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my rig

Not forgetting Episode 4 (string) - A New Hope. The one where everyone realises they should have just stuck with that P bass in the first place and saved themselves a fortune.

Good evening all. After a long wait this finally showed up today. A brand new Fender Deluxe Jazz Bass Special Duff McKagan signature bass in black! I've only had an hour or so play time but first impressions are it's bloody gorgeous! Out of the box it plays well but I will probably lower the action to my personal preference and the Hipshot D-tuner needs some adjustment. Neck pocket is tight with no visible gap, paintwork is flawless on both the body and back of the neck. Fretwork is superb with no sharp ends. The nut width is definitely P Bass width 42mm and the thickness of the neck front to back feels deeper than my (now sold) 2017 MIM P Bass. Soundwise, loving the pickup switch and TBX tone circuit. It seems very versatile and just has so much grunt when you push the tone past the centre detent and engage the TBX circuit. With my EBS Multicomp and Darkglass B7K V2 it's all I need to give me the bass sound that I had in my head for so long! The only downside is that whilst everything is black...the side input jack is chrome..but that's just nitpicking. So if you're still reading..here are a couple of pictures.

Probably done the rounds before, but really enjoyed this and comparing the different instruments.

The originals band I'm in, Gasfoodlodging, released a CD a couple of weeks back. It's just had a review by Ryan's Gig Guide, a Birmingham/Black Country monthly that has replaced Brum Beat. Modesty forbids me from quoting it but it can be found here: https://ryansgigguide.com/2019/June/8-9/ No bribes were involved in the production of this review, and the reviewer is not known to any member of the band.

Some updates! Th700 for small clubs

My early 80s 62RI in uber-rare surf green

Last nights offering... 😃

The good people at Ishibashi sent me this old Bacchus Grooveline. I reckon it’s early to mid-2000’s. I’ve been looking for a Stingray with a J neck size for a while and this really fits the bill. It’s a dinky J ash body, weight is a sweet 3.5kg. Maple neck with with blocks and binding is always a winner. It’s a fixer upper and that was reflected in the price, but these Handmade logo’d Bacchii are always superbly built and the pickups are amazing. Such is the case here, it’s a really good player, even with a duff fret job, old strings and that criminal bbot bridge in place of the Deviser Tune-o-matic. What were they thinking? I will sort out that crack and replace the bridge and broken tuner. I’m thinking of stripping what is left of the finish and refinishing in an emerald green stain. The previous owner had fingernails like Wolverine, by the looks of it. I’ll also sort out the frets, a level, crown and dress awaits. Anyone know where a man can buy Gotoh tuner buttons?

Just ordered a set - at £13 a set it's got to be worth a go. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SPECIAL-OFFER-EBS-TN-ML4-Guitar-Strings-Set-of-4/183549306999?epid=11026285892&hash=item2abc642877:g:ZtUAAOSwDsZcRcdu

Status Graphite Energy. Breathed on by Bernie Goodfellow who re vamped the pots and wiring and added an EBS preamp.. Clean crisp and deep. This one is a keeper.

XR16 - 4 auxes. Into 4 Behringer P2s. Into 4 ZS10s

Norman bought the Alembic from John Entwhistle, IIRC. Love Norm's P Bass tone on New Boots and Panties. That is one of the benchmarks for me.

A small update to the board 🙂

I do the same with my basses, pop my head into the room where they’re hanging on the wall just to have a look 😂

I had my Excess 4 up FS at Bassdirect for quite a while & reduced by couple of hundred as I wasn’t getting much interest, after they asked me to reduce again I decided to get it back as I’d take too much of a hit .. when it arrived I noticed it had a bit of condensation on it & felt cold like it had been stored overnight in a cold warehouse .. started playing it & the (low) action was just perfect, like it had just been set up ! What a neck ! So that made me change my mind & keep it, I only (foolishly) tried selling as I was so used to jazz bass length & initially struggled with the extra frets etc I have taken the preamp out as I felt it was a bit noisy (never gelled with preamps) & just wired in parallel with vol pot, perfect for me same as my two jazz basses. Have now gigged it & just love it, so glad I came to my sense lol Love the fret dots on your 5 btw .. I went back to 4 strings a couple of years ago & think the Vigier has an even better neck than my previous Dingwall ABZ5 ..... kinda don’t wanna try an Excess 5 just in case I like it too much lol

I'm pretty sure the veneer will stay that colour. On the other hand, Mick and I still have to decide whether the underlying wood at the edges and back would look best stained or left natural and there are still some options of how much to cut in the veneer into the body wood and where. Whatever, I have a good feeling about how this will look when its finished.

