Leaderboard

Two more jobs - soldering the wires and fitting the strap buttons. However, took the advantage of a little bit of cloud (not often in the UK we say THAT!) to take the arty-farty shots - taking photos in full sunlight is not an easy thing to do! Before those shots (and forgive the self-indulgence!), someone asked me why I've started scooping the back. Two reasons that can be seen in these two shots: It takes out a LOT of weight. Just look at how much wood has been removed - and this is a relatively thick body this time: It allows a superslim transition of the neck to the body. Again, this one has been made a little deeper (this one is 30mm at its minimum - my last build was 25mm where the body was basically the same thickness as the neck!) but still retains those pleasing lines at the transition. I've also left the transition relatively modest starting with a taper just past the 13th fret - I can always get the surform out if, after he's had a proper play with it, @Len_derby wants it slimmer further up Anyway, enough of the technicals - here are the fancy shots: As always, many thanks for sticking with yet another tortuous thread and for your kind words and encouragement - always HUGELY appreciated Andy

Evening campers For today's thrilling instalment hold on to your seats First job was to glue together one of the headstock bindings and the body binding. After that I set them aside and routed the binding rebate on the bodies, this time I left an extra half a millimetre, better to need to scrape a bit of wood and go through that again. I ran into a small problem while routing the rebate in the bodies: When I made the routing jig some years ago the base I was routing didn't have such a dramatic carved top as the twins but this time the base of the router carriage fouled on the top of the body so I had to cut a bot away to give it some clearance, after that all went well, so if you ever need to make one, bare that in mind Then after some time I took the bindings out of the formers and glued up the next lot before glueing in the new bindings, then once dry I cleaned them up and prepared the headstock for the second lot of bindings which were formed once the former was free again. I cut the mitre joints freehand with a sharp chisel then welded them to the existing with acetone before finishing off by glueing them in with CA. So at the end of the day we have two sets of binding ready to be cleaned up before I can trim the neck before fitting the fretboards and carving the back of the neck

Spent a little time out in the shed today managed to clean the binding up makes the body look a lot whiter, i'll go out tomorrow and look for some lacquer and try and get it finished this week and then start putting it together fingers crossed. I have looked for some strings but the black tape wound are just to expensive for me if I could play bass I could justify buying them but I have found some fender flat wounds on line for 23 quid, I am fitting a jazz neck so what gauge strings would be best ?

You would have loved my old workshops, two large old cowsheds converted and a third as a showroom/woodstore. we had a machine room and a separate bench room which was really comfortable apart from when someone used a router, EEK! The machinery was all 1950s Wadkin all re manufactured to as new condition and was stunning to use, very heavy solid cast iron and no vibration, talk about being spoilt A far cry from my apprenticeship days of hand planing 24" Elm boards from say 1 1/2" down to 1" in an old shed. Lovely as it was I think what I have now is better suited to making basses, thankfully many of the skills I learnt as a furniture maker are transferable to guitar making or certainly the mechanics of it but there are a lot of things that are very different that I have yet to learn or gain some experience with. Thankfully this is only a hobby now and not a business otherwise I would be bankrupt in a month at the speed I'm working at. Like furniture making, anyone can make the stuff to a high standard but the real skill is in making it to that standard quickly, a pressure that thankfully isn't on me Anyway, a picture of something I made a few years ago, sorry about the quality it's a photo of a photograph. The cabinet was quite big and made with shop cut 3mm veneers of Indian Rosewood and East Indian Satinwood with Sri Lankan Ebony for inlay stringing and glazing bars, the rope twists were hand carved from solid Rosewood

