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So some strange twist of fate happened last week. I had been toying with selling my MIJ 1970 P bass reissue because I have three single pickup basses and it was too good to not be played, but I think my Stingray knocks the P bass out. I had seen an MIJ Jazz, 1970s style, butterscotch finish and pearl blocks a while back. I thought they only did the 70s reissue in black... Anyhow I'm thinking of this bass so I email a dealer of Japanese guitars asking about lefty basses. Then I see the for sale forum here and Kevham is selling the exact bass I want! I message Kevham straight away. Then the dealer gets back to me saying he's got a 70s MIJ lefty jazz, but it's been modded and not very well and he still wants almost a grand for it. So I list my P Bass for sale on Facebook and it gets some interest but no bids so a few days later it goes on Reverb at an optimistic price and I get an acceptable offer within an hour! Kevham is a gent and great to deal with. So the Jazz. Its butterscotch which you can see the woodgrain through. The neck has a lovely vintage tint and thick cream binding. The blocks are stunning, not too shiny and colourful, quite creamy. I'm not sure the bridge pickup is actually in 70s position but that's OK. There's a three screw neck plate. The whole feel is solid, pure MIJ build quality. The pickguard is pre drilled for a thumb rest and neck pickup ashtray cover. I've only had a few minutes playing through a practice amp but it's familiar jazz bass sound in a luxurious body. Decisions coming up include to ashtray or not, and if so both or just one pickup? If I don't ashtray the bridge pup do I put my Badass bridge on it? Do I put flats on for some warmth or use bright zingy rounds to get the snappiness from the maple board? I'm a very happy left handed bassist.

It's bleak drizzly day in Essex, so I decided to go right to the back of 'the room' and say hello to a few friends I haven't seen in a while. I had forgotten what a lovely bass this early Empathy is. It was my #1 back in the day, before I got hooked on Stingrays, but still plays like a dream. It has an almost unbelievably low action with no buzz and can be relied upon to stay tuned. I feel lucky to have stumbled across it when I did.

Quite right. And I would extend that. What good was the modern motor car? I mean, we could get round just fine in a car from the 1960s couldn't we? I mean they don't do any more than they used to? And the colour television set, the programs aren't any better these days are they? But to be fair, the 4 string bass made a drastic decline in music quality. I mean there haven't been many beethovens and Tchaikovskys since we had the electric bass have there? No, its all 'she loves me, yeh, yeh yeh' and boom boom boom. And hey you kids, get off my lawn!! ah.. bring back national service, that will learn them!

Let me preface by saying: I've grown up playing upright bass (with classical and some jazz influences). So 4 has been the norm forever for me, since I was 10-11 years old. Since I took up electric, after having a try with a 4, I've always gone directly for 6 strings since. Compared to upright they're so much easier to play, I don't see reason not to have those two extra string possibilities available to me, at the cost of having a fretboard not even half the width of an upright one I don't care if I see somebody come out with a 9 string bass. I don't care if they proceed to spend the evening only playing root-five on E and A, I don't care if they spend the evening doing chordal harmonic work. As long as the music is good and they are comfortable and happy playing it No, and we don't have to. Aside of being a pretty silly assumption to make (how 'much' better musical quality or bass playing per-string we should get? What's the "get good cost" of adding any string more than the 4 you already have? Have you earned your 4 already then, or should you be better off playing a 2 strings bass? ) It's literally the same instrument sonically, if you use the same notes as a four stringer. Nobody of those amazing musicians is what I'd consider 'mainstream'. The thing is, you're very likely to have heard someone play a 5 or 6 in some actual mainstream record without even realising it (because they're not using the extended range if not needed). In my example here, the job could have been done with a 4, obviously. Who cares? Again, they're doing the same exact job and can sound identical. Obviously more strings do not make better music. I can make better music with two beaten up pans and my fists, than a Steinwey piano with 88 keys that nobody's playing. It's just logic and common sense. Or, I could sit down at the piano, and rock a 30 min set with two chords and two notes. Or, I could sit down at the piano, and rock a 30 min set while going through all of Beethoven symphonies, sped up thrice just because I'm bored. The instrument doesn't define the music. Play what makes you feel good and enjoy. If you like playing in a bluegrass band with a metal pointy 31 strings bass, as long as everyone in the band agrees, have at it! Just don't ruin the songs by starting going ham on the instrument! (Which is something lots of 4 strings players are culprit of too...so again, poor number of strings. What has it done to you?) Edit: The end of my point being, where has it brought us? To different tonal palettes in some parts of music (like with the people you mentioned) and in the future, who knows who/what else!

