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I bought yet another bass cab (I'm a drummer...), from this very Forum, a couple of weeks ago. Too massive for shipping, it's being held by the Seller until one of my brothers can pick it up (thanks again, Ben...); he'll hold on to it until I pop across to the UK (don't know when; probably next year, but...). An SWR 8 x 8 in flight case, here's one of the pics...

Got this bad boy incoming. It will be my first ever Jazz bass, which is kind of weird when I think about it. NBD thread will follow shortly after its arrival no doubt, and I shall update here as to whether it falls into the best or worst bracket!

My favourite is The Hissing of Summer Lawns, followed by Hejira, but I wouldn't argue they're better than any others. Just my preference.

Shadows and Light for the band. After that, I love them all and think that ranking them is a completely pointless exercise because it doesn't change the way I think or feel about them. She is a genius : end of. 😀

Best purchase a lovely Status S2 direct from the factory, my worst purchase a Spector Legend Custom, the standard EMG-HZ pickups sounded really weak and the pre-amp has now packed up! Now awaiting fitting of a Glockenlang pre-amp and a pair of Nordstrand Big Blade pickups which will hopefully transform it into the bass it should be as it is lovely to play!

Its only someone's opinion, so these rankings are meaningless but we all know that. I have several JM CD's and my own meaningless opinion is that Hejira , Court n Spark, and Hissing of Summer Lawns should be top 3. I have all 3 and if i had to push one into top spot, it would be Court n Spark, but i love all three I will give a shout out to the live " Miles of Aisles " and not least because there's a wonderful live rendition of Rainy Night House. Supposedly written about Leonard Cohen, but its just something i read somewhere many decades ago, so take with a pinch of salt

The Miezo

Just heard this on R2 , forgot how good it is

I’m currently listening to the Greendale live show that’s just landed on Spotify. It’s gloriously rich, with loads of space to breathe. It’s talking to my heart more than my head, which is how I like it.

My home practice set up.

Can't have been my first amp (given the date) but I found the bill!!

Best definitely my warwick thumb nt5, paid a ridiculously low amount for it, absolutely love it. Worst, a body and neck bought for a project that just weren't up to scratch, however it's a bit harsh saying they were awful cos I kind of knew what they were when I bought them.

That also looks good but appears to be about £20 from 'normal' booksellers. I like the bargains you can find in those cheapy book shops. I've actual ordered, or other people have, Alfie Noakes' book, Guy Pratts 'My Bass & Other Animals', and Soulsville USA the story of Stax Records. The one @Dad3353linked to is looking like it'll wait until my birthday in Feb, as the "we don't know what to get you" will be repeated. Thanks all 🙂👍

My gear abstinence didn’t last long this year but I made 2 purchases that are equally as amazing as one another... My Sadowsky UV70 and my Bergantino BAmp.No bad purchases I’m pleased to say

I think what everyone's forgetting, is that Roger Daltrey said it would be ok, so there's nothing to worry about...

It's curious how threads like this always end up as critique rather than discussion of the relative merits of what's been ranked. Ironic as the diversity of his output probably would generate far more room for such discussion than most. I find the comment about his songwriting a bit odd. He's always been thrown in a bag with Dylan, and it's indisputable that vast tranches of Dylan's songwriting has been covered by others sometimes producing versions better than the originals. On the other hand there's not much evidence of Young's oeuvre being eclipsed by cover versions. His success and recognition is virtually all built on his performances and recordings. I think what's being missed is that Young has always cultivated (and probably a bit arrogantly) a take what I give attitude. He uses an electric guitar primarily to access tones and noises far beyond the acoustic guitar, so he isn't interested in finesse, he's after emotion. I would argue his playing is the exact antithesis of 'widdlywank'. He's one of those guitarists you can recognise within a bar or two and that alone is a marker of something special.

Thanks for posting that @Silvia Bluejay and it all sounds very familiar to me. Takes me back to doing this at the end of the 70s - I also recall one reasonably famous band at one of the borders in Europe, who were in front of us in the queue having all their equipment removed from their quite large truck, presumably to check against their carnet (in case they were carrying any 'additional' items (eg expensive instruments, amps, or anything....). Interesting that the political Brexit people would have you believe this is all a myth and 'Project fear' - when in reality their own 'take back control' rhetoric seems to be amongst the hottest air or most powerful eyewash ever created!!! I will be very pleased to be proved wrong and discover some actual benefits to this process at some point in the future but I'm not going to hold my breath! There will be a number of inland border locations to get your goods checked (4 additional ones in Kent alone) so you may be able to choose where to queue for this process 😉 Unless they intend to have people book slots - if they're anything like my doctors surgery or coronavirus tests, you may have to wait days to actually get through if that's the case - very interesting times ahead (especially if you plan to or have to use the road network in Kent after January)!!

