Saul Panzer

I love a good Harley Benton, I'm already toying with the idea of getting another but that imho is a butt ugly bass to rival a Rickenbacker. I seem to be in the minority with opinions like that, I doubt you'll be disappointed regardless. All the HB stuff I've seen and played have been great value.

Listening to some background reggae with my breakfast.

After another look at the first pic it makes me wonder how it'd look with the cream stripped off, if the grain on that wood looked right and had a dark scruffy beaten mahogany type look to it you'd have a super ancient bluesy looking instrument. That neck, hardware and ancient pickup look ready to make a deal at the crossroads.

That current decal gives me 'Sailor Jerry' vibes, the old style sailor/military tattoos. Personally I'd probably keep it stock but there's a 50 pack of Sailor Jerry decals on amazon for about £10 with delivery that would be tempting me. I don't know if I can link to amazon on here but if you search 'Sailor Jerry stickers' it's the first result there to see what I'd be thinking...maybe just the pick guard covered with the sailor girls or something similar.

I've always liked Rick Moranis doing his vocals in Little shop of horrors, side by side with Levi Stubbs is a solid duo to my ears.

I can't speak for the quality of them, though the various reviews I've seen looked decent if you're okay doing a little fret cleanup..with that covered, if I was going to spend bare minimum... https://uk.glarrymusic.com/glarry-jazz-electric-bass-guitar-p6.html and then hit amazon for a better color pickguard https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=jazz+bass+pickguard&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 That'd be under £100, I guess at some point you'd want to change bits on the bass like the tuners, pickups, maybe some wood stainer if the fingerboard is actually lighter than you'd want..all things that could wait until more money was on the table.

I put on a new set of flats as soon as I got it home, the ones it came with were actually rusted..heavily on the D and G.

I think I have some kind of synesthesia, when I listen to something my brain does a weird translation into a kind of moving 3d landscape map with it. I can listen to most things and think they're okay but other things just 'look' more appealing to me even if they're in a genre I'm not big on. * Such as I'm not a huge fan of crazy jazz music but a lot of the Charles Mingus stuff has a weird angle to me like a slanted bumpy road and I like that. * Iron Maiden songs are often a deep winding canyon I go through where similar classic metal is more flat. * Ennio Morricone's The wild horde is a weird all encompassing visual mess that messes with my peripheral eyesight and I love that song even though I don't much like the genre.

I'm still at the super new stage so for me it's a case of breaking down the song into its sections (intro, verses, chorus etc.) and kind of brute forcing it if trying by ear. After a while you pick up on the looping patterns and can spend your time memorizing a single pattern instead of the whole song..repeat that for the other parts and then it's a case of putting them in order to play the song. I had trouble finding decent tabs, they're usually just the famous catchy piece of a song. Anyway I bumped into this from a YouTube channel while learning 'Your Love by the Outfield', it sounds accurate enough to me though better players can chime in if they disagree. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1R_qUfsRNwrNMhHsmkH6Q5B5zSi072KlF Point is, I looked through the tabs/music and it helped me visualize how parts were broken down and fitted together to make the whole song. If you're somewhat tech savvy you can also try to split the audio to separate the bass track from the rest of the song if it's not too messy..this has been hit or miss though tbh.

I like it, always seems nice to own something with a quirk that makes it unique..doubt you'll see another bass with that exact mark on it. Makes me think of full metal jacket for some reason.. "This is my Bass. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My Bass is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life."

Thanks for the new tips! [Bit of an update] I wanted to test out the low hanging fruit so I removed the neck and fitted a test shim to the back of the neck pocket (slice of old plastic card), refitted the neck and the angle was massively changed. I had to raise the saddle way up just to stop the strings sitting on the last fret. I removed the neck again and changed the test shim to one half the thickness, refitted the neck and checked again, the strings were at a decent enough height now..not counting the discrepancy caused by the bow in the neck which was annoying. I haven't got much in the way of tools, clamps and such so I removed the neck with the plan of rigging something out whatever I could find. I got delayed on that due to life stuff getting in the way, leaving the neck sat detached. When I finally got back to it I looked down the neck to make a plan and it had mostly straightened out by itself (even with the strings off it didn't do that while attached). So I tried moving the truss rod back and forth, figuring I could at least make sure it moved freely even if to little effect. It seemed to work well enough now, adding a little bow or relief as needed. I removed the shim and refitted the neck, I restrung the guitar and tuned up. The neck had a slight bow but I was able to get that sorted this time, the saddle needed to be lowered all the way down again. After tuning up and checking the intonation all seemed to be good, the strings are still too high for what I want at around 2-2.5mm but the neck is consistent now. I've been playing around on it, it's not terrible now..not amazing but playable, the fret spacing feels long and weird going from 24 to 20 frets but I guess that's to be expected, perhaps it's just due to the different neck profile. When I get the time I'm planning to fit a full sized shim in the neck pocket to raise the fret board but not change the overall angle, I think that will get my action down to where I want it without bottoming out the entire saddle and I'll have a bargain of a jazz bass. Thanks a lot for all the tips and info everyone, lessons have been learned and I'm in a better place regarding modding and maintenance now.

Thanks for the info, I think I might have a go at both..try to straighten out the neck and then maybe give the shim a go if things still seem to high. Regarding the clamping, did you both clamp it just for turning the truss or leave yours clamped for a period of time?

