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I, find, that I, can talk, as long, as I, do it, in time. S.P.

Finished work early yesterday and drove a 330 mile round trip to pick up a Fender American Standard Jaguar Bass (I don't trust couriers, too many horror stories on here!). I've always wanted a Jaguar since the original Japanese model came out, so when I could finally afford to treat myself I started looking for one and found there was a US version, only available for a couple of years. I found a couple for sale and went for this one. Looks great, is pretty light, and plays really nicely. Looking forward to figuring out the controls this weekend!

I love P-basses!!!

https://www.gumtree.com/p/other-musicians-wanted/bass-player-needed-for-function-band/1311925635

How can you not love this P bass blue and maple heaven? 😊

He should be put overboard for that crime 😡

No.

With a touch of Post Traumatic Binding Stress Disorder creeping in, I rock-hopped back to the neck and did a bit more on the heel. Still more to do to get a more interesting visual effect and get it looking a little slimmer, but it's starting to get there. I also remembered the final "once you've spent all that time joining the body parts and thicknessing them and fitting the braces and tap tuning the top and sorting the kerf strip and sorting the join shapes and cutting the soundhole and making the rosette and fitting it and the purfling around it and gluing the top on and fitting the back on and routing the binding slots and fitting the purfling and bending the binding and gluing it and stretching the fibreglass tape and next door neighbours kids bicycle tyres round then fixing the bits that didn't quite work and scraping the bits flush that did" - yes, after all THAT then..."You need to clamp the complete large dreadnought body somehow without crushing it and rout a large slot through the sides into the neck block with the hand router that you wreck most other things you use it on and which, if it is the slightest bit out alignment in any of the three planes, will render the guitar unfinishable." Hmmm...I think I might just go and have a gin instead.

being able to read/knowing music theory does not stop you being able to play by ear/jam etc.

I’ll come and bring the usual double bass and stuff. Might have some declutter to sell. Looking forward to trying OBBM’s Quilter. It’s always a great day for cake.

Just spotted this. Im sure the more experienced musicians out there are very aware. But some may not be. A good well thought out vid on why your place is your place and why your favourite licks are best kept for moments in a song.. Too many voices trying to put a point across in a conversation never works.

So often I see clips on You Tube and elsewhere where posters are in jawdropping awe of children playing bass, guitar or drums to a high standard. Thing is if a child starts learning at 3 or 4, with natural ability, being able to absorb information more efficiently than adults, having parental support and a good teacher by 10 they actually should be pretty advanced. At my school there were quite a number of boys who could play drums, piano, sax, violin, trumpet or guitar to a very high standard by the age 12 but given that they'd been playing for 7 or 8 years it was kind of expected. I wonder if these posters would be in such awe of an adult reaching a high level of musical proficiency in a just 2 or 3 years?

A couple of pics:

This is my perfect 😁

A busy day, I'm getting too old for all this, I'm looking forward to a holiday in a couple of weeks First job was to tidy up the veneers, trim the edges, open out the bridge recess and cut out the bit where the fretboards fit. I then cut the truss rods to size, threaded the ends and fitted the anchors, I flattened the threads to lock the anchors and I wrapped the rods in cling film to stop them getting glued in place, I also greased the adjusting threads with copperslip.. After that I fitted them and glued in the filler strip. When dry I planed that down and fitted the small wedge to go under the headstock veneer. Then I trimmed the headstock to shape and stuck on the veneers. Finally for the day I fretted the Satinwood board so that can be glued on tomorrow

I've always liked the look of them, and the idea of the semi thing appeals. The scientific name for my condition though, is Permaskint

My first ever bass was a Fender 57 reissue Precision bass, back in the 80s. It was made in Japan. Since then I have owned several P-basses (all Fender or Squier, from USA to Mexican) and they've all delivered. Standouts for me included, a 51 reissue, an all original 1978 and a 70s bitsa. However, they came and went. A couple of years ago I bought a new 57 reissue, also Japanese. It reminds me of my first bass. As others have said I've tried, owned and enjoyed several basses from Gibsons to Rickenbackers to Danelectros and beyond. There is something about the P-bass that means it will always be part of my life, even if I happen to be doing a gig on a Jazz or an upright. Anyhow, here's mine pictured just this afternoon.

