Leaderboard

I don't know what you'd call it actually. Two things inspired me. The back pack vibrating box thingy you stick on your strap, and the board you sit your chair on which is a big flat vibrating bass speaker thingy. I baulked at the price of either but got to thinking. The result of my cogitation? This is a 100w 4ohm audio exciter or transducer or something like that. Cost about 14 quid delivered. Screwed it to the underside of my seat. Hooked it up to an amp. Sent a line out to my headphone amp (Zoom B1on). Stuck on my headphones... and there was a small explosion 💥 Not really. It actually worked. One of my inventions is actually brilliant. I live with an elderly relative who sometimes dislikes it when the peas dance off her dinner plate if I'm rehearsing. So silent practice is the norm. This takes it to another level. It's extraordinary. The bass becomes complete. Mids and tops in the cans everything else everywhere else at once, and barely audible in the room. It's wonderful. You can have any setting you want, from mild buttock shake to full personal violation. I'm off for another go.

Pile Driver ?

Short scale Tele Mahogany body , Spalted Maple top Set neck Cream binding Smoke p/guard ..sort of transparent dark red Supro pickups Lollipop tuners String through Series / Parallel pull / push middle knob Tbx tone control Picked up from Jon's workshop on Monday...😁

My Serek Midwestern is easily the best shortscale I’ve ever played, B90 pickup (with dummy coil), absolutely love it. Can be heard on this track: https://open.spotify.com/track/3PUTP5fy1snxO9giraiosl?si=E5yBVr_MQ3WM3m7_cOuQaQ Si

The fitting of the bridge is perhaps the most critical part of an acoustic build. It simply has to be right. And there are big, big, problems if is isn't. First step was cutting the angled saddle slot. In the end, I had to make another jig - to be able to accurately use a router: Next was recognising that the top is spheroidal - and therefore the bottom of the bridge has to be shaped accordingly. Just to pander to @SpondonBassed 's engineering background, I will use again the old 'engineers blue' trick: First I put some masking tape on the top and put some school chalk evenly all over it: Rubbing the bridge a small amount on the chalk reveals the high spots: Sand the chalk marks off and repeat...and keep sanding the areas where there is chalk and repeat and repeat. This is starting to get there: As long as you only sand where the chalk is, you are always lowering the high spots. Eventually, there is chalk on every bit - and then you know it's a perfect fit. Next is position the bridge - scale-length-wise and double checking with the string lining up: Then cut round the bridge through the masking tape: Wood components have a tendency to float on the layer of glue while they are being clamped, and so need position positioning. So I now drill through a couple of the string holes and will use some bolts to position and help clamp during gluing: But, the main ooomph is a long reach clamp with yet another home-made jig - this one is to act as a clamping caul for the bridge body, and then the two captive screws clamp down on the bridge wings: And there it will sit until morning

And it’s made it to Derby 👍🏻

First up would be a nice house with a music barn and no meddlin' neighbours.

The marketing tagline could include "putting the A$$ into BASS" "something for your bottom end" "putting your roots through your glutes" Bass Cleft?

Seems there’s not a lot of info on these online, nor are there any decent demos showing what it can do. Well, I plan with this thread to change the first of these points. There’s a demo as well but it’s debatable if it’s “decent”. So... what is it? A preamp/DI with 5-band EQ, a switchable valve drive circuit plus aux in and headphone out sockets. There’s a parallel output which offers a completely unaffected signal too, which I use to send a signal to a tuner and hence keep the tuner out of my main signal path. Two foot switches control (left to right) the valve drive circuit and essentially an on/off for the main and DI outputs. This makes the parallel socket for my tuner make sense - hit “Showtime“ to mute the main outputs and just check tuning and then hit it again when you’re ready to make noises for everyone. The clean 5-band preamp is superb and the valve drive circuit offers a huge range of tonal possibilities too, especially in conjunction with the input gain level. Use the “Drive Level” control to balance the clean and driven sounds in volume level, or use the valve as a boost, and you’re good to go. There aren’t (m)any demos of this online so I set about using today‘s glorious sunshine and heat to hole myself up inside a roasting room and make a video, partly for the benefit of @Painy who doesn’t really want to watch this to get more GAS. Some sloppy playing in places but hopefully it gives a good indication of the capabilities.

