Leaderboard

Just arrived, my first fretless. First impressions, very well made and great tonal options. Good string spacing and a pretty good B considering a 34” neck. The white is a creamy tone so looks much better in the flesh. Comes with flatwounds as standard. The only negative for me is no side markings other than dots in the middle of the frets. Per another thread there is no sight of the fret lines when playing. Coming from playing my long necked fan frett (37” B) Dingwall for the last few months this is going to take some work to get used to but then for the moment time is one thing I do have.

Got this delivered today. Needs some TLC and I'd say the strings are as old as the bass. There's a lot of dust gathered on the bridge. I got it on reverb from Asia, so God only knows the stories this guitar could tell. I haven't had an old intrument for a long time. Bridge and neck sound really good on their own. I was looking for something a little different to a P or J configuration. But both pickups on together seems a lot quieter. Jack input is flakey so will need fixing. I may have to replace or upgrade the volume knob as well. I had been tempted to get it refinished to get rid of all the knocks and dings on it, but I'll see. I suppose it adds to the character. Any suggestions on strings? Flatwound or roundwound. The ones on it are roundwound I think and are bloody old. The neck feels great. I have it beside a P bass at the moment, and it doesn't look *that* much shorter on the guitar rack, but it's far easier to play obviously than a P Bass. Lots of aggressive riffs to come once this is playable. Here's a link to all the pics: https://imgur.com/gallery/YvYmZFA

Hi Probably doesn't warrant a thread, but for anyone interested. A few weeks ago, @donslow contacted me to ask if I would be able to fill the existing chambers in an Ibanez body and re-rout to fit a SD Quarter Pounder P-J Set for him. It's a fairly straightforward job - and with the added bonus that @donslow will be doing the hard bit, the stripping and finishing - so I was more than happy to lend a hand. With @Roger2611 's veneer job back in its gig bag just waiting final polishing, I started it off today. I had some nice lightweight mahogany offcut from the recent SG-style guitar build which is going to be ideal, so first job was to square off the corners of the old pickup chambers and also take the curved paint edges round the tops of the chambers back to a crisp 90 degree edge: With some careful bandsaw and plane work, got the first block cut to size. And a tip - before gluing these kinds of infill blocks in place, always remember to cut access for the cable runs for the new pickup to get from the new chambers to the existing runs - they may not be in the same position as the old ones! Fitted and glued: Then planed and sanded smooth. @donslow is going to be spraying solid colour over the finished body so I just need to sand it down to the present finish : Then the next one in: Busy day tomorrow, but Friday / Saturday, this will be also planed and sanded flush and then the new chambers cut I'll let you know how it goes. Andy

A bit of fun, I thought this would transcribe into a nice slap bass line!

In February 2015 I attended one of John Shukers bass building courses and came away with this, my main bass. Since then I have had a few basses I wanted to try to build so I attempted this. However with no workshop, tools or much free time its been an uphill struggle. Anyway, I was furloughed from my work and made a concerted effort to finish what I'd started all that time ago. These next two are basically bitsa basses. For the first one I bought an Alder body from Ebay in the USA. The neck I picked up on Ebay UK I think. It is of unknown origin and was second hand and had a polyester laquer on it. After prepping I attempted to do a walnut stain to the body and neck. This went very wrong. The stain I used was more like paint and I couldn't get a nice finish at all. It showed up every stroke of the application. I was gutted. Anyway, to cut a long story short I sanded the body and neck back and started again. I decided to do the body in Black nitrocellulose and the neck in clear gloss nitrocellulose. That was a whole new challenge as its not at all straight forward. Still I got it to where it is today. See pics. Hardware is: Tuners - lightweight hipshot Pick ups - Kent Armstrong J and P pickups Electrics - One volume per pickup. EMG BTS Control, 2-Band EQ for bass guitar, features broader single-pole filters. High and Bass +/- 12 db, 4 selectable frequencies for the treble control (2100, 3500, 4500, 7000 Hz Bridge - Gotoh The next one is a bitsa Precision bass I just wanted to do because I wanted a P bass. I thought a shoreline gold bass with tortoiseshell pick gaurd would look very nice. This body I think I picked up on Bass Chat a few years ago. It was fully loaded but the wrong colour. So I sanded it and refinished in shoreline gold nitrocellulose again. Once again this was quite tricky to do. The neck was bought off Ebay UK and is an Allparts brand new unfinished Jazz neck. I prefer Jazz necks as I have short stumpy fingers. This is painted with satin nitrocellulose. Machine heads - Schaller Pick up - Unknown Bridge - Gotoh OEM style So there you have it. I have at last managed to finish these basses. They are not perfect but they are mine, done by me to the best of my ability. Thanks for reading this far.

