Leaderboard

Well, it was in 2011 that due to a relationship breakdown and mid-life crisis I decided to learn to play the bass aged 53. Since then I have been on an amazing musical journey. I make no apologies for using the cheesy old word 'journey', because that is what it has been! I booked in for lessons with a wonderful teacher called Mark Shilvock who inspired and encouraged me from day 1. Within 6 months I had joined my first (dreadful!) band. Since then I have been through various bands, and jammed at open mics and blues clubs with varying degrees of success. Kept my eyes and ears open for any opportunity and never said no to anything. For example, I played in a rather dubious Rolling Stones covers band for a while, but this got me an invitation to dep with a somewhat better Stones trib band that actually went out for money!! So when I retired from my day job in 2018, I spent the whole of that summer playing with the Stones trib band and earning a bit of cash to substitute my meagre pension. Meanwhile also playing for another band that did early 60's covers and occasionally did the odd wedding or retirement home gig (prefect demographic for what we did). Just before lockdown I had been invited to join another band that did mainly originals. This was a bit of a departure for me. We did a couple of small, unpaid gigs and then lockdown struck. I felt very discouraged for a while and didn't touch my bass for months. The only positive thing about this was that the mild arthritis in my hands vastly improved and various pains and strange lumps on my knuckles disappeared! Anyway, due to the persistence of the band leader of the originals band, I resumed practising and now we are booked in to do some recording in the first week of June. This will be a new experience for me. I'm really looking forward to it, and not as nervous as I might have been a couple of years ago. With all that has happened over the past year, I realise it's not worth worrying what the sound engineer might think of you, even if he did play with a famous band before they were famous 🙂 And of course I am so glad I joined Basschat as soon as I started learning bass. I have met so many inspiring and helpful people at bass bashes and the London Bass Guitar Show. And interacted with helpful and humourous people on here that I have never met IRL. I couldn't possibly thank them all as the list would be too long and I'd be bound to miss out someone important. So just to name check two. KevB, my 'bass mentor', who has become a genuine friend. And the late lamented BarneyG43 - lovely Colin who is no longer with us, but who was always encouraging, a great bass player and a huge personality. Finally, to anyone starting out, whatever their age, I would just say - stick with it, you are in for a hell of a ride!! 🙂

