ivansc

Our drummer is always late - he gets lost even with a sat nav.....

Getting to gigs we do 2 or 3 times a year!

An interesting little side note here.

I bought my first (used) bass guitar in 1963 for 60 GB pounds.
Sold it a year later for 60 GB Pounds to buy a guitar. Lost the bass gig, got a guitar gig.

It was a 1962 Fender Precision.

Since then I have owned two decent basses and a load of marginal crap or stuff I was given.
Because I was pro and had things like a mortgage to pay and a family to support.
So no fancy gear, just whatever I could get away with to play the gig.
When I first arrived in Nashville in 1980/1 I didnt even own an amplifier.

Since I "retired" in 2006 I have treated myself to a real Gibson ES335 and 1962 AVRI Precision bass.
Couldnt afford them when I was making my living playing, but to be brutally honest I dont sound any different on them than I did on my old klunkers.

Am I allowed to pm you, since you already had one? Not sure on the etty-quetty here....

Realistically, even if those big old electrolytic caps DO explode, unless you have your face directly over one when it goes, you are not in any danger.

If ti is inside its casing, you risk nothing apart from an amp repair.
And while it may indeed be a good idea to get the electrolytics replaced, if the amp has not been powered up for a while just having it switched on for several hours can restore a certain amount of life to those venerable components.
But yeah - Amp tech. But make sure you get a GOOD and HONEST one. I dont know anyone up your way, but someone local to you is bound to have a recommendation.
Or you could ask on SoundOnSound dot com.

I got given a 1983 Combo 300 when I was working in Nashville. It travelled many thousands of miles with me and the ONLY time it ever needed work was in the first few weeks when the dust cap came off the BW speaker - Carlo Cases ut a replacement from a JBL in to keep the dust out!
One other time, I replaced the USA mains transformer with a European one when I moved back to europe in 1991/2.
I eventually sold it on to a pupil of mine who is still using it to gig with.
They don't LOOK that tough, but my experience is they just seem to go on forever.
My only criticism would be that mine was slightly lacking in the extreme low end department. Which made it very popular with mixing engineers live.

[quote name='taunton-hobbit' timestamp='1419868473' post='2643345']


In defence of the LC - it was never intended to be a bass amp - as a general purpose slogger I recall one doing quite a reasonable job of 'powering up' the downstairs disco room at the Kingston Cellar Club, back in the day..........


[/quote] Our first PA amp in 1962. With a Grampian DP4 mic and a pair of home made 1x12" boxes....



Re nasty amps, we probably ought to discount anything under 50 watts as not really being a bass amp proper.
Other than that, anything I have ever used made by Laney or Carlsbro. YUK!

Amazingly, I gigged a Peavey Combo 300 I was given when working in Nashville from 1983 to 2002, when I sold it to a pupil who couldnt afford a proper amp.
PA engineers loved it - I would point it across the stage so everyone onstage could hear it and FOH got NOTHING but the DI signal.

Ashdown? I have a pair of 10" neos in one of their cabinets. Speakers in it were utter doody. But I am not ashamed to announce that I use one of the Behringer 450watt bass heads. It actually does a nice job with a decent Precision, but you DO have to replace the cooling fan with a decent one. Kept cool, they do fine.

And CHEAP! (grin) like me....

Sadly I have just had to put the original 2002 reissue neck on Ebay in order to help pay for the actual bass.
Wish I could afford to keep both! That neck is a cracker..... probably better than the one on the "new" bass.

But I gigged the new one last night.... action and relief is all over the place but it STILL sounded and played great.
It just feels and sounds so right after all the "modern" P basses I have played.

Bit like the feeling I had when I first switched on the cathode-biased guitar amp I built a few years ago.
All of a sudden that tone I remembered from my youth was just.... there!

Very happy bunny. Pics of the bass will be up here in a day or so.

Looks like I have bought a 2008 '62 reissue Precision!

Should arrive today....

Sorry to appear ignorant but how wide is a B nut width in mm?

So I bought this rather lovely 2002 62 reissue rosewood slab precision neck off a fellow member a while back.

And have been gazing at it and wondering how to proceed ever since.
The original plan was to just graft it onto my MIM Precision but the more I look at it, the more I feel like it deserves better.
I would also like to wind up with a body that is either button polish finish or nitrocellulose.

