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Emotional. You may remember I mentioned a few weeks ago that my friend and long-standing duo partner, who has been ill for some time, was taken into care the night before we were going to play our local om together for the first time in months. He has been allowed home, at least for now, and emailed me late this afternoon to say he wanted to come out and play "The Weight" tonight (one we've enjoyed playing together before) and would I join him? First time I've gigged my new Ibby 6 - a complete joy - I cut loose and used all six strings to put a bit of variation and sparkle into what can be quite a dull song, and his rhythm guitar and vocals were strong as always. Good harmonica and cajon sitting in with us too. Real synergy, strong groove. I don't think I've ever heard quite so heartfelt a roar of applause there as we got. We were mobbed afterwards by people saying how good it was. And we were - but it was mostly an expression of the love and respect that community has for him. There are many reasons why I so much value my relatively new ability to play bass, but the privilege of supporting him tonight is one I never expected. Proud and humble. The joy and healing in his face... priceless.

3" is ideal for me but it can vary according to the material it is made from. Wider is nice of if is well cushioned and soft.

So recently I`ve had 2 dead A strings in packs of Warwick Red Label Steel Roundwounds. Contacted them as although I buy in bulk and had other sets which I could nick the A from, this left me short on full sets. This was on Sunday btw. Sunday evening I received a reply stating they would send out 2 replacement packs - I would have been more than satisfied with just 2 A strings alone - which arrived today. Quality customer service imo, and the fact that my message was read and replied to late on Sunday really adds to it, a company that looks after its customers.

How could it be wrong? DO IT DO IT DO IT

Well, I checked the bass today. It's not a '69, it's a '72. The neck (including tuners, frets and neck plate) is 100% original. So are the finish (which is a lot prettier in real life), the bridge and the control plate. The pickup, pickguard and pots are replacements and they haven't been very subtle in putting them in. The soldering on the pots is sloppy, the cavity for the pickup is kinda ugly and the knobs are hídeous. Looking through that, however, it has some real potential. It plays great. The original shielding copper plates are still there. I want to buy it (depending on the price) and reinstate its beauty. Cool detail: this mr. Torres (who was an employee at Fender in the late 60's and 70's) made the neck on this bass. He also made the neck on my '71 Precision.

Its just GAS. I love the Sei, But the Shuker's look lovely. Holy Moly.

I was so expecting you to conclude with ' and there in the corner was none other than, John Deacon'.

I bought one about a week ago. A 2009 Musicman Stingray. 3 band EQ, single pickup. Candy red, rosewood fretboard I've only really had Fenders before, so I can only describe it relative to those... Build quality is great. Components seem excellent quality, and the fit and finish is great. If you've played fenders before, you'll find the neck is very much like a Precision. It's quite heavy, but not too heavy. Nice and solid. Sounds nice acoustically. The G string was a bit quieter than the others. I'm convinced it's because the pickup polepiece doesn't line up properly with the G string. This is apparently a common issue with Stingrays. I fixed it by raising the pickup at the treble side, and managed to get the string volumes balanced enough to where it isn't an issue. You'd think in an otherwise very well designed bass they would have fixed this years ago. But no. Apparently the new ones DO have the polepieces in the right place... but 2 grand's a lot to pay imo for that My takeaway from the G string polepiece issue is that it's pretty sensitive to how you have your pickup height set - so be aware of that Re the sound and having a single pickup. The most noticable thing is that the kinds of warm, vocal mids you might get from a precision are totally absent. And the second thing is that the low end is deep and tight. I heard the preamp has a high pass filter, and it sounds like it. There's loads of thick, punchy bass, but it somehow has a tightness to it. As if it rolls off quickly below 40hz. My main bass is/was a precision, and I use an SVT. So my go-to sound is that classic grindy rock tone (with a plectrum) with the SVT deep switch in, and a bit of mid scoop. Loads of low end, but it's more of a fat and woolly low end, and those precisiony, expressive mids. You can't get anything close to that with the Stingray. With a plectrum, you get LOADS of zingy top end, and that tight bass, with no real Fendery mids no matter what you do. It's very scooped, even when you goose the mids on the EQ For a punk or rock gig I would leave the Stingray at home and take the Precision, unless it was something modern like RATM or RHCP etc For a pop/funk/disco type gigs, the Stingray would be perfect. It seems to have been primarily intended for fingerstyle players. The frequencies that the pickup and preamp accentuate are ideal for a nice tight, modern fingerstyle sound. Lovely for fingerstyle The 3 band EQ is interesting. I tend to leave everything centered. Sounds best to me that way. The treble and bass tend to either let you take far too much off, or add far too much on. The middle isn't really a traditional mid frequency knob like on a fender amp, it's more like a knob that lets you make the sound go from fairly scooped to very scooped... whatever you do, there isn't much mids I heard someone say (and I agree) that a fender jazz (both pickups on) is more scooped than a precision, with deeper lows and higher mids. And that the Stingray is even more scooped - deeper lows and has even higher frequency mids. I think that's a good way of putting it. If there's a path from P to J, then the Stingray is the next step along I think no matter what you do it'll sound like a Stingray. But I think it has enough to make it a fantastic bass in the right context. It's certainly not a swiss army knife, and almost certainly the wrong bass for certain things I really do like mine. Got it off eBay for £900, and I'm glad I got it. Not sure I'd buy a new one for the prices they're asking now

