Leaderboard

I had the body made/finished from a Italian ebayer. Cost £280 and the finish is outstanding! All parts meaty neck. Has a brass shim. hipshot tuners. Omega bridge. Seymour Duncan quarter pounders. Scratch plate is acrylic - finding a real chrome one is difficult! Plays great! Drilled through the headstock when mounting the tuners! Oops!

I'm thinking...

Dont care who he is or what his qualifications are, but he is wrong. I have used quality ear plugs for years and they have made a huge difference. Over ear defenders are good for industrial noise but hopeless for gigs where you need to hear the music, but quieter.

Have I finally found it? Time will tell but my goodness this will take some beating.

Bit of a weird one. Played a private garden party this afternoon. Duo gig. Vocals and me on acoustic. One lady guest had a bass in the car and sat in and the client's 5 year old grandson's drum tutor was there too and he sat in on the boy's kit. After we'd finished, we got another gig from one of the guests😆 For a band that doesn't exist. However, we're all up for it so it's in the diary😳

I had the very same GAS for a Sadowsky until March this year, when I pulled the trigger and bought a Satin Deluxe 5 from Bass Direct. I'm so glad I did and I just love it. It's prompted me to sell my beloved Fodera (check the basses for sale section) and I've barely played my Fenders since. Mines a NYC model so has a chambered body - love the weight reduction and, IMO, it adds to the tone. And it does cut through in a band situation, more so than any of my other basses. I play in a 'pop' orchestra (a la London Grammar), a rock/funk originals band, a function band and I dep for a few other acts locally and I've had comments on its' tone from each one - more so than I ever had on any other bass, even the Fodera. As always, it's just my opinion based on my own experience, but I say if you've got the money and the GAS then go for it - life's too short. Worst case, it's not for you and you move it on - at least you've scratched the itch! Pic below!

There probably is sound transferred through the bone (probably lower frequencies rather than higher frequencies) but take an ear plug out mid set and hear the difference. IMO they are definitely reducing the volume getting to the ear drum.

I own an NYC and a Metro. I have owned the Metro for ten years and the NYC for three. The Metro is still my 'go-to' gigging bass. Not everybody will enjoy the boost only, two band eq, but I think that they are tremendous basses (well, obviously, I bought two). In terms of general fit and finish the basses are pretty much identical. So if you play a Metro and don't particularly like it, then I wouldn't really recommend ordering an NYC and expecting anything radically different from the Metro. The preamp and pickups are generally the same (Sadowsky humcancelling pickups which I think are custom made for Sadowsky by Seymour Duncan). The humcancelling pickups are also stock on most NYCs, though some NYCs feature Sadowsky single coils or other pickups (Nordstrand I think) depending on the specific order that was made for that bass. The Metros tend to be heavier (chambered v non-chambered) and colours and options on the Metros are limited in comparison to NYC basses. Most Metros don't weigh more than 9lbs though so they are still pretty manageable. I have heard that the carve of the neck on the Metros is slightly different (slightly chunkier) but in hand I can't say that I notice any difference. The UV70 Metros are also the only Sadowsky basses which feature blocks and binding (NYCs don't). The Metros only feature chrome hardware, you can get gold or black hardware on the NYC. The Metros also feature very plain fingerboards, especially ones with maple fingerboards. The NYCs will generally feature fingerboards that either have a bit more figuring or have a vintage tint. The NYCs can also have fancy figured/flamed tops depending on the order. Some NYCs can look very plain as well though. Obviously, I would say try before you buy. I would also recommend that you try some other equivalent 'super jazzes' to compare to the Metro. A Fender American Elite, a Sandberg would be good comparisons to start with, but Mayones, Xotic and Lakland would be worth a look too.

Well, Thats upset the dog! - He still wont come back inside the house!! 🤬

My guitarist and I cabled my board today. Using practical patch leads (https://www.practicalpatch.co.uk/) Finally chuffed that I have a board that works! Fair amount of fuzz and no noise. Yassss!

Epic. Nice happy crowd too 🙂 Never has such a daunting display of wiggery graced a British stage since Poison won Crufts...

Debut gig with Blockbustarz last night at Ivory Blacks in Glasgow. Fantastic night of 70's Glam Rock music. Very warm night and a great crowd all having a great time dancing to some classic Glam music.

Err... Ace Of Spades ? soz....I'll get me wellies

Played at the Rebellion Festival in Blackpool. Our biggest audience to date, not sure how many but the room holds 2500ish and there wasn’t much free space. Played well, sold a load of our new album which we released today, got loads of good comments/feedback. Think the grins say it all.

