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This doesn’t change the tone or brightness, but an Alembic/Warwick-style bridge and embedded tailpiece, together with an angled headstock, sure makes a difference with a low B string. The defined angles between the nut and bridge and their respective anchor points helps to provide a proper bend at each end of the vibrating part of the string, although a tapered string probably makes as much of a difference. I’m not convinced that through body stringing is good for strings with the sharp angle from the saddle to the body, especially with vintage-style plate bridges. Extra mass in the bridge and different materials may affect the tone but in my experience, it’s quite marginal - different pickups and especially different strings have a far more pronounced effect.

Any stringed instrument has many different ways to make a sound - standard finger style, use the thumb, tap, slap and pop, pick, strum, bowed, plucked etc. Each one gives a different attack, sustain and overall envelope to the sound. Less common are techniques such as using a volume pedal to cut off the initial attack and create a “swell”, or change the sustain part of the envelope with an eBow or similar. These are all tonal colours to add to your palette. However, new techniques may require a bit (or a lot) of work to become a useable part of your technique, so to the OP - nothing wrong with the thumb, if you find it doesn’t float your boat, woodshed it for a few months - you may be surprised. Regarding live performance - it’s not really relevant to a particular technique if the soundman turns everything to mush, and certainly no reason to not try to play to the best of your ability, and with as much variety, as is appropriate.

1. OK. If you find a ~1cm wide piece of metal ugly that you can hardly see when playing then - whatever! 2. It’s the weakest point of the neck when there is a truss rod adjuster present. Instruments with angled headstock usually include a volute to provide more strength in that area. Fender don’t actively thicken the neck at that point but because the headstock is parallel with the neck but set back the truss rod nut area is thicker and so stronger. I can’t comment on your Gus instruments as I’ve never played one. EDIT: looking at the Gus website they lay a skin of carbon from the headstock to the body, so probably don’t need to strengthen the end of the neck. Hardly relevant to every other bass and guitar made (excepting perhaps the Parker guitar range, with a similar idea, perhaps). 3. Have you used a bass with this type of adjuster? Not sure how asking a random selection of bass makers is relevant, other than for ease of fitting , which isn’t really an issue as for most Instruments with a fingerboard, a channel is routed out of the neck, the rod fitted and the fingerboard is glued on top, usually with a piece of wood above the rod to lie flush with the neck before the board is fitted. Which end the nut is fitted isn’t going to make much difference. If Fender and Musicman can do it, how hard can it be? In answer to your question, why not? It’s dead easy to adjust the truss rod wearing the bass without fiddling around with an Allen key stuck up the end of the neck, removing a cover and most likely shifting strings out of the way.

1. It’s not ugly if the fingerboard isn’t cut out as per the OP pic - the newsest Fender Elites have it and it looks fine. It’s pretty small anyway so not noticeable from a few feet (as if it mattered) Additional to 2. is that a thick volute is no longer necessary at the headstock to accommodate the truss rod nut whe it’s at the body end. Having had this on both a Stingray and a Sadowsky it’s so much better and easier to use than the headstock-end version there’s no contest. 3. You could fit this style of truss on a through neck, albeit with a bit of extra carving.

It’s a sad indictment that care in the community isn’t working...

Moondance?

I’ve seen those videos on YouTube and she can really play. Admittedly she’s playing along with the song but it sounds very tight, good phrasing and excellent feel. The Paul Young track on fretless sounds great too. I don’t think being mae or female really has anything to do it. Made me want to learn Don’t Give Hate A Chance by Jamiroquai (who aren’t my cup of tea at all normally). I used to play for a living and she plays the tune better than I can manage.

Fantastic backing singers. Now that’s what you call tight!