I've been meaning to post my own tale of woe for some time now - so I was about to post to Jakester's thread but ended up venting at too much length... Didn't want to thread-jack so please forgive the possibly unnecessary new topic. I joined an originals band about three or four years ago which until that point had been a keys/gtr/vocal doing a small number of originals and classy covers that were facilitated by the singer's excellent voice. Things were going really well - I knew a few low level promoters and local radio folks so we managed to get some ok gigs and coverage and we had lots of new songs coming through, turning us into a 99% originals band. A couple of us worked tirelessly to get radio play, social media traction and gigs despite an ever changing mission statement from the singer: "I'm sick of doing sh!tty support gigs" one week but then "I want to do a load of pub gigs locally" the next... a period of "I just want to go out and do some solo slots at open mics"... followed by "I don't want to do gigs at all" the next month. We booked some studio time and put down five songs, although it took two years to actually get three of them "released" on Spotify etc - which should have been a warning sign in itself, in retrospect. In the year prior to lockdown the singer's output dropped considerably and so we went from her bringing in chords, lyrics and melodies for each song to band members working up sketches which she would put words and melodies on top of. We got some great songs out of this process and did some more recording. We're lucky to have access to a nice sounding room and I've got loads of recording gear so we took over the drummer's house for a weekend and got another clutch of recordings in the bag. I ended up doing endless mixes of two of these tracks - interminable back and forth finessing things until we eventually put one of them out. Within days, the singer sent a message out to say that she didn't really like this song and that she "couldn't really get behind it" - you can imagine how this sat with me after the hours of work I'd put in, similarly the guitarist, who'd put a video together for it and who had worked with me submitting it to all the usual radio shows, blogs and other places your average, bottom-of-the-ladder indie band has to plumb. Of note, this song was the first of our releases to have a joint writing credit. We, at length, managed to get over this blip and started working up songs in rehearsal. After spending a few sessions on a new one and having it ready to record, we were again told "I can't really get behind this one" - again, a song that had begun as band composition. This caused major ructions and as we were already into lockdown at this point most communication was taking place via texts and group chats. I had my suspicions about this being related to the singer perceiving a loss of her status as sole songwriter and indeed she sent us some messages about being uncomfortable with our creative process and with collaboration being difficult for her as she "received her songs from the ether" - seemingly unaware of the masses of work we all put into crafting her contributions into finished songs. But at the same time she was at pains to point out that we were not just a backing band - without being able to clarify how this curious creative relationship could go forward. The drummer managed to get us all to agree to a meeting to get things straightened out. Within hours, the singer sent a message "dissolving this iteration of the band" and explaining that she wanted to keep the band name for herself and that she expected to be able to use all the songs and material recorded thus far on her Spotify and social media accounts. I balked at this latter point and made it clear that any songs or recordings I'd contributed to were off-limits. I felt quite bad about this at the time but over the following 6 months it has proven to be a shrewd move. The three of us immediately decided to continue as a new band and in looking at the contributions that we'd had rejected and even some of the finished songs, realized that we had a decent clutch of music that we'd actually written without the singer's input and have been going about re-purposing them with new lyrics and melodies. The eye-opener has been how much more productive and positive the band has been. For someone who endlessly posted on social media about positivity and the need to exclude negative people from one's life, it seems that our original singer was an astonishingly negative and stymieing presence. We all live close to each other and the band members, spouses and children all remain in contact which makes it even harder when the singer is heard to say that she regards the preceding four years as an entirely negative experience and a waste of time - although I wonder if she'd feel this way if she'd walked away with all twenty-odd songs as she'd intended... I've glossed over many, many minor and not-so-minor niggles here: the hours put into researching, sourcing and incorporating -and subsequently discarding- flavours of the month such as loopers, Ableton, IEMs etc; trying to maintain relationships with promoters and presenters when it was belatedly decided that a particular gig or session was not going to happen; the endless hours dedicated to promoting the band and hustling gigs; the irritation of spending entire rehearsals teasing a song out of a tiny half-idea while having more fully-realized contributions summarily dismissed - in truth, all the sorts of mundane things that eat away at most bands in the end. I do find it amusing that our potentially excellent band was preemptively derailed by the sorts of issues that seem to destroy bands *after* they've achieved some degree of success - one wonders how much social media played into this: that sad sort of non-fame that comes from having an instantly contactable audience of friends and fans. Friends who never seemed able to get to the gigs, I might add 🤐 If you've read this far, thank you - I've been meaning to vent for some time and I think there is something to be gained by sharing these tales of misery. Not that I'm miserable now - the new band is far more creative and fun and the future looks pretty bright. I do enjoy reading stories about unreasonable band members though so I hope others here have something to moan about too...

So anyway, from the ridiculous to the sublime.... The first P Bass was packed off from whence it came and the very next day I had a meeting in Cardiff and happened (ahem) to find myself arriving about an hour early, so a visit to PMT was in order. PMT isn't usually my first port of call, especially for online orders but I've always found the guys in Bristol particularly accommodating and have been on tot eh Cardiff store a few times. I always find the store a bit lacking in the Bass department but I knew they had another American Professional in stock in my favoured colour scheme. After playing on it for five minutes I really really liked it but was still very wary given the issues with the first bass. Fortunately, Gavin who was looking after me was game enough to see if the truss rod would adjust properly and was then kind enough to let me adjust the saddles to get closer to the sort of action I prefer. After 15 minutes or so of fettling I fell in love with it and decided it was coming home with me. I love the colour (Mystic Surf Green), I love the neck and the dark rosewood fingerboard and it plays beautifully. What's more, it's very light too. It couldn't be more different to the first one I tried and really is in my opinion a vast step up from some of the more recent US Fenders over the last 10 years or so. My thanks to PMT too and especially Gavin who really went the extra mile for me.