Final coat of finishing oil on headstock. Now I’ll wait to cure that and then, sanding to make it satin

Just watching the Stranglers live in Battersea Park (gosh JJB was a great bassist wasn't he?) and it got mw wondering what the hell they meant by the line in Peaches, which seemed to be describing an anatomical impossibility. So I looked it up. Well blow me down. I have been living in ignorance ever since 1977. It turns out that the word is actually clitares. Which I now learn is a French bathing suit. edit: Allegedly

So I recently returned to focusing on playing bass after a period on concentrating on the first instrument I ever learned how to play on, electric guitar, even if bass has been my main instrument of choice for several years, and I overall have spend much more time on playing bass than guitar. For some stupid reason I sold my amazing Trace Elliot GP7SM, 130 W 15" bass combo, some time ago, which I otherwise absolutely loved the tone of, after having quit a band that got nowhere, and eventually ended up buying an old Peavey XR-600B Mixer Amp, 200W @ 4 Ohm solid state amp with 6 preamp/mixer channels, cheap, which I planed to use for both bass and guitar, but as it unfortunately quickly developed some issues with the pots (afraid a proper cleaning will not be enough, and that a couple of pots needs replacement, though likely a relatively inexpensive and easy fix and definitely worth it too), but anyway, as I began concentrating more on playing guitar I got myself an amazing old Peavey Solo Special 112, 160 W solid state guitar combo amp, with the original stock 12" Scorpion speaker unit installed. The reason why I tell this is that since I returned to focus more on playing bass again, and as there were issues with the Peavey Mixer Amp, today I decided to hook the speaker output wires of my Peavey Solo Special Guitar amp up to a jack socket (and attached some wires to it's build in 12" speaker with a jack plug at the end, so I can always connect it back), and hooked it up to my SWR Triad I bass cab (which happens to match the impedance of my guitar amp's speaker output), that I also bought used a while back, originally intended to be used with my Peavey Mixer Amp as my bass rig. And guess what? The Peavey Solo Special guitar amp sounds truly amazing hooked up to a bass cab and used as a bass amp as well. Damn, it's good, so good I don't even really miss my beloved Trace Elliot combo, that I was stupid enough to sell. So here's my bass amp setup, my Peavey Solo Special 112, 160W solid state guitar combo amp, with it's build in 12" speaker unit disconnected, and instead hooked up to my SWR Triad I, 400W 4 Ohm bass cab, featuring a 15" speaker unit that receives the amp speaker output signal's full frequency range, a 10" unit that only receives the frequency content between 100Hz and up to 5kHz, and finally a high frequency tweeter, which then receives any frequency content that is above 5kHz, the output of the latter being adjustable with a tweakable attenuator build into the cab. In front of it is my 28,6" scale 5 string Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro Bass, with a poplar body and a bolt on maple neck with a jatoba fretboard, which has it's 2 stock J pickups wired in series, and is strung with the 5 lowest strings of an Ernie Ball Bass VI string set, gauge .090 to .030, tuned 2 half steps above regular 4 string bass, E standard, tuning, which means F# standard tuning, as in F#1 to D3, meant to be used for my solo, sort of progressive psychedelic stoner rock, project, which fundamental, primary, instrumentation is going to just consist of of bass, programmed and physically recorded drums and various percussion, as well as vocals, with the bass running though my TC Electronic Sub'N'Up Mini octaver, pitching the signal from my bass 1 octave up, which then is mixed with the unaffected bass signal, sort of giving the effect of a 10 string "octave" bass, with pairs of respectively bass and octave strings (and I actually managed to get a really good, and relatively natural sounding, octave up tone, only by using the standard stock polyphonic octaver and the EQ options the TonePrint editor offers for the input signal fed to the octave engine, as well as for the octave up output signal, with no obvious digital artifacts) (also by the way this 5 string Mikro came from factory with perfectly completely leveled fretwork, which means I could get the string action ridiculously low if I wanted to without any fret buzz whatsoever, an extreme rarity, for not only cheap budget instruments as this is, but for mass produced instruments at any price class really). The big pedal on the top of the amp is my always on, last in my pedal effects chain, pedal, right before the amp, an EHX Black Finger, which is a tube driven optical compressor, which 2 preamp tubes run at proper high 300V voltage, and, which adjusted right, just improves the tone of everything you run through it amazingly great : (Only downside, this rig is heavier than a full tube amp rig) The reason why my pedal board has not been included is because that, while I got the main tone shaping and the octave up, "10 string "octave" bass" effect, down as good as perfect, I still need to perfect my modulation effects and high gain distortion part of my pedal setup *( Edit! : In the meantime this has partially been solved, check the update below for more information on the subject ). I do also own both a 4 string Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro Bass and a regular 34" scale Aria Pro II Laser Electric Classic that is tuned in regular E standard tuning, but the above is what has got my main focus right at the moment. Update!!! : Here's a link to another post of mine from another thread that contains a picture of my current pedal setup, including a complete signal chain description, as well as revealing what my future plans for updating it are, since my setup has changed some since this post, among other things I've gone back to mainly using my 4 string GSRM20 Mikro Bass :

