Paul S

Come on, tell us - I didn't expect to have to grille you about it.... Sorry.

Just remembered another bass I had with an uber skinny neck - one of the CIJ Fender Jaguars.

There was a black/maple one on eBay a few days ago but it must have been sold. He'd modded it a bit, too - black pickguard, 3 position tone switch. Looked very nice.

Thinking about it, the Fender Precision Lyte I used to own had a super slim neck, too. Both that and the Fury were similar to the Geddy Lee neck.

Looks to me like the loser in the 'Great British Bake Off' bass guitar biscuit challenge. Hand cut from ginger bread dough and then baked.

Peavey Fury had the slimmest neck I have played, both nut width and depth. A lot of other Peaveys would be there too, though i don't have first hand experience of them.

On the small off chance you haven't already thought of it or it just isn't appropriate, we had the bit under the stairs blocked in with a folding door at the front. I use a wheeled dolly thingumajig to slide the second cab and least used stuff to the back and the regularly used stuff at the front.

Go on the website. > Help and advice > Sending > Items we exclude from compensation

The Squier Silver Series Jazz basses of the early 90s were exceedingly good with necks that were 40mm wide at the nut (which is actually one of the things I wasn't so keen on)

My new Jake has a 45mm nut width - absolutely perfect for me, and what kind of string spacing I prefer. Oh, and yes - it is a five string....

One tune, roughly in your genre, springs to mind - Looking For Love, Whitesnake. Nice widdly guitar in this, too, if that is your kind of thing. I have a fretless electro-acoustic-y thing. My little band did an acoustic gig recently and are threatening to do more of them so I think it kind of fits in nicely with that whole vibe. Not sure I would bother otherwise, for myself. Immense talent and game-changing pioneer notwithstanding, I find Jaco not to my taste.

I've always done it via Interparcel. I don't think I have ever actually looked directly at the UPS website, now you mention it.

Me too. They actually insure musical instruments, too.

Plectrums, plectra - take your pick.

Dunlop 1mm for me. Love the feel of black nylons...

My Jake 5 arrived today. Just unwrapped it, plugged it in briefly, kissed it a couple of times. An exceptionally trim 3.6kg - 8lbs - for a 5 string Precision!! Neck dimensions I spec'd are perfect. Delano pup has the extra bite over the Aguilar that I hoped for. Figured maple neck/fingerboard and headstock are to die for. My expectations were very high but this has just blown me away - how is it possible to make such a good bass for £1600? Actually, £1500 - £100 was for the SKB case. And Adrian chucked a gorgeous leather strap in the case, too. I am now going to be mega impatient to use it at rehearsals and gigs. Swoon. I'll take some nice pics when the weather cheers up.

I have just changed my opinion. My Maruszczyk Jake 5 has just arrived! I spec'd it high and, with an SKB hard case, came in at £1600 - I don't think I could have got a better bass for the money.

That is exactly what I had in mind. I miss it, too.

I would add that it is possibly worth looking at the JV Squiers. I have two - one is a very early Fender logo, one a bit later - they are both stonkingly good, better than any Fenders that I've had my mitts on. The later one perhaps sounds a tad better, if anything, although the fit and finish of the F logo one is tighter. Maybe I have been lucky, but worth a look.

That looks so much better! The cream and white is particularly sexy

I always played 4 string basses and fitted a detuner for the rare occasions I needed a low D. Then around 18 months ago (+/-) one of my bands decided to morph into a Bon Jovi tribute and a lot of their material is played with lots of low notes - Hugh Macdonald uses every bit of his 5 string basses! So I found myself having to get used to using one - I decided the best way was to use the 5er for everything and not just the songs I needed to, which I carried over into my other band. So I now find myself using 5 string basses exclusively and, actually, I quite like it. Not just for the extra low notes at my disposal but for the ease of getting around the neck and extra choices for playing certain notes - do i want the E to be open or fretted, do I want the bassier timbre of playing some notes on the B string - whatever. Makes me wonder what I would do if I came to a point when I no longer needed to use a 5er - would I keep to them anyway? And what of those wonderful 4 string basses I haven't touched for over a year?

silly idea - it'll never get off the ground.

There are one or two of the sellers on eBay that have a printable template you can download and cut out. At least, they did have for a Precision bass. I don't recall who off the top of my head - possibly Dangleberry Music or Black Dog. You need to follow the instructions for scaling it correctly, too, as printers often seem to have a mind of their own and churn out stuff to a different scale to what goes in. Although that may be more down to my not actually knowing what I am doing with machines of any sort.

Looks to me like you could unscrew the two height adjustment/mounting screws, swap the pick guards, screw the pups back in. Should become clear once you have unscrewed and taken the pick guards off. I'd take pics of how high they are fitted first to prevent a lot of trial and error.