Leaderboard

And it's pretty much finished... @eude is probably going to change the electrics so we opted to just put the old electrics back in. The jack is actually fine, but both pots are shot. I'll order some replacements anyway to fit while the finish is hardening. But, other than the final tweaks on the setup and a final buff up in a few days time, its finished. I've obviously gone heavy on the tru-oil because it's ended up at 8 3/4 lbs rather than the 8 1/2 I was projecting but it sits BEAUTIFULLY on the strap. Even my slippy cheap nylon strap - it rests level and will sit and stay at almost any angle you care to play. It actually feels lighter on the strap than it actually is, presumably for the same reason. The fretboard is just polished - progressive from around 2000 grit paper to 12000 micro-web. The figuring shows up great in real life. I'll probably take a few more fancier shots when the lighting is right, but here it is in the meantime:

Mate of mine is into gypsy jazz (he's a guitarist, obvs). He went over to the big festival they have every year in Holland and joined in with some of the workshops. He realises during said workshops he is sitting in with some of the very best gypsy jazz musicians in the world - 1 being Django Reinhardt's grandson! Later he was due to be on stage for a group performance - playing rhythm guitar (which in gypsy jazz is no calkwalk), but ends up sitting at the front! Ok he thinks, I'll keep my head down and just concentrate on my rhythm work. During the performance all the top guys (remember, these are the best in the world) take turns to solo. He is sat next to Django's grandson who, after finishing ripping out a blinding solo (and if you now anything about gypsy jazz you'll know that everything is played at at least 90 mph) he turns to my mate Andy, (for that is his name) and indicates it's his turn...to take a solo! My mate did his best and 'got through it' as he said. The next day, he's sitting playing in another workshop when the aforementioned Django's grandson turns up with some of the other top performers, joins in with the music and everyone takes a turn soloing, my mate included, not quite so nervous this time and felt he made a better account of himself compared to the previous evenings performance. When the workshop finishes my mate then recounts how nervous he was at the previous evenings show and how he felt like an imposter. The reply of Django's grandson and all the other top players was to tell him that it matters not what you play, but the fact that you do and that everyone has to start somewhere. They were so encouraging and supporting he's booked to go again this year.

That's a bit of a sweeping statement. We have band practice once a week because we are not pro musicians. We have jobs and families, and have band practice so we can be tighter than a very tight thing and give the audience what they paid for, a decent nights entertainment. Being able to busk your way through a set is not the only measure of a musician. Being prepared to the best of your ability, however limited that ability may be, is the very least I expect from any band mate. I have busked through a gig, as a drummer, and I did not enjoy it as I spent all my time watching the other musicians like a hawk and trying to keep up. So much so the dynamics of the gig completely passed me by.

