RichT

Everyone else I've seen on SBL does it by ear, as would I, I never write charts. Not saying either way is better/worse just that not everyone does it the same way. Sharon's no slouch either, she's another ex-Berklee bassist. Back on to Danny though, this is a few months old but it popped up on my YouTube the other night. His comic delivery in the first half of the video is brilliant, and then properly shows off his playing chops in the second half.

Re Tame Impala - both! It's the one man psychedelic pop/rock band of Kevin Parker. He plays everything on all his albums, as nicely depicted in this video he made back in lockdown days: I get what you're saying, Hofners are a particular vibe and I certainly don't want to play mine all the time, but they're also more versatile and can fit into more genres than most people would have you believe.

Curt Smith has played them for best part of 20 years I believe, a lot longer than he was a 'pop star' in the 80's. Johanna from First Aid Kit switched to playing bass live around 2017 and consistently alternates between a Mustang and Hofner for specific songs. Tame Impala primarily uses a 500/1 for recording, it's all over multiple albums of his. Air have used them on a couple of albums, but most importantly all through Moon Safari for classic basslines such as La Femme D'Argent - which is the reason I wanted one... They've all used Hofners extensively for live work and/or recording. I'll let you off with Weller, although I've seen multiple photos of him playing both Clubs and 500/1 😉

Oh look, successful musicians playing Hofners and none of them pretending to be in the Beatles... Curt Smith of Tears For Fears Kevin Parker of Tame Impala Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads Nicolas Godin of Air Johanna Soderbergh of First Aid Kit Robbie Shakespeare of Sly & Robbie Paul Weller of... you know

Seems we've all decided we want a MIJ Junior Jazz! I kick myself daily for not buying the one that came up on here a few months ago, but typically didn't have the cash spare at the time it popped up. I don't get why they're a Japan exclusive in the first place, short scale players obviously want them. I bet if someone like Bass Direct started importing them they'd fly straight out the door.

double post

I had pretty much the same experience. Initial disdain (for quite some time) and then at some point I got the joke and warmed to him and his sense of humour. I'd much rather watch him and his dipstick-lick-schtik than the wannabe technical virtuoso types endlessly trotting out that grating double-thumb run down the G string.

Damn, I was still waiting for "Leo got it right first time".

Wow, that's lovely. Just when I genuinely thought I had no gas left for anything... sigh.

Yes it's wonky, deliberately so to echo the Rio album artwork 🙂

I don't really play anything other than short scale these days but doesn't stop me lusting after one of these. It looks amazing, congrats!

NBD - Sire U5 fretless! (ok it was actually 10 days ago, but hey.) Sorry for the long post. TL;DR - £380 short scale fretless bass is surprisingly decent if not without a couple of flaws. Been planning on getting one of these for a while, being the only really viable affordable shortie fretless on the market. Thomann is literally the only place that sells them, so knowing that Sires have a reputation for being weighty, and my shoulder being incredibly sensitive to my 7.5lb limit, I eventually ordered it expecting it may well have to go back, but thought screw it lets have a go. Also ordered a set of Gotoh GB528 Res-o-lites at the same time from https://tonetechluthiersupplies.co.uk while they had them in stock. First the good - it's a smart looking little bass, scaled down aerodyne jazz shaped body, burst flame maple top with binding, and the weight isn't too bad at all - about 7lb 10oz, brought down to 7lb 5oz after fitting the GB528's which are drop-in replacements. The jazz width satin neck is very playable, I love that the fret lines curve around the side of the neck so I can see them while playing (see photo). The PJ config pickups are definitely noiseless, bridge is decent enough and the finishing is generally very good. It sounds *fine*. Not spectacular, but certainly very usable, but this is the first budget level bass I've bought in a while and I think I may have just been spoiled with better quality pickups now. If I intended to use it more I might think about swapping them out. The passive VVT controls work well, feel pretty solid with a good range of usable tones. My preferred tone is J up full with P varying between 75% to 100%, and the P on it's own is nice and full bodied too. It has to be said the J soloed is rather thin and anaemic, but it suffices perfectly well at brightening the tone in combination with the P and adding more articulation and bite. The two negatives which do stand out a bit though, are the nut which had 3 of the 4 slots cut too wide for the stock D'Addario Chromes, causing them to rattle when played open, and the lack of forearm contour on the body. I worked around the former by wedging tiny blobs of silicone in the nut slots to take up space and it's also improved after switching the strings to EB Cobalt flats. The hard corner on the body is really just a playing technique thing. The body is pretty slim (tried to show the body width and offending corner in photo), and as far as sharp awkward corners go it's certainly not the worst offender (looking at you Hofner Club), but it's still a pain and something they probably should have designed better on a modern bass. If it costs more to produce a forearm contour I'd really rather have paid the extra to have one. Anyway, it may not be perfect but at the end of the day the value for money here is fantastic and I'm really very happy with what I got for the £380 I paid for it (plus another £100 for the Res-o-lites). It's easily worth the asking price, and it's achieved the main goal of giving me a lightweight, gigworthy short scale fretless I can comfortably play for hours at a time. Given the lack of any competition in the price bracket, I'm grateful that Sire is making something this good.

How do the stock 40-100 feel to you? If they're feeling too flexible or you're getting some other kind of problem then go up a gauge. If not, stick with them for a while. You don't mention whether the stock strings are flats, but generally flats are likely to feel stiffer than rounds of the same gauge (TI flats being the obvious exception). It's true what TheLowDown says about how higher gauges on short scales can cause notes on the E string to sound ill defined, however if you're finding the tension of 40-100 is too low then I haven't had any issues going up to 45-105, but I personally wouldn't go higher than that. I'm happy with the tone and feel of 45-105 short scale EB Cobalt flats.

Saw that video earlier. Love the look of it, very cool design 😎

A few years ago I saw a (then) premier league footballer driving his matt black Mercedes AMG GT near where I live. I'm not a car person, but it was an amazing looking thing. In that moment I was put in mind of both Ford Prefect and Nigel Tufnel. "It's so... black! Light just seems to fall into it." "It's like, how much more black could it be? And the answer is none. None more black." A stealth bass in that finish would be awesome, but it would also need a dark fingerboard. For this particular SR5, I'd vote for teal 😁