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I have recently been given an artist endorsement deal. I'm actually chuffed to bits about this, even though I'm 50 years old and have been gigging for over 30 years. It's made me all excited!!

Yes, not surprising with 50+ year old instruments, but they vary so much with how they've been treated. I went shopping for an EB2 with my son in Nashville a couple of years ago. The first one I found was just dead wood. The second leapt to life in my arms and wouldn't let me put her down. Same model, same year (1966), same condition to look at. Chalk and cheese. Sorry, can't resist;

That's 2 in Roman numerals.

My wife just showed me this meme about babies with teeth that she saw on Facebook and I thought the baby in the picture looked kind of familiar.

I've been lucky to play headliner stages at Summerfest, the world's largest music festival for the past 7 years. Blue

A few less strings & some cheat lines and it might! Reminds me quite a lot of the "One Bass To Rule Them All" design idea I knocked up about 10 years back: Having since owned a twin-neck in real life, I'd scale down the body a lot to reduce weight. Done right it could be quite manageable...

Yes, it will be announced at NAMM. The unit is expected to ship in May for the US and Europe. If you keep in eye on our Facebook page that's where most updated information is.

Probably a bit of both I'm going to draw it full size over the next couple of days but I'm pretty sure the bottom of the neck pocket will end up at the level of the back wood. If so, the only thing I have to fillet is the top wood, starting from a rectangular 'neck pocket' shaped hole. If so, a bullnose router bit or similar isn't a bad idea to rough it out @Si600 , and remembering the apprentice school engineer blue fitting techniques- but using blackboard chalk instesd of blue and scrapers to fine finish it all off, @SpondonBassed .... So I might have to retitle to: "Andyjr1515, Si600 & Spondonbassed meet their Nemesis?"

Is that not just it's gravitational pull?

I'd ditch the four as it can't do anything the five can, logically if you need fretted and fretless and five strings then a fretted and fretless five string would be the best solution.

Following on from the end of last year's tour - this Saturday sees the biggest gig of my playing career. Not bad for an old duffer! We'll be on the Introducing Stage at the Great British Rock & Blues Festival in Skegness. Anywhere between 600 and 1,000 proper die-hard music fans there for the likes of 9 Below Zero, FM, Saxon and many others. Good fun this original music lark!

I've never done one of these before, but I'm just so delighted with this bass that I want to shout from the rooftops! It's incredibly versatile, with a really sensibly voiced preamp. The humbucker has a tonne of poke and there's no drastic volume difference when the preamp's bypassed. It's comfortable, with a lovely neck, excellent finishing and quality parts. If I had to find one quibble it would be the tuners - just not quite as solid-feeling as everything else...but that's pedantry. I know the marmite reputation of green basses, but green happens to be my favourite colour and I just love the styling of this instrument - just unconventional enough IMO. The icing on the cake was a fantastic deal from Sandy at The Great British Bass Lounge, who was a pleasure to deal with from start to finish. This one will be with me for a while. Cheers, Tobie

Interesting interview from bassist Klaus Voormann, who played on John Lennons' Imagine album. Comes across as a really nice bloke. https://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2019/01/11/john-lennon-imagine-interview-voorman-keltner-molland/?fbclid=IwAR3d5WAvLWfq1SDBEzwMezeMROPQHg9dglUfsaG8drFoJBVJNsgftvMTEDw

The only thing putting me off a D-bird was the fact it didn’t come in a 5 string... This is terrible news.

... or use a shorter scale bass..? T'will sound just fine.

How about colour grain filling the oak? There is a book by a guy called George Frank who developed techniques for that back in Art Deco days, it's worth trying to get a library to track down a copy. He also uses techniques like charring/wire brushing and grain filling too. One I remember was wire brushed, black stained then limed and let to fully dry then light sanded before a red filler was applied which gave a background of black with red filled white grain, spectacular! Edit, this is the book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adventures-Wood-Finishing-Fine-woodworking/dp/091880406X

Yes, no room left in the car

I'm confused...you don't need to stretch, you need to pivot off your thumb...or am I missing something??? 😕😕

I hope you managed to fit in a cup of tea between finishing the SwiftLite 2 and starting this one Andy 😲 Here we go again....😎 Following

I'm going to take it along to a studio next month where there are a couple of esteemed bass players I know can audition it; I'll feedback on their views too in due course. Regardless though.. I'm chuffed to bits.

