Leaderboard

https://www.kennysmusic.co.uk/yamaha-sessioncake-sc-01-mixing-headphone-amp-for-guitar-bass Great deal if you’re stuck at home and want a quiet noodle!

Friday: scroll down for another! A glimpse of Utopia - from Rhinos Winos & Lunatics Poulseur – pronounced ‘pulls hair’ – is a little village in Belgium; 15 houses, a church, a bridge, a bar, and a large, civic building. Set picturesquely on the banks of a wide, slow-running river, I have yet to find it on a map. We arrived there on a blazing hot August day. It was in the middle of a two-week tour of the Low Countries we undertook straight after the Plymouth bust. It was late afternoon and the sun was having a final blast before knocking off for the day. Bits of white fluff – which I assumed to be some sort of plant-life – hung, motionless, in the still, heavy air. An occasional bee managed to summon up a perfunctory buzz. Of human life, there was no sign. We pulled up outside the large civic building, assuming it to be the gig. The doors were open. We looked inside. There was a stage and seating for about 400 people – wooden schoolchairs, joined together in groups of ten by a spar running along the backs. This must be the gig. We shouted hellos. Nothing. We set the gear up. As gig-time approached, we experienced a whiff of apprehension. Just as we were about to call it a day, a party of seven arrived; six teenagers and an adult. Introductions were effected and the kids ran off into the hall, while the adult started pottering around backstage, switching things on. Under questioning, he revealed that he was the promoter. He was also, he said, the Mayor, the Chief of Police, and the Chairman of the Poulseur Chamber of Commerce. ‘Where are the audience?’ we asked. ‘You have just met them,’ he replied. He explained the situation. The city fathers – probably the Mayor, the Chief of Police, and the Chairman of the Poulseur Chamber of Commerce – in their benign wisdom, worried that the isolated location of their village would mean that the village youth would be culturally deprived, had given them an entertainment budget, which they could spend any way they liked. In previous years they had hired local bands, once a month. This year was different. They had decided to spend the whole year’s budget on us. As we walked onstage, the six kids sat in a line, halfway up the hall. The first number was a half-hour ‘Spunk Rock’. At the end of it, the six kids went apeshit, leaping to their feet, yelling and stamping. The more we played, the madder they got. By the end of the gig, they were on the stage with us. We did three encores and they screamed themselves hoarse. After the gig we were taken to the bar. The whole village was there and we ate a riotous supper. We asked the promoter if we could roll a joint. He convened an ad hoc meeting with the Mayor, The Chief of Police and the Chairman of the Poulseur Chamber of Commerce and, after due deliberation and careful consideration of all the relevant facts, he came to the unanimous decision that, yes, we could. Some hours later, we inquired about the sleeping arrangements. Poulseur, he apologised, had no hotel but they had fixed up something for us in the attic of the gig. We followed him up stairs, ladders and gantries to the attic, which ran the whole length of the building. It was totally empty except for a large square gymnasium mat, laid out in the centre. This was, said the promoter, the best they could do. Would it be alright? Yes, it would. We bedded down for the night. I managed half a page of The Sirens Of Titan before I fell asleep. We surfaced about noon into another blazing hot day. Everybody in the street waved cheerily to us and pointed towards the bar. We obeyed. Inside, the tables were laid and the staff were straining at the leash. We were shown to a table and given copious amounts of alcohol. Gradually, the place filled up and it became obvious that the whole village had turned out. A sumptuous meal arrived. The Mayor rose, unsteadily, and proposed a toast to the guests of honour. Martin reciprocated with a touching speech about the incalculable value of transitory friendship. The party spilled out into the garden and then the river-bank. Martin, swimming-trunkless, decided to cut his jeans into shorts and called for scissors. A pair were produced and Martin set to work, to the delight of the Poulseurians. As the legs of the jeans became available, they were snatched away. Somebody put ‘Two Ounces Of Plastic’ on the record player in the bar and villagers danced around the garden, tossing the legs back and forth to each other. Then, with due ceremony, they carried them, on high, into the bar. Someone found a stepladder and the legs were pinned, in crossed position, above the middle of the bar. The revelry continued, breaking off occasionally to toast the legs. Then, we had to heed the unforgiving call of duty; it was time to leave. As we drove off the entire village waved us goodbye. The Mayor was there, the Chief of Police was there, in charge, no doubt, of crowd control, and I think I spotted the Chairman of the Poulseur Chamber of Commerce, but I can’t be sure. We like to think that, now and again, they still put ‘Two Ounces Of Plastic’ on the record player and toast the legs. As for me, I would like, one day, to return to Poulseur, there to die.