Haha! I'd love to hear him testing mic's too! He certainly is 'possessed by the music'. I'd like to hear the bassists other work as well. We all get something different out of sonic experiences. Especially this kind of avant-garde or free-jazz. This sort of thing can really test people and challenge their definitions of art, as it seems to have done for you. It can drive them genuinely insane as well. I personally love it for that, its very punk! His vocalisations are just that. Vocalisations. This doesn't limit him to specific words, harmony or rhythm. It could be considered quite dissonant. But interestingly, I saw a Rick Beato video recently where he discussed the idea of 'immunity to dissonance'. If you hear a dissonance or musical oddity enough you acclimatise to it and it is no longer dissonant or odd to you, just another fascinating harmony. 7/8 is 'odd' time, but we all got used to it. It's not strange anymore. Immunity to dissonance, while utterly alien at first, is central to this performance I feel. I found it was interesting to listen to with my 'soundscape head' on. The beginning brought the image of someone working with wood outdoors to my minds eye. I'll readily concede that it's not musical in the classical sense of the word. It's not Trane, Ornette Coleman or Sun Ra, but it does have a certain something. I once went to an enjoyable free-jazz/avant-garde gig which closely resembled this but used prepared piano, drums, bari-sax and electronics in addition to voice and bass. I found it made a refreshing change from the usual diatonic harmony and evenly divided rhythmic content. When I was younger, I remember feeling the way that you feel about this, but for all Jazz. The music was unpredictable (which I took to be bad at the time) and harmonically beyond my understanding. So, like a typical monkey I interpreted that which was unknown to be bad and avoided it. As I have matured, this has obviously and quite necessarily changed. For me, this performance clearly demonstrated the difference between improvisation in a conventional jazz idiom (where we expect the usual cliches of approach notes, time on the ride cymbal, walking bass, extended harmony etc.) and improvisation in a free setting such as this, where any sound can be interpreted musically. John Cage had alot to say about this. He held that all sounds/silences are musical, it is the listener and their ability to hear the sounds as such which varies. Don't actively listen to it I say, just be part of the thing. This is what I would call "inhabiting a sound-space" or passive attention. Very meditative if you're into that stuff. Similar to when you put on a record while doing some chores. The tune simply accompanies you as you go about, you're neither ignoring nor focusing on it. Performances like this are highly introspective, interpretive and, as with all music like this, requires completely different priorities from the listener. If everybody walks away from the performance with the same thing, then this music has definitely failed. Think about abstract expressionist art. It doesn't ask you to recognise use of forms from reality in the work (in this case the parallel would be use of conventional musical laws in the piece). The point is not to say: 'Look how well they depicted this scene or that tree.' or 'Look how well the bass outlines harmony x or rhythm y'. Nothing so literal. Rather, the purpose is personal, unique from hearing to hearing and often difficult or impossible to convey with words. P.S. The little "Ooo." from Minton at the end made me laugh.

Noted @The Guitar Weasel Found some screws and some foam with a couple of springs. Fitted just perfectly. Popped on the back cover and so that leaves just the string tree (still in the post!) to fit. I will set it up and set Pickup height later on this evening and give an initial report. I have a plan for sound samples but you might have to be a touch more patient with this.. Doesn’t look too shabby huh?

You're welcome of course. Really though, I'm sure I speak for lots of folk when I say thank you for sharing your craft with us all. I will watch with interest to see where you go from here. I wish Len many happy years of ownership of this beauty. With a bit of luck I'll see and hear it in performance soon. (Been trying to catch Len with the Daz Kelly Trio for a while but plans keep getting scuppered)

TBF none of us are entirely rational e.g. my "irrational" dislike is the mid-scooped sound I've heard on YouTube clips of the Tech 21 dUg Pinnick whilst never having heard one in the flesh! The one thing I do know about @Cuzzie (apart from being a great guy and passionate about all things bass) is that he does a lot of careful research before opting for certain gear and has tried out a bunch of stuff along the way, so I think he's being a little modest in how he describes himself I have A/B'd the following 'high end' cabs: Markbass 1x12, Vanderkley 210, Tecamp212 and BF 1x12s Quick summary of what I've found: Markbass cabs tend to roll of the high end (treble) a touch; if this is an issue this can be easily addressed by boosting the treble EQ in the 3kHz to 5kHz range with a simple EQ pedal (e.g. the EQ patch on the Zoom MS-60B is just fine); The more expensive VK, Tecamp and BF cabs all have greater clarity / better sonic attributes than the Markbass cab. But you're paying a premium price for them. I personally (just) preferred the tone of VK 210 to the BF BB2 (1x12) and I now have a VK 210 LNT which I pair with a DG M900 head. It is undoubtedly a "better" rig than my MB AC 121 Lite (which still gets used for pub gigs), but at double the price you would hope so wouldn't you? My favourite cab is actually my Mesa 212 PH, but that's definitely not a lightweight option! But, as several folk have rightly recommended, no substitute for having a fun half day out (ideally with a fellow bass player) and hitting a decent store where you can A/B the various options

