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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

Thanks Pete, I've been gigging the G&L ASAT (1991) bass for a while. I finally understand the value and use of the active pre-amp. However changing the 9 volt battery is a pain in the derrière. Blue

Been around a while that one: the guy is one hell of a player.

Here's the bass player - 62 P Bass, D'addario Chromes and Fender Bassman, but who knows what he used in the studio. http://www.richardstudholme.com/equipment.htm

I would consider used. They seem to hold their value pretty well. I'll be getting rid of at least 4 pedals, regardless of which route I go down. Money from them will make up for the john east J retro deluxe i impulse bought this morning!

It’s ok! He wouldn’t go as low as I wanted (quite rightly to be honest) so the early wobble has passed!

If you're tired of Hemel, you're tired of life!

Maybe the programme is becoming like the Xmas dinner at work... people turn up just so they can moan about how sh*te it is.... 😄

This aligns very much with my circumstances. I'm 62 but the figures are more or less the same. Getting music back into my life after a 25-ish year hiatus felt like that bit of me that had been missing all those years was back in place. And I'm not married to Silvie of course.

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!!!

I have to say 'you gets what you pays for' seems to me a dubious proposition at best. The implication that the more you spend the better the quality you receive seldom if ever holds true. Especially in an area of such rampant subjectivity. What I value may be irrelevant to you and vice versa. A piece of kit delivering precisely what I want is better than one which does not. Regardless of what I paid. Reliability? I have literally never spent anything on my Behringer or Bugera amps. Had one since my kids were small. In the same time period I've had Trace, Ampeg, Eden, Markbass, Ashdown all need serious money and time spending on them. I got rid of my Stingray because I straight up didn't like it. But my Harley Benton sounds amazing. To me. Can't measure any of this of course. There may be something only expensive gear can do and that may be the thing somebody needs/wants above all else. If so, yes you need to spend the money. When I toss up between my old patched together Trace box loaded with a speaker from a Behringer cab and my Barefaced, it comes down to the ease of the load in. The weight is the only factor, not sound, reliability, headroom, price, none of it

Let the fun begin!

Litter Tray Sod This Foxtrot Oscar Soiled Nappy Tasty Afterbirth Sorry, my Tourette's is playing up this morning.

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.

I prefer the look of Jazz basses but I always found they do get more lost in the mix. I put flats on mine and boost the upper mids BUT they don't work well in stripped back bands like 3 pieces. Better in a bigger band set up, in my humble opinion.

I reckon you've been watching too many episodes of "World's strongest man" over Xmas...😉😉