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Glorious, that is all, I've always felt that P/Js lack a little something, P/Ps are clearly where it's at. And wow, Fender Custom Shop build quality in every respect.

New year, new gig, and a fortuitous opportunity to buy back the bass I custom ordered from Modulus in 2007, at the time because it was the more cred (compared to the sparkly finishes) of Flea's basses to my eye. It's great to have it back, didn't realise how much I;d missed having a Modulus around the place Walshy, thanks so much mate The bass..... And why I love this bass (apart from the fact that it's bloody awesome to play)....

Finished and set up now. The EMG JAX are fantastic. Combine those with the BQS and there's tons of tone on tap. I am so please with the result. Apart from the satin finish, it feels as nice as my Fender Elite. And sounds better. On to the next build now!

As promised, here's a couple pix of the bass that caused my early retirement from this year's challenge. I am sure that once you've all seen this, you'll agree it was perfectly understandable.

Just bought this from our very own @JPJ. Was delivered to the hotel I'm staying at in Geordie Land. Playing it through my Vox headphone amp and Phil Jones cans, it sounds thunderous. Can't wait to get home tomorrow and fire up my Ashdown ABM 500 and scare the crap out of the neighbours.

Tell me about it... An example of my “finer" work...

Oh...and there's also a whole magazine all about playing in church....it's bang up to date and includes advice for the tech team, bass player and drummer... https://www.worshipmusician.com

Right I am out. 2 trade deals this morning, collected tomorrow. Glad I managed a whole 6 days. Same time next year 😂

Let’s face it compression live is like wearing a belt with your trousers. Generally most folks don’t need a belt, trousers on their own work just fine but some of us like to feel everthing just tightened up a little, be it a security thing or you just feel better in a belt. Will anyone know you’re wearing one or will anyone really care. That’s unlikely! Now if the soundman is the tailor he’s always gonna recommend a belt. “Yes yes sir you might not feel the need but trust me sir It’ll tie the whole look together!” Now some tailors might suggest braces but generally they’re overkill unless you want the effect too.

IMHO, after factory set up, every instrument should be looked at once they have settled wherever they are going to be sold (shop etc). The "final" set up here should be, as FDC suggests a middle ground where the set up is as low as it can be but still allow for no buzzes, rattles and produce a good tone. Everyone then will know the action can go higher to suit them. Conversely, when taking an instrument off the hook whose action is sky high, well, the alarm bells start ringing. Why? well, just one example would be that a much higher action at the bridge could suggest a problem with the finish of the fretwork. Lifting the action higher can hide those poorly installed frets causing rattle like nobody's business. Buyer won't know this until they have got the bass home for a tweak. So, if a bass plays badly off the hook, there's a good chance I will leave it, unless a set up is offered for free. Like FDC says, if I want to buy a new car, there's a difference between just having to move the seat back/ adjust the mirrors, verses the clutch biting point being right at the top of the pedal travel, or the headlights facing the sky.

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

To me, what makes the Motown sound is, of course, The Funk Brothers, but especially the great coherence in the mix that's makes everything out of the "factory" listenable on whatever source available at the time, which means poor radio broadcasting, poor low-fi record players, even poorer quality jukeboxes and ultra low bandwidth and quality radios, without forgetting the slightly becoming available car radios with even poorer sound quality. That was the Motown tour de force : the coherent and clever mixes making their records listenable and enjoyable on whatever you used to listen to them.

Hi all, Spoofa here, from up Newcastle way. Only just started tinkering the other week on my mates bass, and got hooked. Just ordered my own Bass & Amp and I'm looking forward to getting to learn. If anyone can suggest any YouTube / websites / books would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Spoofa.

I went into a large, well know, music store over the weekend to get rid of one of my basses (for a very good price surprisingly!), naturally while I was there I had a play on a few basses, and naturally gravitated towards the more expensive side of things! I played 3 different basses, all between £1400 and £2000 in price, and I was utterly disappointed with all of them! Each one clearly had absolutely no kind of set up whatsoever, the action on all of them was sky high, the fit and finish of two of them was really quite poor and they just felt cheap in hand... The fit and finish isn't the stores fault, but I would really expect the store to look at the 'delivery set up' of these expensive basses and adjust them where necessary, the Ibanez I played (which had a price tag of £1399) was borderline unplayable. I know action is reasonably subjective, but this was silly... In order to sell these basses, surely they need to present them in a manner that befits the price they are asking? As mentioned, the finish was particularly poor too, the rear of the bass looked pitted with noticeably uneven lacquering. The other two basses weren't much better, one being a Dingwall, which I was surprised at. With the Ibanez, if I was blindfolded, given it to play and then asked how much I though it was worth, I would have absolutely said sub £200 at a push. I was considering putting it down to being a bit spoilt in terms of what I'm used to playing, but I don't think that's the case as I have a mid-nineties Tanglewood Baron 6 string bass, and have owned a couple of Cort A6 basses and the build quality and general finish and tone (particularly on the Tanglewood) is remarkably good, better than some well know, eye-wateringly expensive basses I've played and FAR better than the three I played over the weekend by several country miles. Has anyone else experienced this? Playing 'expensive' instruments and being left utterly underwhelmed and somewhat surprised at the general lack of quality? Maybe the three I played were just not great examples, but I suspect that isn't the case.