Re: Sadowskys sounding better 'in the mix' than compared to bedroom levels. I am trying to get my head around this idea, as I do think that there is maybe something to it, but just barely, and even then I only think that it applies to a specific scenario. Apologies for the lengthy post to follow... I love my Fender Precision. It is old, passive and barely works. See the picture a few posts above and you will see that scratch plate is cut into two. This was done by the previous owner to provide for easy access to the jack input wiring (which was shocking when I got it circa 1999)...I managed to fix it when I was 15 by re-soldering it with the help of my brother... The neck lacquer is also coming loose and flakes off when I play it. The bridge is, at best, operational. The pickups are fairly low output and deliver a lovely mellow tone when I playing on headphones or through a practice amp. I love this sound. Playing live, I find it tricky to replicate the bedroom tone of the Fender at gigging levels, at least in a manner that can cut through on stage. I can, but it requires judicious use of amp or preamp pedal EQ and some compression to make up for some of the deadspots or unevenness of the output (which occurs no matter how I set up the bass, it just a characteristic of the bass). However, the EQ has to be set up for each rehearsal room and/or gig. It just takes time. Sometimes at a gig I don't really have time. If I am using the amp EQ, then if the sound engineer runs a DI box then I am back to relying on what the hell the sound engineer does with my basic signal. In comparison, with the Sadowsky, I can pretty much dial in a big hefty, aggressive tone by adding a touch of bass and treble EQ on the bass and running my Mesa Walkabout with pretty much everything at 12 o'clock. No dead spots or overly muddy notes. Just a really powerful, clear tone, even at moderate to high volume levels (subject to the lack of natural headroom on my chosen amp). My set up generally takes about two minutes. Does the Sadowsky have that lovely vintage thump of my Precision when I get the sounded sorted? No, but it is a great tone that I can pretty much use for every scenario. If the sound engineer wants to take use a DI box then that is fine as my basic tone signal is set up from the bass itself. It is also much lighter than the Precision. I think that the Sadowskys sounding great 'on the gig' statements might stem from Talkbass members in the early 2000s who were ditching their old passive Fenders that I assume suffered similar issues as mine. Accordingly, I don't take it too seriously. It is mostly a myth. Had I chosen to replace my Precision with a Spector Euro, then the Spector Euro would have provided me with the same benefits of the Sadowsky Metro but I can't say I have ever seen statements like 'Spectors are more for gigging not for bedroom players'. I tried out basses for 3-4 years before I settled on the Sadowsky. Sandberg, Lakland, Overwater, Spector, Musicman, Rickenbacker, vintage Fenders. All great basses (well, a couple of the vintage Fenders not so much) but the right bass for me was the Sadowsky. It is personal though, I would imagine that any number of basschatters would have chosen a completely different bass from the one I ended up choosing at the end of the process. In terms of the other Sadowsky bonus of 'how well it sits in the mix', from gigging and recording with the Metro for years I would just say that it really depends on who is mixing it!

I have used those Isolate ones, and I liked them. They attenuate a lot, and the response is not flat, but on stage I could hear what I needed to hear pretty well. I have gone back to custom moulded ACS -17db, which allow me to feel a bit more 'connected', but I still like the Isolate ones and use them sometimes.

Indeed. To say that earplugs don't work is a very unfortunate and misleading statement, and I hope nobody reads it and goes "ah, I'll do without then"

The ACS PRO17s have changed by life. A flat response, I can have conversations at a normal level with them in, and I can sing without it feeling strange. Custom moulded, and only £40 quid(!!!!) via the Musician's hearing scheme. Incredible. I don't know what the audiologist referred to in the OP is on about, but when I gig with these in there seems to be absolutely nothing that could damage my hearing. I'd need to know more.

Just pushed the button on it, comments here convinced me! cheers all

I've spoken to a few retailers who (at least three) who got out of Gibson/Epiphone because they couldn't afford to carry the stock levels (and mixture of guitar values) required to remain being dealers. Presumably those retailers who did respond to the pressure found themselves carrying large amounts of high-value stock. Gibson then faced with p***d off retailers - those faced with having to discount heavily to sustain their cashflow, and those horrified by the discounting undermining the value of the stock they were forced to take on. This might explain Gibson destroying large amounts of guitars - to keep up the scarcity value of high end instruments, if they are faced with the alternative scenario of the collapse of a dealer network who refuse to restock with expensive guitars they know they won't be able to sell in a timely fashion while making a profit.

