Huge Hands

What's that you say? Oh, go on then!

In 2008, I had been on this forum for a while, and saw a Squier Precision 5 on Marketplace. I decided to buy it and if memory serves, made a rather large detour on my way back from a work trip to get it. The bass was in very good condition, but was an awful metallic green with white scratchplate. My intention was for this to be my first attempt at "modding" a guitar, and had grand ideas of stripping it, painting it, etc etc. To me, the pickups felt a bit weak, so got in touch with Andy at Wizard pickups who, after a couple of attempts, made me a set of lovely J pups (these early Squier P5s had two Jazz pickups in a P body, not P/J). I stuck some LaBella flats on it, and with these new pickups, did a lot of gigs (a lot for me). Over time, I fell in love with this bass, and its cricket bat sized neck. I then started to worry that if I messed around with it, and stripped the paint etc, I might ruin it, as I am no woodworker or Luthier! Therefore, I decided to buy a twin of it. I wasn't intending to, but ended up with an almost identical one in the same awful green metallic. I stripped that one, had the body routed (by a mate) for a P-pickup at the neck and a battery cavity at the back. It ended up black with a pearl pickguard. It looked really good, but have never managed to feel the mojo the original one had. I have also had an issue with the G string on it being quiet, but I have tried various strings and moving the pickups but it is always the same, so it never really gets played. I also found that after I had stripped it, the green metallic look had actually grown on me and the minute I saw it gone, I wished I hadn't done it! Fast forward a few years around 2015, a few of my pro mates were raving about the new Sire V7s as a quality budget instrument so I saw one come up on here and bagged it. It has been my main bass ever since. As I wasn't playing the Squier, I took pity on a young teenage son of a friend who was trying to play bass with his mates and was attempting do so with a homemade bass his grandad had tried to build "Brian May style", but was pretty much unplayable. I offered him a temp loan of my green P5. I figured he would get sick of the huge neck and give it back in a month or so once he'd found something better......but didn't! All the time he had it, I would see old pics of me playing it and the memories of those gigs would come flooding back and would miss it, mainly for the nostalgia aspect, I wasn't so sure about for the playing of it. Fast forward almost 10 years, and a week ago he messaged me to say he was moving out of his mum's and didn't have the space for it in his new place, so did I want it back? So, it appeared at a band rehearsal (minus the E String?) via his mother. Yesterday, I put a spare E string on it and took it to my weekly concert band rehearsal, thinking I'd start playing it and it would remind me not to think of things with rose-coloured spectacles on and I'd jump straight back on my Sire. However, wow! It was like having an old glove fit in my hands! The neck is still relatively straight (whereas the one I modded rarely stays still). Yes, it needs a bit of adjustment to string height for my preference but not a lot, and the lovely mellowness of those Wizard pups was sublime. I am resisting the urge to use terms such as butter but I really enjoyed playing it again and did the whole rehearsal with it. I don't think the kid is a smoker (his mother will kill him if he is) but the white scratchplate has now yellowed nicely in a vintage way, and that green is still growing on me massively as a different look. I'm o happy to have my old partner back. It will now be a struggle to choose between the Sire and this. I think I prefer the radiused board of the Sire, but the huge string spacing and feel of the Squier. I sure there are people out there scoffing with their expensive Wals and Overwaters (lots of other various boutique names are available) but these were all I could afford or justify at the time, (and still can!) Just thought I would share...... I'm one happy boy!

Bought a set of flats from Gareth - really friendly and fast responding. Thanks!

As others have said - it may be down to how the feed is sent to the stream from the mixer. I seem to remember a FOH engineer once told me he had worked with a band on Chris Evans' TFI Friday TV programme in the 90s. IIRC he said the mixer faders were used for the PA/crowd in the room and the TV feed was mixed using the auxiliary sends on each channel. This, he explained, was why it didn't always sound great on TV as the engineer would be concentrating on the room. I could be wrong and it could have been the other way around, but either way, you can get totally separate mixes from the same desk if done this way and might explain why it is wildly different on FB. It might also be worth checking the various points in the chain of EQ, transmission to laptop, encoding, streaming etc to see if there are any HPF/bandwidth reduction settings which may cause a perceived loss of bottom end along the way?

