Leaderboard

So many things in life are just designed to get in the way of what you want to do. The last two weekends we were away, this one i had 3 gigs! During the week I did get to do some sanding, all at 1200 after the colouring, and I found the joys of lintfull paper. If you rub it down with a paper towel, it only leaves lint where something catches it, so that is the bit that needs smoothing. I did all the final holes I needed for neck screws and jack socket. I messed up with the jack socket but luckily it didn't do any harm and didn't show. After having to go and get stuff I managed to put a coat of oil over everything. It looks a lot darker, I really like it, even the line down the back. Like this:

New rig finally sorted.

I put a teeny bead of titebond along the tang, then hammer in the fret and then clamp a radius block on until the titebond has gripped: Here's the board now with frets trimmed and chamfered:

Look like a whisker above 2mm at the 12th fret

Well, quite, but I came to this thread to watch/listen to a band I knew nothing about, and so gave it a go (otherwise why post these topics at all..?). It turns out that, like Lenny, I was, let's say,.. unimpressed, and chose to post in that vein. It's just my opinion, and for my part I have no wish to change the view of anyone at all, but it's comment on an open forum on a subject of interest to several. I'd have thought that all loyal views would be welcome, whether for or against. I'll post again in the same spirit on any similar subjects if I feel inspired to.

And we have frets! Ready to trim and bevel once the glue's fully dried. Then a demarcation veneer and then glue it on the neck

We also have a coffee machine now! Pop round any time @Quilly

Got a bit more done today, Headstock cut started to redo the taper and took some of the bulk off the back of the neck aswell

I had a rehearsal yesterday and our guitarist said he had bought the flagship Helix board to try instead of his pedal board and valve amp. He went straight to PA (we all go through FOH live) and it was incredibly good with none of the stress of mic’ing up amps and noisy pedal clicks etc. For me it is an excellent live solution and if you read /watch interviews with bands most of them will say the same about Fractal/positive grid/kemper. There isn’t enough difference live to warrant the pedal boards, and big expensive valve amps that need maintenance and care. I think there will always be the pureists, and I love a valve amp as much as the next guy, but in the gigging world I think the nuances of the analog kit is lost.

Little-known makes that deserve to be better known? (Speaking as a hard-core lover of GMR basses 🙂 - I wouldn't swap any of my three for a Maruszczyk any day.) Now that I've thought of it I'll start a thread in Bass Guitars.

Tuesdays. You can use them on Tuesdays.

Don't have enough space or time to contrast and compare my amps. Plenty of good reviews and youtube clips about but a quick summary. Edit: I have been using Markbass Cabs for over 10 years and more recently (last 5 years) Vanderkley or Barefaced with all the Class D amps mentioned below. Have used MARKBASS SA450 and Little Mark 500 for around 15 years, both excellent amps, the SA450 no longer in production. Little colouration so sound of bass very evident. Lots of tonal choice and VLE and VPF controls are great. Plenty punch and power. No mute Switch. Good DI out. Good value overall. GENZ BENZ ShuttleMax 9.2 and Streamliner 900. My preference is for the Shuttlemax which I have been using the most over last 5 years or so and I marginally favour over Markbass. Great sound, two channels, loud , punchy, excellent DI out feature laden but which I very rarely use. I find my Shutttlemax cuts through mix better than the Streamliner which is a great simple little amp particularly for warmer older school sounds, three valve preamp and far less features than the Max, Sadly Fender pulled the plug on the amazing Genz Benz range over 5 years ago. I have little doubt that the GENZLER MAGELLANs are excellent just waiting to try one out. GK 500MB, bought as a back-up, but excellent amp as first choice. More colouration than other amps here with a distinctive GK sound (which I really like), seems very loud for a 500W amp.great overdrive and boost. High end can be a but hissy and a little noisey Good DI. Great value for money. Phil Jones Bass D400 with C8 cab. I love the PJB stuff of which I use a variety and the D400 is most recent. Excellent clean HiFi sound, great for studio and practice. Nice low B for such small drivers, excellent for acoustic instruments. PJB gear does cut through the mix nicley, but to even begin to compete with other amps here and loud drummers here one would need to consider the D1000, which is close to a grand! SANSAMP RBI and CROWN XLS 1002 power amp. Great set-up, classic Sansamp grit for Ampeg-like tones, 1100W of power.but getting into rack gear here. QUILTER BASS BLOCK 800, Portability, great tone punch and power at a very competitive price, only Markbass and GK come close at this price point. The Depth and Contour controls provide all I ever need.( Siimilar idea as Markbass VLE AND VPF). I was very pleasantly surprised by this little beauty at under €500!! The QUILTER DI/line out is great and DOES vary with Gain and Master volume. Not overly impressed with T.C ELECTRONIC great fun TONE PRINT stuff but sound a bit synthetic and under powered to me. Had two combos, both with unusable humming DI outs!! Have gigged with HARTKE gear nice punchy sound, like the old HA3500, if it didn't weigh a ton. The new TX600 is nice but seems very quiet compared to GK, QUILTER, MARKBASS etc. Used an AGUILAR TONE HAMMER 500, very good indeed, nice gritty punch but cost quite a bit more than the QUILTER. I started out 45 years ago, with HIwatt 100, then Fender Bassman135, and then Acoustic Control Corp 220/406 which was my favourite. Have used HH, Peavey, Laney, Trace, Carlsbro (less said the better), but am now firmly in the Class D club, for portability as much as anything. In summary the QUILTER is a USA built unit that should be seriously considered by any player. BTW I have no connection, allegiance or affiliation to Quilter, but think I know a bargain when I see one. Hope my self-indulgent ramblings are helpful. Cheers

