doc40hz

Nooooo, it's gone!

This is a seriously good bass, but I’m after a Spector Euro LX5 or LT5. 
 

A few battle scars, but nothing serious. Tuners have been replaced with Schallers and the bridge has been changed to an omega.

Delano pickups. Low action, buzz free.

Its a heavy beast though!

MEC pickups and a 2 band EQ. Plays and sounds great. Price includes UK delivery.

Lovely wood, plays great! Wilkinson pickups and hardware.  Can courier. Would trade for an electric guitar of sorts (160 quids worth I guess) 

VINTAGE V950 5 STRING FEATURES:

• Body: Bubinga
• Neck: Maple / Bolt On
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Scale: 34"/864mm
• Frets: 24
• Neck Inlays: Pearloid Dot
• Tuners: Wilkinson� WJB150
• Bridge: Adjustable /Raised Tail
• Pickups: Wilkinson� Split Coil x 1/ JZ x 1 (M)WPBE500 (B)WPBE900
• Hardware: Black
• Controls: 1 x Volume/ 1 x Balance/ Active EQ/ Bass/ Treble

12 hours ago, RobF said:

Dry fingerboards are not only found on HB basses!

recently bought a Gibson SG bass, lovely apart from the inside of the case being full of fretboard dust, fretboard almost pink from dryness. 

Quite. Gibson are not currently renowned for their quality control!

9 hours ago, hooky_lowdown said:

Think the OP has the action far too low.

9 hours ago, hooky_lowdown said:

Think the OP has the action far too low.

The bass was not playable with a moderate/highish action. I checked all the frets with a rocker and it was like a roller coaster. It's a cheap bass, good ones are good but the bad ones are bad. I am convinced that cheap instruments when set up and fret levelled play as good as expensive ones This one now does. But out the box, it was not good! 

11 hours ago, stewblack said:

OP must have been very unlucky. Never had a problem with any of the HB I've bought. Could literally take them out of the box and gig them. 

Indeed. Just unlucky. I've had a Spector Euro that needed a fret dress out the box!

I have to say, this bass was terrible out the box. The fingerboard was the driest I have ever seen and the frets needed dressed as there was ridiculous buzzing everywhere. Got it playing very nicely now. The pickups are very "meh". Feels nice to play though. 

On 31/01/2020 at 17:18, 4000 said:

I seem to be in the minority here who really like Kingy’s voice.😁 Either way, I thought that was great; the band seem as tight as, and Im a big early Level 42 fan (after the excellent World Machine I kind of moved on). Excellent stuff. 
 

 

I really like MKs voice too - it's quite unique sounding and really laid back!

9 hours ago, MGB said:

Great stuff and respect, I would come to see you if you came to play nearby (but I live in the Netherlands😬).

To be honest, I enjoyed your playthrough video's without the autotune way more than the autotuned promovideo. Autotune really gets on my nerves and you are not a bad singer at all, couldn't you try to ease up on the autotune a bit?

Thanks man. My singing has improved over the last year or so since I put the rehearsal videos up. Live we won't be using it. For the sake of getting quick takes done for the promo video, we decided to use it. I'm funding this project out of my own pocket and time in the studio is expensive! I just wanted something pretty polished out there and autotune helps with that. It's so overused these days, even on people who are capable singers! 

5 hours ago, gjones said:

Excellent.

Annie Mccaig is the ex backing singer for Level 42 and she lives in Edinburgh down in Leith. You should see if she's available for backing vocals  

 

She sang on a couple of tracks on my bands album - she was awesome 

 

Here she is in Fandalism https://fandalism.com/anniemccaig

Was that her on the Live at Wembley gig from the 80s? Good singer!

5 hours ago, Ricky 4000 said:

Doc, I just noticed a complete lack of LEDs on your fretboards!?

Do you have anything to say in defence of that? 😀

I have no defence. I'll have to remedy that at some point

26 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

 

Only Tribute band Promotion i know is Shock City in Glasgow who might be worthwhile contacting. They put on various shows with differing styles across the board.

 

Thanks for the heads up! I've sent them a message. Looks like a Dundee gig is in the pipeline for June from a local promoter

29 minutes ago, Geek99 said:

I’ve got some leads - would you prefer black or tweed ?

Tweed please!- less tangly! 

