Shaggy

5 hours ago, Beedster said:

So following the stocktake I have done some experimentation

 

The rosewood neck on the blue Precision (second top) works best on the natural Enfield

The ebony Jazz neck on the natural Precision (top) works best on the 3TSB Enfield

The Status neck works best on the Blue Precision, in fact surprisingly well

The maple fretless neck works best on the natural Precision 

 

The rest all work very well as they are. Neck body combinations are like rhythm sections, more about magical chemistry than objective quality 👍 

OK, that’s definitely a cue for more pictures......😉

On 12/05/2023 at 18:07, Rayman said:

An hour on my Thunderbird put a smile back on my face.......

 

I love it.

Ah there you have it, no other explanation needed.....😉

Circa 1977 an anonymous neighbour had the Police on us for our punk band practicing too loudly in my Mam & Dads garage. 🙁

These days there so many ways to play silently / quietly / virtually I don’t think there’s any excuse.  Unless you’re a church organist.......

2 hours ago, horrorshowbass said:

What are the body/neck/fretboard woods?

Lovely bass

Swamp ash body, flame maple top (proper cap, not a veneer)with ebony pinstripe in between.

Neck - looks like ovangkol (they changed around then; it’s wenge on my 1998 FNA but ovangkol on my 2001 Streamer LX Jazzman), wenge board, bell brass frets.

Really fabulous basses - I have very similar as above - and they’re all i gig with these days.  Seller is a great chap to deal with too 👍. 

I hadn’t realised Gordon Smith were still making guitars & basses; I used to own a mid-‘80’s GS Galaxy semi, one of the very few basses that I’ve regretted moving on.   They had a reputation back then for making quite plain, unfussy instruments, the designs rather derivative of popular Fender & Gibson models, but hand-built to a very high standard.    Can’t say I’m that fussed on the bass in the OP, but glad to see they’re still around and hopefully the quality is still top notch.

10 hours ago, Oldman said:

and is it a full neck thru? The five retaining Bolts/screws are the clue.

Doh!  🤭. maybe I should have looked through all the pics.....

6 hours ago, 6feet7 said:

It was a very boring natural finish, just ash I think. No maple top. 
It’s a bolt on neck

👍 thanks for info

2 minutes ago, 6feet7 said:

Thats my old bass (The Bass Gallery sold it for me) which I had professionally sprayed with Vauxhall metallic lime green. If I hadn't just bought a new bass I'd have had it back

GLWTS

Out of interest; what was the original finish, and is it a full neck thru?  (the couple of these I’ve seen before I think were natural finish ash body / maple top).

4 hours ago, MacDaddy said:

A rock guitarist plays 3 chords to 1,000 people, a jazz guitarist plays 1,000 chords to 3 people 😜

More than a modicum of truth in that, although the most romantic memories of my late teens / early 20”s were spent at Cambridge Jazz club in the early 1980’s (“The man in the moon“ on Norfolk St.), which was always completely packed out.

Listening to good Jazz music live is an amazing experience, but for some reason I simply can’t do it in the house - of all the many hundreds of CD’s I own, only one is a Jazz one (almost inevitably; Miles Davis “Kind of blue”).

5 minutes ago, Waddo Soqable said:

That'll just go "Duh.."

( there you go, saved you all the bother.. 😁) 

Common misconception!   I think mainly as they’re normally strung with flats, with which they sound quite convincingly double-bassy but not much else, whereas IMHO they’re nicer with rounds to really bring out the harmonics and top end.  I have a ‘58 and a “69 “D”.

For me - like a few above I’d love to try a Ric 4005, I reckon the coolest looking bass ever made.    Though I have heard the tone described as “thin sounding and disappointing”.

Otherwise, wouldn’t mind a go on a Gus.

I’m sure I’m stating the obvious here, but the carrying handle looks offset with the intention of the bass being placed in the case with body to the left of the case and with neck to the right (as you look at the case with it open) - which is probably the norm for a leftie - rather than with the usual body to the right of the case.    The neck support looks like it can  be moved to the other side of the case to achieve this. 🙂

Sounds like a fortunate blend of like minds and good planning, nice one 👍.  

Some of the musician websites and potential for online playing together in virtual rooms are fantastically useful of course.  But personally (and bring old and grumpy 😠) I find that every new development in social media and personal communications relentlessly increases one’s exposure to other people’s verbal diarrhoea.  Which is why I don’t do any of it, beyond texting.

’Course, when I were a lad it were all done wi’ little cards in t’ local music shop.   And all this were fields........

16, in a pub in Cambridge I can’t recall the name of.  It was 1977 and I think we were the only gigging punk band in Cambridge at the time....

Kalamazoo KB1 through Carlsboro Stingray 100 and homemade 4x12 cab

2 hours ago, Bassassin said:

 

To be fair they weren't all sh!t - I've had one or two Columbuses they played fine after a proper setup. Pickups were rubbish, though.

The pickups were definitely the weakest component; the magnetic field on mine were so feeble than an ant carrying a staple could have easily walked across both pickups without losing the staple.   At age 17 I actually carried out my very first ever bass mod on it, replacing the neck pickup with a Gibson mudbucker taken out of my first bass (a short scale Kalamazoo KB1) - which made it into a pretty decent dub-monster.    But it’s still the only one of my basses that I remember with zero affection. 🤔

On 25/04/2023 at 19:35, Owen said:

My first bass was a Columbus. It was absolutely dire. 

