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And this is me playing my main bass in the studio recently:

These are my old ‘91 CS, my old ‘73 4000 which I really wish I still had and my main ‘72, plus pics of my current 2 (the main ‘72 again and my Azure ‘72).

Mine would magically change every 8 months (according to my GAS) from a Precision to a Hofner to a Ric to a Thunderbird and round again. Said with no pride whatsoever!

Why do people keep on with this, "I think it's all crap, so it shouldn't be on TV, crap?" Everyone has different musical tastes so all music is valid. Later doesn't often cater for me but that doesn't mean it's rubbish and should be scrapped! I record it and run through it later with the FFW button at the ready. Sometimes I can check out a show in 20 seconds and other times I'll watch most of the acts. Where are the other live music shows on TV? Pumping out so much negativity is tiresome and unnecessary. Watch the show and you might find the blinkers coming off, if only for one number. There should be more live music on TV, a lot more. I'd suggest Later do some specials, where they focus on a particular type of music, but my hope is that Later outlasts me.

I recently took possession of this US made Spector Forte 6. The Forte model was introduced in the early 2010's as a no frills version of the US NS basses. Cutting down on options, no fancy woods or inlays therefore making the production streamlined the aim was to offer a straightforward and a bit more affordable version of the NS models. Still made by the team of Stuart Spector (before his retirement) and co, Fortes are essentially the same as the US NS models but in Forte 'versions' Now to the contrary of all above this Forte 6 has more features than some of my US NS-5XL basses and certainly more than normal Fortes. Flamed maple top, ash back are the body woods, ebony (!) is the fingerboard, tuners are the same as the NS custom models, preamp is Aguilar OBP and the pickups are EMG 45DCs. It is a wonderful sounding bass, powerful but not aggressive, clean and very even in all registers and there is a depth and richness to the sound. The no inlay ebony board is a wonder in itself, the neck is comfortable for a sixer and the whole thing is an incredibly well built, ergonomicly designed and sweet sounding bass. I have owned and currently own US made NS-5XL Spectors and this is up there with the best of them. Enjoy the pics!

Good news. Everything we make is repairable forever so we should be able to get you sorted fairly quickly. Cheers.

I've got my own going on........

Give us a call and ask for Guy he should be able to get you up and running again. Cheers.

Already got mine 🙂 Figured white ash body with trans black stain, maple neck, Wenge fingerboard. Emg J set, neck profile taken from my Warwick Corvette,

Scuse the crude 'shop job. I do wish Yamaha would come up with more colours for the BB line. The BB414 Orange was an absolutely lovely finish but they seem to be regressing to offering not much more than black, natural and 3-tone sunbursts these days. Anyway, here's the BB-AT414:

Well as this thread has a fantasy element to it, my sig bass would have fantastical technologies. It would look just like a nice P bass on the surface, but with the following capabilities: 1. Upper C and F strings and lower B and F# strings would just appear instantly now and again, exactly when you need them, as if they had always been there. Making it a virtual 8 string. Sort of like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter ... 2. The frets that are not on the note you are playing automagically sink so there is never any fret buzz. 3. It also senses what key you are in, and drops those frets (or part frets) that are not in the key so you never play a wrong note. 4. There are two knobs as on a normal P, but volume is always full on and tone automatically adjusts according to the material you are playing. So in the case of my magic P one knob is variable fret height, from super jumbo to banjo and finally dropping all the frets, making it temporarily a fretless. 5. The other knob varies the string type from round to flat and all the shades inbetween. 6. Obviously the tuning gears are automatic. 7. The bass is spookily light until a long note is played, when it becomes really heavy and allowing massive sustain. The strap senses this and deploys instantaneous anti-gravity measures so you don't even notice the weight changes. 8. The cable has memorised all the great bass sounds ever and lets you DI with no amp. Actually maybe this already exists in the form of a Kemper ...

Yeah, the onboard eq is very useful for that. I play mainly with a plectrum and found I had to boost the onboard lows and mids almost fully to get any beef. Same with Warwicks. Actually, the reason I sold my Ibby SR (a Ltd edition buckeye Burl 5 string) was because I found the body shape uncomfortable! I keep toying with getting another SR but the truth is the body shape hurts my arm. I had the same problem with my Ric 4004. As I’ve said elsewhere, for me the Ric is the most comfortable bass out there. I have nerve problems in my right arm that are aggravated by almost everything else. FWIW my Rics have necks every bit as nice as the Ibbys IMO. The ‘72 necks are different than later necks, comparatively wide and flat feeling. This was my 4004:

I’ll keep my fingers crossed that $ crashes to around 500 to £1 😂

Amp Update: I just spoke with amp legend Dave Green. He thinks it's more than likely a damaged pot. Will be taking it direct to them next week to get it looked. Can't trust those pesky couriers. Great customer service Ashdown! A+ for effort

I'm essentially a Precision player at heart, but if someone said "What is your signature bass"...in many ways, like the thread is doing...I'd say the Lakland 44-94 they built on my request. Basically a modern passive P/J bass with that fantastic 44-94 fret access: Si

A Bass VI derived from the Gus Guitars G3 30" Baritone design, but with a wider neck (closer to classical guitar neck measurements than standard electric guitar width as found on most bass VIs). Three single coil pickups each routable to one of two outputs. Master volume control for each output.

