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

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...

Indeed, if I whisker is .5mm

Yeah, the 'tags' thing is usually a good giveaway.......... as for bought at Xmas & returned in May - I'm relieved that I don't have a monopoly on tw*ts....... 😎

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.

Blues song played backwards: my best friend's wife left him for me. Then I went to bed. Country song played backwards: My dog came back to life. The cows milked themselves. Everything is brilliant and I'm loaded.

I’ll be the controversial one, then! As much as I love Fenders, sometimes I think the tuners look stupid. There; I said it! A full set of “T” (or are they called “Y”?) shaped ones would look fine, but if the rest of the hardware is that dark chrome I’d look for replacements in that colour.

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.

Agreed, the very point of a fretless is that it sounds different to one with frets. It's the slips and slides that give it the magic.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I bought the Yamaha F310 yesterday. It was in definite used condition but played and sounded extremely good. Much better than my Fender acoustic! It was a bargain at £15 too.

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.

Eight posts up ^^ from this one, added to my earlier post. I can't see how to link to a specific post in a topic, as in the previous version of the site; sorry...

What do you consider to be essential spares to carry with you? (Or is that a bit mundane?)

I've been a member since the beginning - massive resource of knowledge. If you want to learn how to play bass, get better or get great, there a course. If you just want to noodle around - no point joining. If you are serious about getting better, there isn't a better online resource. In my opinion.

My Yamaha Bex4 sounds wonderful whatever I plug it into. I've always liked the playability of Yamaha basses and loved the look of the Bex4, especially the tobacco burst one, so snapped one up when it appeared on here. It had the same soapbar as in my BBG5s in a P position and a underbridge piezo so I reckoned it would sound alright but I'm blown away everytime I use it. Our soundman thinks it's the nicest sounding bass he's heard. Less than £300 as well.

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

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.

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.

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

Ah OK, tbh I've never really got too hung up on neck profiles. I'm no good on any shape lol.

Of course you can dislike Jerry Barnes. I don't mind him, but for me he gets way too slappy when the excitement rises. It is very tedious though to have to keep wading through dozens of, "It's not Chic without Bernard" comments. It is Chic if Nile Rodgers wants it to be even though Bernard isn't there. I like that Nile is still gigging and doesn't live in a timewarp, even though so many Chic fans seem to.

Liberace was alive back then and all... hmmm.

Here's a CODA Effects Black Hole PCB, a Model T inspired preamp (4 x J201) with a boost (LPB1) in front of it. The boost was meant to be on a DPTD switch (or footswitch) with an internal trimpot to set the level of the boost. I decided to have the boost always on and moved the potentiometer to the front. I also put C1, C2 and C7 into sockets, so that I could easily swap those caps for more bass if needed. Although, using the 3 band EQ, it can get pretty bass heavy with the stock values. The pilot light didn't function as intended via the footswitch board (from pedalparts), so I had to run more wires than planned first ... Anyway, the light works now (and is red, of course). This could have fit into a smaller enclosure, sure, but I wanted to put numbered knobs and a jewel light on there to give it a bit of an amp like appereance - and I like big pedals!

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.

Pimped a Squier Bronco I got recently. Changed the tuners (elephant ears), bridge and added a hotrails, cream pickguard and pickup cover - to be extra pimpy!!! Super fun to play, the neck is very comfortable and fast. Gets big and thumpy. Depending on the amp can get a nice 60s p tone thump, but it can also dig in and growl when I want it to. Think my full scales may be taking a back seat for a while.