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And finished! I've wired the electrics '50's style' to give a broader range of tone possibilities if Jane needs them in the future and added magnets for the cover with a thumbnail access: I know guitars - particularly slim guitars and fancy wood guitars - and gold trimmings aren't everyone's taste but, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the 5lbs 4oz Swift Lite Mark 2 As always, many thanks for the encouragement and help along the way - always greatly appreciated!

must admit I found the sanctimonious bullying replies by the grammar nazi's a bit distasteful, wouldn't be surprised if the poor guy never darkens the Basschat forum again, wouldn't blame him

I had a similar experience at school, brings back painful memories. Bob Hitler.

Well said, and well played that man. This place is not the most welcoming place to new members sometimes...15 posts the chap has and the thread asking for advice gets turned into a bitchfest about gammar.

I communicated with Dave (the OP) through Feebay. The issue was a bloke bought his Rick, then started playing the disabled daughter scam. Dave has very little experience of selling stuff, but he is an oil industry engineer who I would prefer NOT to have an upper cut from. Our communication led to a flawless pincer movement on Carlisle station, him from Leven, Fife, me from Wigan, Lancs. Not everybody can, or indeed wants to communicate in a manner considered by some to be the only way. Frankly I'm disappointed in the perceived superiority and conclusion jumping that has gone on in this thread. Not what I would expect of some of the experienced people who I would have thought knew better.

So the bass player doesn't have any gear? If these guys were serious they'd have their own gear. If they aren't serious I wouldn't lend anything to them.

This is my fretless one. Full custom five strings FBass AC neckthru with redwood top 34" scale AAAAA flamed maple body. Sounds great and i love it!

The Status T-Bass has been reissued for about 10 years. This isn't anything new. At least it's better than cranking out a TENTH version of the kingbass.

Best way ! A quick chat, hearty handshake and the offer of a drink by way of thanks. I try not to touch any settings, even if I'm told I can - the minimal hassle for the owner when they take the stage later on is part of the thank you for the loan of the gear.

Quick review of the Mu-Tron Micro-Tron III (which I also posted over on TB). If anyone is looking for a Mu-Tron III in a small form 9v pedal the Micro-Tron absolutely nails it: It's good, in fact it’s really good. It uses the same type of opto-isolators (I think) to control the Micro-Tron III filter as per the Mu-Tron III and Tru-Tron 3x, which gives it that classic Mu-Tron 70’s dirty funk quack in LP, Low range, Up Sweep that other filters just don’t seem to have. The Down-sweep sounds lovely and chewy High range sound super squelchy but still retains bottom end. It’s perfect for finger style funk, & pairs really well with a bit of dirt or octave pedal before it. Small form factor (though a slightly bigger enclosure than an MXR M82 BEF for comparison), standard 9v DC power supply requirements. Very easy to dial-in, no issues triggering on passive or active basses, no bottom end loss or volume loss in LP/Tru-Tron jumper settings. No pop when engaging the footswitch which some other users have experienced (I’ve only tried via an isolated power supply though) An internal ‘jumper’ enables you to switch between Tru-Tron or Mu-Tron modes - there is a difference between the two sounds: Tru-Tron jumper is slightly cleaner/ Mu-Tron jumper is very similar to the original Probably the best & most flexible small form pure funk Envelope Filter around today. IMO the smaller form and 9v power means the Micro-Tron doesn’t have quite the same amount of headroom (or ‘oomph’) that the Tru Tron 3x has - understandably, the gain isn’t as loud, and the pre-amp on the Tru-Tron in comparison is incredibly powerful. The Tru-Tron is what I’d call the flagship all ‘bells and whistles’ ‘all singing, all dancing’ version of the Mu-Tron. The Micro-Tron is not that pedal (and to be clear nor would I expect it to be based on squeezing that much funk into such a small enclosure!). A couple of minor things. The internal jumper would have been great to have been set up as a switch on the outside (I guess this is a size or build cost restriction) There’s a slight volume drop in Mu-Tron III jumper mode LP pass/ High setting only, which can be gotten around by maxing the level and upping the Peak and Gain a bit more. Having a second foot-switch for the direction of the sweep is theoretically a good idea but you have to adjust the gain from around 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock which kind of defeats the intended purpose of changing the sweep direction on the fly. Lastly, the Input/Output jacks are very close together. Not so good if you use pancake cables. These are minor gripes though. Most important is how it sounds and overall it definitely captures the vintage Mu-Tron mojo in a small form board friendly pedal, (which is what I believe Mu-FX/Mu-Tron set out to achieve).

