uk_lefty

Just seen on Facebook. Looks like passive P basses and single coil pickup P models....

I bought a Jinwan neck, a lefty P bass neck with binding and pearl blocks. I ordered the black painted one to go for the 80s MIJ look and got glossed maple. That was one of a few issues... The neck is made for either a lefty or for right handers to use it upside down, there's dot markers on both edges! But also, the nut is in upside down! It fits perfectly to a P bass body I had built by Guitarandbassbuilds.com and when I eventually get time I will be building the bass with that neck attached. When it arrived with issues I emailed Jinwan and got a response within 1 day and a satisfactory resolution a day after that. Good customer service I think.

Yeah, I get you. Mine was heavy, but it was a 5 string so there was extra meat on it. I think the hardware is a personal choice thing. Some people complain about sharp bits on bridges, my hand only goes near the bridge when I'm changing strings, all down to the individual. I just wouldn't write off the hardware, it's good enough, not spectacular.

I pre ordered an HX Stomp from Andertons a few weeks back, orders due to arrive with them on the 29th. It arrived with me today at lunch time. Just need the kids to go to bed early tonight! I funded it almost in full by selling off my Boss GT10B which I loved, but found a pain to carry around, a Zoom guitar multi effects (G7.1ut) and a Zoom 506 ii acoustic guitar pedal. Figured I'd get everything those pedals do and more out of an HX Stomp, except a bass Wah. So the plan years back was to get rid of my pedal board and have a decent multi. In the time I've not had an effects set up for bass I've been thinking I could loop a bass Wah and synth pedal in with my HX Stomp and I'd need a board and power supply and....... I've read the manual today and I've read chunks of the long Helix thread on here, but any tips on starting points other than downloading latest softwares of course, very gratefully received!

I had a vintage V7, so it had the BBOT Bridge which was just never an issue for me at all. The more modern bridges look more solid. The tuners feel cheap but I never had a problem with it slipping out of tune and I gigged in a tin shed in summer and at an ice rink in winter, no problems! While they could have been better I saw absolutely no reason to change, the bass performed perfectly with no issues from either. I've never understood "neck dive" being a problem so for me lightweight tuners etc are a luxury and not a necessity whereas other people would say the opposite. I saw Marcus Miller at a Sire plugging event and he was asked about the different models. He prefers the V7 and his view on the V9 etc was, not a direct quote but words to the effect, fancy wood tops and so on are for you to enjoy looking at and inspire you to pick up your bass but they are not making a difference to the sound. And that's from a man who is one of the top living bassists AND who makes money out of people buying Sire basses with his name on them!

I had a Gator board that was heavy as hell, made of ply and I velcro'd a Caline power supply underneath, since sold on to guitarist. Other guitarist is a gear snob, but he uses a Donner pedal board. Looks like the pedal train type things but it's dirt cheap on Amazon and comes with a nice bag.

I can only speak for myself but I regretted selling mine. I thought it was a "cheap" way to see if I liked features not usually available on lefty basses before I invested in a more expensive instrument. In actual fact if you gig regularly and you need something rock solid and inexpensive I don't think you can beat a Sire. If only the headstock wasn't so ugly I think people could love them like they do other brands (joking, you don't look at the headstock when you're tickling the dusty end). I'd had some active basses before, two and three band, and could never get my head around them. This may make me sound like an idiot. However the Sire active system was just intuitive to me, and I have not really grasped what they mean by sweep-able mids or care what Hz I'm tweaking, but for me it was easy to get that bass where I wanted it sound wise. As easy as my 3 band Stingray which is bass, mid, treble. The second hand value of the Sires is poor because they're so cheap and easily available new, better still on B stock. I felt like I was giving mine away, and I really regret it, because now I don't have a fretted 5 string and the best fretted 5 strings for me are the Sire V7 or M series! I'd say if you're curious and you have the cash get a second hand one for peanuts and you'll see what the fuss is about. Is it as "good" as my MIJ Fender? No, but not far off. Is it more tonally flexible? Yes. Would I be happier leaving it on a stand at a break in a gig than my MIJ Fender? YES.

Awesome!! Glad you got hold of it at long last. £600 sounds like a good deal, from what you described just from a bass collector point of view, but fulfilling the long held dream is priceless!

What made you lust so much after this bass, I want to hear the story! 😊

True. Its just one of the things I would look out for though. The guy who just bought a multi effect off me was completely sound, but he originally offered PayPal and sending his own courier, which is a way some scams are done. He was genuinely just trying to reduce cost and have some control. It's a minefield for both sides. In a separate post I've also pointed out people using English as a second language are always buying furniture and baby stuff I sell on local Facebook groups, so I'm not prejudicing against anyone without perfect English, but again it's something to watch out for. It's almost like trying to fill a bingo card!

