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Blimey, once you start looking they turn up in all sorts of places!

Just completed today. A reclaimed oak & mahogany 4 string through neck bass with a Rocklite fingerboard . Gotoh tuners Kent Armstrong PUs and pre/ Schaller bridge. Small offset body weighs in at a very well balanced 10 lbs . Made from rails of an oak door and all parts provided by members of Basschat many thanks. Gary

For me it’s Close To The Edge which I still love, closely followed by The Yes Album and Going For The One. Definitely “soundtrack of my youth stuff”. I do some writing for Rock and Reel (now RnR) magazine and featured CTTE in an article on their “It Started With A Disc” column about a record which was fundamental in your musical or listening history... still love it...

On Friday, the provided cab wasn’t working so just went straight to FOH/monitors from my trusty Para Driver. In all honesty if I could rely on monitoring I’d do this all the time, made pretty much no difference to me.

The current crop. Look, they’re not all P basses 😂😂

Some clarification I got from Madinter today : It has not been easy... but we did it! Since January 2, 2017, several wood species are listed in Appendix II of CITES, with Annotation #15, specifically, all Dalbergias and Bubingas. Since then, a group representing the music industry, to which Madinter belongs, has fought to modify this Annotation, to get an exception for musical instruments. Our work has not been in vain, and finally today, from Geneva, proud of the result obtained, we can announce that these products, among others, will be excluded: Finished musical instruments, finished musical instrument parts and finished musical instrument accessories. However, the exports and imports of these woods will continue to need their corresponding CITES permit as at present. WARNING: This change will come into effect 90 days from today. We will keep you informed!

Heres the full piece in easier to read on a phone form... IT STARTED WITH A DISC: CLOSE TO THE EDGE - YES Some would call it the pinnacle of an entire genre. Others might say it’s the moment its creators attained the perfect expression of their muse. Many would claim it represents the jewel in the crown of progressive rock’s Year Zero. Audacious! Virtuosic! Majestic! Perfect! Personally, I hated it. Couldn’t get it at all. Well, there was that bit at the start which just seemed to be random noise. Then it seemed to ramble on for ages, never getting anywhere. And what the heck was a “Khatru” and why were they so popular in Siberia? What a complete waste of three pounds and twenty-nine pence. It even had the single most boring mud brown album cover I’d ever seen. A cassette-tape was unceremoniously flung to the back of a bedroom cabinet and forgotten. Not the most auspicious start for a candidate for It Started With A Disc. How could this be my initial reaction to an album which I now count as pivotal to my personal and musical development? Well, perhaps there is a little more to the story. In the period from 1976 to 1979 I never bought into the punk ideal. That type of music wasn’t really for me. No, I was a heavy rock fan. Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple were my listening staples. These sat uneasily alongside an unhealthy (I presumed then) interest in Abba, The Electric Light Orchestra and other chart pop. But we didn’t talk about those. If there was any other genre that I was likely to listen to it would be rock and roll or rockabilly - influenced by the kids I hung around with at youth club. If we were going to play ‘C’mon Everybody’ it would be Eddie Cochran’s original, not some crappy punk cover. So my reaction to Close To The Edge wasn’t some clichéd knee-jerk “Load of rock dinosaurs” rant. I had genuinely expected to enjoy it. The fact that I didn’t get it at all was a bitter disappointment. My rock tastes were already starting to branch out in a more prog direction and I had heard the odd Yes tune that I really liked. A compilation album contained the squelchy synths and wah guitar of ‘Don’t Kill The Whale’. ‘Wondrous Stories’ was regularly heard on the radio. Yes was a band I was determined to check out. Yes was a band I fully expected to love. So one afternoon in 1979 I found myself upstairs in Truro’s Saffron Records, rifling through the LP racks, pocket money jangling temptingly in my trouser pocket. There were so many exotically designed covers tempting me in. Was today the day to buy some Yes? Or perhaps I should finally plump for a copy of Brain Salad Surgery, scary looking cover or not? The triple album glory of the live album, Yessongs, was further than my pocket money could reach. Similarly some of the newer LPs. But then I spied a drab little cassette sitting forlornly in the racks with a sticker proclaiming, £3.99 £3.29. Done! When I got it home I slipped the cassette into my tiny hand-me-down cassette player. There seemed to be some louder than usual hiss coming from the speaker which suddenly exploded into an unintelligible noise. Little was I to know that the minuscule mono speaker was in no way equipped to deal with the subtleties of the rainforest sounds which coalesce into a free-jazz influenced intro section on ‘Close To The Edge’. For the remaining twenty minutes of side one the cassette player struggled manfully on, signally failing to deliver anything near the high fidelity sound which the music demanded. Side two didn’t fare any better and so the cassette was unceremoniously chucked in a cupboard. Fast forward six months and my birthday present meant I was finally freed from the vagaries of hand-me-down audio equipment. Resplendent in my bedroom sat a brand new Sharp music centre... Record player, cassette deck, AM/FM radio and three glorious watts per channel of stereo sound. As I consigned my cassette player to the cupboard a dusty cassette fell out and bonked me on the head. “Oh, that! Well, I suppose I should give it more than just one listen. It can’t sound any worse on the new hi fi.” That said, I wasn’t holding up much hope as I slipped it into the cassette deck and pressed “play”. What a revelation. A torrent of sound cascaded from the speakers; chaotic but yet revealing of a subtle structure. Chris Squire’s bass wrestled with Steve Howe’s spiky guitar lines until suddenly punctuated by a complex vocal harmony. Gradually a compelling melody emerged, driven by the bass and underpinned by Rick Wakeman’s Hammond organ and Morse code Moog synth. Forty short minutes later the cassette mechanism clicked off as side two finished. I was hooked. A lifetime love of prog and Yes was underway. Looking back, though, thank heavens that, on that fateful day in Saffron Records, I hadn’t plumped for Tales From Topographic Oceans. There are some musical traumas from which you could never have recovered!