I've got the Headrush Gigboard. I was looking at the HX Stomp, but for one patch covering 90% of my sounds I needed four switches. And then the Headrush came up on Andertons for £350, ex-demo, so I thought I'd give it a try. It's so easy to use - it's got a big touch screen where you can tap on empty blocks, select what you want to go in, drag them around to change order, etc. Then there's one big knob (😐) to help with fine tuning where dragging your finger across the bar isn't giving enough control. Even when playing live, you can switch between modes, through patches, control the looper, etc, with the foot switches. Pros: Easy to use - you don't need to set it up patches on your computer, just plug in your bass and speaker/headphones and off you go. Quality of sounds. It's great - after coming from a Zoom B3 this sounds so much better. The octave tracks really well, the distortions sound aweome (I've split my sound to have a distorted guitar amp mixed with my bass amp), everything can be tweaked to what you're looking for. Well built Very customisable - one switch can control a single effect, or multiple effects & amps etc. Different signal paths options. USB audio interface - record direct, or record clean and re-amp later. Looper Ability to load IRs (the Markbass 212 sounds way better than the default cab sims to me) Exactly the same abilities as the big Headrush Pedalboard, just less switches and I/O. You can still add a separate expression pedal. Cons: Very guitar focused - Only a couple of bass specific amps (mostly Ampeg) and effects compared to 30+ for guitar. However, the ones it's got are all I need, and I've never not been able to find the tone I'm looking for via a combination of amp, EQ, cab or IR. Limited effects list compared to the B3 (though most of those I'd never use. All of the Headrush effects are usable and sound good). No DI out. At the price, and sound of the unit, I'd expect one. Maybe because it's guitar focused? Cost - this goes for all of the multi effects / amp modeller pedals, but I'd struggle to justify the £500-£1500 for these Helix, AxeFX, Headrush pedals for my limited use of a couple of tones, a few effects and something to practice and record through. For a cover band guitarist with patches for every song, I can absolutely see the value. At the £350 I paid, I'm very happy with it.

Following on from the same topic we've successfully run for the last couple of years - a chance for some useful hints and tips with Black Friday and Xmas goodies still ahead, and, of course, nothing to stop us changing our minds between now and year end. And, yes please, pics of the offending items very welcome to add unhelpful GAS for the rest of us! As with the last two years, the only "house rules" are that it's bass gear and something you bought (or at least arrived) in 2020. We can all then sign up to @bassfan's / @Sibob's Gear Abstinence Thread for 2021 with good conscience and in the knowledge we don't have a cat in hell's chance of succeeding! 😁

Just a pointless photo! Anyone got a smaller bass so I can see how far i can take this!

Squarespace. Built 4 and it’s super simple.

So I decided, I wanted to try an all valve amp, so I got an Ashdown CTM 30 Little Stubby. To match the old school sound and theme I got an Ashdown ABM 115 Compact to match it, the 115 compact doesn't have a tweeter, so should rock the old school sound well!

Fired up my Ashdown CTM 30 Little Stubby tonight, for the first time, boy can this thing go loud! And the tones out of it!! Amazing. I could even feel the bass when I turned the bass dial up! Grin factor I've had it nowhere near full volume or full drive ( gain ) !!

I've been looking at short scale basses recently. I'm not interested in the short scale Jags/ Bronco/ etc. or a violin bass. Alternatives are limited - There seems to be a lot of old tat out there like the Swift and the Hofner Travel bass (is it a short scale?) and anything else which looks more than half decent is in the £1,000+ region. I do like the look of the Squier Mini at around £130. I tried a Chowny SWB a while back and was underwhelmed with the hardware. The only thing I've seen in the £500-600 range which looks even slightly VFM is the short scale Musicman - £699 seems to be par for the course - you do need to hunt around to find them for less than £619 (Thomann I believe). https://www.music-man.com/instruments/basses/short-scale-stingray Ideally, like many others here I'd like one of @Jabba_the_gut's creations but Jez isn't turning them out and I believe is harassed, understandably, to sell those which are nearing completion. Here's what Bass Direct have: https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Short_Scale_Bass_Guitars.html

As you grow more familiar with what’s physiologically happening to allow you access to that softer part of your voice, you may well find that you’re eventually able to produce the softer tones without slouching, but instead engaging/relaxing the relevant areas of your larynx/pharynx, separate from your posture. The big thing with singing is the old cliché of “practice makes perfect” - there’s no way around it. The more you do it the more you get to know how your body works and what you need to do to produce a certain sound. For example, establishing your realistic range is very important. How low can you go and how high can you go (in both chest voice and falsetto)? Write it down for reference. Knowing at which notes you need to flip into falsetto is very important as you can pre-empt your “transition point” in a song and do it with control each time rather than just blagging it in the moment and potentially sounding like a strangled cat. Also, as @Cuzzie says, don’t be afraid of transposing the song for comfort. It can be easy for pride/ego to kick in as a singer - it’s natural - but as much as we may desperately want to sing a song in the original key, the truth is 99.9% of the audience don’t know if you’ve taken it down (or up) a couple of semitones, so don’t be afraid to make life easier for yourself. Better to sing the song well in a transposed key than to stubbornly stick with the original and struggle every night. This is where having a 5 string bass comes in handy!

