Leaderboard

Xmas 1961, I and my elder and younger brother got a Portadyne record player between us. 1st single was Apache and 1st LP was: It got played to death. My my elder brother still has it. Soon after our 1st EP was by the Ventures. My elder brother still has it. The early 60's had quite a few instrumental groups, The Chantays, The Spotnicks, etc. That electric guitar sound was new and exciting and the Shadows were front runners in the UK and of course we knew the names of Cliff Richard's band members. So Jet was the first bass player I could put a name to other than maybe Charles Mingus, (yes I listened to Jazz even back then). After that then McCartney and Entwistle and other bassists would become names. But Jet, was probably the first bassist not to be just 'at the back'. Every other pub had music on at the weekend and guitar bands boomed. My elder brother and his childhood friend learned rhythm and lead and had limited success until like many others they got married and settled down. I just learned a few chords and riffs but mostly carried their gear to get in free and under-aged to chat up the birds. Fast forward to my 50th birthday in 1998 and, in my back garden, elder brother, good friend and myself chatted about our youth and strummed some of the soundtrack on a couple of acoustics. Then the fatal words were uttered, "we should get together and start a band - you can play bass". And so with a loaned no-name P bass I was once again the little brother tagging along. A drummer was found and a singer and for the next 15 years or so every weekend was practice/gigs in pubs and WMCs. With a playlist of 60s & 70s pop. Our audiences were of a similar age to ourselves we did quite well as weekend warriors around the Black country. Our Shadows and instrumental repetoire was always popular. The tunes were in our heads having played them to death in our teens. Apache, FBI, Walk Don't Run, Perfidia, Shadoogie, Nivram, Kon-Tiki, Wonderful Land, Flingel Blunt, Atlantis, Theme For Young Lovers, Riders In The Sky, Sleepwalk, Blue Star, etc. The first few guitar shows at the NEC were called 'Mad About Guitars' if I remember correctly. Anyway we went to one. Hank was doing a workshop and I was loitering in the walk-way having a fag by a bin when who should come across to join me but Jet Harris. We had a great conversation, me telling him it's his fault I've recently taken up bass playing and him telling me to practice my scales. My brother and friend joined us and continued chatting for several minutes. He was very congenial and we watched him do an exhibition with his band afterwards and then the Hank workshop. There are a few tribute bands and Shadows clubs around the country. I've attended one or two. Mostly the members play lead to backing tracks as they all want to be Hank Marvin. Also there is Shadowsmania, until recently an annual Shadows-fest with Bruce Welch at Lakeside Frimley in Surrey. A popular tribute guitarist to Hank Marvin, I think called Alan Jones, was present at one such club meeting. He had a drummer and my brother played rhythm and I bass for him as all the other members only knew Hank's lead to a few tunes. So that was a good night. So, Jet, well with his looks & his P Bass and with the Shadows, he set the scene really.

Hello BCs I bought this trace Elliot 10 years ago. I was told it was a prototype, build before the t-bass. Has anyone any information on this bass? It has the Best jazz/Musicman combination I ever heard. BR from denmark

ive just realised im Bolivian

OK, I've totally failed to wait the whole 2 weeks I'm an impetuous git I know, but I figured 3 days early wouldn't hurt..! Last evening I wet & dried the paint until it was nice and smooth and then cut it back to a shine with a cut & polish type substance. The finish isn't brilliant, I should have used grain filler as there's grain showing through in various places and it's not a flawless mirror finish, but it was never intended to be really. It's got too many dings already to be A1, and it's going to collect more in its working life anyway, that's the whole point. I want it to get a bit roadworn. But the overall effect is just what I was after. The strings are just a temporary measure to get it set up and working, the DR Black Beauties are in the post from Holland as I write 😎 I'm particularly pleased with the neck. It's the first time I've used tung oil, and the results are just wonderful. I am never going to lacquer a piece of wood again. The pickguard worked out well. Sure it's not absolutely perfect, and it will start lifting at the edges as time goes on, but I've got spare tape if needs be. For now, the effect is great. It sits so well with the black hardware. Although I'm wondering if white knobs would work better The hot pickups are real beasties, and the EMG 2 band gives a great control range. it's going to sound quite brutal when it's properly set up. But again, that's absolutely fine. Smooth subtle hi-fi would have been totally wrong for its intended job. Rothko and Frost have played a blinder with the decals too, I couldn't have asked for better. With hindsight, maybe I could have done without the silver infill on the big word. But that's just a detail. I think it looks the dog's parts. I'm also really pleased with how my re-shaping of the headstock turned out. It now looks like it should have done all along! So. A bit of tidying up to do here and there, and a setup of course, but it's basically done if not dusted. I've had a lot of fun with this

