maxrossell

[quote name='bassjamm' post='698089' date='Jan 1 2010, 04:44 PM']Thanks for your help there kind sir. That's all more or less along the lines I was thinking of and reading about anyway. The body is black, so I guess I'm going to want to take the shin away a bit and get a duller look about to give the feel of age. That's what I'm after, an aged look, not a battered up pile of junk. Where you say the following though, how long would the pick guard need burying for, and what kind of effect would it give? I've got a good idea as to what I like the look of though, and there's plenty of pictures online to find inspiration from I know. It's just a case of learning how to do it without knackering the thing up. There's a guy on youtube who's got some pretty cool 'how to' videos on relicing. He's using a full on power sander to do parts of it. He get some pretty cool finishes, but I'm worried that it could be too easy to go too far too quickly with that method. Hmm... Also, you mentioned staining. I'm guess the stain only really needs applying to the exposed wood and under coats etc? Not the whole lot? Would It be worth putting a Nitro finish on to the body then? Although, I guess that's just making more/hard work for myself. Thanks though maxrossell. Jamie[/quote] In order: Black is an easy colour to relic - or rather it's hard to get it wrong. Scuff it up, like you said, take a bit of the shine off it. Don't take [i]all[/i] the shine off it though, you're not going for a matt finish. I don't actually think you should bury the pickguard. That's an extreme example of what you can do, but on balance it probably wouldn't have a particularly impressive effect. Get a mint green pickguard, round off the edges a bit, scuff it up, rub some stain into it then clean it up, that's about the best you can do with plastic. Ignore "how to" videos on youtube. I've yet to see one where the achieved effect is even vaguely credible. People who relic guitars for a living charge hundreds for a reason - it's way more difficult than just blasting the thing with an orbital sander or stabbing it with a screwdriver. 99% of it is done by hand because, as I said, the whole thing is a buildup of subtle layers of ageing. People who do it professionally do hours of research, and the effects they apply are not random. You'd apply stain to the whole thing. If you rough the paint up first the stain will take better, but you have to bear in mind that the stain will take far more on the wood than it will on the paintwork so you'll have to judge it carefully. Use very small amounts of stain and work slowly. Maybe dilute the stain some so you're not putting on too much at a time. And no, you absolutely don't want to be spending a lot of money on nitro paints and clears. This is your first project, so at this point it would be little more than a waste of money. One thing at a time. Relic this one, then maybe refinish the next one once you're more confident. Or if you absolutely want to refinish this one, use poly paints because if you make a mistake it won't be as costly. But don't take on too many things at once.

When taking to musicians about potentially working together I literally never ask them if they know any theory. I don't know many people who do. That's possibly because in the alternative music community people who are self-taught and know relatively little theory far outnumber those who can read music, but also because some of the best musicians I've ever worked with wouldn't have known a minor 7th if it walked up and smacked them in the face. I've picked up quite a lot of theory over the years, enough to build chords and scales and identify keys and all that guff, but they've only actually helped me to communicate with people who also knew that stuff. They haven't improved my playing, and they're all but pointless when I'm talking to most of the people I regularly make music with. If I didn't know any at all, I certainly wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

[quote name='bassjamm' post='697966' date='Jan 1 2010, 02:26 PM']Well I have sent off for a few quotes for the routing, so that's probably the road I'll go down for it. But if I thought I was up to the job, I'd give it a go. As for the board, It's Maple. I was thinking about putting mother of pearl block inlays in, as opposed to the black dots. Not sure yet, but I'll most probably not do that and go for the worn look instead. Any suggestions on specific tools and/or products to stain and wear the woods? Thanks Jamie[/quote] Sandpaper and T-cut, really. Sandpaper to wear down the paint, and T-cut to polish it back up so it has a natural patina. Where you want to stain the wood, get a dark brown stain, apply it on the bare wood, then wipe it off right away. Do this until you get the depth of stain you're looking for. The little nicks and dents, you can do with pretty much anything metal and pointy, and as long as you don't go at it like a lumberjack, you should get the kind of little pock-marks that old instruments tend to get. The key to good relicing is to get it only on the areas of the instrument where it would naturally occur, but also to work hard to apply subtle wear to the instrument overall so the wear patterns don't look jarring in contrast to the parts you don't alter. There's no point in wearing off an area down to the wood around the arm contour if the rest of the paintwork looks sparkly and new. That'll depend on what colour your bass is as well. Personally if I was going to relic an instrument I'd start by taking it apart, going over it with fine sandpaper, applying a coat of stain, wiping that coat off, then buffing it back up with T-cut. That'll take the factory "newness" off it. Then I'd work from there. I might do it several more times before the project was done. If the body is light-coloured I might leave it out in the sun for a while. If I had time to spare I might bury the plastic parts, and put the metal parts in a jar of acid to wear off the chrome. There's all sorts of things you can do. Relicing isn't just a matter of knocking a few dints into your finish or dragging it around the garden. You're trying to visually simulate decades of wear that has accumulated fractionally day by day, caused by a massive number of different factors. Therefore the key to realistic relicing is to build up tiny stages of artificial wear bit by bit. In fact, with some of the best relic jobs I've seen you couldn't even really tell what was done, the instrument just looked a lot older. If you're going to route your bass yourself (again, I don't recommend it), I'd suggest getting a load of wood offcuts and practising on those first. You don't want to find out halfways through cutting into your bass that you're no good at woodwork.

