SubsonicSimpleton

Is your left hand still functioning? If you take a positive view and embrace an attitude along the lines of 'what cool stuff can I come up with using only my left hand' you might even find yourself enjoying the challenge.

Bernard Edwards is another possibility - the production work he did with Nile Rogers had a major impact on the industry beyond his playing.

Look at your allen keys - are they metric or imperial? According to a quick bit of googlefu, MIM strats take a 3/16" allen key, you might need to temporarily loosen/remove the string retainer behind the floyd locking nut to allow proper access to the trussrod - no need to buy an expensive fender tool IMHO.

Might be worth a look at this http://personalpages.tds.net/~fdeck/bass/smallbox.pdf

I find pizzing standing up the bass feels very stable, but arco involving any shifting is much more difficult without the right hand point of contact. Ikea sell folding stools in two heights (and different colours IIRC) http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/10199217/ If you know what height of stool you need to have good posture, they could be adjusted incrementally smaller with judicious trimming of the legs, the flat folding might be a big plus for lugging to gigs/rehearsals, but the seat might need the addition of a gel pad for comfort.

When people change the bridge do they refit the old strings? Could simply changing the strings be responsible for the perceived improvements of fitting aftermarket parts, or at least prevent anyone from making an accurate before/after comparison?

Sounds like the early Butler sigs might have had a different spec to the regular V4s, and maybe as a cost cutting exercise the current ones are being machined to the same pattern as the V4s. Manufacturers change the specs on their products quite readily if they can save on the unit production cost, and most of the time they don't publicise it unless they can use it for marketing a new version of a current product - they never make a song and dance about changes that might be viewed as downgrades(or blatant profiteering) to a previously well reputed product.

One option for guitar/bass building is to buy a secondhand bolt-on instrument with a servicable neck, and then scratch build a new body reusing the neck and hardware from the donor bass. Slightly more involved and interesting as a process than assembling an instrument from a kit where everything is pre-routed, but has the advantage that you have total control over the neck pocket fit, relationship of neck/bridge/strap buttons and can choose any pickup/control/scratchplate scheme that interests you if you want to experiment.

You could start here if you want an online info source http://www.studybass.com/study-guide/ There are lots of music study resources online nowadays, and they often explain the same thing in different ways, so you might find that some cross referencing can be helpful, but as CamdenRob says being able to talk to someone in person can be very helpful.

I don't think anyone is hating - if you like the sound of the celestion TF speakers in the Matamp cab that's great, but if you put the same speaker drivers into a cab with a different internal volume and porting arrangment then they won't sound the same as they did in the matamp cab you liked. Regardless of what you want to acheive sonically, the laws of physics affect all speaker cabs in the same way - it might be a bit of a shock to the system to unveil your design and receive criticism, but considering how far you are downtuning, surely the low frequency response of the cab is important?

Does this count? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F9DxYhqmKw

My 2p is that accepting the limitations of one main instrument and maximising the potential of your muscle memory is more beneficial, on the basis that swapping instruments usually means having to think about what I'm doing to a certain extent rather than it being second nature. I'm sure it is possible to get a high level of familiarity with multiple instruments, but practice time is too valuable and life too short to spend it relearning how to do stuff I can already do when my time would be better spent working on things I need to improve or can't do yet.

If you don't know anyone who can come look at the bass, you could arrange to take it to a luthier to get an assessment of it's state of health (and how much any setup work to get the bass in tip-top playability would cost) before buying it.

Nothing wrong with being self taught, and having the curiosity and motivation to push your own boundaries is a good thing BUT it can be difficult to be objective about what will benefit your playing and general musicianship most effectively. If I could jump in a time machine and travel back in time to when I started playing I would have one main piece of advice to give myself and that would be - get a good teacher who can look at your playing/musicianship objectively and guide you towards what you need to learn to improve, and embrace the challenge when this takes you outside your comfort zone. In hindsight I'm absolutely certain that I wasted hundreds(maybe even thousands) of hours of valuable practice time over the years doing things that were giving neglegible benefit, and with the guidance of a good teacher I could have used that time far more constructively and achieved much more if I had directed my efforts differently.

Take a look at this http://roydanstyles.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/tuning-peg-repair-stagg-edb-electric.html

Positive mental attitude is really important when facing health challenges, overdoing it too soon because you don't want to let people down could be totally counterproductive. Invasive abdominal surgery can really mess up your core support, so please don't be tempted to pump yourself full of pain killers and play standing up, or with your bass on a strap - play sitting down on a chair with the weight of your bass supported on your lap and don't try to be a hero. If you can't manage to play sitting down like this without altering your painkiller dosage, you shouldn't be doing the gig - good health is priceless, and post op complications for abdominal surgeries can be very serious, so FFS talk to your doctor/surgeon and accept their advice, in the worst case a couple of cancelled gigs won't damage anyones health.

Might be worth reviewing the height that you wear your bass at - if your axe is positioned badly for your body mechanics you will be making life very difficult for yourself and increasing the possibility of serious playing injuries. Have a lesson with a good bass teacher who can go over your technique with you and advise you on how to maximise your efficiency and minimise the risk of injury. It is fairly common advice to set the strap so the bass sits at the same height that it sits if you play it resting on your leg sitting down, but the position that the instrument sits in when you are sitting down isn't necessarily going to be the healthiest or most efficient position for all players, and will also vary with the design of the bass.