Hi there.. I recently joined a band as a Bass guitarist, my first time in such a role as I'm a six-stringer ordinarily. The band have been extremely helpful in supporting my transition and to be honest without that it would probably still something that remained a "nice-to-do" but never actually happen. They have provided access to all equipment thus far, including instrument and amp; a DeArmond Pilot DLX and an Ampeg SVT valve stack. I thought it best to show willing and get myself an instrument, so I bought myself an Ibanez SR300EB in weathered black.. love it.. slightly shorter scale that the DeArmond and has some great tonal variety. I expect to buy myself an amp in due course. This place was recommended to me by a good friend @Bridgehouse It's a mine of information already..

My methdodology for the neck was roughly the same as the body. Here's a completely rubbish photo: Necks are really hard to photo, but the tru oil finish came out really really nicely. It has a great clarity to the finish and gives enough colour to really warm it up with a nice amber tone, but without going over the top. I hate those necks that look like they've been covered in fake tan. The finish is very very smooth but with none of the 'squeakyness' that you get with gloss finishes which I hate. I think this may well now be my go-to neck finish. It's really hard to fault. The process was as follows: 1. Sand to 400. 2. Two seal coats, 24 hours apart, wiped on with cotton rag. 3. Slurry sanding using either wet/dry paper or Abralon pads (I had a mixture of grits), sanding with the grain. Wiping off really carefully with kitchen paper. Grits were 400, 600, 800 & 1000, 24 hrs apart. The last couple of grits you have to be really careful to wipe off the excess pretty quickly (no more than a few minutes max) and make sure you get all of it off, or you'll get ridges that are impossbile to sand away with the higher grits. And that was it. Because maple is closed grain wood, the whole process is much much quicker than the body as no grain fill was necessary. For my logo I waited 7 days for the Tru Oil to be really dry then I applied a water-slide decal - I get mine from Rothko & Frost, they are really expensive but worth it. The paper they use is very thin and can be buried in many fewer coats than previously when I've used decals I've printed myself on paper bought off t'internet. Once the logo was on, I waited overnight for it to dry then sprayed 4 coats of General Finishes High Performance top coat, which is a water based polyurethane. GFHP works really well being sprayed over Tru Oil (in the past I've finished entire necks in this way). I think I did them all in one day, then the next day I lightly dry- sanded with 1000 and then 1500 Abralon. I taped off round the face of the headstock, so the join (ie where the polyurethane started) was right on the roundover. Because GFHP is crystal clear, it's really hard to tell that the face of the headstock isn't finished in exactly the same way as the rest of the neck. Again, this is now my standard finishing procedure for headstocks & logos. As you can see, the finish is consistent with the rest of the neck, and no lines at all round the edge of the logo: Finally, a quick word about the fretboard, which was a lovely piece of pau ferro: I've started doing all of my fretboard finishing before fretting. Trying to do anything once the frets are in is really really hard, almost impossible to get a consistent finish. So for this one I sanded to 1000 before fretting, then applied 3 coats of Liberon Finishing Oil, just wiping on with a rag, once per day. I used this rather than Tru Oil mostly because it's a lot thinner, which allows it to sink down really easily into the quite open grain. It's a lovely combination of browns, reds and oranges that is brought to life by an oil finish. And that's it. A Tru Oil guitar, apart from the fretboard done with Liberon Finishing Oil, and a polyurethan clear top coat to hide the logo. Job done.

