Leaderboard

So, I love Mustang, Musicmaster and Bronco basses. One reason is because I am more comfortable with short scale basses, the other is that I just love the aesthetic. Recently I saw a loaded body from a MIM PJ Mustang on eBay so bid and won. Also, whilst I love that the PJ Mustang has two pickups, they seem oversized to me and actually put me off a little. That's okay though as I've got a Fender Pawnshop Mustang that I ripped the pickup and pickguard out of so I could replace with a Nordstrand. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Here was my problem, there's no neck. Turns out fender don't sell replacement Mustang necks either. Total pain, but it turns out the neck of my Bronco bass is almost a perfect fit! So, I had to fill and redrill the neck holes. Route a deeper cavity for the pickup, put shielding pain in the new cavity and wire it all together. It's a miracle it didn't just explode when I plugged it in. Also, the neck is a little wider than the pocket and has caused a little stress crack on the edge of the neck pocket. It's s shame but oh well. So, how does it sound? Great. The humbucker is deep and rich but still has articulation. The jazz pickup is tight and fast and selecting both sounds more like the jazz pickup but with extra depth.

I know. When the Nazis secretly stepped up re-armament in 1934 it was discovered that German domestic production of aluminium was insufficient to meet the Luftwaffe's needs. Increasing imports of block aluminium would have tipped off foreign intelligence services. Ernst Udet Goring's Director of Aircraft Research and Development the veteran WW1 fighter ace Ernst Udet hit upon a cunning plan to secretly acquire the aluminium necessary for air frames. Through intermediaries in Portugal, Spain and Switzerland Udet purchased 40,000 Rickenbacker Frying Pan guitars, the bodies of which were made of cast aluminium. The guitars arrived in Lisbon, Madrid and Basel and then secretly shipped to an off-the-books foundry in the Ruhr where they were melted down and recast for use as aircraft components such as fuselage longerons, ending up in Junkers bombers including the much-feared Ju87 'Stuka' dive bomber. Due to combat attrition in Spain 1937-1938 and replacement for wear and tear it is unlikely (though not impossible) that any of the Rickenbackerkampfflugzeuge (Rickenbacker war planes) flew in action during the period 1939-1940. As every schoolboy knows, the ME109E's which fought the RAF during the Battle of Britain had nothing to do with Rickenbacker, being constructed from melted-down Kramer necks.

Going to see Aswad on Sunday at the Havering show 🙂

A common dab writes: "Frankly I'm getting a bit peed off at the constant misuse of my name. Whether it's contemporary dance or those infernal sherbet things, although ironically I'm quite partial to liquorice actually, I think it's because the aniseed helps to cut through the overwhelmingly seaweedy flavour of pretty much everything in my diet, which I suppose isn't all that surprising when you think about it. Well for god's sake, you try eating anything else with your mouth on bloody sideways, see how you get on. And yes, I think you look bloody silly too. Where was I?"

How about 'Not actually a fish'..? Unless of course you do actually self-identify as a fish, in which case I apologise humbly for causing such grevious offence and please don't sue me.

I've been a bit slow with this one. A couple of weeks ago a Stingray 5HH popped up on Gumtree at a moderate but not low price, but offering trades for a Marcus Miller Jazz (as well as Flea Jazz). I had my MM since October 2018 and we were getting along just fine. It was a rarer sunburst model from 2010 and in immaculate condition. Alas, the thought of a straight swap for the SR was too tempting. I replied to the ad and we quickly arranged a trade the same day at a nearby McDonalds. As ever with 'layby trades', I took my battery loaded Zoom guitar pedal and some headphones to ensure it actually worked. And it did. Trade done in 10 mins with a bit of a gear chat. My initial thought process was of greed, as the Miller was worth about £750, and the SR5 easily £1000. I could flip the SR and buy another Miller, pocketing £250, right ? Alas, the SR is a bit too good. I can get any sound I want out of it and the EQ is just perfect. New set of strings and a setup and clean and it does everything I want. Will I keep the instrument for more than 12 months despite my gushing praise ? History suggests not. But it's a good story isn't it.