So, just to confirm - are Bryan Adams covers back on the table? Too soon?? 😖

My observation - from teaching and talking to an awful lot of bassists - is that the role that magazines played in terms of filling in historical knowledge isn't one that people are using the web for... It's weird, because YouTube is the greatest learning resource that humanity has ever come up with - whether you want to fix the screen on your phone, or work out what Allan Holdsworth was doing with symmetrical scales, there are SO many amazing lessons on there, but because the focus is on 'info that will benefit me right now' rather than the contained, delineated authoritative experience of reading an episodic magazine, it seems that relatively few people are spending time online digging into the history of the instrument. Reading BP cover to cover in the 90s (and reading every bass-related thing in Guitarist in the late 80s) was as much my school as the two years I did at music college. I have things I use every day in my playing that I learned from Rich Appleman's theory column in the 90s. I know about players because instead of, as has been indicated here, worrying that I didn't know who the players were, I read more voraciously when they were musicians I hadn't heard of than when it was ones I knew... So magazines were a way of accumulating knowledge... That was, in many ways, a problem, in that it meant that the writers and editors were the gatekeepers of knowledge, and as they were almost exclusively dudes (in the case of BP editors, all of them ever were men), women got WAY WAY worse coverage, and were often written about in a really shitty way. Likewise, the coverage was overwhelmingly US and Europe-centric. YouTube has its filters which provide similar levels of myopia if you use their algorithms to decide what to watch, but the capacity for learning is huge (I recently went on a Soca binge, and discovered a ton of amazing music and bass playing). ...So, I'm still a fan of magazines - the economics of running a mag is way more perilous than a website, you can get away with more auto-generated content on a website and have zero print costs (hosting doesn't even come close in terms of monthly outgoing per reader), even though mags have a cover price - there's obviously no granularity to the reader spend. You don't get people who give you 5p a month for reading a page or two and some who pay the full price. It's all or nothing... I greatly appreciate what No Treble are doing - particularly their attempts to fill that knowledge gap I suggested above - Ryan Madora's column on players to know is a really useful one, and the video tuition stuff is great - but the factors that drive virality, and therefor ad money, are far more damaging to so much web video content than perceived bias in reviews (there's SO much to say about reviewing, but my one observation would be that there is, objectively VERY little 'bad' gear out there now, above the rebadged absurdly cheap garbage on eBay from no-name manufacturers - the big players can't afford to make bad gear, and CNC means that consistency across instruments is lightyears beyond where it was 20 years ago when I was reviewing stuff for Bassist - I was regularly sent really bogus stuff, gave things mediocre reviews, and even refused to write about some stuff... It was way more useful to fill the pages with reviews of good stuff that I was to write a hit piece on some crappy gear. Ignore it, and it'll go away - at that point, magazines were the lifeblood of companies' ad strategy, so a bad review was actually more coverage than their rubbish gear deserved... But that's a whole other discussion) Anyway, decent journalism is expensive, so expensive that it makes a lot of magazines impossible to fund, and no commercial publisher is going to run a mag at a loss in order to meet readers' desires. The economics are a total mess right now. I'm really glad that we still have any print mags for bass at all, and I hope the people involved find a way to keep them going - my rate for writing in a UK bass mag is lower now than it was 20 years ago. They've cut everything back as far as it'll go, so we'll see if that's enough. I don't know the specifics of what was happening at BP, but I do know they ditched all their offices a while back and went to a remote working model to try and cut costs. I guess it wasn't enough.

Been after an 8x10 for a while to complete the SVT rig. Went today to pick up one I got on eBay. Sounds good, except I can't really crank it at home right now to gig volume to really hear what it sounds like in anger. Pretty angry, I'd imagine. After hearing horror stories about carting them about, I have to say it's actually easier (provided you've got wide enough doors etc) to move than a couple of 4x10s, just because you wheel it about like a trolley. The head is more of a pain in the backside tbh Anyway, i'm delighted & wanted to share in the delight with you

I think its a mixture of poor advertising on here, as in, vague descriptions, shoddy photo's etc, plus competition from Facebook, eBay and a quiet market I advertised a mint Gibson Thunderbird on here - no takers, not even an enquiry. Listed it on eBay at a higher price and sold it within 3 days. Just lucky that a guy who wanted the exact model I had (a 2015 model with the Babicz bridge) was looking at the time I posted it. He pressed the BIN button and off we went. Out of interest after the sale I asked him if he was on BC and he said he'd never heard of it! So in summary Not all bass players use this forum (shock horror!) eBay, Facebook and thefretboard - a guitar forum which also sells basses and where I bought my T-Bird from - are competing places to buy/sell (and that's without mentioning Gumtree) Many of the owners of collections who advertise on here are 'thinning the herd' which naturally reduces the pool of buyers Selling on commission through specialist shops - Bass Direct sold a Sandberg of mine for a very good price to me, which then appeared on eBay for about 6 months and is now back on Bass Direct's books. It's this one btw http://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Sandberg_Classic_4.html It's a cracking bass btw! Having said all of the above I'll still use this forum to advertise my gear. I'm a big fan of BC but like most things, it ain't perfect!