Hi, I'm completely new at stuff like this so I thought I'd ask around on here for advice. I picked up a super cheap jazz bass today and I'm having an issue getting the action low enough to be playable. It was already far from set up when I picked it up so I've been playing around with the neck and saddle just to see if it's even possible to get the action relatively low before attempting to get it set up. When I got it the neck was curved up huge amount, the picture below shows the neck as close to straight as I've been able to get it with the truss rod. I've been unable to get it actually straight or even bowed back, the rod is taking some serious cranking force if I want to move it any more. Is this something I should just keep going with despite the creaks and groans or is that just asking for a broken rod? My gut is telling me I'm going to break it and that the neck has just set like this over time and needs replacing. I don't think the bass is super old, it has just been sat unused for however long. Is that something any of you have experienced or seen happen? At the saddle end I lowered everything as much as possible just to see how low things could go at the extreme, even at the lowest I'm showing 5-6mm from the 9th fret upwards. At this height it's unusable for me so I want to get this sorted before I even get around to the other things. I looked around for similar problems and have seen people mention putting something between the neck and body to tilt it back, I'm not sure how much of a difference that would make with the curve in the neck as it is. Any recommendations would be great, I brought it as something to beat on and test out things like truss adjustments, changing electronics and such. It's a project piece and I'd like to get it to a playable state eventually.

I love my cheap Harley Benton, it's my first bass so I've got no comparison but for a little over £200 as B-stock it feels good, looks good, plays good. I'm picking up a super cheap Cruiser jazz bass this weekend, it's going to be my practice piece for changing a neck, pickups and such..for the price it's basically disposable, still hope it's fun to play though.

Maybe I'm late to the party but I recently found the 'Daryl's House' stuff on Youtube, it's Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates with various guest artists. There's been a bunch of people playing live stuff of their own and covers on there, I saw Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy doing this old soul classic and was pretty impressed having only heard the FOB pop stuff before.

Sounds super crisp, I've seen a couple of their videos around and some of Henriks interviews and vlog type videos. I'm not a fan of that particular bass personally, he has a more traditional looking signature one that I like. I think Janek Gwizdala owns the prototype or first production model, he was playing it on his twitch stream the other day..seems versatile. I just had a search, I think this was the first videos of theirs I saw..never heard a bass used in a bluegrass type way before this, great song.

I'm not much of a video guy so take this is a total amateur recommendation. I've played around with a few editing tools and the one I enjoyed the most was Filmora, it was easy to use and had a load of functions that were mainly drag and drop, a store with all kinds of effects/effect sets. It isn't free, there's a yearly subscription but it's a lot less that most of the others I looked at (the most expensive one was less than £100 a year when I checked last). https://filmora.wondershare.com/?ic_source=navigation They let you try it for free (but watermark the video until you're a paid user I think), might be worth a couple minutes to see if it'll do what you want.

3/10 including Homer, officially out of touch with celebrity culture I guess.

I've been subscribed to his podcast for several months, they've been interesting yeah if a little sporadic. Some nice bits about the music 'biz' and being a session musician. Janek Gwizdala and his wife also do a bass podcast called Two Bass Hit for anyone looking for other bass related podcasts, more casual chat about playing for a living as they do than interviews though.

I don't have a physical amp, I'm hooking up to my PC atm so throwing in all the effects is free and trivial with my Guitarix software plug-ins. As a new player I'm trying to avoid them for the most part to get my basics down but I have played around a fair bit. Overall I don't find effects on bass to be as useful as with regular guitars but that's maybe just the noob talking. I've enjoyed playing around with the various phase and octave effects more than the others and it sounds interesting if not 'good'. I find the issue for me is that any effects take away from the bass filling it's common bottom end role so far.

Injury, I couldn't do the work I used to and had to pay bills while I recovered (being able to limp your way to a 20 minute job center appointment equaled being capable of 12 hour manual labor shifts to the government so no financial help there). Luckily I had a decent collection of regular guitars/saxophones to sell which supplemented the bits of cash in hand I was able to do.

I sold my 6 string collection on gumtree when I needed the cash, it's fine for getting in touch with buyers but stick to cash on collection imho. Lots of the paypal/western union scammers tried to do their thing. Also a lot of genuine buyers too though, it's just a thing you need to deal with if you're doing any selling online. I've had more problems via. Ebay with people trying to claim the item never arrived despite signing for it and getting paypal to freeze funds. My personal method now is listing on Gumtree, Freeads and Preloved as collection only, I've heard Facebook is okay as well by using the market place thing they have. I haven't tried it personally but I've got family members who list stuff all the time and have people drop by to pick up and pay cash.

Thanks, StudyBass looks good. I'll be checking that out over the weekend. I'm a little on the fence about SBL he's definitely marmite yeah. I don't mind him but I've only seen his more clickbaity stuff on youtube, I haven't gotten around to doing his free trial yet which I guess is where the knowledge is hidden. I've just been putting off the technical learning stuff in favor of getting my left and right hands to be remotely usable and consistent. I'm doing metronome work to get an even sound on my plucking hand with strength and spread exercises so I can use more than 1 finger on the frets without it sounding like a sloppy buzzing mess. Thanks for the tips and encouragement.

I think a small practice amp is going to be ample for quite a while, once the money starts coming in I'll have a look. It's depressing to shop around when you can't afford stuff. I saved for a couple months extra to get the bass I did, I was drooling over it since last year. No current plans to branch out, this one still makes me grin like a moron each time I pick it up and practice. I'll have to add Three Little Birds to my list, I've been having a go at 'one more reggae for the road' for now. I need to toughen up my hands, I've got no strength it seems.

I got my first bass via. UPS last week, it turned up fine..from Germany to my place. No box damage and the guy didn't even take it out of the van in the rain until I opened the door. I've also shipped and received a lot of pricey tech with Royal Mail (signed) and never had an issue. It's always a gamble with any courier service, having worked in a couple dispatch centers for various courier companies I've seen what happens to boxes if the wrong person there is having a bad day..throwing stuff as hard as they can into the back of the trailer is a common enough stress relief sadly.