This was a birthday gift to myself 3 years ago 😀

Da daaaa! the inlays are only bloody in!! little bit of super glue and wenge dust to start with... ] followed by a fairly intense sanding session... and heres the reults! theyre not perfect i know, but in the end im sure they'll be a nice flourish. im happy so thats the main thing! im not totally sure whether or not to darken the ziricote with some oil to help them stand out... what do you guys think? in the meantime... the headstock has had the wings glued and cut, and i got a nice cocobolo headstock piece cut as well: And, i also managed to get the tops off the pickups, and cut out some nice bookmatch pieces of cocobolo for the covers to match the top! its all coming along fairly nicely at this point next step will be to trim those down and sand them, then later in the week ill be working on the body again... hopefully removing some of the weight.

Excited doesn't really cover it mate!

Those of you who follow my builds know that I give the wood a coat of slurried tru-oil quite early in the process. This because it needs a 'soak in' coat anyway and I find it easier to spot if there are any lumps and bumps in the carve or sanding scratches. These shots were taken in rapidly losing light but probably give a reasonable representation of what the final colour tones and overall look will be:

Here are my lovelies 👌

The new stingrays that were recently released look great. Lighter, roasted necks, more musical preamp and even better hardware. I'd be really tempted to look at those first.

IMO a Hackintosh completely defeats the object of having a Mac in the first place. One of the reasons why Macs tend to "just work" is that the OS only has to support a minuscule set of hardware options compared with what Windows or Linux have to contend with. The moment you try and force Mac OS to run on something other than Apple hardware you start getting all the sorts of problems and incompatibilities that other OS users have to contend with - and more because none of it is officially supported by Apple so you are very much on your own when it comes to voting out exactly why your chosen set of components won't work. The Hacktintosh is fine is a proof of concept and for people who really want to just geek about with computers, but for those of us who have chosen the Mac platform because it lets us get on with our work they are IMO a complete waste of time.

I wasn't gonna get into that - as I didn't want to get too salesy and annoy anybody (and by extension the mods). But since you ask :

I guess you probably would... lol.. but I'll use this as my supporting argument at this time 🙂

One thing overlooked here is; what type of music does the drummer listen to outside the band. I played with a rock drummer in a function band. It was a constant battle. He wanted his drum kit to sound a certain way that really didn’t fit with the band. Trying to explain to him that he was a member of the band accompanying the vocals, not the centre of attention for everyone in the audience was impossible. Trying to explain that we couldn’t make his bass drum sound how he wanted because a PA amplifies what you put in and SISO applies, was impossible. Riding in his car was a painful experience as his music was constantly at 11 with all the bass turned up to 11 creating an unlistenable sludge. I sat in a mixing session with him and after an hour the mix was unrecognisable as us and sounded awful. Luckily we ran out of time and left the engineer to sort the mix in his own and he undid all the mess after we had gone. I genuinely think drummers hear things differently to the rest of us. Might be worth finding out what sound he is trying to get and then having the discussion as to whether that sound is possible and if it is how to achieve it or maybe for the drummer to have a rethink about his sound or his position in the band.

if you invent your own smiles or try other codes that's not already being used here - so then you still can use text ones, like these - one of my fav ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

So much vitality, creativity, positive energy, and genuine human feeling is in it. In a world of types, stereotypes and marketing, jazz offers us the possibility of transcendence. Jazz is not a limited or limiting music, it is not the "property" of any era or group or place, but it is something that reaches each of us in our own way.