I suspect there’s many of you who will relate to this but, following my first Zoot build about 4 years ago I’ve became something of an addict (multi-ACG/Maruszczyk owners – you know I’m talking about!). My first Zoot was a passive 4 string, so obviously that needed a fretless 4 to keep it company. Equally obviously I then needed an active 4 to ‘complete’ the set (well, active/passive actually as it had an East Uni-pre fitted; also went for Mike’s funkmeister body shape on this one so it was, you know, a bit different). As others will have found though 3 is an odd number, so that won’t do. So, there I was, wanting to pull the trigger on a new order, without having a sufficiently differentiated specification to justify another commission. Those of you of a similar age (I’m 57) may feel the same but, for me, there were two basses that stood out during my Thursday evenings glued to ‘Top of the Pops’: a Wal and an Aria SB-1000. Never had the funds for a Wal (have tried quite a few over the years though) but I did own a fretless SB-900 for many years and loved it. As a youngster the fact that it weighed the same as a small cow and had a slab body that made no concessions to forearm comfort – the same as the 1000 – didn’t really bother me, but as a now 57 year-old player, these things matter. So an idea started gestating for my new Zoot – a bass with the SB-1000 sound signature and tonal shaping, but in a lighter weight, more user-friendly body. Some initial googling and thread searching on here led me to discover the Rautia MB-1E pickup that is a direct replacement for the original, as well as Prostheta’s BB Noisekiller preamp. We hit a bit of a hurdle when it became apparent that he was no longer able to produce replacement 6-way varitone circuits at a commercially viable price but, once I located a circuit diagram of the original which showed the capacitor values, Mike has volunteered to make a duplicate for this build. And lo and behold the Zoot ZB-1000 is born! The bass is going to be a medium scale (32”) bolt-on build (yes, I know, I know, SB’s were neck-through and long-scale but the build incorporates my ergonomic preferences). Other specs are: Body: 7/8th sized Zoot bass shape with carved top. English spalted beech on American light weight Swamp ash divided by Ebony veneer pin stripe. Headstock veneer to match. Neck: Roasted Canadian flame maple with Purple heart stringers and ebony veneers. Rosewood f/board, darkened with small amount of clear satin lacquer. Black Hipshot hardware with gold bridge saddles and tuner bushings. Tone Controls: As above but with additional series/parallel switching and passive tone. Some photos of the early stages for your delight and delectation. More to follow as the build progresses. The body: The neck: The fingerboard: The contouring that original didn't have: I'm hoping it be ready in time for Christmas - what a present that will be!

Played my third gig in four weeks yesterday - another in a series of free shows in a local park. There were four bands, the volume is kept low to avoid disturbing nearby residents. We use battery powered amps and hand percussion. This weeks saw a step forward in sound quality as one of the guitarists in the band I am playing with has bought a larger battery inverter, so we could use guitar & bass amps with decent speakers. I played through my BF Super Compact, powered by my newly acquired TE Elf - sounded great! Couple of pics attached, the band is the Oxford-based Grateful Dead covers band Franklin's Tower.

Built this from a kit during the early stages of lockdown, it's surprisingly good for the money.

I’ve made a few now ( and sold a few too) and really enjoy it. The one on the left is a one I made to ‘62 P type spec, not a cheap build. Handmade Walnut body with nitro CAR relic finish and flamed maple neck rosewood board. CTS pots, Fender CS ‘62 pups, relic black Fender pickguard, GOTOH reverse lollipop tuners and old Fender bridge. Next to my ‘66 and Nate Mendel doesn’t look too shabby and plays killer.

First transfer to Rik undertaken...lovely guy and a Mini enthusiast too!

And we’re off. The bass is on its way to the M1...