I'd rather lend stuff to complete strangers than friends. It's a lot more trouble when you break a friend's nose. Just joking - I'd never do that to anyone, especially a friend. I'd leer at his girlfriend, though.

It's not something to be spread around too much, but since you asked... Shh..! Not so loud..! Walls have ears..!

Dave's a great guy, and a really honest seller.

It depends on what you mean by 'tracking'. Do you want to: a) generate a control voltage in proportion to the perceived pitched of the input signal? OR b) do a simple division (eg octave down) or multiplication (octave up) of the input signal? I did mix up these two in my previous comment, apologies. My understanding with the Pigtronix pedal is that they are doing a), and to the best of my knowledge this hasn't advanced beyond the level of the Korg MS20 (for one example); the technology here is a couple of decades old as the limits of what you can do with analog processing had been reached already back then. I'd be pleased to be corrected if I'm wrong, however anyone coming up with an all-analog pedal that does a) will do no better than what has been done previously in terms of tracking accuracy and latency. With something like the EH Microsynth, it has various stages that filter the input signal, and then what I guess I'd call 'mathematical' circuits that detect the pitch of the input signal and then divide it for the octave down or multiply it for the octave up; this happens in essentially real time, so the latency is as close to zero as you can get. So, yes, what you wrote is correct. The big 'but' here is also what you wrote, i.e. the tracking is not perfect and can track the octave (or other!) harmonic of lower notes instead of the note itself. With digital pedals, they are simply applying DSP to the input signal so there's not really 'tracking' involved, hence why pedals like the POG-series can deal with more than one note at a time and track more accurately ('perfectly') than (say) the MXR Octave pedal (and many other similar designs). An interesting design is the Future Impact pedal, which based on a reading of the manual has both a 'mathematical tracking' section (with very low latency) and also DSP-based pitch-to-frequency section (with higher latency).

I decided to face my fears head on. Like when I watch Heather Smalls on the Camino De Santiago, I've been singing 'You've got to search for the hero inside yourself', in a deep husky voice, as I photoshopped a mock up of the automotive incubus that haunts my sweaty nights. I'm hoping this will help me better come to terms with my irrational phobia.

You know that it's a remarkably good inbuilt security system though..... "Eeew.....it's a sunburst, i'm not pinching that"

Get the hair clippers out and give it a number one all over ("number one" refers to length of cut - I don't mean pee on it).

If you need to adjust the settings, take a pic of theirs first so you can restore them after you’ve been on. ( Obviously check with them first to make sure that’s okay.)

Marigold gloves are the business for getting rid of unwanted hair and fluff. Just wet the glove first A wet Marigold can sort a lot of problems

I hate TSB and also hate gold, except when they are together on a '57 P, when the sum is greater than its parts:

Yeah, Mark Gooday of Ashdown (and previously Trace Elliot) was involved with both basses. I’m pretty certain an agreement was made that the T-Bass could return as a Status if the Ashdown basses (lodestone) could feature Rob Green’s ETS headstock design.

flip me, you can't stop can you. Inference that I'm judgemental??? I deleted your message because you give the impression you are always right, anybody who doesn't agree is wrong. You are VERY good at pushing buttons though aren't you. Can't let it rest. Go and have your beer with somebody else.

I assume because Fosters is p*ss. (I don't mind it myself.)

