Leaderboard

Still all the tweaking to do, but it is a bass....

This has been a while in the making, mostly due to work and enjoying the summer as much as through odd times The paint in my metallic blue sterling was looking a bit tatty, so I figured one of the more classic colours was more my thing so off came the paint, lots of preparation and into primer, then paint But the grain was still very visible, so off came the paint and in went grain filler it worked ok, but not as good as I would have liked, you don’t really see it until the paint goes on on went primer, plenty of paint, then more paint and some sanding in between to get rid of a few gremlins and then on with the gloss clear coat Its turned out ok, I like it, but wasn’t easy, learnt a few things along the way! The spraying is the easy bit, sprayed many things in my time and can get a nice even finish! It’s the prep, getting it A1 before paint, a lot of things you don’t see until the paint is on So here it is now, with the neck on for a week or so, then it will come off for final sanding and polish I had a parchment pickgaurd made, but not sure now, think tort’ might work better with the black p/up, unless I can get a white p/up cover! But I have a few option now!

Hi all, Tonight I thought I would try and list my Modulus Flea bass on a few Facebook Bass sale related groups. I wish I hadn't. A diabolical experience, full of snide, idiotic (and clueless) people with no respect. So I pulled the ad. Made me long for the warm hug of Basschat and it's superb community, spirit and conduct. Selling (and buying, oh so much buying!) here has always been a great experience. Thanks to all that run Basschat and moderate it!

(Inspired by @stewblack topic about Bass heaven) There's an old joke, based on crude outdated stereotypes unfortunately.....something like: In Heaven the cooks are French, the policemen are English, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and the bankers are Swiss - whereas in Hell the cooks are English, the policemen are German, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss and the bankers are Italian. However the format's OK......... so I had a bash at a bass player version: - In Heaven the bass players have the image of Sid Vicious, the playing ability of Carol Kaye and the ego of John Deacon. - In Hell the bass players have the image of John Deacon, The playing ability of Sid Vicious and the ego of Carol Kaye. Can anyone come up with a bass/musical version?

Here's my entry to this months challenge. It's a little hastily composed so a bit rough around the edges. Recorded in Cubase LE. The keys are mainly Xpand 2, with some Bassstation as well. Drums are MT Powerdrums. Vocals are me, through a guitar pedal board created in Amplitude (Digital Delay, Chorus, Envelope Filter and Distortion pedal). Enjoy.

This place is a really good community, people talk stinky poo occasionally (mostly me), bicker occasionally, disagree strongly occasionally, and sometimes get into an argument for the sake of it, and there's a few members who clearly don't like each other, but these are no different to what you would see in any community. There've been a couple of dodgy members who were/are here purely to take advantage of that community spirit in commercial terms, but generally speaking, there's a sense of mutual respect and looking after each other on here that means we suffer very few of the problems that come with buying and selling on the internet (and there have been some lovely gestures made to people who have lost out on here). Just take a minute to think just how much gear moves around this forum with virtually no issues? Compare that to eBay!!!!!! A few times recently new members have come on clearly looking for a fight and haven't lasted long because they're expecting the more usual internet rules ala Facebook Marketplace or YouTube. People need to understand that this is a local forum for local people All joking aside, well done to Ped and the mod team, I've given you all a lot of crap over the years about various things, and got into some frankly daft discussions at times, but this really is an outstanding place. How many other forums could you have a full on argument with someone you've never met about something life critical such as, I don't know, how many string windings there should be on a tuner, and a couple of weeks later bump into them in person at a BC Bash and be greeted as an old friend.