Hi folks You may have noticed a new forum in the marketplace called 'commercial items for sale' Currently it's just a bit of a test, but ideally I'd like it to be an area for used bass shops, luthiers and small scale companies to list items they have for sale, so you can look through all the stock directly on BC. We'll see how it goes, and I'll be adding some companies as we go - I will over the next few weeks be talking to small shops and dealers to sign a few more up. Ideally I'd like items posted there to be automatically tagged as 'dealer' but I'm working on things like that, so it's still a work in progress. I hope you like it and find it useful - let's see what happens. Cheers ped

I had a similar issue with rather 'high cost ' bass (a Warwick Streamer Stage 1) at a bike rally a bit ago, in front of one of the biggest crowds I've played to in recent years. Fortunately I had a spare bass to hand and nobody noticed, but trying to change batteries in an active bass in a hurry backstage is certainly one of those banana skins that can trip you up if you're not careful...

Looks like me playing slap! And I think I do that with my head when I play too... The amphetamine chicken peck I call it.

Makes perfect sense to me

Try the diagram below, just leave out the tone pot and cap. https://www.seymourduncan.com/wiring-diagrams?meta_params=bass-options,2-pickups,neck-pb,bridge-jb,1-volume The difference between leaving the pot and cap out or having them in with the pot wide open is impossible to detect with 'normal ears'. If you don't like it you can soon drop a cap in to tame the top end. Cheerz, John

True. As long as players are willing to spend several hundred pounds on an analogue drive pedal (for example) which cost all of £19.50 to make, existing pedal builders will have no reason to move to digital tech.

Last band I was in we went through three or four singers. First one drank way too much and was trousered before gigs started. Second one was a great singer but an unreliable derrière of a man. I wondered why he'd been in so many bands locally - until he we turfed him, and other musicians started sharing their stories about him. Then we got a girl in to sing. Our drummer, a great player but somewhat starved of romance for over a decade, instantly fell for her. Should've seen that coming, really. Eventually they formed a little clique and refused to compromise their now shared opinions on tunes, gigs to refuse and so on. So they had to go. Now they travel round the area doing "sound bath" evenings for the spiritually gullible, with Tibetan bells or something. Me and the guitarist got a new outfit together, borrowed a drummer and found a bloke who was a bit of a karaoke nut, but had never sung in a band before. Turns out he has a tremendous voice and always learns new songs before the next practice. He might still suggest Don't Fear The Reaper, Layla, and other things which apparently go down well at karaoke evenings (who knew?) but we hope to have him educated soon. In short, the atmosphere has lightened considerably,and the first few gigs we've done have been fantastic fun.

See schematic below. These measurements were taken from my original '57 Precision (see pic). Spacing between ferrules is actually 20mm. I'm sure dimensions varied a bit on these early models but this should get you going.

Ultimately you can play whatever you like. You'll know if it's right or not, because you'll either be lauded as a genius or kicked firmly in the scrotum.

I don't think there's any need for that kind of language. Get out!!

Well, I usually come on here and boast if I have had a particularly good gig. So I suppose it's only fair that I should own up to a real stinker! Doing a set of country/rock covers and a couple of originals. First song went well , but then it all started to collapse from there. Singer/LG missed out the second bridge in the second song...the rest of us managed to go with him but it was a bit unsettling. It was my first time doing BVs with this band - I sounded very nervous and warbly. Horrible really. Then in the next song Singer/LG seemed to hit one of those awful mental blocks. Just dried up and stopped half way through. He definitely knows this song, we've been rehearsing it for ages. We started again and he dried up at the same point! We decided to move on to the next one, but by now were all a bit shaken and there were bum notes and hesitations all over the place, including from me! We staggered through to the end and slunk off somewhat embarassed. What made it worse was there were two other bands on who were really good!! Luckily this was in a nice quiet pub with a regular crowd who were very polite about it all. No abuse or rotten vegetables were thrown. I'm playing the same place again next week, but with a different band (and not doing BVs this time!!). So I may have the chance to redeem myself! 😥

Tell that to Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam). They wouldn't sound the same without it

Two things. Sire V7 five string. I was expecting good things, but oh my heavens what an instrument. It looks great and sounds better. Talk about bang-for-buck, this thing has it in spades. The only Jazz-style bass** I've ever played that I preferred was 3 grand's worth of Celinder. I've tried a pukka Fender Marcus Miller sig 5-string (4 times the cost of my V7) and it wasn't even close. Behringer BX600 combo. OK so I wasn't expecting it to be great as such, but it does punch well above its weight. I bought it more as a home practice tool than anything, but it's become my regular chuck-it-in-the-car rehearsal amp. It easily keeps up with my 12-piece soul band, horns and all, and only starts to complain if I get really daft with the B string. Other than that, it's completely brilliant, especially when I consider that I paid 30 quid for it. ** note that I am not including my Shuker J in this, as it's not a traditional J-J configuration.