I thought it was common knowledge around these parts that I am a SLAG and play bass for Sad Lovers & Giants http://www.facebook.com/sadloversandgiants/

Any good for metal?

Bit late to the party .... ( Epiphone Accu Bass , before someone asks )

I'm still delighted with my Stage 800! Another gig at a bigger pub in Manchester to try it out again tonight.

I think there were those benifits, in that there are a couple of places that call us first when there is a cancelation (which always surprised me as we are not that good), but as the rest of the group (who are all younger than me) are now into that baby thing, it is a bit cancelled out.

..I sound so grumpy.

Sounds perfect to me. In fact where are you and the band based?

My approach has always been, neither a borrower or lender be, in music terms at least. Far too many potential arguments and irritations involved in even lending cheap gear. I always make that known right from the start of any musical endevour and then it's easy. Only exception is that people can use my cabs if i'm headlining, though I make that clear that as soon as my stuff is getting abused, the electric goes off and they find someone else's. Sounds intolerant maybe, but It's always the people that feel they don't have to be responsible for their own stuff that care the least about other peoples. I realise that's not you position exactly, but if you're lending to friends it can be even more awkward. Maybe an unpoplular opinion here, but my vote would be to say "sorry but It's a policy to never lend or borrow anything".

Ha, ha....that's my kind of self build

Make sure you ask the guy what is and isn't ok, even if it's a minor thing like pressing the EQ disengage button. In this scenario I would eq from my pedal board and disengage the amp eq if it could be done. But if you've asked first then the guy knows how to correct things if you don't put it back exactly as you found it.

Our BL shares vocals with our other guitarist. Blue

Have you got any 600 grit sterated aluminium oxide paper? It's ideal for final preparation of wood before applying finish and flatting off between coats. I got mine from eBay. If you apply paint too heavy you can always knock it back with a bit of flat sanding. I'd also consider drilling the holes before grain filling. You don't want to knock any filler out round the holes.

That looks a lot of guitar for the money. The quality of cheapish "starter" instruments is amazing these days. I'm in my 50's and I would imagine like me, many of my peers on here struggled on to beome bass players despite the desperately bad planks we had to start on.

To slightly tidy up my area of the stage, I bought one of these - search on eBay for "Fisual Zip Cable Tidy Wrap". They're about a tenner. It's easy to use - you don't need to thread the cables through or anything like that, because it unzips fully along its length. Just first roughly gather the cables together, then wrap the cable tidy around and zip it up. My gear position, power supply positions, and general stage logistics vary from gig to gig - but in this instance, it was two power cables (monitor and pedal board), USB (to charge my phone), and an XLR send to the desk. Other gigs I might also have an instrument cable in there and a monitor XLR from the desk. I've survived years without the cable tidy but it all does seem a bit neater now.

You're certainly meeting different women to those I used to come across...!

Have you looked at the many Comp threads that have been active on here over the past few weeks. They are hard to miss, and their numbers are growing every day ;-). Im surprised anyone needs to ask anything about comps now with all this information to hand.

... and that's the 'Smilies' updated, too (until the next forum upgrade ...!).

And here my Stradi Symphony Bass Fretless 5 #6 with 2110 years old swamp oak top !

One of my fretlesses : 15 mm from string to string at the bridge, 9 mm at the nut, one piece hard rock canadian maple neckthrough with Para rosewood (Dalbergia Spruceana) fretboard, bubinga wings, 2 Bartolini's Quad Coils wired in parallel and passive with volume, balance and tone. It's a 31 positions unlined fretless 6 strings bass, so you can even do some Michael Manring with it. So what's that for ? The rarest LEDUC : the MP 631 SF (MP for Masterpiece).

I bought a Fender American Standard Jazz from Seán at the weekend. We'd communicated about it a while back and arranged a mutually convenient weekend. Excellent communication all round and the bass was in great condition as described. He was very accommodating and offered me lifts to and from the station in his home town so that I was able to catch my train on time. Was nice to meet such a nice bloke and his family and hang out for a couple of hours too. Deal with confidence.