nobodysprefect

These are some of the best fretlesses I've ever played. Or, rather. If you like this kind of fretless, these are the best thing, never heard a fretless that does 'that thing a Rob Allen does' nearly as well.

Tone and playability out of this world.

As TAFKAV -- the addict formerly known as Ville -- I'll say that I was never disappointed by a Roscoe bass, and I think I had something like 5-7 of those. The basic design and dimensions are solid and super ergonomical, the tone and attack envelope are supremely real-world-worthy. The only thing you might not get, depending on the woods, is a tone that's very pretty when you're making vids for YouTube. You know the tone. Sparkly highs, even, long envelope and the bottom is like a big foam mattress or a sponge cake. And then you get buried by 1 guitar before the amp is on and just the left half of a drum set and God help you if there's a keyboardist. I like to call that tone the 'small, BIG tone'. 

No, every single Roscoe I've played or heard samples of has both a satisfying girth to give authority and the penetrating thick mids with highs that rub you just right with a good timing of the in-out-curve of the attack that pounds through even thick mixes and leaves you very satisfied! <3

Oh, and as someone who's had sixes with scales from 33,5" to 36", the Century body design does an absolutely stellar job of making the 35" feel like 34". Which you usually wouldn't want to handle an inch less, but in this one case, not feeling every inch is often a plus.

I had this for a short while, and it's one of the best sixes I've had the pleasure to play.

GLWTS!

Btw, Russ is a pleasure to deal with!

On 20/05/2021 at 10:07, binky_bass said:

There is genuinely a hint of '6+ string player' prejudice in this place! Who gives a monkey about how many strings we play... Person A wants a 1 string bass, cool. Person B wants a 10 string bass, cool. I just don't understand for a second why anyone would think anything negative about a person for playing something slightly different to them. It does genuinely make me wonder what other things in these peoples lives that they take issue with just because there's a 'difference'... The world is not grey, we are all different, enjoy what you do and allow others to enjoy what they do.

'The way you, Binky, as an artist, explore your art, chase your muse, and bring your audions into the World offends my feelings and sense of esthetics and you must not be an artist in a manner I don't approve of'

Uneducated Englishman talks about art /s (and by uneducated, I mean the English philosopher who was the greatest philosopher of aesthetics of the 20th century)

5 minutes ago, Cairobill said:

I'm pretty much with you on being slap-averse except when the slapping is like this...in which case I think it's the best...

 

What do you think about my immediate thought: are you, then, against guitar solos with fast lines or effects, or just when they become and end to themselves, and not tasteful?

Because both slap and shred tempt people to overindulge, for sure

In case it wasn't clear to everybody, when I poke fun at not having put in the time to learn certain pieces of music that many bassists and non-bassists consider to be in the, if not essential or iconic, at least so well-known that you'd be reasonably expected to muddle through ... like Imagine or Let It Be or Can You Feel the Love Tonight on piano, or Wonderwall, Voodoo Chile, Paranoid, You Shook Me All Night Long on electric guitar ...

I'm the worst offender.

I say I love soul, funk and disco, and yet I couldn't play Forget Me Nots without shedding.

I claim to have spent my youth drinking beer and listening to classic hard rock, but can't play Stairway to Heaven or Black Dog off memory. Highway Star on a good day.

Thus endeth today's public self-critique (and I put the little red book back on the shelf)

8 minutes ago, Dazm66 said:

Hope it is tongue in cheek! One of the best bits of bass playing I've ever seen - watched it a million times. Use of a mix of styles but always serving the song harmonically and dynamically. 

And the slap bits in context are great..and pretty understated.

I don't know about understated, he does all kinds of runs and fills and fast clusters, but I think the reason it works so well is that he's so good, he can place those notes in the right spot, time- and dynamic-wise. I "could" 'play through' that line with some (days or weeks of) focused effort, but my notes would stick out, because they would be ever so slightly (or a LOT) off the sweet spot

Not that having worse feel than Andrew Gouche is particularly rare in bassdom...

5 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Damn he's good! 

2 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

I’m not sure if you’re joking or not but I think that’s a great bit of playing 🙂

I'm a gushing fanboy of ol' Gooch.

Putting my tongue in my cheek here.

Yeah, slap sure is a terrible plight upon music. And now other musicians expect us to pull off well-known super hits with slap! Auuugh. Don't they realise all lines just sound worse when slapped? There's just never really a need for it.

Yup, sure wouldn't want to sound like this unmusical womble

https://youtu.be/hmkR3gmJh7w?t=220

Now, I'm no better than the worst of us all: I've been lazy, and I can't play slap properly. It's a shortcoming I have as a bassist. Time to correct it.

no longer on hold

On 06/04/2021 at 16:26, Kiwi said:

Still his finest moment,  all that theory training is being put to work. 

