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Definitely on the final furlong. Last 'mechanical' bit done - fitting the bridge and making sure it all lines up: I use a couple of old strings to line it all up - you can do it with a long ruler but I find the real thing is more accurate. The double check is that the lipsticks have a centre line - so a rule from the middle of the nut should run right down the middle of all of the dots, along the pickup lines and to the centre of the bridge. To my admitted surprise, it does! Now I can do the final tweak of the pickguard to make sure it is all square with the bridge. And this morning, the electrics and knobs arrived So, still to do: - final tweak of pickguard - sand neck - apply finish to neck (it will darken just a touch) - square up tuners and add back screws - Level, recrown, polish and fret-end the frets - Check the conductivity of the body chamber and copper line if necessary. Copper line the pickguard - Fit the electrics - Final setup The next big project after this is...the bathroom. Oh joy Oh, and just for completeness sake, here's the back:

So. You tweak the bass, bit of treble here and there, roll off some bass .. isn’t that what the knobs are for? I adjust mine nearly every song, it doesn’t make me want to sell it. Think yourself lucky it doesn’t have a parametric eq 😂 The reality is you have 2 awesome and very different basses . Don’t sell it. No rash decisions. You know you’ll regret it! 😉 That’s my 2 pence worth.

My first gig was on 20th November 1966 so next Monday's gig will kick off my 54th year of playing in bands. I haven't liked every gig, every song or every band member but for every negative there have been thousands of positives. Tell me tomorrow we're starting a 6 week tour around Europe living in the back of a van and I'll be waiting on the door step, passport in hand, when the van arrives.

I’ve been giving this a bit of thought and have come to the conclusion that the Hootenanny is a victim of all NYE programming. If you look beyond the musical entertainment broadcast, it’s all just a rehash of the various old codswallop that the broadcasters have been spewing out for years on NYE. It just so happens that this is a forum populated by musicians, so we are always going to focus on the musical programming provided. Basically, we are all being shortchanged, whatever our entertainment preferences at this time of year. We deserve better, but in reality, it’s a real First World problem.

Whatever happened to all basses sounding the same? 🙈

After 33 years and 140+ basses I have discovered that my perfect bass: is made of wood/acrylic/balsa/potatoes/ferrero rocher has 4, 5, 6, 8, or 12 strings is active or passive is shiny matches my stage clothes sounds like a bass

Much as i'd like to agree, I have to say that when I have merely changed one wife for another, people have made a right fuss about it!

I've had this for a few weeks now and still cant get over what a cracking bass and how good a value for money it is. I've had a jazz itch for a while and have tried/bought and sold a couple. But wanted a specific spec e.g. lake placid blue, rosewood board, block markers etc. Was tempted by ether the g&l and Sire with at spec but ended up plumping for the more traditional. Bought it with a bit of black Friday discount from the good folks at PMT Bristol and managed to try it against a 2nd hand Sire and a Mexican Fender they had in and the G&L played and sounded better than both especially considering the Fender was about £250 more expensive. Had an audition for a new band so I took it along with my trusty old yamaha and got the gig and said they'd want me to use the g&l as they loved the look and the tone. I dont know how G&L do the tribute series so cheaply but it is an absolutely cracking bass for £400. I'd absolutely recommend one over any equivalent Fenders.

Not sure if this was posted before, but ive only just come across it.

soooo 2019 mate!

Would ya believe an Aria pro 2 SB900 thru a Trace Elliot combo .. @TheGreek will be wetting his pants

That's what I say about my missus

Makeshift reverse p pick guard made and all is sounding well!

Just uploaded this from my NYE gig - enjoy. Maybe this explain my shallow stage comment earlier - we were pretty much standing on the dance floor!

Now then, now then, now then, let's not be having any trouble, guys and gals. What?

You’d need some balls to take on the mods. Could get you the sack...

There’s a trade offer right there!

