Jean-Luc Pickguard

Some early viols had loops of gut tied around the neck as frets. I saw one somewhere, but can't remember where - might have been at the Victoria & Albert museum. Not sure if that's what this one has

I just carry my mustang bass in a standard fender gigbag. fender do make a rectangular hard case for mustang, musicmaster and bronco basses, but its ridiculously expensive - something like £140 last time I looked. When I bought my danelectro honghorn I was surprised that it fits perfectly in a telecaster hard case.

The domain is registered in Denmark to tcelectronic, so perhaps its a bass version of whatever they released for guitar last year. Like the nova system or something?

I have a Stentor student (model 1950) - The one with a solid top & ply back & sides. It does seem a bit rough & ready, but was nice & cheap, it seems to be tough and sounds decent with a K&K pickup & Thomastik Spirocores. I don't take it out much though as its not as easy to carry or play as my NS CR-5M EUB.

I'm into shortscales, my favourite gigging bass is a CIJ mustang, but I also own a couple of musicmasters ('71 US fender & Squier Vista), a danelectro longhorn & a 32" daisyrock elite. My daughter also has a '71 musicmaster and a couple of daisy rocks, so she's a bit of a shortscales connoisseur as well and would be able to comment on the "cool factor" from a teenager's point of view. The best thing about my mustang for me is that, even though it is a 30" scale, it has through-body stringing, so a set of 32" Thomastic flats fit on it perfectly. Also the neck is very narrow & thin (a guitarist mentioned recently that it feels like a particularly comfy strat neck). With my ideal strings (TI JF 324) I can still get an optimal amount of relief in the neck. I nearly bought a mini precision when Fender made them a few years ago, I think it was around a 27"or 28" scale, but I was put off by the lack of choice of strings that would fit. I'd like the opportunity to try a prototype and I'll be more than happy to report back about what I like and don't, giving reasons and suggesting possible improvements.

I'm crap, but the chaps in the band don't seem to have noticed.

[quote name='AM1' post='364116' date='Dec 27 2008, 12:08 PM']I vowed not to go down the road of playing purely by ear because I want to develop my reading as well.[/quote] I'm not sure how using tab is going to help with reading

My 81 Precision has an EMG active pickup, but no actual eq/preamp. I have made a conversion clip to run it off 18v rather than the standard 9v. Unfortunately theres no room for two standard 9v batteries, so my clip uses the 1.5v cells from A23 12v batteries. There are eight 1.5v button cells if you open up an A23. Twelve of the cells fit perfectly onto an AAA holder. It definitely sounds better, a lot more alive almost as if all the oomph was being compressed out of it with only 9v.

If you use standard tuning, have you looked at the ultra cheap Planet Waves Bass SOS tuner? It very quick to tune up wih it & much more accurate than the other tuners I've used.

I'd go for a secondhand Jazz, either a highway 1 or CIJ.

[quote name='Merton' post='362017' date='Dec 23 2008, 02:30 PM']I used TI's once, they were sh*t. IMO. [/quote] Thomastiks are not to everyone's taste as they are very flexible and respond better to a light touch. They're all I use on most of my basses and I've never had a bad set. They're certainly not sh*t IMO. Rotospounds on the other hand...

I've had that when the bass amp & the PA are on different circuits. The shocks cease when both are plugged into the same extension.

[quote name='AM1' post='360581' date='Dec 21 2008, 11:11 PM']Actually that book looks good. What does it say, if anything, about ganglion cysts (if that is what it is). Rgds AM[/quote] on p34/35 he says (among other things) "don't whack it with a bible" it can be drained with a hyperdermic needle or surgically removed or if left alone it may go away on its own.

I would normally recommend you get a copy of Randall Kertz's book "The bassist's guide to injury management,prevention and better health", but he's a doctor (& bass player) so I guess its not an option. Only available from [url="http://www.drkertz.com/buy_book.html"]http://www.drkertz.com/buy_book.html[/url] as far as I'm aware.

