Stub Mandrel

A popular style, but it can look 'sixth-form art portfolio'... Not that my own attempts at cover art are any better:

Utterly rammed and a good time was had by all.

You're doing a beautiful job there, but are you your own worst enemy in the balance department?

The crappy graphics put me off, but when I read that I thought 'must listen' 🙂

Or a skateboarding 'Oss...

There was also the 'Celeb by Ligger' strip in Etavirp Yee...

Not sure why I clicked on that, but I'm glad I did!

I'm from days gone by 🙂

You too Dave!

BoRap (it's on the radio...)

Increasing convinced a Jazz bass on neck pickup with tone rolled right back is the way to go 🙂

Like that.

The guy who stole your seat in the van and was ligging all night stealing your beer and egg mayo sarnies! 🤣

Oh no! For goodness' sake don't let @Al Krow know you are wearing compression gloves... I think that in physiotherapy circles the technique is referred to as "spliffin' up".

LOL! Just twigged who you are Dave... I have to admit categorically NO shortage of thump on Saturday night 🙂

That's because it's an ex-MOD "List, Set - Musician Mk IVb"

This is interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_jazz#Years_of_National_Socialism,_the_1930s_and_the_missing_1940s But as always, music became a focus for resistance too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swingjugend As for bassists, I already knew we were a bunch of degenerate pluckers.

I don't get on much with books, but I have one on developing your 'bass groove' and rather than numbers it has words/sounds that help you visualise (audiolise?) complex rhythms. I find 'internally vocalising' helps greatly with getting a rythym from tab or conventional music (I can read pretty much rythyms, not pitches!) It does come with practice, try and 'accent' the downbeat, and other significant beats. Even simple things like triplets can be: DAH -dah-dah Dah-dah-dah Dah-dah-dah Dah-dah-dah Such emphasis isn't obvious from score (usually) but the grouping of triplets in threes is a clue. Get that in your head and you find yourself playing it easily, emphasising the notes at three levels of emphasis rather than just playing twelve identical notes. When playing with a drummer, listen for the patterns they use, you may want to lock in to the rythym on the snare or kick, or maybe the gaps between them. A good song to practice is In Bloom by Nirvana, where the bass and drums lock together in some nice, memorable patterns but the tempo is nice and slow. I'm afraid I find repeat listening to be more effective than counting... Sharp Dressed Man has 19(!) bars of straight eighth notes and I find it vastly easier to listen to the guitar solo than to count!

There's someone else working hard to convince themselves the 64 picups in their Flea Bass are U/S. Perhaps the two of you could get together and do a swap?

Funnily enough my TE doesn't have the light, but I've bought a roll of UV leds on a strip with a USDB connector. Haven't fitted it yet.

The figure were just to demonstrate it's possible to work to greater accuracy by hand. Despite what people think, you or I could work to the 'thousandth of an inch' mentioned in awe on other forums, I regularly do so.

In engineering, hand scraping is the most accurate process for producing flat surfaces over long distances, by comparing three surfaces and taking off the high spots. https://www.okuma.com/hand-scraping-wp There isn't an accurate grinding machine in existence that doesn't trace it's accuracy back to hand-scraped surface plates 🙂 When optical telescope mirrors need to be made to the highest levels of accuracy (fractions of a wavelength of light) they abandon the machines and finish them by hand. Even the production of gauge blocks (small but very accurate & expensive) was finished by manual lapping until the 1960s. For a fret dress, that machine will work to a known level of accuracy, as it's fairly lightly built 0.02 or maybe 0.01mm is probably about it <it's 0.01mm according to the patent http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6114618.pdf>. Expert hand scraping can work to around 0.000025mm... An expert hand finishing frets could easily work to better than that to a factor of ten (although it's questionable if that would give any improvement). The value of the Plek machine (operated by a semi-skilled person) can do the job to a higher standard than the majority of music shop techs, but i very much doubt it can beat a skilled luthier.

Bad company 🙂

I've got a side project with a black vocalist. I feel decidedly ambiguous about lyrics like 'I'll always be your slave', but it's their call and Sam Cooke didn't have any qualms.

Surprisingly different, would probably go down well in a rock type venue, maybe a bit too extreme for a pub crowd.