I don't mind that clean sound, your word warmer is the key here. Thats why I think the tube version must be amazing. Because the M has just about everything else

Ha - I had similar! Went into Sam Ash, struck up on a conversation... played some bass that appeared to really float his boat... and low and behold, talk about the gigs I was doing and onto endorsement talk. To be honest though, I didn't really dig the setup as much as the rig I was using so it would have been a complete enwhoresement... which is dead against my ethics. EDIT: Larry was (and I am sure still is) a top bloke to talk to. He seemed generally interested in me, what I was up to and the like... I'm sure I've got the obligatory pic with him somewhere on my computer. (With the Jack Bruce Warwick that had just been played at some Cream reunion or something... funnily, the one he let me play to test out the rigs...)

I caveat this with the fact that I am a newb bass player... Last night I hooked up my Tube version to an Ampeg 8x10 classic fridge.. wow.. just wow.. very warm and full. I play melodic rock, some upbeat stuff some ballads.. ("Seven More Days" blatant promo). I can't profess to have given it a full work over eq-wise etc, but at a very flat eq setting it was excellent.. and very very loud. It cuts well and very clean. I've only touched on what this can do I'm sure but immediately I had results. The rest of the band were stunned, and commented on how well it sits, and previously I was borrowing an Ampeg SVT classic valve head!!!!

This is a subject which is very close to my heart. Being an intermittent sufferer myself for many years and having come close to the brink several times this is the way I have learned to deal with it. If you don't feel like playing, don't play. If you don't feel like getting out of bed, don't (if that is an option). If you don't feel like facing people, don't! In fact don't do anything you don't want to do. It will only make things worse and you may well end up hating something (or someone) you love. I've learned to acknowledge my depression. I let it in. I wallow in it. But I do it very much with the mindset that I am purposely taking time out to recharge my batteries for a limited time. It's an illness. I treat it like I would if I had the flu. It's like going in to survival mode. I call them my mental health days, and I find the less I fight it, the more quickly it passes. The more I ignore it the more I get angry and frustrated and it just prolongs the inevitable. Don't sell your gear. In fact try not to make any decisions about anything while you're in that mindset if you can help it.

Mount the body at an angle on the table and use the horizontal arbour (sic) with a fly cutter to cut the curve...

I have every confidence in you Andy. I would imagine you'd work the final shape of the cradle much as they used to with white metal bearings; by hand with a scraper to take off the witness marks left from rubbing the mating surfaces together with Engineer's Blue. Just don't use any Engineer's Blue in this process as it is a bugger to clean off of metal, let alone timber! Joking aside, I'd think that you'd have to have a little movement in the joint to allow you to identify the high spots. Rubbing the pieces together with no highlighting agent should work okay if you can see the shiny spots where contact is made. Interesting problem.

With the other team I usually play with it's art galleries, second-hand bookshops, vegan cafes, and early nights. With these guys I suspect it will be endless motorway miles, sushi, early morning radio interviews, and trying to cultivate inner peace because there certainly won't be any outer. Different strokes! We've got a week away in February that will be the main stress test run but we've already done a few mini tours and a bunch of festivals so I'm not expecting any nasty surprises. I'm just going to pick up a cheap laptop and a kindle so I can try and catch up on a bunch of reading.

I think my biggest to date was playing at the Suwalki Blues Festival in Poland in summer 2016. We played to about 1,500-2,000 people in a park in the middle of the town. I was depping on bass for a blues guitarist called Aynsley Lister. A cool weekend away!

Ah...but if it all fails, I have to buy @fleabag a new neck....

