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I really love the classic look of the Ashdown CTM300 head but unfortunately it's just not in my price range at the moment. To tide me over until I can save up a couple of grand, I decided that I'd try to at least achieve the look of the amp even if I can't get the sound of it right now. I've spent my spare time over the last week building this new case from scratch for my ABM 500rc Evo iii and I'm really pleased with the result so thought I'd share it here. 🙂

NBD today after seeing it on Facebook shared by @cd_david in a super cool little music shop. Man it’s good! Originally sunburst but refinished in Oly White in 1973 when the J pup was added. Owned locally since then by a pro theatre musician. Always had flats on so frets are almost brand new. Bar that everything is original and man it sounds well! Looking forward to gigging this next year 🤘 Shots with and without the covers 😍

I know Lawrie Macmillan. He is very tall, dark and handsome, and up until recently drove an Alfa Romeo. If, after a significant amount of lessons, for some unexplained reason, your girlfriend's bass playing is not getting any better. I would suggest you get her to to swop to a uglier, fatter, possibly with bad halitosis, bass tutor.

I did this on a semi pro basis for 6-7 so... framing, framing, framing - move your focus point so that the entire subject is the frame, headstock, the lot. You can always crop afterwards Spotlights *will* cause over exposure and lens flare so watch out for that and roll the exposure back a touch You'll need at least 2 bodies - one with either a short prime or a short telephoto - I always took a pair of Canon 1D's the 35-70mm f2.8 L on the 1st body with the 70-200 or a 300 2.8 LIS f2.8 on the 2nd. Sometimes I took a 3rd lower spec (20D) body with fisheye/semi just in case. Shoot like crazy - 7fps min, pref 10+ Anticipate - know the material (if possible) so that you know if there's a solo/vocal section/whatever coming up

I got a cracking bargain on this bass off a local guy who was shifting a load of unused gear. It needed a clean and some new strings but otherwise was set up well and all electronics are fully working if a little crap on account of being cheap parts. The stock pick up's sound grand and have that jazz bass thing especially with the new strings. Gonna change the wiring loom to some better pots with a proper 'sweep' across their range rather than 'on on on on on on off' but otherwise I'm quite chuffed. I'll be using it at rehearsal tonight and tomorrow with two different bands so looking forward to hearing it at volume! Plugging into my pedal board, (Tone Hammer DI and comppressor) the Tone Hammer it's really complimenting the sound and of course the new strings are adding to the crisp top end. I've tried a couple of other pre-amps with it but this is a great pairing for this particular bass - bumping the lo mids is giving it the right amount of oomph and I look forward to fine tuning that with the drummer later tonight. Been about 6 years since I've owned/played a jazz and it's a very familiar and enjoyable tone for £120! Certainly prefer this to a recent PJ i was using but hard to qualify why?!

That HiWatt model sounds great on bass though!

Looks like a Sire P7 to me but with a slightly better headstock.

Here’s mine. All wired up. Compressor and 4 way psu in the rear and a nice 1u space to house the DI and wireless cables to pa.

Ashdown Update: I took the amp over there this morning. Quite a pleasant 50 mile drive there surprisingly. Guy had a look at it, put it on the bench and gave it a full service. Said the drive was working but it's a subtle thing, not a gnarly, gritty thing. Replaced the valve for a higher output ecc83 JJ one. Still not a lot of grit so, he modded it with a resistor and a bit of techie magic. Seemed to improve it a bit. He also fixed the mute button issue. Turns out someone had removed the three transistors??? How much did they charge me? Zero, zilch, Nara, nothing. Ashdown, you now have a friend for life. Well done Mark and the gang. And mostly a big thank you to Guy. You sir are a rootin, tootin, troubleshooting superstar.

One problem is where a drummer isn’t really aware of the parts the other members of the band have to play/sing, and the feel of those parts (e.g. in the example above the singer not being able to fit the words in). The more au fait the drummer is with the music/singing, not just their drum part, the more chance you’ve got. Too many drummers IME just think about playing the drums, rather than playing the song, and it doesn’t seem to occur to them that playing the wrong tempo can make other people’s parts difficult or unworkable.

Ooh - it’s beginning to look like a real cab!

