meterman

Love that colour combination 👍😎

Oh wow 😮

I remember one of these coming in the shop I worked in, maybe 10 or 12 years ago. It had black nylon tapewound strings on it and it sounded immense. Unsurprisingly it sold within 48 hours. 
 

Congratulations! Yours looks superb 👍

About 15-16 years ago I bought a 1990’s Danelectro 59 guitar from the bassist of The Selecter. He absolutely insisted we did the deal in the McDonalds at the top of Oxford Street by the Virgin Megastore, which was a first for me, but for all I knew that’s where folks sold their unwanted instruments all the time.
 

Anyhow while we were in there I asked him if he wanted to get anything to eat or drink and he said “nah, not my thing” so we did the deal and both went our separate ways. Weird!

Couple of years later I used the guitar on a session where the drummer from The Selecter was on kit duties and he said it was typical oddball behaviour from him. Never once thought to ask the bassist why it had to be McD’s at the time, and I’ll never know now either. Great guitar though, and he did me a good deal on it.

I use a piece of acoustic foam, the grey type you sometimes find in square panels on recording studio walls. Just a little offcut from one of those. I’ve had the same piece since 1990, just swap it from bass to bass as needed. Tried various different bits of sponge, insulation, etc, but the manky old grey foam is the one for me.

Retro muting!

That looks ace! I’d seen them on websites but they don’t look as good as in your photos. Finish looks great 👍

Just look for any medium scale nickel rounds if they’re your preference. Short scales won’t always work on Mustangs, as I found out in the past.

And definitely, the La Bella Mustang flats are spot on in terms of fit, nice balance of tension as well. I did get a duff set once (the D + G were super bright and zingy, totally at odds with the E + A) but their quality control is generally spot on, don’t rule them out if you ever decide to go down the flats route.

Good luck with whatever you go with 👍 (early 70’s Mustang, quite jealous!)

1 hour ago, Mickeyboro said:

He is actually a humble chap. 

He is really down to earth. Or at least he was when I met him. I sold him a Gibson EB3 and there was no ‘rock star’ airs or graces about him. Dead nice guy. 
 

But yeah, Alan Lancaster’s Mustang! Or his Travis Bean 🤤

This was my main bass for a few years. It’s blue but starting to fade to green a bit on the front now.

10 minutes ago, alyctes said:

I'm beginning to find my index finger on the right hand is sometimes curled tight when I wake up.  So far it's freed up OK without major discomfort.  Has anyone else had this?  (I'm right-handed, and I play fingerstyle or using my thumb.) 

I'm sure this has come up before, but I've searched BC for "trigger finger" and "tendonitis", and not found anything.  The relevant Wikipedia article suggests it will probably go away on its own, eventually.

This used to happen to me, about 20 years ago, except all fingers on both hands. I had a p/t summer job working for a landscaping firm and had to use a hand held leaf blower every morning for weeks, but my hands were seizing up. I had to pack the landscaping in as I thought it was permanent damage. Probably just the vibrations from the machinery.

I had one acupuncture session and did alternate hot and cold packs, but it lasted for months. It went away eventually but it was pretty scary waking up every morning with my hands all curled up and locked.

I hope it passes quickly for you.

Assuming you’re in the UK, I’m going to give another shout for Brian / earlpillanz on ebay. He’s done 4 custom pickguards for me and they’ve all been good quality, inexpensive and a fast turnaround too. Whether or not he can do a 60’s tort exactly like you’d like it, I couldn’t say but it would be worth sending him a message via ebay. 
 

Recently I fancied some 60’s-ish tort on my cheapie jazz bass but all the really good looking guards were costing close to the price of my bass 😮 So I caved in and got one from a local seller on ebay for €10. Looks alright on the bass, but not super 60’s by any stretch.

Oh and £100 for what looks like the cheap tort that’s all over Amazon and ebay for a tenner is really bad service. I’m sorry to hear you had to go through that. Is there no way to do a PayPal claim or something?

I used to do most of my gigs ‘straight’ due to my meds regime, but once or twice I’d have a beer before a show and it would be okay. But on big gigs I’d save alcochol for afterwards. 
 

The few exceptions to that rule ended up being pretty messy, from what I can remember.
 

I used to get Carol Kaye to bite my nails down to the quick for me, but when she put her prices up I had to do it myself.

Shame, because she had a real flair for it. But I’m not flipping made of money. 

On 08/06/2022 at 22:09, stewblack said:

Been wondering about these for a little while. There's a beauty on sale here in a natural finish, but I've always hankered after a green one tricked out with ashtrays. One came up suspiciously cheap on the 'bay so I nabbed it.

It's actually very nice. I swapped the plate because a white plate just looks like a place holder while they wait for the tort to come back into stock! An old Harley Benton one I had lying around fitted after a little judicious shaving with a Stanley knife.