At the moment I'm not planning modding the neck. If I was, then yes, I think something on those lines My thought at the moment is to shape the body a little bit like @eude 's erstwhile Shuker and carve a cradle for the neck to slot into. Do I have proven skills to be able to do that? No - not yet Could this end badly? Please refer to the title

Things come full circle a lot quicker thanks to the internet. There's still not a lot of bolt-on single cut basses out there, compared the the more usual set-neck or neck-through anyway, and I believe that Shuker was the first Jon had made, and certainly one of the earliest ones here in the UK, so it's probably engrained into the search engines now. Eude

Well hello there! That bass used to be mine, and that's my photo! Small world @Andyjr1515! It's a Shuker Single Cut 6er, my first foray into the world of custom basses. I sold it, about 8 years ago I think to another member on here who doesn't seem to be around any more. It was a lovely lovely bass, but I hadn't quite figured out what I needed in a custom bass at that point, and things like nut width aren't exactly easy to change. Anyway, that would be a fine way to put together a bolt-on single cut, but I can appreciate how tricksy it will be to have the body follow the taper of the neck beyond the fender block. You could however try something like this super sexy ACG >> Just use the neck bolt pattern as it is, and then the rest of the single cut shape beyond that point is purely visual, rather than part of the joint itself? Just throwing it in there If anyone can figure this out it's you thought mate! Eude

“Make do” with an NE2. 😂😂😂

Right so the rules are you can only have 2 basses? In that case you can have a rolling stock. Use one while selling the second, then buy another and play the new one while selling the old one. That way you constantly have new basses to try and only ever have two. Isn't that what we all do anyway? (Except when we forget about the selling the old one part)

Start with 1, 4 string fretted most useful and stick with it until you are so good you need a better bass! 😎 By then you might know what you NEED/ It's all you need 😄

nee naw, nee naw.... THIS IS THE THREAD POLICE. PUT YOUR HANDS UP!!!! YOU ARE BOTH ARRESTED UNDER SUSPICION OF THREAD HIJACKING!!!

So this is the neck @fleabag is sending me: And this (again, can't credit anyone because it's just a stock picture) kind of shape: But with a few tweaks, some aesthetic and some to fit front and back onto this piece of lovely English Walnut: ...cut down by @scrumpymike 's late great mate, Merv, and also used on Mike's Rascal conversion: And this is as far as I've got design-wise: Who said precise technical drawing was dead?

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To my utter amazement it's not metaphorically, no. We're doing 18 EU and UK dates as baby support for Pink this summer; UK dates are two nights in Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool, and two nights at Wembley. I'm as baffled as everyone else to be honest but pretty sure our agent is getting a pay-rise this year.

The only odd thing about these cabs is the lack of feet. Plus as it's new I probably should get a cover for it.

IME manufacturers of "lower cost" items such as strings do seem to be more approachable about endorsement deals. Their main criteria is generally that your band is active gigging and recording (and releasing those recordings) and that you are prepared to "big up" the product as much as possible.

@Frank Blank According to a comment in the reviews these Fender high mass bridges from Thomann are a direct replacement and the screw holes line up so no need for re-drilling the body. At about £30 it could be a good option. I'd never even thought about it but I might even get one myself to improve sustain. https://m.thomann.de/gb/fender_hi_mass_bridge_iv_brass.htm Or of you really need to go black. But it's an expensive option. http://www.thomann.de/intl/babicz_bass_bridge_black.htm?i11l=en_GB%3ABG.EUR%3ABGN&r=app They also do a Schaller in black but it might require drilling. http://www.thomann.de/intl/schaller_3d4b.htm?i11l=en_GB%3ABG.EUR%3ABGN&r=app Another option. http://www.thomann.de/intl/goeldo_3_d_bass_bridge_hw55b.htm?i11l=en_GB%3ABG.EUR%3ABGN&r=app

With weird 1:1 panto-graph arrangement to follow the existing neck profile and repeat it in reverse on the body?

Used to do You do something to me ,brilliant tune to play ,loads of space in it

That is cool bananas, presumably this means Vintage basses, which imo are real hidden gems in the bass world.

Can believe the sound this guy is getting from a bass with only 3 strings on. Fantastic!

For those technophobe BCers like me not suffering from perpetual GAS, please could you explain what this is, what you hope it might do, and why it's important ? I'm not being sarcastic, I'd genuinely like to know.