TJ1

Thanks for the replies - maybe it is lack of experience but I am finding much more difficult to detect whether my bass is in/out of tune that my acoustic guitar - which I can usually tell just by ear.

if it was not for the refuge of music I'd probably be an alcoholic/heroin addict - as it is I'm tee total and clean

Thanks - could anyone tell me what the 'standard' pitch calibration is in hz, at the moment it's on 440.

Yes - but do you know why the bass button reads at half a step lower?

Hi

I've got a Snark tuner that has a special bass button. The bass tuner reads at half a step lower than the 'normal' guitar tuning, so A not the bass reads as A# on the six string acoustic.

Could anyone tell me if this is correct?

Ok based on the reviews here and other places I got this new Bongo from gear4music.

I am sure there are more sensible things I could have borrowed 2k for, given I am definitely not at pro level - but WTF.

Anyway my First impressions are that it is very well weighted and comfortable but need to play it more to comment on the tonal qualities. If I was 14 I might like the sparkly blue, although personally would have preferred a more toned down colour - but the availability was not there.

Sorry to be the dissenting voice - but I have done a trade in with GG and they were really mean about the value - particularly given the trade in was bought from them about a year prior. Not had any issues about their product's quality tho - and customer attention is exemplary.

'The live version only does it the second time around and when it does finally get there (at 2:53), it's dumbed down. I thought it might be a mistake at first, but when I checked the other live versions from 2013 & 2014, they are the same.'

It could be that Lynne decided that it was'nt worth the risk of trying to the complex version as a one off performance in a live stage in Glastonbury.

Welll as ong as long as sterling ball(and his fmaily) realiszes that each Indonesian workers committment is a direct imspct on his9thier e rpeutation then I guess it's oK to poy them them whatiever they see fit(in tehe context of the Indosian nationl average wage)

On 22/01/2021 at 12:54, thebrig said:

Reading this thread reminded me of the Shaftsbury Les Paul copy I purchased second-hand in the 70’s, I paid £50 for it at the time.

About ten years ago I donated it to a local charity shop, the following morning it was in the window for £80 and when I looked later that day, it was sold, I was pleased at the time because I didn’t want it any more, and the charity shop made a some money from it.

But then I started googling Shaftsbury guitars and I came across this, whether it sold for £899 I will never know, but maybe I should have held on to it a bit longer. 🤔

What makes it worse is the fact that the guitar pictured looks very much like the one I had, the reason I say that is because when I bought it, the jack socket wasn't the original, it was a homemade oblong silver one, exactly like the one in the picture, the rest of the hardware was gold.

Shaftesbury Guitars

12 October 2017  · 

Check out this vintage 70's Shaftesbury Les Paul we've got in stock! 

Produced in Japan within the ibanez factory this guitar features:

-Traditional style double binding

-Original 70s pickups 

-Bolt on neck (Unique for les Paul shape)

-Rose wood finger board

-Block inlays 

This guitar screams and has similar tone and characteristics of an old Les Paul however you won't have to sell your kidney to take this one home! 

Grab yourself a real vintage guitar for just £899!

Going by the photo only, without having any background knowledge of the model/brand I think a lot of people might think it is worth £900.

It's not really Bass related but I am listening to the enclosed - Michal Fix plays Bach's Toccata on a 12 string acoustic(below). I may be dreaming but it's something to aspire to -  if I could busk it, I suspect rich people who have actually heard of Bach would throw money at me.

Watch the whole video - it gets more impressive. The challenge for Bass players is what would Bach sound like on a modern bass - would it be butchered or add a whole new dimension to the classics. 

9 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Speaking of TV's I had a bloomin' Sony colour TV, you know the usual 'tube' type before flat screens arrived. Would it break down so I could get a widescreen plasma? Like heck it would! Just went on and on and on working just fine...

What is scary these days is that a laptop is only supposed to last 18 months or so before something like the screen will go and that's considered normal wear and tear.

Decent cheaper basses are more like Sony TVs.