Happy New Year

It's all the people who bought Mesa gear in the Guitar Guitar sale now having to sell stuff to pay their VISA bills

One of the biggest drawbacks of luthier built bass is the resale value. Hang on to it - Shukers are way better than Fender in every respect apart from the one just mentioned 😎

That’s it, it’s all over, a) I am now officially an ACG fanboy (although I’m really too old to be an anything ’boy’ but fanman..? I dunno), b) I’m keeping the Harlot. It’s just back from TJC Guitars having been fully set up and restrung with Newtone Platinum Roundwounds and man it sings, no way I’d ever get a bass of its ilk again, it has that undefinable extra something that I suppose we are all looking for in a bass. It’s a GAS killer as far as fretted electric basses go. I’ve a feeling that once I get the short scale bass that @Jabba_the_gut is working on for me I’ll be done... ...mind you, I can’t get @TheGreek’s Psilios bass out of my head? There is no end to GAS is there?

Annoyed pine. 😂

I remember at our most regular pub we used to have to finish at 11:30 on a saturday due to complaints from a local guy. Then one saturday we got to 11:30, we asked the woman who has the pub if we could go a few songs over (we normally did), and she said yes we could, the person who used to complain moved out, a new guy had moved in, and here he was in the crowd!

Yep, musically it's often a kind of indie-rock style somewhere between U2 and Coldplay for example... this isn't Sunday morning, one of the local churches that puts a woman's conference, their Sunday is similar

Stop messing Set and forget keep and play both

68 in two weeks so will have been doing this for 52 years. Hate the gigs that are too far, too late, too tiring when we take ALL the gear. Back gone, knees gone and both wrists shot to pieces so can't really play for a couple of months maybe longer, and get very frustrated with guitarists who constantly change guitars and retune, drummers who speed up and slow down and singers who forget middle 8s. So, what do I do? Ah yes, buy another bass and an Aguilar 4x10 that I won't be able to lift on my own. Being in a band and gigging. Moan about it constantly and hate everything about it but, the realisation that I may not be able to play any more if things don't work out health wise, has filled me with dread because........ it's what we do.

It's not your age, it's the mileage. I was 63 last week, but I've only been a gigging musician for a dozen years so I still get a real buzz out of doing this. The fact that I'm retired means that, far from gigging being hard to fit into my life, I can build my entire life around gigging. Best of all ... Silvie feels the same way!

I used to be in the ‘reggae bass lines are easy, surely’ camp, until I tried playing some. It makes me realise how uptight my style of writing/playing is. I’m off to listen to LKJ.

Well, a good start would be don't book singers who can't sing anymore. After that... It's supposed to be a party show (NYE is the biggest party of the year after all), so maybe, just for one show, don't try to be all cool and edgy and instead get fun, funky party bands. Let the bands play a number of songs on the bounce (like a mini set), give them the opportunity to build up a head of steam and get the crowd really going. The constant switching from genre to genre crashes the flow, even the world's shittest DJ wouldn't plan a set list like that. Plan the night like a DJ set list, bulld the crowd up throughout the night, create a proper party in the studio, it will translate to the viewers at home. Stop the table hopping interviews, it just doesn't work. Maybe have a co-host setup in a corner of the studio, interviewing one guest at a time, prehaps with some prepared, interesting questions. Stop pretending its NYE. Everyone knows its prerecorded. Imho it harms the integrity of the show as well as the atmosphere in the studio. TV is fake enough as it is, adding another layer of blatent falsity does nothing except expect everyone to buy into a lie, which no-one does and, I feel, is a big reason why the show feels so forced.

I have wound down gigging with the covers bands I played in, I just got sick of so many aspects of gigging. 1. The same old crap covers that everyone expects at big function, sex on fire, brown eyed girl, anything by the bloody Beatles 2. Crap pay; no one wants to pay anything decent for a band unless it’s a wedding. I earned more playing gigs when I was 16 than I do now at 36. 3. Wedding gigs are just a massive pain in the derrière, they take all day most of the time, your crammed into a corner and have to put up with a DJ with an overinflated ego and sense of self importance who thinks he should be in the middle of the space assigned for the band. 4. Young people rarely want to watch bands in my experience, in fact to sum up a conversation I heard at work with younger folk than me ‘if they see a band of “old men playing old music” we just turn around and leave’. 5. I’m sick of playing to seriously whizzed up older folks who think walking on stage with the band and trying to sing is a good idea and then later ‘dance’ so out of control that they fall over the floor monitors and knock over all the kit. 6. Drunk people asking over and over again for songs you don’t and can’t play. That’s just a few.....and sadly the thrill of playing and a little applause and a few quid at the end of the night doesn’t outweigh the crap above and being away from my family at weekends. I am sure I will change my mind and miss it at some point but for now I’m good.

