Leaderboard

My little Tonehenge I got the VT500 in the Thomann blow out. £159 + vat and courier charge. Amazing price. Only had a 5 minute play to see if it all worked ok and it does. It's very different to the Darkglass and the Markbass. It actually has higher OD gain levels than the DG - gets a bit noisy when cranked fully and with the Character all the way to the right (and with a compressor in front) but it's a great sound. The thing that really surprised me though was the almost complete lack of noise when using a clean or lower gain sound. No hum, no fan noise (reactive fan control! at last!), just quiet. Perfect for playing with woodwind instruments. I used to do that a lot before the plague. Input gain appears to be very high so even on a loud passive instrument it's better with the Pad engaged. I'm looking forward to going through the Sample Settings in the manual later on. Also hoping that my big band manages to start up again in September!

I'm holding off on changing the title until I've got the deposit down for the hall (should be in the next week or so).

And the fretboard's on - and no gaps The next job is filing the neck overhang flush with the board, and in the background, preparations are afoot to start on the neck profile

Why I can't just be happy making a bass without indulging one of my stupid ideas when it pops in my head is beyond me, last night I saw the back of a Ken Smith headstock and thought... Mmmm what if I did something similar to their weird spiky thing but softer and with the contrasting ash 😩... Cue hours of careful chiselling in to a perfectly good volute... Just to satisfy an itch... It does look pretty cool though, and if anything it'll strengthen the headstock neck relationship having this as a brace, my plan is to blend this in to the volute on both sides to get it perfectly flush and then to reduce the thickness of the part on the back of the headstock to a couple of mm and this will be where I can etch in the model or bass name or my epitaph... Looks nice now as a solid block but I'll have to see what it looks like when blended and cut. I've got to leave it well alone now, no more off piste shenanigans.

Yes - that'll do nicely Using the binding to create the demarcation stripe has its own challenges, but it does mean that you only have to worry about one gap-free joint and not three, as you would if you were creating the effect with full width veneers: So in terms of the actual timber part of the build, we are heading towards the final stages. In broad sequence, it will be : - design headstock shape, adding wings if necessary - add a couple of swifts to the ebony headstock plate and attach - temp fix the tuners to align and drill the bridge fixing holes - complete the body carve - carve the neck profile, being able to 'feel' it towards final shape with plenty of air-bass And then the finishing can start

Young fellow put a 2013 Rumble 150 115 on ebay with a starting bid of 175. I made an offer for 200 and he took it. It's very clean and plays great. There are several on reverb, etc. for another 50 dollars but mostly beat up looking. V1s, too, this is a V2. $200 is a steal.

Surely the important issue is the amount of wood remo.... sorry, I almost forgot... the amount of tonewood removed from the core path of the strings? It's almost as if they don't care 😢

Also.. "Ramp on, Ramp off, Daniel-San"

The 'same as it ever was' rig. The sound engineer will fit it to the FOH rig. Been there, done that; no problems. Oops, sorry; wrong photo ...

A DI box and IEMs.

First of all thanks to those who have been following and engaging positively with the Bassworks build diaries involving stock and custom builds for clients. I'd like to tell you about my "Dream Bass" service. I design your dream bass for you AND you get a voucher for £100 off your instrument if you wish to proceed! Normally this service costs £25, (or $25, or EUR25). For a period of time I will offer a group of 3 Basschat members this service for FREE, per month. I'm not offering this elsewhere. It's exclusive to Basschat members. As well as a clearly identified discount, we'll spend 30 minutes together by video conference to scope out your detailed written specification which I will document for you. You'll get a high resolution 2D colour render of the bass, a fully detailed cost breakdown and an easy stage payment plan where the build time can be tailored to fit with your cash flow situation. So for example if you want to delay the spraying of the instrument whilst you save the cash to fund that - you can do it! There is no obligation to proceed at all. IF you do choose to grace me with an order, we'll create a build diary on Basschat too. This will operate as a competition. Here's what to do if you fancy a shot... 1. In this topic describe your dream bass in your own words, colour, materials, hardware and (if you play in a particular genre) what main genre(s) of music it would be played in. No pictures, just your words. 2. A panel of Bassworks judges will consider the submissions made by the end of each month. 3. As long as there are 3 great concepts per month as judged by the panel, those 3 Basschat members will win the Dream Bass Service for FREE that month. Feel free to watch the video over on my Bassworks Facebook page. Hit my page and then search the page for "Dream Bass". Thanks for reading and have a Funky Friday...