My second bass, Columbus JB copy.   Beyond awful.

Hopefully no one will be suckered into buying the one in the OP.   As the saying goes; “you can’t polish a turd......”

No “Bermuda shorts” scale neck then? 🏝

I’ll get my coat......

Seriously, great find.  👍

20 minutes ago, 3below said:

I owned a Kimbara strat copy sometime around 1977.  Maple neck, natural body with nice grain, a well made guitar very playable.

Bells catalogue 1977 (I perused my copy so often at the tine I still remember most of the models listed!)

I remember Kimbaras standing out from the other ‘70’s copies by having really attractive wood for the bodies, usually Sen wood (Japanese ash).

This is nice, though not that special. 

On 18/04/2023 at 14:32, BigRedX said:

 

You know, I'd never considered that anyone might mistake these screws for pickup height adjustment, but you could well be right.

 

On my Kramer the wood of the surrounds had split once on each surround. Of course whatever the reason for the split occurring it wasn't helped by the fact that the wood for the surrounds is very thin and at the point where the splits happen there is more hole than wood. Here's a photo of mine where you can quite clearly see the wood has split on the neck pickup surround (its on the other one too but not as obvious):

 

 

Fabulous grain on that, BigRedX!    They were indeed known for the fragility of the pickup surrounds; my 650B has them intact, but on my 450B fretless they’re bust.

Big shame these weren’t more popular, which as ever largely comes down to what prominent bassists were playing / endorsing at the time.  As I recall Nick Lowe favoured a 450B, who was no slouch on bass.

4 hours ago, toneknob said:

mostly D.

as is this, I think.....

From Wikipedia re “You can call me Al” -

The names in the song came from an incident at a party that Simon went to with his then-wife Peggy Harper. French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who was attending the same party, mistakenly referred to Paul as "Al" and to Peggy as "Betty", inspiring Simon to write a song.[2][3]

Jon Pareles noted that the lyrics can be interpreted as describing a man experiencing a midlife crisis[4] ("Where's my wife and family? What if I die here? Who'll be my role model?"). However, as Simon himself explained during the Graceland episode of the Classic Albums documentary series, by the third verse the lyrics move from a generic portrait-like perspective to a personal and autobiographical one, as he describes his journey to South Africa which inspired the entire album.[5]

The song opens simply, with its protagonist wondering aloud why his life is difficult, amid other questions. Simon structured the song's lyrics in a way that listeners would be given the simplest information first, before getting abstract with his imagery in the song's third verse: "Because there's been a structure, [...] those abstract images, they will come down and fall into one of the slots that the mind has already made up about the structure of the song."

So it was all obvious, really. 😉

”A winter shade of pale” really is pretty much random lyrics stuck together.  

People have done full PhD theses on songs like Eleanor Rigby - which I think rather bemused McCartney

On 09/04/2023 at 01:37, chris_b said:

Hey @Shaggy. . . . that's exactly the rig I had.

 

I started with a Mesa 400+ then went to an Ampeg SVT-3PRO.  Fabulous sound and volume.

 

I also looked at the 1516 but had to say no, I couldn't fit it into my car.

 

A man of taste sir! 👍. Beautiful bass too, spoilt only by having one string too many 😉

I did used to gig the 1516 or 2x15 when I had a huge Mondeo estate, but yes the 2x10 plus 1x15 is very much more portable.

There are so many.   Cover of “Comfortably Numb” by The Scissor Sisters springs to mind.

Also that awful dirgey cover  of “Mad world” a few years ago that spawned a thousand other awful dirgey covers - it would depress me too much to google who it was (though I guess excluded from the thread as he was neither great or good)

Worst one for me - and everyone here will disagree with this, as for some reason it’s regarded as a classic - is Joe Cocker’s “With a little help from my friends”.  I have to turn the radio off if it comes on......

Edit: Actually no, I have wronged poor old JC.   I have a cheapo Christmas compilation CD with a cover of “Fairytale of New York” sung by Máire Brennan of Clannad (who makes a pretty decent stab of her part) and Ronan Keating (who really, really doesn’t)....🙁

Kevin send me a boxed set of Still Game DVD’s for free and gratis, wouldn’t even accept postage.   Looking at posts above, the man clearly makes a habit of this saintly behaviour..........😇.   I can only conclude that it’s either down to too much whisky 🥃, or Kevin is an unbelievably nice and generous bloke.

Whatever - a true BC legend! 👍

1 hour ago, Beedster said:

Not sure I’m allowed to say this these days……

 

But that’s a real man’s rig 👍

Lol - you can still say it in Wales........🐏

3 hours ago, chris_b said:

 

I used a Mesa 210EV, 115EV stack for many years. That combination proved to me that mixing some cabs can work.

 

I'd still be using it but for the fact that 2 x 90+ lbs cabs finally herniated a disk in my lower back!

 

Be safe!!

Likewise! 🙂. 

With current (not very loud) band I’m now using Ashdown 1x15 and 4x8 mini-cabs with Neo drivers; superbly practical / portable, but just doesn’t move the air in the way the Mesa stack did. 🙁  

Mind, if I had a roadie it’d be the Diesel 1516 every time.....