Just realised that in French Basschat = the cat who plays bass 🙂

I went over to Stevie’s on Monday to look at the counter on his coil winder. As my cab was almost complete he suggested I take it over and he would measure it. The result was that the response was ruler flat to about 5.5KHz, where there was a slight peak and 7KHz where there was a slight dip. According to Stevie, these could be flattened by tweaking the crossover values and were due to differences in the drivers. So could you hear them? No compared to a studio monitor, also in the room, you could not tell the two apart. What this does show is that unless commercial manufacturers individually tune each and every cabinet, there will be differences. This probably applies to active PA cabinets too.

Here are a few pics of a Fenderbird that Taka, the bass player from Feeder made. Pics from his instagram account, @rebirthcustomguitars. I love its look as im a big fan of the Gibson Thunderbird II basses, and the original Fender precision basses.

"Has no bum notes"? Hand it over pal, I'll find 'em.

Yeah I've got some of them. 😁

Very unkind of his colleagues to make light of a medical problem

Friday night I saw John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett. A great evenings entertainment and unlike anything you've ever seen.

AFAIK the EVO IV is when Ashdown changed the valve drive to be fatter, before that it was more like a subtle nuanced addition

Still showing as £299 pre-ordered from Guitar Guitar, I think most would like to save £100 and wait! Had a brief play, sounds good - only subtle differences to the VTDI and YYZ though, lots of crossover and similar tones to be gotten from all 3 units. Will delve into it more over the coming days.

Well the yellow strat has been finished and has been delivered and the fella is really happy with in fact he paid me more than the agreed price so that’s s bonus!! The skip find is almost ready for spraying, and on a side note I’ve just started making a Les Paul/Tele hybrid (which is for me) it’s going to be orange and it will have a Maple tele style neck and black hardware............. 😀

Just realised that in French Basschat = the cat who plays bass 🙂 Heureusement qu'il n'y a pas de " e " à la fin !!!

That's some ambitious flipping!

And has your tech tried adding a washer or two under the truss rod nut? That may be all that is needed to buy back some more adjustment. As mentioned above you might want to get someone else to look at it.

I have a Nate Mendel P, but the signature aspect was irrelevant - I don't even like the Foo Fighters. I've always steered clear of P basses on account of neck girth. The modern Mexican ones seem to play OK, but feel plastic coated to me. I was interested in the slightly narrower neck and nitro finish. I love it. After years of re-EQing a Stingray in the studio, the P just sits exactly right and despite being passive is actually higher output than the Musicman. It pushes the valve front of my amp very nicely and through a Rat, it just roars.

I suspect rear facing drivers will not be allowed until driverless cabs are allowed.

I have a 2006 SG Bass and I’m not sure how the neck pickup compares to the old EB pickups. I do know I don’t even use the bridge pickup, I don’t know why it’s there.... I also have a Model one I think it’s a “will power” on my other baby.

It'll sound fine that way up, but if I were intending to use it like that all the time, I'd turn the horn round to increase the vertical dispersion of the compression driver/horn. The cab is quite low down and you'll hear more of the important upper mids with the horn reoriented when you are standing close to the cab. Unfortunately, turning the horn round means taking a jigsaw to the baffle, but it's a fairly simple task. The good news is that the horn frontplate is square and you can therefore use the same holes. I'd love to claim that there was a great plan, but the fact that the cab works like this for rack gear is pure serendipity.🙂 Looks good though (although it's definitely going to need four more feet). The question is: where to put the badge?

Loving been introduced to Kinga's work by Q, she is such a fresh and fun and very talented bassist:

Aye and a lot of them urinate all over their Fender counterparts.

Maybe that's an adreneline rush thing if its affecting you in so many different areas of the body. Do you tighten up with stress when playing ? I'm 59 and being in a 70's Glam Rock covers band so platform boots etc but only pains i get are sore fingertips by playing too hard at times. Not every gig, just the ones i'm really getting into. I have heavy amp and cab plus its usually me that helps the drummer with his flight-cased gear. I'm no fitness fanatic but i do walking every other day for 5miles or a little bit of cycling maybe. Someone on BC posted an exercise regime while back that was pretty simple to do and strengthened the core ie stomach and back areas. Sure you might recognise him below but i found this quite helpful.

Time for the yearly airing of my DIY support strap. It started life as a padded tool belt. I velcro-ed on the end of a spare shoulder strap I had, which attaches to the bass with a strap pin in on one of the neck bolts. You can't see anything from the front, and the shoulder strap is there largely as a balance aid. The waist strap takes 80% of the weight. Supports your beer gut too. I'm no spring chicken - 62 years young.

