Leaderboard

Got a Ray in, traded against a G&L L2500. I haven’t owned one in several years, but my first proper self-bought and only fretted bass between ‘93 and ‘08 was a Stingray 4 2 band from late 92/early 93. Then gone through 5/6 string basses, custom hi-end etc. Now have a ‘97 2 band Ray in the arsenal and I have to say, great, great basses that sound and play really well. Although I have several 4 and 5 string basses, it is nice to be (partly) back where it all began.

Two whole decades after my last bass guitar purchase I've finally lashed out and increased my collection by 100%. But - you ask - what can it be? A classy Fodera? A Wal? An original stack-knob Jazz with OHSC?

Looks good. Smart idea maybe trying strips if it does get wrinkled. Look at you, all "life hack" 'n stuff

I managed to rehearse last night through my gigging rig and the pedal certainly didn't disappoint. The Compressor is very decent indeed and seems to work equally well at both ends of the sound spectrum (low and high), so really evens out the notes. The EQ is good too and I use it to alternate between different sounds depending on the requirement for the song. It really adds something to a P Bass with flats and tone turned down about 1/3, without having to fiddle with the amp or tone pot each time. The Overdrive is lovely and creamy and gives some really rich harmonics. I only dial Overdrive in a little bit, but this one seems to hit the spot nicely I never would've thunk (thought) Fender would be "up there" in terms of Bass pedals but I've been pleasantly surprised.

I have stuck it onto the area where it is needed. The adhesive seems to be very good, on a par with carpet tape and the rubbery dots are nice & grippy. Just tried the bass briefly and there is no longer any trace of neck dive. I'll have to see how it works long-term - it it comes unstuck or starts to peel, but initial impressions are good. If I redo it I might try sticking a load of one inch strips about an eighth of an inch apart instead of a single long piece to try to minimise any wrinkling that occurs when the strap is flexed.

This is certainly a departure from the typical Tiny Desk repertoire. I'm not really sure what to make of it, but overall have to say I kind of like it. Your opinions may, of course, differ...

I'm slightly confused and if I'm honest I am solely responsible for my confusion. We have never met, are unlikely to meet and in addition, I have never seen a picture of you. Yet, I've somehow always imagined ( as one usually does conjur a mental image of others based purely on their ramblings within these forums) that you were a rather large Nicholas Soames /Patrick Moore type look-alike. Based on that assumption being correct, this bass is far too small for you.

OK update, I've now heard from the seller with an apology, so I'm happier about that. Think he's just fed up answering emails and buyers then not going ahead. Good news, I negotiated a further discount and I'm now the owner of a black/maple Stingray USA bass. Always fancied trying one & think it will suit my sound and at the price, if I don't like it I shouldn't lose too much cash on it. Thanks again everyone for their comments and advice, believe it or not it helped.

Finally it's back! I traded this beast away several years ago and always considered it to be 'one of those that got away'... I think we've all been there, trading a bass and then suffering instant regret! However... finally after 3 years of failed attempts to get this bass back, the right sequence of trades has now landed this monster back in my hands. It's a Warwick Thumb Single Cut 6, a horrendously expensive thing if you wanted to buy it new (price tag is a shade under €8000). Warwick only made 120 of these and now only make them to order. These are heavy, but they are exceptionally good basses. The tone is outstanding and slices through any mix, the construction is immaculate. Pommele Bubinga top with USA ash body, flame maple neck and thick ebony board. Solid brass 'invisible' frets, MEC active/passive pickups and preamp. This one is near mint, with the flight case and Warwick folder. Very glad to have it back!

I recently bought a daphne blue Fender logo strap like this one: It looks great with my '72 Daphne blue musicmaster, however I'm used to using Suede straps or ones with a similar grippy reverse side. Due to the webbing on the back of this one, my feather-light musicmaster does exhibit some minor neck dive which is not apparent when using a suede strap - My seafoam Levys Suede one previously used with this bass has been promoted to my JMJ Mustang and looks great with it as it is very close to the same colour. I figured that something grippy stuck to the inside of the new strap might help, and today while browsing the popular high-street emporium, 'the land of pound', I found this stuff - 'Stick 'em up non-slip rug gripper'. I don't remember how much it cost though. 😝 It looks to be about a gnats wotsit narrower than the strap and the grippy dots are a pretty close match to daphne blue, so I am hopeful that it should work well and not look out of place. I will be trying it later and I will report back here with my findings. There's 1.5m on the roll, but I think I will only need to use about 50cm on the strap.

