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Feel free to use this'un if you want. One of my favourite photos of me ever, mainly because you can't see my ugly mug

You didn’t read the post, did you 😂

You might be over thinking this. Bass has a support role in Blues (old and new) so just get a good sound and play well. Listen to Pino, Carmine Rojas and Sean Hurley, and you'll hear totally different sounds and styles. I'd just use my go-to 5 string active jazz bass with rounds and my regular Aguilar/Barefaced rig. What you play will be twice as important as what you sound like. More importantly, find a drummer who knows the difference between a 4 on the floor Texas shuffle and a Purdy shuffle and can play an interesting pattern on a slow blues.Then youonly need a guitarist with a brain and a singer without an ego. . . good luck with that search!!

Finally got mine flight cased up. After recently adding a wireless I wanted a plug in and go set up. Had the helix 6 months now and absolutely love it. I don't use many fx but do use the built in darkglass od pedal lots and love how easy it is to switch basses between songs and just step on a setting ready for each one. Both me and guitarist have ditched backline completely now. Helix and IEMs all the way baby!

Feel free to share this one of me:

A 5 string for blues? Sacrilege. I reckon I could do a whole set on the E string alone.

Here’s my whole family of cheapos. All get gigged, the white PJ and the black J regularly. Together they cost less than half of what my Fender Jazz Deluxe cost.

Just bought this for £50 Made In Japan Hohner P bass, all original apart from the screws on the scratchplate! Any Info On these chaps? Really plays well!

I’ll sleep on it. Been one of those days anyway so maybe I’ll feel different in the morning. It’s a right come down when you get all excited and then it doesn’t work tho. Proper downer on my evening after a long and quite stressful day working. Either that or I’ll get a refund and buy a TE Elf for the sheer hell of it.

Have you got another one where you aren't blinking?

I realise that now. Lots of people like peas and I don’t... Personally I’d have a wall of valves, an old P-Bass and a chequered relationship history if I was regularly playing blues. I have two (just missing the P bass).

Recently, i was fortunate enough to be able to visit Stephen Chown and try out various basses and effects. After a trip to visit family down south, i went to see him in Bristol. The office is housed in a Victorian bridge arch, which certainly beats most offices. After a while messing with basses and pedals, i brought up the point of me making some short scales. Within ten minutes, i had two chowny swb necks in my hands. At some point, a chowny swb with a carbon top will exist (watch this space) Anyway, cheers to Stephen for allowing me to attempt an swb replica, i recommend chatting to him if you ever get the chance, and hopefully visit him in Bristol again soon.

You know what, I really miss lojo in threads like this. He would definitely have had something interesting and thought provoking to contribute. Sadly missed 😞

That sounds fair to me Lozz, especially given that half the song is likely to be in the energy level. But in a covers band it doesn't matter whether you're learning Brown Eyed Girl or Sweet Child O' Mine ... the rest of the band will expect you to learn the right bass line and get the song structure right, if only because they know that their audience will expect that. In that context, being able to hear the mistakes so that you can correct them becomes quite important.

I would say all your thoughts are bang on - 57 with maple / 62 with rosewood etc. Maybe someone with both decided to swap them over or something?

Scale length is an irrelevance unless you have a general preference for a particular scale length irrespective of the number of strings. What is important is the construction of the bass in particular the neck and how it attaches to the body and the strings that you choose. Strings are tricky things. IME what works well on one bass doesn't necessarily work at all on another, and also IME most budget (sub £500) 5 string basses come with terrible low B-strings. Unfortunately the level od construction required to make a decent 5-string bass comes at a price and generally unless you get a second hand bargain you are unlikely to find anything really satisfying under the £500 mark. The cheapest decent 5-string bass I own cost £700 and it was only that price because it was an EOL model that had been reduced from its original £1700. Go to the Gallery and play all the 5-string basses you can get you hands on including those that are outside your current price range and you'll find what suits you and what doesn't. Don't buy something you don't really like just to test it out because that's all you can afford. AFAICS most people who buy a 5-string bass and then give it up do so because the bass wasn't very good in the first place. If you've tried lots you'll get a feel for how much you need to spend to get something you will be happy with, and if you can't afford it now put off your purchase until you can.

