EMG456

Could you say that any bigger?😀😀

Woodworking complete. Finishing about to start. This is getting exciting!

Any function bands I've played in and there have been many, the perceived success of the evening is generally directly related to the quality of the buffet!

Make a lower offer. Fill the frets yourself - it's not difficult and contrary to popular opinion you don't have to do it with beautifully cut pieces of thin veneer - just use wood filler in your choice of colour! Let it harden and lightly sand it smooth.  It's not a vintage Fender although in fairness I have done this before to vintage Fenders! Pretty sure that's what Jaco did originally to his Jazz Bass. 

To each their own but Kubickis feel and sound great and the pickups and preamp go from old school warmth right through to thunderous mayhem! If it’s the same circuit that’s on mine, it will have two active and two passive modes as well as an “off” position. Fantastic basses and the Ex-Factors are 32 inch scale. At £950 now and probably worth every penny.

51 minutes ago, Hellzero said:

@EMG456, these are rarities, for sure, I really love the mega rare Wal Midi Bass 5. Is everything MIDI still working ?

And that Steinberger Trans-Trem is the first I see by some real owner and not an ad in a magazine ! 

Last time I checked - couple of years back, everything on the Wal still working perfectly!

Right, not having completely mainstream tastes in this bass lark,  I've got a few rare-ish things in amongst the herd so, lets start with Steinberger and related.

XL5W wide neck 5 string - searched for years before this one came up.

Next up, XL2TA. XL2s are not that rare, even in White but the T stands for Trans-Trem so...

Shouldn't really put this one here  as it was custom built for me but it fits with the first two - Status Custom 6 'Berger

Enough of that headless nonsense - this is more like it.

Wal Mk2 5 string - not very rare?

OK - the clue is here...

Kubicki Key Factor 5

And last amongst my rarities - Ibanez Studio 8 - it even matches the couch!

Glad to see you're paying attention Mr C. Yes - that's the conversation we had - string spacing matches the pickups! Always a good thing!

That's a very good question and you'll probably laugh at my answer - I don't know! It's not marked on my spec sheet and I can't remember the exact conversation I had with Alan about it. Suffice to say that that particular aspect of the build is actually not that important to me - I've played Alan's instruments - quite a few different ones- and I've liked more or less them all. I'm guessing that the spacing will be determined by what lines up with the pole pieces of the pickups - that would be the overriding factor for me. I've got loads of basses, all with varying string spacings and indeed string counts and I seem to be able to easily adapt to them all so I guess this will be no different. Actually, I was more concerned about the flat fingerboard but just decided that it works on classical guitars and my Chapman Sticks so I'll get used to it. Fortune favours the brave... or so they say!

Wow, Mr C is motoring along now - mustn't get too excited. Looks like pickup and tuner routs are done and the lines for the forearm cutaway roughly marked out.

Controls are all placed for the DFM preamp - not sure what the smaller hole is for - battery led? LoL - I'll need to look out the spec sheet!

This pic is very similar to the last one but the eagle-eyed among you may notice the little rout in the body at the end of the neck to accommodate the truss rod wheel.

This means that the neck is now installed on the body. I notice also that the excess "headstock" has now vanished. 

On 02/05/2018 at 15:16, bartelby said:

I wish Aria UK had the Selected Wood series!

Just look at these two! 

SB 1000 was my main bass late 70s to mid 80s but I haven’t had one since then. These two are giving me a huge attack of Aria GAS!

Terrific band, great songs, great arrangements, great guest musicians and yes, Curt is a great bass player.

This is from the Sowing the Seeds of Love era, with Oleta Adams in the band. Curt playing Pino's lines with aplomb.

Interesting - my Jazz 24 is my favourite Jazz Bass - I use it out a lot. I'm very much a "full range" kind of a guy so I like the snap and fizz but I thought to myself, "How can it be too trebly with the tone right off?"

So I went and plugged it in and checked - you're correct. Even with the treble pulled right back, there is still a bit of the very high end there.

A passive setup would likely get you what you want but cheaper, maybe just roll off the top on the amp or an eq pedal? I'm not normally a big fan of fixed frequency" Treble, Mid, Bass" preamps but I do think that this one is well judged and useful so if you do change it out, keep it in case of re-sale.

Oh, also, if your cabs have tweeters, try attenuating them if possible or disconnecting them if not.

7 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Somebody's got to bite!

Windows based computers are just as fast and easy to use as Apple are, just a lot cheaper for the same spec.

After all they often use the same processors! But it appears that getting used to one OS or the other makes you rabidly defensive of it. But at the end of the day, both can be equally annoying...

So if you're of a techy mindset and would be happy with Logic, get an old HP server with octacore Xeon chipset and 96Gb RAM and run Linux on it. Ableton won't work... Or you could just run Windows and Ableton.

If you're keen on Apple get a refurb old editing/graphics machine, same chipset and RAM and run whatever latest Mac OS it'll support plus Ableton.

Both these options would be £5-800. And 96Gb RAm!!!

Alternatively, you could do what i did and buy a made-to-spec laptop from PC Specialist. I got i7 with 16Gb RAM, 256Gb ssd and 1 Tb HD 17" one for £700. I run Ableton... Admittedly the motherboard failed after 4 years - £160 - but that was unusual! 