Let's hear it for the ladies! Kim Deal, Divinity Roxx, Yolanda Charles and Sooze of course! 🙂 PS - good advice from Happy Jack as usual! x

My recently acquired Spectorcore 4 fret less wearing flat wounds. Simplicity itself..

Good way of looking at it if you didn't like them i suppose .Being a fan i think otherwise,its not like they were banging 3 chord tunes out . The sexy punk rockers were supporting them at their well attended regular gigs.Given how their music developed in a few short years they would have made it regardless of fads.Black and white went to number1 with no title or band name on its cover.A first iirc .That and The Raven were their peak for me ,never really heard a band sound like those albums before or since .Some of Jets drumming on them was way out there .Opinions like Aholes,we've all got one

I've had a bit of a reaction with the paint on the body so I'm sorting it out but here's the neck anyway I'm still going to give a few more coats so it will go a bit darker 😀

You know, I have been following this thread since it started and still have absolutely no idea what the point of it all is. Anyone else confused? Bean9seventy - you seem to have invented a whole new way of punctuation, let alone bass playing. On topic - or is it? - I do recall Mark King saying in an interview that he started playing the way he plays because he wanted to play like the start of 'Rise' by Herb Alpert. Which does sound exactly like a slowed down version of Love Games.

It's a Gibson! Two quick ways to tell A. Bridge placement B. Neck heel. With the Gibson, The Bridge is further back and they have a rounded heel. Epi Bridge is closer to the Bridge pickup volume pot, and the heel is almost squared. Also, this real or Epi thing is a bit off, my Classic Pro plays better than the Gibson I tried.

Anything you learn that enhances your knowledge and appreciation of music is important. I would place reading very high on the list.

These two notions are often lumped together (maybe rightly so..?), but are, in fact, quite distinct. One's prowess at reading does not impart knowledge of theory, harmony, musical styles (although helps considerably when studying those...), any more than the inverse; the study of music theory does not automatically make one a good reader, even less a good sight reader. Both skills, plus, of course, a degree of playing ability, are very useful indeed, but separate notions. Just sayin'.

Musical notation is just another form of communication, from a quick glance you know the key and time signatures, and the rhythmic and harmonic structure of a piece of music you may have never heard. As you play it you begin to commit it to memory and put your own stamp on it. I still learn stuff by ear, but if I am being paid to turn up and play the dots that what I do. I teach for a living so I use my reading skills everyday, but not everyday in my playing that's very situational. I play in a rock covers band, I don't read for that, but If I'm doing a theatre gig, or reading charts for a jazz gig that bit of music theory really helps. It just opens more doors for you. But there are plenty of great players out there who don't read or know a lot about music theory who are still great players.

I had you down as a coquettish debutant. Close enough.

Well - the results are largely OK for the top. A couple of places where it is a little bit iffy - and I had to heat a couple of the areas with and iron and clamp them properly down to the sides, but this is the sort of look it gives: The above looks OK but, I think binding of an acoustic sorts the men from the boys - and at the very best - I reckon I'm at the petulant adolescent stage, if that. For me, it's too hit and miss. But - curses to poor memory - fixing those couple of bits with the iron (which softened the PVA enough to be able to ease the miscreant binding into position and held until it glued - reminded me that a couple of years ago, I tried a completely different approach to binding - that worked! It was on this re-body of a Peavey EVH I did - where I wanted to put a similar type of binding on upside down to give me a feature line from the thin maple bar: The challenge here was that ANY misalignment would have meant sanding down - and potentially losing - the feature line. So I simply couldn't risk the 'strap it all up and hope for the best' approach. And so I came up with the crazy notion "Why don't I do it like I do veneering - iron it on! And that's what I tried - and it worked!!! And then I forgot all about doing that. So for the back binding - today's little least favourite job - that's what I'm going to do. If it works, I'll show you the shots of the technique (or just look up one of my veneering threads - it's exactly the same). If it doesn't work, I'll quietly sweep the idea under the carpet and get the inner tubes out again

The construct on this sentence could infer a couple of different things.