Burn the heretic!!!! 😄

Well, that's not strictly the case! Right - sit down, make yourself a cup of coffee/tea/gin and let's see what we can work out from the evidence as presented. This is likely to be largely stream-of consciousness rambling, confusing & very, very boring. Don't say you weren't warned. The problem with trying to identify old instruments from online sales listings is - how can I put this? Sellers often don't know what it is they're selling, or if they do, they will assume the majority of potential purchasers don't. So they might say things that either aren't necessarily true, or aren't meticulously researched & fact-checked, to sell whatever it is. Many buyers & sellers often seem more concerned about what they want something to be, rather than what it actually is. That's the case with both of the basses you've linked. They're not Japanese, probably not '70s and they're absolutely not made by Matsumoku. They're Korean, and possibly made by Cort, if the style of the control plate/scratchplate on the natural finish example is any indication. That one's actually very interesting & I'll get to why a bit later. I should probably explain that I sort-of know what I'm on about with these things - I've had an unhealthy preoccupation with old-ish MIJ & MIK instruments for most of the time I've been playing (which is a looooong time!) and for about 15 or so years made a living by restoring & selling predominantly 1970s copy-era Japanese guitars & basses. I don't claim to know everything (& no-one does) but when you've worked on literally hundreds of instruments from a particular era, you do get an eye for traits & details. Typically Korean & Japanese are easy to tell apart, and the products of specific Japanese factories (such as Matsumoku) are very straightforward to ID too. These two basses, like yours, are Korean. The neck style, very similar to yours (extra fret, unusually wide black blocks, no binding, Fender-type headstock, Gibson-style nut) indicates they're from the same factory, which as I've said is probably Cort. It's worth understanding a bit about brand names too. Best advice is usually to ignore them, in the majority of cases they'll tell you nothing at all about who actually made an instrument. In many ways your bass is a good illustration of why - it's unbranded, it came from the factory unbranded & like thousands of others, would've been sold brand-new like that. For a few pennies per unit more, whichever company ordered & imported your bass could have thought up any name they wanted, and the factory would have put that on the headstock for them. However - some well-known brands can be tied to specific factories and that's why the two you found are helpful in understanding more about yours. Japanese-made Hohners all came from a factory called Moridaira, and when that arrangement came to an end in the early 80s, Hohner production moved to the Cort factory in Korea. I mention Hohner because Leyanda appears typically as a brand for Hohner acoustic guitars, although a little research indicates they used Leyanda as a sub-brand for budget electric guitars too. This might be a regional thing, as Hohner also used Rockwood & Arbor as budget sub-brands in some territories. And about 30 seconds' Google image search gives us a Hohner Arbor Jazz copy with an identical body, control plate & scratchplate to the natural finish Leyanda: I'd say, based on inlay style & hardware it's a few years later than the Leyanda - but it's an associated brand, has the same highly distinctive components, & fits the established timeframe for Hohner's use of Korean manufacturers - so it's safe to say it's from the same factory. So through this process of somewhat anal detective work, I think we can be perhaps 99.65% sure that your unbranded Jazz bass came from the same factory as the two Leyandas you found - it has a distinctive & near-identical neck. That neck's overall style (black blocks, Fender headstock) probably dates it to late 70s - at a guess '78 or later. We know the manufacturer's Korean, as all the basses have identifiable MIK traits, and we can narrow down the factory to probably Cort because one of the Leyandas has the same distinctive body & hardware as a Korean Hohner Arbor - which was probably made by Cort. There are a few reasons I can't be 100% that it's a Cort. Firstly, knowledge of older Korean manufacturers isn't great - like in Japan there would have been dozens of different factories but we only know a few - off the top of my head Cort (Cor-Tek), Samick, Young-Chang, Saehan & (possibly) Arirang, and apart from the first two it's not clear how early they were operating & what they made. We know that Hohner's high-quality post-MIJs are Corts because they're often identical to Cort's own-branded guitars from the same era, but we can't be certain Hohner's budget ranges were also from Cort. At this point though, there's no particular reason to think they weren't. So it's Korean, late 70s, factory-unbranded and made by Cort. Evidence to 100% establish the manufacturer & a specific year might emerge in future, or with more detailed research than I've done, but at the moment that'll have to do!

Lock the 4 strings away and practice with a lot of songs in Eb!

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For between £50-100, you could get an M-Audio Keystation 61, and use Vst instruments for your keys; they're very good. Worth a look..?

😂 Scott said we’d start a new craze! I can’t remember when I started putting them on but it was around the time I got this bass so maybe 15 years. It just doesn’t feel right without them now. I was called out in a Facebook group for ‘not taking the bass seriously’ for having them which was funny. The best ones for Schaller M4 are IKEA puppets whereas for Fender style clovers you need a slightly girthier puppet. Some say the extra mass and pair of eyes at the headstock helps with tuning stability, fretting accuracy and sexual attractiveness especially among the puppet community. Here’s the original

“Guaranteed to leave no stern untoned.”

Ibanez Musician MC800 (apart from the finish) but you're not having mine - if I went down to one bass, from 10, this would be the last one.

Found this in a local shop, decided to trade in a PRS electric guitar as a partial trade I have to say this bass is incredible, sound really articulate and the B strings is super tight I see there's not much talk about PRS basses on here, just wanted to share for future references

Still own four though!😂😂

Burn the heretic! 🔥😂

I have the guitars and amps of my dreams, so my thoughts went here too. A large rehearsal facility complete with stage, PA and lighting. So I can make all the noise I want at any time and even invite people along to watch if we wanted. Preferably in a large outbuilding adjacent to my small cottage. But I want to play the game so can I have a P Bass made for me by a luthier all to my spec a Barefaced 8x10, and another Ampeg SVT. Oh and a vegan leather strap, 4 inches wide, padded. Ta.

