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This came in the post today!! I posted a wanted advert here a few weeks ago asking for a Jazz Bass with 70s spacing. I had lots of messages and offers of all sorts of basses from vintage Fenders to modern super jazzes. I ended up going for this one for a few reasons, mostly from good experiences with Atelier-Z in the past, and the fact the bass exhibits none of the weight associated with 70s examples (certainly those that I tried). The body is chambered and a sandwich of alder and ash. It sounds superb; full of that 'breathy' quality of the best jazz basses I have tried. Slap is pure Marcus Miller territory when you want it to be, but I especially like the way it sounds with finger style and the occasional pop accent. The pickups feel great - very powerful and a muscular gritty detail when you dig in. Here's a pic of the chambering ...and here are some pics of the bass in my garden shortly before I walk Sybil and no doubt cause a rainstorm I'll do some sound samples once I have played with it. Cheers ped

My little home set-up

Oo'er missus

Just phoned PMT - the Peavey has my name on it - coming Monday!

I have always liked surf green. Btw Bubinga5, your old Sei Jazz 5 is sitting on the sofa next to me. In case you wanted to keep track. Very lovely.

I found a nice 2 piece body blank in my workshop that I totally forgot about! so decided to make myself a 24 fret five string. I’m kinda modelling the look after an Ibanez Adam Nitti 5 string, red with maple neck and black blocks. I cut the body and made all routs. Applied sealer and grain filler. Red pigment was added to the clear coat and I finally got the red I wanted. Now shooting clear coats.

Yeah, just sold it on Rush US fan forum for £8k

And now 4 becomes 5 - with the sddition of a MapleGlo Rickenbacker 4003. The first time I saw one of these live was a band called Stray at The Kings Head, Romford in 1969. IIRC Gary Giles played a FireGlo Rickenbacker and unleashed a sublime solo in a song called "Move On". I've still got my vinyl copy of Stray's 1970 debut album. Next live sightings were Chris Squire's SnowGlo Rickenbacker in 1970 (Colchester Corn Exchange) and 1971 (Royal Albert Hall - support to Iron Butterfly).

That Aria is a thing of beauty

Members of the James Last Orchestra were extremely talented, but I don't want to hear them play any Led Zeppelin 😉

Keep it exactly how it is. And then order a custom from someone like Moollon, Olinto or Limelight to address your want for a Sea Foam over Sunburst curiosity. Simples Si

No, I was hanging from the ceiling when I took the picture. I am a vampire.

Wenge fretboard, stuck to a neck with Titebond and clamped. Now I hope I didn’t screw up.....

Not seen much talk of this (might have missed it of course). Looks like a very capable Stomp alternative, even has a bass mode (inc BDDI sim). Less ‘named’ sims, and less overall compared to the Stomp, but does have a cool VU meter. https://www.boss.info/global/products/gt-1000core/?fbclid=IwAR34FHJdvyW6Y5gNn1ebhasZbq3rLDeFFk6qDkF-7FFlTwoAcjskf2wFans

Imagine this scenario. Bassist joins band approx 8 years ago. Perhaps longer. Bassist leaves band and leaves his combo with the guitarist. Approx 7 years ago Guitarist takes combo to the singers rehearsal room as he doesn't want to store it. Afore mentioned bassists father then joins the same band as the bassist. Approx 7 years ago Father uses the combo for rehearsals and gigs. The father leaves the band 2 years ago and leaves his sons combo. A few months later, the guitarist who the combo was originally left with also leaves the band and forms a band with the bassist who had left shortly before him. He also leaves the combo. Are you following? 2 years ago, I join the band and the combo is still there. I used it a couple of times in rehearsals only before taking my gear there. Last week, the original bassist sends a message via his father that he wants his combo back 🙄 His father goes to collect it with the same guitarist who the combo was originally left with. Next thing, posted on Facebook is a load of insults about the singer and he was "going to pay" for damage to the tolex on the combo? They didn't mention this whilst picking it up? Tonight a tirade of threatening text messages are sent to the singer! Honestly, you couldn't write it. All this over a decade old Behringer combo that wouldn't fetch £40 if it was mint! 😂😂😂😂 Personally I think they were lucky that the combo still exists, never mind a little bit of damage to the carpet covering!

In these challenging times its good to receive great service, especially when retailers are facing pressure on so many fronts. As a first time buyer from this company I purchased Bart pups and pre amp from Mark at Bass Direct.Unfortunately the preamp displayed a fault. Mark spoke to Bartolini to see if it could have been an easy fix. I received an email that night from the US who were equally efficient in there response to resolve the issue.Mark contacted me today to say that there was a replacement pre amp on the way. This is the standard of service we all hope for and ensures my future purchases with Bass Direct. Hopefully we can all ride this covid storm return to playing live and get to realise our GAS in stores such as Bass Direct. Thanks again Mark.