You may #Repost anything on my own Instagram https://www.instagram.com/DanVeallBassist Just tag me in the post. There's always loads of bass related stuff there which could be of interest. I'll post a few high res pictures / posts here later.

I prefer using my fingers. OK, I'll get me coat...

Most 6x10's deliver a fairly distorted sound and don't have a flat frequency response. A lot of relatively cheap drivers in a portable cab means that the speakers are technically underdamped and give an all enveloping warmth at around 120Hz as well as extraordinary efficiency. Modern fashion calls for a flatter, less coloured response. That's not inherent in the technology but that's what you'll find in a lot of commercial offerings, so it's kind of true but not for the reasons most people think. I use 12's, One does most of my gigs, up to a couple of hundred people and it can go as loud as pretty much any drummer. If I take two it can be overwhelmingly loud, I don't like overpowering bass but after a mild argument with one drummer who kept asking me to turn up I did, to cut a long story short at the end of the first set he complained about not being able to hear his own snare drum. So yes they are loud enough and will give you a huge sound but it's likely to be a bit different from what you are used to. Ignore the comments about neo speakers. Neo magnets are more powerful for the same weight as ceramic magnets but they are just magnets. You can use the extra efficiency of neo to make a lighter speaker or a louder one, or one with a longer throw for extra deep bass or even get a little of all three but there's no neo magic, they are still just magnets. In the end you need to listen and judge them on that. Barefaced are making old school sounding cabs with modern drivers using their 10" units, they may be worth having a look at.

Here's a pic of some of them. I really must get a family pic of the lot...

Small rooms by their very nature nearly always have terrible acoustics, that’s a fact. Gig venues are generally larger and thus less susceptible to some of the worst issues; but they can still sound crap. Acoustics are reliably unforgiving at the best of times. PS: The idea of a drummer going full tilt in a room the size of a domestic garage is plain crazy to me. Makes my tinnitus go wild just thinking about it. Some of you guys must have thoroughly trashed hearing. I SAID SOME OF YOU GUYS MUST HAVE... oh never mind 🙄

'Old school' drummers (I'm one...) can use brushes (very, very old school, which give a totally satisfactory 'thwack' when handled properly...), and/or 'hot-rods', an excellent compromise between the brush technique (admittedly a bit different to sticks...) and ornery sticks. They, too, can make quite a din, but one has to really work hard for that; normally they're very positive as a feeling, but produce less volume. Of course, real drummers can play well, even hard rock, without excess volume, but that's another can of worms, I suspect.

Just got the Zenith back. All I can say is OMG. It's gorgeous. Simon at GUS has managed to fit a 22 fret 5 string neck to a 21 fret 4 string bass and you'd never know. The passive EMG's and greasebucket tone mod sound lush with a threeway switch and wired in series and parallel. The piezo only has a volume pot but it's got a hidden secret. Instead of being battery run it's powered by a capacitor that takes only 1 minute to charge and this will last 16 hours. I've put the original brass bridge logo on the headstock instead of where it should be. In my opinion it just looks better on the headstock (it looked good on the original rosewood bridge but now that has been made larger it looked out of proportion and 'wrong'). Anyway, I know I didn't do anything to convert it (unlike some of the skilled people on BC I would have just ruined something that, in my eyes, is probably one of the best looking basses I've ever laid eyes on), but I knew what I wanted and luckily had one of the finest luthiers on the planet just down the road from me who managed to transform my thoughts into a work of art

I had to put my foot down with the band about rehearsals. We were in tiny rooms, shoddy kit being pushed to the max, ears ringing for ages after. We now pay more to use the big studio rooms in the same place so we can play at low volumes but with real clarity. Nobody has ringing ears and the practice is far more productive, so though we pay more we are actually getting value out of it now. Why do all rehearsal rooms stink of damp??

