jonno1981

I visited the o2 for the first time at the weekend to watch fitness panto “gladiators live” with the family. We sat opposite where the stage would be. Honestly, it felt too big. If I saw a band, I’d have to get floor tickets and get within 50 yards of the stage, otherwise I just wouldn’t bother.

Ah I can’t say I live in Crowthorne, I’m just down the road in Sandhurst past wellington college. It’s a nice part of the world, I hear Hungerford's not so bad!

Home now, it’s great to only live ten minutes from the venue! Thanks Paul & co for organising, I think the venue worked really well with the two rooms. Lots of great gear on display and friendly folks who allowed me to badly try it. I LOVED Mike’s satin finish sunburst Fender MIJ Jazz bass. The talks worked really well, lots of interesting stuff from the chap from Monty’s, the 60s Jazz pickup set sounded killer. The cab demo was an eye opener, you really don’t need a big cab to get a good tone. Chris Child’s interview had great stories and experiences to share. Thanks to Mike Brooks for facilitating. Overall that was a lot of fun!

I love this one: https://yamahaguitardevelopment.com/2023/10/26/yamaha-guitar-development-custom-shop-amos-heller/ Exotic top bb! They could certainly do more like this as a production model.

I’ve always wanted to try one of these but I’ve never seen one in the flesh. Looking forward to taking a look and if possible playing (badly!) a few notes.

Looks legit. I remember these. Fender were getting slated at the cost of the USA standard, so they brought out a cheaper us model with a gloss finish. No hard case, some cost saving measures but a made in USA tag! If it was an affinity body it wouldn’t have the truss rod access at the body end. Enjoy your bass.

This is super useful thank you so much!! I have similar restriction on the jazz bass, the neck volume becomes master volume when you pull the tone pot up. You still have all the original sounds so it’s no biggie. I’ll consider this layout for my bass. Thank you!

Hmmm. I’m curious. My bb414 has factory vol/tone/pickup switch. I changed the wiring on my jazz to a push/pull on the tone for series parallel and I love it. Could I follow a similar approach and change the wiring on the bb to match the layout you have? Do you need four conductor pickups to make this work?

I’d say no, but having any bass with a P pickup is really, really useful!

I often end up searching for very basic terms like “bass” and just seeing what turns up. You have to scroll through pages of fishing gear and car audio but you get some gems. That’s how I found my Yamaha bass!

Some people are really bad at listing on those sites making them not return in the search results. I’ve seen plenty of “base guitars”, “squire guitar”, “fender twine”, “less pal” etc. Dealers are very hot on this and have all kinds of weird search strings to find the true bargains.

I think the price is only a question mark if not enough time has passed. For instance, what if you brought a Wal bass in 1988 from a mate for the going rate of £500. You sell it in 2025 for £5k. Seems ok to me. However, if you brought it from them less than a couple of years ago for £500 and sold for £5k and he found out, it’s gonna be a sore point in your relationship isn’t it?

Yamaha trb6 is brilliant. Pickups don’t sound hugely impressive outside the context of a band, but in a mix they just work so well.

Where did that come from? Cort not looking after their employees?

That’s such an enlightening video. Fascinating that they have entire buildings for the different production lines.