One of my gigs is "Grunge Garden Presents" where we do tributes to bands we love (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, RATM and others). We did on outdoor festival on Saturday, it was a lovely location, great weather and great crowd so thought I'd just share a "snippet" made from iPhone recordings. Enjoy

Quite literally a pup cover

Hi all manged to do a bit today, rubbed the body down with 120 grit to find all the low spots and dings filled all the holes rubbed it down filled some more rubbed it down then rubbed it down some more and so on and on, ready for primer now, cant decide what colour to do it any suggestions ? cheers just gonna put some plasters on my fingers.

Not wishing to appear ungrateful, but you seem to have dropped off a couple of human children outside my gate? I have no idea who they are? 😬 Here's a picture of my kids, which granted, I probably should have showed you earlier! 🤒

It's an acoustic - so it needs yet another jig made Fitting the bridge. Always an area needing accuracy - but particularly with an acoustic where, basically, once it's on it's on. Intonation adjustment is limited to the 1mm difference you can make filing the bone saddle angled towards the back or towards the front. So it has to be right. I use the Stewmac fret calculator app to give me the nut to saddle distances for top E and bottom E, but a steel rule isn't really accurate enough to measure the distances AND get the sideways positioning right. So last night, while watching the box, I made this from some maple binding strip: This is eminently possible to get the measurements right with a long steel rule. Then, the bottom cross-member hooks over the nut end of the fretboard and the top cross member fits into the bridge saddle-slot: I line the jig up to give an even distance between the fretboard edges bass and treble... ...and the bridge should now be in exactly the right position. Fingers crossed

The bridge cover comes in handy as an armoured codpiece for those rougher gigs...

You two are brilliant. Mental.........but brilliantly funny. Dave

As far as the sound goes, they're the same, but there *is* (or should be) a difference between the two halves: they're wound in opposite directions to cancel hum. They should have opposite magnetic poles, too, so that they're in phase if used in a PJ (or PP!) configuration.

So far, the only video that has turned up is courtesy of my Dad who is not the greatest cameraman it has to be said, but the sound is OK if not great. I managed to wrestle the footage off him only this weekend and have stitched the clips he made together into one short 'montage'. The clips show the very start of Blockbuster, the end of Blockbuster and the start of Ballroom Blitz with a final short snatch of the improvised ending to Ballroom Blitz. FYI, the guy doing the Northern Soul routine on the dance floor is my Son bustin' his moves... 🙂 and I'm the really nervous looking fella on the right. Enjoy the chaos...

Cocaine

Er, you're the bass player. Unless you're on fire, there is virtually no chance of you appearing anywhere in the final edit so just ignore the whole camera thing - they're not there for the likes of us.... 😃

spent a few hot hours in the shed today undid the clamps all looked not to bad, trimmed the inserts and gave it a quick rub over just to tidy it up, forgot about the screw holes in the side i drilled them out and glued in some dowels. Not looking to bad. Sorry the pics are not in the right order.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fender-Precision-51-Style-Telecaster-Bass-Guitar/264441223492?hash=item3d91ecd944:g:WGAAAOSwROVdYVXa

On Friday, the provided cab wasn’t working so just went straight to FOH/monitors from my trusty Para Driver. In all honesty if I could rely on monitoring I’d do this all the time, made pretty much no difference to me.