Now the multi-scale is done I am starting this tandem build thread. Infinite Bass 4.4CL: 4 string PJ style, but with Thunderbuckers Passive 34” scale Remodeled/reused Ibanez Grooveline 4 wenge/bubinga neck Alder body Chrome hardware Black stain/oil finish Gotoh tuners Hipshot bridge Infinite Custom Mocking Jay 6: 25.5” scale Alder body Dual humbuckers, 3 way switch Red stain/oil finish Chrome hardware ... who cares

I'll be video reviewing one of these fine lil beasts very soon. It's sat on my desk here at the moment! Oh and another cool lil dude from Barefaced too, for another review!

Ok so I had a thought... And may have done something I'll regret... But it may also look good... I'll reveal it once it's done... Or I won't and I'll abandon another build! 😂 Yes that's in the volute! 😬

I'll just leave this here:

In the days when I still had a conventional bass rig, when I was playing decent sized stages I could always hear more of me in the foldback than I could from my rig unless I was stood directly in front of it. These days big rigs are nothing more than stage props. My current rig is a Helix Floor and RCF745, and I only take the RCF to small gigs where the quality of the foldback is unknown.

It’s actually more about the feel under the fingers rather than a thumb rest.

Yes. Just like all those DB players playing over the fingerboard. Clearly a crutch.

Got the body wings sanded to their profiles. This is when a bobbin sander is priceless. Routed the electronics cavity, wanted a specific place for the battery I'm this bass and lots of areas for screwing setting I keep on forgetting to do! The ash charred a little here but it'll be getting copper foiled so not to worry. Did eventually put a headstock laminate on thought this piece was stunning so popped it on and took a bit of meat off the back side of the headstock to get it back to 15mm Started the rough carving of the neck radius and getting a volute worked out, I'm going to try and get a bit of the shaping done now before the wings are glued on I've left the very edge untouched so I can get the fretboard on accurately, the board is 8mm thick and I like to carve at least 4mm of that in to the neck to create a nice smooth feel. I've done a rough map of where I need to carve once I've fannied on with the neck a bit more again I'll do as much as I can before gluing, not too much though still need good gluing faces! More carving over the next couple of days and a glue up at some point!

1 bottle of Jack Daniels 2 litres of Coke Bag of ice.

The same as I used for 6000-seater arena 😄

I actually received this last week, but wanted to live with it for a week or so before coming to any kind of a verdict. I can’t help but compare this to my Carvin SB5000, which cost me less than half what this did (albeit used) but is a very very good bass. The good: Relatively lightweight at 8.5lb - the Carvin is around 10lb, so a significant saving B string seems legit for a 34” Nice slim neck, easy to play Looks fit Very tight neck pocket Fit and finish is brilliant (as it should be at this price) The not so good: A bit of neck dive. Not so noticeable on a strap, but it’s there. The Carvin (after installing Hipshot Ultralites) balances *perfectly*, so maybe I have unreasonable expectations in this area. I understand that this is probably the cost of the lightweight body. It already has Ultralites so nowhere to go there. I can't help but be slightly annoyed as before I placed my order Adrian told me the Elwood Ls balance much better than standard jazz basses. The strings. Ostensibly these shipped with Maruszczyk own-brand nickel strings. The B and E were DOA. This led to an annoying wait while I sourced my preferred DR Nickel Lo-Riders, which of course have cleared this problem right up. It felt like they’d put on an old set which they had lying around, which I can’t imagine they did, but in any case not a great advert for Maruszczyk strings. The sound. This is the most subjective bit. It seems a bit bland and overly mid-focused to me (some might say ‘honky’). Maybe I just need to adjust to the difference from the Carvin, which has quite an open sound. And of course I'm comparing a P to a J, so apples to oranges. Also I haven’t tried it in a live mix yet, so it’s probably a bit early to judge. This might be a case of underwhelming solo, but fantastic in a mix. Certainly playing along with some records seems to point in that direction, it sounds BIG. Ultimately ordering a custom bass is a bit of a roll of the dice but I think I did OK here. Not a 100% roaring success, but maybe I’m being picky.