I'll have you know I could easily beat Hafthor in a amp lift-off! 💪

Finally, it appears someone took a short video but no photos What The Funk ( us ) at NYE Buckingham move on up.mp4

I haven't forgotten the build diary I started for the Matt Freeman body, but I haven't found the right bit of wood so it's on the back burner for now. I'm going to do something much more interesting in the meantime. This bass is going to be made mostly of walnut, with a maple fretboard and some other maple detailing. 4 string, 34" scale - I'll be using it for Drop Bb tuning in the metal band I've just joined, with Ernie Ball Beefy Slinky strings. It'll have through body stringing and a similar open headstock to my last build. I'm going semi hollow again but with a more modern "f-hole" style the last one. The body will be single cut, which I know is not great for balance, but I've wanted a tele-ish bass for a while and I'm determined to give it a go. The neck will be pretty slinky and I'll try and make the headstock/tuners nice and light to mitigate it. I'm going to use two jazz pickups wired in series, out of curiosity more than anything else - probably wired to just a single volume pot - this bass will not be required to do a whole lot in the way of of subtlety. But the most exciting part for me is that I'll be making the pickups myself this time. I cobbled together a P-Bass pickup a few weeks ago, totally winging it and using a power drill for the winding, and was very surprised to find that a: it works and b: it pretty much sounds like a P-Bass pickup, albeit not an amazing one. I had no way to accurately count the turns, so did it by eye, but have since discovered an app for my phone that can count the turns by sensing a magnet stuck to the chuck of the drill as it passes. What amazing times we live in! There's not much to see except a rough drawing for now, but I have most of the wood so will start in earnest this weekend.

Another shortie kiss.mp4

Ideal three bass sounds you want... something that can sound like a precision, something like a jazz and something like a stingray. Plus animal based wallpaper to match at least one of your basses

That's grooving along nicely 👍

Brilliant suggestions already. I had a 2011 iMac (pretty sure it was 2011). I upgraded the 1TB standard hard drive to a 900Gb SSD. A super fast and quality offering (Samsung). I also updated the memory - and despite Apple’s suggestion it would max at 16Gb, a web search confirmed it would take much more and thus 32Gb is the minimum I would go for when it comes to studio work. The machine worked beautifully! interestingly as Ped has said, the upgrade was fairly easy and I was able to leave the existing drive in the iMac as well as installing the SSD. I know how to do that anyway, but there are some really good “walk through” guides online that are reliable. You ask about swapping drives: I used CarbonCopy - and amazing application that allows you to make an exact copy of a disc on to another. Then it’s just a case of setting the new SSD as the drive to boot from in the system settings menu. I’ve forgotten the name of the menu! If you can, eventually, I would back up all your data and format the drive, install everything from fresh with a “new” vanilla OS. Sometimes a machine slowing down is caused by a profile issue, corruption or similar. (Has happened to me). That said, CleanMyMacX is actually rather good and I expect it can do a lot to help. Finally, one last thing to try as well - Create yourself a new user account on the iMac to log in to and see if the machine seems to run quicker. This is related to the above as it was a profile issue that screwed up the running of my iMac.. but the upgrades ended up being the best thing I did for it. Ok, so I eventually sold the machine to go “mobile” with my MacBook Pro.. some years later, I have another iMac on my desk 😂😂😂😂 love it, it’s so ridiculously fun.

Hi everyone Andy from Leeds, been playing for last 40 years. Played in rock/punk/hardcore bands throughout that time. Self taught but only really started learning in last few years. Currently using Jericho alpha bass and tc electronic amps and cabs. Currently using d'addario xl160's.