16 hours ago, yorks5stringer said:

I think a wee bit of slightly more positive thinking might be in order? 😏 The video and music is way better than you appear to think and I personally can hear nowt wrong with your vocals either. As someone said earlier, Mr King is hardly Pavarotti!  You say Dundee has no legacy music scene: Average White Band, Danny Wilson and The Associates all hailed from Dundee (thanks Google) and did OK. You've got a great video, if the rest of the set is as good, get it out there, use social media and whatever else. There must be agencies who book the big 'soundalike bands', find out who they are and make some noise.  Why not contact Mr KIng himself, he may be impressed  and offer some advice?  I wish I had your talent, the nearest I got was having a Jaydee Roadie back in the 80's!!

I can be a bit pessimistic, true enough! There have been a few famous bands out of Dundee, but there are very few venues to play these days. And those venues are hard to get into unless you are part of the "in crowd" it seems. Same the world over I guess! I'm very encouraged by the interest and support here and over on the Mr Pink facebook page. It's only been up a few days and comments are flooding in asking when we are playing - it seems there are quite a few Level 42 fans out there! I'm contacting as many people as possible, hopefully an agent/promoter will see the potential! 

Thanks for all the kind words!

We recorded the full tunes for the video clips, so I'll probably upload them to the website at some point (www.mrpink42.com) - it's very rudimentary at the moment. 

Any leads for gigs would be greatly appreciated!
 

Of note, I'm trying to get a MIDI controlled light show on the go. A light display programmed to coincide with key drum and bass fills. 

4 hours ago, Ricky 4000 said:

As above!

If the only thing holding you back from the big bucks is live lead vocs -- maybe singing lessons would be worth the investment?

 

👍

Good advice tbh, I'm very much self taught. I think though the thing that's preventing gigs is not knowing the right people (I am far from a socialite. Despite being a very capable bass player in my home town I have zero social currency with the very cliquey music scene ) and also hailing from Dundee - the town really has no serious music scene and ambition/chop flaunting is looked upon with suspicion/derision.

5 hours ago, yorks5stringer said:

Impressive 😀

Thanks  

This has been a lot of work, but this is our promo video.  This kinda started semi seriously to have fun playing hard music with my friends but I've decided to try and get out doing shows. 

I'm Scottish, so my accent is wrong for singing like Mark King so I just tried to sing in my voice. I am also not a singer! There's obviously some autotune at work, but we probably only spent about 10 hours in the studio recording the audio for this! My singing is...passable live. My sister (who is filling the role of Mike Lindup) is an outstanding singer, who fronts my other band called Danger Zone (wedding/events band). 

Level 42 splits people. Some people hate slap bass out of principle for some reason. For me, it's hugely enjoyable and highly expressive. So I'm aware I'm going to take flack for even attempting something like this! So be it. I'm well aware of the failings of this band (my vocals!). 

However, the guys in the band are top notch and I want to show off our hard work. This has been a very challenging project from start to finish. 

In truth, we don't sound much different live - thought obviously the singing is not a good. I can sing and play the parts no problem, the drummer is super humanly tight and our keyboard player is also a masterful sound engineer. We use  a Soundcraft UI24 which is awesome. 

The bass was my JayDee through a Trace Elliot GP12 with what I think is the correct EQ setting. The only track with the Status was "Heathrow"

I'm trying to get this band out doing shows, but my home town of Dundee is dismal for live music. I guess I need a promoter or an agent. Any help or advice would be very much appreciated!

bump!

bump!

3 hours ago, yorks5stringer said:

If you really like the bass, why not email ESP and see what they have to say?

Already have done - let's see if the reply?

3 hours ago, BreadBin said:

Ahem - Silvia is no man.

My bad - apologies!

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

It's not a "proper" ESP though is it? 

It's a LTD, the ESP equivalent of a low-budget Squier.

You're right there, but it's not a cheap bass. 800-900 quid depending where you buy it. 

6 hours ago, Cuzzie said:

What are the saddles actually like?

On Sandbergs you can take em out and turn em back to front to give a little more life in intonation, alter the break angle

Not possible, they are a unique and unisomeric shape.

Dropping the action to about 1.5mm from 2.5mm on the B *just* got it intonated but, unsurprisingly, there was far too much fret buzz! The overall design is just not fit for purpose. It's a bit of a poor show from ESP as they must know this is a problem. I also note that Thomann already has two of these basses as B stock. Soon to be three when mine gets back to them!