So I have only ever owned one bass guitar. I've read about neck profile, neck finish, radiused fret boards, read loads of manufacturer specifications. But having only really had my hand on one bass, it was hard for me to translate what this meant in the real world, so to speak. So this morning, I went to have my bass guitar lesson. Asked my tutor some questions. Afterward I thought to try some of the local music shops to get my hands on so that I could learn. So today I have tried Fender Precision ( Mexican ), Fender Jass ( Mexican ), Vintage Musicman copy, Musicman by Sterling StingRay Ray34, Music Man by Sterling StingRay Ray4 HH. To try all these basses out I had to travel to two shops. Out of the Fenders, I preferred the precision, because of the satin neck, and the pickups are definitely higher output than a Jazz bass. I nearly bought that in the first shop. I showed some restraint, and thought no I'll wait and contemplate over the potential purchase. So then I went to the second shop. Where I tried the Sterling's. So I spent some time comparing the Ray34 and Ray4 HH. I actually preferred the tones of the Ray4 HH because I could hear more tone choices from the Ray4 HH. I huess more tone of the Ray4 HH is probably down to having two humbuckers. What I really liked about the Ray4 HH and Fender Precision, was the satin necks. Wow they play a lot faster than a painted neck or high gloss neck. The Sterling Ray4 HH, sounded more powerful, and sounded like it had more variation in tone over the Fender to me. And you know when you get that "feeling", you know its the one, that real happy fuzzy feeling, yep thats what the Ray4 HH gave, so I knew I had to take it! I've already been playing my Ray4 HH. Very happy indeed. Photo, sorry for the poor quality the weather and lighting is rubbish hear today! The colour looks way cooler!

I'd always fancied the look of the Guild B series basses but simply assumed they would all be boat anchors and discounted them. Back in August @cd_david started a thread on Guild porn, where I discovered that they weren't all heavy. In fact some of them are relatively lightweight. So I stuck a 'wanted' post out there for a lightweight one. @AndyTravis then did me a MASSIVE favour by alerting me to a lightweight 301 for sale on Facebook, collection only in Matlock, Derbyshire. I got in touch with the guy, he wanted a cash only sale so, after initially toying with the idea of starting off one of the infamous 'Basschat Relays' I decided I'd actually drive there to pick it up. 3.5hrs each way. I have been further for less. So that is what I did yesterday. The auspices were good - not a single hold up en route and I found a car parking space just 50m from the shop via an alleyway. He took it out of the gig bag and handed it over - it was one of those instant bonding situations. Love at first sight. Weighs in at 3.7kg on the nose. 8.14lbs. One owner from new, original unmolested condition. Some honest wear about the body but the frets have been barely worn in by the look of them. Serial number indicates it was the third from last ever made - 1980! Pics below are as I got it, I've since taken it to bits and given it a clean. Fresh strings. Wow. The tone is like nothing I have owned. Not Fender-ish. Organic, deep, rich but punchy. Really punchy Pickup is further back towards the bridge than, say, a P bass which I guess makes it so clear. The build quality as right up there, as good as anything I have owned. open back Grover tuners with a cute wiggle to them. 3 point bridge that is a massive improvement over the Gibson version. I even love the knobs! A little neck heavy but nothing a grippy strap won't cure. I've kissed a lot of frogs but reckon this is a Prince among basses. It has completely blown me away. Can't wait to give it a try out with my blues rock band!

When bored on holiday...cheer yourself up with a treat... Have been looking at these for a while and waiting for the right one to come up. Finally today my patience paid off... brand spanking new and a big drop in price from the rrp It is extremely resonant and the neck feels amazing, feels like it weighs in well under 4kg and balances nicely on the strap... Big shout out to Mansons in Exeter who were absolutely fantastic👍

Here’s my ‘83

I can’t promise I’ll be able to do anything with it, but worth a fresh set of eyes on it maybe. PM me mate. I go over the Bas occasionally, so might be passing you at some point.

Never busked on bass myself (have busked other instruments), but maybe take a look the Violent Femmes. They started out as a (three piece ) busking band..... kind of punky with teenage angst lyrics (probably the best such lyrics). The bass player is Brian Ritchie and he got a loud sound by using a very large bass guitar (Ernie Ball Earthwood apparently) and hitting it hard. A lot of the volume came from a kind of clank, and he developed a 'lead bass' style...... not sure how well it would work. I think he's great, but may not be to all tastes.