On point 3 I feel the need to mention Peavey Milestone basses (of which I have two, they were 'nuts' cheap used £50 & £60 with Hiscox case). Given that they are alder bodies, BBOT bridge, maple necks, rosewood boards and J pickups I do not find much difference between them and my USA Fenders and G&L basses. The machine heads are not the greatest but the rest is really very well built. Wish these had been around in my youth - Woolworths K bass, Avon SGs, Jedsons, Columbus sort of F copies etc. were less than satisfactory. I could and do gig with the Peavey basses.

It really won't, it won't make a blind bit of difference. If your girlfriend goes off with your best mate, does it help if it was your girlfriends idea rather than your best mates idea? So he is going to join a band to make them look better and then deliberately pick songs that the singer will mess up and they will sound a crap band playing live so that the rest of the group decide to get a new singer? I hope it sounds better in his head than it does when said out loud!

I’m marvelling at its lightness. Then I find the decals @LukeFRC did. And the badge. Sweet.

You missed a trick there, fishy mcfishface

I like that the amp is too big, it's very Spinal Tap 👍

'You don't want to know where my fingers have been'

There's a new Parts List up on page one of this thread, which includes a revision and details of the screws you'll need.

Got my hands on a Stella this morning. I guess that folk who know me will be aware that I'm a bit (ok a lot!) of a skeptic when it comes to compressors, although I did quite like the 'devil's one knob' Spectracomp as I could finally hear a compressor doing something useful / positive to my sound. The Stella is clearly quite a step up from the Spectracomp in its feature set (and a corresponding hike in price). I've a got a fair learning curve to get up to speed with this comp, but my 'day 1' impressions of the Stella are very positive. Subtle but positive impact on tone** is immediately there to hear and in line with expectations of a VCA compressor which are supposedly fast and relatively transparent; really good metering and multi-faceted control including wet / dry mix and side chain filter both of which should aid in preserving a fulsome low end. Already had a BC buddy wanting first dibs on this pedal when I move it on - but I've got a sneaky suspicion I may have finally found "my" comp so it could be a while before he gets his hands permanently on it! ** not yet clear to me is the inherent character of the pedal and how much is down to compression, though!

You must be very young then, and only seen cordless kettles ie those with a base and a removable jug. There used to be another type of kettle where the jug was not cordless. Instead of being permanently wired to its lead, there was a separate lead with a connector technically known as IEC60320 variation C15 (on the lead)/C16 (on the appliance inlet). C15/C16 is the notched variation, for high temperature applications (.......such as a kettle), however the very similar looking one without the notch, C13/C14 (lead and inlet respectively) became widely, but technically incorrectly, known as a "kettle lead". AFAIK a C15 variation will normally go into the C14 inlet although it might be ever-so-slightly bigger, because the notch is designed to prevent a C13 lead (not high-temperature specification) going into a C16 inlet (ie appliance requiring high-temperature variation specification) so is keyed as such.

#fisharepeopletoo

I can do it for you (as you can see!) - what would you like?

A Space Elliot for air amplification I think.

Bit of progress on the neck pocket. First up, hogging.... I make my pocket templates individually for each guitar I do. It doesn't take that long but does need a router table. Basically I clamp the neck on to a piece of 12mm MDF, then stick down 3 straight edges using double sided tape, pushing them up against the neck to get the shape. If you haven't got 3 straight edges then 3 pieces of MDF cut straight work just as well. Once they are stuck down the I use a guided bit in the router table to cut the template to shape. The advantage of this technique is that you are using the neck itself to shape the template. Once that;s done I then cut two piece of MDF on the radial arm saw at an angle of 2 degrees. These will provide the angle needed to cut the neck pocket. So the template is finished:

John Hall will want custody at weekends

Sorry if it’s the wrong thread but here are some of mine on the settee ...

This thread is useless without 'that' Partridge clip...

Just finished an afternoon recording a bass part for a couple of friends. Gave them the option of flats or rounds and they opted for flats. Realised that I'd never recorded with flatwounds before, and what a revelation! The best recorded bass sound I've ever enjoyed. So hard to put into words but it had an organic authenticity, and a fundamental thick rubbery satisfying sound. Great day. Used my B3 for a touch of compression and an amp sim and the engineer was pleasantly surprised with results. As I was myself.

I think that any genre of music can be played on any of the most popular basses. Could you not play jazz on a P bass? I know I could. And for young beginers, cost is usually important. I think this list would be very useful. Frank.

