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Just before the 1300 leaves for @briansbrew and while the bb450 awaits a new nut…and the 350 awaits pretty much all the stuff to stop it looking like a tramps tea…

It lives! Having confirmed that there was continuity everywhere there should be, I turned my attention to finding it where it should not be. I quickly discovered that the wiper of the volume control was connected directly to earth - the culprit was a stray whisker of shielding. Although I had stripped back the shielding and clipped it away (but not completely it seems), the action of sliding some heat-shrink tubing over it had dragged it into contact with the grid stopper resistor feeding the phase inverter. The amp doesn't sound particularly loud through my test speaker (a 10in guitar speaker lying face-down on my work bench - I can't really give it much beans) but that's just to load the output and confirm that the amp is working - experience tells me it will be a different story through my BF One 10, but that will have to wait for now. There is a little bit of buzz that disappears when the volume control is maxed, but I can deal with that at my leisure. I think my transformer purchase goof may have been a happy accident. Running the amp at full wall voltage (249V today) the HT voltages are only 7-9% below the Heritage spec. If I had fitted a 360-0-360V PT they would have been way above spec. Plate dissipation is now 21.7W in each 6L6. This is 72% of maximum, and perfectly fine for a cathode biased amp. The 10W bias resistor gets pretty hot considering it's only burning off 3.7W! I have been lucky with my guess about the PT secondaries i.e. the NFB resistor is not creating scary positive feedback. I still have to fit the feet to the base plate and make sure they don't foul any of the electronics. I'll do this and fit the base plate before I sit it on my One 10. Watch this space!

Not sure why, but I'm reminded of that programme 'Dexter'?

So getting the garden done with the only access through my bass manufacturing workshop (...garage) means I haven't been able to get in and work on the bass for weeks now, but the job is almost done and with their being no more need for wheelbarrows and muddy boots to be traipsing back and forth means the workshop can finally open again (...garage door can be closed and all my tools can put back on the shelves) There were a couple of jobs I was putting off so I started on those first, biggest one being the sanding of all machine marks and getting the bass and parts up to 400 grit ready for finishing. I'm just continually wiping this down with white spirit to see where more sanding is needed... The grain is coming up lovely and the ash really shows off the curves, you can probably see the dent in the bottom curve here 😣 looks much worse on the pics but will need to be filled at some point probably with a couple of slurry coats... really wish it wasn't there though! Lower horn with it's final sanding complete On the back all the cut aways are complete, the groove for thumbs and fingers to remove the access cover is done, maybe a little bit too big but at least it's obvious I have the magnets installed in the cover cavity and on the cover itself and it sits nice and makes a very satisfying clunk when installed, my efforts to try and line up the grain hasn't been too terrible. Next is getting the bridge sorted out I've made about 4 so far but none of them have been good enough, so got a gut feeling the next one is the one. The disappointing bit is after waiting 2 weeks for my new Newtone strings I got an email to say they're self isolating and won't be opening again until the 12th... so no idea where my order is in their list but they'll get here eventually, just means I can't work on the bridge and nut saddles just yet but all in good time! Thanks for looking guys, hopefully we're not too far away from it being done.

Vapour barrier now up. Plasterboard is next.

Update: My thumb is still intact. The amp is back from the dead. And I am indebted to my BassChatter brethren and sistren for the support, love and good humour.

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Can't we just be excited at a new Trace Elliot amp without having to dissect the history of the company's ownership? I am very excited to know more about it.

It makes my skin crawl. Loads of drunk blokes spilling beer everywhere and singing a soulless mindless song at the top of their completely out of tune voice. Absolutely hate it. Its a situation I would have to leave, which is tricky if you are in the band. I hate oasis with a passion, and always have (their music, although I can't say I am a fan of them either), just something in the simplicity and the whining vocals that to me is like nails down a blackboard (except I don't actually have a problem with nails down a blackboard). It makes me irrationally angry, in the same was as eating noises do.