Meant to post this a little while back, but forgot. We did a charity gig in St. Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle, and were joined by a choir for a few tunes. Obviously the acoustics are astonishing (and challenging), and it was gorgeous.

Blimey gov - I need to find out the name of your establishment! I got home at 3am having dropped our singer off at her place first!

I got a new Dingwall 5 string from Bass Direct just over a year ago - set up was perfect for me and the thing was perfectly in tune straight out of the box. Mucho respect to BD!

I spend more time arranging it than playing through it...

My mémoire about the subject, published in May 2001, is still there, if you understand French. Second time this Audiovox #736 is coming back to BC. By the way check out Igor Saavedra work with his ERB 8 strings. Here it is : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14bent_Two9apqU44qPxGepgRFpsl0DaI?usp=sharing

Just a thought you could use the inlay dots as the metering lights... I’ve gone too far!

I firstly listened back to the original to be sure that I heard what was "wrong". Just a few things in fact, and I only used the Mastering Rig in WaveLab with two modules (Equailzer and Saturator) as I only needed a few "things". I started by attenuating a bit the frequencies at 6 kHz as they were really hurting my ears (that's the weakness of almost all modern recordings, just like as if people couldn't hear these frequencies anymore) with a very narrow Q (to be natural), then I slightly boosted the 120 Hz region (again with a very narrow Q) because it's the frequency of the low end and rolled off all the lows below 70 Hz and all the highs above 14 kHz in a nice bell form (to get in line with the bandwidth of those days). After that I used a tape saturation simulation by large regions +3dB's in the lows, + 2dB's in the low mids, +1 dB in the high mids, and letting the highs flat, so emulating the way a tape can act in the real life when the view meters are going in the red, not necessarily back in the days. This saturation being part of the sound itself. As I told earlier, it's all about ears and knowing what is "wrong". They made a terrific recording and mastering work, but forgot how tapes were sounding and the poor quality of the reproducing material of the (late) 60's. In fact, they simply made a too modern mix. Then I mastered it to avoid any peak and that's all. I made it very quickly yesterday evening and listened back to it today (ear fatigue is a b*tch) and asked my wife to listen to it and she said : "Send it to these guys !", so I sent it here instead. 😉 In fact, it started as a challenge as I showed to my wife the work done by these musicians and this sound engineer telling her what was "wrong" and she simply said : "Make it better, then". So I had to...

I think I've worked out what it is I don't like about Bartolinis, they make rounds sound like flats!

You aren't seriously asking this? Flippant answer, as has been proved on here countless times almost all bassists are not capable of dialing in a compressor to save their lives, and don't really know what they are for anyway. They are the devils work. Given that, why put one in a bass, its at least one, maybe two more batteries to do well, and where are you going to put the metering required to do it properly also (another battery for the 16 leds). Or are you seriously suggesting a 1 knob monstrosity? Cos they virtually all sound like utter shite anyway given they cant be set up right for the bassist. Another point though is that there is almost certainly no string to electronic signal transducer (pickup) that is absolutely linear. So the pickups are almost certainly already compressing (because expansion seems incredibly unlikely) the signal to a degree anyway. Kind of like using a ribbon mic to record metallic percussion, the ribbon is too heavy to be fast enough to perfectly capture the transient, so it in fact works like a rather splendid physical compressor/limiter. As used on all the Michael Jackson recordings by the legend Bruce Swedien...

I 'found' £900 in a drawer at home. Christmas bonus plus remains of amp sale end of last year. Not sure it will hit the bank before its allocated to something i dont need lol.

Two pedals sold. An unsolicited offer for my poshest bass (I'm not going to accept!). 4 paid gigs for Jan (if I'm allowed to include NYE in that number), all helping build up the kitty for 2021 nicely No GAS in sight. Next BIG danger on the horizon...NAMM 2020

Demo's finally up! I'm intrigued. The concept is right up my street. Most of the tones on offer here are way OTT for my needs but the sound at 1:30 is very promising.