If you've never routed anything before, I recommend having a professional do the route for the pickup. As for relicing, it really depends what effect you want to achieve. If it's subtle use for a few years you're going for it's mainly going to be sandpaper, t-cut, a tiny bit of dark stain, and a few nicks here and there in strategic areas (i.e. headstock edges, arm contour, the playing area of the pickguard etc.) If you want to trash it, then you might as well chuck it under a bus. Also it would help to know if it has a rosewood board or a maple board. If it's a rosewood board you mainly just want to roll the edges a bit. If it's a maple board you're going to want to sand back the lacquer and stain it in specific areas. Really, your best solution for relicing is to find pictures of actual old instruments and try to imitate the wear on them.

Damn. I thought you were gonna ask if it was okay to have romantic feelings towards your bass.

[quote name='WalMan' post='697871' date='Jan 1 2010, 12:37 PM']Fair enough the guy was acting like a tosser and apparently cutting your time, but - so what your friends were there. You were the support band not headlining. By all means let your mates do the slagging from the crowd but why sink to his level yourself.[/quote] We didn't. As I said, we finished the show as normal. Maybe we should have incorporated his retarded antics into the set. [quote]And - if I had been them I might have apologised if the guy was acting the tit, but aggravating the situation by dawdling surely just sets you in a bad light.[/quote] I don't do this for a living. My music career doesn't hinge on how quickly I can vacate a stage. I'm certainly in a position to take my sweet time clearing my gear when someone who has literally no business whatsoever telling me what to do starts bawling at me to f*ck off. Being professional is one thing, allowing yourself to be bullied is another. If I had confronted the guy it would have ended in a brawl, ignoring him wasn't an option, and we certainly weren't about to do what he said.

[quote name='Pow_22' post='697825' date='Jan 1 2010, 12:08 PM'][url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2009-Fender-1964-Jazz-Bass-Relic-Black-Special-Order_W0QQitemZ200415986430QQcmdZViewItemQQptZGuitar?hash=item2ea9b942fe"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2009-Fender-1964-Jaz...=item2ea9b942fe[/url] Seems to me like the Fender logo on the head stock is a transfer of some sort, looks like its been stuck on? Anyone else agree?[/quote] Nah, that's legit. Back in the day they used decal material that sometimes reacted with the nitro and darkened more than the surrounding varnish over time. That's what I suppose you could call a faithful recreation of the effect.

[quote name='munkonthehill' post='697784' date='Jan 1 2010, 11:18 AM']yeah I think I may have over reacted, but I have seen reply after reply that this kinda thing happens quite alot when 'organisers' get involved. looks like its best just to organise your own gigs like we are doing the morra [/quote] I don't think it's an overreaction. Cutting a band off after four songs then putting on an iPod for a half-hour is a direct insult. The guy sounds like a massive tool and I'd have called him worse than you did. There's guys like this at every level of live music. We supported Breed 77 a few years back, and literally halfway through our allotted time their road manager was standing next to the stage waving his arms and tapping his watch (even the crowd could see him doing this). Fortunately all the guys at the venue were our friends so weren't about to let this d*ck get in the way of our playing (we later found out that the road manager had been acting like a massive douchebag since the band arrived), so we finished our set as normal. When we finished we started to load our gear off the stage, whereupon this guy starts yelling at us and telling us to f*ck off and let a real band on stage, so we started dawdling. It took us about ten minutes longer than it normally would have to get our stuff off the stage, and by the end of it the guy had almost had a haemorrhage. To their credit, the band apologised for his behaviour after the show.

