Leaderboard

15 years as my #1. In that time it’s seen off Alembics, Marleaux, Smith, Fender, Bossa, Bacchus, Musicman, Fender, Pedulla, Carvin.. even other Vigiers!! It’s comfy like an old jumper.

Here's my recently acquired Elite P sporting its new black scratchplate. Looks far better than the stock pearl IMHO.

Thanks guys. I pre-finished the fingerboard, pre-polished the frets before pressing them in. I will polish again after levelling.

Finally after a year of waiting I finally received my custom order MTD. Can quite safely say it's the best instrument I have ever set my hands on. Playability, tone is unreal and it looks incredible. Also incredibly light! I am now hooked.. already scouring the web for more...

I Wish by Stevie Wonder - if you breathe wrong while playing that...it’s game over.

BREAKING NEWS: BASH RESCHEDULED 🎸 I am pleased to report that the new date for this year's Big Fat South-West Bass Bash is Sunday 11th October BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!! 😎

With every new development another excuse for bad playing gets taken away from me!

In these troubled times we need to entertain ourselves with some frivolous chat. So, what’s the bass you pick up and noodle on to practice & write? Here’s mine, a MM Jap jazz with an East implant.

I often get to work on much nicer instruments, but for some reason I've always been drawn to old, not overly commonplace these days, budget or tat equipment. I also like rescuing unloved instruments in general. Often putting in a good number of hours. So I thought I would write about some of those that pass through my hands as they come along. And I'm bored! So introducing this Hohner arbor mx1, I believe 1987. Also known as the sb420. Korean cort factory made. I enjoy it so much that I recently pulled the sale of this, in case some might of seen it on a certain auction site. I believe these were a precursor to the marlin series or ran alongside or one above the marlin range. Maybe someone knows better? As in the very late 80s I was 6. No idea about the original price. On average these can be picked up for about £60 now it seems. I suppose it's the sort of instrument you would have as your first bass and so I'm guessing there were some bad ones about as well as the better built ones. These are not sort after at all, I think the marlin range gets a bad rep, however the arbor range get a tiny bit more respect, well 6 strings do at least. I think it has a bit of retro cool about it. If I seen one gigged though, I would wonder why would you do that lol. Specs. Birch ply body, very heavy. Candy apple red. Maple neck, 21 frets, rose wood board and 42 mm nut. Precision style front pu, double jazz, mm style rear pu. Vol, vol, tone. Bought a bit unloved, and it was a bit dusty, some kinda filth smeared about, possibly mud and some other brown smearing! Haha. Clearly been well played in its past has some nice patina, a lot of nice front pu cover wear. Came with random rusty strings. Good neck with zero issues, working truss rod. There was a good bass waiting to emerge. Initial Work done. Cleaned!, fret leveling and recrown, polish, although the frets were not too bad. Board oiled with boiled linseed oil, the board was thankfully not absolutely dry and knackered. Setup. Good strings, kindly donated by a fellow basschat member. Some little dints and scraps drop filled. Bridge saddle screws needed cutting down as they stuck up despite the neck pocket having a shim, possibly from the factory. It setup very well and I find easy to play. Although I do find the g slightly close to the fret board edge, although It isn't, just my bad technique means I prefer the g to be a touch further from the edge. Plugged in, disappointing, thin and a bit weak sounding. Opened up the cavity. 500k vol, vol, tone mini pots. Interestingly found an old active buffer which wasn't actually attached. Looks like there may of been other mods done, treble bleeds, could of been from the factory. Non factory I believe tone cap fitted. So I clipped out all the rubbish and used the existing pots and wires, to make a simple standard jazz style circuit with 047 cap. Big difference! Much more output and not weak. Plenty of tones in there, some not so useable and some really good, gets a lovely growl. 500k pots so it can get very bright. Front pu is the better and seems ok constructed, typical p tone. Rear pu is x2 single coil jazz style side by side. Bit too scooped sounding for me on it's own, can get a lovely growling tone. Was found to be slightly microphonic. So I opened it up. Brass shielding plate revealed probably one of the cheapest pu construction I've see. Solid magnet across pole pieces on a,d and g. Snapped bits of magnets on the pole pies on the e string. Very cheap bobbin construction. All glued in place. I wax potted as best I could the whole assembly. Which improved things. However I couldn't get the string volume balance i like on the rear pu. I will add washers to the pole pieces. Front pu no issues. So tone sorted. What I like is the ergonomics it's a very easy bass to play, despite the weight of the ply body. Neck is lovely despite my preference for jazz necks. Hardware is a slight step up from budget, it's still holding up very well after 30+ years. I love the body colour and matching headstock, I also like the retro hohner headstock branding. Neck backplate is good quality and a nice touch. Thinking about upgrading the rear pickups and fitting 250k cts pots. Next adventure in cheapo basses I hope to have some proper jap crap maybe lawsuit or something really pants from the catalogue. Some prices are on the rise so need suggestions for something cheap and interesting. Also wouldn't mind something eastern bloc.