Hi folks. I just want to mention my Classical and Contemporary Studies for Bass Guitar has just been published by Mel Bay HERE - which can be downloaded straight away as an eBook, or hard copies are available from the publisher, or one of their sellers. It will take a month or so to reach Amazon UK, I imagine. So, what is it? Half the book is given over to 21 studies by "the Paganini of the bass", Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889), very classical in style, and progressive, from fairly simple to complex. For the second half of the book I commissioned 12 Studies for Bass Guitar by Gilbert Isbin, whose influences run from contemporary classical to jazz, world musics, etc. If you like Charlie Haden, Steve Swallow, etc, you might well like these solo repertoire pieces. Isbin loves yearning, often haunting melodies, and the 12 pieces are generally in two-part counterpoint, or a melody and accompaniment. Every item in the book has a sound file recorded on a fretless 4-string bass by me, but all the pieces could just as well have been played on a fretted 4-string bass. You can see videos and hear soundfiles of every piece from THIS PAGE of my website. Any questions, just ask. Cheers, Rob MacKillop

A video of the presentation I gave on Saturday to the SouthEast BassBash. Obviously it's very similar to the one I did at the South Coast Bass Bash two months ago, but this is the improved & extended 12" version.

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Just leave the Sansamp at home. The Precision with rounds will work fine for the stuff you're talking about doing.

Thanks, I put the orange one together from parts.

Good idea they did that to the jazz bass elite

Made the move to PE12 but working in West London Monday to Friday until I find suitable employment at the moment.There'd better be an old boys play new wave power pop punk psychedlia and dub scene I haven't found yet or I'll have to start one.

This is a proper bargain for £50! Why do I never find such gems for that sort of money? lol When replacing the electrics - be sure to keep the pickups, if only as a try-out. Some of those 70's Japan made pickups are surprisingly good Just make sure you shield everything while you're at it Re the body and the black over-spray on the upper chamfer... Don't worry too much about it being a laminate. From that era, it's likely to be a solid, good quality body anyway And I would definitely check that intonation, and probably consider re-positioning the nut back to its' original position - if correct and not too much work. Other than that - what a great gigging bass, for very little money. Great condition given its' age

Yep - these were made by Moridaira, probably mid-late 70s. Still has its serial sticker (this type was exclusively used by Moridaira) but unfortunately this can't be used to date the bass - or if it can, no-one knows how they work... Looks like the body's not solid timber - the big overspray on the contour is the giveaway - likely to be mahogany butcher-block with front & back veneers. Proper bargain for £50!

New jazz body for my existing fretless neck and upgraded pickups from a Squier VM jazz. Plays beautifully and is lovely and punchy where it counts.

The odd thing to me is that the black ruby fish was / is named Barbus Nigrofasciatus rather than Nigerfaciatus. Though I am no etymologist I understand that the N-word is a corruption of the word negro which is Spanish for black and itself derives from the Latin word niger (also meaning 'black'). Opinion appears to be divided as to the etymology of niger before its appearance in Latin. Familiar modern descendants of niger include nero (Italian) and noir (French). By contrast the English word for black derives from the proto-German blakaz (burnt) which may descend in turn from the Indo-European bhleg. Funnily enough the defunct Old English word blac meant 'light or pale coloured' and derives from an alternative reading of 'burnt', referring not to the blackened quality of the burnt item but to the flames or light generated by the burning process. The Old and Middle English word for black was swart as in the English word swarthy and the very familiar German word schwartz. It is not just obsessive pedantry that leads me off on these ramblings. I believe that a wider understanding of words helps to understand and to de-fang troublesome examples such as the N-word. In the broadest historical context the root of the word has no inherent meaning beyond its function as an adjective; the issues we must prioritise are the hateful beliefs which have accreted around the word and the actions which spring from those beliefs. The fact that an adjective became a noun is significant but not critical, and agonising about Elvis Costello is of secondary importance

Our drummer used to use a sennheiser Freeport but had to change to a regular mic because he tends to hum whilst playing. Took us ages to work out what it was lol.

