LawrenceH

Excellent! I know it had been mentioned as coming, but at this end no idea about how they manage release schedules of various features.

Exciting stuff, I'm looking forward to the release! Crossing fingers that portamento on tracked notes made it into this one. Pleased so many of our suggestions on patches are on those lists - even though they're often variations on a theme from a synthesist's perspective, from a practical POV they cover a lot of useful ground.

Excellent! But what occupies the coveted number 1 slots?

Not the 70s version! The one with threaded saddles is the 58 I think.

In fairness a replacement Fender Pure Vintage 70s bbot is £50+ (I discovered much to my annoyance when wanting to restore a 70s reissue to stock). Think this is stainless steel which given the corrosion on a few old bbot I've got isn't a bad idea, and probably it's a bit more rigid. Anyway it has a certain look to it and really we all know aesthetics matter!

I have this on a Jap 75RI and it's a good bridge - the grooves, unobtrusive size and string-through option make it versatile, ergonomic and solid. I did feel it tightened up the sound a little, sort of halfway to the real effect a high mass bridge has without the high mass. One thing that might be helpful: this deluxe bridge weighs 106g including screws. By comparison, the Fender hi-mass bridge I have on another bass, while also a good design, weighs close to 250g (238 without screws). Of course heavy is good in some scenarios (neck dive) and not in others (boat anchor), but maybe worth knowing!

I agree with @Hellzero it's a good idea to do at least one classical piece. Even though they're only grade 3, there's a lot to unpick in these pieces - they've stood the test of time for good reason! Avoiding classical stuff entirely now leaves holes in fundamental piano technique and musical understanding that will be harder to fill later. Having said that, the Muppet Show Theme is also very good for chord theory/harmony and counterpoint, so that should stay!

Raising a speaker creates position-dependent dips in the frequency response where the reflected wave at a given frequency combines out of phase with the direct wave at your ears. Walls and ceilings also do this. Hence in-room response measurements can be pretty crazy. But it has the advantage that it puts the mids/highs a lot closer to your ear! Sometimes that matters a lot more in practice. It depends if you want more note clarity (raise it up) or girthy bass (shove it on the floor next to the wall if not in a corner)

I've always felt it's a bit of a shame how in the UK 'blues' became synonymous with 'electric guitar' and a particular restrictive formula. I remember growing up a lot of blues jams being held to ransom by a certain type of guitarist that meant I lost interest in the genre. One in particular, where a (good) keys player was told by the guitarist/singer that he just wanted repeated 8th notes at the top, nothing else, giving the guitarist all the space for his widdling. It was seeing the big US names at successive Bishopstock festivals in the 90s that taught me how diverse and musically accommodating 'real' blues is. John Mayall was the only UK performer I remember who was near their level.

Blimey those prices look alarmingly reasonable

You'd definitely have to joint it (as in glue a couple of sheets along the grain). That's normal though and adds stability. As said you could specifically seek out redwood 'furniture board' for this, never had any problems with it myself. But good ply is durable, and looks very nice finger-jointed (or dovetailed. Tufts list 'marine ply' albeit only in 6, 12 or 18mm. Could try calling? 12mm with more bracing is a good route to a lighter but still decent cab. My best stage monitors are 12mm birch with 12" drivers, and they've doubled as excellent bass cabs in the past. I'm sure there are other suppliers, often sheet material suppliers are specialist and distinct from timber merchants.

Be interested to hear these. I've just picked up a bass with the '74s in and I love the bright mid-hi clank, but so far find them a bit lacking on the low E. Does the overwound nature give them a bit of heft down at the bottom?

@Bass Direct I've recently been looking for some lighter tuners to replace the heavy CBS era Fender ones seen on 70s basses and various reissues. I'm not the only person looking for them but looking at alternatives, none of them match the backs but also things like resolites and hipshots have a different shape, smaller clover leaf. Do you know of any? If not do you have the opportunity to feedback to manufacturers/distributors? The existing tuners are among the heaviest available, that plus the chunky neck profiles on a lot of these basses make them particularly prone to dive. It would be great to have an aftermarket solution that kept the look. Anyway thanks for reading!

Interesting - next time I happen to be in the merchants I'll take a pic of the redwood/red deal, which AFAIK is Scots pine same as it always was. Though I suppose Russian supplies have disappeared now so that might have impacted things. The pale white stuff or anything sold for studwork I'd agree is usually awful splintery rubbish, though I did get a batch of treated 3x2 from Selco that was incredibly heavy and dense-grained. Tbh it was a pain for studding out as you couldn't drive screws in without them snapping off, and even piloting them needed a really good sharp bit! Think they might have been pitch pine like many old floorboards, certainly a nice fragrance when cutting. Total waste as studwork.