I dunno man, he has a fair number of pretty fine moments.

https://youtu.be/VMXW6hfJ-r4
TBH, I find it more interesting to compare him and Justin Raines. Same generation, very different players
Justin's just so exuberant!
https://youtu.be/oVKM0-j04dc

1 hour ago, chris_b said:

+1

His lines are always melodic and musical. No matter how busy he gets, like Jamerson, he's always supporting the song.

And you might want to take into account the different esthetics in different genres! I wouldn't play gospel runs over an Irish folk tune or a tango -- that'd be grievous bassily harm (aka overplaying) and the Crown will have words about it. But there's something about the oversaturation and over the top runs on top of runs on top of runs that you have in gospel jams, it's like having way too much of a good thing and you just laugh at the impossibility, and it still works somehow

Matters of taste and all. It's pretty interesting how people have so different reactions to different genres: to me, most music outside jazz, fusion, and modern gospel is too stiff and I don't wanna hear it.  and I want to whine about it. To contribute, here's Sharay playing improv and making a couple of fat mistakes:
https://youtu.be/mc_R0C2eSLo

Thanks for all the kind comments, guys!

Looking back, I'd really quit shortly after I moved to Sweden. No-one* to play with, and full-time studies + part-time work was more than enough to keep me occupied.
In a sense, selling off my gear is just facing the facts.

Spoilered my grumbling that's more fitting a spoiled 15-yo.
 

Tony B and Henri M kept talking to me about music and I'm gonna get back to playing and donate the profits to charity, instead. Will end up being the bigger amount by Christmas if they fiiiiiinally let us go out and play

So everybody wins, eh?

So I was about to sell this back in January/February when I realised I hadn't touched a bass in 5 months or more. It's been 2 months and I still haven't touched a bass, so I'm selling this even though my friends tell me to not quit. I can always just buy a 100 squids chinajazz if I feel like playing next year or decade.

So this is a Yamaha TRB6-P. P here stands for piezo. The TRB basses got Patitucci and Andrew Gouche to switch over from Ken Smith, and these are well known and loved basses. The 33 7/8 scale makes this a really nice first six. Well-defined B without extended scale.

Pretty jazz-like tonally, but the piezo opens up new possibilities, it can be blended in with the magnetic pickups with it's own pot. Can sit in the mix very much like a jazz bass does. Ebony board gives the highs a very clean, clear character, which I need to hear what's happening. It seems to me to reveal more nuances in technique and such.

Frets have very little wear, it's been owned by 2 jazz players before me.

The photos show the small ding in the back of the neck, and Nordic winters have caused the typical shrinking of neck to make the fret end on the UPPER (thankfully not the lower) side of the neck to peek out.

Asking price excludes shipping costs, because those will vary very very much based on what company and options you want, so there's no fair way of including shipping costs in the price.

More photos: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qiec2i1jcd15nb5/AACZpDouW1CQF8WQBz5wmmZxa?dl=0

@ped if it's my username, can it be changed to have no punctuation and spaces?

@binky_bass @triplebass
pming you guys now

2 hours ago, binky_bass said:

You could always send him a message!! 😉

I heard people can't send me message, but that's weird, you and I have been able to send messages back and forth all summer.

I'm putting this up for sale again. I haven't had an instrument in my hands for 5 months now nor have I listened to music except by accident. I realised I could use the 2 square metres my gear takes up. I'll be putting up ads for my remaining fretted bass and amps over the weekend.

-----
tl;dr hard times*, longer explanation in the end. I was raving to Tony all week how this was even better than the fretless Ken Lawrence and MTD I had had and then got terrible news.

This bass somehow manages to attain that really difficult bit in sixes, a clear and authoritative B-string and a thick c-string at the same time. Very punchy and solid tone all through the range. Very jazz-like, you can go full Jaco if you want to

I got Tony's kind permission to use his ad text:

---

In fully working condition, fully original and in excellent overall condition (second owner). [I'm the third but 6 days hardly counts eh?]

Here are the specifications :

Body  : old stock mahogany

Top : old stock spalted chestnut with thick old stock rosewood veneer between body and top

Neck : one piece old stock flamed maple

Fingerboard : superb old stock LEGAL Brazilian rosewood

Positions : 21 original maple lined fretless

Headstock : 3 + 3 shape with spalted chestnut veneer

Pickups : 2 original hum-cancelling Noguera single coils with spalted chestnut covers

Preamp : Noguera 2 bands

Controls : volume (active/passive), blend, bass, treble

Tuners : Hipshot UltraLite USA

Bridge : original Noguera old stock rosewood with adjustable brass saddles

Strings spacing at bridge : 19 mm

Nut : bone

Strings spacing at nut : 9.5 mm

Knobs : 4 dark rosewood

Scale : 34"

Hardware colour : black

Truss rod : one (fully working)

Finish : high gloss

Land of craftsmanship : France

Serial number : 6002

Year : 2007

Weight : 4.487 kilos

Action : from a bit under 2 mm under the C string to a bit under 2.5 mm under the B string at 12th position (can go lower, but was perfect for me)

Will come with the original non branded Noguera hard case.

