NancyJohnson

New (Jazz bass) neck incoming...looking for advice on machine heads. Ideally, I'd like to put a set of something that apes the long-stem Kluson style/design; I just like the visual aesthetic of these. Anyone know who makes something similar?

Well. I've pulled the trigger on a Jazz bass style neck from a Chinese seller, complete with a '70s TV logo. Maple, rosewood, block inlays. We'll see how good it is in a few weeks. If it's crap, then it's only £80 down the sh*tter.

I bought two Thunderbirds through Ishibashi without any issue.

Genius. I don't know whether Wago make a piece that will handle three individual signals; this would even obviate the necessity of breaking out the screwdriver. Simply hot glue the connector on the bottom of the pot. Something like this:

When I was putting a John East unit into one of mine I used these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06WGM9W7S/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The physical connection from pickup to the circuit was horrific to tighten up and it was frankly simpler to wire these into the circuit before the pots were secured to the body of the instrument. From the pickup end, I just ensured the wires were the right way round, soldered on the other side of the connector and put some heat shrink round the joint. Job done.

There's one recording that turned up that was lump-in-the-throat stuff. A guy I was in a punk band with in 1978/79 died tragically young. It was quite moving just hearing him doing ad-lib riffing vocally over the band, going 'Just swallow that rhythm maaaan, you'd better watch out 'cause this is The Crime, we're out to kill you, we are committed to you and you just remember this, we are the rebels of rock and roll and we are punk rockerrrrrrs!' Bless him.

Thank you. There's a ton of these from this project, maybe 20 complete and another 10 part-demoed. Inevitably, [it] experienced a falling out...a keyboard player arrived out of the blue; the guy was just awful, terrible player and a genuinely horrible personality. There were a few heated emails and the guy I'd been working with for a year and a half just replied with one that read, 'OK, I quit,' and that was it. We never spoke again!

Well, this has been a fairly interesting journey. Hours of frankly terrible church hall recordings going back to when I was about 13, through to some fairly decent studio reels. Runs from punky originals, through metally stuff, the white soul boy years and then stops with a few tapes of stuff I recorded in a local studio as audition tapes for band/label prospecting. I also unearthed a pair of three-track demos I did with a band when I was 18 or 19, the first was self-financed (£65! I remember this distinctly) and the second funded by Polydor (this is another story). Dates cut off late 90s. Interesting. Despite my punky/alternative roots, re-listening to the WSB stuff was the most interesting. I was writing with a bloke up in Ealing; I'd decamp there for an entire Saturday, every Saturday for about 18 months, and we'd just immerse ourselves and write. His wife would do a nice lunch, we'd work through the afternoon and I'd get home around 6.00pm. Programmed drums. From memory, I was using a Warwick Streamer 5LX...my first foray into a 5-string. Sadly it was never going to be a live thing, purely writing and recording (I had a 50% share in a 24 track studio, so it was a good vehicle for that). I'm very pleased to hear these again. For now, the tapes go back in the box. I'll probably never listen to them again! If you're interested: https://on.soundcloud.com/u5PWooGdoLMkJ1426

Everything is better with lube*. *Apparently.

I don't have a bass handy, but I considered adding a second nut/washer to the tuner to stabilise the shift.

I'm latching onto the zinc alloy element of your post. You know that there's probably a few people here that will now be investigating zinc alloy for its tonal/sustain properties over steel/aluminium/lard. What have you started? I hope you're happy. 😂

The Schaller (by virtue of it's 3D moniker), allows a sideways adjustment via a threaded roller saddle, which is very clever 40+ year old tech. These units (albeit Hamer stamped) on both my Hamer basses.

Try a Schaller 3D-4 as a viable alternative.

I put a Hipshot Kickass on an old Aria P-Bass I have. I installed because the original bridge was incomplete when I bought it and Bass Direct were having a sale. If the old bridge had been complete I wouldn't have bothered. It's fit for purpose, intonates and gives me the option to adjust string height. That's all I need, really.

I'm actually scared to post anything detrimental about addition/replacement of original parts with 3rd party pickups and bridges.

I've got D-tuners on three or four basses. They do what they do; give you an Eb and a D option. Like anything, the mechanism needs the odd tweak...I find the little adjustment screw/bolt moves with use which throws out the tuning. They're not rubbish per se, they can be a pain.

Oh, god, here we go. Honestly, just put anything in there. You don't need to spend nearly £400 on pickups, even if they were hand wound by virgins in the mountains of Tibet and potted in wax from bees that produce manuka honey. Buy some Warmans. £20. Tonally you won't hear any difference. You'll want to hear difference, you'll believe you hear a difference, but there won't be any difference.

I blame Brexit. 😏

I've just unearthed a veritable treasure trove of old recordings from 1978 through to the mid-90s. I thought these were all long gone to landfill, but my mother-in-law says, 'I've found a box of cassettes in the garage,' so I did a trip out to pick them up. Man alive. I'm just transferring the first one to the PC. In the early 90s we were rehearsing in our (rather well-heeled) guitarist's basement, a double garage conversion that was under the main lounge of his house. We had a ton of gear...I had two Hamer basses and a huge Laney stack, guitarist came back from a US holiday with three Jacksons (a purple Kelly, two Strat things in custom paint) and he was running a superb Fender Twin Reverb. Thinking back, I can recall he'd bought a Fostex F-77, a little mixer (for the drums) and a bunch of decent microphones, so we tended to capture fairly clean recordings whenever we rehearsed. Listening back, it's a home counties cross between Motley Crue, Anthrax and U2. I'm about halfway through the first cassette (dated May 1991), by which time we seem to have employed the services of a singer who is pretty much channeling Mike Patton (I wonder where he is now). It sounds bonkers. So f*cking fast. There goes my weekend.

I remember being in one of the bigger guitar shops in New York and the new Gibson Thunderbird had come out (this was the one below with the different pickups and the switches). I was using a variety of other 'birds at the time (see elsewhere). Plugging in, you couldn't really hear anything different going on. I mean, if anything was actually happening tonally, it was on such an infinitesimally small tonal swing that you couldn't really identify any difference.

I think these are lovely. People rave about that vintage tone from these old Musicmaster basses. Have a guess what's under the pickup cover on most of these. Ta daa!

You know it. Bwahaha!

For some time, I've advocated that we shouldn't be so obsessed with the swapping out of pickups/hardware; sure if something is broken, too difficult to repair or non-functioning, then fine, pull it out and replace. I could stick any pickups in any bass and so long as they fit the rout and I told you they were wax potted Vintage '62s (or some other nonsense) you be happy as a pig in sh*t and off you'd toddle, none the wiser. I just wish more people would realise this. There's also zero correlation between price and performance. A Timex watch will tell the time as well as a Patek Philippe. Seriously.

I had a bluefaced UK built ABM head, I think it was the 300 (I was in a bit of a bind and Ashdown sorted me out). The head was quite bass heavy/boomy; I was running it through Hartke Hydrive cabs which had fairly bright tonal characteristics. While the power was there it was very hard to get any overdrive out of it, I mean yes, there was some kind of drive circuitry on it, but it was more of a crackle/interference than dirt.

Yup, this, 100%. I used to use a mini-jack adapter.