Jean-Luc Pickguard

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[quote name='Bay Splayer' post='484459' date='May 10 2009, 06:36 PM']didnt deon estes play bass for wham?[/quote] Wasn't he the little bloke in 'it ain't half hot mum' with Windsor Davis?

My favourite bass is my cheap & cheerful CIJ mustang. The neck is a lovely honey tint, but is very glossy. I like the matt finish on my highway 1 jazz's neck and also a squier 70s style telebass that had a silky matt finish. I'd rather leave my mustang's neck as it is than do a half-arsed job of deglossing it, but if a great result is easily achievable I'll probably do it. So who's taken a glossy neck & made it matt? what are the steps? How did it come out? I'm guessing remove the neck & hardware, mask off the fingerboard & headstock, rub all over with very fine wire wool Is this right? Any tips, comments, pics of deglossed necks would be very helpful. I'm not sure whether to do the back of the headstock as well or is it usual to mask off behind the nut?

[quote name='pete.young' post='482534' date='May 7 2009, 10:36 PM']Clip-on blue LED light, supposedly for lighting up the fingerboard but makes you look like you've got luminous smurf hands too.[/quote] where from? I want smurf hands

If the 80s ever become cool that'll be worth a lot more than the current price. (& so will my Hohner B2A)

[list] [*]planet waves SOS tuner - can tune up accurately in silence [*]shower hose washers (a quid for 20) to replace all my grolsch thingies [*]microfibre cloth from the 99p shop to wipe down the strings after a sweaty gig [*]behringer limiter pedal [*]spare 9v batteries [*]bass string winder [/list]

I loved my Ashdown MAG300 (with 2cabs) but replaced it with my LMII which I love even more as it still amplifies the tone from my fingers, but is smaller, lighter and now gets seriously loud (eaily loud enough for the largest pub gig) with a single cab - the Schroder 1212L. I'm happy running the LMII more or less flat - it sounds great in a most venues I played without any tweaking.

Not a bass, but I love the shape of the guard on my CIJ reissue '72 telecaster thinline like this: some of the funky ones jeannie makes for lakland basses are cool: [url="http://home.comcast.net/~pickguards/home.htm"]http://home.comcast.net/~pickguards/home.htm[/url]

30mins if rushed and its somewhere we've played before. Up to an hour if not rushed.

I used to use a Casio midi guitar. The lag was very off-putting, but you could do chord pads on it with the actual guitar sound creating the attack. This looks like it wouldn't be any better as it will still need to hear enough of the sound to be able to calculate the frequency so there will be an audio lag which will get worse on lower notes. The casio, like the roland pickup has a separate pickup for each string, but of course this thing would probably go all over the place if presented with a chord. No matter how cheap it is, I can't see it actually being any good unless you want to sound like early depeche mode.

I wonder if he's such a numpty that the neck isn't actually warped, but just needs a truus rod tweak or possibly a fretstone. [size=1]edit for misspelling numpty [/size] :blush:

I have a few active basses, but I find I don't really need the extra tone shaping capability to get the sound I like. My actives: [list] [*] Hohner B2A - never gets used. I'm not sure the active circuit still works or not [*] Peavey 5 string Millennium - always play with everything set flat. Shape the eq on the LMII [*] H1 Jazz with J-retro - used to be my main gigging bass, but I used to fiddle with the eq during gigs - great sounding ew, but too much choice for me. [*] '81 Fender Precision with active EMG pickup - I originally put this pickup back in as a stop-gap until I found a passive P-Bass pickup I liked, but its staying in as it sounds like a bigger & better passive P bass to me. Its just the pickup that is active - there's no extra eq on the bass. I originally took it out as it sounded a bit lacking in dynamics with a 9v battery, but the sound really opens up with a very simple modification to run it off 18v. [/list] The only one of these I've gigged with recently is the '81 P. My main gigging bass these days is a CIJ mustang, which gives me 'my' sound with the LMII more-or-less flat.

do these look like they're coming off the same production line as SX?