That’s beautiful - probably my ideal Ray! It’s a shame the new Specials all have such dark necks/boards as I feel the roasted maple clashes with some of the body colours on offer. @Bob Lord, thanks for your write-up above. I found it a really useful read!

Okay, it's a five string but been using this for a few months now and before a USA SUB5 so have the choice of 2 band or 3 band EQ. This one really does everything I need in the band. We cover everything from Edith Piaf to the Ramones, Queen, AC/DC, Chic and beyond to fairly modern stuff like Cake by the ocean and Feel it still. Fab tonal palette, comfortable, good balance and great string spacing. This one had a preamp change which also gives me the passive option. Only downside, I wish it were the classic shape body hence I also have the old USA SUB5. Go for it.

Finally I manage to update this thread. Albeit I'm going to cut it into a few different posts. I'll cover the body first, then the neck in another post. I took the guitar home and took a couple of photos in natural light coming in through the window. By some bizarre, never-to-be-repeated, quirk of fate, Nottingham wasn't grey and overcast. This is what the Tru Oil finish looks like in natural light, really nice colour and chatoyance: I would describe the finish as being a high satin, or very low gloss. I'm sure it could be polished to a much higher gloss, but it's not the look I was after. It's 90% grain filled, meaning it feels incredibly smooth and shiny, but has a tiny bit of texture to it. It's lush! I could have gone for a complete grain fill...but again, not the look I was after. There's definitely a time and a place for a dipped-in-glass type high-gloss finish (Mmmm....sadowsky), but not when I was asked to create a Bruce Springsteen inspired guitar. Anyway, here's the lustre: Here's my finishing schedule. 1. Sand to 400, 600 on the end grain. Obviously, sanding is critical. All scratches have to be gone otherwise they get amplified by the oil. The end grain is always difficult, especially on baseball-bat ash (which this was). Wetting the body with a sponge helps identify scratches (and raises the grain prior to finishing) as does going outside into natural light where the scratches are easier to see. 2. Seal the wood. I applied two coats of Tru Oil using a cotton rag. There's no science to this bit. Squirt some oil on the rag or the guitar then rub it in. I wiped off any excess after 5 minutes. I did this twice, 24 hours apart. 3. Grain fill using the slurry method. Using wet/dry paper on the back of a sanding block (a bit of scrap MDF) I sanded with the grain using Tru Oil as the lubricant. I know other people sand in circles (including the chap who made the video above, and his results look great) but that just makes me nervous - I don't ever like sanding other than with the grain. The idea is that the sanding dust/slurry gets trapped in the grain. I found that sanding with the grain, then using my finger to 'swirl' the slurry around worked well, and there was no danger of visible sanding scratches (which is the danger when using a circular motion). I found the best way was to divide the body up into sections and move from one section to the next (the top for example I would divide into 4), rather than trying to do the whole thing in one go. You then want to wipe across the grain to get rid of the excess. You do want to make sure you wipe off all the excess, otherwise you find that you end up with ridges or streaks, which can then be hard to sand away when you move up to the finer grits. If you are anythnig like me you'll find it a pretty messy business - always dripping down the sides, or onto the top you've just wiped, and onto your work surface which then get's smudged onto you newly wiped guitar top etc etc. None of which is a problem, just wipe. I wiped off with standard kitchen paper. Keep lots and lots to hand. I repeated this process twice, both times using 400 wet/dry and seperated by 24 hrs. I found that his filled the grain to a bout 90%, which was the look I was after. A third time would probably have been enough to get the grain completely filled, if you were wanting a completely smooth surface on which to build a high gloss finish. I found the slurry was very happy to stay in the grain, wiping with the kitchen paper took the oil off the surface but leaving the grain nicely filled. 3. Smoothing. I find it usefull to seperate in my head the process of grain fill, and sanding smooth. The process is much the same as above - using wet/dry paper on a sanding block, sanding with the grain then throroughly wiping off the excess. I did the following grits: 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1500, 2000. It was really at 1500 where there was a sudden change in lustre, from what I would call satin to a low gloss. The great thing about tru oil is that you really just keep going until either your arms fall off, or you've got the appearance you want. It is quite a physical process - from 800 and above I would vigorously rub off the excess oil (again, in the direction of the grain), pressing hard to generate a tiny bit of heat. I did only one grit per day, but I'm told doing 2 per day is no problem. Another thing I tried was using Mirka Abralon sanding pads rather than wet/dry paper. It worked really well, and was definitely less messy as the oil gets absorved into the foam of the pad. It did, though, use a lot more oil. I'm not sure the effect was any different though, both worked just as well. I left it at that, ie my last coast was sanded with 2000 grit. For a higher gloss (without buffing) I understand you can just apply a very thin coat with a cotton rag as your final coat. I didin't as I liked the finish as it was. 4. Waiting.......I wait at least a week before putting the guitar together. I think Tru Oil takes that long to harden sufficiently. Overall, I'm very happy with how it turned out. Using Tru Oil on ash is not an easy option. Then again, ash is never an easy option whatever the finish you're using, the grain is just so open. But if you don't want to spray then it's a finish you can apply on the kitchen table. Just make sure that you have wiped away every trace of oil at the end of each session or you'll have to go back down the grits to get out the ridges. I'll go through the process for the neck tomorrow. Cheers all. And thanks very much to @Andyjr1515 for his help and advice re Tru Oil (amongst many other things!)