But add all that to a large touchscreen monitor for mixing, plus controller midi keys, Scarlett interface and a pair of Adam f5 monitors and you've got an instant studio for less than a similar spec Macbook...

You beat me to it there. It’s funny how the Mac myth persists especially when they’ve all been built for years now with similar architecture. Yes, design does count and for years Apple had that aspect sewn up but there are now many premium Windows based machines available which look and feel every bit as good.

You will almost certainly get more for your money if you go Windows but what OS you buy is really just down to personal preference.

Anyone here get this? No spare cash atm but I was sorely tempted.

Looks like it could be a really nice bass.

Stop it- I’m getting really impatient now!

Very nice.

Fantastic- time to dig the Ric out!

I find this an interesting thread...

I'm not really a Fender kind of guy but I recognise their solid place in the history of the electric bass. That said, for whatever reason, I ended up gassing for Jazz Basses a few years back. Went into GuitarGuitar in Glasgow because they had a limited run CS 64 Jazz bass in Dakota red with a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard. It *looked* terrific. the very helpful guy brought me a selection of Jazzes to try - the CS, Sadowsky, Lakland Darell Jones, and Squier VM.

The Custom Shop Jazz was a huge disappointment - clumsy, woolly sounding and generally unresponsive. It wasn't helped by a terrible setup which actually made it feel as if the bass had genuinely been lying around unloved since 1964 but I can usually see through those issues if the instrument shows promise. The Sadowsky was obviously good but a bit soul-less. There were two winners - the Lakland and the Squier and honestly, whilst they were different, they were both a joy to play and hear and I would have played either of them in any situation happily.

And this brings us to the nub of the matter. Leo Fender designed his instruments to be easily assembled by a largely unskilled labour force. An amalgamation of identically shaped parts of similar materials is as likely to be good or bad whether it is done in a factory in Indonesia or a (Custom Shop) factory in the US. And make no mistake - the sheer numbers of Fender Custom Shop instruments which are flooding into the UK (Multiply by all of  Fender's other international markets) makes it obvious that this is not the product of a nice, cosy workshop with a few talented luthiers hand crafting impeccable instruments, but rather a large volume, mass production facility. I'm not saying that Fender don't employ some truly excellent luthiers - they have a history of doing so - but the emphasis of effort in the Custom Shop is focused on finish and appearance. You're paying a lot of cash to have someone lovingly beat up your new guitar so that it looks old.

My Jazz Bass gas was fulfilled three times over at a fraction of the cost of a Fender Custom Shop instrument so I'm likely to be Custom Shop free for the foreseeable future - I just don't see the value in them - but of course people are attracted to instruments for many and varied reasons and make the choices that are right for them. And of course the appearance of some CS instruments can be very compelling...

PM'd.

Do you still have these?

I'm blissfully ignorant as to how they are done but can confirm that whatever factory in Japan that was making Ibanez in the 1970s could do it too coz they're on my 1978 Antoria Fretless P bass. (black, not metal)

I like them because it still has the look of an unlined board but the player gets strong guidance on where the notes lie. Particularly useful if you're launching yourself into a tune that starts somewhere away up the neck!

Mr C has been busy as ever in the workshop and has just sent me this pic of the neck/ fingerboard. 

Side/ top partial fretlines and position dots are in some kind of metal alloy and look great to my eyes. You can also see the 5 piece laminate of maple/ wenge that the neck is made from at the "headstock" which of course will be disappearing as this bass will be headless.

If you want the amp to be quieter when you're driving it hard, there used to be devices you would put in the speaker circuit that would soak up that power - had a quick look on line and they are still being made although mostly not cheap. Search for amp attenuators.

Or get a less efficient cab.

Or, how are the speakers wired in your cab - if in parallel then maybe they could be rewired in series to present a bigger load to the amp - no idea if that would affect the tone or not but as long as the effective resistance was within the amp's capabilities, it might be worth trying?

I don't know you Andy, other than reading some of your posts on here but I suspect that although you are asking this question, you already know the answer- the time has come to take a break.

I've done this before- I've been playing the bass since school in the 70s and at a point just before the millennium, I had had enough. I wasn't enjoying gigging, wasn't getting a buzz out of original material so I wrapped it in. I did no gigs for about 5 years and the break did me good.

If you feel that you need to liquidate the value in your gear then plan it carefully so as to avoid regret later on down the line. For me, amps, cabs and effects would be the first to go - you won't need them and if you ever do again, the gear you'll be able to buy will be louder/ smaller/ lighter than the stuff you got rid of. If you don't have one however, get yourself a good practise amp - ie one that really does sound like a big rig only quieter - if it takes headphones and an aux input that's all you'll need.

Basses to me are more personal and I form a greater attachment to them. You may be the same so work out the one(s) you would save first if the house was on fire and keep them. If it was me, I'd need to keep a fretted and a fretless - you'll have your own criteria. Also bear in mind that older instruments are likely to retain their current value or increase whereas newer instruments will still generally be on a depreciation cycle.

Life's  too short to be unhappy. I wish you well.