Play them a tune on it badly and explain that the notes are all in the wrong places. Should get you a decent discount.

And here we are with the braces as fettled as I dare. Certainly there is a pleasing variety of tones across the various points and so I think this is the point to stop: Note that the main cross braces and the horizontal one next to the heel block all will lock into notches that will be cut in the lining but that the ends of the slimmer 'tone bars' fizzle out into nothingness at various places. There will be some thin reinforcement strips around the back of the soundhole but my attention will now be turning to the much more straightforward braces to go on the back. And for that, out comes the 15 foot radius dish. Yes - another radius dish! There are some scary bits with acoustics (and most of them are still to come!) - but there is something deeply satisfying about the above

Jethro Tull - Living in the Past - it's in 5/4 All the more extraordinary in 1969 as it got into the UK singles top 10 (3) and US top 20.

Neck pocket cut, marking for pickup and bridge. On to my DIY spray booth. After much scraping, gnashing of teeth, sliced fingertips and general nonsense ; a working bass guitar appeared 🙂

Got 2 gigs confirmed today, both outdoor Festivals which is pretty cool. Been able to use rehearsal rooms for weeks, all marked out for social distancing. Thankfully it looks like things are starting to move, until the stinky poo hits the fan that is.

I wonder if Jodrell Bank would allow the use of their dish for my next guitar top?

Think it'll match my nans curtains. 🤣

No nonsense please, folks.

Don't worry about the lack of a dedicated input - there'll be a "7" model in 6 months and an "Ultra" next year!

‘Far more complicated than it needs to be’ could be the entry for Jazz In the Oxford English Dictionary.

I spent the late 1970's and early 80's playing awful basses, truly awful. At that time I could only dream of playing a Fender. So, when I grew up* and decided to get back into bass albeit with a bit more cash, I went after 70's Fenders, and in doing so I made a lot of mistakes. Given that you learn from your mistakes this could be seen as good! The biggest lesson I learned was this: if you don't trust the seller 100%, do not buy the instrument, at whatever price. This is for two reasons; firstly in my experience a significant number of people selling vintage basses are hiding something, either because they got caught out themselves when buying, or because they're trying to sell the bass for a lot more than they paid for it. If you ask the seller (and yourself) the right questions - where did you get it, how much did you pay, do you have a receipt, has it been modified, are there any playing issues, why are you selling - you'll quickly get an idea as to how much you do trust them. Second, if you buy the bass and there is an issue that requires a full or partial refund (and this could be anything from a courier issue to the bass being not as expected, unplayable or fake), the seller's behaviour before you buy is a very good predictor of what it will be like to deal with afterwards, and whilst an issue with a vintage instrument is bad enough given the money involved, a difficult/unethical/criminal seller can make things 100 times worse. I get that you're in a country where these are pretty hard to come by, but I think you'd still be better off waiting for what you want to come up on this forum, which is 99.9% trustworthy, and importing it? Good luck mate * Matter of opinion

And the braces are on ready for fine tuning I've roughly profiled the cross sections to a more triangular/parabola shape. Next steps will be to add the maple bridge plate and there is a small strengthener that goes across the X brace centre joint. Both of these make a difference to the flex of the top and so need to be in place before I do the final tap-tuning. Having said that, it already is returning a wide variety of notes and harmonics, which bodes well

Until 31st Dec nothing has changed regarding UK/EU transactions. There aren't any custom fees to pay. I can only assume that it is finding a suitable carrier to ship a bass could be the issue. Sellers would prefer a face to face transaction.

