Leaderboard

Purchased yesterday from simon88wilson, thereby filling the gap for an appropriate passive instrument in an otherwise all-active bass collection since the sale of my Squier VMJ, MIA s1 Jazz and Yamaha Attitude. Satin maple neck and maple board. Sonic Blue (although it sometimes looks minty green) over Mahogany body. Feels solid and substantial but not heavy or clumsy. Biggest surprise is how well the two control layout works without a tone control. Just tweak the volume controls a bit and there's plenty of useable tones, certainly more than a 3 position switch would give. Hardware and pickups are really chunky. Tried it briefly last night, and it sits nicely in the mix. Until you push the volume control/s, and it comes out fighting. All in all, a simple, tough and well-thought out bass. Only minus point? They don't do a 5 string, so I might drop-tune it to DGCF to cover a bit more low-end territory.

Another rebuild. Running order still the same apart from the TU3 added so can use wireless or lead a lot easier. IN/OUT/OUT locking jacks mounted to the back. Matching purple boots on the jack plugs ........ New (don’t know what to call them, plastic bits underneath for the cable ties). They were previously bits of random mismatched wood covered in black tape, worked fine the last ?? many years but now custom cut matching plastic bits of thingy

Aww no. I hope your health improves/stabilises. An Aria Sinsonido bass might allow you to keep your hand in? they weigh about 2lbs, but are still full scale and have a wire frame body to sit and play x

Thoughts are with you mate, please stay on here and continue to share your wisdom and humour with us though 👍

Does anyone do this? I only play 6 string basses, I have done for fifteen years or more. I’ve often felt that the high C never quite sits right, tonally. I’ve also never really liked over-bright strings - I also dislike thuddy sounding strings. Some double bassists have a mix and match approach to strings, mixing different brands to get their ideal sound and feel. I recently read an article about John Patitucci where it listed his gear. I was already aware of most of what it listed, and I knew he used two different types of strings on his double basses, I was surprised to read that he used the same approach with stringing his electric 6 string basses. I knew he used D’Addario half-wounds, apparently though he only uses the high C string, using nickel round wounds for the other strings. Anyway, I tried it and I’m really happy with the results. I’ve used D’Addario nickel .130 and .105 round wound strings for the low B and E strings, and a D’Addario half-wound set for the rest. I’ve previously found the low B and E in the half-wound sets to be very dull, almost dead sounding, whilst the top strings in a round wound set tend to be too bright for my tastes. This hybrid approach though solves both of those issues. The strings don’t sound too different. The low B and the E sound full and focused, whilst the higher strings sound clear without being too zingy.

50 percent of people who buy tickets to see The Cure actually end up watching Placebo And they enjoy it just as much. c. Gary Delany

I have owned a few Westones!!👍😃 An 84 Thunder 1A bass in Black..to be honest always preferred the the mega punchy passive tone..total workhorse!! My first, to me anyway, serious bass!! A Westone thunder 11 86ish!! medium scale (32) in a greenish tint.. Westone super headless 86 which sold on basschat in 30minutes!!! lol Absolutely stunning..Guess I wanted one since I was a whipper snapper! Didn't disappoint though, headless wasn't my thing.. Also a thunder 111..Brilliant but mega heavy.. I personally play with a low action and light touch and all the Westones I owned, were able to deliver that with aplomb!! They can be great value and are wonderfully made instruments..👍😃

Yes, but the KISS ‘End Of The Road’ Tour has been going on for years 😎. I wish you all the best for the future 👍

New to the bass but recently picked up this VT4 California Heavy Aged Medium Scale.

So sorry to hear of your situation. I can do nothing but wish you all the best for the future. I can't imagine how it must feel but easy to see what it means for you.

Ok, not bass related but musical instrument related. Last week I bought a Gibson SG Standard, great guitar but realisation hit at the weekend, I’m not in a band playing guitar, and very unlikely I will ever be so having a grands worth of guitar seems a bit extravagant. So I ordered an Epiphone SG Standard which arrived today. I was hoping it would sound ok and play ok, if it didn’t I’d send it back but hopefully it would do for my needs. Would it do, it’s amazing, I prefer it to the Gibbo! Now I’m not a great guitarist, I can play rhythm pretty well but that’s my limit, but this Epi just works, and out of the box with no tweaking at all plays and sounds fantastic. Am well chuffed, my mature decision to offload an expensive instrument and replace with a cheaper version has paid dividends.

Chuck Rainey was on a film score session, and couldn't read ledger lines very well. There was a very busy couple of bars with a lot of ledger lines. He fluffed the first take and Tommy Tedesco stood up and apologised. Chuck fluffed the second take as well. Tommy stood up again. This time, when he sat down, he whispered to Chuck, "Next time you're on your own, kid!". On take 3 Chuck didn't play those bars. To his amazement, everyone on the session was playing the riff and no one in the control room noticed that he'd stopped playing.

