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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

S9 series Precision, so made anywhere between 1978-1980 (not checked the neck to see exact date of neck etc). Anyhoo, I have owned this since 1999 and despite being lucky enough to own 2 Sadowskys and 2 Vigiers, this is still my ‘go to’ bass. Scratch plate was cut in half by a previous owner. I think this was for easy access to fix the jack connection as when I got it the wiring was horrendous. 14 year old me did a resoldering job in 2000 and I haven’t needed to look at it since. The bass was in almost faultless condition when I got it apart from the scratch plate issue. As a result most of the mojo is mine. Lots of gigs, lots of rehearsals, lots of ‘why didn’t I put it in a hard case?’ gig bag travel dings. The neck lacquer started to come off 10 years ago. I had it treated a bit to stop the whole thing coming off but now and again another bit will flake off in the middle of a song. I won’t get the neck refinished as I’m afraid that would ruin the feeling of the neck. Apologies for rubbish pics

Getting a white pearl and a Tort guard done, May get a clear one at some point. Keep the options open x

Very nice, that’s class 👍

My first thought. So I changed it for a brand new one.

You already know everything. Fast, professional, very friendly... Highly recommended.

Yes, that’s right. I was at Goldsmiths a couple of years ago, J J Jeczalik did a guest lecture the one week, he spoke at length about the recording of Relax.

Time to go wired in ears, ditch all the heavy boxes! Our entire stage setup for a four piece function/pub band is two RCF 735 speakers, mixer and two di boxes, guitar pedal board, drumkit, three mics and stands, kick drum mic, bag of leads and four sets of in ears. I've never been able to hear myself so well and the FOH mix is the best it's ever been, I've actually had random people in the pub say they've seen us lots of times and the sound is the best it's ever been by far and better than all the other band's, ha.

Yes I am wondering this myself but I suppose it's modelled on Duff' s Jazz Bass Special from the 80's. But to me it's a Precision bass no doubt! 🤣

This looks ideal for me, I want something compact. The cradle arms moving so it takes the offset is exactly the thing I need. I'll order one. Thanks all 👍 p.s. done already - one-click Amazon £21. Really easy spending dosh with one-click innit

And the winner is... Fingers211..! Here, then, is your Winner's Certificate (download and save as pdf file, then proudly print and frame...) ... BC_Chal_Cert_2019_05.pdf ... which looks like this (but bigger, of course..!)...

You’re right, something about the shape of these just looks right. Vigier have some excellent design language. I’m not sure about the pickups actually, as all the Vigs I’ve owned have been old models. However I know Mr. Benedetti passed away and that meant no more pickups. I have a feeling the new ones are made by Delano but could be wrong. Patrice Vigier will tell you if you send him an email, he’s a cool guy and I met him at the London bass show a couple of years ago. Love the purple. Never seen one like that before. Enjoy!!

Sounds amazing - I bet those dead-heads are great fun to hang out with.

And cut and carved That dark natural grain mark heading towards the back is useful because it distracts your eye to the actual join line which is here: I'm pleased how the grain lines seem to join up - at the back too: Again, that natural dark patch takes the eye away from the join.

Fun?

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.

Well, this has been quite a project. A little over two years ago I bought my first Precision. I wanted a shoreline gold one, but since those only came in unaffordable price brackets, I bought a Mexican P with the foolish idea of refinishing it myself. Having had prior experience with utterly destroying a guitar’s resale value, the one good idea I had was deciding to build my own body (with help) and finish that instead. So far, it’s already had a pretty rough gigging life, but it’s my absolute favourite guitar ever. After swapping out pretty much everything else, I decided to purchase a lovely carbon-reinforced neck from a builder in the south of Holland. So, after an agonising period of waiting and having to miss my favourite bass - at long last - here’s the result. On the right is the old bass, and on the left is what resulted from changing pretty much everything about it to my personal preferences. It’s frighteningly resonant and it has ridiculous, Tufnel-esque sustain - even if it turned out a bit heavier than I imagined... Anyway, there are many P’s out there, but this one is mine. Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with the old one.

Got on well today. MrsAndyjr1515's sister has come to stay for a few days and they have been out all day, no doubt comparing their poor choices of spouses, so I've cracked on pretty much undisturbed all day! For flat faces, once I've run over the face with a plane, I use the chalk/engineers blue trick. I put some school chalk on my dead-flat chisel sharpening diamond stone: Then put it on the face and just move it a couple of mm, leaving me the chalky high spots: Which I then scrape off the chalk and a smidgen of wood underneath the chalk with cabinet scrapers: ..and repeat until the chalk smudge is all over the face. Ditto for the block. Then I added a dowel as a belt-n-braces support: ...and put in a corresponding hole in the block. Then added a generous coating of titebond and clamped: I'll leave that clamped overnight and then should be able to carve the corrected horn end tomorrow That's enough for one day

Thanks to all for your comments. I guess the clue is in his words; "Bottom line: you need to play to the gig (volume- and amp-appropriate), but don’t change what you do to suit someone’s engineering and audio fantasy . They will come at you fast and furious with solutions and ways to take you off your game plan. My advice is to stand your ground and be the guitarist you worked so hard to be." So, he says, don't listen to the guy who works as an audio engineer in that hall every week. Stick with your own inflated ego... hmmm..

Hope all goes well, studio work is great fun, have just spent the last 4 days in the studio recording our 4th album. Still got to mix it but got 15 tracks fully recorded (bass/drums/guitars/lead & backing vox) so are feeling rather pleased with ourselves at the moment.

I made a short comparison video between 5 analogue octave pedals to see how they compare to the much-celebrated synth sound of the Boss OC-2. Extremely niche, I know, but hopefully some Basschatters will find this useful!

This wasn't built for me, it was part of a triplet of basses made from the same piece of american walnut facings, my particular bass was made for a trade show, and I happened upon it by a freak phone call to Bernie, (as id been wanting one for years) saying " I want a Spitfire, what have u got?" reply was " well I just build to order but' and the rest is history, it was just what I was after a beautifull 4 stringer with a maple neck, all the electronics etc and a joy to play. Pics as requested, spot the tronics under the see thru cover, nice touch!