Ball of Confusion - Temptations

No idea what the song is, but I love the sound of you chucking your bass downstairs at the end!! 😂

And can I just note it blends really well with my SB-2

We have some more progress. The fingerboard is now blocked and will be getting glued to the neck soon. It's second from the top, Cocobolo with AI Maple blocks 😎 Eude

Once upon a time in the West - Dire Straits.

I really like this album - she has a voice that really pulls on me, and yeah she has described it as an album about getting over bad relationships. She does have a much earlier solo album - but it's instrumentals (very cool noodling though, she really can play.)

trigger pulled new bass day next Thursday

Considering the above, I'd personally opt for Cubase and the offer of your friend in getting started with it. Having a mate on-hand to walk you through the first (and steepest) slopes of the learning curve will be invaluable.

That Musicmaster is lush. I bet it looks great with blue jeans and sandals. An ideal summer bass. 🌞

....another latest today.... New York Times publishes list of over 800 artists potentially affected by Universal archive fire As Universal Music continues in its attempts to cast doubt on recent reporting in the New York Times about the 2008 fire that damaged its Hollywood-based archive, the newspaper has published a list of more than 800 artists who allegedly lost recordings in the blaze. Based on internal UMG documents produced in the wake of the fire, the Times says that, of the "many tens of thousands of tapes" covered by the list, "nearly all [are] original masters". The newspaper adds that this list is not even complete, rather it's an amalgamation of a number of lists put together by Universal in 2009 and 2010 as part of 'Project Phoenix', the music firm's attempt to work out what had been lost and then try to source alternative copies, where possible. By the label's own estimates, it reiterates, over 100,000 tapes were lost, containing up to 500,000 individual tracks. That the fire happened on a Universal Studios backlot in 2008 is no secret, of course. It was also known at the time that the Universal music company still stored archive recordings at the Hollywood site, even though it was no longer in common ownership with the Universal film business. But the NYT's recent articles allege that the music major greatly played down the severity of the damage caused at the time, and has continued to cover it up to this day. Although current Universal Music CEO Lucian Grainge recently admitted to his staff that "we owe our artists transparency" on the status of their archive material, he and the company's archiving exec Pat Krauss have both said that the original New York Times article on the fire is not accurate. For a Billboard article, Krauss even pulled out a John Coltrane master tape said to have been destroyed in order to prove his point. In its new article, the New York Times says that it is likely that some of the tapes listed as potentially lost are indeed safe. It estimates that the aforementioned Project Phoenix was able to source around a fifth of the affected recordings - either original copies that had been out of the archive at the time or back up copies of reasonable quality stored elsewhere. But that still means a lot of masters were completely lost. Following the publication of the first NYT article, several artists whose recordings appear on the lists commented on how they'd attempted to get hold of their masters at some point in the last decade, only to be told by Universal that they were lost. However, that they were destroyed in the fire was rarely explained. Speaking to the newspaper for its latest article on the fire, Bryan Adams recalls how in 2013 he wanted to put together a 30th anniversary release of his 1984 album 'Reckless'. "I contacted the archive dept of Universal Music", he says. "I called everyone, former A&M employees, directors, producers, photographers, production houses, editors, even assistants of producers at the time. I can tell you with 100% certainty that I couldn't find anything at Universal that had been published to do with my association with A&M records in the 1980s. If you were doing an archaeological dig there, you would have concluded that it was almost as if none of it had ever happened". In the end, he discovered a tape in his own vault and was able to produce a remastered release. However, he says that throughout his conversations with UMG staff "there was no mention that there had been a fire in the archive". This despite his name appearing on the label's own list of artists whose work was thought to have been lost. Last week, a group of artists named in the original article, including Soundgarden, Hole, Steve Earle, and the estates of Tom Petty and Tupac Shakur, filed a class action lawsuit against Universal in relation to the fire. As well as claiming that the label breached its contractual duty by failing to keep their master tapes safe, they are also seeking a portion of monies Universal seemingly received from an insurance claim in relation to the fire and a negligence lawsuit it brought against NBC Universal. While publicly playing down the extent of the fire damage in 2008, the artists' lawsuit claims, the label received large pay outs based on its own internal estimations of the damage. It then failed to share this with affected artists, or even to inform them that they had been affected. The lawsuit is demanding $100 million in damages. It's thought that other lawsuits specifically relating to the 2008 fire could as yet follow. Meanwhile, other ongoing litigation could also force the music company to reveal more about the extent of the damage that occurred. A number of heritage artists in the US have already gone to court to test the reach of the so called 'termination' or 'reversion' right that exists under American copyright law, and whether this applies to master recordings. The termination right says that 'authors' who assign their copyrights to another entity have a one-time opportunity to terminate that assignment and reclaim their rights after 35 years. This particular termination right comes from a piece of 1970s copyright law in the US, so only really kicked in earlier this decade. On the songs side of the business songwriters reclaiming their US rights in this way has become routine. On the recordings side, however, many corporate rights owners have resisted efforts by artists to reclaim assigned rights. This is based on an argument over the nature of record contracts and the status of the artist in copyright terms. Many labels insist that record deals are so called 'work for hire' agreements that basically make artists employees, so that the default owner of any copyrights they create is their employer, ie the label. Lawsuits were filed against both Universal and Sony earlier this year attempting to gain court confirmation that artists are in fact able to regain their recording rights by employing the termination right. If they are, that would include the return of their master recordings. In those circumstances, the label would have to admit what tapes it does or doesn't have. The potential outcome of the reversion rights cases is just one black cloud hanging over Universal parent company Vivendi's plan to sell up to 50% of its shares in the music company. The fallout from the NYT's articles on the big fire is another. Although last week, Vivendi CEO Arnaud De Puyfontaine told Variety that the new scandal surrounding the 2008 blaze was "just noise" and would have no effect on the share sale plan. However, it seems unlikely that "noise" is going to subside anytime soon. Responding to De Puyfontaine's comments, Howard King, the lawyer leading the first lawsuit to be launched off the back of the New York Times' report, told Variety: "The likelihood that their life's works may have been destroyed by the gross negligence of Universal Music is far from 'just noise' to any potentially affected artist". He went on: "It wasn't 'just noise' in 2009 when Universal Music sued NBC Universal, claiming that hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable masters had been lost in the devastating fire. It wasn't 'just noise' when Universal Music collected tens of millions of dollars, or more, in compensation for the lost masters. I believe that Mr De Puyfontaine wishes this would all disappear and not interfere with his financial planning. This wish will not come true". Universal has not yet commented on the fire-specific lawsuit. However, with the publication of the extended list of affected artists by the New York Times, it seems likely that many more artists will now be asking questions, and potentially going legal, in the coming weeks.