Just to play devils advocate here, maybe people simply are not interested in much of what is being advertised in the sell anything section - most of this (iPods, iPhones, Laptops, Macs, PCs, Software) becomes obsolete very quickly in a way that items like instruments(and their components), amps/cabs etc don't. Maybe the people that would buy a secondhand (iPod, iPhone, Laptop, Mac, PC) already have a huge choice in places that they can procure these items (CEX, cash converters etc) without the risk of postal accidents and with the benefit of having some comeback as opposed to none from a private sale over the internet. Surely it would make more sense to have a separate subsection for the hi-fi/tech items, so that they can be easily found/browsed by interested parties without the need to spam another forum section with them - having to wade through lots of ads for things you don't want is bad from both buyers and sellers perspective IMHO.

If you want to improve your overall musicianship, then piano is the best choice (serious musical education institutions will make you take it as compulsory second study if it isn't your first). Nothing wrong with picking up the guitar(anything that broadens your musical knowledge and creative options is always beneficial), but it is seriously restricted both in terms of range and the practical options for voicing chords and playing bass/melody lines simultaneously. The practical advantages of how easy it is to play/write music pretty much anywhere with a simple acoustic guitar is the main selling point for going this route IMHO.

Maybe head down to local jam/open mic nights and talk to people in person rather than advertising - you should be able to get a good sense of what they are like and also see what sort of level their playing is at. If they can be bothered to go to a jam night then they have an active interest in actually making music rather than just facebook/talking about it to seem cool.

Maybe these amp/speaker cabs would be a better concept as a high $$ aquarium/terrarium for millionaire rockstars rather than attempting to make them function adequately as musical equipment - you might get away with making a guitar cab from perspex due to the frequency range guitar cabs operate in(and the general sh*tty standards of guitar cabs since forever), but making a functional bass cab is a whole different ballgame.

I used to use a peavey 50/50 classic when I was playing skinny string - 2u but not particularly lightweight pic of the interior here http://en.audiofanzine.com/guitar-power-amplifier/peavey/classic-series-classic-50-50/medias/pictures/a.play,m.468770.html You could probably convert the innards of any traditional head to rackmount format, but assuming you want the end result to be roadworthy I don't think you would save much(if any) meaningful amount of weight in the process of remounting everything into a 19" rackmount chassis, and the smallest dimension of the transformers is always going to dictate the height. I've always felt that the rectifier and power transformer are important to how valve amps deal with the large transients at the start of a note(and plenty of argumentation about solid state vs valve rectification in guitar amp circles), so using a switched mode power supply might negate a certain amount of what makes playing through a valve amp enjoyable in the first place.

[quote name='cloudburst' timestamp='1423268374' post='2683101'] All, I've been part of a number of high-value transactions on BC which have worked well due to trust on both sides. In two of these cases I've been sent expensive basses PRIOR (yes prior!) to my sending funds....because the seller wanted me to be happy with the instrument. The sellers were lapolpora and camdenrob in these cases. Thing is - these transactions were performed remotely. NOW.... I'm trying to buy a keyboard (valued at £1650) from a well established BC'er (who shall definitely from my point of view remain nameless). And it would be a local face to face sale. I'm offering to travel to view this keyboard and have agreed to perform a Faster Payment using internet banking to the seller's bank account whilst he watches. I would only leave with the keyboard once the seller can see the money has arrived in his bank account. I've also offered up my flawless BC feedback. However, this is not good enough for the seller, who insists on cash. Taking £1650 out of a bank at the weekend is inconvenient and I feel also that it's less reliable for the seller as any notes I give him could easily be fake. I also feel that the seller is disrespecting my good name which is comprehensively evidenced in BC feedback. My strong gut inclination is to pay an extra £400 and buy the said keyboard from the local (and more convenient) retailer who isn't questioning my integrity. What would you do? CB [/quote] No real point trying to claim the moral high ground if you give enough information to identify the seller and item in question quite easily without naming names - there are plenty of valid reasons to ask for a cash sale, and not everyone is willing to be trusting on high value transactions regardless of who they are dealing with (which is quite understandable IMHO).

Worth taking a look at amazon retailer violins4you as they seem to carry the most comprehensive stock of sub £300 bows in the UK. http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dmi&field-keywords=Violins4you+double+bass+bows I just bought one of their carbon fibre french bows, but I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted so I arranged with the proprietor via email to get several bows on short term approval - all the stock is in the UK, so taking delivery and returning was very quick, and no nasty suprises with customs charges or exchange rates. I was impressed with the customer service, and the quality of all the bows I tried was good, so I picked on the basis of what felt most comfortable. Happy to pass on the email address of the proprietor via PM.

[quote name='Muppet' timestamp='1422098410' post='2668640'] I don't get it. [url="http://ashdownmusic.com/products/1/Bass-Amplification/21/BSOCIAL/131/BSOCIAL75W/"]http://ashdownmusic....131/BSOCIAL75W/[/url] Am I missing something here? What makes this worth selling at £600? That's a lot of money for a boombox.... [/quote] Just imagine how expensive it would be if it was sporting an apple logo