Obrienp

Folks for what it is worth, I asked about the nut width on the Vintage Revo Supreme semi (subject of my post a few above). The response from one dealer was “it looks about 44mm”, which really is wide! Allowing for error, I guess it is probably 42/43mm. Unfortunately not what my arthritic left hand is looking for. That puts me looking at either the Guild Starfire 1, or the Warwick Star Bass, which have 38mm nuts. The Starfire II is out of my price bracket. I am a bit dubious about whether their single coil pickups are really going to give that vintage semi tone. Some reviews say they deliver it, others don’t. Any experience here?

Anybody come across these Vintage Revo shorties? https://vintageguitarsrus.com/collections/vintage-revo-series-bass-guitars. I rather fancy the semi despite the 3 point bridge. Unfortunately, the spec doesn’t say what the nut width is, just that it is Graphtec. I wouldn’t get on with it if it is 42mm.

Not sure this counts as a proper gig but the covers band I’m in played at my partner’s 70th birthday bash. We had 50 plus folks, a pizza van and enough booze to have bought a very decent medium priced bass, plus marquee and gazebo. Well you are only 70 once. I have yet to catch her up on that but some of our band members are well passed that milestone. Anyway, I spent all morning rigging the PA so band members could just turn up, plug amps into the DI lead provided (drummer uses an electronic kit) and connect their mics: job done. Drummer and rhythm guitarist were there at the start of the event (1pm) had tested their set up and were able to enjoy a few drinks, eat some pizza, etc and chill. We had agreed to play from 3-4:30, leaving the lead guitarist enough time to pack up and rush off to a gig with another outfit starting at 7pm. Two o’clock no sign of lead guitarist. Two thirty still no sign. All of us sending WhatsApp messages like: “Get here quick pizzas running out” and “ we left a space for you to park on the drive”. 10 to 3 lead guitarist arrives and has brought an amp without a DI and we can’t connect his monitor (he brought a street cube instead of his normal Laney wedge). I have to frantically search to find a DI box buried at the bottom of some kit box. I get that running but the “monitor” defies all my attempts, so I move mine over. By this time some guests are drifting off. We eventually get going at 3:30. To make up for lost time he seems to be playing everything at about 20 BPM faster than the original. Fortunately, faced with doing the solo in Sultans of Swing he slows down to just 10 BPM faster than the original. I don’t think I have ever done as many songs in an hour before! About half way through his monitor sparks into life: Sod’s Law! Anyway, apparently the guests liked it but then most of them were around our age and probably not used to liberal lunchtime drinking 😀. One or two did say “that was a bit frantic”! Fortunately the birthday girl (actually her birthday was in February but that’s not the greatest time for a garden party) was well pleased. Won’t bore you with the full equipment list but I used my LFSys Monza with Blackstar U700 and custom made P/J shorty from Tony Edwards Guitars who lives round the corner from us. I can’t get over how good the Monza is. It’s not just me: some friends did a spontaneous gig after us at much reduced pace: very chilled. Bob the bassist loved it and his fretless Ibanez Aerium sounded amazing through it.

I just bought a Soundcraft mixer from Nick. It was a fantastically smooth transaction and I couldn’t be happier to deal with him again. Very quick postage and brilliantly packaged. Deal with confidence.

@spyder Great choice. I’ve had my Lake Placid Blue Acinonyx for a year and a half now. The only thing I’ve felt the need to change is the volume knob. I’ve put a conventional metal knob on that matches the machine heads. Apart from that it’s brilliant out of the box IMO. I even like the preset tone buttons, which a lot of people complain about. You really feel the benefit of the light weight and easy playing when you do a long gig.