I don't find that they get in the way at all as my preferred playing position for tension and tone is between the P-pup and the bridge anyway. In fact I went to a great deal of trouble to find covers to fit my 5 string precision (purchased on ebay from a seller in China who would only post to the US. They sent it to - if I remember correctly - the New York home of the sister of helpful BCer. She then took them with her to Florida to give to said BCer who was meeting her there for a holiday. He then carried them back in his hand luggage to his home in the Republic of Ireland where he finally posted them on to me here in Norfolk). I'm very happy with them. 🙂

Mine is an Ibanez Talman TMB100M. It weighs exactly 8lbs and balances comfortably on a strap. The fitting and finish is of a very high standard. The frets are level with no sharp ends. I have a low action without buzzing or rattles. I think it could go a little lower but I'm happy where it is. I haven't needed to adjust the truss rod, having only lowered the bridge saddles by two turns. The hardware is doing its job as well as on any other bass I own although the tuners don't feel as refined as on more expensive basses - they work perfectly well though. The pickups are rich and powerful and the active preamp needs tiny adjustments to be very effective. This Talman range is fantastic value for the little money they cost. I recommend them wholeheartedly. Frank.

Oh, bahllocks... 😄

Me too dave 👍

We used to have a local market stall which sold foam. They'd even cut it to size... Alternatively eBay or Amazon I suppose.

Is this it??? Is it???

I owned a fender Marcus Miller in about 2000-2010, and I got used to the pickup cover being on. Never use the bridge ones on a jazz though - too big. Did have a very nice P with mutes in the cover. Looked brilliant.

Obvious answer is to have enough basses that some have them and some don't. I like them because the increase the differences in how my basses feel and the point of having a small collection is that each one makes you play differently. Plus they do look the dogs on a bass with a sunburst and tort scratchplate.

Pre-Internet and I ordered some for my Fenders back in the 90s. I sent off a postal order to the USA and everything. I was a fierce defender of them and proudly flew the flag against anyone who dared suggest they got in the way. I kept them on for over 20 years. I came up with a whole list of excuses as to how you could adapt your style to fit around them... then in a rare light bulb moment about three years ago, I suddenly realised that they did, um, get in the way. They are sat in a bag of spares right now.

Thanks that's a great suggestion & I will act accordingly. I am currently studying Jazz

Wotevz!

I ask similar a similar question regarding the public place smoking ban.....there MUST be a UK ashtray mountain somewhere

My fretless Sire V7 came with an ashtray. It's in a drawer somewhere. I might have at least given it a go if the bass had come with the corresponding pre drilled holes required to fit it but it didn't and I'm not going to drill the holes myself or faff around with double sided tape for an aesthetic feature that I'm almost certainly going to decide is just a hindrance to my normal playing style.

I'm guessing most were simply binned. I think they look cool, as I'm into vintage, but as others have said, a real pain to play around. A neat trick (if anyone is interested) if you want to "age" chrome parts, which I've used on new parts as well, is to rub the chrome lightly with a scourer pad (with a tiny bit of WD40) to remove the very thin layer of chrome, to reveal the duller metal beneath. Then put the now de-chromed parts in a smallish box part full of nails and screws (rusty screws are best) and shake vigorously, the more you do it, the more little nicks and marks are made on the parts which genuinely looks like they have been bashed about for a number of years. The longer you shake the box, the more "aged" the parts look.

It came from a Halloween party costume, which a few years later, was worn at this Halloween gig....

Oh and Chris Squire's Fish out of Water is wonderful too.

Just an observation, feel free to ignore me. I think what you’re doing is brilliant, it’s obviously taken a lot of time and effort. I do think though that a brief welcome or introduction would make the site a lot better. Just something so that visitors landing there know who you are, what you’re doing etc. It’s all very anonymous, you want people to sign up and register, but they don’t know anything about you. Perhaps also something so they can see what’s available? Like I say, I seriously think it’s great what you’re doing, and good luck with the site, and your studies; I presume from your posts you’re studying music?

(Steeples fingers and awaits developments).

The very best thing for doing this is 0000 wire wool, it leaves tiny ridges along the neck, barely discernable but enough to reduce friction on your hand from a gloss finish on polyurethane, nitro for some reason suffers less from friction I find. The trouble is though that eventually the effect gets polished back by your hand which means doing the same again, eventually you're going to sand down into the wood but think of a good few years

That’s where I’ve been going wrong, I’ve been putting lemoncello on my fretboard and doing lemon oil shots 😁

I'm just a big-mouthed attention-seeking gobshite desperate for validation :-0 At least I'm self-aware...