Tait

would any of you notice the difference if i was to post a picture of that bass and a standard marcus miller? it seems a silly price to pay. especially if you can get four (maybe three and a half) shukers for that price.

[quote name='Scoop' post='169915' date='Apr 4 2008, 05:24 PM']Well that's ten minutes of my life, ten minutes that I'll never get back, wasted reading (with one or two notable exceptions) the haves and the have nots re-entrenching their positions. I don't own a six string bass. I do own a five. I also own a twelve. Do I want a six string? No, I don't fancy one. Does it "offend me" in some puerile way that some bassists use them and love them? No it does not. Do I play a "real instrument" when I play one of my numerous fours? You better believe it coz if you don't believe that then its tantamount to telling me I'm not a musician. I picked up my first bass over three decades ago and I would have issue with you on that. Indeed I would. Do I agree with Jake that a high C would sound sh*t? - Yes; In my hands, almost certainly it would, but that is not to say that others may not make much better use of it. And Jake and I have both played with a guitarist named Carlo Bowry, God bless him, and I really, really wouldn't play in a register that he considered his territory. I'd just make it sound, well, sh*t, because Carlo is very much not sh*t. It seems to me that what we have in the six string camp, not exclusively but by and large, is on the one hand a genuine snobbery "mine's a real instrument like a grand piano" (sorry if that offends you mate, but that's how I see it) and on the other hand a sort of bitter defensiveness. Why? You play a valid instrument same as four and five string players do. In the four string camp we have ignorance and a sort of non-aggressive Ludditism "Leo made them with four, Jaco played them with four, that's all you should be allowed". Get over yourselves, you might just as well be arguing about why you feel the need to eat oranges when "apples are all I've ever needed" or "Now I'm eating oranges, I feel like I've got a proper fruit". FFS... Bassists. That's all. Bassists. Good enough for me... no matter how many bleedin' strings you have.[/quote] thats the most true post yet on this thread. [quote name='Scoop' post='169915' date='Apr 4 2008, 05:24 PM']"I just don't understand why you feel you need them"[/quote] [quote name='Scoop' post='169915' date='Apr 4 2008, 05:24 PM']"Jaco played them with four, that's all you should be allowed"[/quote] are these two parts refering to me? i have no problem with other people playing six strings. i never once said that i dont understand why other people feel they need them, i just i dont feel the need for them myself. and although i said jaco played with four, that was simply to support the fact that i only feel i need four strings. i never said you shouldn't be allowed more.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='169894' date='Apr 4 2008, 04:45 PM']Don't you think that sounds a bit silly? You should seriously listen to this crap that I don't really like![/quote] not really. i listen music like blink 182, zebrahead, good charlotte, new found glory etc. im not going to try and pretend any of them have good bassists. i wouldn't reccomend listening to them if you wanted to hear good bass playing. im saying you should seriously listen to him because his bass playing is so unique and you can learn a thing or two from him, rather than listen to him because his music is good.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='169724' date='Apr 4 2008, 12:07 PM']And those that say he only played four strings are wrong. Jaco had a five string acoustic bass guitar made for him:[/quote] ok. he also used fretted jazzes but when you think jaco (or at least, when i do) i always think fretless jazz bass. thats what he's most famous for. [quote name='tauzero' post='169704' date='Apr 4 2008, 11:40 AM']And Nelson only used sailing ships and muzzle-loading cannon, and Fangio only used front-engined cars. Some of us have no desire to emulate Jaco. In fact, some [1] of us haven't even heard him... [1] Or is it just me?[/quote] i have no desire at all to copy jaco, and thats not what i meant by my post. all i'm saying is that most would regard him as one of the best bass players ever and he got on fine with a four string. seriously though, if you've never heard jaco, listen to him. his music's not the kind of thing i'd listen to, but he's still a great bassist.

i really dont know whether i like the looks of this or not...

i love these. they look unbelieveably cool! nice one.

[quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='169267' date='Apr 3 2008, 04:47 PM']Thomann have them in stock in white [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/epiphone_thunderbird_iv_ltd_edition_aw.htm"]here[/url]![/quote] thats not a bad price for a white one.

i use four strings cos i like my four strings. my dad has a five string that i get along with fine, but i find 've only ever used the fifth string for one song, and then i could have used it on four strings its just less moving about. i don't feel the need for five strings, never mind six or seven. i realise that I'm not the first to say this, am im sure im not going to be the last, but jaco only used four strings. im not saying dont have a go on a six string, or that six strings are pointless, im just saying i dont need them and that IMO, you can get along fine with four. but i just want to make it clear that other people may find it useful and so if they need six strings, then thats fine by me, and im not having a go at six string players.

[quote name='budget bassist' post='168833' date='Apr 3 2008, 01:37 AM']i wouldn't mind having a gander at the SR500 i like looking at stuff i have a chance of affording...[/quote] no problem- the SR500 will be there then.

as my dad's already said, I'll be there. I'm only planning on taking my taitycaster i built on the course, but if anyone wants to try out an ibanez SR500 or my precision i can bring them, but neither are too exciting.

i gigged with it sunday night, it looks cool! and it was by far the best sounding bass there, and quite a few bands played. anyway, heres a couple of pics: [attachment=7178:gig1.JPG] [attachment=7179:gig2.JPG]

i just got back from a rehersal for a gig from 10am-6pm. i played my bass for songs ranging from wonderwall, wonderful tonight and sunshine of your love to paranoid, walk this way and paradise city (to name a few). it sounds great for them all - absolutely brilliant! the only problem is that its quite a heavy bass, and weight is extremely noticable when you're playing for 8 hours with a five minute break between each song. it was a really enjoyable week, and I'd definatly reccomend the course to anyone (even if they have no woodwork skill whatsoever). it was a lot of hard work, but it was well worth it. you get an amazing week and a brilliant bass at the end of it. it just goes to show - you really can buy happiness... for £950. john_the_bass, i don't know what you do if you want a solid colour or a sunburst, but the course is a 5 day course so you don't get any longer on it - no matter what you want. macdaddy, ped and anyone else who asked how it played and or sounded - the answer to both is AMAZING! i carved the neck myself, so its exactly what i want in a neck. i chose the pickups, controls and tone circuit myself so the sound is also exactlty what i wanted. there's a bit of neck dive, but for a bass that shape it's to be expected. pockethammer, it hasn't really got a name to be honest, I've just been calling it my new bass. although me and my dad joked about it being called the taitycaster (tait is my surname) so if i had to name it that's what it'd be called.

DONE! It's been a long day, we had to go on longer than usual because of a dodgy switch and then the tone circuit gave of feedback whenever the treble was right the way up, so I can't really be bothered to give a long description of what I did today. basically it was flattening then buffing the finish, then just putting the hardware and electrics in. heres some pictures of the finished thing anyway. [attachment=7017:shuker_day_5__2_.JPG] [attachment=7018:shuker_day_5__1_.JPG] [attachment=7019:shuker_day_5__4_.JPG] [attachment=7020:shuker_day_5__3_.JPG] [attachment=7021:shuker_day_5__6_.JPG] [attachment=7016:shuker_day_5__5_.JPG]

[quote name='spree' post='164793' date='Mar 27 2008, 09:02 PM']a clear one doesnt appeal to me either. As for the control plate, i dont like the aesthetic of rear routed jazzes.[/quote] +1 on both of those comments

[quote name='MacDaddy' post='164884' date='Mar 27 2008, 10:48 PM']lwtait, I hope you will be at the Bash?[/quote] afraid not, I've got a gig! (bet you can't guess which bass I'll be playing ) PS. jon's going, though.

oooh... thats nice. am i the only one thinking that'd look even better with a black pickguard?

[quote name='Scoop' post='164201' date='Mar 27 2008, 12:21 AM']The scraper thing - would that be a spoke shave? I'm dredging back over thirty years here to O level woodwork but "spoke shave" seems to ring a bell.[/quote] that's the one! just got back from day four of the course. to be honest we didn't do anything too exciting today. i finished carving the neck with the spoke shave (thanks scoop!), sanded the lacquer on the body from yesterday so that it was flat, routed the musicman pickup, then we spent the rest of today lacquering. there was nothing much we could do whilst we were lacquering - we started cutting the nut, switched the blend on the seymour duncan tone circuit to a 3 way switch and sanded the edges of the scratchplate, small jobs like that, but mostly just played with ruby (jons dog) whilst we waited to put on the next coat. the neck's feeling lovely now, and the body's looking really cool. [attachment=6960:shuker_day_4__1_.JPG] [attachment=6961:shuker_day_4__2_.JPG] all looking good, but quite a hard day tommorow as we've got a lot to do.