Pea Turgh did ask for lots of piccies....... I think you'll all agree, this does not look like a homemade cab. The Ashdown badge probably helps here, but you can buy all kinds of badges on eBay for a few pounds (plenty of Trace Elliot, for example). So if you feel like putting a name on your cab there's nothing to stop you.

I once played in a band that backed a reggae singer from St Vincent. We were white, he was black. None of us gave a sh 1t about that. It was the best musical experience of my life. Tell me where I went wrong...

Aston Barrett is one of my favourite bassists but he isn't one of your "regular" reggae bassists. His lines are totally unique. If you want to get the feel and learn the style of Reggae I'd listen to others first, then progress to Barrett. For starters, try stuff like : Peter Tosh - Johnny B Goode, Feel No Way, Glass House, Reggae Mylitis etc Toots and the Maytals - Pressure Drop, Monkey Man, Louie Louie, Funky Kingston etc

Might be worth absorbing a live version of the sheriff, as well 👍 Once you can do everything on this thread - if it still doesn't work, then it's probably safe to blame the drummer. 😁

I think that we do need to consider that we have an ageing population in the UK (and the rest of the western world) and the rock and roll generations of the 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s have now reached various stages of middle age and are not interested in the same things their parents were at that age. Younger people may enjoy live music if they are exposed to it, but it is not the same thing as it used to be and they can't be expected to turn up en mass for a night out to see a band playing a type of music that their parents grew up with. There is still an audience for rock music (or dad rock as some people prefer) and a few years ago there was a pretty vibrant scene in pubs. You could always get a decent audience if the band was good enough. Now you can't help but notice that austerity has taken its toll and it is more difficult to get people away from their TVs and supermarket booze, but I have still been managing to gig pretty regularly for the past few years in decent bands with guys ranging from their late 30s to early 60s playing to audiences of a similar age group. You need to know your audience. These days yoof culture is no longer necessarily king and its the older punters who are more likely to be interested in watching live music, not to mention to have the disposable income to do so...

Check out this vid, at 7 minutes...

Vim Fuego........

@The59Sound do you need to take a break?! How about it, or do you think you can behave like a grown up for a bit? Calm down.

Why are you being rude? What an odd reply. Literally an opinion, a point of view - my 2p. The concept of a cheaper (‘kiddy’) Flea bass in itself was acknowledged by Flea when he brought out the “fleabass” range of instruments and further addressed by the introduction of a lower price point Fleabass (street bass). I was just pointing out that Fender may have missed a trick by only having the one price point which would be out of reach for younger/less affluent fans when they’ve done broader attempts to previously... Mike Dirnt has/had a Fender and a Squier model simultaneously BB King had a Gibson and Epiphone version of Lucille (there are plenty more examples) It just broadens their buying audience somewhat and more buyers means more money. Makes more business sense. And having left the guitar/bass retail industry after 12 years in 2015 - I might have an idea of what people buy into. As a point, the cheap fleabass instruments weren’t that great - but we sold 100’s of them because people bought into the Flea name/image. But what would I know, I’m only a child.

Apart from anything else, the Wal is an appreciating investment. Mine is my pension plan

I am still working on the bender - it's not cooperating however.

What a great rig.

The hole for the other horn proved to be slightly too big, but some fibreglass filler came to the rescue. In the drawings, which Ghostbass is very kindly reworking for us as we speak, the horn is located more centrally on the baffle, as that is acoustically the best place for it. I also decided to position it vertically to improve the dispersion to the player's ears when standing up close to the cab. So - the handle is fitted and I've foamed the grille support. This is what is looks like with the grille. Although perhaps I should say, that's what it looks like under flash. So I took the cab outside and took some more pictures.