In all seriousness, I had this with a Squier 5 string P build (the early ones had Jazz pickups) when I tried to get some custom wound ones for it. Although I hadn't noticed it before, it became apparent that most Fender Jazz basses had two different sized pickups, to compensate for the strings being further apart at the bridge than the neck. The pickup man's first set he sent were too wide, and he told me that for some unknown reason, Squier had used two 4 string neck pickups when making my 5-string P. In summary - I think you will have to use your measurements and search for pickups that will fit the holes, unless you want to carve bits out of your bass.

This ^^ My favourite style of music is slow, well arranged power-ballad type grooves like Isaac Hayes, Leroy Hutson etc, where the lyrics are usually about love (and oft in Isaac's case - sh*gging) and therefore not depressing, but they do tend to be dancefloor killers...... I have learned to wind my neck in when discussing possible new covers.....

...and here was me thinking this was going to be a thread about Gary Lineker....

Not a mags fan then? Lol! (I'm originally from just up the road from you).

I'm happy to change my name to "Future Nancy" if you just want to bin the guitar off.......😃

In simplest terms, "Pre" means FOH will get a flat signal regardless of what you set you mid, bass and treble to. "Post" means they will get the same as your settings. Most FOH engineers prefer pre as they can do their own shaping to suit the PA, but if you have critical wacky EQ settings that suit your style of music, I would go post.

A manufacturer we buy a lot of items from at work use DHL. They had a tick box option that said "Courier to bring labels" on their courier request form to save us printing them out. However, in our experience, the DHL driver never had the labels, so the items would not get collected unless we printed and put them on the box ourselves. I have noticed that tick box option has disappeared from the request form so must have been a regular issue!

I tend to favour standing to the drummer's right as I often play EUB and sing backing vocals and want to look across the instrument/my hands (when singing) towards the lead singer who is usually centre stage. It all feels a bit backwards otherwise.

I see a lot of for sale ads offering organs for free - the type your nan would have in the 70s and 80s to try and play some Klaus Wunderlich medleys on. I also see a lot of these type of organs that were made by Hammond (but without drawbars) listed at silly prices in the hope someone will be fooled by the name and pay out hoping they will be the next Jimmy Smith on it....

I could be wrong, but it felt like a lot more than a 1mm difference to me. With the first set I got, the "ears" wouldn't fit in the notches on the body. They were catching the edges and I would have probably had to shave about 1mm off the cavities to make them fit, but they wouldn't have been central in the ear cavity and touching the side, if you know what I mean (the correct pickups don't touch the edges in the current holes and there is probably already a 1mm gap all the way around). So in my dodgy maths head - if each ear needs to move further apart and needs at least 1mm - the gap between them should be bigger than 1mm? Apologies if I', being stupid. It was about 10 years ago and someone has that bass on permanent loan from me so I can't check.

When I tried to get some custom pickups for my old Squ!er P5 (which had Jazz pickups) - I ran into this problem. It appears (from what I was told) that the different width neck and bridge pickups also have different spacing of the holes, which was a problem for my build as the body was cut with domed notches for the mounting tabs and the first set I got wouldn't fit. The pickup builder was amazed that Squier had used the not-as-wide 4 string neck casing for both 5 string positions. He told me that there wasn't really one standard and that once you add all of the copy manufacturer pickup dimensions there can be a lot of variance. I think you will have to find one you want to use, and measure it, and fit for that. This is all based on my limited experience, and of course could be very wrong!