Definitely not. There are those who can discern pitch, notes, and melody. Then there are those who like jazz.

I have an allowance from my millionaire great Aunt. It helps keep Ubit towers in the style that it is used to. The west wing was in need of repair recently but old aunt Gertie soon had that taken care of. I work just to keep from getting bored but intend chucking my job soon as I wish to further pursue my dream of being a top model. My current wife is an international origami champion and gets handsomely rewarded for her work. This is our string fund and I have a regular supply that arrives bi weekly. I don’t have many regrets.

I've been hesitant to go further this week because I was looking at a relatively expensive purchase in the sourcing of pickguard material. This will almost certainly be a unique shape even though I am following the outline of the missing original in the faded red paint of the Encore body. The pickup position that has been dictated by the Yamaha neck has made that most likely. The faded paint is just visible enough to make out under good light. Tracing paper is not transparent enough to make out and trace with a pencil however. I used some flimsy masking sheet that was handy and getting it as gently taut as possible was able to trace the outline onto it. The trick then is to get that outline onto the card backing* without distorting or ripping the flimsy plastic sheet. It is especially fragile since I have cut the outline of the pickup and the neck with a sharp blade to allow the sheet to sit flat against the body. I used a glass cutter. The little wheel allowed me to follow the curve accurately whilst scribing that curve into the card. *In this case, a Weetabix packet. Other cereals' or products' containers may be used. I followed the scribed outline with a sharp blade. It came out better than I'd hoped. A few minor shavings and I've ended up with a pleasing shape that is worth working on both to mount the controls and to finish off the instrument respectfully. Here it is in reverse. For the next build, I quite like the idea of using a "Pop Tart" packet with the outside showing and then having it laminated onto a proper three ply backing... The mock up is promising.

Nobody commenting on the fact that the singer was the first to arrive?

Learn the awesome Thundercat lick and main groove from ‘What’s The Use’ by Mac Miller. In the lesson I breakdown the main groove and the lick. I also explain how we can use Amaj7 arpeggio & F# Dorian to ‘deconstruct’ the lick. There is also a FREE pdf transcription with the lesson and a free backing track at the end of the video.

The MÜB Miezo is coming on, looks like it's just the final coat and assembly.

Loved this back then, still excites me to hear it today... That bass!!

That is slightly different than this though, that is just the same name for different thing. It makes no difference if your A is 410 or 450, your scale is still the same (back then scales were different anyway, but also not really relevant). Like with colours, it doesn't matter if you call green yellow, if everyone calls green yellow. Also however many notes you divide an octave by is just cultural, but that still involves dividing an octave, what is discussed there is not having a an octave at all. It doesn't make a difference with perfect pitch. If you have perfect pitch, one pitch is always that pitch, regardless of what you call it, it is just a question of using the right labels, but doesn't change you hear the note. In fact when it comes down to it, it is actually a very odd thing that we don't all have perfect pitch, I guess because we hadn't been taught when we were young (see Rick Beatos videos on it), in the way we were taught sight. If you ask people to give the names of light at 560THz or 450THz , most people will get Green or Red. If you play some sound at 880Hz, very few people will give you the note.