In my mind episode III - Revenge of the Sixth (string) was the best followed by episode V - The U-Bass Strikes back with episode II - Attack of the (Rickenbacker) Clones a close third. Don’t bother with episode I - The Phantom (power) Menace. (Sorry, very bored on a train)

With the glue now touch dry, I can begin the veneering itself: The advantage of the glue being dry is that you can spend as much time as you like positioning it because it barely grabs. Then with a hot (dry) iron (as I said above I happen to use an old heat-shrink iron, but a standard ironing iron works fine), I start in the middle and progressively radiate outwards, making sure the veneer gets hot and applying firm pressure, but moving it in circles so I don't scorch the veneer in one spot: Once the main flat areas are stuck flat (this only takes a few minutes) I start applying firm pressure round the outside of the body shape, starting to seal what will become the edges: To allow the veneer to bend round the edge better, I then remove some of the bulk excess with scissors, keeping an eye on the grain direction to avoid a grain-following split heading towards the body: I then work round the edges with the iron again, peening the veneer over the curve by a mm or two. The glue, once cool grabs in seconds - but it is fully repeatable. Just heat up an area and the glue will remelt and then grab again as soon as you lift the iron and let it cool for a few seconds. If it's a tight curve and a stiff veneer, you can hold the area down firmly with a cloth (to prevent burning yourself) while it cools and grabs. Once all of the flat areas are glued and the edges defined and secure, you can start trimming just past the flat surfaces. I find the easiest way to do this is use a disposable Stanley knife (Swann Morton do them too) and use the body itself as my blade guide, holding the blade at about 45 degrees to vertical: I use a sawing motion. If you are careful, you follow the outline without the risk of cutting into it. BUT - always, always, think of where the grain is going and make sure any split will go away from the body and not towards it. In the above example, I will stop around here and then cut the bottom overhang in the other direction - the grain then naturally pulls the blade (and any split) towards the left and not to the right and into the body. For the chambers, I get my template out and cut a small hole in the middle so I can see where the chamber edges are. Again, I use the chamber sides themselves as the blade guide, this time with the blade vertical: So eventually, you have trimmed it just round the edge of the flat areas, but with no unglued overhang of veneer: Then simply sand with a sanding block along the line of the join. There will be a bit of tidying up to do to sort the edges properly and make sure there is no PVA line or - in the case of the tissue backed veneer, fuzziness - at the edges...and I also need to know from Mick how 'sharp' or 'blunt' he wants the tips of the veneer at the ends of the two horns...but this is broadly done

I missed bass sounds part I so i struggled to follow the plot with the sequel.

I use a Hercules stand for mine - one of the ones that grab the neck as you place it on

We ditched the valve amps and put our guitarist onto a TC Electronic G System, plus in-ears.

I think I’m going to go spectracomp & Thumpinator after the shared thoughts here and an afternoon on YouTube! Thanks all!

If you ever sell the orange Yam' let me know Andy....

Loads of DI options as people have stated, Tech21 DP3x pedal is a massive winner for me, new Fender ‘multi Fx’ unit which has EQ compression and DI capabilities, Trickfish Trilobite, or even just a DI box and nothing before it, my radial JDI is great (and it has 2 inputs/outputs). I agree with what the others have said about a load box, you guitarist can crank and keep the volume controlled. Two Notes do great ones (captor) and their cab sim Torpedo could work a treat for him. Or if he likes new kit, Friedman have just released the JJ model either head or combo which was made alongside Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains, and that is 20w tubes with an internal load box, so you can just go straight out and have no speaker connected - it sounds bloody immense!

That's news to me. You could call it my moment of Epiphony.

No Bass day. Got everything now. Stopped looking at basses and gear. OK - need a tuner having retired the TC with built-in (for an Aguilar, so no pain). Don't even need strings - totally happy with string choice and even have a new set of the rounds to replace when they go off. And a Hercules stand for the Jazz. That's about it. How's it feel? Great, really good. Not like I'm skimping with 3 fine basses, 2 or 3 rigs including the newly acquired GB combo. No excuses, just play. Get better, Attack the stuff I'm wary of, confront the weaknesses.There is nothing on Earth so fine as a great bass through a great rig on a good day.

Looks real cool...👍 Curious though, why they call it a jazz bass special when its DNA is 80% (at least) precision...? 🤔

I can live with the paper. The carpet. Well that reminds me of pavement pizza 😂

Ok now he’s claimed this bass as his own!

Speak to Nick at NGS Custom (search NGScustom on Facebook to see his work). Based in the UK, he'd be able to do anything like this for you and he also makes his own brand of pedals.

