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I think the antidote is to listen to many isolated bass tracks. Many of them are not great on their own.

A bit like with finishing, ask 100 guitar or bass builders how they level frets and you'll get 100 different answers. For what it's worth, this is broadly how I do it. After checking that the neck itself is a flat as it can be, I level the frets with an aluminium beam with some fine emery cloth stuck to the back. And yes - I'm outside. And yes - it's SUNNY!!!! Yes - in the UK!!!!!!! : Basically, I'm taking the tops off any high frets so that the beam sits on the tops of all of the frets. I have to say, with this being a flat fretboard, it is easier to keep it all even across the width of the board than with a radiused board! But once this is done, the tops of a number of frets are now flat - and so have to be re-crowned so that you end up with the point contact with the string that you need for accurate fretting. You can see how wide this flat portion can be with my sharpie-mark: I tend to use a variety of crowning files - though generally I find the little Chris Alsop diamond ones with the wooden handles the best but the three-sided diamond one (I think Tonetech?) is also pretty good. The worst - ironically - are the most expensive...the Hoscoe non-diamond ones. Their nut files are expensive but great, but their crowning files IMHO are, well, just expensive . In this picture the frets been rough shaped and the above sharpie lines are now teeny thin lines along the top as the fret crowns have been re-established: So the frets are now back to the right shape - but they need the scratch marks taking out. Again, there are many ways of doing this but I generally take one of the Chris Alsop files and use them as a former for a series of progressively finer grit papers or cloths wrapped round, specifically 400 emery; 800 emery; 3600/6000/8000/12000 micro-mesh cloths : Which has done my poor old arthritic hands a power of no good...but it has done wonders for the frets. And I suppose they do say, 'Get rid of the old...make way for the young' The stain should be with me in the next couple of days so, soon, the final finishing process can start

Got my first less-than-34”-scale Bass last week. A Squier Mini Precision, it’s a 28.5” scale and is proving to be great fun. I’ve played Musicmasters and Mustangs, but never a bass less than 30”. I think it’s the cheapest bass I’ve bought new before too, but I have to say, I got a good one. It came well set up and ready to go. It sounds like a P bass, funnily enough. Roll the tone back and it grooves! I bought it to have about the house, something easy to grab and do something productive with, but it’ll definitely get gigged; when we’re allowed.

Roll up , Roll up We have the picture to inspire you for this month. Congratulations to @Dad3353 for his winning entry in January and we wish you best wishes in your return to fitness. While Douglas is recuperating, the worthy runner up @upside downer has the honour of picture choice and has thus offered.......... Usual rules apply. You know the drill: ✔️ Entries must be <5 minutes and written/recorded this month. ❌ No illegal samples, copyright infringements or other snide goings-on ❌ Bagpipes. ( Christmas truce now expired) . Also on thin ice with panpipes, to be perfectly honest. ❌ No voting for your own entry. We'll know. And we'll shame you. A short month this one so get stuck in, deadline for entries is midnight on Sunday 21st February * Enjoy *realistically the voting thread probably wont go up till 8 ish on the Monday , but don't risk it as I don't know how to edit polls

Anyone else discovered that while recording yourself can be fun and helpful it can also be deeply depressing, revealing that what you thought was your totally tight pocket is actually a shallow bomb crater?

Compared to most of the rest of the thread - my very modest Sire V7: I might be alone here but I love the look of that lined maple board. 😍

Managed to snap this up in great condition - Spector Legend 4 in Black Cherry. Mint condition, superb build quality and looks great. I always find the Spectors sit lovely when worn. Very easy to play somehow, and no back ache! I got this as it's a bit less showy than my current holoflash spector! Weirdly this one is Indonesian build and the holoflash Korean - I think the Korean one is slightly larger and thicker? Love them both! Great basses.

New bass just arrived. Adam Nitti signature. Not like the usual Ibanez slim necks. Chunkier and perfect 18mm string spacing which I think is a little more than others they make. Bart pickups and preamp sound fantastic.

Reckon you've got bass? Pfft. This guy will make your low F# sound like a squeak.

February is go

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/feb/01/prs-for-music-backs-down-on-livestream-licence-fee-plan

Please allow us cack-handed buffoons a go too!

Yes, thats the plan Simon! to be honest i dont know how well it'll carve or how it'll look as a rounded neck profile... but thats all part of the experiment! i am not looking forward to attacking it with a bunch of sharp tools mind... that will be a nerve wracking day! Don't worry Richard, I will be sure to make it to every one i can, if this is going to become a semi-business of mine i need all thr feedback from experienced players i can get! Im glad it isnt JUST me interested in the nerdery, its very satisfying when you get things to work the way you intended! with regards to the pickups, the answer is eventually most likely yes. half of the point of this bass is to see what people like but also work out any kinks, and some kinks you can't really work out on paper. you need to wind the pickups and hear them and wire the preamps and try lots of different configurations... so im hoping that a MKII version of both the pickups and the preamps can be made available after this is all finished. I already have a couple of things id change slightly, including the coil height (they didnt really need to be that tall) and maybe re do them with 1/4 inch magnets for greater output but similar DC resistance. with the preamps this is actually the third circuit i simulated, the first was a copy of wal's current control layout; 2 frequency sweeps with pick attack and resonance, and the second was similar to an alembic with 3 mode preamp: Low pass/High pass/Band pass, so id be interested in actually building those to see if anyone had any interest as well!

