Leaderboard

I can even imagine what @eude was thinking. I'll bet he was thinking : "OK clever clogs Andyjr1515. So you can build 6 string electrics and you can build dreadnought acoustics but they are - well - NOT BASSES! And, yes, admittedly you've made a bass or two and you've modded a few. BUT I BET YOU CAN'T SORT THIS ONE!!! Oh, and before you say you can, did you know it's a VI? Bet you've never done one of THOSE!" I'll let @eude fill in the background but the challenge is to take this body: And put a shortscale neck on it and a Warwick two-part bridge. "Oh...and did I mention the b****y big hole through the body?" "Oh - and the neck pocket might not be the right size for a VI neck but I'm sure a clever clogs like you will be able to sort THOSE trifling details!" So what could I do but accept the challenge! Besides, I've only got my reputation to lose. @eude has this rather nice bass carve to lose

No backline at all. It's the way forward.

Tried to finish this off. Almost but not quite. First popped the magnets onto the truss-rod cover: ...and hey presto: Then installed the Shadow Doubleplay electrics. It comprises a blendable under-saddle piezo: and a mini magnetic pickup at the end of the fretboard: I suspect that this is intended for a flatter fingerboard radius (prob 12" - I've build closer to an electric neck with 10" rad and locking tuners. Makes it easier for me to transfer from my electric to the acoustic) so I sunk it into the top to make sure it didn't foul the top and bottom E strings: As it turns out, I've overdone this and will, at some stage, take it off and pop a shim underneath. I then installed the preamp / blend unit that sits inside the soundhole (I'll photo it in the 'finished' shots) and the rear strap pin / jack socket. Before I put the strings back on, I cleaned up and oiled the fretboard. The frets - well, at the moment there is absolutely no buzz anywhere so I haven't even polished them! When I get a moment, I'll at least do that but there is no need for levelling and crowning By the way, before you go thinking I know what I'm doing, that is a first... And - other than the low nano-mag pickup being a bit quieter than the piezo - we have electric amplification. Lastly, now the strings are on, I do my usual 'sit it like a cello and scrape the neck to the final shape by feel, spinning it round and playing it then re-scraping until it feels like I want it. This is followed by a quick tru-oil slurry and buff and it's good to go within an hour. Am I the only one that does this? No matter how well you fit a neck to the profile templates, I don't think you can really tell if it's right until you play it. So that's what I do. And the most subtle tweaks can make all the difference! Remaining jobs: - Replace the nut with a slightly wider one (plays fine with the present one but it isn't quite wide enough - Raise the nano-mag pickup (ditto) - Side dots! It's a big b****r and there is no way you can see the top of the fretboard when you are playing it - Final polish in about a week's time - Take the arty farty photos

This ^^ . And of course the ''flat' tone may not indeed be flat on some of the amps as they each have their own voicing. I'm sure most of them could be made to sound like each other with some simple EQ-ing if required..... One of my fave things about the bash was hearing the range of tones we can all produce...... from Nancy Johnson's gnarly rock tone to Frank Black's beautiful double bass style fretless tone to OBBM's traditional warm tone to Richard Searle's muted picked tone.

It would be nice to see more Darkglass demos using different genre's and more traditional type basses.... All I mainly hear is dingwals and metallic sounding metal tunes. I'm sure all his pedals could sound good in other formats. I liked the b3k on lower settings and would be interested to hear what more med type drive this could do

Just got this Explorerbird. I was toying with the idea of building one, but thanks to Karl Aldorfer pointing me in the right direction, I managed to find this beauty. Well chuffed

Here's the thing, none of those amps sounded bad. Some of the 'baked-in' tones might not be as preferable as others, but nothing sounded bad, due in no small part to a classy cabinet. Likewise with the blind bass test, nothing was bad, just small variations on a theme. A real eye opener on both fronts.