Personally in your situation I'd see how it goes with the Behringer DI box. They aren't so much about "imparting a tone" as "being reliable". To that end, might be worth buying a more robust one and keeping the Behringer as a backup. I'd not worry too much about amp sims etc unless you really need it (do you need overdrive/distortion?? Or any other effects? What bass is it coming from? What genre of music? etc). Regarding the guitarist, I believe you can buy (excuse me if I don't get the terminology exactly right) a "load box" which takes the full-fat speaker output from a head working hard, and provides a much lower speaker output and/or a DI output suitable for the PA. Might be worth trying one of these together with a mic'd up cabinet anyway, and seeing if the load box can get near to the tone of the amp/cabinet (of course, the speaker itself will create some amount of the 'tone' which the load box might struggle to simulate well.

One of the other things in the package of bits that @TheGreek sent was this: The veneer that he wants on the body top and the headstock! And it's a bit of a bobby-dazzler! There is a sort of impossibility that natural wood at 0.6mm thick can be rolled tightly like this - but that is how it's often delivered. I once had a boxful of about 8 different woods, some over 2m in length that all came from Germany in a box no bigger - and perfectly and undamaged! Other than the quick demo I did at the Midlands Bass Bash last year, it's been a while since I've done a veneer job so, for those who might be interested in trying it sometime I'll take a number of photos of how I do it. With MrsAndyjr1515 still distracted, that might well be this afternoon's job

So far, I can only agree with the above, we’ve been treated very well by both promoters and audience. As a result we played a cracking couple of sets last night, but I was surprised to find it was quarter to three in the morning when we finished! Walked back through the deserted town centre to our hotel, about ten minutes, and slept well. We are playing nothing twice over the three nights, so a different set tonight, and it looks very strong, looking forward to playing it. We’re first on tonight, so might get back to the hotel before midnight.

I think £50 is very fair, it's already cheap to start with. (Note to self, don't sell this guy anything )

I do think flats have come on miles in the past 10 years or so - I recently asked for advice here about 'bright' flats and was recommended EB Cobalts or D'Addario chromes. I got a set of the EBs - amazing, the full-fat flat sound but with more than enough top - Ok not the ringy top of new rounds, but a crisp controllable crunch on the top... tasty. I'd used a set of Fenders recently and whilst many here like them, to me they are the old-school flats, not only devoid of top but no high-mids either. Depends what you want but sounds to me you would like the EBs (or Chromes maybe) a lot.

Roasting is entirely appropriate if putting others health at risk under the facade of it being the only was of getting full sounding guitars and controlling dynamics - which is just not true. We all know the stories of guitarists running small rigs, often offstage, with fake cabs - there’s a reason for this. He may be a pro - but his actions are highly irresponsible and short sighted.

https://forum.jbonamassa.com/viewtopic.php?id=22909 Yeah, just dandy Joe. https://www.facebook.com/JoeBonamassa/posts/ears-still-ringing-from-the-amp-show-saw-a-bunch-of-friends-though-even-a-couple/164303641317/ https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/joe-bonamassa-in-concert-unbiased-review.251371/ I dunno about you - but I have some very strong views about Joe's views.

None of the readers of that who will pay attention to it will be actual musos who play big venues. they’ll be bonermassa fanboys banging out shoddy blues in the dog and donkey on a Saturday night - obnoxiously loud. Dangerous ideas for people who are easily lead. i have tinnitus from similar thinkers

What a load of balls!

Certainly isn't the going rate! But good deals can be had if you spend all of your day searching, negotiating and travelling to get a deal done! You have to work mighty hard to get a deal like that, it isn't something that is a regular occurrence. I frequently scoure the net for instruments when they're being sold at great prices, some I keep, some I move on straight away to reinvest the money in something I want. The seller gets paid for a quick sale, and if I sell it on the next buyer gets it cheaper than anywhere else and I get a small profit which goes straight back into the bass market and usually in the pocket of a basschatter! Keeps the market flowing!

Went in to buy a few things to upgrade the Sei Jazz bass, surrounded by some of the most expensive beautiful basses.Anyway, I wanted a pair of Nordy NJ5's but they didn't fit. So my second choice was the Bartolini B Axis, Ive heard great things about these pups. There a lot brighter than the regular classic Bart sound. So they came home with me. . Also I got some USA Lollypop Ultralight Hipshot tuners. I also wanted to try some new strings being a die hard DR man, but these have been in my mind for quite a while. Labella RX stainless steels.Talked for a while to the always knowledgable strong opinioned Mark who is a real gent. Anyway im fitting everything tomorrow so will give a review. And yes I do look like a redneck at a gun show.