Al Heeley

desktop inkjet printer onto clear adhesive paper from www.craftycomputerpaper.com let it dry well, stick onto the case, then 3 or 4 light coats of clear acrylic spray lacquer to seal it all. Works a treat.

Chorus pedal build for fellow bassist

it won't rot the wood but it is free of preservatives so will go rancid in time if there's too much soaked in there. Danish is great for oil-finishing a body - it will discolour a maple board but should be fine on rosewood or ebony. I;m guessing my old magic can was that or boiled linseed.

I have my Bubinga P-bass home build with replacement P-bass neck you are welcome to borrow, got SD pickups, weighs a tonne but very solid thump. Huddersfield area pretty close to you.

its his technique - i like that bit of percussive thrrupp from a low action and an aggressive finger style

[quote name='thodrik' post='1251333' date='May 31 2011, 12:27 PM']...unless you are playing with 2 guitarists using Mesa Dual Rectifiers through a full stack.[/quote] Heh, one of our guitarists plays a Les Paul thru a mesa dual recto but the other uses a Dean Razorback through a Marshall half stack. I hate to get left out of it but we can no longer hear the drummer. This is not always a bad thing...

I find some venues have a low resonant frequency that really booms when you play. I start with eq flat then find the booming freq and cut it a bit, then have a little boost in the lows and a bit more top for bite. Sometimes I drop the mids a touch as the Stingray and Hartke cabs tend to be already very strong in the mid frequencies, while this really allows the bass to sit up int he mix, it can sound a bit 'boxy' if overdone. the active (3band) eqs on the Stingray are hugely effective though so are easy to tweak on the fly during a gig.

Toying with the idea of a general gear upgrade, I've always yearned for a Trace elliot system since their influence on 80's music when I first started learning the bass - the practice rooms near us has a small Trace stack that sounds great with my Stingray. At the moment I have a Peavey Tour 450 head into a Hartke XL410 cab and a Hartke XL115 cab. In larger venues it's peaking out to get sufficient volume, which is a bit surprising, I thought 450W would be easily enough for mid size pub gigs, but I guess it's down to speaker/cab efficiencies. The current setup sound can be really good in some venues but lacklustre on other nights, I guess that's an EQ thing. I like the punchy mids of the Hartke 4x10 and the 'Ray combination. Anyway, there's a small Trace Elliot head (AH600-7) whichj will give me a little more power into 4Ohms than the Peavey, and I quite like the look of the Trace Elliot 1015H cab which combines 2 x 10 speakers with \ 1 x 15 inch as well as a horn, at 800W/4 ohms. Now I've heard many debates about using same amp to power both 10" and 15" speakers at the same time, and the negatives are down to the different resonant frequencies of a 10" cone sometimes acting to interfere with or cancel some of the frequencies of a 15" cone, so you don't get such a balanced response, or maybe some frequency notches that a single 4 x 10 on its own will not have. When I play a gig through the 4 x 10 without the 15" cab it definitely lacks the big low end push of air I get with the 15 but on its own the 15 is a bit woolly for my liking. If you have been bothered to read this far, I'd like to know what the feeling is about the Trace 1015H cab over the 1048 4 x 10, does the larger speaker add a bit more low end authority or is this a popular myth? Also any thoughts on the Trace AH600-7 amp over my current Tour 450?

I bought a JAN2 for my Warmoth gecko 5-string as I was never particularly happy with the nut height when i put it together, and a proper luthier helped me set it up. I spent a long time tinkering with the neck and the action and the saddles and nut height, now its sweet as a ...a nut, and the JAN has been a great help in dialling on a really slick low action. Construction looks a little less than robust but mine's lasted well so far.

I'll take the red and the scooby slippers

I've put together a few tubescreamer circuits swapping out the input capacitor for a larger one to let more of the bass frequencies through. This makes them great for bass overdrive, though no blend knob. I put the normal cap and the bass cap on a mini toggle switch so you can then use the pedal for either bass or lead. Using the bass cap for lead gives a huge thick overdrive sound instead of the characteristic mid boost associated with a Tubescreamer pedal. If this sort of stuff interests you, you can find a lot more info on AMZ Muzique.com site, look for tubescreamer phat mod

quick mockup

One gripe I cannot fathom is Fender's anal 'Lets-Hide-The-Truss-Rod' game. Its a super slim neck and it's possibly prone to needing a bit of tweaking, so why bury the truss rod adjustment under the pickguard, just to stay true to 70's J-bass styling? I find this entirely annoying. OK its not a massive job to remove pickguard and carefully insert flat-bladed screwdriver in, but getting enough torque to tweak it is not particularly easy. It would have been so much more sensible to leave the truss rod adjustment at the headstock end. Having griped about that, I'm really impressed with the slim neck and punchy pups, though I am also getting a bit of mains buzz in the practice room. This is usually down to ring mains lighting with dimmers, they create a racket if the wiring is not isolated.

if they say use it for the hardware for lubricating as well, then I'm guessing its a mineral oil. I prefer the tung or linseed approach to feed into the pores and seal them. That old number one fretboard conditioner can was my magic mojo, so sad to not find any more around. It had more the apprarance of danish oil, forming solid gummy bits around the screw cap after a while, so it was definitely a polymer oil type like tung or linseed.....

not so much a tendency but a potential - it has been known but I've never encountered it myself or heard of anyone else actually experiencing it. Hang rags out on a line to dry, dont leave them crumpled up in a bin full of dry sawdust and gelignite.

As of this evening I am the proud owner of a new Japanese Geddy Lee JB. Truly average shop setup quickly tweaked and the neck is sublime, thin and fast, very low action with no buzz; I thought my Stingray was good! Finish quality is excellent. Let's see if it drifts. Not played very loud yet but it feels 'All There', will get a better work out at tomoz practice. (Apologies for the spindly six string content) I would like to say though that the access to the truss rod adjustment under the scratchplate in this day and age with an instrument of this price is stupid stupid stupid. What were they thinking?

I've heard others recommend Bore Oil, might give this a try, just pretty expensive for a tiny bottle but I guess it lasts a few years.

linseed - like raw tung oil, will not dry properly unless it is boiled and treated with dryers, I don't know if neat linseed from DIY outlets is the right thing to use.

Help - I've had this little can of fingerboard oil for years and years, it's the best thing ever for conditioning fretboards, marvellous stuff, but it's run out and I can't find anywhere that sells it. Its a mix of linseed oil and lemon grass, not that naptha spirit stuff with lemon perfume added to it. I rub it in to fretboards, let it soak then buff off any excess, brings out a marvellos rich shine and smooth finish, dries hard and protects the wood. Company on the back says Logic International, Gwent but I can't find anything on the internet. Anyone know of this product? Whaere I can get some more? Suitable alternative to do the same job? Thanks!

If it cannot be removed by lem-oil type cleaner/degreaser then careful sanding with scotchbrite pad or fine wire wool will help. Once purdy again you can seal it with Tru-Oil. This needs to be wiped on with a drop or two on a clean rag, rubbed well into the wood, allow 30 mins to dry then rub in a bit more. repeat several times over a couple of days to build up a silky hard lustre. I'll say that again as it excites me. Silky hard lustre. The trick is maybe 10 to 15 really light coats rubbed well in then left to harden. Tru-oil is a boiled linseed derivative from Birchwood Casey sold to condition gunstocks. For natural looking bass necks and bodies it is the doggys doo dahs.