It would help to know what you mean by "thick black substance". Sounds like the fingerboard has been painted and then varnished, is that right?

I think it's also because realistically bass players won't often change their pickup configuration during a track. I've in fact personally never seen a bass player do that, closest I've seen is guys rolling their master volume down. There are several MusicMans that have selector switches on them.

I've essentially had it with eBay. It seems that the only way to make it work is to try to weasel people. You never win an auction by bidding honestly because there's always some guy with an auction sniper set up. You can never sell anything by just announcing the price you want for it because people would apparently rather you start at 99p and hope you don't end up making half what the item's worth. If you set a reserve price you can either announce it in the listing or field hundreds of emails asking what it is (thus maing it totally pointless). That, and of the last twenty-odd items I've sold on there, five of the buyrs contacted me afterwards and asked if I wouldn't mind cancelling the sale as they'd changed their minds. There's no point buying anything new on a BIN on eBay because the same stuff can always be found cheaper elsewhere. Even if you find a guitar at a nice price the guy always wants fifty quid postage for it (presumably to offset his eBay and Paypal fees). Generally if it's too big to fit in a Jiffy bag a lot of sellers are just too lazy to shift their arses to a post office, so you have to go collect it at the other end of the country. Half the listings don't give enough information, the other half are full of crap about how rare and vintage and valuable their run-of-the-mill items are.

Bass not really being a solo instrument (not the way I use it anyway), the question of "sound" for me is usually a matter of what works best with the sound of the band I'm playing in. To answer your question, I don't think I've ever wanted to sound like a player I don't like, probably largely because that dislike makes me prejudiced against their sound, but also probably because the way people play is such a fundamental part of their sound anyway. I've also always thought that combinations of gear to try to sound like someone else is a bad idea, mainly because most people I'm into have changed gear many times over the years and yet their basic sound has remained more or less the same.

Usually I work from the melody scale, not the chord progression.

[quote name='Mapas' post='695060' date='Dec 28 2009, 07:15 PM']but, if i definitely need to buy one, i will may buy the used bass (140E) and an amp at a budget about 200E++++, do you have any amps to suggest me? up to 250E budget![/quote] Really for that kind of cash you're better off looking at second hand. At that kind of price you should be able to score a pretty powerful combo on eBay or something, or maybe even a little stack.

[quote name='Beedster' post='695043' date='Dec 28 2009, 06:48 PM']Thanks guys. The amps in question are, apparently, capable of 4ohms, but given that they're not cheap, and given it's a bass, and given it's not all that important anyway, I'll not risk it and end up having to buy a new one! Cheers Chris[/quote] Well, the thing is that if you can get a 4Ohm load into it, then you're totally fine. There's nothing wrong with sticking a bass into a guitar head (bassists didn't used to have the choice since there didn't used to be dedicated bass heads). The only issues you'll ever get doing that are with the speakers, but since it's a bass speaker it's fine. FWIW I only use guitar heads for recording bass.

[quote name='oldmanrock' post='694959' date='Dec 28 2009, 05:16 PM']As far as I know all guitar heads will work down to 4ohm.[/quote] Nah, none of the five guitar heads in my practice room go to 4. Three Marshalls, a Mesa and an Ibanez. Generally guitar heads will do one or two sixteens or one eight.

I'd advise against the preamp, for the basic reason that if you're not really experienced with home recording, you literally won't get any benefit from it. If you can get a good signal into the DAW via the desk preamps, then you're good to go. Also, there's nothing wrong with using a dynamic microphone. Don't feel like you have to have a sparkly studio condenser to produce good tracks. Your 70s AKG should do just fine. What you really want to focus on is getting a good performance. You'll need to warm your voice up, have plenty of fluids nearby, don't smoke cigarettes right beforehand, make sure no-one's going to disturb you and that you have a good few hours to work on your stuff (no-one ever laid down a good vocal five minutes before they had to go to work). Get a mic stand, stand up straight, take your shoes off, make sure the room is comfortably warm, and think a little bit about what kind of vocal performance you want to give the track. If you want it to sound quite live and urgent, a good trick is to wear your bass or guitar while you sing (careful, not to move around too much though). If you want it to be more intimate, consider moving lightly closer to the mic (turn the input gain down a bit, and move back for louder passages). Also don't go insane with the vocals processing. If it doesn't sound okay with a basic compressor and a touch of reverb, then you need to retake it. A good vocal should sound nice dry. And basically don't forget that you're home-studioing it, so what's important is the song and how it's performed, the sound quality is all relative, and as long as it's audible and mixed evenly it'll stand up just fine.

