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Greatest Live album of all time (arguably)

And tada! Survived the journey across the ocean... my first Smith after 33 years of playing! What an awesome beast, absolutely lives up to expectation in tone and playability 🤩

And to the neck carve. Although I use a spokeshave and microplane to get much of the bulk out of the way, I do most of my neck carving with a humble cabinet scraper: It is very controllable, it is gradual - and with neck carves it is very easy to end up with a dip or a thin bit where you didn't intend one to be! And - while there is a lot of confusion about scrapers and they are only a couple of £'s each - they are planes in their own right. Here are the shavings: I had sent P a profile gauge to take the neck profiles from his present bouzouki. While I can't replicate these exactly because he has asked for the fingerboard to be wider and shallower than his present one, I will be replicating the 'soft V' at the lower frets (still a bit more to do here!)... : ...progressing to a more 'C' shape further down (a lot more to do here!): Ah - that's a bit better... : Now I'm a bit odd. I always have to 'air guitar' a build to see if the profile is right - even if I've never played a particular instrument. While I have never played a bouzouki, I can tell if it feels as I would expect based on P's profile measurements. Besides...it gives me an excuse to do a quick gratuitous mockup with the 2-coats-done-2ish-to do-body Bear in mind that the neck will darken and amber up a touch when the finish is put on: The neck actually feels great even though it is significantly deeper than a guitar or bass. The relative slimness and that V at the lower frets makes fretboard access a breeze. So, so far so good....

BB1600/714/424

Sexy tops, exotic woods, high end mega money basses I would like to see, the flashier the better. Here is mine. Not super high end but a full fat cherry burst Lakland 5594..

Or this 😁

My latest.

After 4 coats of Tung, I had left it for a day extra to cure and am now slowly but surely putting it together. Also had the control cavity cover split on me along the grain whilst drilling holes for the pots. Ah well, I will have to redo it (and redo 4 coats of Tung) and it will be fine. Some selected pics for you to look at whilst I have a little cry in the corner

What Quatschmacher doesn’t know about this stuff ain’t worth knowing. I keep telling him to offer bespoke patches online for a fee.

Tomato plant thing £9.99 from ebay. Rotating holder. 3M of poly pipe (£2.19), compression Tee piece (£2.47). Body is fixed to the arm by a plate, bit smaller than the pocket, arm rests on the middle frame support. Long pipe slips over the base of a guitar tripod stand, tool bag is used for ballast. Drape a dust sheet over the top and you're good to go.

@MattiZ and @gobasserk some great BBs there. Here's my not-quite-matching BB pair to put alongside yours!

There's a handful of bass players out there that indirectly owe Pete Way a huge debt of gratitude, Nikki Sixx top of that list. And yes, Strangers In The Night is certainly one of the greatest live albums ever released.

I would buy a Harley Benton and with the rest I would spend it on cheap hookers, coke and bottles of JD so I could be the proper rock star I should have always been. If I can't play Paranoid properly on that , I'm not going to play it properly on a multi thousand pound coffee table bass either.

I know it doesn't appeal (or even make sense) to everybody, and I can see why, but there's something about these lay by/service station/dodgy car park meetings that many of us enjoy. I saw @Frank Blank today, very briefly, very socially distant, but it was lovely to put a face to the name. Basschatters become more real, more 3 dimensional once you've actually met them. So not only is this a bit of a giggle, it's also a great way to bring folk together.

Well said, that's exactly how I feel about my L5500! I wasn't aware of the existence of the MJ5 at all.

As an active, five string version of the full fat USA JB-2 basses I think they look bang on the money and no doubt sound and feel fantastic too. Was it the blue one with the empress body? Only thing I can guess at re the MJ-5 is that it likely wasn’t selling given that most G&L five strings ordered will be L-2500 or JB-5 models. I see that the passive JB-2 bass is discontinued from the USA line too after over twenty years or so in production. Still love the Tribute versions of those and will buy another soon! Incidentally I exchanged a couple of emails too with another basschatter today about another seemingly unloved and forgotten G&L five string - the L-5500. He just picked one up, his is a ‘95 and mine is a ‘96. Not for everyone with EMG pickups and preamp but a seriously well made G&L with its own vibe. Definitely good to have something familiar yet little known and/or under appreciated imo Keir

It's a fair cop!