Somewhat delayed report of four gigs over the last 10 days. First was with the covers band Bandwidth (not my idea) at Blakeney Harbour Rooms beer festival. It wasn’t actually raining when we set up, so they had us playing outside under a gazebo in the beer garden. The venue hired a very good sound engineer with excellent kit, so my LFSys Monza and Blackstar U700 were more than I needed. I could have used a preamp direct into the desk and I am sure Mark would have made it sound fantastic. Unfortunately, the weather intervened. It was pretty cold (around 14C) when we started and about half way through our 2 hour set, it started to rain. We decided to play through without a break. Most of the tables were occupied when we started but by the end our audience had dwindled to about 6 stoic individuals huddled together. I later learnt that this group included the ex-British High Commissioner to Nigeria, the former Financial Times Nigeria Correspondent and the former President of the Nigeria/Britain Association. Blakeney is that kind of place where the great and good retire. Gig number two was at the Necton festival with Checkmate Kings blues band at the Necton Festival. It had been lashing down that Saturday but about an hour before were due to go on (early evening) it stopped a the Sun came out. The stage was a trailer but they had an amazing sound system with two very competent sound engineers. I had come prepared to make enough noise to be heard, which turned out to be completely unnecessary because of the amazing PA. I had my BF Two10, plus LFSys Monza stacked under a Blackstar U700, which can handle the 2.7 ohm load. We just had a one hour slot but the crowd had grown due to the sun and were appreciative. The backstage organisation was great as well, somehow turning the bands round in 15 minutes! The money was pretty generous by local standards as well. All in all an excellent gig. Gig three was playing in the “house band” for a blues jam organised as part of the Dereham Blues Festival. I brought along the LFSys Monza and a Mark Bass LM III. Another great combination and easily able to fill the pub with bass, without having to go much above 10 o’clock on the master. It was interesting to hear the rig from the audience side during the general jam, when the house band weren’t playing. It sounded great with a number of different basses: P bass, Mustang P/J and a Jazz. We had quite a few participants and plenty of punters. Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves and there was some excellent playing. One or two oddities but overall a great night. Shame about the cricket on the massive TV behind the band! That’s pubs for you! This brings me to gig four at the Dereham Blues Festival with Checkmate Kings. This is our third year playing at the festival and we were delighted to be given a prime slot: 9-11pm at the Kings Head on the Friday evening. The Kings Head has a massive beer garden and puts on a real ale tent plus catering during the festival. It is normally packed on the Friday of the festival but this year it lashed down. We asked the manager if we could play inside in their back room three times but they insisted on us playing outside on their fixed outside stage (it is covered). Consequently we ended up playing to about 10 people in the garden and another 20 or so in the pub (which had the garden doors open). Be careful what you wish for! On top of everything else, they have a decibel limit because of local residents complaining about noise: the complainants moved in recently, next to a pub that has been putting on live music since the 60s! We had to turn down a couple of times, so I doubt the folks in the pub could hear us that well. It turned into a paid rehearsal but the last gig for our current vocalist/guitarist. Not the greatest way to go out! No photo of that gig unsurprisingly.

Great speaker. I am really pleased with mine. I have done a few gigs just using it and my Blackstar U700 head (250 watts @8ohms). More than adequate on its own and really reflects the range of tones the U700 can give. I have also tried it sitting on top of my BF Two10S at an open air gig. Phenomenal combination, if you have an amp that can handle the combined 2.7ohm load (U700 can). I’m still toying with the idea of getting a second Monza and moving the Two10 on though. I think two would sound even better.

I’m sure either would make a fantastic bass but not in those colours IMO. I dread to think what the price is for those specs! I have speced up a light weight 32” several times and it is easy to end up with a pretty expensive bass! WRT hardware, the tuners on my Elwood seem OK but I hated the stock bridge. It seemed pretty solid but the intonation adjustment was a right pain. After much searching for a drop in replacement, I found a Gotoh with proper intonation adjustment screws. Perhaps things have come on a bit since you last bought from them.

I can feel the anticipation from here! I’m sure it will be worth the wait👍.

Another aspect to consider, as @LeftyJ mentioned, semis can be surprisingly heavy but genuine hollow bodies can be feedback monsters. That said, I had a hollow body Hofner Violin bass (some have a centre block), which was light and didn’t seem too prone to feedback. I never got used to the playing position though, because of the way the neck is set into the body and the position of the front strap button, it seemed a big stretch to reach the bottom frets.

Yesterday evening doing a catch up on Glastonbury on iPlayer, I stumbled on the Last Dinner Party. I noticed from the very brief glimpses of the bassist (BBC seems to try to avoid showing bassists) that she seemed to be playing a Gretsch Junior Jet and it sounded pretty good. Good on her I thought. You don’t need fabulously expensive kit to sound good. Of course they didn’t show her rig (at least while I was watching). One up for the short scale players anyway.