If there's a 4Ohm out on the head, then it shouldn't be a problem. Most guitar heads don't go that high though.

You said a friend of yours will give you a bass - if you like it, and you can keep it, then I'd actually suggest using that and putting your total budget into an amp. A cheap bass into a good amp can sound great. A good bass into a cheap amp won't sound great. As the guys have said above, if you want to play with a band, you'll need a lot more power than 60w. I'd say at least 150w to be comfortable.

I think with that kind of music race isn't really an issue. Racists don't usually tend to like music that has very obvious roots in black culture like funk and blues. It's actually kind oif weird - I remembered the other day that it only occurred to me that Tom Morello is black several years after I became a fan of RATM. It was when I read an interview where he was lamenting that some of the people showing up to see them play were white supremacists. Same with Lenny Kravitz, or Phil Lynott, or even Jimi Hendrix. I don't think fans of that kind of music tend to think in terms of skin colour. I think RHCP did well because they had very pop-oriented music with tons and tons of hooks, and other bands at the time were a bit more niche.

[quote name='4-string-thing' post='694178' date='Dec 27 2009, 11:48 AM']Hmmm, in the 70's I used a Marshall superlead, and it was ok but surely a decent valve head is going to be way over my budget?[/quote] Oh, sorry, I didn't see your budget. Yeah, you'd probably be looking at at least 350-400 for a good valve guitar head. Personally I think it would be worth the extra ton, but that's only my opinion and no doubt many would disagree. FWIW I recorded a load of bass tracks using a 50w Marshall Vintage Modern the other week, and the engineer basically swore blind that he'd never use a bass amp again. That said, there might be a few cheap solid-state guitar heads worth looking at. I used to have [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RANDALL-RH200-GUITAR-HEAD-RARE-DISCONTINUED_W0QQitemZ220529950355QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_MusicalInstr_Amplifiers_RL?hash=item33589bfe93"]one of these (a Randall RH200)[/url] and it was brilliant. Headroom for days, clean boost and two colours of overdrive that are surprisingly warm and expressive if you don't blast the sh*t out of them.

Try a guitar amp head. Might not necessarily be your thing if you're going for a high-fidelity sound, but these days every time I've stuck a bass into a decent valve guitar head I've found a sound I liked about a billion times better than any bass amp.

[quote name='JTUK' post='694095' date='Dec 27 2009, 07:52 AM']Too many people get volume over the ability to 'mix' sound so TOTALLY wrong.. IMO,[/quote] Amen to that. It's like when you practice. The loudest thing in the room should be the drummer. Saves your ears and encourages the drummer to play with more subtlety - and crucially, you'll be able to hear what everyone else is doing. If you're mainly playing weddings and pubs, you shouldn't really need a large PA, and certainly not one that cranks the drums, as most of those places won't thank you for being loud. At an absolute push, you could consider investing in a larger PA and running the kick through it - not so the kick is much louder, just to give it more presence in the mix and to have it lock in with the bass better.

This is the "Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" thing, isn't it. If you own something, if you don't learn enough about it to service it yourself, then you should at least know enough about it to know when someone's giving you a line of bullsh*t about it. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, of course, and looking back to my youth I can recall a number of occasions when some guitar store "tech" has told me something about a guitar that was blatantly false, and I was too ignorant to realise it. On one occasion I took a bass into a store to get a setup, and went back a week later to collect it, paid them well for it, and ended up thinking that they hadn't put it the way I wanted. I now realise that they hadn't actually done anything [i]at all [/i]to it, and were just relying on my inexperience to rip me off. That being said, even at the time I think I was savvy enough to realise that the advice of a guy who didn't want to take my money was going to be more valuable than the advice of someone who had already taken it.