Bowie’s Jean Genie. Trevor Bolder usually gets the blame for going to the first chorus too early, but if you count the bars it’s the rest of the band coming in too late.

Me too.

Aww, you've made a pair of Nessies

Had a bit of think about best place for HPF when introducing new low freqs via octave-down and filter, and decided to compromise by putting it mid-board immediately before my little Zoom multifx but after all the additional low-f stuff. I'll have to 'fess to having an ulterior motive in that I've got a couple of pedals offboard that I was really keen to find some space for, so I took the opportunity to sling the Thumpinator below board as an "always-on" pedal and have now slotted in a Pigtronix Octava in its place.

Putting my tongue in my cheek here. Yeah, slap sure is a terrible plight upon music. And now other musicians expect us to pull off well-known super hits with slap! Auuugh. Don't they realise all lines just sound worse when slapped? There's just never really a need for it. Yup, sure wouldn't want to sound like this unmusical womble https://youtu.be/hmkR3gmJh7w?t=220 Now, I'm no better than the worst of us all: I've been lazy, and I can't play slap properly. It's a shortcoming I have as a bassist. Time to correct it.

I'll add Hadrien Feraud, Matt Garrison and Tony Grey to that list not people that need any sort of crutch whatsoever for their technique Ben

Nice touch..

New Adjustable ramp 12 years ago:

Probably time for me to clarify! Why I never ‘got’ ramps - because I never found myself thinking, ‘It would really help if there was a surface a small distance under the strings beneath my picking fingers.’ Why I thought it looked like a crutch for technique - I assumed it was to ensure that the player is always contacting the string with the same part of the picking finger; and to aid fast playing by preventing the fingers from going too far below the strings. I hadn’t considered the fact that it would make the playing area feel more like that of a double bass. My anti-gear-snobbery mantra (to myself principally!) is: Use what works for you. So my bad for casting aspersions on ramps in general, crack on and ignore my ill-judged comment.

Yeah, big stage/ venue gigs are more about the PA than your rig. As long as your using any type of pro level rig your ok. I play big gigs with 2 10 GK cab and a GK head Blue

*Bass Guitar is basically a service instrument. Nothing to have an ego about. *Stanley Clarke Blue

I think the age limit for learning slap has recently been scrapped so you'll be fine! Seriously though, slap is just another technique like any other, and can be played as a basic root note or a complete technical show off routine. There's no reason slap has to be a display of fingerboard pyrotechnics. Give it a go!

I never mastered the art of slapping and I'm too old to learn now, especially as I don't really need it for most of the stuff I play. But sometimes I wish I could do it, as I think it can sound great if used at the right moment.

I'd be willing to stick my neck out and say that's not a genuine Gibson product.

Had one, thought it was very similar to the Emperors new clothes. Great rep, but doesn’t do much, and nothing i couldn't get from much cheaper gear. Sorry, just my opinion.

I guess it is the case of if it ain't broken don't fix it. The waiting time is considerable, which is frustrating for customers, but an indication that the business model is working. Wal are similar in terms of sticking to a winning formula, but very expensive. As I said in a previous post, Jaydee prices represent incredible value. I have owned both a Jaydee and a Wal. I preferred the Jaydee

It's here... And it's SPECTACULAR! Edit: unlike my photography skills...

Thanks Stevie. I'm tempted to ask why it is so component specific, but I guess it's because of how all the different properties of a cab design interact in reality 'on the bench' rather than in the software? The tailoring analogy is great. It is of course possible to buy a perfectly decent suit off the peg from M&S (dare I say Asda or is that a 'bodge' too far!?). I guess the difference is that making it bespoke means it is a perfect fit rather than 'good enough'. Cheers, I'm learning loads from this ... mainly about how much there is to learn

I've gone for it.

I’d never trust anybody to have control of their own wedge. Asking for feedback central!