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Carving the body top

Dear Fellaz & Fellazettes, How are U all doing? I don't know how many of U are aware of Keith William's Five Watt World channel that does "Short History" videos of emblematic guitars & basses... Just in case U didn't know, he just released this video: Hope U like it!

I did wonder that. When Martin Kemp was told about Carol's unfortunate situation and the need to find a substitute he said something along the lines of 'bass players are hard to find'. He should have just searched Basschat and he'd have found plenty on here in the right age bracket!

I'm playing tonight, tomorrow, the day after and the day after that. 2 gigs and 2 deps, 4 gigs in 4 days and I'm looking forwards to each one. It's why I bought my first bass in 1965 and why I just loaded the car. Love it all.

Personally, i watch your reviews with both the sound, and my pants, off.

That all goes with the territory. Problem is if you only do two gigs and one is rubbish then 50% of your gigs are rubbish. The more gigs you do, the more you'll understand whether what your playing is what people want to hear and you're just getting the odd duff audience, or whether it's the other way round. As I wrote earlier, if you're playing Dad Rock, all you'll get is Dads standing at the bar watching and drinking. If you play modern pop, you'll get a younger, keener more energetic audience. If you are dead set on only playing music you enjoy, the only person who will enjoy the music is you.

There's good gigs and bad gigs. I've played a Blues set in a bar full of numpties and gone down like cold sick. I've played the same songs at a Blues festival (where people have paid to see the band) and received a standing ovation. There's two reason why a gig is bad, either your band is rubbish, or you're playing to the wrong audience. If your band is rubbish, it's probably time to call it a day.

Gigging. When a bunch of people are leaping around enjoying your music. How often do get to experience actively giving people joy as directly in that way? One if the best feelings there is.

OK! Here's the bad news. Prices for CHB-1 and CHB-2 basses are increasing from £500 (Made in India) to £895 (Made in the UK). Here's the good news. MASSIVE bump in quality. Made by highly respected luthiers in the West Country UK. Totally UK made and finished. Assembled by ourselves in Bristol. This means lower carbon footprint. Quicker leadtimes. UK jobs being created. We are collecting samples on Friday and will have them available to look at, and play, at the ACC Liverpool for the UK Bass and Guitar Show on the 2nd and 3rd of April. We hope to see you there.

I absolutely love gigging whether its to 20 people at the Dog and Duck or 200 at the main stage at the Magna Beer Festival... I love every aspect of it...the nervous anticipation of loading the car, meeting the other band members at the gig...setting up, sound checking and then walking on stage knowing you are supremely confident in playing the songs you've been rehearsing for a couple of night at home. I love trying out any new gear, different strings and different amp settings. I just love the buzz of performing and being as tight as possible with the other band members. Then after the gig, ragging down asap with a large beer, chatting with anyone who might have appreciated my bass playing and finally loading up to drive home for a sandwich and a whisky. I just simply love it, been doing it for 50 years while holding down a stressful full time job too....l must be some sort of crazed, demented animal who doesn't mind feeling knacked all the next day with blisters on his fingers....l just can't stop myself and l will gig till l eventually can't stand up anymore. I simply love it.........

The 4 string Bongo in the stealth finish was averaging at around £1850 at most retailers. I trawled the internet for days. Even to the point of speaking with Beaver Felton in the US about the possibility of giving him a holding deposit so that a friend could collect it for me while on holiday the following month. Then I came across an ad for a shop in the Netherlands who had some Bongos on their website, but not a Stealth. I emailed and asked by any chance did they have a Stealth 4 string in stock, and got a swift reply saying they only had one and it was a 4HS. I asked the price, including shipping, taxes etc and it was £1250 for the bass plus shipping. He got me a fixed quote and it came in at around £1285 all in. I ordered it on the Tuesday and and it was on my doorstep by Thursday morning

And...fret ends trimmed And why the clamp? Left to their own devices, the fret tangs in the slots would curve the fretboard. Normally, a small strip of double sided tape in the middle would hold the board to the beam. But, yes, this is Rocklite Richlite - and so... That said, the frets seem to be nicely held and it is very black. Just like the ebony of legend that the Vikings used to talk about around the camp fires of yore

There is no reason why the fretboard has to be parallel with the body. In fact, many instruments have the neck angled in relation to the body. It's certainly no reason to send it back. Have a look at some videos on doing setups. It's fairly straightforward to do once you take your time and understand the principles.