I've made a few bitsas down the years... every so many years I get the urge. Last time making the body myself. The place I always get to is good, but not great, when I compare them to my other bases. If you've got two amazing basses and a pile of parts, why not flog one bass and the pile of parts. You can garuntee you will have an amazing bass at the end that way.

Wow wow amazing report here Mr. @Bassassin those are great news. To the folks above, not a metal head here. I am a sample based producer and multi instrumentalist, kind could be anything from a wide range based on 60s-80s samples from rockabilly and psych rock to jazz funk soul, blend alongside with live old strings brass and organs, so this beauty could find its unique place through the others sitting in my lab. I am into old stuff since childhood, from record collecting to finding old stuff and gear, diying, valves, restoration and all that kind of stuff. Everything...till 90's 🤣 Cheers to all, it's a nice place here 🤸

I would say, go for it. It’s an opportunity to learn something possibly, so has to be a good thing. You’re in the same situation I’m in. I have a neck which Fender sent me as a replacement for the one that went wonky on my Flea ‘61. I replaced it with a Status Graphite neck which is staying on it, so this neck needed a body, which I’m waiting to be delivered and will go from there. My first attempt, so will be interesting. Hats off to you @walshy. They look fab 👏👏👏👏

I have one of the Bozo guitars. Bought for me for my 13th birthday from Hessy’s in Liverpool. It wasn’t really what I was expecting but I’ve grown to like it. It’s fairly heavy for a guitar but is really well made. Electronics more complicated than a normal guitar as it features a distortion unit powered by at 9v battery - although this doesn’t work any more. Must get this looked at. Really interested to know there were bass versions.

Cheers. Gettin' spalty widdit!

Kate Bush, with Youth on bass... loved this when it first came out - still do...

Nothing wrong with what you have if you like the sound of it.

No doubt but my motivation is not to be popular but to provide some transcriptions that no one else is doing. I know I could get bigger audiences but I have no intention to monetise this so there is no motivation to regurgitate endless Pop and Rock tunes. I do the transcriptions that interest me and, sometimes, it is just nice to be kind and give some time to help someone out.

I followed this advice 👆 and what a difference! 🤯 Soldered cables and fitted a block (heat shrink is my new favourite toy) Then used nuts and washers as spacers and oh my goodness what a joy! Not only is the love seat back to its throbbing best but the sound quality is just extraordinary. No need for a practice amp - my chair sounds just fine thank you. It's quiet enough you could practice at night without headphones and not wake the neighbours but easily audible, and responsive to the tone controls on the amp. Comes into its own however when you also use a headphone amp. An immersive, virtual reality experience. With free haemorrhoid and prostate massage thrown in.

Only just got round to buying one of these. Looking forward to trying it and checking out some patches posted here (eventually)

Advice I didn't think I'd be getting today.

Thanks, I think I am maybe a bit in the habit of needing an open E to orientate myself so that is useful advice

As a long term user I can confirm that this is indeed the case. I have to ration it’s use now because I don’t have room for an eight pack

Not strictly speaking live, but it will contain new video of us performing live, maybe some photo's and some other random stuff 😂. All very much a work in progress, but it's going to happen. Coming soon, stay tuned!

And page now gone.

Driftwood Junior made by my son from wood found on an Essex beach. 1936 Regal Parlour 1931 National Triolian I don't play bass anymore if I can help it - I just sits myself down, sticks a glass wine bottleneck on my pinkie and whine away until her highness tells me to shut up.😎

There's lots of trialling and checking involved with an acoustic build. The bone zero-fret string guide will be shaped before fitting, but the slots are basically in the right place: Then, with the two outer tuners popped on, and a couple of spare strings from my bits box, I am able to first determine where the guide would be fitted at the nut end to give me equidistance from the fret ends, and then, popping the strings through the outer holes in the bridge and pulling them tight, where the bridge will go left/right-wise. Ignore the kink in the bass string - I couldn't pull tight and press the camera shutter at the same time!: What I am happy about is that is has confirmed I got my bridge peg holes in the right place Once I've cut the saddle slot in the bridge, then I can position it forwards/backwards-wise and then glue the bridge! (Again, not the sequence you will see in the text books...I will explain my logic later As always, thanks for looking and for your kind comments. Always greatly appreciated

Hey hey! I've unceremoniously chopped together a handful of snippets from the DVD. Check it out...