Soooo.... I could either buy an aftermarket unfinished body and DIY, or go to someone like Stratosfear in the USA and buy one of their Fender reissue bodies as a starting point. A lot more money but a lot less hassle, too.

I guess what I am looking for is anyone with experience of refinishing bare wood bodies to reassure me! (grin)

[quote name='ivansc' timestamp='1432923398' post='2786292']
My first bass was a 1962 three colour burst with a slab rosewood board. No case - the guy I bought it from couldn't afford one so it travelled in the fender cardboard box.
It was 3 or 4 months old when I got it. Oh and it fell out of the back of our truck on the way to a gig and got run over by a car. Squished one of the strings and messed up one of the control knob. Not the pot, just the knob! Was stolen from me and I got it back, then stolen from the guy who bought it off me a year later. Sadly he didn't get it back.

Had to sell it about a year later so I could afford a guitar. That was what the gig called for and it paid. *sigh* the joys of young married life and paying the bills.

So now I have bought a 62 reissue neck from 2002 and am hunting around to pick up the rest of the bits.....
Yes it would have been easier to just splash out a couple of grand, but since I am a broke retiree I decided to do it the fun way.
Great feeling to feel that flat wide neck profile and know it will soon be pretty close to my original bass.

And in the meantime I have my MIM Precision refinished in Fiesta red or "Hank and the Shadows Pink" as it seems to be known in the UK!
[/quote] Update: (sob) Was talking with my brother who lives in Florida a while back and he told me that my late mum was robbed in Tennessee years ago and one of the things that got stolen was every single photograph of me from my earliest baby pics up to when I finally left home. Including the one and only of me with the 62 P Bass as a 3 colour suburst & one or two of it after the white refinish.
Need to find a nitro finish body so I can put the replica together. I now have everything BUT THE BODY.

I have aan original model G&L ASAT guitar with microtilt and it works like a dream. Leo got it right the second time it would seem.

My first bass was a 1962 three colour burst with a slab rosewood board. No case - the guy I bought it from couldn't afford one so it travelled in the fender cardboard box.
It was 3 or 4 months old when I got it. Oh and it fell out of the back of our truck on the way to a gig and got run over by a car. Squished one of the strings and messed up one of the control knob. Not the pot, just the knob! Was stolen from me and I got it back, then stolen from the guy who bought it off me a year later. Sadly he didn't get it back.

Had to sell it about a year later so I could afford a guitar. That was what the gig called for and it paid. *sigh* the joys of young married life and paying the bills.

So now I have bought a 62 reissue neck from 2002 and am hunting around to pick up the rest of the bits.....
Yes it would have been easier to just splash out a couple of grand, but since I am a broke retiree I decided to do it the fun way.
Great feeling to feel that flat wide neck profile and know it will soon be pretty close to my original bass.

And in the meantime I have my MIM Precision refinished in Fiesta red or "Hank and the Shadows Pink" as it seems to be known in the UK!

[quote name='machinehead' timestamp='1389292903' post='2332532']
I can take the relic look or leave the relic look but I do wonder how the f**£ some genuinely worn basses get into the state they're in.

Do the owners take them to gigs tied to a tow rope behind their car?

I own several guitars that I bought in the 70s, one is from the 60s. They were extensively gigged over the years and still look 9/10 condition today.

It makes me wonder what the fake worn basses are based on? Maybe it's ones that were accidently dropped off a ferry and were recovered in a trawlers net 30 years later?

Frank.
[/quote]
My 1980 Tokai Strat worked five to seven nights a week on the road for years. First blemishes were caused by the dodgy case the importer supplied which had a staple sticking through to the inside exactly in line with the lower horn!
Met him years later & he told me YES it was his fault, but that it was an easy way to authenticate one of HIS imported Tokai Springy Sounds!
The rest of the wear and tear - including the first twelve frets I replaced recently - came from sheer hard work, not careless handling.
I also have my regular working bass from about the same date, which has a thumb-sized dent in the wood (through the finish to bare wood) right up against the pickup cover, from years of me anchoring there. And the neck is now so worn the skunk stripe in the back has started breaking out of its slot! Time it went off to be fettled again I suppose....