If you are in Essex, you are really not too far away from the Bass Gallery (which usually stocks Metros and the odd NYC), as well as the Bass Gallery in Warwick and Guitar Guitar in Epsom (which should stock a mixture of Metros, NYC Satins and even a Metro Express). It might be a couple of hours travel, but if you are looking to spend £2500 plus on a bass it might be worth it. I appreciate it though that the personal circumstances of different people can make travel of even short distances difficult. Here is a two year old photo of the NYC, the Metro and my old S9 Fender Precision. Not great quality for detail but you can certainly see the extra flame on the NYC. I have also attached the 'as new' photo of my NYC from when it was originally sold by Sadowsky (not to me). I don't have an equivalent of the Metro, but frankly it is indistinguishable from every other Sadowsky Metro MV4 in 59 burst. The NYCs are generally more unique looking. The best place to see the differences between the Metro, NYC and Metro Express models is the 'recently sold' section of the Sadowsky website. Also, you might notice that the Metro is a four string and the NYC is a five string, yet my previous post stated that I didn't notice an 'in hand' difference in terms of the neck carve of an NYC and a Metro. Obviously I have played five string Metros and 4 string NYCs and my comment is in relation to that. Obviously I can tell that a five string neck feels different to a four string!

This is the thing with Sadowskys. They only come into their element when playing with a band and they cut through the mix unlike anything else. Not one for the bedroom bassist but are loved by working ones.

Crikey! Just looking at that natural colour bass hanging up one the wall in the background. The pickups are all over the place, looks like it was routed by Stevie Wonder, blindfolded in a dark room!

Bass is short as well.......🤦🏾‍♂️

A lot of bass players will be biased though when forced to choose between only having percussion or bass. Ask a drummer and they’ll choose the cajon! A decent acoustic guitarist can cope without either if they have the necessary rhythmic chops, and they can put out a surprising amount of low end when amplified. I went to see two friends play a festival gig recently with just female vocals and acoustic guitar, and imagined what it would sound like if I were to play bass alongside them. I’d definitely would have had to get the guitarist to turn down the bass EQ for one - the root notes of each chord were quite powerful. Ideally of course, you’d add both. But if I was being totally honest and looking at it from the perspective of a typical audience member, I think a cajon would have added more excitement to the live performance than bass alone. There’s also a novelty factor since many non-musos would have never seen one before, which will get them more interested in what’s going on. In a similar way, I pulled out a Ukelele bass for a song once and it grabbed the attention of the audience like you would not believe! Another option is play bass and play foot drums simultaneously. It’s surprisingly easy to manage at least a kick drum with one foot whilst playing, I have a couple of stomp devices like these: https://www.logjam.net

An entourage is something I have resolutely discouraged over the years. Too many good people have died as a result of getting too close to me - and not by my hand. Not having any friends is the curse of my former profession but that's all going to change now I've retired from The Life. I've even joined a book club.

Great in ear mix tonight, even the guitarist is starting to like them now! Cheap foam tips off ebay held my KZs in all night although they do alter the sound compared to the standard silicone ones.

That's exactly what we do. Except everything in the bucket goes to charity.

If this includes your sizeable entourage, then surely it's worth it for both the venue and the band? They're going to sell a lot of Bolly....

Until your singer quits the band midway through a song, that song being about halfway through your first ever headlining set, walks straight through the crowd and out of the venue without even stopping to pick up his jacket, to the sound of one scallywag singing "One of these kids is doing his own thing!", while the guitarist (who was so stoned he came up to you before the gig to say he couldn't feel his hands and was slumped over throughout his "performance" on a bar stool on stage, because it turned out he couldn't really feel his legs either) continues to fumble his way through something loosely resembling your music because he hasn't noticed the singer is not only not singing, but isn't even in the venue any more, you haven't really had a bad gig. There's a worse one out there waiting for you. These will make you appreciate the good ones more, so chin up. 😃

Ready for gig number 2. I love doing two in one day. Cuts down the driving.

Horses for courses really. I’ve never played one that I’ve thought was anything special.

I always take a decent sized bowl onstage as I find that sort of thing adds to the spectacle... Fills in those boring guitarist tuning up moments. It worked for GG Allin!

Careful now, look how it can end up! This isn't everything...

Basically we're getting back to the model which pertained before the 1960's. Pubs didn't have bands. If they had any music at all, it was a local amateur piano player who knocked out requests and singalong favourites and did it for beer. From the mid-19th century to the mid 1950's there was no commercial 'market' for amateur bands. Professional musicians played in the pit or onstage while amateurs formed choirs or colliery bands or scraped around the edge of the pro-scene. Read: Spike Milligan. Prior to this, we're back in the 19th century and looking at the lost tradition of village bands where a bunch of old boys turn out for weddings, harvest dances and other communal events. Gear? A fiddle, a squeeze-box and (insert cheap instrument here). They'd play for beer until they fell down drunk and everyone went home or ended up shagging someone in a haystack. Further reading: Thomas Hardy. Slightly different in the towns where it was more organised, the middle classes wanted light classics or something to gavotte to. The musicians were a bit more accomplished but still got paid a pittance. Read: Jane Austen. Going back even further, we're basically talking about peasants tootling away on flutes or bagpipes and banging a drum while their in-bred relatives clod-hop around. View: Breughel Local gig circa 1568 So: amateur or semi-pro bands making decent money out of playing loud music at people in pubs is a lost world. Time to re-embed ourselves in our local communities and chop out stuff that punters want to hear - and more importantly - in which they wish to participate, i.e., dancing, singing along. Upside? You might end up getting mullered for free and shagging someone in a haystack. That's got to be worth more than £30.00

