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I just received this today 😁 Ernie Ball Short Scale Stingray "Starry Night" 3.17kg. nice and light, The quality is amazing and it feels and sounds like a High end 34" Stingray just in a short scale size..It really is an amazing little Bass.

As documented here: ... and with a great deal of help from @Woodinblack and @stewblack, a suitable location was chosen for the final handover to me. Unfortunately a nearby 5G mast distorted my brain as I was setting the satnav and ... erm ... I drove to a different location. Not to worry because Stew had his entire family in the car with him, and they had no problem driving an extra 25 miles to find me and @Silvia Bluejay (who handled my faux pas with astonishing equilibrium) and the handover was accomplished anyway.

G&L L-1000?

This summer I put together a Corona Project Bass, a tribute to The First One. Not an exact copy, but a very good and functional modern take on the classic P'51. The details making biggest difference are the Babicz Full Contact Bridge and the super nice somewhat overwound humbucking version of the original style pickup made by Swedish Urban Pickups. https://www.urbanpickups.com/ https://www.facebook.com/UrbanPickups I don't like false labeled instruments, so I had a friend making me my own headstock logo in classic design. A nice bass all in all, if I am allowed to keep it. My cat has another opinion...

Anyway, you know the answer when the conversation starts wandering off into technical areas I don't fully understand - just throw in a few gratuitous arty-f**ty photos : P picks it up at the weekend

One should never miss the opportunity to add some Python

Really excellent YouTube documentary, well worth watching.

So last week saw a bit of an unplanned flurry of bass purchases, well....two Firstly a 70'a MIJ Camel Journey Bass from @MoJo. Very cool, trans-white/blonde finish, maple rock machine. DiMarzio Model P (which I've always liked). Effectively just another Precision for my arsenal: Secondly, on Saturday I picked up Lakland Skyline DJ5 from The Gallery. I wanted another 5 string, and regretted selling my Lakland 55-01 a year or so ago. So with my Elrick covering the active 5 string duties, and remembering that I loved the Skyline DJ4 when I had it briefly a couple of years ago, plumped for this. Colour is Pearl White, which is actually another little tip-of-the-hat to my first ever bass, an Encore Precision, also in Pearl White: And that's me done for at least 6 months........I think Si

Hahahaha. Jesus Christ. The odd folk are out in force.

Sold this P Pro to a m8 last week, stuck a mirror guard, Badass 111 bridge and a set Harris pickups on it for him..🙂

New EVO Single Bass bridge

So, ever since I started to get into bass and learn bass there has been one bass I've wanted, i've always love Fenders and have had several Precisison's and Jazz's over the years (I still have 2 jazz basses that I love) but I've always hankered after a Rickenbacker, a 4001 or 4003, today I finally got a Rickenbacker 4003 and it's everything I hoped. Sensational. Obvs had to take the silly pickup cover off and it's just a rock machine. Very happy.

Although I’m not a massive Neil Young fan, his version of this old song is just sublime. Love Nicolette Larson’s harmony vocal, moves me every time I hear it.

It's clearest if you join together the tails of all notes which fall in the same beat: Personally I like to do the same with rests as well, although not everyone does:

It's a thunderous little beast! Very impressed.

I am sure a lot of groups are using that guidance and do not meet the criteria. No wonder we are in the state we are.

I struggled for several months with Jaco's 'Portrait of Tracy'. Then one night, there was a gas leak at my house and BOOM. Is this what you meant...

An All Ghoul (girl) band??

Being a musician today is so much easier that 30/40 years ago, both in terms of availability and range of relatively inexpensive but good quality equipment and the equivalent in terms of learning tech and resources. If I wanted to lean a bassline in 1980 I had to get my unplayable Woolworth Bass, tune it for about 20 minutes, then play the track I wanted to learn at really low resolution on my cassette player (often having had to record it opportunistically from the radio using the cassette player's in-built mic), and then play all of this through a bass 'combo' that turned the mud coming out of the bass circuit into sludge. And that lot probably cost me the same as a decent Squier, PJB combo and bass training app would cost me today

The regular jam I attend moved out to the pub car park and we got a couple of sessions in, two weeks apart. It worked quite well, though running power cables out and arranging the horn players to blow in appropriate directions was tricky. There's one planned for next week but presumably it will be cancelled. Of course, we could always drive to the pub to test our eyesight and, whilst we are there anyway, jam in a very specific and limited way...