Don’t abandon shapes entirely. Whilst it’s good to know the theory behind what you’re playing, it is very important to be able to relate the shape of something you play with the sound it makes. Like it or not, the bass and guitar are played with notes on a grid, often in several different places. This is not like a piano, which has one, and only one, place to sound each note. “Learning” the fingerboard is partly matching up the fret location with the sound. So I can play a G at the open string on the G-string, the 5th fret on the D-string, the 10th fret in the A-string or the 15th fret on the E-string. Notice a pattern? So the fingerboard is geometric and repeats. They are all exactly the same pitch (well, maybe not exact, but that’s for another conversation!), but the different string length and diameter provide a different sound. Whilst it’s great to know that, for example, CEGB is a Cmaj7 arpeggio, it’s just as important to hear the sound it makes, and relate that to the shape on the fretboard. Learning the pitch alone will not give you the tools to play something in the right place to get the sound that you want.

Nope, they disappeared for any number of reasons, not least that spend on musical instruments went through the floor, poor financial management, not stocking (or being able to get enough credit to stock) what customers wanted or would sell in enough quantities to keep the business afloat, customers wanting a discount on everything, cutting into an already tiny margin, and finally, box shifters on the internet undercutting at rock bottom prices. Bass Direct may be different in that it specialises in a narrow area and there are few bass shops in the UK. Flouncing out because you thought you got poor service and telling everyone about it on here, rather than dealing with it there and then benefits no-one. As you’ve been a customer there before and “spent £5K” there, surely you’ve built up enough of a relationship to sort out such an issue?

I once played a Matt Pulcinella - ash body with maple neck and board and EMGs and it was lightweight, very easy to play and sounded fantastic. I think it was £750. Having passed it up I bought another one sight unseen and it was distinctly average. Still, qualifies as little-known make!

I think we’ll agree to disagree on this one. I recognise your tone from some of the “customers” I had the misfortune of encountering.

Did you think to tell them that you were interested in a bass? Looking from the other side of the fence it is sometimes hard to tell the genuine customers from the (many) timewasters who will take up your entire day and spend £20 - or nothing. I’ve worked in a music shop, albeit a long time ago, and the ratio of reasonable/chocolate starfish customers was about 10%/90%. If you feel you had poor service tell them there and then - the worst that can happen is that they’ve lost a customer. Maybe the guy/gal was having a bad day?

What is the porpoise of this thread?

This is very true, and not something many players find out until it’s a bit too late. I got out of the “industry” when I saw how things were going (no radio or jingle jobs anymore, major London studios closing down one after the other). However, I believe by not needing to earn income from playing music, you’re freed up to a) be able to afford decent gear and b) pursue musical excellence and play music with musicians you like. One of the worst things about being a “pro” player was the awful novelty gigs, playing styles and genres I didn’t much care for and having to rely on teaching in order to survive, rather than because I really wanted to teach. To his credit, Scott certainly has a great deal of enthusiasm for playing and music!

In terms of a band situation I’ve never been a fan of bass, drums and sax. Without a chordal instrument everyone is just outlining the harmony. The original clip posted is, I’m sad to say, something that only the people playing it could possibly be getting anything from. I’ve got no problem with fairly dense improvisational music but it’s got to be really well-played (no technically but musically) and ultimately has to say something (e.g. some of the earlier Tribal Tech was quite film soundtrack-like). This didn’t do anything for me I’m afraid.

I’m sure this will be a great resource for bass players starting out or struggling to improve, but speaking as someone who was a pro player and did studio sessions etc I’ve not seen anything from the free videos on YouTube that would want me to sign up. I’m lucky enough to have a pretty good ear (and worked on it a lot) so all my lessons came from my music collection, and playing with musicians who were much better than me. I get the feeling that the money may be better spent with a good teacher - but appreciate that they’re not always easy to find, and can be harder to vet as to their knowledge and ability as a teacher until you’ve spent a lot of money. Then again if I were a beginner now, this would probably be a lot better than some of the learning resources I had when I started!

Follow the cables from the jack socket -looks like a connector into the circuit so if you can source the appropriate replacement, no soldering needed. I had one exactly like this once, nice bass but very, very heavy and the neck was thick, which made it tough to play.