@BrunoBass its OSX El Capitan Well, @ped @ezbass I've taken the dive and and bought a years worth of CleanmyMAC, £22, worth a try! It does seem to be behaving better, not making dodgy constant HDD noises! It cleared 40.5GB of Junk, 35 threats and 3 performance issues. Ive just bought 8GB of Apple RAM too (its only capable of accepting 16GB).

“Build” diary on back of fag packet.

The bass is just a standard Fender Precision American Standard from a couple of years back, but frankly I just wanted to show off my new pick guard from alperious.com as I absolutely love it!!!

Let the fun begin!

There's no such thing as one ring to rule them all - different basses sound better in different rooms/mixes/bands. You've got two stunning basses, use the right one for the right circumstance and know you've got the other for a different situation.

Just listened to a gig where I used my jazz. has totally put me off track as I thought the modulus flea was a better fit...reality is that the jazz sounds loads better in the band setting. errrmagehherd....😳

Isn't it because on a Jazz bass there are 2 pickups picking up each string in different locations so when they're added together some of the frequencies get cancelled out while on the P bass, even though the pickup comes in 2 pieces wired together, each string is only being picked up at one location? I think that's more to do with it than series/parallel thing because you can wire J pickups in series and it sounds very different but not like a P. It's a possible option for the OP though - to either wire the pickups in series or even add a switch that switches between that and normal. Favouring one of the pickups rather than having both on full might also help cut through. P.S. I'm jealous you have the Flea Jazz - I see it every time I'm in the guitar shop and it just looks so beautiful. I fear by the time I can afford to buy it they'll be out of production.

I play bass in our church band and am on a rota with all the other musicians. I get to play about once or twice a month and the band line-up changes each time. We do not have a rehearsal during the week but get together about an hour before the Sunday service to run through the songs - generally about 4 or 5 - and ensure we are all playing from the same hymn sheet! We play a mix of hymns and more modern worship songs to a mostly young congregation of about 120 people. The church attracts many students and young families and we are blessed with some good musicians. We have three keyboard players, three violinists, two oboe players, several flute players, three semi-acoustic guitarists, a couple of drummers and even a trumpeter/saxophonist when needed, plus several vocalists. We don't all play at the same services so that members have the chance to enjoy the meeting without the pressure of playing every week and it also prevents a clique from forming. At 69 years of age I am the second oldest member of the music group and it is really great to be able to play music and have some fun with the younger people in the group. I would like a mid-week rehearsal but there is so much going on at our church there is not time to fit one in! At our Christmas Carol service I found that two of the carols I had been playing at home were in a different key to the rest of the band. Not only that but we all had variations on the words too. That made things "interesting"! I have no control over my sound as the bass is plugged direct into a DI box and fed through a mixer at the back of the hall. Again, we have a rota of mixer operators and some of them don't understand fold-back. I am squashed into a corner between the keyboard and drums and am also behind the speakers so cannot hear how the bass is sounding. To make up for not getting a mix from the system I use a 'Y' connector to feed my bass into the DI box and also into small street busker's amp at my feet. At least then I can hear myself. As has already been mentioned, the main thing is to enable the congregation to sing and praise. It is not a performance and I always try to hit the root note in every chord change. I am not a brilliant bass player by any means but most church songs tend to concentrate on about three chords - usually Eb Bb and F with the odd C and G thrown it for interest. Root and fifth or an ocassional arpeggio are all that is often needed. There are one or two songs that I have been able to put more in but "Less is more" is often best. When playing in a church band park your ego at the door. Play as well as you can to honour the songs and God but remember it is not a show and you are not the star. I sometimes watch American "super church" bands on YouTube and they look more like rock concerts than church meetings. A different culture I suppose. Enjoy the experience and play well but do it with humility. The attached photo is from our Christmas Carol service which was held in a local secondary school/academy and open to everyone. There were over 200 people there singing carols then eating mince pies and drinking mulled wine (non-alcoholic!). The photo is a 'still' taken from a mobile phone video while we were rehearsing. I took my jumper off for the event itself but I think the picture shows me trying to work out why the chords I'm playing don't match everyone else's!

I’ve managed to find a real nice Ripper in Washington DC so I’ve bought it tonight👌👍