 

Not too heavy, plays well, lovely neck...but...an annoying audible vibration noise which took me a while to diagnose. In the end it was a machine head very slightly loose. Sorted that and reassembled it. Beautiful now, sounds like a dream. It's easily as good as folks say.

 

Even the headstock which I know puts some of you off (it did me) looks so much nicer in the flesh - although you'll have to take my word for that!

 

 

That is handsome! Wouldn’t say no to one myself, that colour is ace 👍

For bass, not so much. But I did some recording sessions last month and the temperature was 32 degrees C in the room I was in and the guitars and drums needed retuning a few times.

Not usually a problem during winter but the winters here are mild and instruments don’t seem to mind.

1 hour ago, Dad3353 said:

 

My issue with some (most..?) retractables was hitting the rim of the snare, which tended, over time, to crush, or even bend, the tube and they would no longer retract..! As I mentioned, I'm not a heavy hitter, but the cheaper brushes would end up as a metal shower at the most inconvenient times. I've not had a failure from fixed brushes, ever. Just lucky, perhaps. 

Fair point, that. Repeated rimshots will either dent the metal tube or at the very least chew up the rubber or the plastic over time. I’m not a heavy hitter either but I’ve never had a pair of wire brushes disintegrate on me. I had a cheapo plastic set of nylon brushes fall apart in rehearsal one time only, but they weren’t something I’d have gigged with anyway.

Buy a decent pair to start off with and they should last for years.

I’ve had a pair of Pro Mark wire retractable brushes for years and they’ve been great. Gigs, studio sessions, you name it, they’ve been rock solid. Recorded with them today in fact, they’re still doing the business 7 or 8 years on.

Otherwise, Flix do many different gauges of nylon brushes and again, they seem to last years in my experience. 
 

Vic Firth, Vater, Regal Tip etc all do quality brushes. I’d rate any of the major companies for decent brushes 👍

I never had any particular bass player in mind when I bought my first bass, I just needed one to do some studio recordings with. I bought the cheapest bass in the shop, and it was horrible 60’s tat really but it did the job.

The only player influences I ever had when buying any of my basses was when I bought a Hofner violin bass, and it was specifically Aston Barrett and Robbie Shakespeare who’d used them that tipped it for me. Otherwise I’ve never really been fussed. That’s probably the wrong thing to admit here I guess 😂

I used to, along with studio work. Sometimes it was a bit stressful if there were lean times, but I’d got into the habit of putting earnings away to tide myself over.

The pandemic saw off all my 2020 live work, then emigration and health issues seem to finished off my gigging for good. Never say never and all that, but I’d be surprised if I got back into it again now. But from 1984 till xmas 2019 wasn’t a bad run, and I reckon I was pretty lucky to have fluked it for as long as I did. 

4 hours ago, Beer of the Bass said:

Was Holger Csukay's bass with Can a Musicmaster, or one of the other short scale Fenders?

His first electric bass with Can was a 1960s Fender Mustang. Looking at old live footage he may have got his Fender Jazz in 1971 or 72 but the earlier stuff is the white Mustang bass with the weird mods done to it.

I bought this 1/2 size kids P bass from a charity shop pretty much because I liked the colour. Also it was less than £5 which might have swayed me...

I’m fully aware that these things are regarded as trash but still use it now, it actually records really well.

Reggae artist Pachyman definitely uses a Fender Musicmaster bass on a lot of his recordings. Not sure what’s on Spotify cause I’m not on there but there’s plenty videos on YT:

And there’s a band called Black Sea Dahu that use Musicmaster basses live and in the studio. Again, I couldn’t say what’s definitely a Musicmaster on any of their tunes on Spotify but there’s clips of them live with an early 70’s one. 
 

That Air track on “Moon Safari” was recorded with a 1960’s Hofner violin bass that Nicolas Godin had on loan from a friend in Paris. There’s an interview online somewhere where he mentioned it had old black nylon tapewounds on, and that he tried to buy the bass but his friend wasn’t selling it. Afterwards he got a violin bass and another Hofner (similar to the one Tina Weymouth used), possibly a Club bass? 

I can’t find that particular interview on this phone, but he briefly mentions the Hofner in a Red Bull Music Academy interview here:

https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/nicolas-godin-lecture

My humble jazz, a cheap B-stock Squier Affinity in Charcoal Frost Metallic. Haven’t got the blingy chrome covers for it yet but I will. Nobody will ever accuse me of having good taste 😂

1 hour ago, Clarky said:

NBD. 2006 CIJ Mustang in the very rare sunburst paint scheme (most are oly white or fiesta red).

 

I bought this before the Easter bank holiday, only for a dream s/s bass to appear (see next post) so may have to sell this on quickly even though its fab 😬

 

I had both the Oly White and Fiesta Red ones but would have definitely gone for the sunburst if I’d found one. Looks ace! 

16 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

The UFO Club.

 

 

That, and possibly Middle Earth, would have been my first picks 👍 Or the Cromwell. Or the Bag Of Nails. Or Ally Pally ‘67...