Re - Laptops I think you have got a very specific choice either you go cheap for  a £500 consumer laptop and deal with the inevitable limited life span or you join the crew who need to use their laptops for their work and living 40 hours a week for years and will not accept unreliable or deliberately obsolesent component faults. At the level you are good at 2k plus for a Dell XPS or a good Lenovo Thinkpad - but if you don't abuse them they will last a mininum five years if not ten or more - remember they are designed for 40 hours a week hard use and often guaranteed for that use for 3-4 years

There's a boogie waiting - David Bowie

2 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

I find Amazon baffeling - 50 variants of almost identical kettles from Chinese brands you’ve never heard of - no way of knowing if any of them are any good

What I do when I buy an appliance is look at how much the retailer is charging for additional years cover. This I think tells me how durable the appliance is - the more expensive the additional cover is(relative to the appliances price) the dodgier the appliance. I don't know how you could apply this formula  to bass guitars - maybe amps.

I lead such an interesting life - really I should have my own TV show.

It's not just guitars - my 15 quid Kettle has lasted longer than all my other kitchen appliances - I don't even know what make it is(I am usually idiotically fixated on branding)

Lets say you get/want a bass whose colour you find.. er. somewhat irksome Like this for expampel.https://www.andertons.co.uk/bass-dept/bass-guitars/music-man-bongo-5-hh-in-fuschia-sparkle

How do go about respraying it to your desired colour, or do you take it to a special guitar paint shop.

NB: really I want my bass to feature a montage of photos of Sandra Bullock but I am not sure how doable this would be.

1 minute ago, dub_junkie said:

This one is more plug in and play and has a StingRay vibe but the sound is smoother and to my ears doesn’t have the top end ‘clank’ of a 3EQ Ray. The bass is also very light with a super fast neck. 

 

This gels with what I've been told - that despite the odds looks it's got more of a 'neutral' tone.

Ok I can see the blue's classier but I still want that orange.

On 05/01/2021 at 17:23, bassfan said:

 

 

So, the gauntlet is now down again, can you survive 2021 without a purchase? 
 

 

Totally not - if 2021 brings some strange/unpleasant economic times that means that people have to sell gear in desperation.

Just now, NancyJohnson said:

It's just the shape that seems to irk people; I know my association here is generally Thunderbirds, but that's about as traditional as it gets for me, so the shape didn't deter me and probably made me all the more determined to use it.

I actually liked that the design irritated/amused people in equal measure and as an additional plus, nobody on the circuit I was gigging in played one.  (All these old punk guys with Precisions covered in stickers would be falling over themselves for a noodle and saying how decent it played/sounded.)

Ultimately, it's just a bass.  They all sound pretty much the same.

I think maybe the odd shape would persuade me that I need to try it out, for me being physically comfortable with the instrument is the bottom line - everything else comes afterwards.

NB: I've got an musicman Silhouette which is ergonimically the best guitar I've ever played in terms of feel, position etc. And whatever you think about BMW's they are comfortable to drive.

20 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

Are you inferring because a basswood Sterling (made on a production line in the far east using cheaper labour/hardware) costs £300, that there needs to be some kind of price correction/correlation against a premium product made in the US by Sterling's parent company costing £2,000+, or that basswood isn't any good?

No - being an ignoramus I am not in a position to infer anything. Just that you might expect more expensive materials to be used,, but as as others have pointed out Basswood is a proper wood and there also probably different grades of it.

The responses so far have intrigued me about the Bongo, but confirmed there is no way I should buy one without trying it first - it is just too left field.

4 minutes ago, Beedster said:

Basswood strikes me as a pretty good choice for a bass?

It sounds like a generic wood composite - not from an actual tree. 

My Sterling SB14 is made of Basswood - it's a decent bass but for a £2000 plus I might expect something like Alder.

Thanks for the replies so far. One thing that would put me off is that the body is made of 'basswood' - this is the same wood that my 300quid Sterling is made of.

On the other hand that orange might tip me over the edge.

It certainly looks different.

I am a big fan of Musicman products, but this bass is difficult to try out in the UK(as well as the £2k plus price tag meaning I might have to take leave of my senses)

Has anyone got the experience as to whether this is worth hankering fo?. Any opinions gratefully received.

Bought an amp from David that was as described, and transaction effeciently handled.

The science of sound and pitch is very interesting(if only they could write in actual English), OTOH I believe(don't actually know) that intense low pitches are more likely to kill a person than intense high pitched ones. The human ear may be responsive to bass than treble but this can work both ways. For me listening to it now the bass line of God Save the Queen(or King) cues the crowd to sing-along - as such it works but it is not subtle.