The electronics for this are phenomenal! This a a bass which will freak out FOH engineers as it has it's own PSU, freak out airlines with the Lithium batteries, freak out the drummer who is the only other person to see the back of the neck, and hopefully freak out the audience with the sound. This has got to appear at Bass Bashes up and down the land when we are allowed them again. Or we will find out where you live and descend en masse.

What is your security concern about going through the bridge? The chance of damaging the string through an extreme break angle when going through the body is very real, but the possibility of the bridge being ripped off when stringing through the bridge is very unlikely.

That’s a couple of crackers there @meterman, I like a lot of scientists work, this is a great track which I’m pretty sure he mixed and I’m not sure if you’ve seen any covers by wobass, she lives in France (maybe near you) and does some transcribing for me, when I’m too lazy to do it myself 😁, check out some of her videos

Caught a little bit of the Eagles but wasn’t really in the mood, so watched the Rush, which I’d recorded. Found it quite moving tbh. I discovered Rush at a relatively optimistic time in my life, after a very, very bad one, and certain tracks always remind me of that sense of optimism. And although I grew away from them in later years, knowing that Neil is no longer with us and the band no longer exists is very sad.☹️

Hahaha I'd never noticed that before, damn you now thats all i can see now I look at it too 😂 Preamps are now all soldered up!! all box caps in place, tested for the right inputs and outputs, all seems to be working as expected thus far. lots of tests to happen now to muck about with component values and make some final decisions about the filter profiles. this first setup is the widest frequency sweep, from around 100hz at the bottom up to 6.8khz at the top. if i find that either end sounds wrong or wouldn't be useful, i can just change a few resistors/caps and try again. at this stage im thinking i may have them tuned differently from eachother, with the bridge pickup having a much wider sweep to allow for more top end. The Opamps ive got in here are LME49720's, which are some seriosuly good Hi Fi opamps. these are the kind i have in my headphone preamp on my desk, and they sound phenomenal. Much faster slew rate and much lower distortion than those normally used in onboard preamps, but that comes with the downside of much, much higher power draw. not many preamp makers give exact details on the predicted battery life or power draw of their preamps, but Noll for example quotes typical draw of 1.5mA, which is pretty good. a typical 9v battery would hold about 600mAh of charge, meaning about a 400hr battery life. compare that to these beasts the LME49720s have a draw of about 5mA per channel, each. and theres 7 channels being used by the preamp. and theres 2 preamps. oh dear that means about 70mA of power draw at maximum...which, Maths fans, means battery life on a single 9v of less than 10 hours. not exactly great so lets talk solutions. as mentioned before, the plan is to have a phantom power input, running at 24V that will power the preamps most of the time. Sorted!! but... what about the one in a hundred time when i want to just plug and play without the phantom power? Ta Da! this is a Battery protection and charging board that takes 3 18650 sized Lithium ion batteries, the kind you might get in powerful torches. the plan is to mount this in the other side of the bass, and have the same 24v power input to the preamps run to this as well. this will: 1) charge the batteries in place whenever the bass is plugged in 2) protect the batteries from under voltage and over voltage, and ensure the power is cut once they are fully charged (very important for lithium cells) 3) allow me to carry additional batteries and swap them out if needed 4) run the preamps at a reduced 12v when a normal jack is plugged into the bass. 18650 cells have some serious capacity. a 9v battery- about 600mAh. these bad boys - about 3500mAh. and thats at 12V, not 9. meaning that i can get 50 hours of play time with the hi fi opamps on a full charge, not too shabby! Again, if youre only here for the sexy wood stuff, i must apologise for the electrical nerdery. i assure you there are dullards like me who really find this stuff interesting! but, here you go: the fairly nerve wracking process of slicing that 50mm block in half on the mitre saw. clamped carefully and then sawn slowly. measure 9 times, cut once! but the patient left surgery in good shape! well... sugery number one. this now needs to be repeated... twice... on even thinner pieces. admit it. own up. who was watching up to this point thinking this was all going to go horribly wrong? I certainly was, and im sure glad it didnt. there are a fair few hours invested in this up till this point! then its just a process of glueing them end to end with some CA Glue, and glueing the little extra triangles in place in the remaining gaps, letting it all set up nicely, and then planing down one face nice and flat 😁 honestly, im pretty chuffed with this. im very much ooking forward into turning it into a proper neck blank and getting moving on the body of the bass properly. by my measurement its about half an inch longer than i was aiming for, but thats fine and should run perfectly from the headstock to the body. roll on the next experiment!

I thought you knew that the bass is a Wal...it's a bird's-eye maple body. Once-in-a-lifetime purchase for me. It's the only bass I own that IMO sounds its best on its own, perhaps with a smidge of compression to tame my erratic playing. Wal does make beautiful instruments.

Yes, I see the resemblance, now that you mention it.

