Bassassin

5 hours ago, Machines said:

I grabbed this as it was only 20 min away from me and looked like a fun project for a few days. Needed a full stripdown, clean and setup and strings, but i've got it singing now. Interestingly I found this exact bass was in the US a couple of years ago, I've messaged the previous owner to try and find out how it got here but they haven't logged into talkbass for a while.

 

The tuners were unusable when I got it (no movement then massive jumps), but they were just overtightened, I stripped them down and reattached, they're fine now. Is it heavy ? Yes, but not quite Peavey T-40 territory. It's a solid instrument and the single pickup with 2 band EQ gets a very close Musicman vibe, albeit a little different due to a lack of humbucker. Very usable though, I'll try and stick a demo up.

 

Great score! The original 'Hercules' tuners on these were Gotohs with a heart-shaped key - if you fancied giving it a treat a set of GB10s would drop straight in.

Lovely bass! Stop me if you already know this but Tokai Gakki was one of the two factories which made Crafted In Japan Fenders from the mid 90s until 2015, the other being Dyna Gakki. The Tokai factory in Hamamatsu has a stellar reputation, going back to the replica-standard clones of Fenders & Gibsons they produced from the mid 70s onwards. Not surprised it's a good 'un.

1 minute ago, TheGreek said:

Hmmm..."keep it in the family" suggests that we should ask his brother. 

If only this thread had been posted a week or so ago - just saw him playing in Edinburgh with the magnificent Frost*. [/irrelevantproganecdote]

1 minute ago, Grimalkin said:

 

It was a bit of a trippy one, I would have forgotten all about it if you hadn't provided the flashback.

At first flashbacks are occasional, after a while they become inevitable. Eventually they're all you have.

I'm inclined to think the OP has a point.

This thread will tell you everything you need to know... or will it?

Where's @Bean9seventy when you need him?

10 hours ago, Ralf1e said:

They are out there. My Steven Hart built 5 ff headless. He even makes some limited stock to keep busy. This was one he had in stock when I came across him.

Mainstream as f*** these days!

1 hour ago, Waddo Soqable said:

A question for @Bassassin.. On your bass what was the approx measurement between the flat top of the body and the top of the fretboard (at fret height)? I ask as you mentioned the need to drop the saddles a bit to get a reasonable action and wondering if I'll need to do likewise (I suspect I will! )

I've revisited your thread numerous times for inspiration for sure.. One thing that occurs to me, I really would do the trimming the head "lump" right down to the block as you theorised, it would look much better, purely IMHO of course! 

It's about 10.5mm at the edges and looks like 12-ish in the centre. Still needs a little bit more fettling to get it playing at its best, tbh.

On reflection the headflap isn't the thing of stylistically coherent beauty I'd hoped for (I'd still contend it works better than Laurus' attempt!) so in due course it'll get a bit of hacking about. Not sure I want to just lop it right off but it could do with being a bit more minimalist.

2 hours ago, Dom in Dorset said:

Great work, great visuals  and yes the Adamson vibe is great too🙂

We also made a video recently and as (hopefully) you've started a trend I'll share it here...

The band is a tongue in cheek country rock trio, the song is about cousin Billy Bob and his fancy new girlfriend.

We recorded it in the studio at the shop where I used to work, no idea what system he used but it's essentially the three of us playing live to a click, vocals and guitar solo added after.

The video was filmed and edited by my partners son who's a pro editor and up and coming comedy writer/performer. He was a perfect fit for the project, he completely got what we were about. We had to cancel the first days shooting (COVID) but that gave us more time to hone the script and sets etc.

We had perfect weather for November in Dorset.
The bass used in the video was alo used on the song , it's a semi hollow precision built by myself.

Thoroughly enjoyed that! Great fun song & video and the very obvious professionalism (bet you had storyboards & everything! ) certainly shows!

2 hours ago, Paul S said:

 

I enjoyed that, Jon.  Stong tune, well played.  Felt to me like a prog Big Country.

Thanks Paul! I'll take that! I always consided BC to be a post-punk/celtic rock band with a prog rhythm section - in their early days they even had a tendency for 8-minute multi-part epics.

