Happy Jack

Try swopping out the Telefunken valves for some higher-gain models. A German engineer in a white lab-coat looking over your shoulder might not approve, but it's easy enough to get the sound you're after with a bit of experimentation.

I had several vintage Dynacord valve amps some years ago, all very Germanic ... bullet proof and built like tanks, but also alles ist richtig = we don't do distortion. These were some of the cleanest valve amps I've ever played a bass through, but in truth they didn't sound as 'rock' as my old Selmer and WEM amps.

I mined that blog for information on so many occasions ...

That really does take things to a new level. The pickup arrangement is simply beyond belief.

Don't go and see @TheRev without taking a nice bottle of cider. Poor lad hardly ever gets to drink any ...

On the height issue, I'm just short of 5'11" and always played my DB with the end-pin out about 6" (bringing the nut in line with my eyebrows) until I joined a rockabilly band. Now I keep the end-pin all the way in and the bass is little more than resting on the ground. It took surprisingly little adjustment in my playing position to get used to it, and the DB is actually far more stable with the centre of gravity lowered in that way.

Good review, and I agree with most of what he says, but I was quite surprised by his description of the pull-up Tone knob function. He seems to think that this is to 'thin out' the bass tone and pick up more highs, which I suppose is one way of describing it, whereas John Hall actually named it to me as 'the vintage knob' and he was quite right - pulling it up instantly restored the classic vintage Ricky 'clank' which had been missing without it. There are situations where the Ricky 'clank' works really well, but there are many more situations where (IMHO) it doesn't. I play mainly T-birds and Precisions, so that gives a flavour of how I like my bass to sound. The thing I liked so much about the new 5 is that it can sound like a vintage Rick AND it can sound far more mellow. On the string spacing thing, though mainly a fingerstyle player myself I would certainly have to play more with a pick if I got the chance to own one of these - unlikely to be an issue any time soon, since Rickenbacker seem to be keeping supply ridiculously low, perhaps to add to the mystique of the bass. The biggest problem with this review was his complete lack of a silly hat.

Incidentally, I've had two of these and both of them had really weak original pickups and dodgy pots. I sold the first one (in maroon red) because of that - it looked great and the sliding pickup system is astonishingly effective, but the tone was so weedy that I couldn't imagine gigging it. A few years later I stumbled across, of all things, a single Dark Star pickup. I bought it on spec, and then went looking for another The Rail. I found one (in black) and then had Andy Gibson in Denmark Street do a real number on it. He loves working on those things because Dave Swift is an admirer of them too (Andy works on all Dave's basses AFAIK). We ditched the original pickup, pots and wiring, he prepped a piece of ebony to add on to the sliding base so that it was 'squarer', and then mounted the Dark Star on the newly-enlarged slidey bit and did a complete re-wire. The bass now sounds absolutely awesome and lives right here alongside me in my tiny study on the landing ... it's my go-to 4-string bass when I'm learning or practising. On the other side is my go-to 5-string bass and that's a Status Streamline. Judge a bass by the company it keeps ...

After all the mods & upgrades I've had done, you could be a long time a-waiting ...

Where? Where?

How many times does this subject have to come up before people finally cotton on? ALL of these barking mad listings are, essentially, (virtually) free advertising and clickbait. He's not crazy, or if he is then he's crazy like a fox. It costs him peanuts to list these things at stupid prices, nobody buys them so he doesn't have to pay any commission to eBay, and then people like us spray the listing across the Internet and advertise all the other, sensible, reasonably-priced stuff that he sells. It's a very canny business model, and I don't understand why so many Basschatters struggle with it.

Silvie and I put a helluva lot of work into getting gigs. We plan it like a military campaign ... there's a strategy (what sort of gigs to aim for, and in what geographical region), there's tactics (who says what when we get into the venue, and which marketing materials to show), and there's logistics (make each raid as efficient as possible, plan a route that gets us to the right places as quickly as possible and at the smallest expense). I play in two bands, each of which does about 30 gigs a year, and every single one of those gigs is brought in by us. Despite endless talk about their efforts, no other band member in either band brings in anything at all. Trouble is, that's largely our fault ... the more you do for people, the more they'll let you do. We've found most agents to be an incompetent waste of time, and most websites to be an expensive waste of time. There's no real substitute for actually going to the venue and talking to the people in charge, and if you bring in the gigs by schmoozing those people then they become your contacts and will be there to talk to when you need them. Being persistent, patient and polite also helps ... there are pubs that only gave us gigs on our third or even fourth visit. The one guaranteed fail is to think of landlords as being lying scum who are out to rip you off. We've met one or two who would match that description, but dozens and dozens who are friendly, hard-working people with very little time and a lot of pressure to deal with. By and large, we find they respond really well to bands who are honest and friendly with them.

Not sure if this link will work: I think it likely that quite a few of these negative comments could have been chucked at my old Crinson. I do assure you, they would have been desperately misplaced and inaccurate!

Well, the headstock, the scratchplate, the pickups, the tuners, etc.

This is really rather tasty, reminds me of my old Crinson. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Super-Rare-Blackpoole-Relic-51-57-Precision-Bass-Killer-Spec/401851050701?hash=item5d90306acd:g:gF0AAOSwQKZdWCIu The given explanation ("Blackpoole Guitars were renowned builders of relic instruments. This bass dates to around 2008 to 2010 when the company was disbanded. It was the classic case of victims of their own success. Demand was so high they couldn’t meet it.") contains at least some weapons-grade bull stinky poo so I'm not convinced about the rest of it ...

They play a lot of shuffles?

You're all missing the obvious. You won't need any spares, because you look after your kit and you check it before every gig. What you need to know is which spares and tools will be needed by the rest of the band ...

That's no use to you, mate. Trust me on this. The second your guitarist sees that, he'll start nicking one side to hang his guitar. Don't ask me how I know. I now use a triple Hercules, even though I only ever take two basses to a gig ...

And for those of of a certain age (and purely for comparison):

Another reason to play flats ...

I really wish you'd bring back your original avatar (said the man living in a glass house).

I would need to stop and think pretty seriously if I wanted to count all the bands I have been a member of / played with / depped for over the last 10 years. The number is certainly in double figures, it's just a matter of how far in. Bands come and go for all sorts of reasons but IME aversion to diary clashes is one of the least frequent of those reasons. I don't get involved with bands who say up front that they want a bassist who is committed/dedicated solely to their band, so the problem only arises with bands who change their minds later. Dilution can be an issue ... but it can also be a strength and an opportunity. I have frequently drawn individual band members from one band into another band I'm playing with; sometimes they're still playing with that second band long after I've left it! Speaking very broadly, it's probably best to avoid generalisations.

+1

I rather like "Double Bdonkey", it has a nice ring to it. Might start calling it that when in discussion with bandmates ...