I think after all the comments and advice, I will probably stick with just stringing from the bridge, because by my own admission, I can't notice any difference anyway, so why try and fix what is not broke? 🤔

Yeah I know, it's just such a small thing! I don't like being forced to set the knob in a particular position, however miniscule. It certainly won't stop me from using the amp at every opportunity mind!

Mono 1/4" jack straight to right-angle adapteur...

I made another one, this time with the Ray4 preamp boosted just a bit (bass and treble just a tiny bit boosted). Also threw in my P bass because why not?

50 kms south of Paris (Fontainebleau...), so a faire trot, but Skype is an option, it seems. Good solid stuff.

And steal it.

Somewhat disappointed to learn this isn't, in fact, a drum you play with your tongue.

Managed to snap this up in great condition - Spector Legend 4 in Black Cherry. Mint condition, superb build quality and looks great. I always find the Spectors sit lovely when worn. Very easy to play somehow, and no back ache! I got this as it's a bit less showy than my current holoflash spector! Weirdly this one is Indonesian build and the holoflash Korean - I think the Korean one is slightly larger and thicker? Love them both! Great basses.

Well I'll be.... through some deft marketplace activity and more than a little creative accounting I have been closing in on the backbeat cash. Then up comes a bass that I didn't know I needed 🤦🏼‍♂️

Jack Casady interview last August : ” I personally think, and it’s just a stab, a guess, there’s no science behind it, but I just have a feeling that this is a three year endeavor for the mainstay of this new normal, so to speak, and I think the shakedown is going to be three years and we should plan for that. “ https://glidemagazine.com/246845/jack-casady-of-hot-tuna-jefferson-airplane-delves-deep-on-hendrix-otis-achieving-that-tone-interview/

This all explains why I had an unnaturally lustful reaction to this ad the other week! https://reverb.com/uk/item/38055091-vintage-1981-odyssey-b500-b500ws-semi-acoustic-neck-thru-body-bass-guitar Want want want want.

The fact it is made by the top people at Ibanez. Like the custom shop vs the squiers. Obviously not, its not that ugly, but why are you paying that much for a fodera? same reason They weren't investing - they were gambling on the destruction of something, effectively they were a parasite, and sometimes the parasites get washed off.

I've owned a couple of them, and still have two. Three of them have been very impressive, especially for the price I paid used. One was a dud, but then again it was modified by the previous owner (lacquer on the back of the neck removed and replaced with tung oil, and the profile shaved down by a couple mm) so I can't tell for sure if it always was. It looked fantastic though, it was an LB75 with a hidden two-piece maple neck through body, walnut wings and a flamed walnut top, ebony fingerboard, and it looked really well-made. I didn't get on with the neck, and it didn't sound as lively and not nearly as loud as the other LB75 that I had (and bought back last summer after 10 years). I think used Carvins are incredible value for money, because they hold their value very poorly. You can often find high-spec Carvin instruments for really low prices. I paid only 250 GBP for my black LB75 here on Basschat because of wear to the finish, and I paid roughly the same for a lovely B4 in perfect shape (bolt-on, natural gloss alder body, one-piece maple neck, birdseye maple fingerboard, passive electronics). My 7-string DC727 guitar cost me 600 GBP and it's like new, almost untouched. The 7-string and my black LB75 are the ones I still own, and not going anywhere soon 😎

fun fact: one of our Presidents had some Japanese masters of martial arts hired on to train the Secret Service & CIA in Jujutsu I worked in Japan for a while & there's a pride in their work, read up on how many times they 'fold' the steel for a sword. personally, I'd rate Japan's craftsmanship in general best on Earth You might not guess it, but I found good products in Taiwan as well, when I was purchasing steel valves & piping products.

And parlour guitar and my anatomy ... hang on, no, that’s not actually true .. sadly 😞

I don't spend too much brain time on it, either I like it or I don't. I tend to listen to the compositions as people post them - often with a little snippet of their thought process which I like - rather than wait for the voting thread to appear. Usually, I know what I'm going to vote for before the thread comes around and usually just have a final listen to make sure. Regarding assessing, well, it either works as a piece of music or it doesn't, I never feel the need to analyse beyond that. It's a bit of fun. It's great that so many different approaches to composition can spring from people's reaction to the same image. It's a great format which always yields interesting and diverse results. As for critical commentary, I dunno, it doesn't feel appropriate to do so as a contributor when I've just rambled down my own very definite path for the image.

Been done to death on here by some of our esteemed cab builders. In a nutshell, if you like one cab a second identical one will work perfectly with it and give you more of the same. A different cab might work just as well/better, but may not. Matching cabs removes the unknown.

Ibby now have a 30-32 fan fret!

I agree it's a confusing time buying from the EU here in the UK, but, it's just as confusing for a seller in the EU selling to the UK. If I were an EU seller I might be inclined to think, 'you chose this, you can work it out.' We (the UK) have made a very difficult situation for everyone but as usual we want everyone to make it easy for us. Unless I'm missing the meaning of the OP. 🙂

They're often not as good.

Surely bands without any original members are just tribute acts? What makes them different from any other covers bands?