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Right, photos time. My Stanley Clarke.

Stock is dictated by how much the shop buys in and it’s policies on selling - they prob have loads of Fenders in stock - doubt its a fire sale They that have paid ‘full fat’ have likely done so in the knowledge of other prices but wanted a specific spec/finish/colour etc. Used ones are great value precisely because of the quality. Yes they take a hit from new to second hand, then it plateaus shame for other quality brands outside of Fender (which is what most people go for) G&L, Schecter, ESP, Yamaha etc. Doubt half the customers are not happy with Delano’s, you have your experience and that’s fine, but I would think it’s a gross over exaggeration. I think most Nordstands I have played have been utter Gash - still a good pick up. There are other options of pick ups available from the manufacturer - may cost you more, but if for example you do a Shuker build course and want to install a pick up he doesn’t normally order/have a deal with - that costs you more as well, or you buy it yourself. Time for Sandberg to up their game.....🤔 constantly tinkering, subtle changes, brilliant QC, innovation about the best customer care you could ever ask for - when a company is emailed and asked where they can buy a tuning peg which broke on their second/third hand Electra (budget range bass) because they dropped the bass - how many Owners of the company would reply personally and send for free. I think other companies need to up their game

This is my non educated view...though i do have a materials engineering related background so it makes sense to me... Strings vibrate when you pick, strum, etc... They vibrate at a frequency and are held between the nut/fret and bridge. Everything else in the instrument acts as a mass damper absorbing some of the frequencies produced by the vibrating string. This in turn affects the vibrating frequency of the string to affect the tone of the instrument. Simply put, the materials that make up the instrument take away from what’s Beijing produced and remaining vibrations is what’s heard through the pickups.

Just got this feedback on the book from a new 'friend' on Facebook. 'Rob Palmer just so you know 2 years ago I was playing a week in Greece with the great Kirk Lightsey when I was reading it and I end up giving him the book. Kirk was a very close friend of P.C. and he fell in love with your book... this is the best proof your book is extremely valuable. Thank you for doing such a great job '! Warms the cockles.

Orion is a very comfy set-neck ride

I did a Version of Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of gold. What do you think? Cool or blasphemy?

I thought the body needed something so I decided racing stripes are the way forward to tie in the black neck and headstock I've decided at present not to use the pickguard............... Just waiting for the paint to dry then its time to get it all back together....... 😀

I'd use whatever the manufacturer says is good for bass fishing

An alternative, more visually pleasing approach would be to tie a large, colourful helium balloon to the headstock. The more neck heavy the bass, the bigger the balloon. Thunderbirds generally need a giant rainbow coloured unicorn. 😎

It’s the bass equivalent of going outside with no knickers on.

Many builders offer a choice of pick ups and charges apply according. Marusczyck do and you pay for the different pick ups as per the price it costs them. Having a ‘standard’ spec is pretty normal for a bass builder and if one decides that they want different pick ups it’s not up to the builder absorb the cost same way shuker will charge you for what they don’t normally carry as their ‘normal’ options. Lets remember the likes of Nordstrand pick ups in an Ibanez it’s very possible Ibanez wind those pick ups in-house to Nordstrand spec? It’s not quite the same as Sandberg or any builder offering pick ups from various manufacturers who have their own operational costs, individual overheads and bottom line to make. If one were to buy a Fender what pick up choice do you have other than what comes as standard on that model? Even with the latest up grade to custom shop pick ups. It’s one choice per range.

I'm anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.

A lot of these sub sonics come from the percussive element of hitting the strings. When you pluck, before the string is released, it moves over the pickup at a slower speed than a freely vibrating string would, as it's attached to your fingers. If there was no filtering whatsoever in the entire signal chain, you would be able to see the cone move just by wiggling the string slowly over the pickup.

Still can't believe I snagged my Basic 4 for about tree fiddy. Must be the name - not many people want to spend big coin on something called a 'Basic'!

It's in the diary, my first time @ a bash!!!

Here is my latest build. The Brooks Telebird. It is my take on the legendary Fenderbird that was built by Peter Cook for John Entwistle. However I decided to combine the characteristics the Thunderbird body with a 51 P (aka Telecaster bass). The specs are as follows - Two piece Swamp Ash body - Allparts Maple 51 P neck. Bolt on - Vintage blonde finish - Jess Loureiro 51 P split coil pickup - 34" scale - Tusq nut - Wide travel Thunderbird bridge plus tailstop. Nickel - Matte black single ply pickguard - Gotoh GB528 lightweight tuners. Nickel - Allparts push/pull Volume pot - CTS Tone pot - Silver reflector cap knobs - Telecaster jack cup. Nickel - GHS Brite Flats 49-108 I'll post pics of the build process in several answers below.