Lovely Orange amp turned up today wahoo!

This guy is loving life and he loves his bass. Excuse my ignorance but I had no idea you could make a Rickenbacker sound this way. This guys a star!

Are they prone to escaping? 😆

Well, to misquote Benjamin Franklin: there's nothing more certain on Basschat - as in Life - than bad puns and Taxus. A little botanical humour there. Well, almost.

Still no reactions from yesterday. What's the limit on use of them. Can we not have the number extended during these unprecedented times. I keep running out because i show some emotion on other peoples posts. Not fair you know, i'm a nice guy, i deserve better, i deserve more reactions.

I was looking for a thread I participated in not long ago, where someone was asking for advice about making their Stingray style bass passive. Some people were claiming that the Stingray pickup needed a preamp as it's otherwise low output. There's also the question about the preamp, and some claim you need the preamp to sound like a Stingray. I have experimented with this quite a bit years ago when I cannibalised an old OLP expanding the cavity under the pickguard and trying different pickups at different spots etc, so I know that passive MM pickups are more than just fine on their own, and that the single most important factor for THAT sound is the position of the pickup (which is why every other bass with a MM at the bridge that pushes the pickup towards the bridge, compared to a Stingray, sounds great but not have that Stingray type of sound, just liek you don't get a Precision sound unless you put that pickup where it should). Here's an example I found on another forum. The guy put a cheap MM pickup on a Harley Benton Jazz, passive, but he put it exactly where it goes on a Stingray. Of course, it sounds like a Stingray. He just does not have the ability to get the wider range of sounds that the active onboard EQ would give him... but the sound is unmistakeably Stingray. See post #871 here: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/music-man-sound-and-pickups.739218/page-44#post-23825611

The future, apparently. Could it work? Listen through headphones!

Whoever is next, their selections will be way better than my list of shame!!!

I know. I was young and naïve at the time 🙄

Thanks, folks! And so to the carve. First is to mark it out. This was scaled up from a fairly flat-on photo: Now the top is glued to the back, there is little to no chance of, say, a whole knot becoming dislodged. However, the brittleness and variability of the wood was going to take some patient, steady work. The thing I always think kills a DIY SG-style is when the faces are rounded and the chamfer edges aren't crisp. There are a number of ways of maintaining that but, for what it's worth, these are my main tools for the job: Spokeshave with a very sharp blade and set for quite a light cut for the rough-cut external curves, curved medium micro-plane for the rough-cut internal curves, flat and freshly re-burred cabinet scraper to smooth and flatten off the faces. For carves like this, I have in the past used just a scraper, but with this timber, even a teeny scraper burr has a tendency to dig in. For the horn cutaway, pretty much just the micro-plane, but being careful to cut down for the upper edges and up from the lower edges to ensure no chipping along the all-important edges: Grateful for a sunny dry day for this - too many poisonous particles flying around to do in the cramped cellar. Mind you, haven't heard the neighbours moving around for a while... And the first rough carve is done. Here it is lightly dampened to show more closely how the finished figuring is starting to develop: And while I was doing this, a parcel arrived from David Dyke. Sounds like we might have an ebony fretboard blank As always, thanks for looking and for the encouraging comments and suggestions. Always much appreciated - especially for a build 'from the dark side'

Sire P7 and a bottle of T-Cut. Best £407.94 you'll ever spend.

You should definitely AVOID this thread... ...otherwise you're going to end up with a Sire P7 instead of a Squier! 😁

A pretty pathetic image really but as a 15 year old seeing it for the first time and with all the narrative that came with the band at the time, this was coolness personified!

This guy was the legend But seeing this guy play in 1988 was the lightbulb moment

Dear Friends, I would like to say thanks to a good friend of mine for his help Bill Compeau , for improving my design! Here a few shots of the rough sanding if the new EVO-FX5 P/J

I then cut out the fret board once thicknessing it and the neck. Marked it up and stuck it on. Thats where I am upto. I expect to fall down on this project when it comes to carving. But i am enjoying it. Would love to have a playabke neck at the end of it but who knows.

Love the Yew top... Got me pine-ing for one myself....

I made the wings using alder, black veneer and cottonwood burl top. I have to rout the battery boxes. What you see here are cavities for the controls, and the headphone amp.

this.

From the viewpoint of my age, my question is "How the hell does he get back up again?"

Here we go, I feel that this is a whole lot better! I also completely forgot to mention this is not a thread hijack as I owned a Sterling HS for a while. Definitely prefer the H only version though.