I was told it was her favourite bar and she was always in there, but it in the 5 or 6 years we played there regularly before she died, I never saw her, other than the paintings. Someone told me it was the bar owner himself that painted them, but I don't know if that was true. Her dad Mitch was in there one night and asked to get up and sing with us. He wanted to do Sinatra type stuff and I think we did "That's Life" as we did that as part of our set anyway. He seemed a nice guy, but he didn't appear to have his daughter's talents, or not on that evening anyway.... I later realised it was all a setup, as there "just happened" to be a paparazzi in there and a photo of him singing with us made it into the Monday paper. It was only a tight shot of him and not us though! I used to sit sideways on a tall stool so that I could fit in the tiny stage area beside the drummer - I think my knee just made it into that shot!

Equally tenuous, I did sound for a gig with Noel Redding not long before he died. I walked up to him and patted him on the shoulder to get his attention and ask him to give me a line check. It felt like I nearly broke him - he seemed really frail. My memory is of him not saying much backstage and when he did, it wasn't very coherent. It was supposed to be a "super trio" with Noel, Eric Bell from Thin Lizzy and John Coughlan from Status Quo. It wasn't so super that evening,IMHO, but as you say, I still got to meet someone who was there with Jimi!

It sure would. Smallest venue ever!

In the late 00's, the band I was in turned up to a regular monthly gig on a Saturday night in Central London. As we got there, a van pulled up and another band started getting stuff out. The bar owner came running out an apologised profusely, saying that Amy Winehouse's friends had booked the whole bar for a birthday bash for her and that he forgot to cancel us. After a bit of frustrated grumbling, we found out the other band was her godchildren/nieces or something (I later found out they are quite famous themselves, but I can't remember the name - basically two girls and a boy with their mother on double bass - Daisy, someone and someone?). We were told that they would only do about 40 mins when Amy arrived, so could we hang around and do the rest of the night as we were there? We could see Mark Ronson milling around, as well as Adele (this was after her first album but before she got stratospherically famous), so we said yes of course! At the time we were doing a similar style of sound to a lot of Mark's Dap Kings stuff, so thought it would be good to impress him! The "stage" area wasn't big enough for both bands to be set up (they didn't have a full drum kit and some sort of weird huge organ) so we packed our kit in the cellar and waited.... Hours went by, while we all dutifully stood there waiting with the paparazzi outside the front door....no sign of Amy. We kept asking the party organiser if we could play to keep the people entertained, but he kept saying no - the other band needed to be ready to play the moment she walks in. At one point I remember Mark Ronson shouting - "let the musicians play!", which made me think - wow - someone famous called me a musician! (Not that he had heard me at that point!). At one point, someone shouted they needed a bass player - so I ran in, and found Mark had started messing around on their equipment. WHen I got there he was playing on their snare drum. Our guitarist was playing, along with the two young ladies from the group. Having no idea who they were, I picked up the double bass. It was very low height for me and had plasticy gut type strings on it. I couldn't see any kind of pickup or amp, so not sure if their mother actually played anything to be heard on the gigs, or whether it just hadn't been set up yet. So, I ended up jamming with Mark (him having a go on several instruments), or at least I thumped as hard as I could without breaking the strings (that would be rude!). I think we played about 3 or 4 songs, including a rendition of Bear Necessities, before the organiser ran in and shut us down again as Amy was "5 minutes away". We all put the instruments down and dutifully stood waiting.......but no Amy. It got to about 1am, and as the venue closed at 2am, we decided there would be no time left to play after them, so called it and left. We did get paid, but were mightily huffed that we didn't get to show what we could really do in front of Mark. We had been dreaming that he might have given us some backstage after party gigs or something! Just to rub salt in the wounds, I read a report in the Metro on the way to work that Amy had let her friends down and that Mark invited everyone in the bar back to his suite at the local posh hotel afterwards. We had obviously walked out in a huff before then! In summary, I got to jam with Mark Ronson who probably didn't hear anything I played (I couldn't so I don't see how he could have). I would like to think Adele also took note of my brilliance, but she did look rather inebriated that night so I doubt it!