+1 for contacting Ashdown. There's no other company anywhere that supports its products as well as they do.

Ahhh GTF.....I can just hear the dulcet tones of our Glasgow born drummer as I hand him his tea in a blue mug..........yes he IS a Celtic fan I love to live dangerously!!😁

Did I mention I've got 7 Rics? Only 1 MM, though (a SUB)...

Had a random one at a recent gig - first set so pretty early and no-one really tanked as yet. We launched I Believe In a Thing Called Cheese and this middle aged, very conservatively dressed guy at the bar goes loopy. Some of the most extrovert dance moves we have ever seen, including dry humping a brick pillar - repeatedly. We became completely transfixed, expected him to come through the singer at any point - but his timing was ninja like. We finished the song, gave him a round of applause. Then he left. End of the night all the locals were asking us who the guy was. They'd never seen him before. Mysterious Darkness Dancer is out there....

The Bash made £590 clear profit of which I have split £500 between 2 charities and have given the school the balance. I've posted the raffle prizes to Sibob and Billy Apple today. One of our supported charities is Cancer Research https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/ For the other it's the charity that Nik works for - https://www.4sight.org.uk/ Well done all! Col

Lists and "sells for" are sometimes not the same thing. I'm guessing if you turned up to look at one of their £2599 basses and asked for a 4% discount to pay and walk away with a sale that day they would probably do that...

In between bl_ody Halloween preparations (I know, I know, and I agree with you, but how do you say that to a 3 year old?) I've made a bit of progress. First up I glued the neck heel in place, and of course added in another pin stripe. Yippee! You may wonder why it's laughably oversized, poking way out of the neck pocket? The reason is that I knew I was going to want to rout it flush with the side of the neck so I needed it large enough to provide at least some stability on the router table. Thus: So, putting the neck in and checking on height at the bridge? Really at this point there shouldn't be any surprises, cos I've measured several thousand times, but it's to within 0.5mm, so happy with that. I then start to shape the neck itself. First of all I do the taper, going from 21mm depth at the 1st fret to 24mm at the 12th. As usual, I use a router to do this. It leaves a lovely flat (but tapered) surface for me to be able to draw on the facets that I use to shape the neck itself. Here's my taper jig. Like most the jigs I have they were prototypes that were supposed to replaced with better ones made out of baltic birch and beautiful machined clamps and stops and such like. The trouble is they work as they are, and I really really hate making jigs. If you are easily offended by crude MDF with router stops that are just taped on rulers, look away now.... Next up, neck carve. I started by doing the curved profile for the volute and the heel on the spindle sander, then started my usual technique of carving flat facets that give the neck it's rough shape, before filing/sanding off the sharp edges to leave what is hopefully a fairly standard C shape. More on the neck carve tomorrow😁

Same for me Deedee, I initially bought a set for my P bass, but out of interest I tried them on my Sandberg, and loved them, now I’ve got to buy more 😂

Well the set of LaBella Low Tension Flats I ordered arrived today. I've put them on my Steve Harris P and what can I say, an absolute revelation! The only time I'd tried flats previously was when I'd bought a bass where they were already fitted, or at a jam night etc. I'd liken my previous experiences to trying to play coat-hanger wire. These however feel and sound superb and the tension is fine for me (I do like pretty light strings). I'm really loving the sound. Embarrassingly it's like a penny has dropped and I've finally realised what all the fuss is about with flats. It's the P sound and I'd not really appreciated the almost fretless mwahh quality you get, plus the difference in sound when really digging in. I'm very pleased with them and they'll certainly be staying in place. May even try a set on the Stingray too.

Totally agree. I generally have pretty catholic tastes in music, but I couldn't see anything of merit in that. Seen simialr performances before, but generally from a gang of 16 year old on their first gig. Unpolished is one thing, crap is another. (IMHO of course)

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Remember, if you're miming, mic up your nose.

Flats on a Jazz- always sounded to me like Gary Thain used flats, but I could be wrong. Ditto JPJ and Lenny Kravitz, although I read a JPJ interview where he said he didn’t use flats on the Jazz as they were “too dull”.

@hiram.k.hackenbacker & @DeedeeI agree I’d like a Chris Wolstenholme, knowing how good the Status basses are. That said I have no use for built in sat nav touch screen at the minute so the bog standard will do.