Game on tomorrow. All going well. Need to plan out screws etc. And all the other bits and bobs.

Well this amp is the one that just keeps on giving. Removing the power amp board revealed the FETs have been replaced. Probably the consequence of running it off that high power PSU. Both fets had 'rubberised' insulators, one with compound on one without, but they looked like the work of the same person (the part numbers for both fets are written on the board in the same fat felt pen). Probably along time ago, as the original Hitachi fets, now obsolete, were used. I replaced all the insulators with mica ones and servisol heatsink compound - best to have them all matched. Also redid the compound on the heatsinking. End result, offset voltage still 0.2V, low enough to be acceptable. That's 1/100th of a watt wasted compared to 16 watts when I started, and there's now no visible displacement of the speaker cones. Most importantly, with parallel fets each one now has to handle ~75W instead of 150W, which is probably a good idea when they are individually rated 125W. Best of all, I've learned the amp inside out and if it DOES fry in the future I'm confident at worst I could rebuild a complete replacement amp from the ground up.

Any bass players on this forum?

Lots

We get videoed all the time and it really can be hideous watching yourself.

Probably one that's been made into a clock or an ashtray or something.

I once wore a T shirt at a gig a year or two ago. It had a picture of Darth Vader saying ' I am your father' emblazoned across it. I noticed our guitarist wetting himself with laughter everytime he looked over at me. During the interval I asked him what was so funny and he replied that my guitar strap was covering some of the letters and made it look like 'I am fat!' 🤬

Deep sea bass of courses 🤧

Band T-shirt thing only happened once in a band I was in: One of the guitar / singists had written a song called 'Cartoon Victim', and decided to have their own T-shirt made for a gig with the title emblazoned across the front. We ripped the pee out of him before the gig, and even more afterwards when someone from the audience asked who 'Car Tim' was - his guitar strap covered the rest! Never again!

Did you have a gas-fired amplifier??????

We have several designs of shirt. Every time a new one comes out we get a freebie. I generally wear them for work, normally under an open Levi western shirt or the like. We never wear them on stage. The only 'band' t-shirts we've allowed anyone of us to wear on stage is our drummer, wearing his Motörhead t-shirt - bear in mind we're an 80s indie band.

Outdoor festival gig tomorrow, 27 degrees .... am so looking forward to it

I think we differ on the word beginner. To me a beginner is someone who’s new to bass and just wants to get the basics down. That was me for a year. By the time I’d settled on a genre I’d also found out enough about basses to be discriminating about sounds and makes.

as everybody says, Tony is a top gent. Sold my preamp to him and everything is so easy and smooth that I now have seller’s remorse. 😜 enjoy the preamp mate. 🙂

I just picked up a Vintera P yesterday and it's considerably better than the Classic 50s P that I owned for a while. Everything about the build is better and, in my (dubious) opinion, the seafoam green and gold pg combo is disgustingly delicious. Nothing new about it per se, but it's an improved take on a decent instrument in the 50s P. I needed a P and more than happy with the quality for the price.

Well that's that then. Final gig with the band this Sunday. Too many people pulling in different directions so I'm out before it starts to effect the friendships I have with the rest of the band. I made it clear from the start, before we even played a note that the band was very much a hobby, and I wasn't interested in, and don't have the time or inclination to be out gigging every weekend. 12 gigs in 10 weeks, plus practices in-between was breaking point for me. I still have to earn a living in-between gigs while the rest of the band are financially independent. It's been fun for the most part, even a couple of the gigs were enjoyable in the end, but it's become obvious that some of the band want to do far more than I'm willing to commit to, and while they love gigging, I honestly don't think I ever will. It's a shame really. Things were really starting to come together and we were sounding pretty good. Still, we raised a fair few quid for a local charity supporting children in care, so it's not all bad.