First time I ever went to a blues jam was because the guitarist in our new band somehow thought they would let us get up as band together. That blatantly wasn't the case, but he wasn't one to give up easily. While we all sat there quietly wanting to kill him, he pushed a couple of us to put our names down to show willing. I got called up for a lady singer that appeared to be well known in this jam, and was being treated as if Tina Turner was about to take the stage. She was pretty good to be fair. The house bass player appeared miffed that I wasn't a guitarist, even though I had definitely put my name in the bass player's list. I told him I'd seen him playing guitar on a previous couple of tunes, so could we not swap? Reluctantly, he picked up his guitar. They called the drummer up, and a guy got up wearing sweatbands on his wrists, and doing rock hands with his brand new sticks under his arm. They all seemed to know each other and I figured they had called up the best players (apart from me as they didn't know me) to back their star singer. After a couple of seconds of the guitarist showing me the bass hook he wanted me to play, we were off. It was going ok! I thought - "Hey, I'm enjoying this!". I hit the change to the 4, at the right time with a run. They seemed to like that. Great......until - the drummer decided to do a drum fill..... There was a magical stretching of time where he thought about the fill, worked out what things he was going to hit, then went for it, played an extra 3 beats just to be safe - then went back to the same straight beat (everything but the fill was pretty much solid and in time). Each time he did this, there was this weird pause where we waited for him to finish, then all tried to kick in again. Any trying to be clever and play something under his fill ended in divine embarrassment for me, but oblivion for him and all the while him grinning like a cheshire cat. At the end of this first song, it became apparent that our jam slot was 2 songs, and we would all have to go through that with him again on another one. I suppose at the end of the day it kind of worked, our guitarist kept badgering the jam organiser and they did let us get up as a band, but right at the very end. In summary, I got to play 4 songs, missed my last train home and had to spend a fortune on a taxi.....

Oh man, I only just saw this. I once bought some pickups from Nick about 10+years ago - came across a a really top bloke and I always kept an eye out for him on here after that. I was always amazed at some of the stellar basses that passed through his hands. RIP Nick.

Considering all of his comments about "the bass player" when talking about the Police, I am surprised that Stuart Copeland ever agreed to play in a band with loads of them!

It's been over 20 years since I stopped working at Butlins, but in my day that would have been the house bass player's own supplied rig, and not necessarily available for free use by anyone. However, as they play almost every night of the week, they get to leave their stuff set up. I guess it depends on the player - when I was there we had two house drummers - one in each of the two main venues. One would leave his kick and toms out for all and sundry to use, the other would get VERY angry if anyone so much as breathed on his stuff.

Just before Christmas I played a gig with a highly intoxicated middle aged lady in the audience who spent the whole night trying to make it all about her, trampling through the "stage" area during breaks and tripping over/pulling up cables etc whilst trying to "have a shot" on our instruments ("Go on, giz a go....") We begrudgingly just about put up with her trying to sing and cuddle us all until, as we were packing away she started trying to lift my shirt. From what she was mumbling I think she wanted to blow raspberries on my bare stomach (I am the most portly member of the band, so there is plenty of surface area). I made it clear she had gone too far and she thankfully grumbled some sort of abuse and walked off. Imagine trying to explain that one to the Police if it had kicked off! I do wonder though, if I refused to play at a venue because one punter had been a bit annoying, would I have any venues to play in? I wouldn't be surprised if we went back there and the same lady, with a lot less demon drink in her would probably be fine? I am not excusing the behaviour of the OP's experience, just thinking out loud....

When I bought mine, (I think they were serial numbers 9 and 10) they were called Retro 210s, and were famed for having a more mellow/vintage/warm sound. I think Alex dropped the "Retro" in the name, so may have changed the characteristics of the sound since my early models, but I wonder if they may not be the right sound for metal? I know a couple of other players that tried mine and weren't so keen as they weren't flat enough response? As others have suggested, I would do a "try before you buy" or buy second hand cheap if you're not sure.