Azureglo

Strange clear bubbling appeared on the headstock one week after purchase, perhaps it didn’t take to rainy Dublin’s "soft days"? Fender UK (or whatever they were then) offered a replacement or £100 credit which, on a £375 purchase, seemed very generous to me...

I wonder what became of Eugene and the other fine fellas who worked there, last time I was in Dub, the place  was occupied by an artisan cheese shop

This has been on the long finger since I sprayed the body back in 2022. It was to salvage a Fender Mexico fretless Jazz bass I bought new in Dublin back in 1998 for a job, played once and was consigned to the gig bag till 2022. I just found the weight and size of the Jazz body cumbersome but always liked the neck. Wasn’t a fan of the lurid metallic aubergine or whatever this colour is, either. But it was cheap and in stock and the session was a week away…

The plan was to get a lightweight Precision body,  repurpose the neck, bridge pickup, hardware then add a US Precison pickup and thus get a more useable instrument  by recycling. The MIM body I'm sure will make a collector of lurid purple basses very happy.

Body sourced was a 2 piece alder one from Guitarbuild in the UK that was on sale for a measly £95 delivered. I sealed it then sprayed it with 1K automotive clear that the mobile repairers use as its way less toxic that the 2K version. I cut it with Menzerna fine and then just hand polished with a microfibre cloth as I wanted a more subdued gloss than the mirror shines that are prevalent .

Pickups are a Fender US P and Tonerider J: I was hoping to use the MIM bridge from the donor but it was larger than a stock US version for reasons only known to FMIC. The J bridge is more a tonal addition that I use subtly to bring forward the “singing” tonality on a fretless so not really bothered by its provenance.

Lovely original 1998 lined fretless Jazz neck, did they use rosewood? Who knows? Who cares? Not me.

Stock 250K CTS pots but a mini required for the tone control required due to tight clearance in the cavity. Capacitor is a Russian NOS 0.05 that I have large box of. Setup is Vol/Vol/Master Tone but I have a bass “warmth” control in the spares box  ( 5 way rotary with multiple cap values not a “choke” like the Gibson Varitone) so might rewire this later this year with dual concentrics for each pickup and said “warmth” control . Right now it’s needed for an urgent job so “Less is better” as Dieter Rams tells us.

Strings are 26 year-old ? gauge Fender flatwounds that it came with in 1998. Should be nicely broken in by now. Bridge/saddles are the original MIM items, polished with Solvol chrome polish. It works fine so keeping it. I hear a lot of stuff about high mass bridges etc, but when I listen to James Jamerson, he sounded ok with a stock Fender bridge so if it’ was good enough for him…

Side jack with real Electrosocket/switchcraft components for reliability. My instruments daily go on paying jobs so any snap, crackle and pop is strictly reserved for the cereal bowl. Note remedial work required after brilliant idea of driiling a pilot hole for the Fortsner bit turned out to be not so brilliant. Easy fix though and who looks at the bottom of my bass on a session?

8.75 lbs is not a featherweight compared  to my 6.3lb Limba Tele but a vast improvement over the MIM  orginal's 13lbs.

Action is a little high but will work on that  later as I need to source the the 3/16" Allen key these MIMs use so just shimmed with 1 degree shim to get the action a bit lower but this appears much less critical on a fretless from what I can hear.

Cosmetically it  transports me straight back to my teens in the mid-70s when everything was natural wood. I like the look of wood so might make another fretted one if I can pick up a nice slim Squier CV Jazz neck at reasonable cost. This one would have just a control cavity cover like the Musicman/G&L/CLF control plates. If the G&L version doesn’t fit, it’s easy enough to cut down a stock black Precision pickguard. I rather think the large expanse of wood grain would be quite fetching.

That said, it’s already being put to use on a track we’re getting ready for TikTok, cheesey UK garage anyone?

So a pleasant afternoons work and a nice inexpensive way repurposing of a closet queen into working instrument and one that brings back happy memories of the the stripped 1970s Fenders I started my session career with, back in the err, 70s’…

It took forty years but I'm finally playing bass live after four decades of session and live guitar: Bought this and a Mustang SS last year, 

Upgraded to pickups to these Tone riders and replaced the electrics

No flats, no fun.

I've got Teles that weigh more than this,

And used in anger at the bank holiday blues jam  at the Bull in Downton: Hmm its only "The Thrill is Gone" but suddenly that Gma7 arpeggio on the turnaround is a lot further away than on my Tele...