I used to have a BassMax and now I have a J-Tone - I prefer it to the BassMax. It has a more even, usable sound and it's very feedback-proof.

Absolutely. Great guy, fun to deal with. He sold me a great bass. I think I need to buy some more basses from him before ... you know ... it's getting more complicated ... if it happens at all, that is.

Here's why - it's a little know fact that instrument strings are right poseurs, very particular about their appearance and refuse to appear in public without the appropriate neckwear...and a silk cravat does the job admirably. There - don't tell me your day isn't just a tiny bit richer now that you know that. No, really....your thanks is enough.

Or certain MPs...

Actually, that's the easy bit, as any good scout that's indulged in a bit of whipping could tell you.

A shame for some, and a bonus for others! I can't wait to get into Leeds and check it out, been looking forward to the move since hearing about it!

I think of it as a calling..

I think this is a brilliant idea (especially for a bass forum!) and i can't understand why no-one thought of it before! I agree that if people only choose obscure songs to show off their knowledge of Patagonian Jazz or similar then it's going to whither and die. But everything so far has been pretty mainstream and gives us all a fighting chance. My only gripe is that I'm now intimidated by the level of skill being demonstrated..... But that's just me and I'll get over it. Keep 'em coming, I'm enjoying this - thanks, Stew for kicking this off 😀

Well I don't want to speak for Jason but I know their strings are made on the same machines which were hand made by his father so I guess there's no sense in changing them - presumably other manufacturers started by copying Rotosound and did things in the same way.

Just asked Jason How at Rotosound: So there you have it!

Having tried a few, this is the fuzz that has stayed with me the longest and probably will never leave my side. It's a real shame Chunk is no more as this was a real gem of a pedal and they're getting very hard to find now.

The man is an enigma, wrapped up in a mystery, wrapped up in a roll your own. Never one to shy away from delivering 130% in all aspects of his life, his views on instruments and backline in particular were legendary. His lifestyle was completely free of anything we might normally recognise as restraint. He was the original inspiration for Geddy Lee's washing machine backline after one of the band's stage trucks broke down on the way to a sell out gig at Golddiggers in Chippenham in 1982. A Tyrrell and Green had opened just down the road so Tony, in his characteristically down to earth style, replaced his missing backline with a selection of household appliances of approximately the same size and DI'd straight into a PA fold back using his Jaydee Tony Goggle signature with three stage gain preamp. Another fact worth noting was that his signature bass featured an integrated bottle holder. Unfortunately though it was attached to the headstock and any spirits rarely stayed in the bottle for long once the performance had started. But what Tony wanted, Tony got.