Parallel mode gave plenty of top end but the stock pickup doesn’t lack top end as it is. Typical Stingray ceramic pickup I guess. I agree about small pots, if they are Alpha/CTS. I am beginning to think I prefer the feel of Alphas to CTS. I have had some very loose feeling CTS pots recently. The vol actually starts to roll off on one when I am playing. I have to constantly tweak it. I have not had this with Alpha. I was shooting the breeze with my local luthier about this and other things recently, and he said his experience was exactly the opposite, so the jury is still out. I have moved the Jaguar on now. Great bass but I decided a P is more the vibe I am looking for in a single pickup bass. I have just finished putting together a medium scale P bitsa but that will be the subject of another thread. I was on the point of stripping the Jaguar just for the neck, as there aren’t any medium scale necks available in the UK for reasonable money. However, that would have made it a pretty expensive neck! I took a risk and went for a neck direct from China that turned out OK.

I think 8 ohm, plus 4 ohm comes out as 2.something or other. There is a guide to mixing impedance on the BF site. I guess that means you will need an amp that can handle the load. Blackstar U700 head will do it and I know there are others (Bergantino, EDS Reidmar….).

Nice vid/recording.👍 I use a stand occasionally, when my back is really killing me but only for practices. I find I end up picking the whole thing up because I want to move when playing. It probably defeats the object of using it! I noticed you were moving it about a bit too. I worry that the bolts are going to undo and the thing will collapse when I step away from it. That hasn’t happened yet but it’s at the back of my mind when I use it. 😏

I had a three hour (3 x 50) gig yesterday afternoon with the Checkmate Kings (blues band) at the Cock in Dereham. It was in the beer garden, which is a courtyard and it was hot! I nearly melted during the load in. As you can see there was not much space, so we only used one monitor and just put vox and drum mics into the PA. It was one of those gigs where I felt we were ragged a lot of the time but the punters seemed to like it. For various reasons we have had very few rehearsals over the last 3 or 4 months and I realised we hadn’t played some of the songs this year. Without the usual DIs and monitors, it was hard to hear what the guitarist was doing on the other side of the stage, despite the drummer saying he was deafening! Also, I think we were affected by the fact that Marc, our vocalist/guitarist (the bearded fellow), is having to leave because of family commitments after our July gigs. I have no idea what my backing vocals were like as I couldn’t hear the monitor: probably like a cat being strangled! Anyway, it was good to get out and run through the material before two festival gigs in early July. The set lists for those is going to be the songs that worked well yesterday. My rig was a Blackstar U700 head into a LFSys Monza. I just use the amp voices, drive options and built in compressor for “effects” but I do use a Mooer Bass Sweeper on our funked up version of Black Cat Bone. Basses were a Maruszczyk Elwood 4a medium scale and a bitsa medium scale P bass I just finished putting together (the one in the pics). The Blackstar/Monza combination was plenty loud enough to fill the beer garden and I could hear myself without any problems. It was the first time I had gigged the Monza and it really lived up to its reputation. Just amazing for a 10” cab. I have to make a shout out for the Cock. They are really dedicated to putting on live music. A lot of pubs are giving up because of the economics and it is great that venues like the Cock keep going. Always a great audience too and no idiots! We always enjoy playing there.

@Mickyk The advice above is for FRFR cabs. If you are going down that route, checkout the offerings from LFSys. There are threads on BC about them. They will give you a very tight bottom end with all the mids and highs you could want. They just reproduce what you put into them without any colouration. Also the compression driver doesn’t give you that brittle, quacky sound that you get from some tweeters.

I’ve got that left thumb arthritis thing too: a right pain (literally). At the risk of teaching you to suck eggs: another thing to look at is the nut height. Quite a few basses seem to come with it set far higher than necessary, making the first few frets require quite a lot of squeeze, especially with heavier strings. It also affects intonation.

You are welcome. You might also want to look on Talk Bass, as there are masses of posts on modding Broncos on that forum. However, some of the parts mentioned are hard to find outside the USA. WRT changing the pickups: you don’t have to solder if you keep the original pots etc. You can drop a Stratocaster rail pickup in. To wire it, cut the original lead close to the pots (leave enough length to be able to work with it while avoiding breaking the original solder connections).There should be a white (hot) wire and black (ground) wire. Colours can vary but ground is generally black; it will go to the back of the volume pot normally. Strip a bit of the shielding off the original wires and do the same for the new pickup wires (if not already done). Get a small screw type electrical connector block with two connectors (you normally buy them in a strip and cut off the number of connectors you need). Then just use it to connect white (hot) pickup wire to white original wire and black (ground) pickup wire to black original wire. It should work fine and you can change pickup again without soldering.

