GarethFlatlands

Not much of it but there's a couple of Tool tracks with fretless on it. Intension from 10,000 days is the main one but the 2nd verse of Lateralus has it dropped in too. Both Wals. Joe Lester from Intronaut is also well worth a listen/watch. [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMcj7x-J96o[/media]

My guess is that every guitarist and their dog has owns or has owned a strat so there's more of them around on the 2nd hand market. I've always felt like a strat was the sensible choice and a tele would be great but less versatile, which is why I walked out of Rich Tone with a strat a few years ago when looking for a new workhorse guitar. Nice Community avatar btw!

Busy week so slow progress on the bass. Finally got round to removing the pickups and control plate and doing a test fit. The new bridge pickup is too big for the hole by a tiny amount so I'm considering my options. Buy a router and widen the cavity, try the same with a file or file the pickup surround down at the corners so it fits in the old cover. Got a replacement bridge but only one of the holes lines up with the ones already there so I can't use that without drilling out 6 new holes. I was also in Maplin looking at SSD drives and forgot to pick up a jack socket so I'm not having a great week. On the plus side, the chrome control knobs look great so that's a plus point!

Thanks for this! Grabbed the Mark One, my piano skills wouldn't do the Studio Grand justice and the Mark One seemed to have some interesting sounds.

[quote name='Mister RLP' timestamp='1487705133' post='3242055'] 'Dollar Days'. Great choice. I wonder if anyone has tackled 'Blackstar' yet? [/quote] I learned it, then we decided we weren't playing it! There's only really 3 sections but the structure is a little weird so it's doable for sure.

Trumpet. Never managed to make it as effortless as you're supposed to. I actually got OK (grade 3 on a good day) and had a decent range on it until years of overcompensating for my less than ideal technique caught up with me. Over the course of a week I lost about 70% of my playing range and never recovered. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

[quote] Will look into this too. Cheers. [/quote] No problems. I tried to find a clip of us on YT but it's all recorded on mobiles from the crowd and the bass isn't really prominent enough to show you the results. I know what you feel about avoiding the obvious stuff. We played a Bowie convention in Derby last year and racked our brains for a setlist that covered popular stuff people would want to hear and less obvious tracks as I'm not sure how many times people would get excited to hear "Ziggy Stardust" for the 20th time in a weekend. The best reception we got was for "Dollar Days", although our sax player didn't thank us for that one as it's a tough one for him.

That's a beauty, I hope it plays even half as good as it looks.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1487611383' post='3241207'] I think it also depends on the genres you were into at the time. For me the 80s was all, Aria Pro II, Ibanez, Wal and Overwater. [/quote] What did Kylie and Rick Astley play?

I'm in a Bowie cover band too! Using an Ibanez SR300 on the neck pickup, treble dialled up for a bit of extra clank on the attack. Going into a Behringer BDI-21 for some Ampeg colouration and a COG custom bass OD for the dirt and mid range boost. Can't say I nail the tone necessarily but it works for me.

I'm a child of the 80's, I just missed out! It was all pointy headstocks and Steinbergers when I were a lad.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. There's a few exceptions but when was the last time you saw a player you looked up to with a Gibson bass? Especially compared to their 6 strings, I'm struggling to think of many players with even the T-Bird which I'd guess is the most abundant model. Caleb Shcofield (Cave In) and his Grabber and John Curley (Afghan Whigs) and his T-Bird are the 2 main ones for me but even Caleb switches between that and a P. If the classic models were more widely used and maybe just easier to get hold of then more people would use them.

That looks really nice, let us know how it performs in a gig situation.

Yeah, I was expecting worse but they just need a bit of extra turning compared to what I'm used to. They seem very stable from what I've seen so far.

Thanks Geek! I've always loved the look of Sunburst Fenders, I own a Japanese Jazzmaster in that finish and briefly owned a Squier Bass VI until I realised I would probably never use it. This is as close as I can get on a budget. This one too has cheapo tuners (they hold tuning fine but aren't well geared in that they need a lot of turning to make small adjustments) and a 2 saddle bridge. I'm going to see if I can intonate and set up OK with it before I consider new hardware.