Yes a bit of googling provides an interesting read! It would appear that a single string can't produce anything lower than the fundamental, but a combination of two notes can produce a tone lower than the fundamental of either. This is called a 'difference tone'. A good example is the power chord on guitar (root + fifth). Because these frequencies have a ratio of 2:3, they generate a difference tone with half the frequency of the fundamental (ie. an octave lower). Apparently this is why power chords sound so fat.

Tell Hölger you heard he was rumoured to introduce a colour called ‘September Sunset’

Here we go - managed to track down the original post:

I've been using these for the past 3 or 4 months on Fender type basses and I'm really enjoying them - I moved over from exl220s (40-60-75-95). The difference isn't massive but the lighter gauge is preferable for me and there's plenty of bright twang if that's what you're looking for. I've been shopping around but picked-up a few sets at about £18-19 including shipping

"Babooshka" came up on a thread about great fretless basslines, and one kind soul directed us to a No Treble article with a transcription of John Giblin's sublime performance, so I've been trying to get my fingers 'round that. I'll see if I can dig up the link and share it on here. Anyhoo, it's been a good challenge for my fretless intonation, as it's not often I find myself having to play up the dusty end in E-flat. Definitely a good workout for the ears!

Get that old 'dodgy kebab' alibi in first 😈

Damn you're good at this. First you have me on tenterhooks then you start reeling me in

Sorry, did I say fishing line ? Of course I meant my patented (ahem) ToneConduit music tether. Want to know why all the session players use it ? You'll be amazed at the answer !!

Sorted, bought an Ibanez SR500 of a fellow BC member. Thanks Stuart!! Off to find an amp!!

You forgot the 'unboxing' part!

Here's an early Tokai Jazz (c.1981?). Originally fretted, the bass has a small issue with the truss rod so a few years ago, while the repair chap had it on the bench, I asked for it to be converted to fretless (now has a nice Indian Rosewood board).

As the list stands- all room costs plus some extra for food and bits are covered

Excellent news ...I was struggling to find the time to read the pdf you kindly sent me. Now I have ordered a copy you get to splash out spending the massive royalties on a debauched life style, and I get to read it without lugging my laptop around. A win/win I believe!

I paid £300 and spent the rest on vodka. My bass looks as good as anything out there after 1700 quids worth of vodka.

Fresh off the plane. One for flats, one for rounds.

Mine went to a Glasgow rehearsal place couple of year back. That was actually my 2nd one.bought the first from Grants in Edinburgh early 80's. The old Alexander's buses had a storage area for them,often hijacked by women with prams 😄

I use a Suitcase (older model) with the 4b extension cab for doublebass and I really like it's sound. The suitcase on it's own is only 200 watts (8ohms) and you need to add the 4b to get the full 300 watts (4ohms). All being equal I'd say the Suitcase alone will be better than the Briefcase and worth the extra 'lugging' as I much prefer the sound of the Suitcase plus 4b, it should sound the same tone wise but it's just nicer with the two (and noticeably louder, double the volume of air being moved which is essentially what counts). Soooo if a Suitcase plus 4b (300 watts through 8 drivers) sound nicer than just the Suitcase (200 watts through 4 drivers), the the Suitcase alone should sound better than the Briefcase alone (100 watts through 2 drivers), not to mention louder. The briefcase is not the best to carry, it's not overly heavy, although heavy enough, rather it's just a bit awkward, definitely a two handed job if going more than three feet.

I'm a bit disappointed here. I was introduced to reading music in junior school and I'm 56 now; so that's nearly a half-century of experience, on and off, of trying to read music and failing. What I was hoping would be that other people who use tab might chip in with ideas around how it could be better or even suggest things like software I could use to rework some tabs to better suit my playing style. Re-tabbing something really helps me learn it. Instead everyone seems determined to tell me that I should be reading notation instead and the only reason I can't is because I won't put the effort in/get a good teacher. All this has done is convince me that my 'dyslexia' analogy is probably more accurate than I realised. It seems there is a condition identified in 2000 called 'dysmusia' that relates to the inability to develop the skill to read music. Unfortunately all the interesting stuff seems to be hidden behind pay walls.