One of my favourite bass lines...

Anything by...

It does not matter. You should not be up there anyway.

Extended range basses are perfect for certain situations; doubling synth bass lines in the 80s would have been much more difficult without being able to go lower than E. Horses for courses.

@akabane replied as I was typing and has pretty much echoed my thoughts, so saved me typing any more. 👍

Yeah, also looks like Wannasee in Penrith is going ahead which is mighty as I think we are headlining the Sunday night. Still got a few drive in Festivals booked too. Just wanna gig, last live stream was good fun, almost 100k have watched it and/or tuned in live which was mental. Raising money for a venue and they did well so all good. Hopefully we are all back out there soon

Sorry folks, to me this is simply 58 pages of flipping ugly basses

...and must cut off my hands* for fear of insulting what is truly great talent. I'd like to be able to play my electric fretless (or fretted for that matter) as well as R G-F does on DB. Mind blow 🤯 *not going to do this, BTW.

I'm assuming that these radius dishes are not actually 50' and 30' across? Either that or you have a radio telescope array in the garden that double as luthier tools.

Yep, Playing in the band is in 10/4, Estimated is always counted in as 7/4 but one of our drummers (who really does know what he's talking about) says we should be counting it in 14/8. Either way, it's not the easiest one to play on the bass - the emphasis keeps changing. And then there's the eleven. In 11/8, obviously. The structure is mostly three 3s and a 2, which is quite straightforward.,

I have a bit of a thing for 70s and 80s style basses and Japanese made. Shame I had to move on an MIJ bass to get it but it was the most sensible thing to do!

Nope, anything which is n/n will be a semibreve. Think about it.....2/2 4/4 and 8/8 would be. 5/4 would be a semibreve + crotchet in length though. I do agree that these "irrational time signatures" are basically a load of Balaerics, though. They are simply a different way of writing the same thing, and no clearer either, in the process.

Great recommendations thank you. I have been studying and playing along to Kid Charlemagne for a few months now. I have got the nuts and bolts notes wise, but the feel is what you really have to work at. It’s very much Jameson inspired according to Chuck himself. Being primarily a groove drummer myself I love the concept of funk, the syncopation, the note choices, the repetition (sometimes), the ghosting etc etc. Cheers.

Also, unlike the guitar where a "soapbar pickup" is a fat single coil based on the Gibson P90, on the bass there could be absolutely anything inside the housing so long as it will fit. So very different coil and magnet configurations all housed in identical looking covers.

IMO you need to stop thinking that the various effect and amp/cab modules are exact copies of various items and think of them all as "tone-shapers". Most of the time I don't use any amp or cab sims in my patches (and I'm going straight into the PA with an FRFR speaker for on-stage personal monitoring). When I do have an amp sim in the signal path it has been chosen because I like the drive sound it produces and therefore it is there as a distortion device rather than an "amp". Quite often it will be a guitar amp too! That's the great thing about the Helix modules. You're not going to break anything by using something that hasn't been designed for bass as could happen with the actual hardware, at the worst it simply won't sound very good. Therefore you can experiment without any worries.

No worries here always use PayPal for extra protection though but to be honest I find eBay seems to have tons of overpriced basses and not many bargains ime

oh yes!

The Grateful Dead have a load of songs with odd time signatures, e.g. "Playing In The Band" (10/4?) and "Estimated Prophet" (7/4). Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" (7/8) isn't exactly rock but everybody's heard it...

My 1972 competition Mustang

Painting has commenced. Three coats of Tufcab.

With recording done, this evening's task is all the fun stuff... Swiss army board for me, does everything I need and nothing I don't. Pedal power 2 underneath.

There has been a price increase on a few HB basses. Probably because I didn't buy one last month

Other stuff. Had an idea I wanted a reverse Telecaster neck. Bought one from Wan Guitar on Ali Express. £69 and 3 week delivery. Worth every penny 🙂 Lovely chunky neck. Had a 2 saddle bridge in the spares box. @The_Rodster came to my rescue with these T-bird pickups 😎 Had the option of 1 or 2. Decided on 1 👍