EMG456

Bobby Watson on Michael Jackson's Rock With You.

Welcome to the crazy world of the Chapman Stick! The only advice I feel qualified to give would be to "stick" with it. (Ouch!) I don't know how you're feeling about it but I certainly thought that having about 33 steady years of bass experience before I started with the Stick would give me a head start but I actually found that my skills were not so transferable after all. I found the reverse 5ths tuning on the bass side very difficult for playing bass lines and found even interaction between the hands not easy, let alone independence! Fortunately, I'm stubborn and persistent so I'm finally getting somewhere but in reality it's taken me a lot longer than I thought it would and I'm still no virtuoso. Play as often as you can and pay attention to your setup - If you're playing out make sure you have the truss rod tool with you - the neck can move from one environment to another and if the action is out of whack, it can really throw you especially at the start. If you want to play "normal" bass lines on it, some players change the bass side to a 4ths tuning - easy to play fluid basslines like you are used to but against that you lose the compact open chord voicings that 5ths gives you. You're right to think that it's easy to take over a whole band's sound with the stick - played all at once it can be an enormous, dense sound leaving little space for anyone else but if your bandmates like it, they'll likely start to make adjustments to accommodate you. For example, the guitarists I play with will often switch to mandolin or Dobro if I'm going to be playing stick - there's lots of room to experiment and no real rules or traditions with the Stick - it's very much whatever you choose to make it. Also be prepared to make lots of new friends if you play it out. It may be different if you mingle in the prog-rock circles but for most types of music, yours will be the first Stick an audience has ever seen and the questions come thick and fast! 🙂 One last thought just now - Sticks sound much better in Stereo than mono, even if your just going through a mono setup like a bass amp - something to do with the impedance loading on the pickups I believe so if you don't have multiple inputs on your amp setup, invest in a little mixer - I use a Boss LS-2- and it will sound much brighter and livelier. Overall, my Stick journey has been at times frustrating but hugely enjoyable. It hasn't diminished my love for the bass but it has enhanced my musical knowledge no end and frankly I can't imagine being without one now. Best of luck and if there's anything you want to know, just ask!

Yep, that escalated quickly! Hindsight and all that - moving on the Buy It Now would have been the right thing. Good for the seller assuming of course that the sale goes through... I'm pretty certain that you could pick one up for a lot less but of course that one was in particularly nice condition. Onwards and upwards.

Here's the thing - this Kubicki is a top notch boutique bass from the early 90s albeit assembled by the Fender custom shop. New, they were priced alongside Steinberger, Alembic, Sadowsky, Modulus etc. and thoroughly deserved their place there. Lots of people nowadays routinely pay £2k-ish for a 1970s Fender. As long as you're not one of the "all you need is a precision with flatwounds" crew, this Kubicki will eat any of those dodgy Fenders for breakfast so £1500 seems more than fair to me. The interesting thing is that at the end of the day, it's all down to individual taste and what the market will stand. After this discussion, I now want an Ex-Factor. Fortunately for me I have an imminent bass arrival in the next few weeks so I will not be joining in the last minute bidding frenzy if there is to be one. And I can console myself with the fact that I already have a Key Factor 5 which goes both higher and lower than an Ex-Factor! Still want one though... GAS!

It's an unusual tuning arrangement so best to just watch somebody...

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.

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.

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.

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...