Phil this doesn't tally with my experience, other than the caveat that you have to select it yourself, but Robbins, Buildbase, Travis in Bristol all carry good enough redwood pine, largely knot free and straight grained, and store it racked indoors. Selco usually have good enough stuff too, and Timbersource carry good enough low knot-count furniture board. For a bass cabinet IMO you're not going to need the flawless quartersawn lengths you would want for a full-size, free-hanging door. It's going to be 21-22mm and I'd wager it's at least as stiff as most 18mm plywood, despite being lighter. Might be worth having a cross-grain brace on each panel I suppose if the panels are deeper, but I can't see any problems with using it for a wee little cab provided the builder knows what he's doing. I wouldn't use it for a heavy gigging cab just because it dents easily but unless you're gigging underwater it's not going to fall apart. I'm not sure what is meant by 'stability' but I've never had problems with splitting, and warping (of free-hanging cupboard doors) has been rare and probably similar to what I've had with plywood where presumably there are occasional manufacturing flaws. In any case a cab constrained by construction method isn't going to move. By contrast the only plywood I can get that is decent is from Sydenhams (or Robbins but they're even more £££), formerly Avon Plywood, and recently I was paying over £100 per sheet for B/BB.

Decent knot-free joinery-grade redwood pine is easily obtained from timber merchants or, tbh, most builders merchants - places like Buildbase and (though I hate their attitude towards small traders) Travis Perkins and Jewsons usually carry very good stuff. Your local independents probably do too, and are more likely to give you a fair price. You can also find good furniture-board. Go for ~21mm thick finished stuff and it ought to be strong yet pretty light. It just dents more easily than oak, beech or birch. It shouldn't split if it has been properly kiln dried and you don't start forcing unpiloted screws in next to cross-cuts.

I've never built cabs from solid timber (though I have built plenty of other stuff), but for a given density/type of timber, solid is actually noticeably stiffer than ply. Weight would depend on the timber species (and individual planks) chosen but ought to be roughly equivalent to the same species as ply. Machine-cut finger joints would look cool IMO. Functionally they'd work very well and no screws necessary. The extra cost in timber is insignificant if jointing solid planks together to make a sheet manually - it only matters if working from standardised sheet material where a design has been tightly optimised to fit the sheet with absolute minimal wastage. Sensible timber choice and splitting shouldn't be an issue, especially when you've got a protective finish on. Plenty of 100+ year old furniture without splits.

Where's that then? I've never seen decent plywood in any of ours. I'd like to find a source that's somewhere between far-eastern poplar-core with loads of voids and super expensive birch from Sydenhams

From a manufacturer's perspective, pickup differences are the easiest and main way for the manufacturer to differentiate cheap/expensive product lines in terms of tonal differences. I swapped out the 'vintage alnico' pickups on a Mexican Classic 70s bass for then-current AV75 pickups and it turned an anaemic, polite instrument into a snarling funky monster. I know I could have got close to that sound another way, but the pickup swap was simple, it's inherent to the bass itself which is useful when going through house/rehearsal rigs, and I enjoy playing that bass a lot more with those pickups in.

Yes I assumed you'd need the low pass side - an optional defeat switch for the tweeter might be an interesting extra. I suppose a 2.5way ideally necessitates a (switchable) extra pole on the low pass filter to smooth out the transition, and I guess that'd normally be an inductor so a bit more cost as it'd need to be low down. I built 2.5way tops with some Deltalite 10s that I deemed unsuitable for bass guitar compared to more robust drivers, it did do that 'girth' thing which bassists chase.

In my experience yoga mat doesn't tend to work as well as foam slabs, it's not thick or firm enough to properly support the weight of heavy cabs through their feet so the decoupling is compromised. I've found foam blocks are much more reliably effective. The cab needs to be properly 'floating'. Spikes can make a bit of a difference with hifi speakers, I suspect because they're placed in the corners of the cab where the panel vibrations tend to be reduced compared to the centre. That doesn't really apply in PA where cabs tend to have feet already.

Not used spikes, but when putting cabs on wooden stages or hollow floors with a propensity to resonate in the upper bass and low mids, I've had very good success using slabs of firm packing-type foam between the speakers and the floor. Audibly and measurably tightens up the bass in those scenarios - the kind of situation where you're otherwise pulling out tons somewhere between 80 and 300Hz on a graphic in an unsatisfactory attempt to control the woolly boom. Edit to add it's also great under stage monitors and often buys more gain before feedback.

Not necessarily, that was a bit of a postcode lottery in any case even by the 80s/90s, and in my case the subsidy (limited to only those who passed an aptitude test) went towards a different instrument.

To add a little to what Phil has said, it is tricky to truly compare like with like across different manufacturer's offerings without just building some cabinets and having a listen. One spec that's not always published but does tell you something useful is Xlim. That is commonly defined as the actual amount a speaker can move before damage. Celestion have provided info on Xlim in email exchange before, I've always found them very helpful. In general I've always found Celestions to perform very well in practice. Gigging rig years ago was a pair of 12" Celestion PA drivers, Xmax 2.5mm. Never ran out of juice on a gig. A decade ago I built two 110 cabinets loaded with sadly discontinued NTR10-2520D. The Xmax is 'only' 4mm (I chose these over the long-throw E version due to midrange response) but mechanical Xlim is 13mm. I have used single cabs as subs before for indoor gigs and again they've never come up wanting. On bass, the pair cover me for anything I do up to the point where I'm on a stage where serious monitors and PA take over. In contrast I have blown Eminence Deltalite II 2510 before and reading online this seems to be fairly easy to do. Xlim somewhere around 8mm I think. Published Xmax 4.2mm and same wattage, but not the same class of driver as the Celestion in practice.