In one of the hundreds of Andertons youtube clips Lee Anderton basically said that from his shop's point of view it doesn't matter how expensive or well done the mods are, they add no value to the px or resale price of the instrument. In a private sale a buyer might agree to pay more for a well modded instrument that particularly appeals to them but the general consensus seems to be that you'll get more of your investment back by returning the instrument to stock (if possible) and selling the upgrades separately.

Being premiered at tonight’s Living Colour show: More detail required!

Hijack- AH200 and Bergantino HD210; compact and capable.

I'm going to be playing two hours plus of nothing but Grateful Dead at a local pub this Saturday - it'll be interesting to see how that goes down!

I had a big old 600 with my Midget. It really sounded great. The weight of the Trace got the better of me quite quickly though.

Got one, all working. Just in time for band practice tonight. Thanks again

True, probably, if it's a job, but if playing for one's own pleasure, one may be more discerning, I'd say. Fewer gigs, maybe, but more satisfying.

I don't want to wee on anyone's parade, but we do have a tendency to go straight onto the attack when we hear about a new product. Remember the appalling reaction to Barefaced and their pedal? Simple fact is we're consumers of products, we don't make them nor do we have any input to the R&D. If the product is badly thought out, designed or overpriced, we won't buy it. Having said all that, it's only my opinion. I just prefer us to be happy and excited not carping and miserable. Everyone else is of course free to explore their own response to the news.

I have to agree. It's a really beautiful build, but like when I obsessively put together a bass and my mate said, "wow it's like a £3000 bass" (I'm sure he was being nice about it!), even if that was true it would be like buying a ferrarri replica from someone with an unknown track record - it might be as good as the real thing, but part of the value comes from the marque it'self and a bitsa will never command the prices of a Fender and will remain the value of it's parts. Which doesn't detract from the fact that it is a great looking bass - nice work!

In my experience, you'll never recoup your investment on a bitsa. Lack of provenance as a package kills the value proposition and you just end up looking like you're over-justifying the value when you list all the great components it's made of. Further compounding things - the weakest/cheapest component appears to me becomes the benchmark which drags the whole thing down. You'll lose less by breaking it up again and selling the parts individually. Also, pretty sure you can get humbuckers in a J pickup shape. Or get the router/chisels out. Unless you're thinking of ending this project because you think you've taken it as far as you can/want to.

But is Trace really Trace now? Its all a bit lipstick and furcoat is it not?

I once played with a singer who asked us to slow the song down, which is fair enough. They then said it was too slow, and asked us to bump up the tempo a little bit... a little bit more... a little more... and we were back to the original tempo. They later asked the keyboard player to "come in earlier". He was a little miffed as he was playing what was on the recording but did as they asked. They then told him he still wasn't playing it right, so they had a quiet, in depth conversation, after which everything was fine (I didn't notice a difference). Later he explained that what they had meant by "come in earlier" was actually "use a different piano sound".

I saw this on BC last Wednesday, paid Giovanni in Italy on Thursday and it arrived this afternoon (many thanks UPS) All I can say is 'WOW'. When I used to play guitar (many, many years ago), I always lusted after a stainless steel Stratocaster, but that being the early days of the internet, I couldn't find one, so I wasn't going to lose the opportunity to get this bass the second I saw it. It was built in late 2018, with an aircraft grade Aluminium alloy body, rear of body and scratchplate in carbon fibre, bolt on hard maple neck with graphite reinforcing rods and graphitex fretboard with 24 frets and luminlay side dots, Hipshot Ultralight tuners, Alusonic Hybrid Alnico5/Neodymium MM + J pickup with a 3-way selector for the bridge pickup, and preamp with volume, blend, bass, mid and treble, and weighs only 3.9 kg. The changes to the basic version are: - flatter radius. - block inlays instead of simple dots. - 3-way preamp instead of 2. - 3-way selector instead of 5, which acts only on the bridge pickup in series / parallel / single coil mode. - blend on the preamp instead of the 5 pre-selected combinations. It feels absolutely wonderful and sounds better than pretty much any other bass I've ever played. I think I'm going to have to keep my eye out for another one

£5 says it's a 500W or 800W version of the Elf. the only question is why it took them so long to do that. but i wish they'd ditch the TE branding and just sell them as Peavey gear. buying the name of a dead company to market your products under just feels tacky.