I bought a set of these a few years ago just to put on a jb I leave in my summerhouse £12 I think and was really impressed Very nice deep warm tone Well worth the money

I'm shocked @cetera I feel I may have to down-grade your status to 'quite knowledgeable Spector Guru' in light of this shocking revelation

Where do I have to send that cheque to again? 😂

Very interested that a number of people are up for this little (big?) challenge. I should perhaps explain my own feelings behind why I thought I might do it...... Ultimately, I think too much about gear, like many here, always thinking about what next piece of gear could replace or potentially better the last piece. Which is strange, as I have a lot of fantastic gear that allows me to do everything I want (need) to, at a very high level. Obviously this a well-known story, and basically the definition of GAS. It's usually well humoured and dismissed as a bit of fun, but it genuinely takes up a fair chunk of my thought processes, which kind of gets a bit tiring if I'm honest with myself. So instead of trying to manage it, I'm going to stop it altogether, safe in the knowledge that I have some amazing gear, and that actually nothing will change haha. As mentioned, in actual fact, I only have a couple of very intentional purchases left, so if we're including those in my 'exceptions'....I'm technically starting from now haha. Si

Or an Excision?

Here we are then. Pulled the trigger on a pair of Aguilar SL112s today. I think that's me sorted now. GAS has disappeared.

Here is an analysis to see the harmonic content Open B Open E and some pics with me

You were probably an obsessive teenager, as I was, when you got your first bass. The first song I played live was 'Alright Now' by Free. It took me forevers, squirrelled away in my bedroom, to get the tricky bassline in the solo. In fact I was still figuring it out about 5 mins before I went onstage. But this dude is 51, he's got better things to do than hide away in his bedroom for 6 months learning 2112.

I did, in fact rush were probably the reason I started on the bass. Rush and Yes. I got an Ibanez Rick clone.

It's just my personal opinion, of course, but I don't think it's worth compromising on amplification. I think a dedicated bass amp is the way to go every time. For practice, at home as well. The other alternative is a Preamp/DI or some sort of bass specific interface that can go to a PA style speaker. A guitar amp will always be found lacking.

I hope that nut is glued in properly otherwise it's going to be catapulted through the ceiling when you tune up!

Result (well, partial): the neck seller has agreed to a 50% refund and I get to keep the neck. I’m still disappointed it’s not the “right” one but it does look like a nice bit of wood, and the fingerboard in particular has some nice grain. May as well suck it up and crack on. The refin’d body has spent the last few weeks at our practice room whilst the paint cured and has finally made it home with me tonight. I’m a little short of time this week but may grab a few hours at the weekend to get the build into some sort of shape. As I think I mentioned in the OP, my long term aim with this build is a fretless. I’m not entirely sold on defretting the neck myself, however. I’d be more than happy if I could pick up a fretless neck for decent money, but they don’t seem to come up often (annoyingly I missed Beedster’s fretless neck cull in June) so I rather suspect my hand will be forced in that regard. It just seems that with defretting there are too many things I could make a right balls of, and I’d rather save myself the hassle. One could argue, though, that making a balls of a neck that has now cost me £16 isn’t exactly the end of the world. Onwards!

Just for home use your guitar amp will be fine....personally I would wait to part ex until you have been playing a few months....then once you are a bit more familiar with the instrument you might get the urge to jam with folks then you could always part ex for a half decent Bass Combo....but till then your guitar amp will suffice just crank the bass EQ to about full and keep the mids and treble to a minimum.

It's funny you say that I've been told in the past I'm as stealthy as a killer whale!! And yes you may christen it the Orca(ster) Bass!! 😁 I agree that would look nice with hidden pickups but I've got another build in mind which I was going to go down that route a semi hollow with piezo pickup possibly under the bridge I am going to call on Jez or Andy's expertise when I come to tackle that!! 🤔

Just purchased one of these at the weekend, very impressed. It is two different distortion channels, Hot tubes and Crayon but its more like l 4 pedals in one. great smooth drive on hot tube all the way up to 12 o clock and no loss of low end at all, not even touched the blend nob. up to 2pm and still only some eq to boost the bass a bit. best tube simulation i have ever played really good organic sound. Crayon is a nice smooth range of overdrive and again no blend needed much up to 12pm. gets a bit fizzy on loss a bit of low end on higher gain settings but not had to go beyond 50/50 mix as yet. Bang them both on at once and the hot tube drives the crayon. this is when things get a bit crazy and i did need some blend, but again on down to 50/50 at pretty harsh settings. Either side can be used as a clean boost full blend and 8-9pm gain. or gain all the way down completely. If it had a mids control as well as the bass and treble would also make a great pre amp. this certainly looks like my always on pedal from now on instead of my MXR M80 At just under£110 cannot recommend this enough, everything from mild boost mild tubey /grit to full on distortion and all the controls for flexibility you need.

More than just another Jazz copy? I hope so... I like the look of this one...