[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='164032' date='Mar 26 2008, 08:05 PM']Did Jon give you any tips for making sure the neck was carved in a consistent and parallel way? Was there anything to stop you from taking a large chunk of wood out by mistake?[/quote] the answer to both of those is no - i think. he just told me to file it into a rounded shape and keep feeling the neck to make sure it feels like a neck should feel - anything that doesn't feel right, you make it feel right. he gave me a demonstration and began the carving of the end of the neck nearest the body, showing me how to carve it properly. whilst giving the demonstration he might have showed me how to carve in a consistent and parallel way, but if it did i took it in without realising, because every time he checked over it he said i was doing well, and just pointed out things like "carve a bit deeper over here". as for taking a large chunk of wood out by mistake, it was only a hand file and a sort of scraper tool - it would have been hard to take a large chunk out. i hope that answers your question.

got back from day 3 a couplpe of hours ago, but have been busy since so only just got on the computer. today was mostly about the neck, although give the body a few coats of lacquer throughout the day, the wood's looking really nice now. [attachment=6912:shuker_day_3__5_.JPG] [attachment=6913:shuker_day_3__6_.JPG] the first thing we did on the neck was put the dip on the headstock (sorry, i dont know what its called, and "dip" is the best word i can think of!) so now its not level with the fretboard, it dips down and is lower than the fretboard. we also decided on putting lightweight tuners on, so we made the headstock five millimeters thinner so the the lightweight tuners could fit on, and then drilled the holes for the tuners. [attachment=6914:shuker_day_3__2_.JPG] next job was to put frets in the neck - a job im sure many of you have done and only really involves smashing the fretwire with a hammer so im not going to go into detail about that. [attachment=6915:shuker_day_3__1_.JPG] finally was the job that took most of the day, carving the C shape in the neck with only a file. basically you start at either end of the neck, carve a basic C shape and feel it, then carry on carving with your file. when it feels like a neck should feel, carve the other end. then you use some tool (i cant remember its name - its sort of a wood thing with a blade that scrapes along the wood and scrapes strips off) to join the two together. [attachment=6916:shuker_day_3__3_.JPG] [attachment=6917:shuker_day_3__4_.JPG] and one my mum took of me carving the neck: [attachment=6918:shuker_day_3__7_.JPG] sorry about the blurred pictures - i took them all at the end of the day and i was in a rush.

[quote name='OldGit' post='163295' date='Mar 25 2008, 06:14 PM']Wow, You're a lot faster than Jon Looks like a good project and for that money you get to do it under the watchful eye and guidance of Jon so you will end up with a good bass whatever happens - and in a week![/quote] me and jon were talking about that. its not that im a lot faster than jon, its that im only building one bass. jon says with each bass he does, in the 3-5 months hes building he'll only do about 7-9 days worth of work, but he evenly shares out his time between all his basses. [quote name='paul, the' post='163300' date='Mar 25 2008, 06:35 PM']It's looking fantastic. It really is. It sounds like a great experience and like it's going to be a great bass. What woods are/were available to you? How does the pricing work?[/quote] any wood in jons woodshop's available to me. the pricing (i think this is what it was, anyway) is £950 for the course, including all the woods, tools, etc. but then you have to pay extra for pickups, your own choice of hardware, etc. [quote name='jwbassman' post='163313' date='Mar 25 2008, 07:06 PM']Coming along nicely - really liking the body shape you've got going on there and of course the natural with the black pickguard is a classic combination, great stuff... Can you stay at the workshop to do your homework or do you have to get everything done in a set time during the day?, I know what I'm like and if possible i'd be putting in as many extra hours as I could to try and make as good a job of it as I could. That said I guess Jon has it all worked out and if you follow his instruction there won't be any issues and he probably quite likes going home too Looking forward to tomorrow's installment, great thread you've got going here and thanks for info on the finish [/quote] no i cant stay at the workshop. i dont even HAVE to do the homework. its just that we're lacquering it tommorow, and the smoother the body is, the better it looks. i've done a lot of sanding today at jons workshop, and he just lent me some sandpaper and let me take the body home so that i cn sand it more if i like. as to a set time, its roughly 9am-5pm, but its not strict. jon doesnt mind if i turn up late, and we stop when we cant fit any more in. today was good because i just spent the time till my mum picked me up sanding, but yesterday we stopped about half four and i had to stand around for half a hour in jon's workshop (not that i'm complaining!)