Not a Fender, not vintage. Looks like a bitsa to me, no idea what's under the covers (could be a P/J with that big Jazz ashtray), depending what the parts are it might be a decent deal for £155, especially if you could haggle down a bit. On the other hand if it's built from cheap tat bits (which the tuners suggest it might be), you'd be better off with something like a Harley Benton for the same sort of money. Also: "I just started playing and I was given this" says the seller, snapping pics of the bass in his room containing rackmounted mixers, flightcases, a Peavey 4x10 cab and another bass... Hmm.

Now you are being ridiculous....!

Some better shots. Fender Hi-mass and J Retro 01, and as i speak, there's some Bart Classic pups on the way from Thomann

The ad title is Nowhere is it claimed the bass is a Fender, or even the bass is a Precision for that matter, and rightly so. It's a Fender 3 hole neck plate. The rest? Well, I can tell you what it isn't 😉

Yeah, I'd say that was really quite harsh. Nobody is selling his music or talent for you to even think about putting your hands in your pockets and spending your precious money yet as far as I know, so let's not just slap it down, shall we? While he'd definitely be advised to reign in the gurning a bit, he is clearly a very talented youngster who will hopefully stick with learning the bass and become an exceedingly talented adult player. I bloody love that thought. And, in case you didn't notice, we live in a Youtube/Tiktok age. Kids don't watch much, if any conventional TV these days. I don't like it much either but for goodness sake deal with it! I am (and I suspect you are too) of an age where we strove to get ourselves seen and get into bands and get a deal so that we could be famous, sell records and make our fortune. It didn't work for most, but at least there was a known pathway. In case the largely +50 demographic here hasn't actually noticed yet, it don't work like that any more. Releasing albums and singles won't pay the rent, with Spotify and the like needing tens of thousands of listens to even cover minimum wage. I suspect most young bass players who visit this site to do anything other than look at ads for second hand gear see posts like yours and think there's not much to be learned from this forum. I personally find that deeply disappointing. 😩

Shadows And Light is my clear favorite (having seen a supporting tour show is a factor), which they didn't even list. After that, probably Hejira, then Mingus, then Hissing.

The EBS ones seem slighty more sturdy but there's not much in it. Both suffer from the same issue of having poor shielding around the plugs though, so in certain rooms they can be a major contributor to noise. I went back to cables with full metal plugs, as I had too much buzzing practicing at home with a dimmer switch on in the room with the flat cables.

Easy with the "insist"!!! I thought I was advising a fellow player. Not leading a junkie into oblivion!!

That is one lovely bass! Always been tempted by NT5 Warwick Thumbs and fantastic that you managed to get one for a great price and in such good condition! If I could find one which weighed in at around 10 lbs or less I'd be champing at the bit to join you. I totally love that Warwick MEC growl - it's what led me to seeking a lighter weight substitute which I've kinda managed to get with my Ibby SR Premium basses with their Nordstrand big singles. I got mine, used, within 4 weeks of yours but complete with a cover! Frustratingly, and I suspect true for both of us, I've certainly had precious little opportunity to use it "in anger" outside of the house since then...

I have had no bass related purchases apart from two identical Levy straps. Honestly, I can't choose between them as to which one is better and which one is worse.

My americana band Violet Hour has released its debut record! Check it out (click on the image) and/or order it on 45 rpm vinyl through violethourband.com!

Wash your mouth out young man!

I've joined the Ashdown Barefaced club too

Impressive but... this phenomena is known as a 'dancing pony'. So you've got a dancing horse. It's not great dancing (music) but it's a horse so that's something. Nobody would spend money to buy this a music but it's a dancing horse. It's a product of the YouTube age. Give it 90 seconds and you'll click away. I'd rather hear about where you've spent your money to buy music. Not to show a talented statistical edge case do something you can't. And 'no' I don't like gospel. ** Edit - a bit harsh. Talented little chap but I don't want to listed to it, let alone pay for it. **

I'd keep the Lakland purely because of the aesthetics, really like the bound maple neck with block inlays plus I prefer pristine over roadworn 🙂

First line of description. 'Original 1958 Fender Precision Bass'. Second line of description. 'Restored about 12 years ago.......' and goes on to say that nearly every part of it has been messed with. Soooo, talk to me about this word 'original' that you led with. 🙄

What, with playing and everything?