Tell tale signs of a scammer for me: User only joined Facebook this year. Facebook has been around 15 years or so, if you've only just joined now and you're looking to buy gear... Nah. Bad English or impolite/ too eager to close a deal before an agreement is reached "send it me, yeah bro", or when told of postage charges "I only have *cost of item*" in which case I suggest you spend it on food and shelter and not frivolous items like effects pedals. Unreasonable expectations: "are you near London? What's your nearest train station I'll meet you there". Well, your train ticket to St Albans will cost more than the 4 quid I want for postage so not sure what your game is. Reads like a translation of a Dickens novel: "I'm asking in behalf of my esteemed cousin who is currently taken sick to his chamber and unable to peruse the item. He definitely wishes for it to be acquired. Please furnish me with your PayPal and address and I will send a courier forthwith to collect. From *miscellaneous non English sounding name*. Send photos to John Frank Churchill at Gmail. Com (or other incredibly English sounding name for authenticity) " How I recently got through this: Buyer wants to send his own courier and pay by PayPal. I refused the" own courier" unless he sends bank transfer, avoids the scam of recovering money via PayPal saying items not received. Discussion back and forth saying there's a lot of dodgy stuff going on at the minute, apologies for being over cautious but have been seeing a lot of attempted scams recently. Agreed PayPal goods and services with me posting by Parcelforce. A bit of faith shown on both sides after some discussion. Sent a photo of the item in its packing, a photo of it wrapped up with his name and address on the box, then a photo of the full Parcelforce receipt so he can see a parcel weighing 5kg was sent from my local post office to his address and he has the tracking number. Then Parcelforce's tracking system went haywire and couldn't trace the parcel which led to some fraught questions from the buyer!! He also saw I had missed taking down one of the Facebook ads after we agreed the sale, so I did as soon as he pointed it out. Luckily it arrived with him on time and he's chuffed to bits with it.

J fit is good, assuming either my Entwistle pups are a mm wider than most or the rout was just a little off. It's no biggy.

So I've had some time to progress things. Today I have been sanding and filing the body rout because it was about 1.5mm too narrow to take the "ears" for the P pickups. The sanding isn't so neat, but it will do. I can squeeze the pickup in so I'll sand a bit more to make it comfortable and not have friction when changing the pup height. Later I'll experiment with the stain by starting with the control panel cover thing.

I started off using it to just chop up a long rehearsal recorded on a Zoom handheld in to songs and get rid of chat between songs and false starts, save as mp3 and host on Dropbox. Then I started to use it to record off the USB output from a Blackstar ID Core BEAM (very handy for home recording), then for vocals got a USB mixer and started to play around with adding track upon track. Here's something that took me about 20mins using that kit: Listen to Take on Me by clive mustang on #SoundCloud https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/6Y2bd There's no drum or vocal on it. I was purely trying to prove a point that to do an 80s cover without keyboards is possible, so it's just intro, verse 1 and 1st chorus with a mess up over how long or short that chorus should be! Am sure Audacity could do more but just for taking the input and recording track over track it's doing the job.

What an absolute legend... Well, both of you actually. Two absolute legends!!

Am sure that's the convenient excuse they will use, but it wasn't snowing on Friday when I posted it or Saturday... Website problem has been there since Fri afternoon at least.

Parcelforce

Anybody else unable to track anything sent via Parcelforce? I sent an effects pedal on Friday, sold over Facebook. Had some back and forth with the buyer trying to protect myself from any potential scam and now I've received payment and posted it looks like I'm ripping him off because the Parcelforce website won't recognise the tracking number!!! It's also not recognising a tracking number for something I sent a week earlier which I know has arrived, so looks like a system error. If you phone them it puts you to an automated speech recognition thing which also doesn't recognise my tracking number. Infuriating.

First thing I did in lockdown was buy a USB mixer so I could record. I have even offered to drop round either the mixer, an amp with USB recording out, or a zoom handheld recorder to one of the guitarists. The drummer has an electronic kit, but he also has some funny habits, like he will be really difficult about bookings unless it's for someone he knows, so any questions to him go unanswered. I'm going to learn to programme drums this week.

How I wish either one of my bands: A. Cared enough to do this B. Had the time to do this C. Could just spend a few quid on a second hand USB mixer so "I don't have the kit, sorry" isn't an excuse any more. They've saved enough £9.50s a week from rehearsal to get even a rotten one off ebay, surely? D. All of the above

I had a bass lesson in December and could barely remember the names of most songs in our 60ish long set list. Last gig was 15th February 2020

Top advice thanks everyone. Believe it or not being in two bands it's very hard to motivate anybody else to do any kind of recording even though they moan about not being able to get together to rehearse. Will stick to producing my own stuff and then sending tracks to others so they can re do "their" bits should they want to

Yes have been playing to a click supplied by my Blackstar BEAM amp. Have downloaded MT Power kit and Reaper once more because Audacity can't take the MT Power kit. Audacity is very basic, probably why I've not moved away from it until now! Thanks everyone

I'm looking for some advice... I've been doing some solo recording. The bass and guitars is coming out well, vocal needs work. I just don't have drums. Any advice on cheap or free places to "get" drum bears to record over? I record using Audacity purely from familiarity but should try Reaper soon. I'd like something where I can get an easy pattern and decide where to put in fills so I can make it work for doing my own versions of popular songs. Don't really want to spend actual money as I've invested in an expensive but of effects kit recently. Grateful for any advice! Thanks

Not a great deal extra! It is just added switches, not exactly hugely expanded functionality.