Well hello chaps, I thought I'd better say hello and explain Bridgehouse's pickup as I'm the person who designed and wound it :-) My business involves a hell of a lot of pickup rewinds (as well as building new pickups), and the most common bass pickup to need my ministrations is that 'certain classic California-made' bass we are discussing. It's always had me thinking that it's kinda an object lesson in how to break the mould in bass pickup design ... because it's actually built pretty much the opposite way to the way you'd expect to produce bass tones. It's thin bobbin and super fine wire combined with relatively low output is really poles apart from the tall bobbin, thicker wired P Bass and J Bass. There are plenty of guitar pickups that use the squat bobbin approach: the P90 and the Jazzmaster are two notable ones, and they instantly sound different to taller bobbin pickups like Strat ones. My instant thought was to replicate the tones Bridgehouse was looking for (without tons of extra EQ) a 51 P Bass bobbin was too tall and would accentuate too much treble over mids. So I fired up the laser cutter and produced a custom bobbin of exactly the same winding area as the ... um ... Californian bass, and sat it atop a ceramic magnet ... filling it to 14k with 44awg wire. As a finishing touch I added adjustable dome head steel poles. Now does it sound exactly like the original? I popped it briefly into my bass pickup test guitar (a P Bass partscaster with a dirty big central rout) and gave it a little go ... I ended up with a big smile. Not an exact ringer, but a lot closer than I've ever got with a Precision and no EQ. I'll leave it to Bridgehouse to do some sound samples ... but I'm pleased I proved a bit of a concept, at least to myself.

Compromise: put a Cabronita pickguard on it.

For me the key to unlocking the answer here is in your first statement: you 'love the portability and sound'. If that's the case, then having something that you already really like is worth a lot when evaluating your options. The missing piece of the jigsaw is a lack of volume. My suggestion would be to get a MB 121 NY cab (and even better, if there's one available second hand in very good condition) to pair with your CMD 121P. This should do five useful things: a) increase the output of your amp from 300W to 500W; b) double the amount of air that your single cab is shifting; The combined effect of the above two will be: c) a considerable increase in volume which I'd be very surprised if it didn't meet your needs. (For comparison I have a MB AC 121 Lite which puts 500W through a single 12" speaker and I've never had to push this more than half way on either the volume or gain knobs. I'd expect your rig, with the additional 12" speaker, to be louder than mine, so you should have plenty of headroom). d) you will have the flexibility to just use your single 300W combo for smaller events and the full rig for larger events; e) the fifth (not to be dismissed) point is that you will have a matching / compact / lightweight rig with many admirers(!) which you should not have any difficulty in moving on if / when you decide to do so. ...just my tuppence worth - hope that's of some use

The other week a fella wanted opinions on the Peavey T45. Being an honest soul I chipped in that the T45,like the Sarzo, was a great looking bass but sorely lacking in the tone department. The single humbucker T45 is 1 vol 2 tone set up and would've been better wired parallel 2 vol 1 tone IMHO. You'd need to rewire the pickup to get parallel and I don't have a spare so other options were needed. Being a fan of Warman pickups, that decision was quickly made 4 wire MM humbucker. Spare Peavey Foundation body would finally see some use 😎 First snag was the 2 pickup Foundation body, I'd need a scratchplate big enough to hide the pickup cavities.Printing off a Stringray plate showed the trouble,tight to neck heel exposed the bridge pickup/moved back to cover the holes and it was shy of the neck heel. OK I can live with shy of the neck heel 😀 Pearloid plate arrived yesterday,as did the Warman. Dropped the pickup into the plate then marked pole positions on masking tape. Popped a neck on the body and run 2 wires from bridge to tuners. I looked into pickup position/frequency response,sweet spots etc but the bottom line was the pickup position would be decided by the plate hiding holes and lining up with strings. Plain sailing followed 😎 Routed out for pickup,wired it up,fitted stings, took a photo. Then decided a maple neck would look better so took it apart again 😂