Hey! This is a great thread!! I've played bass almost exclusively in church for 30 years (had a sheltered life!) and I agree with a lot of the advice that's been offered already so I won't go over old ground...just a few things... It's definitely a thing that the key matters! For this reason I started to use an iPad app called OnSong - it's a bit pricey but I used it for years as my digital songbook, as did the lead guitarist in the band. It transposes with a tap. Do be sensitive to the audience (congregation I guess is the word) - it's an unusual gig because there are babies and old folk and everyone in between in the same room. Invest in some Subs if your sound set-up doesn't already have them. And then talk really nicely to the sound guys about what kind of sound you're looking for...I spent some years working with some sound guys who had me so low in the mix that I may as well have stayed home, that was until we agreed that bass is more about frequency than volume!! Rehearse with the drummer, if you have one - get to know how you both deal with changes in tempo, sudden shifts from verse to chorus, ad libs, etc... Don't forget that you own the root! Whatever you do in between, try to keep the root note solid because the congregation need all the help they can get to keep in the right key.... If you have an organ or cellist, or even a competent pianist, you really need to speak to them about who plays which parts. I had a great relationship with the cellist in a church I was in - she was very happy indeed to let me take the bass parts that she'd been holding down before I arrived. And don't forget that any organist worthy of playing a church organ will be pretty handy (feety) with the bass pedals and they have a lot of power but not much clarity - so rather than compete with them, get used to enjoying the middle range. Playing in church is where I learned to use and came across IEM's, Ableton live & logic, click tracks, synchronised videos, lighting rigs, smoke, feedback destroyers, 6x15 (x2) subwoofers!. I've also had the privilege of playing in every set-up from 1 guitarist through to a band with two drummers, percussionist, horn section, choir, 2 x electric, 2 acoustic guitar, string section.... Also - there's some excellent new church music out there that is pretty contemporary...don't limit yourself!! (It's been a long long time since I've played what most would recognise as a hymn!) Let us know how you get on...

No coherent difference! It's the same company (Shiro Arai Co), they adopted the Pro II suffix in the mid 70s, probably around the time they started pushing original designs alongside copies. Don't think there's any real differentiation, modern Arias seem to use both brands pretty much interchangeably.

It might get a bit confusing what with all the controls. One could be looking at at least 4 or 5 stacked pots, maybe push/pull pots too and switches especially if combined with an active circuit. I know some folk can struggle getting to grips with the most basic of active/passive set ups and this would be quite daunting for some! It could all get very confusing and as identified above no one really needs a compressor. The other question is do you think you’d have gravitated towards an instrument with these features? I know of one brand of on board eq which features a drive which seems like an easier to execute/more useful feature for the masses but that’s for another thread!

I don't know, I've never paid for a set up. It's one of the simplist things in the world to do so I'd never pay someone, hence why I said, "or whatever it costs".

They’ve probably been unpacked and put straight out on display. This is why I like Bass Direct. Everything I’ve ever played there has been looked at and setup prior to going on display. It might not be set up how I want it, but we’re all different. The Bass Gallery is the same.

As many as they think they will shift. Not too keen on their videos, but the bass guys were pretty positive on the same day on the same subject. Mind you, they normally are. Also their videos are mainly about the look.. maybe they weren't blue denim enough for them The more I look at them (the basses, not the anderton people), the more I want one, so I hope they don't turn out to be disappointing.

Indeed he was. Shame about his self destructive hobbies We do 2 covers of GSH's songs, namely Lady Day 'n John Coltrane and The Bottle

The only real question is - how come Eastwood haven't knocked out a shonky Chinese copy, priced up at £1200?

Measure it so there’s about 7 or 8 centimetres past the tuner, make a bend in the string, then cut about a centimetre past that. The bent bit goes into the tuner. You only really need a couple or three wraps around the tuner.

I always cut strings to measure, no matter what type they are. Low Bs and Es are almost always too thick/long for their tuning pegs otherwise.

They were in a loudness war with the Beatles. Loudest single sounded the best on a jukebox. An HPF meant you could cut louder without the bass popping the needle out of the groove....

Refin on the way. My '97 USA P is due back to me next week from David Wilson who stripped the original black and repainted LPB. Here's some WIP shots from David - interesting that under the very tough poly black (factory original as I know the bass's history from new) it was sunburst - so even in the 90's Fender were still repainting bodies when they had their colour stocks wrong. I did find the original black amazingly resilient. I'd given it some fairly serious knocks over time and never broke through the black surface. Anyway, it's now nitro LPB so much less tough, a lot less paint on it so it might be a little more alive and rather more delicate. More pics later.

My absolute pride and joy

I was largely immune to his charms until I heard this: love the mix of industrial and blues, and the fact that he was pushing the boundaries in making new music - great album. Sadly his last - I would have loved to hear what he did next

Good to see you managed to bag the SMX @bigthumb 👍

Two covers with keyboard which I may have forgotten to post.

I went into the shop to pick up a Gretsch that was being worked on, while waiting a 5 string winked at me, it got plugged in and I just had to pluck that fat string. The heavens parted. I muted the string because I was overloading. Other guitars in the room were still singing and some racking was still rattling. There were three of us in the car on the way home. Its all about the B.....