Phew, I can breath now

Great post, but in truth you really only needed to post this sentence. 😂

The world is full of those people mate, all too often 'Positivity and the need to exclude negative people from one's life' translates as 'Narcissism and the need to exclude anyone who disagrees from one's life". Glad it's resolved

I've been able to find 4 string sets of Tapewounds but not 5 string sets. Really frustrating. I rang Dawn at Status and she was able to dig through some shelves and managed to find me a .40 and 2x .120s which I can use to make the full set with the existing sets of Status Tapewounds I bought a while back.. As always she was polite and really helpful. Many thanks, Dawn. FYI she has no sets, she has very few long scale (but not enough to make a full set) and a few medium scale (fine for 2+2 headstocks)

David Wilson. Look no further. He’s on FB. @walshy knows him well and will attest to his talents.

Well, it's been awhile since my original post on ordering a Jaydee but the great news is I have some progress pics. John got back to me with this recently with this pic which he explained was just awaiting preparation to be sprayed.

Don’t take liquid courage before the gig. You will feel better if you do but your playing won’t benefit from it.

Or beautiful, depending on context.....a bit of subtle sharpening of a leading note, for example, can make the resolution onto the tonic seem like Paradise found, rather than just the obvious last chord of a piece.

Thank you for your lovely comments, everyone. Bass chat is the best! 🙂

I agree....but some think it looks like a bathroom.

not gold hardware but...

Thank you @jezzaboy I did that to my Matt Freeman Squier Precision. Twice. First configured like a Jazz: I took it to Chris McIntyre here in Edinburgh to route the bridge pickup, get a new pickguard made, and move the jack to the side although you could easily just add another hole to the front and keep the jack socket on the front too. Then I installed a pair of DiMarzio Area J, which I prefer to the Nordstrands I had originally. Later I decided to move the neck pickup closer to the bridge. I just had a new pickguard made and did the additional routing under the pickguard myself with a couple of chisels and care: As a fan of the Jazz bass sound but not of the larger body and skinny neck, I also ordered a Maruszczyk Jake like that: But I ended up preferring the modified Matt Freeman, which cost me very little to transform. Start with a nice Precision, and just modify it to taste.

Thanks Paul, I didn’t find that one when searching. Lots of love for Adagio’s on there. Thank you all for the comments and suggestions 👍

Honestly, one thing I have always noticed is that if you are positive and productive you don't spend a lot of time on social media telling people you need to be positive and productive. Likewise, being kind to people, looking after your friends, supporting your friends businesses etc.

Have a look at the baseline to Fernando. Right up the dusty end that one. Legend has it there are two types of people. Those who like ABBA and those who tell lies.

https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/444788-experimental-prototype-bass-i-hope/page/9/#comments There's a cost analysis, if you want to calculate the profit. I used the minimum wages £8.91, but do you think his work is worth some more, do you? My guess is that the personnel at WAL can live with their work, but I doubt that's a gold mine. Let's say they (I assume there are only 2 persons, and I have excluded all outsourced work) build 4 instruments per month, around 40 per year (holidays etc.). 40 x £7 000 = £280 000. Subtract parts that may be something like £700 / instrument, round a little in case something breaks = £30 000. We have now £250 000 left. The very low rental of the workshop is £1 250 / month = £15 000. £235 000 left. Because the workers need to pay pension costs (£1 200 / month / person), insurance (£3 000), update tools (£ 1 000) etc. these yearly costs could be in the ballpark of £35 000. I need to point out that this is very rough guestimation and the costs are probably substantially higher. £200 000 left. Divide this to two, and we get £100 000 per person, which is £8 300 / month and after taxes maybe £5 500 / month. Gold diggers? I might call them hard working men.

We are in a somewhat same scenario. Our singer left in November 2019, she gave us plenty of notice and was upfront about the situation. No probs there. But the lead guitarist is her other half and we agreed to continue with a different vocalist. We found one with more of a bluesy voice but she can belt it out, then covid with all plans put on hold. Got together in September last year and managed 1 rehearsal before lockdown again. There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm from guitar boy. Since then no contact from him, he has deleted his facebook account and isn`t answering calls or texts. So as he is a moaning negative type of guy, we have decided to move on without him. One of these guys that even when we played a great gig with the punters right into it, his face would still be tripping him. Myself and the drummer had had enough of his attitude anyway and it feels like a weight has been lifted from our shoulders. It was always going to be hard to pick up after the singer left but I feel more positive about the future of the band now even if it means almost like starting from scratch again.