just got back from day 2 of the course. today we mostly did work on the body. i cut out the body, with a 1.5 inch radius around the edge. i also routed the precision pickup and the control cavity but we didnt route the music man pickup because it wasnt important today. i spent most of the day sanding the body. [attachment=6847:shuker_day_2__1_.JPG] the reason we routed the precision pickup and control cavity was so that we could cut the pickguard and mke sure it covered what it needed to, the musicman pickup isnt going to be in the pickguard, so that's why it wasnt important. we cut the outline of the pickguard but need to cut the gap for the precision pickup, the gap for the neck socket and the holes for the controls. [attachment=6848:shuker_day_2__2_.JPG] the only other thing we did today was to glue the fretboard to the neck [attachment=6849:shuker_day_2__3_.JPG] homework - sand the body some more, so that its ready for spraying tommorow. jwbassman, i could have had any finish i wanted to, and i decided to go for a natural finish.

[quote name='jono b' post='161506' date='Mar 21 2008, 05:31 PM']I don't find the Precision neck too much of a handful. It's certainly thicker than the Jazz but my hands aren't the biggest and I can handle it just fine. You could always buy a MIM Jazz second hand and then have a Precision pickup installed. I was tempted to suggest the Mark Hoppus Sig but remembered it's got a Precision neck on it. Also the scratchplate on it's pretty fugly. And it only comes in cartoon blue, pink or green. Actually thinking about it sounds sh*t.[/quote] no, it stopped in pink and now comes in blue, green, black or white. (i like the white best ) [attachment=6834:img10292992215.jpg]

just got back from day 1 of the course. we began by talking about the shape - you cant get a 34 inch scale bass on a standard telecaster guitar shape. i took the lower horn and neck socket area from a precision template, and used the tele template along with the precision template to make a bass sized telecaster. we then used this sketch to transfer onto a wooden template. [attachment=6812:shuker__3_.JPG] we then found a nice looking piece of swamp ash and copied the template onto it, in two pieces. we roughly cut out the two pieces out, glued them together and left them to dry. [attachment=6813:shuker__2_.JPG] next we moved onto the neck. i changed my mind about the wenge, i didnt think it would look right with a swamp ash body and decided to go with a maple neck with a rosewood fretboard. the headstock shape was the first thing we talked about - i wanted it to be a telecaster kind of shape, without it being a direct copy of the telecaster headstock. i decided on this: [attachment=6814:shuker__1_.JPG] we cut the neck out with that shaped headstock. i put in the truss rod and two sticks of carbon fibre, and covered the truss rod with some wood. i moved onto the fretboard, where i made my first mistake. first try i cut the fretboard too small so it wasnt covering the neck properly, but i did it again and it came out fine. i cut the slots for the frets, but didnt have time to do any more. [attachment=6821:shuker__4_.JPG] the red on the fretboard is just tape - it wont be there when i've glued the fretboard on. thats about all i did today, tommorow i think jon said that we're going to glue the fretboard on and then work on the body. d-basser, i booked it a while ago, but its only been this long because i had to go in the school holidays and jon was away for christmas. jon could have done it pretty much anytime, he doesnt have set times for the one-to-one courses. if you wanted the five person course i think the next ones in july.

[quote name='Shaggy' post='161814' date='Mar 22 2008, 03:23 PM']Wasn't there a thread on this recently?[/quote] you could be thinking of mine which was a while ago, i dont think ive seen one more recently...[url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=6322&hl=fretless+songs+lwtait"]here's[/url] the link to my thread

soul to squeeze by the red hot chillis, not played on a fretless but I think it should be.