It’s great 😊 The fretwork and neck are perfect so I can get the action as low as my Vigier. It’s effortless to play as a result. The pre sounds great - I’m not sure what the internal dip switches do but currently it’s very spicy sounding and really lively. Slapped notes sound full and weighty right up to the G. The body is very tactile - a little bit smaller than a full sized J, and slimmer - it reminds me of a Smith in that regard. The neck joint is neater than your regular four bolt plate and very tidy. But yeah it sounds tremendous. The pickups soloed sound great too, which I have found isn’t always the case with jazzes. The smooth covered pickups are nice under the fingers - I’m used to using them like a ramp. I don’t know about the specs of them but they are super Hifi. Also I think they’re the first pickups I’ve had where they actually raise up when you loosen the screws! It came in a Hiscox style Celinder case which is in pretty good condition. The bass has obviously been played and has a few small marks and scratches but that’s good because I don’t want to have to baby it! The G tuner (Hipshot) is a little unresponsive to tuning down, it sort of needs going back to take up the ‘slack’ and back up to tune - maybe it needs oiling? Otherwise - perfect. Seriously love the shape and thin body. The bridge saddle grubs require a very odd sized Allen key - I have a set of every type, metric and imperial - none fit! Luckily the correct one was in the case. The truss rod needed a very slight loosen to compensate for my strings but that is a regular 5mm and was smooth as you like. The neck is a serious piece of work though - lovely bit of clank/buzz when you want it but clean when you attack slightly differently. No other neck has been this good for me and I’m really fussy with my almost dead straight neck and super low action (I normally find G saddles don’t go low enough and have to file the groove down) Compared to the Atelier? Hm. Too early to make a direct comparison but it is more Marcus Miller and enables me to set the action slightly more to my taste. It’s a close call. Both are just fantastic at what they do and have that organic grindy 70s slap sound. I’ll get some pics in the next few days maybe if the whole collection which has grown a fair bit lately. I quite like that this matches my P of choice (Black/Maple) Cheers to the Gallery for sorting a Saturday delivery, too. Cheers ped

Looks like a keeper to me.

Thanks to a recent purchase from @Al Krow my board has had a slight revamp. I’d had a pretty settled set up until just before lockdown and it’s changed quite a lot since, but I’m hoping this is now the final iteration 😂

It's here!! Well done TNT!! Brb...

Here are the cut and boost freq curves for the Musicman 2-band. Also an interesting technical article about the original Baxandall circuit https://learnabout-electronics.org/Downloads/NegativeFeedbackTone.pdf

Anyhoo I'm on beer #3 so might call it a night after this. THIS was the first guitar I decided to build completely from scratch mid-way through the bass conversion above. Now, if you ask online about a good guitar to build as a newbie you'll get an army of boring gits telling you to either build a kit (done it, boring) or build a telecaster from pine with an eBay neck or something. Well, dear reader, f*ck that noise. I don't want no pine boringcaster. I want to build a Les Paul. My inspiration for this was the work of a member at the Les Paul forums by the name of Scatter Lee. You can Google him yourself, but rest assured this guy is a genius of improvised jigs and tooling. Armed with this half-assed research and some downloaded templates I bought some wood and got to work. The design here isn't strictly Gibson you may notice. I was actually aiming at a guitar produced by a Japanese company called Greco, which is used by Roland for one of their early synth guitars. A former housemate of mine had one of these and it was actually a really nice guitar. But also rare as unicorn poop. So here I am making my own. I made the neck from maple & mahogany. Around this point I had to come up with a way to cut a fretboard radius and slotting jig. So I did a bit of Googling and came up with this: Next up: Top carving! This is actually far less intimidating when you know how to do it. Basically you're just routing in the contour lines and then sanding out the steps. I made one routing booboo along the way but was able to fill it in with dust&glue. Good templates make good joints which is why I spend some good time cutting MDF before I started hacking up wood. This worked out well as the neck joint came out pretty darn good. I also came up with what I thought was original headstock design. Suffice to say I found out later that no, someone had already come up with pretty much the exact same thing already. Sigh. I knew nothing about neck carving but I just went at it with the drum sander and, well, see for yourself. I made a very sketchy floating router thingy so I could cut a roundover on the top. And did some blending on the neck joint. Cut in the pickup & control cavities. And eventually shot it with some nitro. Now, there is a reason why I won't use nitrocellulose again after this. This guitar hung on a peg for 3 f*ckin' weeks and after that the finish was still soft enough to recieve an imprint from a goddamn rubber pad. I didn't care by this point though, I just wanted it done. Anyhoo to wrap up this tedious tale: how did this turn out? Great! The guitar plays really well. It's also STUPID heavy. Turns out making a guitar from a solid sepele slab with zero weight relief results in a guitar for truly manly men. This thing feels like a mighty tree that just happens to be a guitar. Next up: Phil decides to built a multiscale guitar. Anger, regret, bargaining, despair and eventually acceptance follow.