Probably competition to those, yes. I didn't look into the details but compared to K.2 it looks like the power section is much smaller and the Hi-z input gone in the CP series.

No shock you feel could ever match the disappointment I feel in myself.... 😂😂

It's my fault - I passed out from GAS withdrawal symptoms and my head came to rest on the 'page refresh' button all night.

I actually thought the Handbox was the best amp in that shootout by a country mile.

Here's an updated picture The chrome knobs are just temporary they are just there for visual effect! I definitely prefer this in white than the black 😀

This might come in handy

New bands worth checking out in the neo-soul genre include Moonchild and Hiatus Kaiyote. In fact, Hiatus Kaiyote are probably my favourite band right now. As unique as the Nai Palm may appear, I think I'm a bit in love with her. Here are some tunes worth checking out:

I'm glad people feel comfortable enough to admit it, though...very brave... 🙂

Been going for a while, very funky, very jazzy, very rocky, very everything!

Just resurrecting this old thread, to say I've just tried some Adagio Flats. I bought them a while back, for about £10 or £11 from an eBay shop I intended just to give them a whirl. Not really being a fan of flats, I wanted to try them on my fretless bass.... Long story short, I put other strings on the fretless, after much reading of peoples thoughts on here and elsewhere .. so the Adagios sat, unused for quite a few months..... So I tried them on a Jazz the other day, and was blown away! I really like the strings - they are higher tension than the TI flats I use on another bass, but not overly high tension I'm aware that some players prefer higher tension, but I found strings like the Steve Harris sigs too high a tension for me Anyhow, I was so taken with the sound of these Adagio Flats, I decided to resurrect the "Flats on a Jazz" thread too It sounded much better than I thought this experiment would sound. Even though I had only taken the Jazz along as a backup (yes, I took a backup - as it was a big show) I decided I liked it so much - I used the Jazz for the first set. That went so well, I opted to use it for the second set too I might just be sold on flats forever!

I started recording myself again for the first time in over thirty years. It's well worth doing. I was lucky to get a heavily discounted pocket Zoom recorder during the Maplin sales prior to their closure. It's got lots of storage potential even in the higher formats and it is a handy field recorder. I had also been using a disabled smart 'phone (it's now a dedicated recording device) to video myself and assess my posture. The sound was okay on that too. It's so easy compared to when I used four track cassettes that I'd strongly recommend it to anyone, regardless of experience. You can develop bad habits and this will help identify them before they become a burden.

Oh yes. Much better Looks great

Keep up the good work

It’s a mobile number on google, a little odd for a shop.

They must be sharp you vary the angle to alter the cut depth. Can be very subtle or take quite a bit bit off very quickly. I use old wooden ones they seem better than the metal ones.

Let us know where and when you're playing next . There's plenty of Scottish based players on here that could come and give your sound guy a good duffing up some sound advice. 😃

Yesterday was one long day for @Happy Jack and me! We left the bash and drove straight to a gig in Dartford. All good - I've got audio and video recordings of the bass and heft tests and of the whole of Richard's talk. I'll probably post the videos in their entirety on youtube and link to them in my forthcoming megablog, but before that, I'll let the BC Podcast team have the audio, in case they decide to publish snippets in the next episode. I've also got loads of photos, of course. I took pics of @Marcoelwray's bass in the jam room, but didn't have the chance to sit anyone down to play it and record their impressions. I'm sure the next person who has it will do so on the forum. It was great to see you guys again, and have the chance to catch up, albeit briefly. 😎

Bloody lovely. Literally, only a P bass could sound like that.

“The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert-goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet – or more frequently around a completely different planet. Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason. Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band’s public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitation treaties. This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.”

I didn't like my EA Doubler much when I got it - I felt the sound was underwhelming. But one I'd spent a bit of time with it (and read the manual) I realised that you need to crank the EQ noticeably more than you would on other amps to get a noticeable change in tone. Maybe the amp is super flat with the EQ centered, so it sounds less lively than other amps when they're at 0 on the EQ. Or maybe they use linear pots so you have to turn the knob further to get the same change in tonight, either way, once I got over my fear of pushing the EQ section, I was a lot happier with the sound. Also have you tried adjusting the input gain and HPF trim pots on the top of the Doubler?

Another Pralines video, this time from Olivier’s channel. I haven’t watched as I’m not on WiFi.

Or this - I can try to scale it in CAD if required. 500_1 Beatle Bass.pdf

Erm ... you've not seen me in the kitchen then?