Alanko

Dark oak Briwax took the bright white out the edge of a pickguard for me. As it contains solvents it sort of etches into the plastic rather than sit on the surface.

I was sent a 'T' in error by the first Dutch retailer I tried to buy a 'TI' from. It is a much busier black/brown/orange tort with a smaller grain/ripple to it. Like the tort is zoomed out, if that makes sense.

Did you phone up Rotosound to get these? I don't see any sort of 'add to cart' option on the Music Alliance website.

They are musicians in the same way that McDonalds line cooks are chefs.

If it is a vintage bass then you might want to consider black/parchment/black as it would look more sympathetic. Brian Pilanz, aka Earlpilanz on EBay, usually has it in stock. Failing that, the Vanson BWB stock is grand. 50 cm is a large dimension though. I've not seen a blank that long.

Couple of weird observations I've made over the years. The tortoiseshell used on Mustang basses is different to that used on P and J basses. It was redder from the get-go and only three ply, with a black bottom layer. I think I've seen this used by other manufacturers, so must have been a cheaper source than the premium four ply stuff. I think pearloid turns up on the rear of '60s Stratocaster pickguards, possibly before it was seen on the front face of Mustang pickguards. There seems to have been a vanishingly rare pink pearloid occasionally used on Competition Mustangs. The slightly later pearloid seen on Comp Mustangs seems to shrink alarmingly. Not unusual to see a Mustang Bass with many additional pickguard screws that appear to be either factory fitted or a dealer mod. This includes in period photos, so wasn't done years after the basses shipped.

It is a shame that venues are closing everywhere and musicians can barely earn enough money to survive, let alone prosper. Yet it is lucrative to make short-form and/or blatantly fake content on social media. It seems wrong that the best outlet for creativity now is basically hyper-performant shredding videos filmed in the spare bedroom. Doctored, sped up, mixed from a billion takes etc. My band sometimes records with guys who mainly focus on technical djent-y style metal. They always put down a grid and snap everything to it. They punch in individual notes. They put wraps on the strings at the headstock to remove unwanted overtones. It is beyond clinical, and YouTube musicians just seem a sort of weird additional couple of rungs on this musical spiral. Superhuman performances.

The advantage is that 95% of Hawkwind song names would work as a name for the band. There was a Hawkwind tribute locally to me looking for a synth player. I was tempted as I have a Moog Rogue and an equally vintage analogue echo unit, but I figured it would get boring quite quickly and I would rather be playing bass.

Must be quite hard learning how to nail all those bass lines while singing everything slightly flat, à la Martin Turner.

Were you called The Covers of Chloë?

Were you called The Covers of Chloë?

"Fernandopeth" sounds like it should be followed by "epidemic". Some sort of synthetic party drug that makes promising college freshmen eat their own faces when taken in higher doses.

Two of the Boston pickguards? Any pics?

Nobody is going to sell a vintage bass with the tagline "in mint condition, because it is a total nail and nobody enjoyed playing it". GuitarGuitar had a mid-'70s Jazz Bass in a few years back. I had a plunk around on it and it was nothing special at all. Brutishly heavy, with a thick poly finish that looked like a layer of toffee. The neck pocket route in the body was very wavy and approximate, with wavering gaps down both sides of the neck. The body in its entirely seemed a little wavy, club-like and approximate, perhaps testament to worn out router jigs and a disenfranchised workforce. All hardware and routing just seemed a little crooked and imprecisely done. Chips out the lacquer on the neck had let dirt work itself deep into the bare maple underneath leaving ugly grey spots and unpleasant bumps to feel under the left hand. The frets had maybe one re-crown left in them, but were essentially raised metal inlays with lateral roundwound chew across the tops. The block inlays were discoloured, like smokers teeth. There was an ancient corroded Badass bridge and brass nut fitted. The latter ensured the open A string had an ugly rattling overtone. The former, if it did anything at all, made the bass feel even more stiff, cold and unmusical than it might have done anyway. I guess to some, this is all mojo and somehow indicative of a road warrior bass with talismanic properties. To me it just felt like an old and worn out instrument with nothing inherently musical about it, and likely apathetically if not outright badly built in the first place. Unless you somehow sympathetically restored it and re-fretted it you would have the additional bonus of a lynch mob telling you that you had desecrated a valuable antique. I'm sure GuitarGuitar will have pitched it as a mystical best in breed, with an inherent aura you cannot find in modern instruments (with their close tolerances and lack of corrosion).

Interesting that the tug bar somehow etched its footprint into the front pickguard and discoloured its footprint onto the rear of the pickguard. These plastics really are unstable after all these years. Guitarguitar currently have a '69 Jazz Bass in stock as well as a refin 1979 P Bass.

I don't even think they even played the Syd Barrett stuff, which at least has cudos points in the realm of Paisley Underground and the lighter end of Britpop, with a chic outsider art thing going on. This was strictly the wilderness years of post-Barrett, pre-Dark Side. Lots of fiddling around with guitar slides and delay pedals.

I saw a Pink Floyd tribute act years ago called Ummagumma. They played songs exclusively from pre-Dark Side of the Moon Floyd albums. Therefore, no Money, Wish you were Here or Comfortably Numb, but everything from Live at Pompeii except that song where they wheel out a dog. 8/10 for authenticity.

Toneriders are generally quite vintage voiced and genteel. Which Seymour Duncans do you prefer? The Apollo set is voiced to sound quite orthodox but is noise cancelling, which may appeal.

"Baldly Demolished" is an interesting turn of phrase.

What is the bass currently not delivering for you? Jazz pickups cover a broad church. Dimarzio Ultra Js are going to deliver a very different set of goods over some ultra-correct early '60s spec'd recreation.

Some vintage pickguards end up like that, with the bevel shrinking back. I guess the old tort material looks the way it does due to tinted, volatile plastics being partially mixed together and poured out into big sheets. This makes it all inherently unstable, hence all the shrinkage and fading going on.

I've found a couple of places locally to me that do it. Their stock-in-trade appears to be car wheels, so some bass parts presumably wouldn't be an issue. Sand blasting appears to be part of the service for both. Phone a few local independent garages and they might recommend the same few names for doing the work. You might need to know the RAL number for black. 😀

The Spitfire chap seems barely in control of the process of making the tort, then passes off the results as something unique and interesting. If it has a giant unmixed yellow blob in the middle then he will come up with some marketing blurb and a cute name for it. The Avantguard offerings look better with a slightly wet, suspended animation look to the tort. It also looks like they over-buff the pickguard once completed, however, melting don't of the details.

I own one of these in white, which I wrote about in the vintage Fenders thread. I've shielded it, swapped out the bridge for a high mass Fender and fitted a Sadowsky pickup (I reckon Dimarzio is the OEM). It is a nice, light and resonant bass that is a delight to play. Very inspirational. I have built various parts basses with P Bass body and Jazz necks over the years, but it is nice to be able to buy one off the shelf!

The downside was finding one! I ended up buying two. The first seller sent me the wrong model. Both sellers were tiny guitar shops in the Netherlands. Essentially one-man operations. One needed payment via bank transfer, which made my banking app a bit jittery. I couldn't find a UK seller, but contemplated noising up these guys: https://themusicalliance.co.uk/en/product/158481/pickguard-puncher-bass-standard-4-ply-tortoise-intense?view=newproducts