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SO chuffed! I was the only bidder and won a Maruszczyk Elwood L 4A and picked it up this afternoon. Couldn't be happier! Super lightweight but perfect balance, insanely good build quality, Delano pickups, Glockenklang preamp and in a gorgeous natural finish that feels fab. All for under £600? Very happy with that! Came with the case and all the candy including a set of strings too. Pics to follow in the morning. Can't wait to crank it through my gigging rig - first low volume noodlings are very promising indeed. Cheers, James

Will the excitement never end?! Bridge is on. Don’t ask about the black screws...so mundane is the story I cannot even be bothered...in a side note, chrome screws on the pickup now...as it should be.

Here’s some pics, though...

And you don't want to buy from a dealer with a bad Attitude.

My first self built bass. I bought a fretless neck and a loaded body from here and sourced the other bits from ebay. Finally got around to building it today but made a school boy error. I forgot to buy the strings. Our own Gary Mac is doing the honours so I should be up and running next weekend. I've not played fretless since the '70's so it will be interesting to so how it goes. Anyway, there's the picture.

I've cut a new fretboard for this bass and this time I measured twice and cut once!! The previous neck was 31.5" with 24 frets, for the new neck is 29.5" and obviously has to fit in the same neck pocket and the bridge has to be in roughly the same place. So this works out as the replacement neck being 22 fret for it to fit correctly. As the chance of me getting the intonation exactly right having not tried this scale length before I think is minimal, I'm removing the original brass inserts for the bridge and filling the holes so I can repositioning it later. I'm also going to redrill the holes for the string anchors as I have a better version I'm going to install. This is done by widening the top 4mm of a 10mm hole to 12mm diameter. to do this I have a small piece of mdf with a 12mm hole in it that is placed over the original hole. One of the string anchors is used to centralise it before clamping the template in place. This is the body with the brass inserts removed Then this the body with the holed infilled The body had also picked up a very small dent which I sanded out. I tried refinishing but couldn't get it to match so I sanded the finish off the walnut and started to finish it again. Fussy, but I want it to be right This is the body with the topped sanded and the string anchors holes redrilled.

Good choice.

john martyn some people from grace and danger easy to learn and super expressive

Is possible that your band mate may be even less keen on that scenario than you are. 😐

Mine arrived Thursday too, best £16.50 I’ve ever spent. What a collection - I thought the John Entwistle book was good, but Geddys is amazing!

My SB2 is shod with thomastic. I tried my newly aquired SB1 with flats that were on the bass and in the end changed to rounds. Theres soomething nicely aggressive about the sound with rounds.

There's more to the story which is why I had no problem taking the money. Blue

And here be pics:

yeah, ain't gonna work with my ELF mini rig with one or both 1 10"s hehe

Slick stuff from Cory and his band. B Slade with the amazing laid back Sharay on bass. He reminds me of KRS1

Great guys and we've been using their stuff for about a year now: Map Bass, Airline 3P and Rivolta Mondata in the band. We do have a casual non-endorsement relationship with them so feel free to take this whole post with salt to taste, but I'm happy with the quality on all the stuff we got and none of it was special order or anything. Wouldn't be using or defending it otherwise. General thoughts on the Map Bass are that it's incredibly heavy but also possibly the deepest bass I've ever played. Get a lot of other players asking if I'm using a sub octave or something but it's just a very strong fundamental and a lot of output and low end. In fact there's so much low end that I struggled a bit to start with but after lowering the pickups it's now got a nice vintage growl to it. Still very high output and I have to severely rein the gain in on my pedals to keep it clean. We went up to the demo day they did last year with most of the range in and I was impressed with all the higher end stuff. Lot of nice decorative touches across the range that you wouldn't find on a Fender of similar price but the lower stuff definitely felt like it could do with a setup. They're very interesting guitars and get a lot of attention - lots of other players and audience members asking what they are.

Things have really picked up out of nowhere with all these acoustic gigs. Well, not really out of nowhere. I have a suspition about why I started getting these acoustic offers. I played Cafe Soeurette Saturday night from 7-10 ,great hours and a nice engaged crowd. I'm playing a Sprecher Micro Brewery gig this Saturday night. I also found out my primary band will be opening for a national headliner at a large country festival this summer. 3 weeks ago I had nothing. Blue

I usually take one or two to the Bass Bashes I go to; I've been to the SE and Midlands ones.

I’d echo the posts above about not mixing speaker sizes, it can work but can also be hit & miss. I’d look for a 2.5XL (210) cab, yes this will get the same amount of power as the 410 but as long as you don’t push the lows you should be fine. Additionally as it’s more than likely that this cab would be on top you’d be able to hear it if it struggles - not so easy with a 115 at the bottom. The added bonus is that this cab in theory should be similar sounding to the 4.5, so for rehearsals and smaller gigs just take the 4.5, for the bigger stuff take both. This is what I do, though with Ashdown cabs not Hartke.

