headstock is a nice touch

I'm very pleased with the EMG Geezer Butler I put in my '81 Fender Precision. It comes with everything you need (including the pots etc) to install without getting the soldering iron out.

I'm very impressed with the build quality of my flamed maple starfire II. This budget version looks pretty good, but its lost much of what sets a starfire apart from other semis by doing away with the one piece bridge and not having a chunky bisonic pickup. Also it looks like it might have a flat top & back rather than arched.

I have never had any problems with stringing flats thru the body, and I have never heard of any cases of strings breaking when doing so. I've seen/heard warnings about this and also about not using long scale flats on short scale basses, but Fender puts long scale Fender flats on the JMJ with no issues - and they feel & sound pretty good to me. I have also used LaBella flats and TI flats on my other mustang without any issues. The only basses I have used cobalt flats on are my thunderbirds, but if I wanted to try them on a mustang I wouldn't hesitate to put a set on.

...and its on a ukulele! https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/233859070673?ul_noapp=true

Armstrong pickups: http://www.armstrongpickups.co.uk/

Bootsy!

Briefly last year I owned three epiphone thunderbird vintage pros; a white one and two in sunburst. With the same strings and setup I honestly wouldn't have been able to tell them apart without looking at the colour/woodgrain. When I decided to sell one of the sunbursts, which one of the pair to keep was an arbitary decision as they were so similar.

The new metallic colours look great. I wonder whether the bridge will be fitted in the correct place on these. This does make me worry that similarly finished vintage pro thunderbirds will be coming out at some point, and I won't be able to resist them although I already have a pair in white and sunburst.

They're great little basses with a very easy playing neck but that price surprises me. My red squier jaguar SS was my main gigging bass in a previous blues/rock band. It cost £165 new from Thomann when they were first available. I've fitted EMG-X pickups & BTC system preamp, fender hi-mass bridge and upgraded tuners so its probably worth 400 to me.

Get the new neck. Then get a new body, bridge, pickup, pickguard and other bits & bobs to add to the neck you removed.

Sorry, you’re all wrong. This was originally a feature to prevent passing slugs from taking a shortcut to the other side of the body under the strings between the pickup and bridge. It doesn’t happen now of course, so the strip is unnecessary but it was a common occurrence in the early 60s.