Belka

You are absolutely right in what you say about Long Train Runnin' and Play That Funky Music. I would probably add Superstition into that group as well. I can only assume that when rock bands decide to do some funk without actually liking/knowing anything funky these are the songs that are acceptable to them (don't forget to transpose Superstition up a half step so the guitarist can actually play it). That, or they have been played by so many bands they just add them into their setlist without questioning why. The Doobie Brothers and Stevie Wonder have such rich back catalogues and yet these are the only songs of theirs people choose to play. I suppose to be fair it's difficult to find a vocalist who can do anything with Michael McDonald on it any kind of justice.

Ambient is correct. Good technique becomes very important when trying to play a 6 string properly. Muting is especially important. I know that some people say the main advantage of a 6 is playing across the strings rather than playing in a more linear manner in order to be able to deal with key changes and avoiding major shifts up and down the fretboard, and while this is undoubtedly a major benefit, in order to make the most of the instrument you really need to study players like Anthony Jackson, John Patitucci and Oteil Burbridge who really make use of the full range of the 6 string. It's very good for transcribing too - the vast majority of guitar and horn solos can be transcribed and played (albeit an octave down) on a six string a lot easier than they can on a four or five, even those with 24 frets. At the same time I would never say that you can do everything on a six. Slapping (unless you really need the high C, which sounds very 'pingy' when popped anyway) is a whole lot easier on a 4 or 5, as is aggressive pickstyle playing (Duff McKagan for example - you lose the ability to mute fully with the right hand, so you can have the low B and high C ringing out all over the place if you're not careful).

It was sold on commission through a shop. I have no idea who the seller is.

No, these are rounds.

Hi all, I just wanted to ask if anyone recognised these strings. They were on this Jazz Bass when I bought it and they seem to suit it very well. They have purple coloured silks both on the tuners and the bridge. They look like steels but are fairly old so they could be nickels that have lost their sheen. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Me too. I think it might start planning to go to the 2024 event now. Looks like a very nice part of the world too.

Dep needed for a party gig as I'm away on holiday that date. £150 for the gig. It's an evening do - two 1 hour sets. A mix of the usual function covers and some less obvious songs. PM me with any questions. Thanks.

Those tuners are normal for a '66. Lollipops started appearing on Jazz basses in 1965 and were standard for '66-67, but they showed up on P basses later, '67-68. I have no idea about the seller but that bass looks like a genuine '66 P bass in all respects. Nothing looks dodgy/fake at all.

I don't know about Les Pauls but I actually think vintage Fenders would be pretty difficult to fake to the extent you would fool an expert. Firstly the tuners - you can not buy any Fender tuners these days that look like the vintage ones made up to 1976 - all of the repros they make all just look slightly different. Next, the necks - it's practically impossible to source a 7.5 radius neck with a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard - either with a slab or veneer fretboard (the veneer would be even more difficult). Finally, tortoiseshell pickguards - Spitfire come close, but there's nothing like the real thing. Early sunbursts also look a lot different to what you get now - I guess custom colours with white/mint pickguards would actually be a lot easier to fake. I can see the attraction for a skilled faker of doing a late '50s Les Paul when asking prices are around half a million, but the bother of making a dead on repro of a Fender bass to sell for around 10-20,000 hardly seems worth it, especially if they're going to build their own neck from Brazilian rosewood, age it, pay a machine shop to make the tuners look right, etc. The real issue is probably passing off refinished basses as original custom colours - it would be a lot more difficult to establish how genuine those really are. The same with Les Pauls probably - I would imagine most of the fake '50s burst Les Pauls are earlier goldtops with the P90s swapped out for humbuckers and refinished rather than reproductions built from the ground up.

Randy had this bass made for him by Fodera. No idea where it might be now.

More teal. This is a 1996 (I think) which I bought second hand in 1998. Wonderful bass. I know that around this time you were considered lucky if you got one with a birdseye neck. This one actually has quite a bit of flame in the neck which I think is quite rare.

There does seem to be a tendency for more glamourous, successful, talented or edgy stars to be seen as less troublesome and get away with more - I guess that's human nature. John Lennon was by some accounts serially emotionally and physically abusive to family members, Jimi Hendrix and Syd Barrett were reported to have beaten up/imprisoned girlfriends. Sid Vicious (ok, I know he barely played anything but he was integral to the group) almost certainly murdered his girlfriend. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, Rick James also have fairly sordid episodes in their past, but no one seems to find covering their music troublesome. On the other hand, Gary Glitter seems sad and pathetic, and MJ a weirdo, which probably makes them more objectionable to the public than the likes of Pete Townsend and Jerry Lee Lewis, although I acknowledge that the formers' misdeeds would seem to be worse than the latters'. Another example would be covering Charles Manson songs, which Guns and Roses, the Lemonheads, GG Allin and Marilyn Manson have all done, without suffering much detriment to their careers.

I've changed pickups and electronics on a few basses. With experience, I've found that it's only really worth it if you like the sound of the bass already but just want to tweak it to your taste/needs. If you're not happy with the sound and think changing pickups/electronics will fix things, then you're headed for disappointment.

Great - thanks for answering so quickly.

I am thinking of getting a Euro 5 LX and I have one question for you Spector experts out there. Can anyone tell me if the standard Euro 5 LX with the EMG soapbars and Tonepump has the option to split the coils to single coil mode? I've seen a few videos of the LX 6 where the reviewers say you can do this, but none for the 5, and I can't see any information about it on the Spector website either. Many thanks in advance.