Funnily enough I discovered the weirder end of jazz completely by mistake; I was DJing in Leeds in the 80s - mainly funk. And as there was no real means I knew of finding new music I'd buy stuff completely on spec. One day I saw an album cover with a sharp dressed black guy holding a Steinberger bass - it was an import costing £8.99 (this was 1985!!!) but I thought this looks like new funk, I'll play it at the Warehouse tonight! It was Jamaaladeen Tacuma's "Showstopper". I played it before sticking it on the dancefloor - didn't sound straight 4:4, there was weird repetition, there were too many notes, it just wasn't right. So I shoved it in the back of my record collection. A couple of years later I listened to it again, and somehow it just made sense... But it was a slippery slope, I craved more oddness, more dissonance, more crazy. Ornette and his harmolodics weren't enough. Through Shannon-Jackson I discovered Last Exit, Brotzmann, Bill Laswell, Sonny Sharrock, Steve Lacey, Lol Coxhill and the holy grail - Derek Bailey. It was like starting with a fag behind the bike sheds, graduating onto a sneaky spliff, onto white powders, bits of blotting paper, and finally, Free Jazz Improv. All other music sounded dull. After a long visit to the Betty Ford Clinic I was weaned back onto "normal" music, but thanks to this thread I'm hooked again. Cheers!

Just lovely, I have a few chunks of Poplar burr under my bench I might have a look at them to see if I can make use of them it looks so nice, or should I say you have made it look so nice. Lucky Len!

Stunning!! 😀

They don't make money being sexist, they make money taking the p!ss out of sexism. It's an important distinction, and one that also applies to Spinal Tap and Bad News.

I built my first bass back in 1978(it was a set neck Thunderbird copy) out of an old mahogany hardware shop counter! I love the idea of recycling wood.

. . . and this. If you think that two 112 cabs will sound twice as good as one 112 cab, prepare to be amazed. They will sound a lot better than that.

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Stunning work, and thanks for taking the time to post all the updates, it's been a fascinating thread.

Good work Andy...I'm sure that Len will be really happy.

Like many bass players I slap a lot at home, but rarely in public at gigs! Oh er missus! I find MB gear very flexible the VPF gives a variable mid scoop for slapping and the VLE a great old school, treble roll off . Quilter Bass Block 800 does this very nicely indeed, but enough from me already!

We're heading off topic here, but good slap tone doesn't necessarily need a tweeter (think back to early Brothers Johnson, Level 42 etc.). Of course almost everything discussed on here is (hopefully) based on opinions that have been formed by personal experience. That is completely rational. I totally get that others have tried gear and not liked it. I never 'got' Markbass when I tried it in store but when I used a LM2 through a rubbish Laney 410 cab at an open mike night it was a real ear opener. Having been precisely where the OP is, my rational advice to someone who is happy with their combo but just wants the ability to go louder is to add another cab of the same type.

I personally don't give a rat's backside about what the gear looks like (even banana yellow) but I must admit that try as I might, I have never been able to get the sort of sound I want from a Mark Bass rig. Even when I just the power amp and speakers by using my DI box into the fx return, it still doesn't get 'my' sound the way my Rootmaster/Barefaced rig does. I suspect that the MB gear may be aimed at a more 'modern' sound for slap, etc. which is not what I look for at all.

Sparky Mark makes a lot of sense. If you like the sound you,'ve got add a MB 1x12, two 1x12 are more portable and flexible then one 2x12. I n addition to MB, I use Barefaced, Vanderkley and PJB which are all clean uncoloured. IMHO Vanderkley and Barefaced are the best cabs I've ever used, and I prefer them marginally, maybe, 10-20% over MB, but sonically I am not sure they justify being twice the price?

I would ignore advice from anyone who admits to having quote "irrational hatred" of anything. Chances are that they've never done a proper A to B comparison of what they have against what you are thinking of. I can guarantee that if you are liking the CMD121P combo then the cheapest and best upgrade is either a NY121P (my choice having also owned two TRV121H cabs) or a TRV121H. You can pick either up secondhand on here for around £200 to £250. If you still need something different then you can shift that gear easily. Two twelve cabs can be fairly lightweight but they're not as flexible or convenient sizewise (is that a word?) as two single twelve cabs. I've no experience with BF cabs but as my Markbass cabs stand up really well against my Bergantinos I don't feel the urge.