I have two - a blue one and a black one. If you treat it like a instrument in its own right rather than a shrunken bass guitar it is a very rewarding bass to play once you realise the limitations, stengths and practice the specific techniques that get the best out of it. The most important thing I learnt is that to get good intonation you play between the fretlines rather than on them like you would a lined fretless BG. The best talc to use to. Despite an uniformed previous poster, vibrato is possible - it just that you move up & down the string rather than stretch it. Properly talced this is easy with practice. In the right hands it is a unique and expressive instrument. There is an example of a track with a very simple ashbory line on this page: [url="http://www.o5b.co.uk/ashbory-bass/"]http://www.o5b.co.uk/ashbory-bass/[/url] It serves as an example of the basic tone of the thing rather than any techniques as I only bought my first Ashbory during the recording sessions for that album. My Ashborys get a lot of use for acoustic blues sessions and jam nights. The easiest way of tuning them is by using a Planet Waves SOS LED tuner. There's a great website that is a wealth of info on all things Ashbory at [url="http://www.largesound.com"]Largesound.com[/url]. I like toys.

I'd like to predict a backlash against soulless autotuned machine music. Not sure my prediction will come true, but it'll be nice if it did. I heard akon the other day - he's so autotuned he sounds like a dalek. I have to wonder whether he was signed up & marketed as a result of a trading-places style bet at the record company.

As far as I can tell Tony Hadley still sounds like a foghorn.

I've yet to hear any bass with as strong a B as my NS-CR5M upright with the magnetic EMG pickups - but that has a scale length of over 40".

Every Marlin I've seen has been cheap & nasty crap. Not even comparable to the cheapest squier let alone the makes mentioned. If you're going to upgrade the pickup & electronics you'll need to upgrade the bridge, tuners, body & neck while you're at it to make a decent bass. If the strap buttons are in good shape & he wants a quid for it...

[quote name='lemmywinks' post='473004' date='Apr 26 2009, 11:08 PM']A friend of mine has a cheapy Kramer PBass. He gigs all over the country in a function band and has to use this from time to time as it's his backup. The sound engineer at a Walkabout venue asks him to use it instead of his Ray cos he prefers it![/quote] Walkabout? - Do they pay bands in real money now? Last time I was asked to play one their standard deal was - house guitaramps, drumkit & PA. No bassamp 'cause it sounds better through the PA'. Five bands on, each expected to bring a thirsty following. Bands payment - f'kall but a £25 bar tab split between however many band members. I politely declined in two short words. I expect the sound engineer in that case may have been less someone with magic ears and more someone who knew which knobs to twiddle to make a bass with a precision pickup sound like a precison.

I was blown away by a squier VM Precision (70s telebass style) the other day. But don't forget a expensive bass that needs a trussrod tweak is likely to play like a pig compared to a perfectly set up cheapo.

[quote name='jimbaby' post='472075' date='Apr 25 2009, 11:05 AM']Hi I bought a Squire VMJ from a guy in Glasgow recently for a good price and when checking the neck did notice a slight bow which I thought, (not very experienced in these matters) would be righted with some adjustment by a pro. I did ask him if the bass had had a setup or was it as it came from the shop, he told me he had lowered the strings to suit himself (the alarm bells should have been ringing but I was smitten by the look and general quality). On putting it into my local guitar shop the tech tells me he will have to clamp it over the weekend and if that fails maybe try some heat treatment. Only had this bass for a short time but have become very attached to it already, also it was a birthday present from my wife so fingers crossed for the right result, will find out next week. Regards Jim[/quote] I'd have thought a tweak of the truss rod would be all that was required if its a slight bow - particularly as the weather has warmed up just recently - a couple of my basses have needed a little nudge in the last week or two. Is this tech an actual luthier / repairer or just someone that works in the shop who happens to know how to put strings on so gets called 'the tech'?

[quote name='HeavyJay' post='471591' date='Apr 24 2009, 03:10 PM']How many people outside the bass community know the difference between a Jazz and a P?[/quote] I bet the average punter wouldn't be able to tell a strat from a jazz bass.

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='470965' date='Apr 23 2009, 05:58 PM']If you buy one, I guarantee you'll either be selling it or attacking it with a chisel within a fortnight....[/quote] By the time I've raised some spare cash, either the gas will have worn off or there'll be cheap ones popping up secondhand left right & centre. Hopefully.

I couldn't believe how nice this bass looks, how light & comfy it was to play, the matt neck finish with slightly wider & deeper profile than a jazz, but not as wide as a precision and how the tone is right up my street. I was imagining how it would sound even better with a set of Thomastik-JF344s and how it would feel with the truss rod adjusted properly for less relief. The missus says I'm not allowed any more basses (but then its easier to get forgiveness than permission) and I probably have about 15 more than I need already, but I'm trying to work out a way of raising 'extra' cash to get one of these beauties. Damn! I only checked it out 'cause people on BC were saying how nice the vintage modified basses were and I saw one hanging up in the local shop.