NancyJohnson

My eyes! Jeebus.

I'm weirdly interested in this. Does anyone know whether the high and low pass filters work as well as a crossover?

As the Bass Centre operate as the UK/European distributor for Brian May guitars, when I was picking up my EUB, I asked Barry how often he has contact with Brian May and he replied, 'Oh, just this morning. There were a few signed guitars in open cases going out to collectors. (BM lives in Windlesham, barely five minutes drive from the Bass Centre location.) Red Special guitars aside, they also distribute the Arielle; these are the brightly coloured Firebird-ish models with the same guts as the BM model.

Shiny machines aside, I'm just waiting on some Crimson guitar finishing polish and I'll bolt it back together. I'm 100% on the John East unit, so will order this (chrome knobbage) after Christmas. Will need to wait for a replacement J-pickup. All good.

Bejeebus. I just used it on the machines. I'm assuming there's a chemical reaction going on (because the paper towel was black), but they came up super shiny. Kudos to you!

From a home studio perspective, I'll always attempt to capture two audio streams, one clean, one with what I desire the bass to sound like. Easy enough to achieve, I've got a couple of Tech21 DI stomps (dUg/Ged) and splitters; just assign the output feeds to different tracks, easy. I also loop takes...I find that I'm not in the pocket until I've run the loop several times. Also, sometimes it's good to keep some of the happy mistakes we make and use these. If you want to hear some weirdness, have a listen to 'Light 'em All Up' by Lutz. It's on Spotify. The producer was just shouting, 'Play some strange sh*t!'. Which is what I did.

On the subject of cheap basses, there's a well documented thread within these hallowed pages about the Gumtree job-lot I picked up a few years back; two guitars, a bass and a little practice amp for £50.00. The bass is an Aria Pro-II Primary Bass, essentially a '78 Japanese Precision on bass copy and I still own it. It's undeniably undergone a ton of work since I got it, but the strong thing here is that the body, neck (well, after some fettling) and the machines (replacement Schallers) were all sound, which just gave me a platform for upgrading bridge and electrics. There are bargains out there to be had. I think I just got lucky.

I'm listening to some Floridian pop/punk; band called Cider. (I know terrible name.)

I watched about half of it and gave up. Wife endured the whole thing. I just found it horribly slow. After four hours of viewing, I feel everything they needed to get over could have been done in half the time. Just considering the opening hour or two, it's no wonder that the Twickenham sessions were so unproductive; they seem to have been surrounded by so many people, so many cigar-smoking non-musical people, with differing agendas that weren't conducive to creating music. Why was it necessary for Harrison to have Hare-Krishnas in there? (At this point, my wife asked me what it would have been like if this had happened in bands I'd been in.) It's clear Lennon and Ono were besotted with each other, but realistically the key moment for me was when McCartney made the 'When people watch this in 50 years...' comment along with the quote alluding to lack of managerial direction (it was something about him referring to leaving the girls at home). Nah.

I have an old Trabant. I'm thinking of putting a new engine in it, maybe some fuel injected thing. New wheels. I have interior from a BMW that'll fit. Might reshape the roof as it doesn't look like a Porsche. Not happy with the brown colour either, so I'll paint it as well. Might put a Ferrari decal on it, too. Money well spent.

I'm really not a fan of doing covers, but we are pushing some content up to streaming services shortly. We've recorded 'That's When I Reach For My Revolver' (Mission of Burma) and are considering 'Game of Pricks,' (Guided By Voices).

I'm listening to the Charlie Sexton Sextet. I've been a huge fan of Charlie since the first album (Pictures For Pleasure), but I love the Sextet album. 5/5.

I have East units in my Lulls and the Hamer Cruisebass and they always seem to be tight! I'm sure it'll be ok. 😃 Unlikely to be until next year.

I'm thinking about going with an East Uni-Pre 5 in this. This will give me a pair of stacked tone controls (active bass/treble and mid/sweep), plus separate volume/blend knobs and a passive tone control knob (which will be redundant tbh but will fill one of the holes). I've ordered some Crimson guitar polish, which should shine things up a bit, then I'm done with the finish. I'm wondering how best to clean up the machine head leafs. Regular polish not shining them up.

Happy with that. I was thinking about putting a John East unit in this, but my wife would pull my nut sack over my head if I spent 200 British phands on one at this juncture. I'm not a big fan of passive tone controls (I tend to play with everything open and for a while used a P-bass with the pickup just wired through a volume control into the jack output).

Irrespective of who sued who or the plaintiffs previous (racist) history, allegedly the defendant did communicate with the plaintiffs lawyer saying, 'You can sue me if you want.'. (Or whatever the Germanic expression is for this.) All said and done this is more a case about making an example of the seller and sending out a warning to other sellers of bootlegged material, much like the people fined $$$ for downloading from Napster 20 years ago. In addition to this, loads of people are weighing in that Clapton stole everything he knows from black music/delta blues, so that makes him, by association, a very bad man. Honestly, we really need to let this argument drop, it's getting very tiring. (Years ago, some earnest teen musician told me everything I was playing had it's roots in black music. Interesting concept considering I was playing three chord punk stuff and my only exposure to black music was probably The Stylistics and The Three Degrees on TOTP.)

Brief pre-Chrimbo update. It's not bolted together or anything, but this is where I'm at It's had several coats of spray clear coat, there's been an odd reaction in a couple of spots; just above the neck pickup the clear has just gone pitted, no idea why. I need to work out a cheapish way of polishing/buffing it up a bit. Right now, while I'm not exactly losing the will to live with it, I just want to get it put back together, but I'm a patient man. I honestly feel I can live with it as is. Concerning electrics, dunno. For the moment I'm going with Warman pickups - the J-unit I got from Josi was DOA, so he's sorting that. For now, pickups>toggle switch>volume control> output. That'll just get it working.

I've known Josi for years...top bloke. If you're looking for great budget pickups, Warman are brilliant.

I wrote a Christmas song a few years ago. Belter. Honestly. https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/cevwo

Machine heads don't line up properly.

The scratch plate doesn't look a good fit either...too much space between it and the body chamfer.

I had a 78/79 Precision and that decal is virtually identical. If is was just a Standard Precision from 1997 the Fender logo should be silver with a black surround, serial number under it and the words Precision Bass would much smaller. The string tree is in the wrong place, too (should be closer to the A-machine head). Maybe it's my screen but the finish on that looks too 'rich' for a Fender. Hell, what do I know. I think as time goes on, it's just going to become harder and harder to identify what's what. All these reissues, Squiers with Fender decals, Custom Shop decals, general swappage of hardware, custom builds with Fender decals, people putting different necks on. Too many people with access to sandpaper. There's probably thousands of people playing what they believe are vintage Fenders/Gibsons which came off a Chinese production line a couple of years ago.

I put the PJ set in my Hamer. I was a bit underwhelmed with the pots, so pulled the trigger on a John East Uni-Pre3. Belter.

Chris. You're missing my point. While you personally may feel the desire to make your gear create a variety of different sounds, there's an awful lot of people that know how they want to sound and have little interest in making a bass sound different. My signature tone (if I can call it that), is broadly a bit if Ged, a bit if dUg, a bit if Jean-Jacques. Suits what I do. I rarely stray from that and it's not a millstone.