Painy

The plate on the P is actually a dark brown tort.

You can't groove with a pick!

Some good points there. The lower frequencies of a bass don't interact so well as those on a guitar so individual sadles would certainly seem to make more sense. If that's the case then a non proprietary bridge might be an easier option to also allow for adjustment. If it's a bridge with through body stringing then it would also still maintain the direct transference of vibrations to the body that these wooden guitar bridges are looking to achieve. The neck profile is surprisingly comfortable on these guitars but I'm of a similar mind that it's possibly not as well suited for bass. I do personally like a fairly shallow front to back profile but I'm actually thinking an asymmetric profile could be quite nice.

Fair point. How about including both a piezo and a Q-tuner with the option to switch (or possibly even blend) between the 2?

The pickup he uses as has an incredibly acoustic-like sound (the clean sound on his guitars is genuinely breathtaking) and because it has a hugely wide frequency range it's suitable for both guitar and bass but without the feedback issues that you can often get with piezo type pickups. Rob Allen basses are definitely stunning instruments though and certainly worth looking at for some inspiration!

Yeah, it's basically a string retainer that holds the strings over the zero-fret but apparently there was an awful lot of work that went into getting the perfect break-angle that gets the minimum amount of pressure possible to avoid wearing the fret but still enough contact to work.

A luthier friend of mine has asked me to collaborate with him to design a bass but based on the styling and design principles of his existing guitars. His builds exclusively use UK grown woods and aim to be as organic as possible both in construction and tone so, for example, the pickup is direct wired to the output and everything (bar the frets, electronics, tuners and straplocks) is handmade by him. I'd appreciate your thoughts on how these guitars might translate into bass form (or indeed any suggestions as to what might need to be changed to make it work). Link to the photo gallery on his website here:- https://www.halflightguitars.com/ Thanks.

And a video - although I've not had a chance to watch it myself as I'm at work right now.

Looks very much like it I'd say, yes.

Just seen this on Facebook!

It's my always on drive and it's a really important part of my sound. I use it fairy subtly really but it adds a nice growl and really livens up the harmonics.

Yeah it's nice to play and plenty of tones available from the coil-taps. I did have to shim the neck on mine though to get the action down as even with the g string saddle bottomed out it still wasn't low enough for me (although I do use an extremely low action).

Bargain!

Tech21 Programmable Bass Driver DI. Not as cheap an option as the Behringer but allows you to save an EQ setting (and volume level if there's any difference in volume between the basses) for each instrument. The only thing I'd say is that both this and the BDI21 have very much their own particular sound (they're very similar as the BDI21 is a very good budget copy of the standard Tech21 Bass Driver DI) so although it would allow you to set up 2 different tones, they may not actually be the tones that you're looking for. Plenty of demo's on YouTube to o give you an idea what they sound like though.

As much as I'm a fan of John Deacon (and Queen in general) there's something about a plain white scratchplate that always makes me think a guitar looks kinda cheap - like it's just been cut out of an old ice-cream tub.

The Ric wouldn't happen to be in mapleglo would it?

Well I managed to intercept the delivery driver before he could make his getaway. 🙂 NBD thread here:

I've anyways thought of the Holy Trinity of bass as being Fender Precision, Fender Jazz and Musicman Stingray (Honorable mention to Saint Gibson of Thunderbird). Today's new arrival has completed what I'm now thinking of as my UNholy Trinity. Unholy? Well firstly - as you might notice - they're all five strings. Secondly because the Precision is a (much modified) Squier rather than an actual Fender, the Jazz is a real (albeit Chinese made) Fender but has coil tappable Humbuckers rather than the traditional single coils and now the newest addition is a Sterling by Musicman Ray CA25. Anyway, not had much time with it yet other than to give it a good set-up with a nice low action and to temporarily stick a bit of black adhesive vinyl over the (in my opinion) cheap looking white scratchplate but so far it's looking good. Sounds like a Stingray. Plays nicely. Looks pretty good to me. Now looking forward to giving it a run out at Saturday night's gig. Also, any help choosing between these three scratchplate materials I've narrowed it down to to permanently replace the white plate with would be appreciated. 🙂

That's it then. I'm going to spend my whole day tomorrow avoiding anything remotely likely to cause any kind of physical injury! I think I'd have been an absolute mental and emotional wreck by the second day if I'd been in that situation.

Fortunately I'm on holiday this week and will be at home anyway. My wife would have signed for it anyway if I wasn't home but that would have run the risk of her seeing the total value on the invoice before I got a chance to make it vanish. 🤪 😄😄😄

Blimey! That's better travelled than I am!