Non-smoking environment as usual.

The bass has been fully set up professionally by Christophe LEDUC. It has a new battery and has been fitted with a brand new set of Kalium Hybrid Bass Balanced BH-136-6BS round wound strings (29 - 41 - 57 - 76 -102 - 136).

This bass has been custom made with exact specifications for the previous owner and is in almost new condition.

Link to the Noguera page where you can see this very bass : http://noguera-basses.com/modele_basse.php?serie_b=Harmony&model_b=Deluxe&page=photos&categories=Serie Harmonie&galeries=Harmonie Standard Custom&nopage=1&ppp=6

Link to the Kalium strings : https://kaliummusic.com/product/string-pack-2g2x343c3k3q/

What you see is what you get !

Look at the photos taken under different angles to see the almost new condition for a 13 years old bass ! This is a totally unique bass !!! All the photos are here : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hz6HjS1hD1zw9g3co2vPw1iy-oP5dnGa?usp=sharing

----

My asking price is net price excluding shipping, as it would be unfair to ask people who can come pick up the bass pay the same as someone in Australia or New Zealand. Wiggle room might be there, but I'm exploring my options to resolve the crisis in a way that lets me keep this bass. Original hard case included.

*I just had disastrous news -- benefits denied out of clear blue sky-- regarding my personal finances on Thursday ago, and have agonised over this for 2 days now. Should the situation change this bass is off the market immediately. I'm trying to do everything I can to appeal, but we all know how that goes. The price reflects my situation and you probably won't find a Noguera Harmonie Custom (at least not one this good) at this price again. I haven't been able to get to really know the bass yet.

Traded a bass with Tony, he's a great BCer, would absolutely recommend him to anyone

3 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

In general the higher the excursion the lower the sensitivity, although it's not a hard and fast rule, as excursion alone doesn't determine sensitivity. It's not easy to compare apples to apples here, but two drivers that use the same motor with different excursions are the Eminence 3012HO and 3012LF, at 6.2mm 100dB/w and 9.1 mm 95dB/w respectively. They also have different response, which is  related to their different excursion, but only in part, as other parameters affect the result. This goes back to the fact that be it a raw driver or a finished speaker you can't consider just one or two specs, you must consider them all. With raw drivers that's usually not a problem, as most driver manufacturers publish all the driver specs. With finished speakers it's usually not possible, as very few publish all the specs, if any.

Doesn't the math get ... 'non-trivial' also? Thanks for the informative reply

10 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

-3dB at 40Hz or any other frequency is meaningless in and of itself. I can show you 6 inch loaded speakers that are legitimately -3dB at 40Hz. The problem is that they only have 85dB/w sensitivity. Search: 'Hoffman's Iron Law'.

And I bought ACME bass cabs because this was being explicitly said when almost no-one else making high-end bass cabs in 2004 did. It made sense to me, and the cabs behave as advertised. I may have quit physics, but I can still appreciate being told what tradeoffs are made in the design of a product.

What's the tradeoff in making high-excursion vs low-excursion cones? Accuracy of reproduction? The durability of the suspension? Weight? Difficulty of manufacturing? IIRC Acme said it's difficult to find a manufacturer that's willing to produce low-sensitivity, high-excursion drivers that have accurace low-end reproduction in the small-ish enclosure, but that may have been mostly about his buying relatively small amounts of drivers.

Hi Manu, do you have any recordings with this bass by any chance?

BTW, they make beautiful stuff in the UK too

Thread necromancy: vigier guitar necks are the best necks I've ever felt, no contest. Nothing else comes close. Not pre-factory PRS Customs, not 80s high-end Ibanez, not the Kramer Nightswan II I had, or any of my Hamers, not even the EBMM Steve Morse model or the Zion Radicaster!

If you play guitar, you owe it to yourself to source a second-hand Vigier before the end of the year when you'll start incurring more costs for purchases from the continent.

So, are the bass necks equally sublime? This might be a perilous question.... XD
edited to add: see, my post IS relevant, I'm asking how the bass necks are!

Just now, basspirate said:

No it is not countersunk.

Where did you see that?

It's the fourth picture. Now I see how it's an optical illusion where the angle of the shot makes the height of the bridge and the pickup disppear.

I might need a new pair of glasses, if no-one else sees the pic like that