Ladies and Gentlemen Pin back your lugholes for a most awesome selection of homemade toons composed for your pleasure Today we bring the following compositions which have been inspired in the most part from the following picture chosen by last months winner @NickD who states "Taken in my back garden as a bit of an astrophotography/light painting test" Vote for your top 3 enjoy Here are your choices 1 @Dad3353 2 @Leonard Smalls 3 @upside downer 4 @NickD 5 @xgsjx 6 @skankdelvar 7 @lurksalot A great selection , show your appreciation and put a tick for three of the above Voting closes at midnight on 30th September

Mark Smith from Talkingbass is giving a lesson on the track above live. See below for more details and the link. It's Mark from Talkingbass! It's that time of the week again! This week we're looking at the most famous bass solo in music history: My Generation by The Who played by the late, great legend of the bass guitar - John Entwistle. I'll be breaking down the bass solo itself and presenting some tips on how to negotiate the technical hurdles in terms of three finger picking, bends and pentatonic scale flurries. The pentatonic scale runs used in this bass solo are popular in the bass fills of Geddy Lee and Geezer Butler and the three finger picking is also a huge influence on the playing of Billy Sheehan. So we've got plenty to work on in deciding whether My Generation contains the greatest bass solo of all time! I'll be watching along as usual in the Youtube Premiere, so come along and have a chat as we go live shortly. Premiere Times: 8 pm - UK Time 3pm - USA East Coast 12pm - USA West Coast Click Here For The Lesson See you there! Mark

Unless he means he’s not well at all - feeling very odd 😏

I'm not reading this thread and I'm not going to look at the site... I hate you all!!!

“You played well, you’ve passed the audition...” ’well, you’ve failed mine...’

My current Taurus 4x10 is a beast. Lightweight, efficient and punchy. Great build quality too. Like this, but doesn't have the Bi-amp mode.

Fortunately, I never made more than 50 quid here or there from playing music, so that aspect doesn't fiqure for me. Fairly lucky (though luck doesn't ultimately come into it). My salaried job as European Legacy Equipment manager for a large petrochemical company is unaffected, although the private consultancy work stopped dead. Once my most recent project was completed and the cheque banked that was that, not a whiff of business. Mrs Bassfinger has a well paid job in a school and also gets her police pension. We've loads salted away ready for my pending retirement, so weve rejigged our plans to allow me to finish 2 years earlier than envisaged, and ive alreary handed in my notice. I was going to wind up my own business as I was the only regular employee, and I in turn hired in what i needed, but ive had an offer on that. They aren't getting a lot other than the name, goodwill, contacts and portfolio of existing work, but thats another 55k in my pocket so I won't knock it. Come February I'll become to be a house husband, although I may still prostitute myself offtimes as a contractor to the chap thats buying the firm. We're fortunate that our hard work and sacrifice has paid off, just in the nick of time, and we're pretty comfortable. My thoughts are with those who aren't doing so well. Oldest daughter owns a hair salon, was previously making a mint but is suffering at the moment. She'll weather the storm, but her staff are in dire straits. Instead of having paid staff its normal for salons to hire out a chair to a stylist so they're self employed and will be in real pain right now. Daughter #2 is a lazy donkey dole mole. Daughter #3 is a newly qualified accountant and tells me that business is booming, processing all the furlough claims and stuff. Shes been doing 12 and 14 hour days at home, 6 days a week, but she reckons she'll take 70k this year, which is isn't bad for a newly qualified accountant at 23. I was opposed to her not going to Uni, but if she had she'd have just left and be earning pittance, if she even had a job at all, so she proved me wrong. So bookeeping and accountancy is where its currently at if you want to buck the trend. Hang up the bass and buy a calculator.

Here's the spec. Decided to keep it simple. I have a vox plug headphone, so I'm not adding the headphone amp and I will be playing it at home most the time. Miezo 4 16” scale Ash body Black stain Birdseye maple fingerboard Bartolini single coil pickup Small knobs, passive Black hardware. Brass string anchor. Satin hand rubbed finish

Can be, and you do have to be a bit cautious. I would say you couldn't go far wrong with the East stuff as a preamp. They're pretty good value for what you get and their Uni-Pre range will fit inside pretty much any bass (check the cavity space first!). Bonus is that they are solderless, so you can wire up a set of pickups and, if they really don't work for you, you can take them out again without major surgery!

It's just not possible to see this too many times. After the show, honey ...