Nothing like as glamorous as some of the gigs you folks have been doing over your weekend: I did two dep gigs with a covers band (Backtracking). It was at a local fete (worse than death); both days playing two one hour sets 12-13:00, 14-15:00. We had one end of a massive marquee, so much more space than I am used to but directly on the grass (except for the drummer, who got a little platform made of pallets). Gates opened to the public at 10:00, so we had to unload before then and couldn’t get out until about 15:30, which made it a longish day for me with a 40 minute drive each way. Pics show set up on first day (still waiting for action shots). Day 2 I brought a ground sheet and a sheet of ply to keep the damp and grass mulch off my gear. We originally set up to stand just out side the tent but British summer weather intervened and we had to drag everything inside just before the first set. We were running off a very noisy generator (located just the other side of the tent from me), which struggled a bit: every so often my amp started to fade. Gear: Blackstar U700 head (recently acquired from BC), back up Warwick Gnome iPro, Barefaced Two10S, Boss wireless, Maruszczyk Elwood 4a medium scale and Nordstrand Acinonyx V1 (back-up). DI into the desk. I was really pleased with the Blackstar /Two10 combination for this kind of 60s-80s cover work. The ability to change the amp voices at a flick of a switch, or press of a button on the pedal, is fantastic. The drive settings are useful as well: overdrive/distortion/fuzz. I don’t know how accurate the voicing is but it sounds really good to my ears and the band’s sound man as well. I can’t wait to use it on a gig with my LFSys Monza. Despite the weather we had a group of people watching us and got a lot of positive comments afterwards. Some brave souls even danced for a while. The band picked up about a dozen potential bookings. The sax player had to cry off because of a lurgie, so there was some hasty rearranging of songs and some had to be dropped. They also brought one in that I hadn’t played before but I think I did OK given only one rehearsal before the gig. I had chord sheets on my iPad on a stand to compensate for my aging memory. Weirdly we were tighter on day one, then on day two but it was only about 13C most of the time on Sunday. I was glad I didn’t get the memo about wearing Hawaiian shirts: four of them freezing and me in a sweatshirt and padded jacket, and I was still cold! Lol.

There is a thread here: it is one of many on the subject. I was looking for a load of posts I did on modifying a Bronco but couldn’t find it. Maybe you will have better luck. The string spacing on your Bronco will be narrower than the “standard” Fender 19mm. I think it is 17.5mm, maybe even less; memory fails me. Someone here will know. The other hassle with changing the bridge is that it doesn’t have the usual Fender style 5 screws in a row fixing. Finding one that is a direct replacement may be tricky. You may have to drill some holes. TBH I would change the pickup before anything else and there are plenty of threads on that. I gave up on drop in replacements and replaced bridge, pickups, pickguard, electronics and machine heads. This involved quite a lot of woodworking but in the end I had a nice little bass with a Tone Rider P bass pickup in it.

Sandberg 32”? Which model is that? I’ve only seen full scale and 30” advertised.

Guinness Zero is actually pretty potable IMO. Ditto Punk AF and Adnams Ghost Ship low alcohol. Nothing like the horrendous offerings of the past.

The medium scale ones have 42mm nut width and 2x2 headstocks, neither of which suit me. I have to say the shapes don’t float my boat either. I like the look of the P/MM model but it is full scale only. If he came up with a medium scale P with a Jazz style neck, I would be right there with my wallet open; ditto the P/MM model. Actually, if somebody marketed reasonably priced medium scale Jazz style necks in the UK, I would snap up a couple immediately. They can be bought from China and the USA but you have all the import duty/VAT hassles to deal with. I guess there just isn’t a market here for anything other than full scale offerings and some of those are seriously expensive. I have considered buying a Squier Jaguar H bass just to get the neck and marry it up to a P bass body.

Any folks aware of this offering from Gordon Smith. https://www.gordonsmithguitars.com/shop/guitars/gs-bass/#reviews. Pricey I think and vaguely reminiscent of the Orange O bass, especially if you opt for a single cutaway. I wonder if it is actually made in the UK, or just tweaked here, like the Auden offerings. Still there aren’t many medium scale basses available in this country, so it adds to the range of choice. I still can’t understand why Fender/Squier aren’t offering a medium scale P bass. I think it would sell really well.