Literally that makes me happier than you could imagine to miss out. The one thing that would make me want to stop gigging is a group of drunk blokes screaming wonderwall at the top of their voice. We do sex on fire as it is, and I never understood peoples love for that, but no to oasis.

1200w into a single 10!

Maybe that's where we differ.? I (nor my partners in crime...) are not so much moved by the clapping and cheering (in fact it's more often an embarrassment...). I started playing because I enjoy making music with other like-minded musicians; to give ourselves a raison d'être, we rehearse, and folk ask us to come and play. Apparently they, too, enjoy watching and listening to what we do, and do, indeed, clap and cheer. They clap and cheer, and ask us back, with the repertoire we've rehearsed. We wouldn't rehearse a set with songs we don't like, so that's what we play when we play out. We get asked back more often than my health permits now, and, because we don't ask for (nor want...) payment, we can choose which invitations to accept. We don't want to be out every week-end, either, so half-a-dozen dates a year was about our maximum, anyway. Different strokes, and all that. It's all good; we don't all do the same things for the same reasons for the same audiences. I've other anecdotes about getting the party up and dancing, but that's for another time.

I am now!

I was thinking the same thing. Would now be the time to install air-con? I can imagine that being a sauna in the summer

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It charted earlier this year... I do think you're over-thinking 'a sad 37 year old man trying to be popular to 20-somethings', tho - it's the band, not you, and a good song is a good song whether it's a year old or decades old. IME, 20-somethings will dance and sing along to songs they know just as well as anyone else, and if you're playing popular music, that stretches a long way backwards and forwards. The real tricky bit is playing stuff punters will know, but not necessarily the same old cliche'd stuff like Sex On Fire...at least not all the time... Take Go Your Own Way; OK, it's 44 years old, but if there's a better guitar-based song for getting all the girls (yes, the 20-somethings, too) singing and, where possible, dancing (which, incidentally, will get the blokes singing and dancing, too), I've yet to encounter it. I'm 20 years older than you, and I'm never sad about playing for girls to sing and dance, no matter what their ages...

I ordered my Elf at the LBGS when they first came out and waited 6 months before it arrived. When it finally arrived I was so disappointed. NOT a Trace Elliot!!! I, for one, won't even be thinking about the new amp. If I want a well built British amp I'll buy an Ashdown. To quote The Who, "I won't get fooled again".

Spare a thought for me, a Yorkshireman, having to play Parklife. In Essex.

We put all the punters off coming so it's a short queue

I would say... convert to active humbuckers and sell the bits you take out.

The BB424's victory over my TRBX604 is complete: Bass Direct have agreed to take the TRBX on as a consignment sale and it's on its way to them. Despite the fact that I never got a sound I loved out of it, despite the fact that my thumb gets tired gripping the back of its very thin neck, I'm still feeling very bad about waving goodbye to it, and that's because its such good quality, especially for the money, it's completely without faults. Good weight, good balance, keeps in tune, looks beautiful, active electronics work immaculately. In every respect the 424 feels a more basic object - presumably the fair like for like comparison would be the BB734. Damn you, picky hands, damn you, picky ears. Grrr.

.... and relax!

I'm guessing "unknown government body" is short hand for "I'm not dobbing in my contact who gives us all this stuff to sell" ? I work for a company who owns an auction business (cars) - it is super locked down in terms of the auction house having a legal responsibility to know who is selling things and that they are who they say they are to stop money laundering. In my experience, based on the automotive sector, it is utterly unfeasible that the auction house wouldn't know the "government body" involved and also the name of thee disposal agent who would have authorised sale and the courier who delivered the items. anyway, I'm getting annoyed, and just edited out anything liablous or that would get me in trouble with the mods - how you've kept calm I don't know!

It's not from Trace Elliot it's a Peavey product.

You should count up how much you could get for the parts, if you sold them separately, then put it up for sale at that price. If nobody buys it, you can disassemble it and sell the parts.

More Scouse early new wave from ex Big In Japan-ers: And some New York No Wave:

And he's still got his thumb! Sterling work. 😁