Doing it for the buzz maybe? I’ll get my cloak....

One of my students has a CP and it is lush beyond. I keep having to stop myself from buying one, and my keyboard skills are legendary. But not in a good way.

Following a lead from Davie (Kodiakblair) I contacted Brian Pillans on ebay ( earlpilanz) to make me a replacement pickguard as mine has an extra hole from its days as a 'twinny'. I sent him my original plate on Thursday, and he returned it today Wednesday having compared the colours of his stock plastic and given me 2 options. He also made me a couple of inserts to fit the extra hole in my original guard too. I gave the new guard a quick fine steel wool rub-down and soaked it in a Turmeric solution for around 20 minutes and the results are below. Brian was really helpful and for £25 which included Special Return Delivery for my original, the new one was great value for a custom job. I'd really recommend him

Totally awesome track, bringing the bass to the forefront rather than an in the background supporting role.

The can of woodworms, if you will...😉

Not a paying audience ... we'd be doing it for the exposure.

I've owned 2 classic shapes ( part T-Bird ish some call them ) First one i bought in the early 2000's , single Armstrong pickup, about 1984 ish and passive ( first classics used Bill Lawrence pups ) and paid approx £350-£400 , exact price eludes me cos it was nigh on 20 years ago. Dear cliff the prices have changed !! Also, up to early this year, i owned classic deluxe ii , so it had a fancy Silky Oak top, pair of Armstrong pickups active. £1800. !!! Now sold The circuit on these have a dual filter for each pickup.

It's a small private wood, with lots of beeches and a few oaks and fir trees. The guys played for the cameras (recording for band reference only, not intended for publication), for yours truly behind the cameras, for Jack's couple of hundred thousand bees in their hives, and for the occasional jogger or dog walker stopping by for a few minutes. Good fun.

When we get out of Lock down and you all are back out gigging, you'll forget about wiping your bass down. Remember the days before James Last, who i hear you say. when it was still OK to stop after every number for a swig of your beer or for someone in the band to light up. you couldn't see anybody in the room for smoke, or know when it was time for Bingo until they put the lights on. The band would be first to the buffet table for the chicken in the basket or the fish n chips. well all that grease and fag smoke is why a 60's Precision is now forth £5000. Bring back Wem column speaker i say, you need somewhere to balance your fish n chips and pint. so you can continue to add value to your bass during the gig.