I haven't gigged for a long time now, but definitely went through the same cycle a few times: 1. bored playing solo, miss playing with others 2. find a band 3. have great fun jamming/rehearsing 4. gigging, dealing with huge amount of time spent in cars, setting up/tearing down, uninterested crowds/venues, poor sound, tiredness at work next day, etc. 5. getting fed up with it all and thinking I'd rather spend 6 hours playing/practicing than 5h30m dealing with all of the above just for a 30m set 6. go to step 1 I think I'd honestly be happy stopping at step 3 and just find some nice people to play with, with no intention of gigging. But that never seems to be very easy, most ads/social sites seems to be full of people super eager to rush out and gig ASAP. 🤷‍♂️

As said, if the gig went well it was great but there were too many occasions when you had an apathetic audience who didn't give a toss about the band and would only possibly shout out for ones they know. A typical gig on a Saturday night when we were still gigging. Go down to the pub at 8.45 and have a look in. People are still eating and the stage area has tables on it. Have a pint and wait. About 9-9.30 they would finish and the staff would clear the tables. The pub would start to fill at this point. We would man handle all of our gear in through and around the ones who insisted on standing near the door. About 10.15 we would be ready to start. Another pint before starting just to see if it got a bit busier. 10.30 first number. Usually would get a cheer or a clap. This first set would be our best of the night. This is the point when people are actively listening. Half way through this set a bunch of girls would ask for a particular song as they wanted to hear it and were going somewhere else. One we had already done or were saving for the second set when we needed a lift. 11.00 take a break. 11.20 second set. By this time the pub is heaving and very few people are taking any notice of the band. All cheering and clapping has ceased part from a couple of drunken bawls if they recognised something. A song we had banked on going down a treat would end to the sound of loud shouting as we realised they hadn't even noticed it. 12.00 we would take another break. 12.15 last set. By this time the pub was getting quieter as most had left for the club. 1.00 start repeating songs as they don't notice anyway. 1.30 finish. Not an example of every gig as some nights were much better but this gig certainly happened many times over the years. Do I miss it? After having not played for a few years now, yes but I know that if we started it all over again I would get sick of it in no time. I find, certainly around these parts, that live music moves in cycles. Way back in the early 80's before we started playing in the pubs full bands were all the rage. Once we started this was not so popular anymore and we couldn't get gigs. We re invented our selves and myself and the guitarist went out as a two piece with a drum machine. We made a fortune and were so busy in the early to mid 90's. Late 90's, early 2000's live bands were again starting to get attention so we got a drummer and we had our second happy time. This went on up until 2015 or so when the live scene just took a nose dive. Pubs closed, live music budgets were cut, gigs dried up. This is around when my job changed and I couldn't plan any time off as I get called away at short notice. I have kept a close eye on the live scene however and pubs that used to be busy as hell on a Saturday night are happy to have a busy spell at tea time with bar meals. Pubs that used to have live bands just have a disco now. It has changed again. People just don't have the money to go out as much as they used to in '96. Maybe its different where you guys play but certainly around here the live scene is poor just now.

I think the OP is asking about valve heads, not hybrids.

I've never heard of 80% of Bass players people talk about on this forum.

Came across this pedalboard recently - what particularly caught my eye is the additional two stomp switch box on the HX Stomp, not eating into PB space. Available from these guys: Pedalnetics

There it is, along with my, also since departed, Stingray

Here is this month's contribution. Inspired by the Latin name for the daffodil, Narcissus which led me to write something about those people that rate themselves too highly. Technical - I was a bit pushed for time this month after abandoning an all electronic track that started OK and fell off a cliff so I went back to my last song of a similar genre and copied the project for all of the settings. I tweaked them a bit but they suited the song and it saved a heap of time. It's a Fender Tele and Squier PB all via Amplitube 5. MT power drums. I forced myself to be a bit more confident with the vocals - they're still very shaky but I think singing with a bit more effort improves them a little - just a touch of reverb and EQ from Cubase helps polish the turd.

Kill your television - neds

Yes. I'm writing / rehearsing most weeks with my new (actually about 2 years old now minus interruptions) originals band. Now that Covid is settling down a bit, we should actually be able to get out and test the waters. First "gig" which is actually a small Festival in my garden with another couple of bands (or in my barn in the weather's bad) is in 9th April.

Got the neck pocket and pickup cavity routed out and the neck has been shaped I'm going to use the original truss rod out of the twisted neck that looks and functions fine...... 👍🏻 Time to start carving the neck....... 😬💩💩

Arrgh, what to do... love A Farewell... Rush are gone... hate Primus... dilemma stalemate cannot compute ERROR ERROR ERROR *fzzt* emergency shutdown

My 2013 Mex P had a curved rectangular spring under each cog, (fender design is different now). After about 6 months a thin black plastic washer, same shape as the spring started to appear and slide out on one tuner. Eventually all 4 did this and fell out. The low E tuner then started to buzz. Tightening the screw helped a bit but it came back. Changed to Hipshots, higher ratio easier to tune.

Ok sooooo……. I’m now totally sold on these peavey cabs!! So much so that am….. this one has the bw in aswell I’m def I. To collecting more of these!! As they sound great with my setup aswel!!

Finished cutting the side slots so time to cut the pieces of aluminium for the fretlines. I have to cut each piece to suit the slot to wrap around the spine of the fretboard (if that makes sense!!) It is going to be a slow process to get this done .. I only managed to get 5 line installed this evening - but they do look nice!!

"well Mr Ball, I've been all over Talk bass and I think I know what will make people like this next bass..." "What is it?" "Tortoiseshell! They lap it up." "Pickguard? that's easy" "Trust me boss, they stick tort on anything over there" "Well we're the Ball family - we don't do things by half- how about we do tort inlays too!" "Oooh lets go for it" "really?" "yes, lets do the binding too" "oh yeah"

I may have overdone it a bit, over the years !