Always unplug, no matter what. The input jack closes a circuit - and uses battery power - even when you're set to passive.

I'm a freelance with two roles. 1) I run training courses for businesses on business writing skills, editing, proofreading and such like. 2) I edit books for a couple of publishers. As with the freelance musicians, engineers etc on Basschat, my future training work has evaporated in the space of a fortnight. Every client has cancelled. Every. One. Oh well, just as well the missus has a salary (for now) and can work from home. Cheers!!! :-) Graham

Hi Jean Marie, I’m not sure if you have had a look through Chris’s tabs , there may be something there for you to practice, his work is first class 🙂

1/64" plywood - one of the marvels of the 20th/21st century world. I have no idea how they make it and when it was first developed (I suspect a long, long time ago - early 20th century?) but I've used this for decades. And now it finds good use in guitar and bass building: Ideal to provide stability to my brittle wenge: The headstock board is also cut ready to glue to the headstock, although I might add a couple of swifts before I prepare the headstock and glue it. Tom's special cutout will be filed once it's glued and once I have hold of the tuners he's ordered to position them properly. Once done, it should look pretty similar to the Mk 1 version below:

If you want to support your favourite artists on Bandcamp during the current situation, consider buying something from them on Friday 20th when Bandcamp will be giving 100% of the sales revenue to the artists and not taking their usual share. This runs from midnight to midnight Pacific Time (that's from 7.00am Friday 20th to 7.00am Saturday 21st GMT). Any Basschatters with music on Bandcamp please post your links here.

If you like D'Addarios then I would advocate for EXL170BTs, a balanced tension nickel wound set. I have these on all my fretted basses and am a real fan of both the feel and the sound.

I just checked the invoice and it’s been 4 years since I had this bad boy built... Maruszczyk Elwood L, fretless, 33” scale.

Lakland USA 5594 Deluxe. A bass that will keep me happy for a very long time..

Thinking Of You (Sister Sledge) has always been a bit of a white-knuckle experience for me. Lots of slippery staccato notes that need careful muting... and then there's a couple of big sections with no bass, perfect for letting the mind wander and then being taken by surprise when it starts up again!

Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. The first time we played it I had a horrible moment of onstage terror halfway through the prior song, but it went OK in the end. We couldn't really hack it convincingly though, so it got dropped after a couple more performances.

I do exactly the same thing with that song!

I used to regularly get some bit of Sweet Child wrong, perhaps 'cos it was our encore number and after 2 hours late at night with a pub full of drunken air guitarists, I (mostly) got away with it - although very little escapes the attention of our drummer! Recently the guitarist got the intro muddled and it was very much an "at last it's not me" moment!! Two tracks I kinda enjoyed but found very demanding were Keep the Faith by Bon Jovi and Higher and Higher - Jackie Wilson. Certainly the Wilson riff wasn't particularly technically difficult but maintaining just one riff metronomically precise for 4 mins was quite a challenge, for me anyway! We've not played them live yet but I think Muse's Hysteria, Duran Duran Rio and quite a few Jamiroquoi numbers will require a fair bit of work to nail.

The beginning of sweet child was my nemesis for years! No idea why... the most complicated bass line we play now is probably Never too much, although I love it I don’t dread it! Somebody else’s guy used to send dread through me, Stevie wonders I Wish, took some getting used to as well. What yours?

Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Not technically difficult but got to get the feel and timing right and remember the solo bits which one starts in where on the Fretboard. And hope the guitarist and drummer also get it right, or if we get anything wrong we all make the same mistake together!

Four thumb rests ? Are you from Norfolk?

We've just killed the full programme through to the end of April, which on top of cancellations means we won't be playing again until 2nd week in May. Somewhat gutted but as one band member has a partner who is at risk the decision was absolutely necessary. Fortunately I'm not dependent on the [meagre] income but I have every sympathy with those far more affected than myself. Unfortunately the day job is looking in jeopardy in the same way as it must be for half the population.......... That aside, on the positive, I'll be spending the next 6 weeks putting together my astrophotography rig and hoping for some clear skies....and chain watching Netflix, Amazon Prime.

A pleasure to deal with Paul. We didn't actually meet but used @cetera as an intermediary, both he and I employing strict quarantine discipline. Thanks Paul you're a fine Basschatter and a fine human to boot Similarly thank you @cetera hopefully next time I'll be able to shake your hand. 😷

Have you got a gate on the input? also go here for a starting point on the amp models. http://drtonelab.com/lab/balanced-eq/ even if it’s too clean and flat sounding you are at least tweaking from that place!

A sensible attitude. They are a much loved animal in the UK, but probably the one with teh greatest offensive capability. And ours live in big families, not like your US loners... They're coming for you Blue...

Those that do RTFM become god like on websites like this lol.

Sorry to hear that you're isolated away from your family mate, that's a toughie. Have you tried working them out by ear at all? I don't know your level of ability but it will help no end to pick things out by ear. A lot of Northern Soul records were US imports from Tamla Motown (the label name we got on these shores) and the bass was mixed well and pumping! Should be easy to pick out. Great idea for isolating /lock down by the way. If we can't go out, stay in and dance! Uplifting vibes needed now more than ever! Dancehall Ska would be a another positive style to get bopping to. Good luck friend.

It would be interesting to know how much Bass Bashes contribute to the UK economy by fueling additional purchases of new gear.

I always did think that RTFM was over-rated, just shortens the shelf-life of kit. Ignorance is bliss, right? 😁

Took a couple of pics this afternoon of me 60s Jazz...

Hilarious punter vocal contribution on Saturday night...turn the volume up and have a listen. He was blitzed when we arrived at 7.30pm and could just about stand up at about 10pm when this little gem happened :-)

This thread could go viral

+1 D’Addario EXLs are really nice strings. Certainly a good place to start.

A quintet of swifts cut out of my last bit of MoP… Two for the 12th fret: Glued in with epoxy mixed with fretboard sanding dust: And three for the headstock:

I have a stream of Lemonrock emails with gig cancellations on them

Steinberg, Dorico 3 SE is free. It only has two Instrument tracks, but perfect for what you want. Notation and Tab. There is a Dorico tutorial channel on YouTube, so you will be up and running pretty quickly. https://new.steinberg.net/dorico/se/

We have seen them three times. Each time the sound has been rotten. Fair enough you may say, as the venue might be prone to that but Halestorm and Shinedown had great sounds and they were on the same bill. The second time we were standing pretty much in line with the mixer. It's a shame because I love Black Stone Cherry.

Actually wanted to be either a rockstar or footballer. But I’ve just gone with “the flow”, having a very understanding wife, and one step somehow has connected with the next step. Never been happier going to work each day. Rockstar/footballer/therapist? I would end up seeing grown men cry one way or another 😊

The block plane was originally made for flattening butchers blocks, hence the name or so legend has it . If the use is endgrain then the mouth size is irrelevant as there are no chips to break, it's all short grain shavings. The really cool thing about these planes is that the bevel on the iron is uppermost so the cutting geometry is variable a shallow angle (25 degreed iron vevel and iron angle combined)) for endgrain or a steeper one(40-45) for long grain or a very steep one (50-55) for very difficult woods like east Indian Satinwood. You don't need a regrind for the angle change just hone at the different angle, that's all you need but a regrind will more than likely be needed if you need to hone at a shallower angle than the last hone if that makes sense. If you're hollowing you need to change your planing technique. At the start of the cut press down on the front of the plane and transfer the pressure as the plane moves forward. You don't actually push the plane as such but lock your arms to your sides and rock forwards keeping your eye over the mouth of the plane. It should be done quite slowly so you keep absolute control over the shaving, it should come off full width for the whole length of the wood once it's flat. An hour practising should see you set for life. Precise work needs a different mindset to hanging a kitchen door, speed comes from getting it right first time not doing it quickly, gossamer thin shavings you can see through are what you should be seeing. Once you can do that (and it's not hard) you can do anything

Here's my new to me Spitfire to go with my Rumour. The video doesn't do the finish justice but gives you the idea. MVI_0218.MP4