Wow! That is all 😮

Much better? That's a very subjective question. I use BF cabs and IMO they are "better" cabs (ie go louder, better sonic attributes and lighter) and sound "better" (to me for what I want to sound like), but if the tone isn't for you then it doesn't matter how much "better" they are. I've seen people put off by cabs at this level because they sound "different". They will produce sound that is clearer which people can dislike. I like that because it lets me cut through and makes me play better. As you already know, this is not the cheap option. But if you think the differences in tone between your old gear and this are "better" then IMO this upgrade is worth every penny.

Pickup has arrived.. hopefully I will get some time over the weekend to fit it! I need to sort out some mounting hardware - I’m low on foam/rubber slugs - but that won’t be difficult!

It's in Luxembourg. There is no pre requirement, hence they the entry examen to check your ability to play (3 jazz standards), your harmony knowledge (I've always referred to Théorie de la musique by Danhauser) and your sight reading in the key of your instrument (practice). After that they will decide of your level and your courses. Playing 3 standards of jazz implies playing obvious tracks, hence my choice, that said.

Its possible. You would have to move all the frets accordingly. It's not just moving the nut closer to the fret, as that would be totally wrong. The thing is even if done properly. It might still look odd around the headstock, nut area. But I hear there's maybe just maybe one guy crazy enough to help you. His name is unmentionable on here but he is a eBay legend. Converter of instruments extraordinaire. Haha

Love the sound? Just want more volume? Add the extension cab and get more volume and tone.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Some folks that study, in whatever subject, do actually enjoy it. Education does not systematically kill one's pleasures.

Its music, just pick a song and play it. Play what you enjoy, that's what playing music is supposed to be about. If it matters more to have a Phd in music than love what you play then that is a whole different ball game.

Either that or you are trying really hard to justify hanging on to that Ric

@drlargepants - you are sounding sentimental!

Usual tactics... blind panic... Just a tune really, not cutting edge or experimental, sorry. It is however typical of the "fools journey" sound. I prefer to go for accessible emotion. It comes complete with the painting inspiration and my "star traveller" artwork which I thought was quite fitting. The Artist's Passion PS sorry about the various wonky bits and rubbish mix !

Putting aside being diabetic for a moment... I like a nice Forêt Noire gateau I like a Victoria Sponge cake I like chocolate éclairs I like jelly and trifle I'm less fond of a Forêt Noire, layered with a Victoria Sponge, stuffed with chocolate éclairs and topped with jelly and trifle. That's what I made of the BBC video, a rich series of elaborate compositions each vying for a place in a sonic sphere already pretty full. Yes, the bloke is multi-talented, and has a lot going for him, for which I would think he's worked darned hard; chapeau bas for that. Taken individually, in smallish doses, I can appreciate a lot of it, and even enjoy some, but in such a massive dose, I had to turn it off half-way through. I might go back to listen to a bit more in, say, five-minute sections, or however long the pieces might last, but then I'd let that settle on the stomach for a day or so before going back for another dose. I would recommend, on a technical note, that he carries on with, or takes up, proper singing lessons from a good coach, as he definitely has the vocal capacity for doing some great stuff, but it's a bit more than 'hit'n'miss' to be comfortable. Trained to the same high standard as opera, lyric singers, he'd be a good deal more 'musical', I'd say. In short, I'd suggest that the fellow is a living proof of the old adage: less is more. I found the quality and professionalism of the orchestra to be of great help in getting as much as I did from what I heard, and will likely go back for more, but not right now. [Burp ...]

Roughly 2-5pm with a couple of breaks, but whatever we felt like really.

House of Tone in Chester are fantastic as an alternative. They’ll do exactly what you want and are very good value.

Following on from my post from last night's gig, we've just taken a wedding booking off the back of it. Even the bad venues have their positives

I used to have a CMD121P combo to which I added a NY121P cab. The increase in volume sounds more like four times and the fullness of sound is amazing. Do it now!!! As I already had a LM3 I sold the combo and bought another NY121P cab for my lightweight rig of LM3 plus two NY121P cabs.

Even something like a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder can make a big difference - what sort of sound do you like? Vintage, modern, high gain, punchy?

I'd do a pickup swap too. You can get some really really good replacements for these for small beans.

Actually, how about a 'Sausage Fest' pedal - one knob, to control the bias. No footswitch of course...it's an 'always on' kind of effect.