[quote name='operative451' timestamp='1487442468' post='3239875'] Ladytron - saw them supporting Goldfrapp at the Eden Project in 2006. Sort of a female petshop boys with kind of Vulcan barely withheld cold rage... [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTTwlAT_AwU[/media] [/quote] I remember really liking that song and it's pie based parody back in the day! [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xiyh-w2BsoI[/media] Heard of the Cardiacs as a friend is obsessed with them and the God Machine album cover is familiar but I've not heard of much else in this thread. I adored the first 2 Dredg albums back in the early 00's but I don't think anyone I mentioned them to had heard of them. There's already a lot on this thread to get your teeth into but this is one of their best if you've got the time to give it a try. [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDTGCHeHZFI[/media]

As already posted in the Bass Guitars sub forum, I recently picked up a 70's Maya Jazz. There are things I love about it and a few I don't, mainly the sound which lacks clarity and is a little noisy. The control knobs are a mess too, the bridge p/u volume sits a lot higher than the others for some reason and the tone knob is cracked. I can't prize them off and when I took the control plate off, there was a resistor wired between the bridge p/u and control which isn't standard wiring for Jazz. Rather than take the whole thing apart, i ordered a new control plate with the intention of wiring up a new one. I already had 3 mini pots of the right taper and value and a .047 orange drop capacitor lying around, as well as 2 chrome knobs which meant apart from the plate and 1 more knob, I was good to go. I'm pretty bad at soldering so it took me longer that it should and isn't a particularly clean job, but here's the basics in place. I thought I had a metal mono jack somewhere but didn't, so might need to take the existing one and drop it in, or buy another one. I hope I've not made any massive errors but will check a wiring diagram before I put in in the bass. I snapped up a pair of MIM Jazz pickups from a Facebook musicians page and bought some aluminium tape, so next time I'll be taking the existing pickups out, shielding the pickup and control cavities and then wiring the whole thing up. Feel free to point out if I've done anything incorrectly or to put suggestions forward about what else I could do on the cheap to improve the bass!

Yeah, I think of it being a catch all term for any cheap Japanese copies but this certainly isn't crap. I'm probably going to keep the bridge cover as the saddle adjustment screws protrude a lot and I can see myself cutting my hand on them but the other one gets in the way so it's off. Everything is here for the rewire so I'll do that this week but probably keep everything else as it is bar a string change and setup.

Spied this in a local shop a few weeks ago and it stuck in my mind as I've never owned a Jazz before. Went in for a play today after chatting it over with Bassassin, really got on with it and ended up leaving the shop with it. It has a few cosmetic issues as to be expected from a bass that's 40+ years old but it played and sounded really good. I got a set of pickups from a MIM Jazz on Facebook which arrived today and ordered a new control plate and chrome knobs for a rewire. The scratchplate has been hacked around the neck pickup so I'm going to take it off and see how I like the look and consider whether or not to get a new plate made by Bass Doc.

[quote name='Rexel Matador' timestamp='1486326985' post='3230945'] I used to be a member of one in Brighton and dabbled in guitar building there. I used jigsaws, bandsaws, sanders, drill presses, blowtorches, routers etc etc, that I would never have been able to afford otherwise. I've now found one in Newcastle and am excited to get involved again. If you are, as your profile suggests, in Sheffield, I just had a quick google and it seems there's definitely one there. [/quote] Never heard of Hackspace but it's a fantastic idea. I am indeed in Sheffield and the one there is around 10 minutes drive away. I also have a friend who does guitar maintenance and techs for various bands who I'm sure would let me have a day or 2 in the workshop if requested. [quote name='Shockwave' timestamp='1486329682' post='3230971'] I bought their SG bass kit a few years back. Sent it back as the three point bridge was routed not inline with the neck pocket. The next one had the same issue so had to send that back as well. Pity, a full scale SG bass is my kinda thing. [/quote] That's a bit more worrying. Maybe their QC has improved in the intervening years but it still seems like a gamble.

Love mine, super useful in a lot of situations. I don't think they're transparent, they have their own sound which is great for the cash but I don't think you can bypass that to just use it as an EQ or boost.

That's part of it but as I've never done any DIY at home (rented accommodation for years so no need) I own very few tools. Anything in the kit that would need work, I'd probably have to go and buy and learn to use them. That's the main thing stopping me taking a punt at the moment.

Thanks for the video link, looks like my fears about the cost were justified. Prowla has given me some food for thought, might be worth a long haul approach getting bits when they become available and putting it all together over time.

Love that fretless! Did you go with warmoth or similar or just scour BC and eBay for the parts?

[url="http://www.kitbuiltguitars.co.uk/guitarkits/jazz-j-bass-build-your-own-bass-guitar-kit.html"]http://www.kitbuiltguitars.co.uk/guitarkits/jazz-j-bass-build-your-own-bass-guitar-kit.html[/url] These look interesting but seem a bit too cheap to be good. Has anyone tried them? I got some paypal money and wanted a jazz and also a project to work on, but I lack the woodwork skills to do much more than assemble a kit. And even that might be beyond me!