Mmmm. Cake.

Given your comment, like the deep bass, Precision sound I’d recommend the Squier. When starting out I too loved the Precision sound, virtually all of my fave bassists played them. So what did I do, I bought basses other than Precisions and tried to get the Precision sound on them. When I finally bought one it suddenly clicked, there was what I’d been chasing all along. So save yourself the trouble, get the bass that makes the sound you like. Additionally the Squiers are very good basses, and should you - you will - decide to upgrade later on the CV will be a great backup bass. I have a Squier VM77 Jazz and the quality for a so-called budget instrument is amazing.

It was this for me.

@AndyTravis it's a Stanford acoustic I bought used from a guy in Portugal - in fact a (snappily named) Stanford Robot. A damn good acoustic bass, the best I've ever played and sounds about as good as an acoustic bass can sound in my view. That trusty snarling beast of a Geddy Lee Jazz was purchased from @LewisK1975

Only one kind of Deacon cool. He and the image of his yellow shorts sent me on my way. (Honestly)

Not Brotherhood Of Man - I saw them in Bournemouth as a kid on holiday with my folks. To make matters worse, it was a double headline gig with.......... Michael Barrymore!!!!!?

Nah... That would look really dodgy without the trousers!

One of my main influences

Here's my concise lineup - just the two:

No really any one image but just whole attitude of these sort of images. So how come I don't own a white P bass with a black scratchplate?

OK - you asked for it.... We met Steve and a few others of the Maiden posse when British Lion (the first time they were around - some came from round my way) played at a local pub in Thorpe Le Soken - Steve was managing them, not playing. Ended up having a beer afterwards, my mate Andy and Steve comparing Maiden tats etc. Andy (BT engineer) ended up offering to fit some phone extensions into Steve's new home studio - which he did. They got on well and Andy ended up playing football (don't know why , he's awful) for Maiden XI. We saw British Lion a lot in these pokey pubs and village halls etc and always had a natter with Steve. We got invited to the 'Nodding Donkeys' undercover Maiden gig in Norwich and later asked to go along and do some "Yob vocals" on Fear of the Dark (Chains of Misery and From Here to Eternity) at the aforementioned 'home studio.' Steve gave Andy some bits of memorabilia for a charity auction he was running, remember this is all pre internet, and Andy tried to sell the stuff to a largely uninterested crowd so ended up making a donation and keeping it. Amongst the stuff was a pair of spandex from the World Slavery Tour - which were pretty worn even then. Andy wore them to gig in with our band (not a pretty sight.) They've probably fallen apart by now, but they were cool - had sewn on patches and Egyptian symbols up the side. Good worn patch from p bass action. Nice bloke Steve - happy days 🙂

L to R: Music Man Stingray 5 (1989) - Music Man Stingray fretless (2001) - Fender Jazz (USA Standard) (1998) - Tokai JazzSound fretless (198?). L to R: Westone Thunder II fretless (1981/82) - Westone Thunder II (1981/82) - Tune SWB4-BB (200?)* - Tune TWB-6 (1991) *(Note - photo of the Tune SWB4-BB is not to the same scale as the other photos. Body size is similar to the TWB-6)

It's all Rickenbackers and Precisions. 🙂

It was these two for me - John McCoy & Gerry McAvoy - I aspired to a white/tort Precision & they both played them. At the time I wouldn't have believed I would never get to own one - a white one anyway 😀 Still it's never too late...

Not so much a still image, more seeing this lot repeatedly at the Apollo in Manchester... And this...but you have to hear it at the same time... 😁 Oh, and this 4-necked bonkersness...

It's very light, very resonant and has a BIG neck. I havent gigged it for a couple of years now but I keep hold of it because it's not really worth selling. It owes me just over 350 quid and I'm hoping that I'll find a gig that needs a Glam-rock bass

Its a week on and i havent noticed any difference. That was some slick handover

Argh! How does he do that with his leg?

Current herd - a recently acquired Revelation Bass VI being the newest addition. Don’t think I’ve ever been above 6 in the arsenal at one time but I can see it happening this year...

Steve Harris of Iron Maiden. The first time I heard the band, the first time I saw the images, the first time I saw them live, the first time I heard/saw that bass, I had to play bass. I was lucky enough to support British Lion in December, and play through his Iron Maiden cabs (only 1 of the 4 he brought out with him), and I got to chat to him as a “peer”. What a brilliant, engaging and funny guy he is. Mind blown. 16 year old me would never believe it was possible ☺️⭐️