THank you Lozkerr! I really appreciate you taking the time to watch my noodle! There is not a big market for videos on bass looping so every view and subscriber is special! Its fun to make them though!

Thank you Dave! I wasn't aiming for a hip hop/skateboard type of expression but the drum machine kind of set the pace and I think it turned out fine. Some foibles in the playing but it is what it is. Thanks for checking it out!

I think it depends a lot on both how it is set out at the beginning, and how the band members react. Some people will happily play for no money as long as they're having fun, and others won't. No right or wrong. My bugbear is when people agree to play for nothing or just expenses, and then do nothing but complain about it afterwards. One old band of mine did a wedding as a present to a mate of mine (not theirs). I offered to pay the band the usual gig fee, and to a man they came back and told me that they wouldn't take a penny more than the cost of petrol. On another occasion the same band did a "loss leader" for a mate of mine who was looking at getting into being a promoter - he knew I was in a couple of bands and asked if I could get them to play for a flat £50. The fact that he sold every ticket in advance, but still lost a load of money showed what a terrible promoter he would have been. For my other, non-punk band, it was understood to be a good opportunity to play a gig when we were just getting started, we'd probably only just about cover fuel, but it would be a packed crowd in central London for a new promoter who would then owe us a favour. The split was £10 each, but I'd happily put mine back into the pot if that didn't cover the petrol for anybody. Everybody understood, and the night itself was brilliant, but the lead guitarist from band #2 made a bit of an @rse of himself (long story) which as was standard he blamed on everybody else, and because the promoter was my mate, that made it all my fault. Including the fact that his girlfriend, having bagsied a £5.00 ticket, somehow managed to pay £10.00 for it, on a night where half of our mates, having also bagsied a ticket, just walked in without paying (more proof that a career as a promoter did not beckon for the organiser). Everybody agreed that they could cover their petrol with the tenner that they were getting, so my tenner was to go into the band's float and could pay for half the next practice. But the guitarist demanded that he get the tenner, because it was unreasonable that he should be a tenner out of pocket when he was doing a favour for me, it wasn't his fault that his girlfriend had paid twice the going rate for a ticket and anyway nobody else's mates had paid to get in (not actually true, plenty did). We gave him the money, but that pretty much cemented his reputation as being a massive, selfish c#nt, and was the start of the end for him in that band.

Finalising details... by the order will be official within days, yes. My first choice was a non-aged high gloss solid colour, but I didn't like the colour enough to pay the £525 they wanted for a 'custom colour'. So I'm going with metallic orange. Just checking out a couple of minor details before signing the document. Teo at Guitar Guitar in Glasgow has been very helpful, ensuring Sandberg is aware of the specific 48 bass I liked the neck of to make sure my VM has the same kind of profile (both 48s they had were slightly different). This also means I'll take the opportunity to do a clear-out of a few instruments I rarely use these days... at least 3, maybe 4: "fewer but nicer instruments" is what I want.

I won't really say too much - I'm not bothered if people want to use tab instead of conventional; but the time/effort spent in improving tab could be used to learn normal notation. I find it odd that you have tried and failed to learn it - its not that complicated....after all, the higher the note, the higher the note (on the notation)....and as time goes on, similar to reading words, the music is read from left to right. I suspect its partly because you've not been taught properly and partly because there is no impetus to actually practice reading regularly in your situation.

Oh that brings back so many memories. That combo and a Tokai Hard Puncher were the sum total of my equipment for much of the 1980s. Hard to believe but that 100W was more than sufficient for everywhere we played. Missing its Stingray and Carlsbro nameplates from the front otherwise I'd be tempted.

This was the version i used from Ultimate Guitar but i honestly can't remember how accurate it was (or is) I use bass tabs as a guide and work out any bits i need by ear.. Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting Bass by Elton Johntabs @ Ultimate Guitar Archive.html

That works for me! 👍

Not as ironic as someone who feels upset enough to post that 'the only people getting upset about the issue seem to be those posting how they "don't understand why people get so upset about the issue". ' I could have opened to door to infinite recursion here 😈

Musik Productive is cheaper. LOADS of sock too.... https://m.musik-produktiv.com/gb/sandberg-california-vm5-rw-nat.html

Or an anvil.

Whilst my teenage peers were posting pictures of Pamela Anderson to their wall I had pictures of these.