Heh - my MIM Precision has some interesting wear marks top and bottom of the sides - I suspect that it is more a case of the refinisher taking too much of the paint off when buffing and the remains of the colour coat just wearing off really quickly!
Looks pretty cool though and you cant see it from the front.
Have a look at me playing it in "Paul Neon & the Saints" vids on Youtube, it is the pinkish fender precision.

Ahem! Linky Winky..... [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bogWNRbZYhg"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bogWNRbZYhg[/url]

Yeah - VERY short scale. I measured it at around 29 inches!

Neck is a bit like holding a well used baseball bat.
Sorta round but in a comfortable way.
Not at all what I usually like - I just bought a 62 reissue Precision Bass neck of a fellow member here to try and re-create my original 62 sunburst-refinished olympic white one that I bought in 63, had stolen, got it back and had to sell to a friend to pay bills and then HE had it stolen in 1964.
All three of us "owners " of this bass agreed it was the nicest Precision we had ever played.
Wonder who has it now? I was so young and innocent back then I never thought to get the serial number and write it down!

Be grateful yours has obviously been tastefully restored. I have seen some horrendeous jobs done on some of those oldies.

Funny, because the scratchplate with the controls mounted on it like that reminded me of the ghastly Rosetti Lucky Seven a mate of mine had.
Pickups and controls including jack socket all in this ugly lump of white plastic.....

Yours looks rather nice!

I finally got to play the bass at an elitist swine jam night (you have to have demonstrated that you can actually play before they let you get up ) last Wednesday and the little bass performed really well.
The neck pickup is a monster - fat full and very sixties. Despite playing all 34" scale instruments, this tiny 29" was actually very easy to play!

Down side was that everyone was ignoring me and asking to take pictures of the bass!
At least it can't sign autographs....

This is torture! TWO 1963 precisions, refinished in white, both up for sale at the same time....
Both for way more money than I can afford.
Had my refinished Precision from 62 stolen in 63/4.

*sigh*

*sigh* looks SO much like the 3 color sunburst, refinished white in 1963, Precision I had - got stolen in 1964....

Well I got the broke machine heads sorted out, courtesy of a friend who has a vast collection of old guitar parts.
The early Burns bass used the same Vah Ghent machine heads, so I picked up 2 from him and swapped the engraved "Fenton Weill" covers over.
Took it to a gig last wednesday and it got its photo taken a lot, especially after I played it!
For a 29" scale length, this thing has thump you would not believe.

I was going to fix it up ad sell it to finance my 62 precision build, but now I am not so sure. Like I NEED another bass!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gh0735lonl4gndl/AACqBLYBjOr5dhRl-hl_YVlsa?dl=0

According to Jim Burns Henry started FW and Jim worked for him for about a year - 1959/60 before starting Burns London,
I am pretty sure this is from that 1958-59 period before Jim worked with Henry, but as you say... there was immense variation in the guitars AND the basses.
I first came across them in that little shop that was next door to Selmers on Charing Cross Road in the late fifties. They had one of the contrabasses in their window and I practically broke the window in lusting over it!

Unfortunately the original jack socket, although still mounted in the bass, doesn't have its innards any more - at least the jack socket mounted on the scratchplate isn't too ugly!

What are the neck dimensions? Looking for something close to my old 62 Precision, which had the wide, shallow neck profile.

Just bought a rather nice AVRI62 precision bass neck off Rob - WHAT a lovely chap - honest, trusting (shipped the neck before I had even paid for it!) and like Mojo said, a great conversationalist!

A pleasure doing business with you, Rob!

I am about to be reunited with an old friend.

Very late fifties or maybe very early sixties Fenton-Weill bass guitar. Produced by a Mr Weill and a Mr James Ormston Burns.

I lent it to my youngest son years ago and when I came back to the UK in the nineties asked him how it was doing.
"Dunno - it has disappeared"

Some 25 odd years rolled by and last week I got The Call.
"Hi Dad - was spring cleaning, moved my wardrobe and found your bass behind it, still in its case. Do you still want it?"

So. I know it has a missing plastic button on the G tuner, but last time it was played it worked fine.

Needless to say there will be photos when I get it back sometime this week.

Made all the more pleasurable because I worked with Jim during the steer/scorpion era.

Big grins.