It strikes me that all the ‘complaints’ folk had with the stomp and the reasons cited for migrating to the HXFX have not been remedied by the GT Core - not having enough foot switches, an inability to select individual effects like a ‘real pedal board’/ finding they would have to tap dance during a song going up and down patches with said three foot switches or indeed needing to buy an additional fs to maximise switching options etc. It looks like good unit theres no doubt and having the bigger screen and more control knobs is never a bad thing. I’m sure it will find its way onto many pedal boards or replace many folks existing pedals but I’d not be expecting it to ‘fix’ whatever issues people felt the stomp had and which were the reasons they jumped ship to the hxfx... which can also load IR’s if so desired... in the first place. Having so many improvements over the older tech of the stomp is a bonus too - a faster processor and more processing power should translate to better emulations of classics like the DS1, the DD3, a Flanger or the venerable TR2 tremolo and and a whole heap of other pedals no bassist really needs. Joking aside the midi integration is always handy in a multi pedal, pedal board set up, it looks like it has a good large screen with intuitive UI and the pc editing and amp/cab sims are always handy on for both recording, headphone use and of course out at gigs if they ever return. I guess it comes down to what features are really important and if the new Boss provides those essentials like three footswitches (a Boss FS 7 for instance can be added for an additional cost), 24 fx on at once, PC Editing, a killer tuner, amp switching then it’ll be a Stomp killer which we know has been ‘plagued’ with failures and issues but mostly related to brand new first run models -I’m sure Boss won’t have any such teething issues!

And will any of this help when you play Mustang Sally?

I bought a pair of gen 2 barefaced midgets just before the gen 3 cabs were released, I haven't looked at another cab since they arrived (except I did test out a compact before ordering the midgets and If I had the space I would definitely add one to my collection) Matt

My Tremond arrived. It sounds very good indeed.

Couldnt agree more. Just a different flavour of the same thing. A few extras, no doubt a few things missing that the Stomp has as well. Time will tell. Being a member of a few Helix FB groups i dont get why the Stomp keeps getting mentioned as having issues. Its not widespread, just taken out of context as far as I’m concerned. A very, very few owners that had had issues do not make it a problem box, at least no more than anything else. I have two broken Boss pedals at home, I’d certainly avoid that manufacturer as well 😁

Now with added SIMS red LED-ness

A blast from the past... great live, too. A much overlooked band and bass player... Get your groove on!!

So he slapped two ponies in your pocket, well that’s inflation for you 😀

The tall bloke with the long guitar is 70 today. I honestly thought he was older, it means he co-founded Genesis when he just was 16-17. Now he's one of the richest (and nicest) people in Surrey. 🎂

Very happy with my little set up now, does all I need

Horses for courses. It's just a different sound that sounds better for some genres / tracks than regular overdrive - I like and use both. It's also been a studio trick for decades, the modern trend is just distilling that into a convenient pedal format.

nah, I don't like black necks.

This is interesting though, particularly from around 0m25s: Composed 45 years before Joplin was born.

Finding that bass in Slough is like running into the Minogue sisters at the Dog & Duck

This one really was a long-awaited effort. I have had it in mind to transcribe this probably since I started playing the bass. I got my first bass, a Hondoo II Precision copy in September 1980. I know that because that was the year I started working for a living and I paid for it with my first pay packet. At that point, I was already listening to the Friday Rock Show and, like every Rock fan who lived through that era, the opening theme from the show promised great things. It wasn't until some years later that I learned that the tune that opened the show was called 'Take It Off The Top' by the Dixie Dregs. What is more, the tune featured a genuine bass solo in the form of Andy West's two bar exchanges with guitarist Steve Morse (both names I would not know for some time yet). Last night, I put the final touches to this transcription and it is now available on my website. We got there in the end! https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/take-it-off-the-top-dixie-dregs/

Wouldn't it be nice - Beach Boys (I was going to try "Wooden teet be nice" but thought better.)

Well this little bass is really annoying - my band prefer it to all my others, it feels great to play and is a right little bruiser in the mix. Makes me wonder why I've got these nice 'quite expensive' other basses. 😏

I painted our garage floor with the basic screwfix garage floor paint Last year, it’s been great and makes a big difference. I don’t know why I would need to redo it in three years really, but if I do it’s cheap and easy to do. I looked at epoxy and more expensive approaches but decided that for me they didn’t give me much over paint except a smaller wallet. Our garage is a double so the cost differences were multiplied vs Your considerations

Ain’t that a shame (Fats Domino) how’s that for a double link - title and artist. 😎

My newest one - LWA1000 with 2 matching 4x8 Celestion loaded cabs. Lightest (and loudest) rig I've owned.

Not all Sig models (across different companies) are just production models with a name tagged on, they are different. Doug Wimbish Spector has its own neck profile, Sandberg models have subtly different pick up placements and bits compared to the ‘standard’ model it is based on. For me, I’ll assess something on its merits sig or not This bass looks cool - congrats to him

If the look & feel of the bass are a direct result of decades of you playing it ... leave it alone! If you do nothing now, then you retain the option to something later. If you do a refin now then that history is destroyed, and you can never get it back.