A previously owned 301 has returned to the fold 😬

Small board is constantly evolving.

Dawn is an absolute diamond. I've been up to Status HQ many times and she has always been lovely.

I can also recommend David Wilson here is the jazz he did for me

OOF!!

1) I totally agree, but the modern use of autotune (or Melodyne or whatever) is over-corrective and does correct even slight variations. Good musician CHOOSE how to tune each note, and removing that removes the humanity, just as editing to the grid kills the groove 2) True, but again, good musicians make choices, and unless you can play in tune (or sing in tune) to start with, you can't make the choices, because you don't have enough control 3) Same thing applies. When I play Baroque or Classical music, depending on what the conductor or Director wants, certain intervals will be played wider or narrower than you would hear on a piano or a guitar fretboard. Again, this is "in tune". It's about control, and awareness and intention, and the existence of Autotune etc seems to lead some producers and performers to believe that that level of skill is not required any more, when in fact that level of skill is what makes great music so musical. IMHO.... Apologies for the tardiness of my comment, I was busy playing music....

That metallic green on the Gretsch is seriously nice! Always wanted a green bass after listing over an early green Eric Clapton Strat as a kid.

like this shade...

Purple!!

Really neat work! Can't wait to see the finished bass.

The deluge of TLRTs your post received is more eloquent than I can manage. Yours is a heartening post even by the high standards of this incomparable forum. Happy anniversary.

I keep taking this (we’ve had about 4 rehearsals now)

Let me see.... No. No it isn’t 😁

Pardon me, I appear to be lost. I'm looking for the compression thread? 🤓

"That sad sort of non fame" - I love that, nicking it...Great Post BTW!

Lady Dawn even called me in person to inform the neck was ready to ship. I could have listened her voice all day!

By and large, the best solution is usually to play in a 3-piece. Each additional band member increases the complexity and the likelihood of problems by - quite literally - a geometric progression. I have my own problems and issues to deal with, but that's just me so it's problems of one to the power of one = one. Add one other musician and we're dealing with the problems of two to the power of two = four. A 3-piece band is therefore three to the power of three = nine. It is NINE times harder to coordinate a 3-piece band than a solo artist, but on the other hand it is 90x as much fun to play bass in a 3-piece than it is to play bass as a solo act. And a 3-piece is way easier to cope with than the classic 4-piece line-up (16x), let alone a 5-piece (25x). This is of course a very simplified model. The numbers should really be re-stated with weighting in place to account for the ego of vocalists, the selfishness of lead guitarists, and the reliability of the drummer's van.

Hey waddo, I’ve got a spare Wilkinson bridge which I bought just for the screws, but I never used , your welcome to it if you want it , and I think I’ve got some neck/body screws in my workshop you can have, let me know and I’ll pop them in the post 🙂

Some MP3 codecs pad the start of the track by a number of milliseconds. This means if you play along to MP3s, you won't realize at your end that there is an issue; but to the producer, your bass tracks will be slightly out of sync. WAV won't have this problem.

Monel should be 'warmer' than Stainless (Chrome):

Fresh set of batteries in the Shuker, because (I can barely believe I'm saying this) I've actually got a full band rehearsal tomorrow

I'm going to spoil everyone’s JC for them, because once seen it can't be unseen. Have a look at the headstock and ask yourself who 'Slack Casady' is? 😉

Yeah, I didn't appreciate them in the 70s. Grew to appreciate their talent in the 80s & 90s. Sick to the back teeth of them in the 2000s.🤮. They are clearly very talented. The songs and records are very well crafted. But, Mama Mia (the movie)... Why???? (rhetorical question)

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this topic. I followed up every suggestion and have made my decision. I am commissioning Zoot to build me a Jazz Maniac similar to this one, but with P/J pickups.. It won't be built until next year, but I will put a picture of it on BC when it arrives.