Digging in behind my new favourite Tenor player, a righteous blower who came up the hard way and paid his dues... as a Consultant Plastic Surgeon for the NHS...

Liking this live bass playing thing and the VM SS Jaguar is definitely the right bass, just need to let my right hand find the sweet spot for my thumb, perhaps a thumb rest is in order.

Peace out,

A

3 hours ago, Richard R said:

I know nothing about K-pop, other than a half-remembered Sound On Sound article about producers working in the genre. It does sound like extremely competitive hard work!

Pour yourself a stiff drink and watch these:

Now go have a cold shower. You have been educated.

2 hours ago, Richard R said:

Welcome aboard!

 

Sounds like you always were a bass player, you were just "diverted" by K-pop. 

 

Groove on!

There is an ulterior motive, I'm looking for an "edge" as K-Pop is seriously competitive and I have noticed a lot of interest from my paying masters for my retro bass guitar driven beats, samples and demos: nothing like playing with live drummers to keep your grooves honed and in the pocket, them drummer boys don't do quantised , especially after the third pint of Stella...Plus I'm loving the female action, Pub Cats cant leave or my charcuterie  platter alone🤣

So long time session/jazz guitarist now writer producer, starting to get bored with Zoom calls to Seoul at midnight and endlessly staring into this…

plus virtually everything I play these days is 2/4/8 bars, looped, processed and massaged into a three minute K-pop song or ten minute house track by various  clients..I have a few basses I use for occasional tracking so I decided to dust my main tracking bass off and head down to the local blues jam last Thursday.

Total hoot, despite my wanting to turn everything into a James Brown or Meters track, much fun was had. I was hooked and importantly, was on the opposite side of the stage to the atonal wannabe shredders gurning their way through tuneless and aimless solos, displaying their freshly learnt from YouTube “licks”. Yes I truly hate badly played blues guitar solos at shrieking volume played by middle aged accountants pulling those dying-from-constipation grimaces as they  tunelessly  bend notes ad infinitum…I need to sit down for a few minutes, mother.

Have decided that my own live playing henceforth will be restricted to 4 strings and finding tight drummers to lock my groove down with, Bootsy style.

Current basses are : 1998 P bass Lyte Deluxe ( bought new) , Squier Mustang stock+ Labella flats and Hohner B2A

And this

which is also going to receive the bridge pickup from this 1999 Mexican lined fretless J bass which I bought for a session in 1999, used once and put in its gig bag for 34  years due to its horrible ( to me ) colour and back breaking 12lb weight.

The neck and neck pickup will be headed to the gorgeous light alder body on the right later this summer with another 62 Pbass pickup.

I’m a dedicated short scale player now having used the CV on a couple of dozen paying tracks since Xmas 2021. And my hooley at the jam last week.

And then there’s this…

Sorted an acquaintances one out last year, with Staytrem hardware, La Bella flats  and US pickups/electrics and used it with the  local Orchestra for some Bond and Morricone nights last year, total hoot. Also made its way onto a K-Pop tune doing the 60s bass octave doubling thang with a foam mute.

This one is fresh from the box and is pretty much unusable with a grinding vibrato, weedy strings and emery grade frets plus a fretboard liberally smeared with buffing compound: And it took 7 months to arrive…will make a nice summer project and will join these studio only “ fairy dust” guitars that need similar upgrades.

Next jam is week on Monday run by wonderful a local blues harp player, Hugh Budden, who seems to have paying gigs every day of the week. After that there a regular schedule of three jams within a thirty minute EV guilt free jaunt, a month.

No amp but have my beloved bought new in 1988  Polytone (jazz guitar use) for practise

and mostly play through my Logic/Krk8 rig (above) for practise, using these as DIs.

If it gets serious I might buy the Quilter 800 and the wee Ampeg SVT-210AV that Hugh and Harv used at their medium sized pub jam on Thursday, truly terrifyingly loud to the  extent I dropped the volume as I could not hear the drummers kick drum. And teeny tiny to boot, my aging back don’t need no grief.

In the spirit of not hiding anonymously behind an avatar, here’s what I look like should you ever encounter me and need to rapidly cross to the other side of the road:

And here’s what my bass playing sounds like: Some recent rejected loop/beat ideas including some seriously uncoordinated tenor sax playing/arranging, my new thang for 2023

Nice to be playing actual songs with actual people in actual venues again. Look Momma,  I iz a four string fool now!

Peace,

A