Hey dude, Deffo email Ashdown, they're amazing, I bought an ABM600 2nd hand from here too and had the same issue, although mine turned out to be just the valve that had gone, they suggested a dodgy pot and suggested either send it in for repair or they could send over the bits FOC if your handy with a soldering iron. Call Us at 01621 857853 [email protected]

Yes, Ashdown are very good on customer service, they’re on here as well @Ashdown Engineering

Like roundwounds, flatwound strings differ a lot depending on manufacturer. There may be even more variation than between those roundwounds. There'll also be the differing subjective experience of the player and differences emanating from one bass or another. Some examples: a Rotosound Jazz flatwound will never feel like a TI Jazz flat; the La Bella 1954 set is hardly like GHS Precision flats; Ernie Ball Cobalt flats really do not sound like Pyramid Gold flats. But, I'd say, whichever flatwounds you decide to try, you'll always need to give them a little time to settle in, to find out how they will actually feel, how they will actually sound. A couple of months should suffice. 😏

As no fan of thermionic valves I could be cheeky and say you will only get a lovely warm drive tone from a solid state amplifier. On a serious note, call Ashdown. Their customer service is awesome.

I must admit to being extremely tempted by one of these.

Yep! Bigrig 5 in lefty version, but in a 6 string format to reach over, since fan fret makes the "diagonal length" greater than across the strings. Also an NP5. One thing I didn't like with the Dingwalls was the switching system. I wanted the ability to mix pickups, not just switch. Another thing that makes the Payson more like a Fender is the body thickness; Dingwall makes their basses thinner to cut weight, but it also cuts tone. The Super P5 is also modified; I took out the rather useless "dual way tone pot", where you rolled out the mids in one direction (smiley face) and rolled off the highs in the other the ordinary way. Taking out the mids is taking out the P from a P-bass. On both my P5 and P4 I have Stellartone Tonestylers, the very best retrofit for ANY P-bass. Period. My Dingwall Super J4 has also been modified: switching system out and a J-Retro Deluxe in.

Done only 2 weddings, one for the guitarists sister which was a bit of a disaster as no one danced! (we're a loud rock band and granny didn't like it ( what a surprise), got bought not a single drink, in fact I bought the happy couple and entourage a round! Second wedding much much better, got properly paid and put up at a cool venue in cornwall, fed and watered to excess, people dancing up all night icnluding on the stage, fabulous, so you never know. The one thing I will say is it amazes me how the bride and groom sometimes only choose a band based on what they like rather than thinking of all the other guests.

I'm a nightmare. I take/have... Spare bass, head, guitar strings, gaffa tape, drumsticks, hi-hat clutch, bass drum pedal, mic, various cables, tools, batteries, plectrums and for two gigs, a spare snare drum after the drummer forgot his. I also usually take two sets of clothes to change into for functions in case our singer's hubby ( our sound man) looks like a sackofshit.

Ah, but you can roll it in glitter.

I once forgot to confirm with a venue so ran down the road and found a spare venue!! "as long as you don't want paying" was the Yes we needed. My guitarists mum had travelled some distance to see us so the show had to go on somehow.

Anything that doesn't make me look like a knob... the now seemingly endless search continues. 😒

It is - I'm in it! Blink during the club scene and you'll miss me though 😄

This switching scheme was designed to be used with a variety of switcher boxes that are more common in the guitar side of the industry. There were a bunch of semi-custom products, but some stock ones too. https://mesahollywood.com/products/voodoo-lab-control-switcher Here's another, uses 2 x TRS that have to be broken out at the amp's end into 2 x TS: Here's another, I believe this breaks out to 4 x TS: Here's an example of the kind of product that would be used at the amp end, and a programmable MIDI footswitch would go on the floor with a single MIDI cable between the two. The box would provide the contact closures upon command by the MIDI signal. The guitar world is full of such devices, we had some too, but things have changed considerably over the years and they are in fact fading away: https://six4pix.net/product/midiswitcher/ We also made a 4 footswitch pedal with 4 outputs that could be connected through a single 4 pair snake terminated in 1/4"-TS plugs, I don't know much about the accessories, but customer service would know. Hope this helps

While I agree that the backing band plumb new lows of munterdom my immediate reaction was to assume that the former Home Secretary Ms Amber Rudd MP (Ind) had been on her way to a fancy dress ball and stopped at several pubs en route.

Thats what happens when you flash your donkey on live TV (her, not you lol)

Exactly the same here. I'm a big Steve Harris fan and that may be the reason that I first tried one, but I love the bass because of it's chunky neck and how it plays, not because of it being a signature bass.

Nothing sounds like a Ric growl and along with it the iconic 50s design is the reason why it’s lasted so long and will continue to do so. Here’s my little friend...