2 hours ago, Waddo Soqable said:

Nice job 👍.. I had one of those Wesley Ricko things about 2010, it was quite a good bass, tho as you allude to, the headstock's hideous and spoilt the look of the original thing.( I see why they felt the need to do it of course) 

I'm thinking of doing similar to a rocktile Rick, do you have a link to the seller for the Guyker tuner/bridges and head block set you bought by any chance?.. the ones I've seen are somewhat more expensive and 45 for the whole lot is a good price!  The Guyker stuff seems better quality kit, I'd be avoiding "overlord of music" from what I've heard these have a bad rep for rather "soft" metal components! 

 

Unfortunately no longer in stock but as the seller presumably is Guyker, probably worth hanging onto the link - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203735338271

I think I remember seeing these on AliExpress so probably worth having a dig around there. If you go ahead with the project, do post a thread here!

Mods - I should say I have already posted this in the 'Share Your Music' sub-sub board of the Recording sub-board, where unfortunately no-one much goes or seems interested - so if this post qualifies as spam, please delete the earlier one!

This represents my first go at a 'proper' music vid - I've done lyric videos and slideshow-y montages before, but this is the first time I've used green screen, recorded performance & outdoor footage/still images & tried to make something coherent out of it. Disclaimer - the drone footage isn't mine (free-to use stock from the excellent pexels.com site) so any occasional illusion of professionalism would be that of the talented videographers whose work it is, not me! Video was recorded using my little Canon SX720 compact on its HD setting, all the bits & pieces were bunged together with Shotcut, which (as someone whose previous video editing experience was limited to Windows Movie Maker) was easy to get started with & pretty intuitive to work with, and let me do pretty much anything my limited imagination came up with.

Anyway - I think I'm pleased with the result, given the obstacles of poor equipment, dubious aesthetic sensibilities and general ineptitude I have tried to overcome. It was fun & stressful in equal measure and I'm not even too horrified at my own ugly mug gurning away while I pretend to play bass!

A bit about the song. This is a bit of a musical departure for us, and despite playing/programming the instruments on the song I consider myself a distant second-fiddle as far as writing it is concerned. Basically my partner-in-crimes against music sang it to me, & said "can you make the guitars sound like Stuart Adamson?" Doing so was an absolute pleasure as Stuart was a huge influence when I was learning guitar & starting to write songs back in the early 80s. For that reason the Yamaha SG and the Strat in the video are what I used in the song - however the bass you hear is an Ibanez RS924 Roadster, not the silly thing I'm waving around on screen! I also used a Riverhead Unicorn headless (with flats) for the chordal intro. Song was recorded using Reaper & mainly Reaper plugins, guitar sounds courtesy of ToneLib GFX, bass through a Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro, & drums are the MT Power Drumkit plugin.

Hope you like it!

Looks like it's the latest instalment in that long-running occasional series, Curious First Posts On A Bass Players' Forum.

20 hours ago, Bolo said:

Carnivore was a much MUCH better initiative than Type-o. Brutally honest.

 Carnivore were great fun. All the time you appreciate Peter's tongue was wedged firmly in his cheek.

In fairness the same is true of a lot of Type O material.

I was a big Peter Steele/Type O fan, absolutely gutted when he died. Fantastic band, saw them a good few times & they were a big influence on the gothy aspect of the band I was in in the early '00s. IMO Peter's huge overdriven tone defined their sound as much as his vocals did.

And they wrote the best Christmas song:

Good deal, apart from the tuners being replaced with nasty cheap pressed tin Chinese rubbish.

15 hours ago, TheGreek said:

Mr Phillips would be proud to have built this. 

I think he'd approve but it's not a route he would go down - he's all about the sausage fingered royalty of guitar playing. In fact I'm sure the only thing that's restrained him from doing the exact opposite, and modifying a 5 or 6 string bass into a guitar is the unavailability of 35" scale .009 guitar strings!

Dunno how I missed this thread - +1 for the Danish oil which was exactly what my SR500 refin got! It did get a few more coats though, 10 or so, iirc.