I sometimes play with a lady friend of mine in her living room who plays acoustic guitar. Usually once a month to share things I learned in my lessons

When we did a blind Precision shootout at the Herts Bass Bash a few years back a Hoppus was the runaway winner. It beat a 50s, 60s, 2x70s plus US Precisions among others.

The good thing is the seller doesn't need to respond if there are issues, eBay will simply forcibly remove the funds from the sellers PayPal and return it to you. (After the seller has not responded to an open dispute for 7 days that is). After that, eBay will request you send the item back via their pre-paid tracked postage, once the item has either been delivered/delivery refused by the seller/or delivery returned in the event of failed delivery, your money will be credited back to you. If you want the bass, and it's a good price, buy it. So long as you pay via PayPal your quite safe.

This is one of those persistent myths, but the 2 band EQ has always been boost and cut, as detailed in this 1978 manual: http://www.musicmanbass.global/1978-hangtag-manual/

Hi there! Why so sarcastic? ;°)

On the diagram I've posted it's the neck volume. That's how I've done it but I would think you could use whichever pot you wish. I'm not that clever so I just copied the supplied diagram 🤷🏻‍♂️

All The Beatles multitracks and masters were digitally copied in the 1990's for safekeeping, and the original 1960's tapes are stored in a secure vault at Abbey Road. The recent White Album and Sgt Pepper 50th Anniversary editions were taken from the original analogue tapes not the digital copies.

Russian Green Muff secondhand.

Soooooo tempted by the 800. Only thing I don't like is the power button on the back. If it's racked this is a pain to get to!

That's the one I use on my doghouse and whilst I've not compared it to a BassMax, I really like it's sound. Of course, like all these pickups it relies on the preamp to make the most of it.

Looks all legit to me to be honest. Clearly being sold by someone who has some half decent gear what with all the pedals and flight cases etc. in the background, adds a bit to the legitimacy of the sale I think.

Back then i too was only gigging with a vocal PA, so had to supply the full bass experience from the rig at the back of the stage. I was mainly using Markbass heads, SA450, LMII, F1, but also dabbled with a GK 1001RBII, Ashdown ABM300 and Streamliner 600. I also had other cabs but always went back to the 1212L or 1012R. I still have the F1 and still use it, but it just didn't/doesn't seem to gel as well with other cabs for me. Also flitted between P and Jazz mostly, although i also owned other basses. I loved the tone out front, very full, and although not sparkly, still quite clear. On stage I always felt i was too loud, but the band loved that they could hear me (drummer used to say its lucky as I’m the only one that knows a the songs:-) my current cab is a RS212. Lovey tone close up but ive yet to gig it. I doubt it will be room filling like the 1212L though. Bugger, getting 1212L GAS now lol.

Struggling with the 0% option on the 800 or 1200. Gah.

The thing is, when Gibson were going bust, everyone was saying “they need to go back to what they do best, Les Paul’s/SG’s/335’s!” And were criticised for all their “innovations” (which incidentally were poop...) Fender and Gibson do what they do, Imagine Levi’s making tracksuit bottoms or Dr Martens making tennis shoes. It just doesn’t work that way. Fender have a staple 5/10 models and have to work with that. They try stuff and it doesn’t always sell - there are 100’s of models which didn’t stay long. I sold Fenders for years as my Job, and all the weird and wonderful sat on the wall while black strats and white telecasters turned over in huge numbers. For years their best selling Telecaster was the butterscotch 52, their second biggest selling telecaster was the left handed version. After that it was a natural finish USA with a black pickguard and the Baja Tele in blackguard blonde...etc. Its about an “Icon” thing for players. Jaguars/Jazzmasters/Mustangs were sort of dead until Grunge - the artists bought them because they were reputable branded guitars but cheap. Then in the early 2000’s the 72 Custom Tele/Thinline Tele/Tele Deluxe were in vogue because of all the hip indie bands using them for that same reason - before that they couldn’t raise an eyebrow let alone a big ticket price. They have a legacy and they’re bound to it, damned if they do (by some) and damned if they don’t (by others). More stringent quality control and they’d be away - but that adds cost, and that’s why a Deluxe USA Jazz is £1800 or so and a USA Sadowsky is about £4500. Incidentally - I side by side compared a USA 2010 Deluxe, A USA sadowsky and an Alleva Coppolo (check spelling) and the Fender held its own, massively. I preferred it in sound to the other two and it felt as nice as the Sadowsky. It was just a bit heavier than the other 2. It was also about £1449 at the time. They should open up 12 month contracts to us all and see if we could do a better job. Anyhow, as someone said earlier - if you weren’t thinking of buying a Fender this year - these probably aren’t aimed at you...I’m off to play my yamaha 😂