Jean-Luc Pickguard

Cheers for the replies chaps. I'd already tried cleaning the old strings with planet waves string cleaner & fast fret but it made no difference. I've not used nylon wrapped strings for a while so I might look into investing in a set. I put the old set of JF324s on & they sound & feel pretty good - I'll need to find the tool to give the truss rod a tweak but its not far out.

I hardly play my Tanglewood (Rosewood Reserve) acoustic bass as the Thomastik Acousticore AB324 Phosrphor Bronze strings feel 'grabby' and make my hands stink after playing. I'm thinking of putting on an old set of JF-324 flats as I love the feel of those on my short scale solid basses & I expect they'll give me a deep thump on the acoustic rather than the zingy twang of a new set of bronze acoustic roundwounds. Is it just me, just these strings or does everyone get this with bronze acoustic strings?

At least its not coldplay. Its probably a gimmick done for BS reasons like when Alicia Keys was blackberry's global creative director.

The batteries in my P were still good after a couple of years, but i don't use that one much so that isn't much of an indication. The test will be the jaguar which is my main rehearsal & gigging bass, but EMGs need very little power and I've only put the batteries in recently so I doubt they'll need replacing for a while. I'll post an update to this thread when I do change them — if I remember. If your basses can already fit a pair of 9v batteries I don't think you'd need the 24v mod thing as there's no difference sound-wise between 18v & 24v as far as I can tell and I expect the battery life will be shorter.

[attachment=163309:24v.jpg] My Squier Jag SS VM bass has a set of EMG PJX pickups. I wouldn't be able to use a harness made from three battery clips to add a second battery for the essential 18v mod as it hardly has room for a single 9v battery. Instead I made this little fella to hold a pair of 23A 12V batteries (car alarm plipper type). The battery holders and battery clips came from ebay sellers in China. Not done much of a sound test to see how much if any improvement there is in the sound, but I didn't kill the pickups - the important thing to remember when soldering the battery holder to the clip is that the red wire on the holder needs to be soldered to the black wire on the clip & vice-versa. I have the parts to make another but I'm waiting for some more batteries so I'll make another for my '81 precision which also has an EMG but is currently powered by 18 volts using an AAA battery holder full of the button cells you find inside 23A batteries.

A heads-up for anyone with an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch who likes free stuff & needs another tuner - IK's UltraTuner is currently free as a free in-app purchase within amplitube IOS & also free as a stand-alone app

[quote name='Diablo' timestamp='1400743699' post='2456498'] I picked up an early 70's Jazz in a London dealers and it had exactly the same issue. I pointed it out to the shop owner who took the bass, knee at the base the of the neck, one hand on the headstock and one on the body, and heaved the neck angle to correct it. I thanked him for his expertise and left! There is usually a tad of movement in the neck pocket so worth checking before sending back I've have thought. [/quote] I'm certain I have read that in the early days of Fender this was a recommended technique for fixing such issues and the company sent instructions to their dealers in how to carry it out.

I'm too worried about my iPad getting damaged in transit or onstage to take it at gigs but my kindle paperwhite is pretty good for setlists & lyrics/chords memory joggers - I just make a document in pages & export to pdf or save as ePub and convert to mobi using calibre

The can't be bothered to help attitude is nothing new. When the Hohner B2A steinberger clone had just come out in 1986 I ventured to Denmark Street on a Saturday to get one. The first shop, Rose Morris had the exact bass I was after in the window so I went in and asked if I could have a closer look & try it out. The chap really couldn't be bothered and although it should have been easy to grab from the window, he insisted that I'd have to come back on Monday as they were due to change the window display. I mentioned that I was planning to buy the bass today if I liked it but he wasn't interested and couldn't be swayed so I left empty handed. I carried on down the street and saw that another shop also had them in. No problem this time: I tried it, liked it, agreed a price and bought it within about 20 minutes. I was told that as it was a new model the hard cases were coming by sea & would be arriving in the UK in a few weeks so I took it in the cardboard box. I couldn't resist going back to Rose Morris, opening the box and asking the first chap in front of his manager "Do you have a hard case for my new Hohner B2A bass?" The expression on his face was priceless.

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1398595072' post='2435532'] Music is not a competition. [/quote] Try telling that to Simon Cowell or any of the chumps that appear on his programmes

I'd recommned the same one I got from brandoni guitars in Wembley for my '71 daphne blue musicmaster - an enclosed cool rails strat humbucker. It fits the original pickguard without needing any modification. It sounds massive. I think it was made by Kent Armstrong and it cost about £30 (but that was some years ago). I also put a hot rails in another musicmaster but I don't rate how that one sounds as much as the cool rails

Unless you're going to be driving over the pedal in a tank why would you need to rehouse it? I keep my BDI21 in a lightly padded poundshop discman case to protect it in transit & storage. I've had it and the similar ADI21 for many years and they are both as good as new although they had a lot of use untiI I got a zoom b3.

The Harley Bentons aren't available at the moment, but I contacted Thomann to ask about them and I was told they should be available May/June and they will produce cases for them which should be available in the summer.

A fix I've used when this happened on a bass was to slightly flatten the thread of the offending grub screw with pliers.

Is this one of those StSanders shreds videos?

Lets hope its less of a waste of money than that tutorial video he released was for anyone daft enough to buy it - the one where Flea talks bollocks to River Phoenix & jams with Chad Smith

I have one on my 2003 highway1 jazz which had a deadspot at the 5th fret of the G string. The fatfinger worked. Before buying it I checked that it would work by using a tiny cast iron g-clamp from the pound shop. I since fitted hipshot vintage style tuners to the bass including a D-tuner which also seemed to help due to their increased mass.

For me there are only two types of strings: TI flats & everything else. I have tried alternatives to TIs but I don't get the bounce thats TIs give me that make them so enjoyable to play fingerstyle. I have sets of JF324, the 32" set, on a Fender mustang bass (thru body) & a Squier Jag SS (fitted with a hi-mass toploading bridge) which is my main bass for playing at home, rehearsals and gigs. I have had no problems with the strings on either of these 30" instruments and even though the set on the jag cost almost a quarter of what I paid the bass, the long life of the strings means that this is not important. I first tried TI 344s on one of my precisions well over ten years ago & the original set is still going strong on that bass.

Make some out of sugru? http://sugru.com

if a bridge's a thicker baseplate affects the action, shimming the neck will enable you to correct that

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1395150016' post='2399184'] Not unless you want to suffer a horrendous poo-storm like the last member on here to do such a thing! [/quote] That might be amusing. Any chance of a link to the thread where that happened if you can find it?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/electric-bass-guitar/121296366161 That looks like a Japan-made 62 reissue Squier JV from 82/83 - should someone tell him to make it a bit more obvious in the title?

The whole Shepherds Bush gig last week is on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3oAaElKxKs

If it was a genuine blocked & bound fender I'd expect to see a bullet truss rod adjuster at the headstock end - not a x-slotted adjuster at the heel end. I think this is most likely an allparts and if so will have 'licensed by fender' on it (unless it has been removed)