Yes, we drummers have the same issues. Which kit to take this evening..? The Ludwig Vistalite or the Premier Oyster..? Maybe the Gretsch, for a change..? Nah, the trusty Yamaha Oak always goes down well; I'll take that (with a Slingerland as spare, just in case...). Now then, about the cymbals... You're a funny lot, you bassists. ...

Made all the more sinister by the human entrails hanging from Paul's mouth...

So sorry to hear this @Telebass. Always sad to hear of ageing / health woes, and especially among fellow BC members. Just wondering whether it's worth considering a really small UKE bass, or some similarly tiny, lightweight option - perhaps for some acoustic jams? Or maybe even just noodling at home on the sofa? I only suggest this as I know just how much I would miss playing music. Take care, look after yourself, and all the best.

1kg = 2.2lbs 1" = 2.54cm 1 mile = 1.61km Oh and the Babylonians also invented a great system based on 6 rather than 10...check your watch some time. 12 hours in a waking day and the same again for night, a bit like 12" in a foot? Now why would anyone divide something by 12 instead of 10? As for 7 days in a week and months being a random 28 to 31 days in length...and, God forbid, that you might wander into your local and ask for a "pint"?! That's what I am speaking of. 😄

Alan of ACG proposed Paulownia for the body of my last build. It was a great choice looks and feels fantastic & only 6.4lb

Testing out the new boys ready to transfer to the big board,and have made a lovely little "Bare bones" setup 😁 FEA Optifet IE subterranea EBS Unichorus EBS Microbass 2 Leads would need tidying though!

Respectfully, to counter the common argument that the polar pattern (response versus frequency versus axial angle) of a speaker depends only on the diameter of the driver and the spacing to adjacent drivers, this is only partially true. It is possible (and commonly done in the real world) to alter the polar patter of a driver at higher frequencies by changing the cone depth, shape and the size/material and location of the dust cap. All of these elements contribute to the non-theoretical aspects of a driver's radiation pattern, and is why 10 different 15" drivers will have 10 different polar patterns. As an extreme example, the JBL D-130 utilizes a shallow, light weight curvilinear cone, and an aluminum dust cap that is directly bonded to the top edge of the bobbin. This dust cap acts to radiate the higher frequencies differently that the cone itself. As another extreme example of what could also be called a secondary radiator, the "wizzer cone" concept is a dust cap with a radiation element that is bonded directly to the top of the bobbin and can extend both the frequency response and polar pattern by an octave or more. Polar patterns are something that designers consider when developing transducers for practical applications.

If we're talking bass driven Cure tracks then this has to be the winner, Shirley? The Cure have been a massive part of my life since first hearing Charlotte Sometimes, and they still are to this day.

Hiya SD Beware of the casual reference to bre*it - it's not popular to mention the biggest act of political & economic suicide in history, which is why I never mention it

Helloo BC'ers! Since I'm in the depths of my longest lockdown, I've started a few different projects. One of them is something I've wanted to do for years - I have a project bass! It's a 1978 Yamaha Pulser bass, in bad cosmetic condition, but it plays reasonably well and sounds incredible. I bought it in Bangkok for about £60, which is a great deal for something I anticipated would be much more screwed up than it actually is. Anyway, the plan is to strip the body and neck, refinish, refret, replace rusted hardware, scratch plate and these awful new tuners. Thankfully the electronics are in great shape. Also the body appears to be one piece of ash or similar wood. I'm thinking of going for a natural finish with tru oil. Basically I wanted to a project bass which had a very low possibility of ending up any worse than when I started Any advice from anyone more experienced on any part of this project would be greatly appreciated. Here's the 'before' pics:

I have had a blonde Engelhardt ES9 ("Marilyn") for three years and much as I liked the lovely look of the bass that thin Kay/Engelhardt neck was starting to bother me and I was finding the full size neck on my Yamaha SLB 200 to be much easier to play. So...last weekend I made a one day 779km trip to Stand Up Guy Bass in Toronto to try out a blonde '70's Czech laminate bass. After some discussion we worked out a deal and he took my bass in part trade and put new Obligatos on the Czech bass and set it up the way I wanted it and "Peaches" came home with me. I have a silly thing about blonde basses and it seems most people know me not as "that old guy who plays bass" but as "that guy with the blonde bass" so I wanted to find a blonde. I need a ply bass due to the weather here and because it gets hauled around a lot and I hope this will be just what I need. So far I'm loving the sound and feel and it works well with the KNA DB1 pickup, no preamp, direct to the amp and since I always need an amp in my bands I'm happy. I had Zyex strings on my other bass and have them on the EUB so this is my first time with Obligatos and I'm liking the feel and response, I play pizz in my bands and only use the bow at home. The bass has aged to a butterscotch colour like most blonde basses and has a few marks but that's OK, it's 50 years old. I've included a photo of the endpin, it is a prototype made by John Hay, a luthier in Michigan and uses more modern technology than most endpins. Some of you will recognize a quality bicycle post clamp that holds the carbon fibre pin. It is adjustable and clamps all around the pin rather than at one spot and is very easy to operate and has worked well so far. He sent these to some of his luthier friends to try out and Paul at Stand Up Guy Bass had several and I got one on my new bass, I believe he plans to produce them in larger quantities in the future. It's not a beautiful bass and it's a long way from high end quality but I think "Peaches" will be the working bass I need.