New song & video from my current musical endeavour. Hopefully won't be removed for political content - but you can sing along & dance to it (although possibly not the 10/8 bits) whether you empathise with the separatist sentiments or not!

Wilfully a bit more celtic rock than my usual prog nonsense, and it was good to indulge some of my early musical influences - Stuart Adamson was a huge inspiration when I first picked up a guitar and I enjoyed unashamedly channeling that influence throughout this piece!

Recorded with Reaper using a Behringer UMD404 interface, guitar noises all courtesy of the freebie version of ToneLib GFX, bass went through a Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro, & drums courtesy of the MT Power Drumkit plugin. Some of you might be unsurprised by the vintage MIJ guitars involved - '84 Yamaha SG1500, '86-ish E-serial Squier Strat, and bass-wise (despite the silly headless Rickenfaker in the vid) an '82 Ibanez RS924 Roadster for everything bar the intro chordal parts. Those were done with a mid 80s Riverhead Unicorn strung with flats.

I have a tendency to get bored & wander off once a composition gets to the 'that doesn't sound bad' point of mixing, and this song's no exception - in fact my production skills are sufficiently limited that continued meddling has been known to make things worse. Still, very happy with the clarity & definition of everything & it sounds pretty decent on a variety of different setups. It's sort-of mastered using Izotope Ozone Elements, using whichever preset it was that made it sound loud...

Vid was cobbled together on Shotcut from a variety of sort-of appropriate royalty-free content & stuff we recorded/photographed ourselves. Having started out with the idea being a simple slideshow/lyric video, it did reach the point of almost collapsing under the weight of its/our ambition. But I feel that is the appropriate prog path.

This seller's entire Items For Sale list looks like his plan to make a million overnight involved going to the local car boot with £40 and a wheelbarrow:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/imola1994/m.html?item=364067011254

Laptop/PC + Reaper + MT Power Drumkit (or similar inexpensive DAW/plugin pairing) should do what you want.

Rare stealth ad for a rare & (debatably) cool old headless bass, currently £90 with two days to go.

Collection-only from Nottingham otherwise I'd be telling no-one & getting ready to snipe.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185673840815

1 hour ago, prowla said:

Thunders are interesting basses; extremely well regarded, but have never made the leap into the next price range - apart from some chancers asking silly money.

£250 could be doable, given that most other things seem to have gone up by a good 50% in the past year, but it might be a stretch.

 

 I think an immaculate, virtually unplayed one might justify £250+, but like you say, the 1 & 1As haven't appreciated like other MIJs have. It's interesting that the through-neck Thunder II & IIIs do go for quite serious money. That said, I think this one might stick around for a while!

17 hours ago, Beedster said:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334591233266?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=mxK9BFxRR8m&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=155UlNbXQGW&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
 

Seems a good deal?

Always worth looking at the sold items to get an idea of price - still lots of Thunders around, a few go for around that sort of money, but they still seem to be mostly in the £100-£200 bracket. This one looks OK, well-played but not abused & could do with a good hosing-down. Looks all original but I'd say a bit over the odds.

22 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

Paging @Bassassin

On 28/11/2022 at 18:45, cybertect said:

It hasn't been said out loud yet, but everything about that guitar screams that it was made by Teisco

I don't know much about 60s stuff (or the many holdover 60s designs that were sold as beginner guitars in the 70s & early 80s) but I doubt this is Teisco. There were literally hundreds of little manufacturers knocking out this sort of stuff in the 60s and it could have come from any of them. That said, I've seen this type of pickup on Kawai guitars. So it might be a Kawai. Maybe.

I believe the owner of that particular imitation has it up for sale on the Rickenfakers FB group.

Didn't expect much, didn't get much. I'm broadly of the opinion they've not done anything worth getting excited over since Justice For All, and Metallica were always at their best when they sounded bleak, hostile or both. This is just safe, tame and a bit dated, and probably the best thing I can say is it sounds quite sprightly for a band in their late 50s/60s.

Better than the turgid Load/Reload era (I remember a pal who'd been a fan since Kill 'Em All commenting "They should change their name to Licker, 'cos they're not f**ing metal any more!") but I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy the album.