I'm not playing if they're going to cheat. 😕

After many years of buying the latest and greatest Class D amps, I finally took the step of acquiring a valve amp to use at home and if I ever gig again. After a couple of weeks looking around at the many options available I settled on a Stoneham YI200. There was a little chatter on Basschat a few years back about the amp and it was named by fellow Basschatters. I will do a review of the amp in a week or so after I've gained a few miles on it.

Chuck all three on! Might turn out nice.

Happy with my board now. Lots of nastiness available.

Recently completed my first ever pedal board. Just used them loose and ad-hoc in the past but I was going through wires on power supplies like nobody's business. So I thought it better if it was all enclosed and boxed up. The four home made ones are clones of a Roger Mayer Octavia, a DOD FX 25 Envelope Filter, a Death By Audio Robot and an Earthquaker Devices Plumes. The latter three I'm pretty pleased with myself about as I designed the strip board layouts myself from the schematics. Which I think is pretty good going for someone who has absolutely no idea what he's doing with electronics! *struts*

This takes me back to my very first home-made bass which used the moving-coil earphones from a German flying helmet. Firstly I would use a male XLR not a socket. As far as the connections go, connect the transformer to terminals 2 and 3 of the XLR. If you are mounting the the whole lot in a metal box then connect that to pin 1otherwise I would leave it unconnected

Can even get them elected!

Someone trying to sell a Spectracomp this morning

ahh, my old bronco! I can only remember gigging it once myself, at the most disastrous gig I ever played (not the basses fault, it did it's job fine) I often think of it and would probably have done the same mods myself if I hadn't sold it as it was quite a nice instrument, I bought it from @mcnach a few months before i sold it to you. I do find myself looking at Bronco's but i think i would go for a standard black one and then have a pickup made for it this time. Matt

A kind of tangential Jet Harris story. My brother-in-law is a huge Shadows fan and occasionally logs into a forum just like this where they discuss the minutiae of Shadows music. One frequently discussed topic is 'which guitar did Hank use on X song?' On one occasion, I forget which song it was now, the consensus was that he played it on a strat. There was one guy who insisted it was played on a Burns as he had analysed the sound and found it was impossible to make that sound with a strat. He was insistent. Jet Harris used to post occasionally and he piped up and said it WAS a strat. He was there when the recording was made and remembered it well. The guy said he was mistaken, he had proved it couldn't be strat. A nice little vignette of forum life,. I thought.

The tone on the live version of a forest by the cure. I think it sounds much bigger and more aggressive than the lp version which is quite minimalist. As others have said, it’s all about context of where it sits in the mix with other instruments. I think the tone here is perfect for the song

Threads like that are the lifeblood of forums. Advice changes, members who used to be new become the person who answers, and those who have been around for ages should just ignore and let them be repeated. Pointing people to old threads isn’t very welcoming and rarely that useful. Let people whet their appetite by discussing ‘the classics’ and before long they become more involved which benefits everyone. Otherwise Basschat would be a Wiki.

That first piece reminded me of this obscure classic: Athletico Spizz 80 - Clocks Are Big

You need to keep Bees, then you could name one 'Sting'.....

I think this threads gone on too long.

So I bought this piece of Claro Walnut... Why? Cause it looks like a frog (...yes it does) and I love frogs. I have finished a design for a 32" scale bolt on bass that I want to make... So what happens when you combine the frog with my new design? Froggy pickup cover! 😍 I've taken delivery on the timber I want to use on this bass and the construction will be; 2 Piece Wenge body (neck pocket, chambered pickup cavity, and electronics cavity should help keep the weight down) 3 Piece Wenge and Bubinga neck, (bubinga central laminate) "Frog" Claro Walnut pickup cover with Wenge walls Ovangkol fingerboard (I have a wonderful piece with what looks like ripples on it) If I can get tarnished brass / gold hardware then I will, or I'll try and tarnish it myself, no frog would have shiny super clean stuff, so that's tuners, bridge, knobs, and bolts, which will be hex bolts with brass inserts. I have brass frets but I'll leave them shiny I guess... No headstock angle this time round, flat head stock with string trees. Using an EMG jazz setup again but with master vol, pup blend, independent bass and treble. Work will begin next week! But really excited to get this one started!

I’m sooooo tempted by the Ashdown LB550.

Are all the Harley Benton's looking at it... ganging up on it?