I just think its a useful tool for learning any song. I'm all for making life easier and using whatever tools are available when learning songs. I've seen me using my ear, bass tab and manuscripts when its a tricky song to learn so anything that's available is a useful tool. Dave

I spent 30 years playing (percussion) in orchestras, theatre bands, brass bands and such, where good sight-reading skills were vital. I now play bass in a pub band and I hardly ever read at all. However, I'm really glad I *can*. It's very useful every so often. Not for a minute do I think it doesn't matter to me. It's been an important part of my musical "journey".

Check out Xotic bass, I really like these.

I've burbled on about mine too often on too many threads before... But there's nothing quite like the lightness and vibrancy of that semi-hollow body combined with that punch and growl with the bass boost kicked in. Nothing. Plus feeling 50 years of music history flowing through your hands. Do it. Save up for it. Keep your eyes open and they do turn up now and then.

Not an urban myth - I remember Blackie Lawless having to talk about that in interviews even years after it happened. Talkbass has an interesting post about this episode and other accident-prone rockstars.

Really? Yeah i can think of hardly anyone who uses a precision.... I'd list them here but there's probably so few.

Shpock does my head in - never ever hear anything, there’s zero feedback if you’ve got the price or pictures wrong. Everyones offering trades - it’s cool, I do it. But when you specify no trades it’s a pain to sift. it is quiet, people want bargains as buyers, people want decent returns on their sales as sellers.

http://www.acguitars.co.uk/

Just announced - Richard Searle from Corduroy will be attending the SE Bash. Amazing player, great technique and style.....check out his work here.... I feel sorry for anybody who misses this years event.

There's a very nice epi jack casady on here for sale

Can we define what "reading" music actually means? There seems to be an implication from many of the replies that "reading" = sight reading. Is that the case? However if reading simply means being able to get a musical performance out of written notation no matter how long it takes, then pretty much anyone should be able to read music. Work your way through the notation for a simple bass line one note at a time and you'll quickly learn where the notes are on the stave and what all the timing values are. All the less common symbols can be looked up as and when required. You might not be able to play something the moment it is set in front of you, but at least it won't appear to be a load of incomprehensible gibberish. Does that count as "reading"? In 45 years of playing music I have never needed to be able to read to any standard - either sight reading or working my way through a score one note at a time. For music I'm composing myself I'm creating the parts I'm working out the composition and arrangement. For songs written by other people, I either learn the part by ear from a recording or compose my own part from scratch depending on what is required. While I know that many of the musicians I have worked with over the years could read (and probably sight read to a high standard) for the music that I have played with them, it has never been required, or even mentioned. My very limited abilities come not from needing it to get a gig or even from learning for my own interest or amusement. I had to learn to write because back in the early 80s when I joined the PRS the only way they would accept song registrations that had not been released on a record, was to score out the main musical themes - the vocal melody along with the lyrics and any important instrumental parts onto blank manuscript that they supplied for this purpose. It took me several days for each song working out the notes for the vocal melodies and tapping out the rhythms, so I could write the parts down. Sometimes when I was really stuck with the timing I'd cheat by tapping it into the drum machine and see where the notes appeared on the display. Because I learnt this way dealing with vocals and multiple instruments, my knowledge isn't tied to a single instrument, and so I am always a little surprised when I come across musicians who can sight read for one instrument (usually something they learnt at school playing classical music) but seemingly can't transfer that skill to being able to read for another instrument that they can play but haven't learnt by reading music. It makes me suspect that in order to be able to sight read competently you need to be able to bypass some of the information. So instead of looking at a part that has been scored out and thinking: that is a C, in order to play C I need to put my fingers here on the instrument. Instead you think: note on that position of the stave = put my fingers here.

They look great Johnny, well done. You'll be really happy with those fitted with Beymas. Enjoy

Good thread! Strengths - a musician's brain, good listener, good ear for arrangements, can also play other instruments, diplomatic, sense of humour.. Weaknesses - tend to play the same riffs/modes all the time, have incurable 'bass-face', always late, change gear too often..

John Wetton's bass lines and sound of his P bass during his King Crimson era still haunts me. Legendary bass.

I'll just leave this here....

Welcome Andy.

Thanks - converted barns are so hot right now!😊 Good news about the cake - result🍰

Good morning, Andy , and ... Plenty to read and amuse you here, and lots to learn and share.