One of these came up near me at a good price and I just couldn't resist! I've heard all the positive feedback they get here, and on TB, so GAS curiosity got the better of me. Its a 2005 from the Peerless factory and is in pretty good shape apart from the odd ding here and there. I've been playing it for the past few hours and it produces quite the lovely mwamp with flats on it 😁

What's the best bit about a bass? What fills you with joy when you look at or pick up a favourite instrument? Or even a less favoured four string friend that might have one feature that makes you smile. My Bruce Thomas Profile makes me so happy every single time I pick it up. It feels as though the God of bass looked down upon me one day and said: This man deserves a bass which fitteth him so well verily it is as if it groweth from his body and he shall not feel its weight nor shall he suffereth from the slightest dive of the neck. It shall always be in tune never need fiddling to achieve the right action and his hands shall glide up and down its neck without even friction, thus shall it be. Oh and Bruce Thomas himself who sitteth at my right hand as a noble Prince of bass shall haveth a hand in the design and making of the bass And Stew looked at what the God of bass had created and he saw it was good.

Having recently done Yes and Warren Zevon, the next stop on my 70's music odyssey is Steve Miller. Admittedly I was listening to this on bloody nice headphones which helped put the bass front and centre, but the bass tone and the bass part itself are just lovely, bass tone pulled back to about 1% away from being muddy, and just works. And I didn't expect a bass solo 2 mins in

Been there with a previous (sometimes tetchy) worship leader. We kept getting this low frequency boom/feedback type sound on stage in rehearsal which was annoying the Leader. He told me to turn down a couple of times. I did until I could just hear my amp over the drums. It kept happening and I realised it was the keys amp resonating the acoustic guitar into low frequency feedback.It happened again and the worship leader was actively annoyed (at me) by now. I told him what I thought the problem was and he, effective told me to shut up, stop making excuses and just turn my amp down. Having had enough by now I quietly removed my bass, placed it on its stand, turned off the amp, unplugged the cable and coiled it neatly on the floor in front of me, turned to the drummer, winked and tapped the side of my nose and stood with my hands in my jeans pockets. The band started to run through the song again and the low frequency noise started again. The worship leader was furious by now and yelled while starting to turn around to confront me, “OH FOR GOODNESS SAKE TREVOR WILL YOU JUST DO AS I ASK YOU AND TURN YOUR AMP D...” I sweetly smiled at him, shrugged and said, “You really do need to do something about the acoustic guitar feeding back.” He never said sorry though...Bit of an ego issue, that guy.

Ive been looking for a Suhr Jazz for quite a while as they are quite rare and on my bucket list of Jazz basses to own. Some might know John Suhr predominantly makes guitars. He makes high end jazz basses in all sorts from his Classic Pro model Classic Antique to the Custom Classic J series. This instrument is a Custom Classic J. Its a swamp ash body with a honey burst high gloss finish. Abalone side dots, decal and fingerboard dots. Suhr (Humphrey) Jazz pickups in a 70,s spacing position, paired with a 2 band Suhr preamp. Ive played many high end jazz basses and this preamp is the clearest non coulered preamp ive ever heard. There is no preamp messing around with this basses clarity. It is also built beautifully. Amazing attention to detail. Ive got to say after playing many high end jazz basses from Celinder, Sadowsky, Nordstrand, Lull this Shur is up there.. The pickups on this bass are soooooooooooooooo good. !! These Suhr Humphrey pickups are just killer imo.. Im not sure how he winds them but these pickups make this bass sing. They are a dual coil that sounds very close to a single coil but are (I think) overwound to give a punch ive not heard on many jazz basses.Ive always had an issue with jazz basses sounding a little thin. I think John Suhr sells these pickups as Humphreys or a single coil. This bass retails at around £3500 which is a bargain when you look at Sadowsky NYC Alleva etc. Its all in the name I guess. One of the great Jazz basses does John Suhr make. thankyou Fatih.

I'd stick with the Yes but I admire SM's ire at that stupid R&R Hall of Fame's crapitude...