Another consideration is if you’re using a DI out from your amp to the PA most amps send the DI after gain so having the gain low and the master high will raise the noise floor on the DI signal.

Probably not.

Victor has got a fabulous outlook on playing bass and is always an interesting guy to listen to. Sadly, I can't stand his actual music 😂

Episode 4: ‘Wind Yer Neck In’ I filed the ‘item not as described’ with eBay for the neck plate and that’s going back. Proper one bought as per @AndyTravis’s suggestion. Just before packing the dodgy plate up for return, I borrowed some genuine Fender bolts from one of my other basses so I could exactly where we were with the Flea neck fitting this body. Dug a used set of strings out and set to it. I had visions of me taking the neck on and off all afternoon adjusting the truss rod, but no, it all came together very well and the neck relief was spot on (for me). The saddles needed very little adjusting and the intonation was even spot on. I had thought about replacing the bridge, the saddles are almost on the floor and if I get one with a thicker plate, that could cause issues I fear. I think the next move is to purchase @KiOgon’s control plate and get this bad boy routed. All in all I’m pleasantly surprised with today’s events. Shopping list now includes shielding tape and wire for grounding (it does have grounding wires, but I’m going to replace them). Any recommendations for either? Stay tuned 🌧🌧🌧🌧😎🌧🌧🌧🌧

+1 and indeed, so much quicker than a radius block. @spacecowboy, is there a built in stop to prevent rolling off the side? I made a similar radius jig a few years ago that I made quite wide to prevent mistakes from the router sled rolling off the side. Your is much more compact so keen to learn how you tackled it.

I've just looked at some of the links, the gov't guidelines are still that the volume shouldn't be loud enough for people to have to raise their voices and full social distancing so that's us out then. Pretty much people's movements have to be controlled by the venue and nothing that could lead to bunching so dancing is out I guess. To be honest I don't really want to be part of an event which becomes a super-spreading incident. Potentially killing the elderly and infirm relatives of our audience isn't something i really want to be doing, even though I'm probably personally immune having recovered from Covid. Opening pubs when the numbers are edging up is the act of imbeciles. Doing so when you know track ad trace isn't working and your scientists are telling you there is a second wave in a few weeks time when the weather turns and you want to open up the schools is fatal negligence. It's great that the government is finally moving the tracing services to local control and that they are ordering up all the differing vaccines and have almost sorted PPE and spreading by care workers but until we do tackle the disease we aren't going to get back to regular gigging. Rant over

Hi all, I thought you'd enjoy some pics of two basses that arrived to me from a very loving home :). I originally had my eye on the Squier Musicmaster as I'd never owned a short scale before. Apparently only produced for one year in 1997 but please correct me if I'm wrong. All I can say is that I now completely understand why people adore short scale basses. Even without the beautiful thump from the single coil, it's just fantastic to play. It's in good condition considering it's age and it's even got a bit of birdseye in the neck! The second bass is a Fender Modern Player Telecaster. They're fairly new (as far as Fenders go) but it's really quite nice. The pickups really standout and they're super versatile. The mudbucker by itself is my favoruite though. I may be tempted to sell them at some point but for now, enjoy the pics!