It could be. It's their call and if they want to do that it's fine. I'd imagine their overheads are considerably higher than Bass Direct and Bass Bros, so that will almost certainly be a factor. The downside is though that by asking a lot more for your instrument you should be ready for it to hang around for a lot longer waiting for it to sell. Some stuff seems to be for sale in the Gallery for up to/over a year, whereas it gets turned around a lot quicker in the other places. Again, fine if you don't need the money now, but not if you do. As for sticker prices, I know that you can haggle (and indeed I did when I bought a bass from the Gallery last year). But elevated prices are also likely to put people off in the first place.

I know it can be an unwritten rule around some forums that you should never mention whether or not a seller's price is considered fair or too high, but recently I've noticed that the Gallery seem to price their used/commission items a lot more optimistically than Bass Direct and Bass Bros, who generally price their items to sell. However, I have no idea whether this is their policy or whether the actual sellers themselves are overvaluing their items. I'd guess they do have some input however. Perhaps they have more storage space than Bass Direct and Bass Bros and don't need such quick turnarounds on what they sell.

Good points, but from my point of view, your wine analogy makes more sense when talking about playing solo. When it comes to working in a mix, almost all of the basses which sound great seem to have a certain frequency point emphasised naturally. P basses, J basses, StingRays, etc., all seem to have certain natural mid frequencies which help to push through a mix in some way, as do certain custom basses like Wals, Ken Smiths, etc. On 'full-range' sounding Swiss Army knife basses, you can replicate these sounds with a preamp, but the shelving of frequencies the preamps impart mean they never sound quite so clear/detailed. I didn't mean to knock Overwater, they're beautifully made basses and I'm sure there's a good reason why so many theatre pros use them, but like I said, they tend to use the J replicas rather than the customs from what I can tell.

I think you're both right here. I've never really been interested in designers who say they can build anything you want. The most successful luthiers these days seem to be those whose basses have a signature sound. If I see a Wal or a Status on stage, I'm going to have a pretty good idea of what it sounds like. Basses built to cop many sounds, like the early Laklands, seem to have fallen out of favour these days. I remember back in the '90s the fact that you could get a kind of MusicMan sound, a kind of J bass sound and a kind of P bass sound out of one bass was considered a benefit, but these days, most professionals would just have a MusicMan, a J bass and P bass to get the exact sounds. Again, the Sims quad pickups - in theory they sound like a wonderful solution, but they haven't really caught on. I also have heard that Overwaters are designed to have a very full range of sounds, which you can eq to get any sound you like. I might be unpopular with some for stating this, but everytime I've seen someone playing an Overwater live, it doesn't cut well through the mix at all. I know they're considered popular with the theatre guys, but they seem to use Overwater Jazz clones rather than their custom designs.

One last thing, I and I think someone else asked earlier in this thread whether Xotic XJs had '60s or '70s pickup spacing. I measured mine last night and it's definitely '70s. Looking at pictures online, they obviously use this spacing for both the more '60s inspired alder/rosewood as well as the ash/maple ones.

Last year I bought an Xotic after reading some of the good feedback on here. I originally was after a 5 string but I saw this bass being advertised in Japan second hand at a very low price (around £1300 - it had been bought a few weeks earlier on Reverb for about £1600, and then obviously returned to the same store). I just loved the finish, which seems to be a special run of a few six string only basses they did for a Japanese store. Obviously I had to also factor in shipping and import duties, so in the end it probably cost me about £1900, which is still not bad considering it's practically in mint condition (it's a 2020 model). The fit and finish are extremely good, and it sounds great - it's a slightly more hi-fi twist on a '70s Jazz. I can get extremely low action on it, and it's generally very comfortable to play for a six string, with a nice neck profile. The parts are all high quality, and the preamp is very nice; subtle, but very musical. Set flat, it sounds more or less the same as it does in passive mode, which is what a good preamp should do in my opinion. The only negative I can mention, which has been stated here already, is the weight. This one comes in a around 5.3kg/11.8lbs, so it's a heavyweight. I think the ash they use is medium weight rather than the really heavy northern ash, but it's a very big bass with heavy parts, so of course it's going to weigh a lot. I can manage two hour gigs on it with a decent wide strap though. No neck dive at all, obviously.

I think you're right. I mean, the pickup/bridge misalignment is not forgivable at this price point, but complaining about a vintage style bridge, truss rod access at the body end and neck dive being defects isn't really fair, they're features of pretty much any vintage styled Jazz, and you'll get them on custom shop instruments costing three times this much. I see this bass has an ebony fretboard and Gotoh tuners, so it's not as if Fender is using cheap parts. Shame they couldn't get this right. The whole gold foil thing would probably have worked better as a short scale Mustang/Musicmaster bass rather than a Jazz , especially with their narrower spring spacing and the current interest in short scales. It is quite an entertaining video though, although it does annoy me sometimes when he tests out tones that noone would ever really use (whenever he reviews an active bass, he does a sound test with the active eq all the way off - I mean, does anyone use that kind of setting?)

Here's mine. This is the pedalboard of someone who doesn't really care much for effects. Funnily enough, the two I like most (the delay and phaser) get the least use in my band's sets. The others all get used to get the right tones for songs, and the Cali is always on.

I did the tour of the Fodera shop just before I ordered one in 2015. I still have it and it's my absolute favourite bass of all time. They are great people and a great company and contrary to what people think, no one there is getting rich. Their custom basses are all different and you really have to know what you want before ordering to avoid making an expensive mistake. Having said that though the Seymour Duncan dual coils they typically use do have a tone all their own which puts them all in a similarish ballpark tonewise. Aside from the one I ordered I also bought another second hand. Although I initially loved it, over time I realised that the tone of that particular bass just didn't work for me so I ended up selling it. Neither of the basses I own(ed) had the extended B headstock and personally I don't think it can much difference to the tightness of the B string. I think Mike Pope was the first to have a bass with that feature. He's a great player and a very creative guy so if it works for him...