We decided to play a number of songs we hadn't gigged for years last night. I was a little dubious at first and a bit worried that they wouldn't come back to me but it turns out they totally rejuvenated the playing live vibe. We've been getting a little stale recently so now have decided to get our older songs back on rotation so no two gigs are the same. It's genuinely enthused me and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy playing a big variety of styles. Looking forward to the rest of the year with renewed enthusiasm knowing that RATM could follow James Blunt who could follow Chic with some Simple Minds to conclude 😁

Buy the 3000, love it for a while. Then realise you need to sell it to me.

Looks like a 14 year old's woodwork project. I'm sure it sounds amazing, but it looks like hell to play.

What a bargain James. Love those Glock preamps.

I have one of these, crazy right....?

3 seconds? It's closer to 3/4 of a second... A punk originals band I was in got 28 songs into a 40 minute set, including some between song banter...

Fender also have a limited edition lightweight ash 7lb Jazz at the moment too btw!

Morning, The J has SB70 Alnico single coil pickups with the East Uni-Pre amp with Active/Passive switching. It has that classic 70s Jazz sound. It’s light for a 5-string too. Alan is a good chap to deal with; always very helpful and a mine of information. You won’t be disappointed 😀 Shaun

Good looking bass there sir. Black nylons would look well cool on that

The Eden EC8 might be worth considering. It's got quite a punch for a 20 watt amp, and the low end sounds nice and full. There aren't many bells and whistles on it - aux in, cans out, plus controls for gain, tone and enhance is yer lot - but it does the job very well. It wipes the floor with the Fly 3, IMHO.

I tour a lot and it's a case of luck a lot of the time. Very occasionally we've had rooms upstairs at the venue, stayed with the promoter or had rooms locally as part of the deal. Obviously sites like Late Rooms are always worth a go and just occasionally Airbnb have come good. The rule of thumb seems to be that some nights you strike gold and some nights you make a loss, but hope to make it up on the merch table or the next night. I also operate at a level where there isn't loads of money so it's not unusual to break even and basically have a working holiday.

Even Billy Sheehan is laughing 🙄

Yes! *punches the air*

Here are my two... Both stock instruments. The J-type is strung E-C and is the easiest 5-string I’ve played. The Recurve was my first and the tonal palette is huge with Alan’s DFM pre-amp.

OK - I'll start off the raffle prizes. I will contribute this: A number of you have already seen it at previous bass bashes and - until the website wiped all of the avatars - this was my avatar since joining Basschat, so it's only fitting It's a Squier Jaguar - the original full scale version. Great to play; hmmm...Seymour Duncan 'designed' p/ups - not the most exciting but eminently upgradable; passive electrics; stacked volume tone for each pup; D'addario Chromes; one of my early veneering jobs; remodelled scratchplate covered in automotive-go-faster-carbon-fibre matting; natural sides and back: Andy

My bass & other music related purchases this year are still zero, and I have sold three basses - so I'm still in!

I watched it. As far as being one bass player's personal opinion on he achieves his own personal tone i have no issue with it. In terms of his opinions being passed off as 'essentials' for bass tone I thought it was just another case of opinion being passed off as fact. There is nothing from his free videos that would encourage me to pay money to obtain any of his knowledge. I'm happy that he has managed to build up a successful business but I just really don't gain any insight or enjoyment from his videos. I have slowly managed to block SBL from my social media mentions, but I still see SBL posts here on BC. When I see them I can't help but watch (it is like a drug). For my own sanity I am going to pull myself away from all SBL discussions and would ask the mods on this site to give me a warning if I so much as comment on another SBL related topic.

Not my type of music, but I love the rising bass line when the musical interlude starts. We need more fretless bass in music

I'm lucky enough to live around the corner from Bassdirect where this was recorded, so fairly regularly go in for a noodle. In the hunt for 'the perfect bass" I've actually played at least half of these models, and recently a few of the ones in the video. I've also had amongst others an MTD, various Fenders, a couple of Rob Allen's, a Zon and currently my main (and only one of 2 as I can't afford to hoard) bass is my 3rd Dingwall, a Z3. What is interesting to me is that my perception of the sound on the video compared to how it was trying them out is quite different. The Dingwall Lee Sklar really doesn't do it for me on the video, yet it's effectively the same model and pickups as my Z3, the bass I bought having played for 5 minutes, after agonising for several months about whether I could afford a Roscoe that was a lot less expensive. The Zon sounds nice but in real life I found it lacking warmth, in common with other graphite neck basses I've tried. The Fodera J I didn't have plugged in when I tried it but the neck feels amazing. The Maruszczyk basses are fantastic to play and really well made, but as they do so many options in terms of electronics some sound great, some don't (to my ear). The Mayones Jabba sounds good but didn't fit my hand. The Roscoe sounds ok on the video but growls, burbles and sings in the real. Only the Sandberg Marlowe of all the ones I've tried sounds the same on video to me as it did in the shop. It also has a slinky worn in feel neck and is a bargain compared to some of the higher end ones. And that's even before you put it in a band context. It's really useful to get an idea of the variety of sounds you can get, and where your tastes may lie, but it's only a starting point On the flip side, it's a bloody great advert for the amazing range of basses you can get, and a good excuse to get your derrière down to a shop and just try them. What time do they open tomorrow? 😁