I was one of those kids for whom Music was one of the few things which made sense in school. Some subjects were easy and some were hard (a U in O level Chemistry and 2 Us in O level French come to mind) but I actually understood what was happening in the music lessons. I was in my mid forties before I understood how to write an essay so my tidy marks in O level Welsh and English were down to something else. They came crashing down in A level (E twice in English and a U in Welsh). I was also the first pupil in my school's history to be invited to leave an A level (History). I had a great music teacher who gave us many opportunities to do our thing with gentle encouragement. Anything I have done since then is down to the hour a week of Aural Perception lessons I did at A level. He gently formalised what I was already hearing and enabled me to label it all. He saw me for what I was and led me on superbly. I tell him every time I see him and I even tell his children. Did we do groovy pop stuff? Not in lessons really. It was not on the curriculum. He can hardly be blamed for that. I have nothing but praise for him. I was also hugely involved in the County Music system (and beyond) of Orchestras and Choirs as well as playing in the local University Orchestras and local Madrigal choir. I did so much playing that I never did any practice but still managed to get away with it. Two 3 hour rehearsals per week + 6 hours once every 4 weeks on a Saturday tended to keep chops up. This was in the late 70s/early 80s. It did not hurt that I also lived in a part of Wales where there was just an expectation that you would be involved in all the local Eisteddfods and performing was just something you did. When I hit University it came as a bit of a shock to see how some musicians who were clearly more capable than my friends at home could not stand on stage and give it the beans because they had just not had that experience at school and in Eisteddfods. I was a peripatetic 'cello/DB/Bass Guitar/Guitar teacher for many years. I have seen the inside of so many school music classes and I take my hat off to anyone who does it. There is not enough money in the world to make me want to do that. And I am a full time FE Music teacher. Teaching Music to a disinterested Year 9 group on a Friday afternoon must be a special kind of grim. I struggle to see how it can work really. If you are appealing to all the kids who would love to be giving it the max while composing EDM then there is a whole other group of kids who would be walking out of the door. GCSE has a performance element which is tricky for the EDM crew because that is not where their strengths lie. You would also need banks of Macs for all of them to have their own space. I would say banks of PCs but when we were runing PCs at work literally 20% of every lesson was spent trouble shooting some technical problem or other. And schools just would not have the budget for banks of Macs. Virtually none of the students who come through our doors have been involved musically at school. Much respect to school music teachers working in incredibly difficult circumstances.

Hi folks, Had a Gumtree alert on my phone whilst practising last Sunday. Vintage brand Stingray active bass copy for £160. Looked good. ( You know how it is... I had bought a Fender Champion 100 twin amp the week before from a Gumtree ad, so once they have your number, they send you similar flavour ads). Fine by me, Contacted the guy, and he's only a few miles down the road...makes it easier for me to nip out, do the deal and sneak it past Wifey. It's a no brainer! Or so I thought. Wifey taps me on the shoulder, "Col, I need the car to take the grandkids out". Plan B. Need to wheel out my 100cc scooter once she drives off. Just hope I can carry the axe on two wheels. Challenge on. Coast clear and I whizz over to the sellers village. Pull over at the village pub and phone for closer directions. I ask him " I don't wish to offend, but d'you mind if I wear a mask?" " No probs bud". Next I am knocking on his door, he answers and hands me the bass, he is wearing rubber gloves. The bass looks great, still got the sellophane on the pickguard... but I need to play it. Then the guy says " d'you mind if you stay outside and I wheel an amp over to the porch?' " Course not mate, pays to be careful" Next thing he wheels over a Marshall stack as tall as me, and throws a cable over the top. So here I am standing in his front garden hooked up to this powerhouse of an amp. His neighbours are tending their lawns, washing their cars, kids riding bikes etc. Perfect urban summer scene about to be ripped apart by yours truly. (I have snuck the volume of this 300w Goliath up to five. Bit of Beatles "come together" riff followed by Sniff and the tears "driver's seat". Then distort on full treble for The Stranglers "Down in the sewer" for some real dirt. All the birds have fled the trees. Somewhere a baby is crying, and many dogs are barking... People are staring at me...think it's time to stop. " I'll take it mate" I hand it back and pay up, he returns it clad in bin liners. He says smiling " I recognised "come together, I'm a real Beatles fan". I would have liked to chatted to him for longer as I love all things Beatles too, but I need to stow this axe before Wifey gets home. Manage to balance it ok between my knees on the scooter, but to my horror the car is outside our house. Luckily the garage door is up, so I ride straight in and stow my booty. Just need to wait for her to shower later and I can retrieve my new bass and get it in the rack. Mission accomplished, but it was my wierdest buying experience ever. Good to know that other discerning folks are respecting the covid restrictions seriously though. Cheers Col.