Since I last posted on this thread, there has been a change of plan on the drivers. I struggled to get the cab sounding right with the original horn and decided to revert to the P. Audio horn I'd used previously. I haven't given up on the asymmetric horn and may revisit it later. However, as the design objective of this particular version of the cab is light weight, I thought that the combination of the P. Audio horn and a Celestion CDX-1415 compression driver would be a good choice. The total weight of the 12" bass driver, the Celestion compression driver and the P. Audio horn is just 3kg. Amazing! So even though we've used 15mm ply for the cab, a proper crossover, and a metal grille, the total weight of the finished product is 13kg. I'd call that a result. It was difficult to get a decent photo of the compression driver with my cheap camera and flash, but it really is dinky - weighing in at just 250 grammes. It's not cheap, but it does have a 1.4" voice coil, and not a 1" coil like cheaper compression drivers.

We resume our little story after the cab has had two coats of Tuffcab paint. Time to sort the grille out. I was fortunate enough to obtain an Ashdown 2x10 cabinet with blown drivers, whose grille proved to be an ideal fit. But first I cut some 15 x 12mm pine strip to make a grille support. A coat of matt black paint, and I had this: The observant among you will have noticed that the port is no longer grey. The grey port looks quite good in actual fact - it's distinctive - but I thought I'd paint it black anyway, as I had paint in my garage that was unlikely to be used for anything else. It worked fine, as you can see. I did have to cut the grille to size with my ancient, trusty metal-cutting shears. .

£1,049 is a comedy price tag, surely? Especially when this can be had for £100 less:

Great idea. 👍

Is it good for Metal?

Just spotted this, in case of interest. Definitely a head turner with a 3 band EQ and a lovely finish: http://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Sandberg_Classic_Special_5.html

It’s nice having both options for those moments when Bluetooth or Wi-fi connection gets glitchy or laggy. But I’d never want to go back to not being able to tweak my monitors from my tablet!

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Don't worry Douglas, we're used to it by now

I fully appreciate I am the least musically talented person in our band. I am also the hardest working when it comes to practice. I am never the least prepared...... pluses and minuses.......

This was one that took me quite a while to get the timing on ,I had to really break it down 😀

6.0 user here. Use it on all my gigs. It's a very neutral sounding thing. No complaints.

It's more complicated than you might think ... 😉

I'd rather not get into this but you're talking so much sh*t that I just can't let it go. So called "cultural appropriation" is a perfect example of being offended on the part of somebody else. I don't know who you are but I'm going to bet you are some reasonably well-off white person. You have no right that I can see to dictate who should or should not play Caribbean music. I make no pretence to "pass myself off" as a Caribbean person - I'm a fat, bald, old white bloke. I play it in appreciation, not to mock or to pass-off or to pretend I am what I am not. Most complaints about "cultural appropriation" are a nasty example of left-wing politics going so extreme that they have become indistinguishable from far right politics. This needs called out for what it is. However, this isn't what I asked about. I didn't ask for your opinion.

Try these for size...

I think essentially Flea knows what he likes for live use after all these years. He likes that MM humbucker in the sweet spot and by the looks of it, a Stingray-ish thickness in the neck (not surprising after so many years playing them). He has been seen regularly with his old fender and a couple of other fender jazz basses and a Precision, and it’s pretty well documented that he uses/used a Wal and has recorded recent stuff on a Stingray. Ernie Ball don’t need to pay him a load of money to endorse a bass that is always going to be synonymous with flea that already sells well. From fragments I have read over the years I think Flea was basically being a d*ck about it and I don’t think Sterling Ball takes any crap from anyone. Modulus go out of business, Fender knock on your door offering some money and you say yes to a replica of your trusty 62 and say I also need basses that sound as close to the ones I love to use live, pretty simple really. I think that he’s obviously still peeved that Ernie Ball didn’t bow down to his celebrity, and still won’t use a stingray in public despite it being the bass everyone associated him with, that is essentially the spec and tone he still wants.

Yup. I learned early on that most of the audience, any audience, are actually listening to the song in their head, not what the actual band is playing.

The Gallery are correct, it's a problem with the piezo. I had similar issues with the piezos on my 6 string. Just get a replacement, they are cheap enough and it will save you a load of faff.

For about a year now - Caravan Palace... I think I'm in love with the singer... And for this week - Pomplamousse. My son put me onto them:

Put down the bass, pick up a triangle. Then listen to Reggae, an ting.

A singer friend of mine and myself were starting a new project, writing songs together. We would meet at mine to write and record a bit of guitar and bass. I was playing guitar but I wanted to stick to bass, so we auditioned guitarists. This guy comes in, and within seconds we realise he can't even play. He was having trouble shaping chords with is fingers... and you could see he was feeling very nervous and embarrased. Singer is giving me this look like "we're done here"... but I felt sorry for him, so I took one of my guitars and showed him something simple to play, and I played another guitar and singer sang a bit... then moved to bass... and over all I taught him 3-4 little things and we played for another 30 minutes or so. Then he left, apologising for his lack of preparation and he laughed at how silly he was for thinking he could do it. Then he says he had only been learning guitar for 2 weeks... I emailed him a couple of days later to see how he was. We laughed. He was a cool guy, he just jumps into things with lots of enthusiasm and not enough preparation sometimes We became friends, I encouraged him and eventually he went on to form his own band. I played a couple of gigs with him as a dep, recorded a bit, I went to his wedding... so yeah, cool audition ha! stinky poo guitarist at the time, but I ended up with one of the coolest friends I've got.

I've found the Newtones to be familiar enough, but much better. The feel, tension, flexibility is similar, and the sound can be similar too, however I think the Newtones are a little hotter than the Sun Beams, but if you play gentle you get that round Sun Beam tone. I think they're probably more versatile as a result. Durability wise, the Newtones are far superior, they last and last, plus any problems, they are based in the UK and are great folks to deal with. I had SO many dud Sun Beams in packs I bought direct from the US that I just stopped using them. The QC at DR took a real turn for the worst a while back, but in a way I'm glad as I might not have ended up with Newtones I wholeheartedly recommend you give them a go. Eude

is that a festival celebrating different sexualities?

It would seem from my good friend @NancyJohnson 's post above that the Bass Player crew have taken this rather badly. Were further confirmation needed I have been passed an unredacted copy of the BP FB post as originally drafted: Bass Player Family When we launched Bass Player almost 30 years ago we were motivated by a festering resentment at the way that guitards had three or four magazines for themselves but we bass players didn't merit more than a single page shoe-horned into the back of Guitar Player in among all the other bits of articles that started at the front then unaccountably broke off and continued after the classified ads in the weird way that we Americans lay out magazines unlike anyone else in the world because they do it wrong and we do it right, kinda like football is football and soccer is soccer. We digress. BP was meant to show the world that bass players are the most important people in the band and not at all sulky passive-aggressives who can't get laid. And over the years, we've succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. No one ever laughs at bass players these days. Now on the eve of our 30th anniversary we have been stabbed in the back by those treacherous sons of bïtches at the hedge fund. All you need to know about these guys is that only one of them plays a musical instrument and it's a PRS. What's worse is we've been sold to a bunch of effete limeys who sip their tea with their little finger stuck out and curtsy to each other when they meet. Was it for this that thousands of our best young men crossed the Atlantic to join the 8th Air Force and save the Brits by raining death and destruction on Germany? All we have to say is 'Semper Fi'. Could it get any worse? Turns out the upstart English magazine is in bed with those anti-American, Rickenbacker-hating dirtbags at the 'TalkBass rip-off website' BassChat. All you need to know is that the owners of BassChat wear bowler hats and say things like 'God save the Queen, actually'. Anyway, the murderous English redcoats who are taking us over will completely screw the pooch so please cancel your subscriptions now and protest this unwanted takeover by burning the Union Jack flag. We wish the new editor well but it will be a clusterf*ck of biblical proportions and in the end it's all down to Donald Trump and his fascist nationalism. Make America Great Again? We think not. Bass Player