Get in the sea.

It might be because I didn't buy everything ... I'll PM you...

I have a cloth fronted Two10. I think you’d really have to stab it to get to the cones.

Played a wee local festival, that’s been going for a few years and seemed quite good, yesterday afternoon. Had a great time and went down well, however a raging hangover from the night before, that I had to fight off, made slightly less enjoyable. 🙄 Lesson learned there, won’t going out the night before a gig again. Seems the older I get, the better I was. 😳

Always assumed "Wes Tone" rather than West One" - but what do I know? It was Matsumoku's own brand so there's every possibility both interpretations are wrong! Used to call them "Wet One" back in t'day but that was just misjudged sardonic punnage. Or something.

I would reverse that, bass on the slower numbers and cajon on the faster ones. Bass on the Shania Twain too. That's based on my experience of playing in a band with bass and cajon, and another with no percussion. For Happy Jack - the strange ribbed things that you stroke is either a fish (guiro) or something dressed up in a ribbed condom. Obviously the choice of which depends on exactly what sort of gig is being played.

Yes a green vinyl and a greenish carpet one,have not used them for a while now,gigs are getting smaller and those stairs look higher🙈

I've always fancied busking. If you're really good, obviously totally dependant on factors of footfall, location, weather, time of day / night - I reckon a good solo or duo can gross £3 a minute (£180 per hour), and that's with a setup no more sophisticated than the 'big issue' lady... If you're a band, with some trustworthy mates as bucket persons, playing off a flatbed truck in a pub carpark or near a campus, burger van etc - £300+ an hour? Elvis Costello in disguise, with just an acoustic, a fishing stool and an upturned hat would gross £300 per hour, easy, I reckon.

'Bill & Ben' theme tune

The next bit is even more scary. Taking off the neck jig, I now suspend the body over the cellar floor using only the jaws of the workmate protected by some bits of cork!!!!!! And then rout it!!!!!!!!! And to my great relief and surprise, it fits... ...and more surprising, it even fits in the right place (14th fret): Happy chappy...until, of course, I get to the next scary bit....

Yeah, seems to creeping in since I quit a couple of bands and was gigging just about every week, to play in a more specialised band that plays bigger venues, but less frequently. Tomorrow I'll be playing my first gig for two months, headlining a festival in Kent - and it doesn't help that the band on before us is one I used to follow in the 70s and whose bass player was quite an influence on my playing. The fact that we change the set list for every gig doesn't help me either - though they are a great bunch to play with. It'll be a friendly crowd as well, we know a lot of the people in the UK Deadhead scene.

<insert my standard defence of Darkglass prices here> I'm not sure this offers enough over my current X7 - AOU setup to consider upgrading this time. The X7 is a HUGE upgrade on the X, but this not so much if you already have an Ultra pedal in the series. The only feature that makes me think about it is the fact the compressor on the pedal can be configured to work as a normal compressor when the distortion is disengaged, potentially replacing a separate compressor pedal. I'd want to see what control you have in the suite though before considering that. The X circuit, when used right, is the best distortion Darkglass have made by far in my opinion, so this naturally will be their best pedal for many. It sounds absolutely huge.

Sorry to be so slow... I'm ok, busy as a bee in a window! Seeing a kid off to college this fall, hoping her studies in biomechanical engineering can get me a couple new joints! Lol. It's very nice to catch up with you, and your work looks as stellar as ever! Very nice. I'll be checking in, if that's ok... (Carlo told us you were here, posting build threads! And right, you already knew that...)

One's first reaction is 'Oh, do mess off, Fender'. The second is 'For how much less than £12k could I knock one of those up?' And - as I never cease to mention - Lynott's back-up P-bass went for meagre £800 at auction a couple of years after he died, mainly because he'd thoroughly wee-wee'd his reputation up the wall after he left Lizzy Don't get me wrong, I think he was a great man but there was a period of about five years either side of his death when he was regarded by many as a sad joke, hence the paltry auction price. How times change.