Have another: 8 (It's your fault, your monitor is sideways...)

It does have a truss rod when you take the neck off but the reason that neck is foreword is the lack of shim, it's not a clever design feature! you can see now why I said the switch being backwards was irritating, it's hard enough with those controls to get the right thing without a reversed switch!

Just purchased a couple of 'Bass' tankards off Mick for our little bar. Total gent and a complete pleasure to deal with.

Peavey G-bass. 35" scale length, carbon neck, Cirrus preamp. Peavey Forum. Peavey Fury II Peavey T-45 All are active bar the T-45 .

Have a look at this complete beauty at BassDirect: https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Sandberg_VS5_SH.html If I didn’t already have P basses coming out of my årse I’d be all over it!

You'd have had change for the tram ride home.

I find if I listen to any song a few times without playing it, I can get the structure in my head and have an idea of the patterns before I start to pick out the notes. If you already know the geography of a song the notes will come with less effort, even on the more difficult bass lines.

IMO re-runs of threads can be helpful. Over time people's experiences can change and grow their advice, which will be very useful to others.

Listening to music through an F-4 amp? (Sorry, wrong Phantom...)

Watching people get upset by the word dinosaur is totally hilarious.

Currently on ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Aria-Pro-II-1979-Longscale-24-Frets-Bass-Guitar-Original-Case/174359970768?hash=item2898aa03d0:g:tooAAOSwRqJfGcR6

Keep going, there’s some silly ‘big amps are best’ nonsense early on but it soon settles into a really thorough discussion of the topic. Reading that thread lead me to totally change my views on bass amplification and ultimately to a completely new rig that I’m really happy with.

We had compulsory music lessons only in years 1-3 at secondary school, and they were largely a waste of time - definitely for me and most probably for the rest of the class. Firstly, as my mother was a piano teacher I'd had lessons from about age 7 or 8 and had done grade 5 practical/theory at about 13 so the music teacher gave me different end of year exams from everybody else (!). Not only that, but he was very poor at imposing any sort of discipline so everybody just messed about, taking absolutely no notice of the rudimentary theory and multiple record playing of Peter and the Wolf and Jesus Christ Superstar... It was only in 6th form when we got a one-off band together to play very average versions of our RE teacher's favourite Crosby Stills and Nash/Dylan songs that I realised, thanks to @lurksalot's brother, that playing keyboard was for losers and that Bass was actually The Place. 😃

Absolutely this 👍

I knew listening to Jazz was a bit odd... but didnt know that it was now considered a recognised disability... 😉 Nice... It's not, but that's funny. I have a serious mental illness and bass has become my refuge. I can be having the worst of symptoms and when i go in and play, it almost all disappears.

Another day, another singer... well, he said he was. ”he sounds like he’s in pain” ’don’t call us - we’ll call you (not)’

Really nice. This is how a trio should sound. Blue

Speaking of stuff amps should have built in every time as well as a compressor. I was looking at those new HBs and they have a big easy to read tuner on the front panel. A 9v out for a pedal board alongside the effects loop please. Bluetooth receiver as an auxiliary input. Oh and a drone system to fly them in and out of the car please.

Our streamed set from the Punk 4 The Homeless benefit last Saturday... Drums programmed by me!

Played an open air gig on Saturday at The Pickerel Inn, Stowmarket. They had done what they could - we had a barn to play in, loads of space. There were picnic bench tables set out with a reasonable distance between them for folks to sit. Not that many there - maybe 20-25 - but it was great to play. First outing for my Harley Benton Shorty which performed admirably. Sounded exactly like a Precision in the mix. Here 'Hideaway'