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.

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.

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.

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.

I've got to keep away from bloddy forums - they keep giving me ideas!

Re: screwholes... cocktail sticks, PVA glue and a shap blade for trimming.

More likely Beach Boys....

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.

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

I hope you'll like it. It's been filmed over 5 years or so in 20+ countries around the world. Only sound and vision. I highly recommend it. It's magical.

Love it. It reminds me of a movie ''Samsara''. If I didn't know you did it, I'd definitely say it's a part of a soundtrack to that movie. Awesome.

yep same goes for all class D amps. one nice feature of shuttles I recall is the internal hi pass filter is quite strong which prevents sub-baddy boomy sounds hitting the speaker too hard and is very helpful for upright bass especially

The LMB is a limiter, not quite a compressor. It’s sole purpose is to make sure your signal doesn’t go above the volume you want, you only really need it if you’re clipping from getting huge jumps in volume when you’re digging in. It’s a utility, not really a tone shaper. A compressor evens out all your dynamics, while a limiter just stops them being too loud. Don’t bin it, sell it.

You've not played enough dives or festivals with slippery surfaces, maybe..? It lends a dash of 'home comfort' to the occasion. I'm a drummer, so (obviously...) I have a rug; our rehearsal space is laid out in similar fashion to the video above (albeit a tad smaller room...). Mickey 3D have an armchair and standard lamps, with lampshades, on their stage; it's part of their atmosphere. Try it, they're fun..?

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!

-

-

-

Think I may have seen them 12 times now with my sister and various Incognito lover's. I adore Randy's playing, especially his fretless playing on Tribes Vibes and Scribes. But Ernie Mckone's playing on this this record is up there with the best playing I've ever heard on any record ever. He is just smokin. He's all over that groove. His playing near the end of this record is just WOW... imo A Bit Like Julian Crampton on a Down to the Bone record. ✌️

No need, as i've stumbled on some very sweet English Walnut, and we'll be off and running in the new year.

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

Frontman version; How many frontmen does it take to change a lightbulb? One to hold it still and the rest of the world to revolve around them and screw it in... I'll get me coat..

Playing?? You are supposed to play them as well? Oh...

The best bit of advice I was given when I started was that as long as you start together, stop together and smile together, no one notices the bit in the middle. I thought they were joking but it’s surprisingl true. There have been a couple of car crash moments when we have murdered a song but never has anyone commented on it. Quite the opposite on one occasion where we did a short set and for some reason just weren’t on it (borrowed kit, no set up time didn’t help) but we had people raving about us, in a good way, on Facebook.

I knew this bass had potential, but I lacked the tools and attention to detail to bring it out. Luckily, I knew of a very good tech in the area. Apparently, so does everyone else as he has a 4 week backlog! For years I’ve thought “I can tweak a truss rod/set intonation” etc, but I now happily admit I was wrong. The strings are sitting at a perfect height at both ends and over the frets, the action and feel is consistent on every note up and down the neck. Definitely feels like my playing will improve as a result. I am now very happy with Trigger, the bitsa P!

Alright Stephen. 👍

I don't know what is was like in it's 'heyday' but of the 11 basses listed since Thursday morning the 4 priced to sell / good value (imho) for money instruments have sold and a good number of other basses listed earlier have also sold in the last couple of days, so I'd say once people got paid this month and allowing for the seasonal feast of mammon wallet draining the market is fine if things are correctly priced but there are too many overvalued instruments imho, including obviously my Kala Ubass, which I am listing for 50% of what it cost me (I clearly paid too much), but since I bought it Harley Benton and others have been knocking out Uke basses (and everything else) for not much more than the cost of the materials in the west so bringing down the whole lower and middle market values used, why pay £70+ for collection only from Ebay for a often well used or neglected used instrument that was £200-£300 (when originally sold) when a new one with 30 days return and 3 years warranty is now £120 delivered How anyone can think an old Squier is worth twice what a new one costs I don't understand, should be less than half the price of a new one surely regardless of how 'nice' it is as no return, no warranty. I don't think your home insurance company would pay out £700 for a 25 year old mid market bass if it was stolen or lost in a fire without some damn good valuation evidence I bought my used Maruszczyk less than 12 months old for 50% of it's new actual price (not it's list price) and at that price I thought it was a great/good buy but worried that it was flawed somehow as otherwise why would the PO be selling it (and the fact that none else bought it in the month or so it was on Ebay meant others were also concerned as to why it was for sale so cheap), but it's absolutely perfect 😃 just the brand doesn't hold it's value in the same way that overpriced (what the market will bear pricing backed up by price agreements and restricted access to trade) Fenders seem able to do I don't have replacement value insurance so if the Jake was stolen all I'd get back would be what I paid for it and the hard case(which I can prove) probably less some wear and tear and I doubt I could sell it on here for any more than that and I certainly wouldn't ask a lot more than that as I just don't have the front to do that but others clearly do I see the same thing in my day to day work with VW campervans, people buy into the lifestyle, buy a van, do it up, use it, appear to have a great time, then sell expecting to get back every penny they have spent plus some scene-tax, not allowing for all the fun times they had or depreciation due to age/mileage and thus expect the next owners to effectively have subsidised their previous fun; price of vans goes up, everyone tries it on, the value for money/correctly priced stuff doesn't sell as quickly as it should because people are suspicious but if you ask a silly inflated (to me) price people somehow buy into that and then end up paying over the odds and when they come to sell the cycle repeats Don't forget the younger generation didn't grow up with records and record players and buying stuff once to own and have for ever (a good long time at least), they live digital lives, pay to stream, have smaller footprints, micro this and that and 2-3 year replacement cycles on stuff (3-7 years for really big ticket items like cars and domestic appliances), and needing to save money to be able to buy a house or paying over the odds to my generation of landlords means that they won't be buying 2 or 3 or 4 shiny objects to possess unless they are actually making money out of them and I suspect there's a number of traders on here who have realised it is quite hard to monetise music in the digital world but it is possible to make money buying and selling instruments/effects etc. so expect more of that

Maybe, maybe not. Unsupportive and/or controlling husband lets wifey audition for the role because obviously she's useless and (i) will never get the gig, (ii) can't possibly manage without hubby there to tell her what to do. Anyway, it'll shut her up for a while. Then gets all hurt and precious when it turns out that little wifey actually does just fine when he's not there to screw things up for her. Perhaps.

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.

the only way you can decide on an amp is to use it in a band setting, if you play in a band that is.

That sounds suspiciously like current goings on with people who have now discovered the mess is really bad, but fingers in ears will not admit it - it's fine. I knew the cost - any cost is fine as long as I get what I think I want!! Seriously though - there ought to be some form of decent comparison - you often try an amp in a shop at first polite and then a quick stab at noisy volume - but every amp can pretty much manage that and still sound ok. It's no use when you want to know how the sound will work at the sort of gig volumes you would need your Trace Amp turned up to 1.5 for...

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

Blimey, I hope I never come across a Bass Boiler ! Still, at least the strings would sound brighter afterwards.......................