+1 for John East's excellent preamps - I love my J-retro [quote name='dub' post='358691' date='Dec 19 2008, 11:55 AM']I recently bought a John East BTB-MMSR 4 Knob preamp to replace the original Musicman preamp in my 1990 Ernie ball stingray 5. Although I liked the tone of the original, I found it a bit noisy and was interested in getting a sound closer to a 70s Musicman. I had already swapped the pickup for a seymour duncan alcino a couple of years ago which was a step closer to what I was looking for. It has a fantastic sound and much quieter S/N ratio that the original. The mid sweep is ideal for cutting a bit of low mid when switched to humbucking or boosting 100Hz for a massive dub sound. It is very close to a 70s MM sound with a bit of extra boost on the bass. It's the best sounding preamp I've come across so far.[/quote] I dare you to post that on the EBMM forum though

Give Andy Blake at wizard pickups a shout. I bet he could rewind it for a reasonable charge. [url="http://www.wizardpickups.co.uk/"]http://www.wizardpickups.co.uk/[/url]

It is certainly a lot more transportable than a double bass and wouldn't look out of place in a more traditional jazz setting compared to one of those new fangled fenders, so maybe that is its market? Before I upgraded to an NS upright, I heard a few comments from other bass players about the dean pace EUB being nothing more than a skinny BG on its end, OK everyone has an opinion but I suspect the people making those comments probably never spent any time with a pace so were basing the opinion on what it looks like rather than what it is actually like to play. I don't know about the barker, but I found the pace has very different characteristics to a BG (thick chunky neck, piezo bridge, 35" unlined fretless) but more importantly, due to it being vertical the hand positions to play it are totally different. I found that because of this I tended to approach it very differently, not just in the physical way of stopping, striking and muting the strings but also in the feel of the music and note choices. It was great fun to play and the audience always reacted well to it. I think without my experience of the pace I would probably dismiss the barker as fairly pointless, I can see it as a valid instrument in its own right, albeit a fugly one.

Sounds like me about eight or nine years ago when I restarted playing bass after a ten year gap. I'm now in two bands, one of which gigs regularly and has released a CD of original songs. When I got back into bass I had an '81 Precision and a Hohner B2A "cricket bat". I now have far too many basses according to the missus including fretless, upright, shortscale and rubber-stringed very short scale fretless.

[quote name='chris_b' post='357009' date='Dec 17 2008, 02:43 PM']I wish more development was going into Laser and Piezo pickup technology for bass, and then string materials could broaden even more to include gut, plastic, rubber, etc[/quote] Mmm silicone rubber

The only thru-strung bass I have flats on is my mustang which is wearing a set of Thomastik JF324 jazz flats with no problems at all. I recall a thread on the old dudepit where some flats were being manufactured specifically for thru stringing on 50's style precisions and were to be sold exclusively by Steve under his 'vintage bass trading' label. I think LaBella were going to make them and they were going to be similar to Deep Talkin' flats, but with the outer ribbon wrapped obliquely around the core to prevent it frombreaking at the bridge, but I don't know if they ever did get manuactured or if any are available anywhere, but I'm sure there were some pics posted at the time. I wonder whether a company like picato might be interested in [s]nicking [/s]developing the idea?

[quote name='Jean-Luc Pickguard' post='338670' date='Nov 27 2008, 05:23 PM']I would guess it will be less fender-like, probably a paddle-shape or something hoogly like a johnson.[/quote] Spooky

[quote name='Buzz' post='355218' date='Dec 15 2008, 05:53 PM']Oh, just as a heads up, you don't have to buy a Mac to run any of the Mac OS's now, Apple relased their OS's for normal laptops a couple of years ago. Dual boot as you see fit and get a much better specced laptop for your money.[/quote] 'Fraid not- they only sell the latest version of MacOS as an upgrade for Macs. Any monkey business to make a 'hackintosh' is unlicensed and unsupported.

To confuse the issue my unlined fretless precision is anything but precise in my hands.

In my experience Vista is such a shoddy pile of sh*te that my next machine is likely to be a macbook. Vista was terrible for music production when I tried it so I had to make my PC boot into XP to run cubase. I had no problems mixing an album on cubase 4 on XP which was originally recorded in a studio running cubase SX2 on a mac, so cross-platform compatability is not necessarily an issue. Also with a mac you can run bootcamp to boot into windows while you wean yourself off it, or run windows apps seamlessly using parallels or vmware fusion.

My '81 Precision (S8.. serial) that I bought new for £260 in 1982 is monstrously heavy due to cheaper Northern Ash being used instread of Leo's preferred Swamp Ash, the pick up sounded weedy compared to my other Ps (Is this due to cheaper wire of the wrong gauge being used?) and had dodgy frets that buzzed & rattled from new. I swapped out the Pickup for an EMG (not very good until I ran it at 18v) and Martin at the Gallery sorted out the frets. Its great now, but for the first 20+ years of its life it was a bit of a dog (but a very nice looking cherry sunburst dog).