Hi Guy, hard to tell from photos. There are lots of factors that will obviously bring the value down, especially the non original top and the non-Ebony board, but if the sound is great and it’s solid, it may fetch a good price for a serious learner or a club player. I personally like those basses with little pedigree and a good sound which you can play happily without too many worries of a bump. You should really take it to a local luthier for an opinion, where are you based? There is a thread with lots of luthiers details in it, you may find one near you. Hope this helps.

That's getting close to something like this: Just saying.

That'd be me. 🙂 I'm still really impressed with this passive Thunder 1 - particularly the neck, but it's also got a nice bridge and tuners, and a good-sounding P pickup with adjustable pole pieces. In general it feels like a decent Japanese reinterpretation of the P design. I'm a bit surprised at the comments about them being heavy; this one is 3.5kg (600g lighter than my 2007 MIM P). I guess the more common active version will be a little heavier, and there's probably some production variation...

Why are bass players usually the sensible/practical/organiser one in the band?

Only dealt with Wunjo but they were fantastic and are looking for a Candy Red 70's P for me now.

Looks good and I'm sure covers all the basics. A lot more sophisticated than my first one....

Speaking as a child of the 70s who started playing in the 80s, most things have blown my mind in the last 10-15 years.

That was mine, but it's sold now!

Wunjos Basses in Denmark Street too.

The question is slightly wrong. It should be have non-programmable effects had their day? There are some programmable analogue effects units - I own one the Roland GP8, which apart from the digital delay and chorus/flanger is all analogue but digitally controlled so it's programmable. For me non-programmable effects had their day in the early 90s when I bought my first programmable effects unit. Before that in the 80s I was mostly playing synths where affordable keyboards with programmable memories couldn't come quick enough for me. When I went back to playing the guitar and bass, I briefly had a complex multi pedal set up, but the amount of messing around between songs, even if it was just to set the correct delay time was too much, and the moment I could afford a second hand GP8 I bought it, and haven't looked back. Over the years I've had a few different programmable effects units for my guitar and bass rigs - Roland GP8, Peavey Bassfex, Line 6 BassPod XT and now the Line 6 Helix which along with an RCF745 FRFR cab has completely replaced all my old effects units and guitar and bass amps. I can see why people think they need a particular effects unit to get a particular sound, but in the context of a full band mix is it really that important? In the studio I'm happy to try anything if I think it will give me a better sound for the song, but live the fact that I can hit a footswitch and know that I will all the correct effects in the correct order with the correct settings is far more important than whether my distortion or octaver is absolutely the most perfect one for the song when the programmable one in my Helix will be 90% right.

And especially with more and more bassists using DI pedals. My guitar setup was fully analogue, cost a fortune, and sounded amazing. Boutique, UK made valve amp, hand wound pickups, the only digital element of the signal chain was the true bypass tuner pedal. Annoyingly, I can now get a very similar guitar sound from my Line6 HD500x. Though it doesn't have the same touch dynamics of the analogue setup, it's 80-85% there. For bass, the HD500x is my go to kit. My bass amp lies in the spare room unused, and the pre-amp of the rehearsal room amp gets bypassed. I think it sounds great, and I've had no complaints from the rest of the band. In fact the only "complaints" I've had were down to my No.2 bass having new pickups, and the heights weren't quite right. I'd like to get a Helix, but for now, the HD500x is more than what I need, it's ace.

Hi Paul Good to see you on here. I imagine you’ll be hitting the For Sale threads soon ;-) Dave

+1 I joined right at the start and when I came to renew, I'd had pretty much zero value out of it due to lack of time. So I didn't renew and wished Scott all the best with his venture. I also decided that I'm not the type of person that learns from watching videos. It's worth watching the videos on YouTube to find out if Scott's voice grates on you. Also, it's worth noting that you should download the videos etc as you won't have access to them if you cancel your membership.

It's his hat, right?

Welcome to the Dark Side.

I once discussed joining a band with someone - their precise requirements were that I play exactly the lines they told me to and also drive him and the singer to and from gigs as neither of them drove. That was a tough gig to turn down!

For the avoidance of further confusion: England Flag UK Flag Flag of the Klingon Empire

Welcome! I notice you said "so far" - that's a lovely bass, you obviously know already it won't be the last... 🙂 Hope all goes well with your new band, let us know.

Welcome Borderlineblues. It sounds like you've hit the ground running, so to speak. Best of luck with the new venture.