NOT MINE!!! I just had to show what is out there... This should be an intimidating rig: the EICH Amplification XXL cab under an EICH amp head... XXL Cab Features High-quality 2 x 15“ Ceramic speakers TE15D High-quality 2 x 12“ Ceramic speakers TE12D High-quality 4 x 10“ Ceramic speakers TE10D Neodymium tweeter 2 x NT 1 Tweeter Switching System Extremely lightweight construction Classic grill cloth Speakon® connectors Non-slip rubber feet Two high-load 80 mm castors Two sunken side tray handles and one edge handle Wooden protection rails Ampfixing Specifications Model: XLCab Configuration: 4 x 10" + 2 x 12” + 2 x 15" Ceramic speaker Power RMS: 2400 W Horn: 2 x 1” NT1 horn with tweeter switching system Sensitivity: 105 dB Freq. Response: 26-19.000 Hz Impedance: 4 ohms or 8 ohms Connections: 2 x Neutrik Speakon® parallel Tweeter Switching System Dimensions: (W x H x D): 74 cm x 157 cm x 41 cm / 29.2" x 62" x 16.2" WEIGHT: 70,55 kg / 155,5 lbs

Struggling to upload the video. It's not on the web, only on my laptop. I'll see if I can post it on YouTube. Work in progress....

Anything that involves slapping - a technique that I find impossible - but that's not really bass playing, is it? It's just making a racket.

It's a perfectly reasonable question. My layman's answer is this. For each given musical note, a string has to vibrate at a specific frequency. Regardless of what the string is made of, the tighter it is, the faster those vibrations are and the slacker it is, the more the string flaps about at a lower frequency. So you can get a rubber band to vibrate at the same frequency (and therefore musical pitch) as a piece of string, or as a piece of wire. The material used, and the size within each material will affect how much you need to stretch them to get the same note. So you will have to stretch a thick rubber band differently to a thin rubber band to get the same note. And - for the same size - you will need to stretch a silicone rubber band differently to an india rubber rubber band for the same note. Guitar and bass strings are just the same. It's not just the size that is different, but the metals they use, and the windings they have around them and event the shape of the windings. And everyone of those differences will affect how much you have to stretch (tension) the string to vibrate at the desired frequency. So if a maker has a combination of metals and windings they are happy with for strength and durability and feel and corrosion resistance and wear resistance and makes ALL of their strings with the same materials, then the only thing that will affect how much you need to stretch the string is going to be thickness. Hence the grades of strings. And - to have compatibility of nut slots, playing feel, etc, most makers have dropped into a convention of the broad size ranges they offer. But if, say, D'Addario, want to make their strings at the same thicknesses as Ernie Ball...but they want to use different metals, with different windings, etc., then the amount they will need to be stretched to produce each frequency, will be different to the Ernie Balls. Somewhere around there is a database of all of the strings from all of the manufacturers with the string tension for a fixed note - they vary CONSIDERABLY across manufacturers and across types of strings from the same manufacturer. Final point. For a given string, how you set up the bass (with one exception) WILL NOT affect the tension at all. You will still have to stretch the string the same amount whether you fit the string on a bass or between two vices! (The exception is an extreme - if your bridge lets you wind back your saddles to the extent where you actually change the scale length, then yes, technically, it will affect the tension). But the opposite is certainly true - the tension of the strings WILL affect the setup. The tension higher or lower will pull on the neck more or less meaning that the trussrod will need loosening or tightening to compensate. Hope the above makes some sort of sense. I'm sure there are more accurate scientific factors I've missed or misunderstood...

I did the same to take a photo but when packing them away in their cases there was a knock at the door. I answered it and it was my neighbour, I had taken delivery of a parcel for him earlier, anyway I invited him in while I fetched the parcel from the dining room, it was quite big so I stored it in there out the way. On my return he was in a right state as he'd only gone and sat on the sofa and sat right on the one bass left there after the photoshoot. He was so apologetic and it really wasn't his fault so said not to worry and reassured him I could fix it. I couldn't, the bloody body had a dirty great crack right through the control cavity. Luckily the neck was fine so having always secretly lusted after a flying V (it's all about the looks with me) I had a new body made for it. And what a body it is, such beautiful craftsmanship and it's so lightweight it's unreal, that coupled with what was probably my favourite neck and I have my dream airbass, so much so that the others rarely get played now. Here's an arty little shot of Vee (short for Vera which I named her) reclining in a Chesterfield, I think you'll agree she's a beauty. Now every time my neighbour pops in he does a little jokey feel around of the chair or sofa before he sits down and says "No basses here today then?", and we both roar with laughter.