Those Hohners were decent instruments. They sell for good money these days. As good as Steinbergers were - I love them - the move by Gibson to more traditional construction wasn't all bad news. The Spirits are decent instruments in their own right and good value, and dont suffer the age related neck issues that many of the truss rod-less Steinbergers do with the passing of time. Indeed, the contemporary Hohner copy tends to withstand time much better than the original, which could be why prices are on the up. Fundamentally, the original Steinberger was flawed. Cracking on 50 years ago when Ned Steinberger started work on these designs he didn't have the benefit of the modern materials and the understanding of their characteristics that we do today, which is probably why modern firms can make them better and cheaper. In the case of Gibson, they followed the profit - theres no physical reason that they couldn't have updated the design using modern materials and composites, but they're a volume seller that tends to rely on high turnover as their business model. To that end, they've done very well - the Spirit is an ok instrument and a consistent seller, yet probably costs them no more to manufacture than, say, a Harley Benton Jazz Bass, so they're making good money off it. Fair play to them. Smaller manufacturers target different markets and run different business models, and that's where the likes of Status come in - their operating model would never allow them the growth to Gibson levels of turnover, but the benefit is that they can concentrate on developing smaller volume, higher profit instruments. It's physics, materials science and business, all rolled into one! Were Ned to release the Steinberger today, it would be a different matter entirely. He was simply born 40 or 50 years too early.

Just had a look at their website ... impressively badly-designed and non-intuitive. Great basses, but they really should bring in a decent website guy.

I love Bowie and try to see a.n.other Bowie tribute every year they come to Scotland. I'm still waiting on you guys coming up here too so come on extract the digit and make the effort............PLEASE. I had never heard Slip Away to be honest till it was mentioned here and really enjoyed it. I tend to get lost in Bowie once i start. His back catalogue is tremendous and so much to listen to. Anyway !!!!! what's wrong with The Laughing Gnome ? Its a brilliant comical wee song and also very popular with Bowie fans. There are probably several others i would love to hear a Bowie tribute play but i'd be here all day listing them. Have to say your existing set list covers most of what i'd be happy listening to. Have you tried doing what some tribute acts do successfully and cover a full album either in first set or 2nd set and vary the other set. Aladdin Sane would be my choice album of course. Or cover the Live Ziggy album would be interesting. As a 70's Glam Rock covers band we cover Jean Genie, Rebel Rebel, Ziggy Stardust and considering Hang on to Yourself Anyway i'm sure you have already considered or already done these things so i'll head off now and listen to some more Bowie. Dave

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+1 for the "jinwan" necks. I've had 2 Tele Bass necks and one Jazz neck and they've been great. All three had the MoP block inlays on maple boards with gloss finish and are great. As @RichardH points out the headstock is not quite 100% but 98% in my veiw and a man on a galloping horse is not going to notice!

I'm a big fan of the "this isn't how they say to do it but it's how I do it" explanations.

If you're referring to the Status pickups the coils were parallel with each other as in a humbucker not as in a split coil.

RIP but in some ways it's a surprise he lived as long as he did, certainly lived life to the full.

Since lockdown I’m more 3D than usual.

Svirfneblin ?

Sandberg Superlight. 6.5 lb jazz. Wonderful. Things.

It's been a little while since I did anything to this but whilst I continue playing my mini bass instead of finishing off completely, I decided to get on with a couple of jobs on this. FIrstly, I needed to decide on what the front of this should look like. I opted for the flamed maple veneer so I can also do a matching headstock - this build is also about re-using and the maple veneer can from my dad who had this knocking around for years so sort of fits into this as it wasn't bought specifically for this build and was potentially destined for the bin as there are a few cracks in it. I cut the cracked sections away which left me just enough width for the top. I then glued the two pieces of veneer together along the straight line I just cut. I know this sounds a bit odd as the veneer is only 0.6mm thick but I wanted to do this to give me a singe sheet to glue onto the body. I glued along the edge of the veneer and held them with masking tape until dry. Net up I sanded the top of the body flat ready to accept the veneer and drew the centre line. Using a gloss paint roller and wood glue I put an even coat on both the bbody and veneer them stuck them together, holding them in place with plenty of clamps!! So this is how the tope now looks - not perfectly book matched but is fine for this project. I'm planning on having a black scratch plate on this, only because I got given one and I want to re-use that too!! Here's a mack-up of how that might look: But I also tried it without the scratch plate and that looks kind of nice too!! Decision, decisions,...

Fresh from the garden: