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Some of you may have followed the diary in the build forum, but for those of you who don't frequent those parts, here's my new ACG Krell E-Type 6: These are Alan's photos, but it arrived yesterday. Spec: Alder body Indian Cedar top 33" scale 24 frets Ash neck Macassar Ebony fingerboard (with a very slight radius) ACG RFB dual coils East Uni-Pre 4K I believe it's also one of the first with Alan's new headpiece, which really tidies up the string ends on headless basses! I've already recorded the theme for the new Basschat Podcast with it, loving the sound, so make sure you download that and have a listen when it's available in the next few days. Si

He's not done anything decent since 'Take My Breath Away'.

Carve's done for the body ready for final sand. As usual, I give the wood a quick coat of tru-oil to show up any filing or sanding marks and any glue spills, etc.. It is also useful for keeping the body relatively clean while I move onto the next bit - carving the neck. The finish will be enhanced, but this is fairly representative of the colour shades that will be on the final product: Nice bit of quilting when it catches the light: This will be enhanced further when the final finish is applied. And for good measure, the back: ...and front-on: Next job - the neck carve

I think that's the root of the whole thing... he came up in the late 70s with a technique on par with Jaco (maybe) and Stanley but without the compositional skills or band forum showcase to project him. You can find his best work on Patrick Moraz 'Story of I', the four Bruford albums and my favourite JB, with Allan Holdsworth on 'Road Games'. These are not records that worried the chart compilers to any great extent... I saw him play a mind-blowing gig with John McLaughlin and Trilok Gurtu... but it never made it to records. I think some people find him hard to get along with due to the chip on his shoulder about not being recognised in the same way as Jaco or Stanley. Plus he's had other issues, parents holocaust survivors which casts long shadows and I think one of his kids had cancer but pulled through. Hope he gets back to playing with his trio with Scott Henderson and the mighty Denise Chambers... loads of potential there... Loved some of their Weather Report arrangements with guitar...

The Fender Precision had a Jazz bass neck that had been shaved by Michael Tobias. It had two Bartolini pickups which were custom wound to Jeff's specification by Bill Bartolini. It ended up with just the bridge pickup connected (I may be wrong, but I think the neck pickup may have 'went static'). Interestinigly, that was the end of the road for those pickups until recently, when Bill Bartolini found the original diagrams for those pickups. The pickup was resurrected, appearing in the Cort Rithimic. It's actually a splitcoil inside a soapbar case. I know that bass was eventually stolen, probably some time around 1990. Jeff had used it in 1988 in the Kazumi Watanabe recordings and live with John McLaughlin on their tour of England. By 1992 (I think) he was playing a first generation Peavey Palaedium. I plan on getting a replica of this bass commissioned. I'm not sure how I'll go about it, but it'll probably involve a Warmoth alder Precision body, a Fender Jazz neck, some Bartolini 'classic' range pickups, a Badass II and a few other finishing touches, put together by a good luthier in the UK. As for Jeff himself, I consider him a friend and a good guy who always wants to lift people up. On the internet, he has perhaps come across as a bit stand-offish in the past but he will speak to anyone to put his point across because he genuinely wants to raise the level of bass education and the skills of bass players in general. The situation is not helped by some frightfully rude sorts on the 'net who insult and troll him for sport. I know not everyone is interested in jazz, fusion or classical teaching methodology, though I'm never surprised to see folk lining up to have a go at him. In conversation with Jeff, I've always found him to be a warm, funny and caring bloke. It astounds me that the (IMO) greatest bassist of our generation, and the most fluent improviser on our instrument, would have any interest in how my playing is and would want to offer me advice on how to get better. For that reason alone, I'll always have a tremendous amount of respect for Jeff.

Good to see Jeff pairing the tried and tested jeans & Hi-Tec combination with a rather unorthodox (some might say daring) vest and blazer counterpoint there, I like it when musicians push the boundaries and really stretch themselves.

Lot of carving still to do, but the neck is sized and roughed out:

Very Probably Nigerian.....i think 🙂.

I tried it once but it made me feel dirty and ashamed.

Spot the misdemeanours.

The tawdry item is not the instrument stand I'm afraid which I find quite good, I have 2 the same, they are K&M. The tawdry item is the speakon to Jack speaker cable which looks like an odd bit of 1.00mm mains cable at least a good 2' long. I believe that only 27 Amp 2.5mm cable is acceptable. Well this has been amusing. hope you all enjoyed it, (by the way they were the kitchen cupboard doors).

Going to leave this here... can't seem to link the video directly, so scroll down - it's worth it! https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/25/oh-my-god-is-water-racist/#.WzVFWnHQcpM

Another hot morning in the sun cutting Abalone today, I cut a couple of the Draig inlays. After I drilled the headstocks for the tuners and marked and routed the holes for the inlays and stuck them in, not quite as easy as the square fretboard inlays and yes a little black epoxy was needed. Just rough sanded and wetted to give an idea

/Supportive wife mode ON/ 1. Camera work for No. 1 2. Camera work for No. 2 3. N/A 4. N/A 5. N/A 6. Would much rather wash my hair than attend one of these, even in the audience - or indeed *as* the audience - but I do, occasionally. 7. Short hair is a pleasure to wash. /supportive wife mode OFF/ 😉

I love Denise Chambers.... she's great

I fear I may have made too much of an issue out of this. I too miss a manual volume control but it's not that bad. I set it to +15 for live work (where the hiss is not at all noticeable) and 0db for home use. There's enough gain in the helix, a Behringer Xr18, a Behringer MIC1000 or my Soundcraft Notepad to make up for any changes within the realms of 'loud' and 'quiet' that its not as though I feel the need to sit with a laptop and tweak "nono, this is a small gig, so I need to set the FR800 to +11db rather than +15". If I didn't use one of them at home I would never move then from +15. Next time, something similar to the QSC back panel please, but the current ones work fine.

I love that 1st Dread Zeppelin album, the novelty never wears off in my opinion. I heard a rumour that Cher is going to tour with a Cher tribute act. The tour is called 'Cher and Cher alike'. I'll get my coat 😂

So today I redid the wiring as it worked passive but not active. Some idiot had swapped the in and out wires round! I put the back on, I put the new machineheads on, I put the knobs on (of which one is nice and the other 4 will be replaced). I made another scratch on the front 🙄 I adjusted the bridge, I put strings on, I played it. For the first time active (played it passive on one pickup before!). The pickups have a high output, and that is on normal mode, in serial the really have a huge output. In single coil a lot less but still sound quite full. The bridge pickup is very bassy, more than I thought it would be, the bridge a little less so but very clear. So happy with these pickups (they are cheap). And even happier with the switching, it gives a clear difference in each mode. So thats it, pretty well done. I will gig it next week. There are a few rough edges, both literally and figuratively, and a few things that if I had known then I would have done differently. I need to do the frets, there is a high fret at about 23 choking off some strings, and I need to do intonation and stuff, but no big deal. Where I am very sweaty in this weather, the red seeps a bit - maybe some wax or something? But honestly, I couldn't be happier! So here are some more gratuitous photos, just because it seems a good way to finish a thread.

Superb

Buying the Daily Fail.

Yes and Cort for the bass. Should ask Gillette for the moustache.

6.5 LBs?? What's stopping it floating away?? Seriously though, the weight will make it so much more playable...

Just weighed it - that neck carving has taken off a lot of weight. We might be looking below 6 1/2lbs finished weight …

I think I'd put washing my hair at the top of the list, because I'm not about to play any sort of gig unless my hair looks right!!! 😤

Hi all, Just a quick bump so this doesnt dissapear into the caverns of Basschat, we are still at £555, thanks again and all donations are much appreciated Cheers Steve

Oh dear. Instead of saying "Silly me. My bad. Sorry folks", he has to "go back into therapy to find out what is happening", etc, etc. Jeff, you were a @rse. We all do it on occasions (some of us more than others). Try not to in future. All the talk about "therapy" is just a way of avoiding owning up - "I need to find out what's happening, it wasn't my fault, some unseen hand is controlling me, blah, blah". Give it a rest.

Well for north Wales the weather has been hot these last few weeks but the last two have been baking, I had the day off yesterday but decided to try working outside today and enjoy the sun. It started out lovely but eventually it got too hot and I ended up with a towel draped over my head trying to keep the sun off, I had a magnifying visor on so I couldn't wear a hat. I got some done and now I'm inside cooling off. I set up a makeshift bench outside, literally a saw horse and a metalworking vice clamped to it to hold my saw table. then I took my designs for the headstock inlays and, well confession first, I nearly flamingo'd up (like a pink torpedo up only bigger!) with the name as my written Welsh isn't that good but basically "the dragon" is "Y Ddraig" and plain "Dragon" is "Draig" so disaster averted. So I took my design and with a sharp scalpel cut out some of the sections and glued them with Titebond to a Mother of Pearl blank then cut them out, each time I cut a piece I turned it upside down and glued it to a mirror image of the design so it can then be transferred to the headstock. I'm sure you all get the drift and after 4 hours sawing and filing I ended up with one dragon ready for inlaying into a headstock. Not sure if I want to do the other tomorrow or do one of the Draig inlays for which I have some lovely dark green Abalone

Hi guys We've dealt with this character before. He always uses 'Gear' at the beginning of his username and joins from a Nigerian based IP (we've now banned access from all Nigerian IPs) but now he's found out how to use a VPN it seems. I'm going to add a warning about scammers in the wanted forum as it seems this is always how he contacts people. At the weekend Rik and I are doing some work on the forum and one job will be to flush this idiot away once and for all. Sorry about that chaps ped

Finished at last. I'm quite happy for my first attempt. Followed a You Tube video for the covering. To be honest my corners aren't that good, thankfully mostly hidden by the metal corner caps. Was a labour of love, probably cost me way more than it's worth but I'm a happy cat. Finished with a Lotus badge ..... just because I could ha ha. Hope you like it. Andy

So today's thrilling update, I know you're not sleeping nights wondering what will happen next First job this morning was to drill the switch and control pot holes, I did this perpendicular to the surface rather than to the back so the knobs don't look pink torpedo eyed. I looked at some Les Paul guitars in PMT Cardiff last weekend to see how they were drilled, strangely some were vertical and some where in line with the contours, it was the ones high on the wall that were angled so in hindsight they would have been customs as they cost an arm and a leg.. Next was to sand the body contours and make them look less like I attacked them with an axe, after that I did the sides and the back but only to 80 grit until the binding is in and all other work done then I'll take it down to 240 or 320 grit depending on how it looks. No need to go further than that on wood, the marks will never show even at 240 with clear lacquer, the problem with going finer is that the grits start removing soft wood rather than the harder and ripples start to appear, it's quite hard to stop that and to be honest there isn't any real advantage to do so on your average timber like Oak, Mahogany, Ash etc. The last job of the day was to check the necks for flat and yes they were, excellent news so a couple of wipes with the plane and then I sanded the headstock and glued the headstock veneers on, after an hour in clamps I trimmed the veneer flush and being the daft bat I am I stuck the bits together to have a first look at what they were going to look like. I won't comment on that, make your own mind up. The top of the neck body isn't flush thith the top of the body yet, I need to trim the bottom of the tenon but I'm leaving that until shaping time

Just a heads up, BBC 4 are doing an evening of Duran Duran tomorrow, 29th June.

Just got and fitted a lovely new Electro Harmonix valve from our friends at Watford Valves, as recommended by Derek as an early breakup valve. In short it sounds fantastic in my Trace. With the valve pre set to full, the gain at 9 and the low compression at half, it gives me that tiny bump of breakup at the edge of every plucked note. Been pursuing that tone for so many years and have finally got it.

I think your batteries are connected in series to provide 18v to both the active circuit and pickups, in which case they will run down at the same rate.

I don't know the answer, but you could check that easily with a multi-meter.

<interval> For some bizarre reason, every time I see the letters "FRFR" written down... this song comes into my head. Which is bizarre, because there's not even any Rs in Foux Du Fa Fa. Anyway... As you were.

I've just put the song on Spotify for a listen, thank you. There's a nice bit of space for a bit of a noodle, yeah I like that, especially against the drone of the D in the accompanying chord. Good call!

They're very decent basses, and i'd guess the prices are just going to keep rising.

Great thread! I actually came back to look at this as one of my students has asked about dissecting these sorts of bass lines. A personal influence for me (other than the obvious that I bang on about all the time) is actually Paul Gray who recently rejoined The Damned. Is playing is melodic and almost sings across the bass neck even when he's just holding down the low end. His playing is interspersed with melodic lines that reach up the bass neck, but never over play. First time I saw him play was actually with Captain Sensible's solo project. He rocked up with his 76(?) thunderbird and made that thing sound incredible. The band I was in played support and of course had a great time with the guys. Shame The Oval Norwich has long since closed as we had lots of great memories in there, but that's a discussion for another day! I love this track, Wait For The Blackout. But there are plenty of others to choose from!

He's one of those players... I know his name from these forums. But I couldn't name anything he's done.

Aw shucks. 'T were nowt.

Used a Boss TU for years but love my PolyTune pedal. So another vote for TC.

Not a tribute band as such but I've always thought my mates band name was superb, but you have to say it with a Yorkshire accent;

Add the Ashdown ABM 400 in the classifieds at the minute (bit over budget but that's what we're here for!) and that'd be a stonking rig! Lightweight gear is all the rage at the minute (and has been for a few years) so you'll find that heavier gear is pretty cheap...

Not a bad way of going about things, but maybe there's a distinction between 'learning songs' and 'learning music'..? I'm a drummer, and spent a long time learning and practising the rudiments of drumming (hours at a time on just snare drum stuff, or syncopation, or tom rolls, or cymbal swells etc...). It then became possible to play almost any 'song', even if I'd never heard it before, or pick up on the 'hook' parts if there was a specific drum part. For what I was doing at the time (variety drumming, and depping...), it was far more useful than songs, and indispensable for creating my own drum parts for original material. There's no 'song' to copy when one is writing the song oneself..!

Thanks for the link Grangur