RRP of £1169 😶 Si

These types of ads seem to be prevalent in all sectors now. There are similar sites advertising £3k bikes for hundreds of pounds. They all "take" paypal. I get a feeling that the real scam is the harvesting of your PayPal details via a phishing site that looks like PayPal.

Jon is an incredible Luthier. He has an attention to detail that is revered amongst his peers. His basses are beautiful and you aren’t alone with the dribbling that’s for sure. The Bass Players United page went in to overdrive when one of Jon’s Fretless Uberhorn basses was posted. Thousands upon thousands of likes and every single comment a positive one. Crazy! Anyway, from experience of lots of Jon’s basses, I’m afraid I have to tell you that you need to follow your heart, otherwise you’ll always wonder if....if.... Shuker is my bass brand of choice.

I respect the spirit of this position but I have a caveat to it. Jazz is whatever you want it to be unless it is something else. The problem I have with the idea that 'anything goes' is that this is OK to a point but, put simply, some things are not Jazz not because they 'don' t swing' or some other genre specific details or whatever. They are not Jazz because they are Funk or Torch Songs or Blues or Pop. Rod Stewart doesn't become a Jazz singer just because he puts on a beret.

I've had a small windfall - about the size of a new tip-top-notch bass as it happens - and I'm having serious GAS for a Stingray Classic 4 string. I buy a new bass about once a decade so it's a BIG decision for me and I need to know how many of you guys (possibly the greatest bass playing experts on the interweb so I trust you) rate this bass? How's the quality of build and is having a single humbucker a limitation? Has anyone bought one recently and are you pleased with it? Obviously I'm looking for encouragement but if there are any serious worries I'd probably rather know!

Yeah, it really makes you wonder, doesn't it? All these decades chasing a 'sound' when in fact it's all in your head - how you sound live is largely down to how everyone else sounds and how good they are at what they do. You can get chronic GAS, spend thousands on gear and attempt to get the 'best' bass tone in the world, but it's all for nothing if your drummer can't play in time, your singer's falling-down drunk, or your guitarist routinely deafens everyone in the room. If your drummer is really on it and they and the other members of the band know how to play quietly and tastefully and listen to each other, you've got half a chance - and what's more, it won't matter if you're playing a Harley Benton Jazz through a Behringer combo, you will sound great.

Makes perfect sense to me

I decided to reshape the headstock as it didn't look right with the fender style so I did the Ibby style I've done on a couple of my other builds then veneered it with oak to match the centre section of the body....... 😀

Firstly, I thought you loved your Sei? The grass isn't always greener, and you may regret getting rid of it. Secondly, to counter many of the other opinions here, I've played several Shukers and haven't liked any of them. I don't mean haven't been blown away by, I mean actually haven't liked, although I'm aware that Jon will build most things so it's perfectly possible he could build something that I really like. On the other hand, I've had 5 Seis (I think it's 5) and have played loads more, and there are very few I haven't thought were really, really nice. Of course Martin will only generally build variations on existing models, but as you're looking at Js and already have one anyway, that's not an issue. If I had to choose between the 2 based on all the basses I've played, I'd choose Sei every time. Of course YMMV.

I genuinely wish I hadn't started reading this thread....... I went on the Shuker site and starting looking at the P basses. Crikey, I saw this one and fell in love with the body wood. I'd love this as a 5 string with the addition of a J PUP plus 21 fret and with a maple board (not a rosewood type). Awwwww man, why me? 🙄😂

Yes. The Boogie eq has always been a sensitive beast and the controls all interact too. Back in 1988, when I got my Bass 400, I actually stopped using it for a short while because I couldn't figure it out. After a while I decided to persevere and it paid off. It does take a while to get to grips with the way it all works but it soon becomes automatic - and very worthwhile. Whenever I read a thread where people say it didn't sound right I remember how long it took me to get to grips with it. I have always maintained (and still do) that any Boogie amp is capable of producing exactly the sound you want. Whether or not you can find it is down to you!!

What a fantastic learning tool - it hums the tune to you when you forget!!!

Heres my Fender collection- 66 Jazz, 71 P, Custom Shop 5, 76 P 64 P, 70 P, 69 P

I like the picture on the wall

Warwick just a nut does this I think

First night out for the Ampeg PF-50T, with my country band. 50W is plenty when it's (a) supplied by valves, and (b) delivered through a Super Twin! I loved the sound I got, and a bass playing friend complimented me on it too, so that con't be bad. There was plenty of volume in reserve too.

Think we need to be able to bump our own “wanted adds” - people are posting multiple times for the same stuff and then stuff is just getting missed - I’ve been after a few things for a while and it looks like I’ve missed sale threads or the sellers have missed my wanted add. cheers Andy

I assume you mean the wenge? and yeah i think im going to have to, and take some off the edges, and drill out some weight elsewhere too... in case you can't read that... thats 4lbs 7oz just for the wenge. by my best guess, if this all got stuck together and the hardware added on as it is now, this thing would come in around 15lbs, and thats too heavy even for a beast of a man like me. im just realizing now that ive basically got a collection of the heaviest wood i can find and then built a huge body shape with it. worst comes to the worst i'll rout some of the thickness off the wenge, but if i can help it id rather not. in other news, the inlays are coming along well. i had a pretty successful weekend: getting the lightning and those tiny fiddle ends of the clouds in SUUUUUUUCKED. but im pleased with it so far. i like the way the ziricote looks in the background as well, i'd been tempted to just go with a flat black ebony to help the inlays stand out, but the ziricote gives it a bit of depth. what do you guys think? also ive now got a headstock design im pretty happy with: I had originally planned to go with a fairly classic symmetrical headstock... sort of alembic esque. but i always loved the look of le fay bass headstocks: its obviously very similar, although widened out a bit to accommodate a long truss rod cover and some big schaller tuners, and reversed. for some reason i always thought the le fay ones looked like they were the wrong way round.

There's no shame in using an open string to give your ear some reference and reassurance...if the key of the song permits, of course!

Here's the antidote ...