The biggest problem with pretty much every rehearsal room I've been in is volume. You have a room roughly the same size as a single garage and you fill it with stacks by Marshall and Ashdown, plus a PA that could handle the main stage at Glastonbury, and then the band plays at gig volume. Well gig volume only works at a gig, in a decent-sized room with carpets and furniture and stuff, and above all with dozens (perhaps hundreds) of bodies absorbing the sound. I've never understood why so many bands are so stupid about this. The only thing that gig volume is good for at a rehearsal is hiding the mistakes ... so why bother rehearsing? Grumpyguts, try insisting (just once) that the whole band turns down to a sensible level. Turn the singer down on the PA to the point where he's at home stereo level, you take the bass down to match, force the guitarist(s) to follow suit, and then the drummer has no choice. I believe that you'll be very pleasantly surprised at the result. And your ears won't be ringing the next morning.

IMO if you let something like that put you off you shouldn't be looking at 5 string basses in the first place. Just changing the strings can make a bad bass sound and feel good. There is a lot you can do, but if you discover in the end the bass you just bought doesn't feel or sound how you want, don't blame the bass. If you can't return it or fix it, just sell it and buy one that does the right job for you. We all sell basses when we think we have found something better. I've never owned a bass with a bad B. I've had a couple which needed a good set up before they were to my satisfaction, but that's personal and what the previous owner though was a good set up certainly wasn't mine. Then again, the bigger your budget the wider your market place will be and the more chance you'll have of finding a suitable bass.

I know the Band leader ( guitarist/singer ) and the situation I'm confused as to why he is a "tryer"

interesting but mainly similar stories. My early bands, same singer. We left our first band together as we got a much better offer from 2 other blokes, plus the guitarist was having an affair with a groupie and I couldn't really cope with it. His wife was lovely and I wanted no part. 2nd band, the singer started an affair. again I didn't want to be anywhere near it, so left. Brings me to my current band. I rejoined this band because the band leader and bass player had terminal cancer and his singer had left. Music had kept him going throughout his treatment. I went back happily. He lasted another 4 months but importantly gigged right up until he passed (3 gigs in 3 days was his swansong) Fast forward 3 years and it's like herding cats. We recruited the original singer (band has been going 31 years now) and it was a laugh. We work well together, a real frontman/ sideman thing. But he now has terrible memory problems. He literally can't remember what he did 10 minutes ago and it makes calling the set out a challenge. He knows he has problems and he's had all sorts of tests. It really is hard work but we still have great gigs. Added to this, the guitarist does PA hire and I never know if he's gigging or not and he tries to call the set out but has no idea how to make it flow. I am, chief cook and bottle washer. I get no help. I'm hoping it will fold as I don't want to let them down by leaving. I just don't know what to do

take of your knob and put a rubber washer under it, will still turn but will take more force to do so

The black pickguard looks ok too

I really like the yellow one!! I've just done a bright orange Jazz but was considering bright yellow but I might do that on a 5 string Jazz I've got planned Watching with interest to how these turn out 😀

9 here. I have worked out the perfect number to own is how many you already have +1.

Yeah - We're a blues band and I love the groove of "Hey Little Schoolgirl" but we decided against it as we're all in our fifties and the "Can I Come Home With You" line seemed somewhat inappropriate to say the least.

Haha, so if you ever need to play a low C or D below the bottom E? I have heard some bass players stray that far... Just teasing... a 4 string bass (I'm making an assumption that is what you have?) is just fine. ...That is until you decide you want to try out a fretless, a P as well as a J, a 5 string and (god forbid!) a six string or and 8 or 12 string(!) and then stray into playing EUB, and then you buy yourself that dream bass to celebrate your band getting its first function gig. If you carry on playing bass and love it and manage to stick to just one, we'll you're a better man than me