Haha yeah man, I think I set a notification for "barefaced". I messaged within minutes got permission from the Mrs (yeah I know but still ) and cracked on with it hehe

They are so ugly they are cool!

Just picked up a two10 of FB marketplace. 😎 It's coming together

Wowsers x a lot! It’s rather amazing and only 8.2lb...chicken dinner!

He still is. Saw The Stranglers a few years ago, and he's still a darned fine player.

This was fun IMG_0563.MP4

'Twas a lot of fun, especially since it was our first rehearsal in 10 weeks, and also the first time I'd played DB seriously in the same time. Won't be letting the guitarist use a bloody resonator guitar again, though. Those things are as strident as a banjo.

Pretty sure that's Leland Sklar on bass - he did a lot of Mike Post's tv work.

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Really interesting to learn everyone's experiences with these instruments, with the different views expressed it does tend to point to a 'try some out and find what works for you' viewpoint. There's certainly more love out there for acoustic basses than I would have expected. Worth pointing out to the OP @Johnnyguru that it's wise to have a look what's on sale secondhand acoustic bass wise, as the resale value of acoustic basses is generally great news for buyers and heartbreaking news for sellers. There's always used acoustic basses on sale at good prices that look barely played, on here, eBay or Gumtree.

Been getting a few laughs on Facebook

Thanks for your comments Trevor! I agree - it is the most versatile and suitable bass I've had, interesting as I've had a few! I also had a Sandberg VM5 (P+MM) but I didn't get on with the P pickup too well, and once I tried jazz basses I've always had at least one J pickup at hands reach! I find Sandberg incredible value for money, same as the Sire/Marcus Miller on entry level is, but in this case for pro level! Not to forget others like Lakland and Xotic etc, the competition and quality on this range is defo there, but I can say hand in my heart this Grand Dark is in no point worse than the Alpher, MM SR5 special or Sadowsky Metroexpress I've had recently - indeed, it is like a merge of these basses and I'm well happy with that!

Someone in the YouTube reply posts added these names. "Alf Bigden on drums, Don Lusher on solo trombone, Tristan Fry on tympani, Roy Willox and Eddie Mordue on piccolos, Tony Fisher and Eddie Blair on trumpets, Laurie Holloway on piano, Dave Richmond on bass" .

Here we go... you will have two or three by the end of the year!

Yeah but I bet he couldn't hear you.

And Tristan Fry from Sky on percussion?

Sibob I ran through the Windows optimisation information earlier tonight and had a look at all the settings and made quite a few changes to things I never knew were there to be honest. I am not sure what I have done to help things exactly but it now seems to work as it should and the distortion has disappeared. Thank you so much for your help and time in answering my question. Cheers Martin

Sounds to me that you've got a first class rig! But if you're finding your sound too polite and want more clarity and zing, I'd recommend putting a Tech 21 VT Bass DI in front. The tone shaping plus "Bite" selector can give you exactly the clarity and zing you're after - a bit like lifting a blanket off your rig! But it can do a lot more besides. The "Bite" is very much a key ingredient of the VTBassDI. It provides a ‘presence’ boost by boosting the upper mids and treble so that the tone becomes more pronounced and 'present' especially in a mix. The pedal also has a subsonic filter (i.e. hpf) to tighten up the sound. It's a great little preamp and very much an all time favourite of Tech 21 pedal users from the feedback I've read and with good reason.

I find the Marcus Miller versions to have a more sensible EQ.

There's no right or wrong order, but I tend to follow convention when it comes to pedals. I would order it: Tuner - compressor - boost - distortion - chorus - flanger - amp. Not too different from yours but in my experience the compressors I have used have worked better when fed a cleaner signal I.e. before distortion.

My all original ‘66. Now up for grabs in the For Sale section.

Hey Mr. Garage Man, service me Granada! [Daylight come, and me wanna go home.]