This is a bit of a revelation for me having never owned a P Bass before. Right away ive noticed that this bass makes me play very differently. I don't know what it is about a P Bass but the feel/neck and the tone makes me slow my playing down. Im quite amazed that you can buy a bass of this quality for this much money. It seriously is a very well put together instrument. Ive been playing it all afternoon and im at a loss to find anything bad about it.

Lovely board! That wiring brings me tears of joy 😂 Mine will never be that perfect.

Tomahawk Kid - SAHB - Best Band I never got to see .......

When I had an OTB I used it with a Marshall VBC412 and couldn’t even get to 9 o’clock on the master volume without completely obliterating the rest of the band (a punk band with 2 guitarists both using 100 watt valve heads & 412 cabs). Amazingly loud amps.

Jeez Lozz, how many SG's did you buy?!

I like the original G&L headstocks but never quite 'got' the bottle-opener look. I'm a self confessed tart and these things matter when you get to my age... I don't want the bass aesthetics to detract from my boyish good looks! However, I'm still off to Google the Kiloton!

Big sound - long mix -

Hi Mr Telebass - your post made made me stop for several seconds and offer up an incantation of gratitude to whichever deity is keeping an eye on my health and well-being. Having just turned 69 (and still gigging) it was also a timely reminder to think about the right way to lift and move my own gear. I wish you well for the future sir. Chris

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Not me. No, not ever!

Plus 3 days every 10.000 years to be very precise. Bloody dyslexic mathematicians.

Coincidence? I reckon Gallop has gone to his dream gig of Steel Panther.

Sorry to hear this. Is there no alternative, like one of those stands that holds the bass and you just stand behind it and play? Keyboard bass?

You also have the 28 system based on the moon, the 60 system based on minutes and seconds, the 365 system based on the sun which must be corrected every 2 years, the 5 system based on your fingers, the 12 system based on the months and the delirious royal system that has been abolished in 1999 after a whole century to adapt to the MKS system (apparently it didn't work at all ). From now on, I shall speaks in halfhands for weight, in peenuts for time based on the time between two pees and semilegs for distance, so it will be very clear. All these new measures won't be fixed, but will depend on my mood, the speed of the wind and the amount of rain per day.

I have always liked the Cure but the Prevention are better!

The Cure & Steel Panther find themselves sans bassist - Basschat membership, “Hold my beer, I have auditions to attend.”* *Or at least you’d hope a few might.

maybe its a Wet Wet Wet cover

G&L instruments are so good! You really get the feeling that they're the product of a lifetimes worth of work and experimentation.

First night gigging with the UE6... They certainly didn't fail to impress.. They're extremely comfortable and there's no movement whatsoever on stage once they're in. Excellent seal and I barely noticed them in. I was using KZ ZS10 Pro before which used to slip out in my ear and move around a lot. In terms of sound the biggest difference I noticed coming from universal KZs is the clarity. I could hear every instrument perfectly and the seperation between everything was excellent. Bass was not overpowering or boomy and had just the right amount of low end. I panned both our lead vocals L/R and they sounded very crisp and clear. I was hearing parts of music on our tracks that I never even knew existed. All in all I'm very glad I made the move to customs and I'd highly recommend the UE6 to anyone wanting a superb sound. Thanks again for the recommendation @EBS_freak

In recent times I have developed shoulder and neck problems to go along with my glass back. I play at home most of the time whilst seated but still use a strap. I recently had a very nice Fender Jazz Ultra but it felt like a lump of lead and several basses later finally found the Sandberg Superlight models. Mine is a TM so there is loads of tonal variation and the weight is just over 6 pounds. This seems like a more sensible way forward for me. The body wood is paulownia which originates from Spain and has amazing resonance. So far so good.

Yes. If it is in one ear and is there because of playing volume then you can protect the other ear. This is big AND clever. Do it now. Or kick yourself in 4 years time.

The specs are on there. In the main menu, click ‘Information’, then ‘Specifications’.

Put it on our calendar, mentioned it again to dear partner so think I’m okay for this NOT bringing white jazz as it’s been parted out. Bringing a p bass and a Vintage stingray clone that’s been worked over by a luthier. It punches far above its weight

Wondered if this was going to be about this...