Not exactly a Fenderbird like Peter Cook made them. It's my take on the theme of a hybrid between a classic Gibson and a classic 7ender I call it Telebird:

It’s fair to assume I was talking about drive sounds on the helix considering the thread title. Recreating the SH1 and it’s 7 or 8 controls with the HX stomp should be pretty straightforward what with the assignable eq, global eq, parallel signal paths, hpf, array of amp and cab sims (including the Hiwatt) and drive pedal options. It’s being a tad obtuse to imply I was saying the stomp can recreate ‘any sound’ with enough time spent programming and imagine you were well aware of that you cheeky imp! Anyway following your recent pedalboard thread update I’ll let you get back to programming your Stomp looks like you’ve still a bit of work to do...

Paul responded to a plea for help and sold me (at an extremely reasonable price) a Zoom multistomp. Deal couldn't have gone more smoothly. Top basschatter, top bloke!

Is that the feller from King King? I thought he looked fairly hefty even from the back of the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Mind you, if you think a Strat looks small on him, you should look up Buddy Whittington. Go on; I'll wait.

Salut! Les nouveaux membres francais sont toujours les bienvenus chez Basschat!

If it was me, I would keep as much of the bass the same as possible so no re-spray etc. All of the dings and marks sound like they have been well earned and add to the ‘mojo’ so keep it all as part of the bass’ story. I would source a new high quality blocker neck, Warmoth or Allparts and have all of the decals duplicated which is pretty simple to to. You won’t get the bullet truss rod but it will be really close. i don’t know if you have Instagram but there is a guy on there called Jagged_offset_electric and he gets some beautiful necks and does nitro tints and all that kind of thing and I am sure someone like him would be able to help with decals. So new neck and the rest original for me, then frame the old neck with a load of pictures of you using it or use it as a back scratcher.

Can another some other luthier take a look for you

Harry, forget the GruvGear Duo Strap, I've met you and, like me, you have large shoulders and are tall. Even with the longer Duo Strap to its maximum length, you'll be playing with the bass right under your chin. I bought one and gave it to a friend on the very next day. Furthermore it won't balance the weight at all as you have a serious scoliosis, just like me, minus my other back injuries (66% crippled because of that. Some days I can hardly move)... The strap made by @solo4652 is way far better. When I see my rheumatologist, 3 or 4 times a year, he always looks at my scoliosis saying : Ah yes, it's the young man who makes you dizzy when you look at his back. 🤣 By the way, I'm 54 years old with a completely destroyed back due to a severe car crash in 2009 while making my job as a medical advisor... Concerning scoliosis, we all have one, because we all have a shorter leg. You can live with it without any problem, but being a bassist and having something too heavy on one shoulder will severely exacerbate this scoliosis. Are there solutions? Yes! The obvious one is correcting your posture with adapted exercices and wearing an orthopedic insole to compensate for that spine deviation originated way down under. Making some fitness is certainly a good idea, just like what @Happy Jack is explaining in his video. Avoid classical medication or start looking for a new liver... Playing sitting without any strap is also a very good idea, and using a foot rest with the bass between your legs will release the tensions on the back. If you also have too powerful muscles pulling on your spine, working on your posture is the first thing to do (it's my main problem linked to my heavy scoliosis). Going light is simply mandatory if you still want to play standing. If you decide to make some sport(s), don't run as you'll finish the work and end up in a wheel chair. Swimming or nordic walking are the best choices, but just walking is already very good. Cycling is good too, but not on a Dutch bike as you'll compress your spine disks by the wrong posture (ultra straight vertical spine). So a standard non Dutch bike is best, because leaning forward will release the spine disks pressure. Also avoid all schocks on your spine and remember that your car is your enemy. And go see a nutritionist as food is important too. PM or WhatsApp me if you want more information.

Although undoubtedly an example of a front facing driver, right? 😁

"You'll never play a guitar the same way again.." or words to that effect. The new range is going to be entirely left handed with just one shitty bottom of the range right hander in black only with no options. A small recompense from years of neglecting left handers. That's it, if you want one you have to play it upside down.

This is a killer combination. Love it. Ashdown Little Bastard Two Barefaced One10s ACG Finn 5 Obligatory arty shot

Mine

Not sure if I am in the right thread but here is my new (8 year old) arrival ! All working nicely except the treble control on the stacked bass/treble push/pull for split coil mode control rotates 360 degrees - hmmm! (And yes the Allen grub screw is tight)