My Barefaced Super Twin (2x12) is marginally bigger than my old Mesa Boogie Powerhouse 1x15, weighs marginally more than a postage stamp (my 7 year old daughter can lift it), and underneath an SVT-2 Pro is the full, fat bass tone that was always in my head. None of the other cabs I've used have given me that tone, and that's everything from Ampeg, Bag End, Boogie, Fender, Mark Bass, PJB, and loads more I forget, and in just about every combination of speakers. They come up used on this forum occasionally, and even new are well worth the price. I know what you mean about small boxes sounding boxy, that's my experience also, there's no point compromising on cabs when the rest of you gear is quality

Awesome! Thanks.

This is one of those things where those who know will nod sagely and approve (hopefully), and those who don't will nod sagely and go 'Er, WTF?' in their heads. From the design/tutorial by Paul Sellers:

I remember when I bought my Mustang nearly 15 years ago, it was really hard finding a short scale that was cool looking. There were some Hofners, but that has never been what I'd call "cool" (YMMV!) and vintage Gibsons have never been in my price range. The only 'stangs made at that time were Japanese models which were around £800 plus import tax. I managed to get a cheap 76 USA Mustang off eBay for about £500 that was in terrible condition and repainted it. Then a couple of years later the Jag SS came out and then so did the Gretsch electromatic basses (2202?). Cheap short scales that gave people something to try that also looked a bit unusual. I think they sold really well and gave a lot of confidence to the market to start doing more interesting short scales that don't have to be clones of the longer scale catalogue but shrunk. Happy to be proven wrong, this is just how I saw the SS market expand.

This is my Beautiful Black Beast Backup Bass or BBBBB for short. It's a £99 Artist Guitars P bass copy now fitted with some black hardware and a DiMarzio P pickup. Killer bass for the money too. 🤘

I once put up a curtain pole for a man who's girlfriend is the niece of John Deacon.

Cheap basses have become so good these days that they've almost lost their quirky charm, lol. But yeah, I love cheap basses too. If you know what to look for you can get a pro level instrument for very little money these days. At least if you're capable of doing a setup and maybe some minor fret leveling. Even if you pay a guitar tech or a luthier to do the work it will still be considerably cheaper than a Big Brand bass. And a Big Brand bass will often need a setup and some fret leveling too! It's getting ridiculous how much extra money we pay for Big Brand logos on instruments that are only marginally better than the cheapest in-house brands. Of course there are some truly exceptional expensive basses out there too but I'm talking about the expensive ones that are mass manufactured by robots, just like the cheap entry level brands. Fender USA would be a very good example. The prices they charge for mass manufactured instruments that are riddled with QC issues and often not that much better than a Harley Benton is absolutely insane. But I guess we are still willing to pay £1500 extra for the Fender decal on the headstock. Don't get me wrong, I love a GOOD Fender but I've just seen far too many shockingly bad ones come out of the Corona factory lately to justify paying more than 10x the price of a Harley Benton JB-75. If anything I've seen LESS serious issues with Harley Benton basses than with Fender USA lately. So yeah, I love cheap basses too and I wish more people would use them in public so we can get rid of the silly notion that you'll need a "Big Brand" bass to sound great.

Oh no, not this topic again! Every few months someone revives the straight/curved debate, and they just need to remember what Gene said about this when he had the first curved strung bass specially made for him: "Well, I don't play the bass with straight fingers, so why shouldn't my strings should be the same as my fingers - curved" Here's the opening lines of Rarfer Friytnt's notoriously difficult bass piece *Straightjacket" which Gene was struggling with when he came up with the original idea:

What causes a driver to create sound is cone excursion. What causes cone excursion is volts. A SS amp will deliver the same voltage into any load impedance. When you double the number of drivers parallel wired the voltage pushing each remains constant, the excursion of the drivers remains constant, but the cone area is doubled. That gives a 6dB increase. so long as the drivers are placed less than 1 wavelength apart, which insures that their outputs combine fully. Amps do have a limit to how much current they may deliver. Current also doubles each time the driver count is doubled when parallel wired, so you do have to wire multiple drivers so that their impedance isn't too low, causing current flow to be too high.

I’m in Essex. Happy to take a look at it for you mate.

Yeah baby!!

Apparently tomorrow. We had a practice yesterday (the highest number of people I had been in proximity with since March) and we sucked big time, so should be fun!

This version of the abuelo also exists.

There's something about the back of a 70s Fender headstock with the stamped tuners... yum.