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What I think is hilarious is that for ten years no-one has said "these humbuckers sound like single coils". Makes you wonder how much pickup snobbery is just bullshittery....

I've made some spectacular mistakes, and @Silvia Bluejay has the videos to prove it! 🤣 But you know what, the world didn't stop turning. And apart from some well deserved ribbing from the band, no-one cares or remembers. As Beethoven said: To play a wrong note is insignificant. But to play without passion is inexcusable!

I gigged my G&L L-2000 last weekend. It's monstrous and so versatile (almost too versatile?) sound-wise. It was brilliant though and just a thoroughly lovely bass.

Stingray Special in my favourite colour scheme 😊

I'm so impressionable... I just went and ordered the JJ550P above. 😂

Whall...(hic)...thish ish wot I dun djust (hic) Reddy for gloo...gluw.......shtiking

Good morning, If you haven't seen what I do before : I build basses and guit@rs from reclaimed wood, body , neck, the whole thing (apart from an occasional bit of binding) all reclaimed , mostly from old pianos. A couple of weeks ago I was working on a bass neck for a Fenderbird that I have planned when I had one of those negative Midas touch days. I drilled the holes for the machine heads and then noticed that one of the holes was about 10mm from where it was supposed to be. Fuming I cut the headstock off and threw it on the fire so I didn't get constantly reminded of what a nerk I'd been. I was planning on prizing off the fretboard to salve the truss rod when I remembered something... A few years ago after carrying a heavy jazz bass in a hard case for miles through a crowded festival for a gig I build this: It features a chambered body to keep the weight down, asymmetrical bottom end so that a single strap button let's it lean against an amp without falling sideways, a cutout so it can be played sitting without the need for a flippy out thing and an upper horn to improve ballance. It was my main gigging bass for several years. I have some ideas for further refinements, watch this space. If anyone is interested I have also entered the Great Guitar Build Off , check out the Scavenger Music YouTube channel to follow my progress.

Hey folks, was in my local cash converters today on Leith Walk in Edinburgh. Sitting in the shop is a Yamaha BEX-4 in blue, cost £219.99. That is very cheap for a bass this rare so, thought I'd give someone the opportunity to snap it up. CC Edinburgh Contact: 0131-554-2266 Andy

bass removed from the track, just a quick recording, not played this for ages.

I've been through tonnes of gear over the past few years, sometimes chasing very particular tones, sometimes just seeing if I like stuff. Certainly with the instruments themselves, less so with amps, cabs and effects, which are a bit more consistent, I'm finding that all the stuff people are shopping for - sound, feel, weight, build quality - it's all not only subjective, but also a bit random. Sound is the big one - at the moment, the best sounding bass I've owned, in my opinion, is a 10 year old beater of a squier jaguar, with much maligned online Duncan design pickups, and knackered electronics- I dunno what's going on, but when the bridge pickup is on full, the bridge tone pot acts as a master tone for the bass. For whatever reason, that setting - both pickups on full, riding the back tone, through my gear, in my room, to my ears, sounds amazing. Weight - you can buy an off the shelf American made fender, and end up with an instrument weighing anywhere from 7lbs to 11lbs, which is the difference between toy like insubstantiality, and an unusable slab of furniture imo. Things like tuning stability - you can improve the odds with material choices, etc, but imo, it's mostly a crap shoot if you get a "good-un", or a neck which seems like it's still trying to grow towards the light. For context, some of the basses I've gone through - sterling musicman stingray, fender american ultra jazz, sire u5, gibson 2015 sg, fender vintera and player mustangs, ibanez mezzo 5er, ibanez ehb1005, fender player p-bass, marusczyk jazz, couple of squier jags. All good basses, with the possible exception of the gibson, which sounded like it was under water no matter what I did, but maybe that's your thing... My conclusion is this - there's too much variation between individual instruments for differences between - brands, location of manufacture, materials, components, and price - to be anywhere near as significant as we're led to expect by marketing. This leads me to believe its just not worth buying an expensive bass sight unseen. Certainly not unless factors which are important to you, like weight, quality control, setup, figuring etc - are all known - like a dealer who takes detailed images and weighs individual instruments. And I don't think I'd ever order a custom instrument. You might get a good un, but you might get a very expensive wall decoration. It's also led me to think that I should stick to budget instruments. Probably sub £500 used. If my "best" (for me at the moment) bass is a slightly broken squier from a line which didn't even have a great rep when it was out 10 years ago (Indonesian vintage modified) which cost 250 quid with a hard case included from a dealer (so is probably worth about 100 quid), there's no point spending big money. Thoughts?

It takes time to know what instrument & amplification is your cup of tea and even then it may be temporal.

Horses for courses. I have a particular bass as my wife likes the colour. I have another bass (clue: R*ck) which I am persisting with as it looks cool AF but know deep down will not last. There's an indefinable personal aspect to what makes you feel good. That may be a cheapo Squier, it may be an uber-expensive Alembic, or something in between.

Just drop the mixing desk in a bath with hot soapy water. Job done.

Here's some advice on avoiding car crashes. Don't do an open mike playing a song on guitar you haven't played on guitar before, singing words you can't remember from a phone screen you can't read, accompanied by a bassist you've never played with before, when you are half cut. No, no, I would never do this...

Dear Friends, attached a few pictures of the new Alien 👽 Bass

Many thanks for this suggestion! They did, in fact, send me the pickups separately. It probably wouldn't have occurred to me to ask if not for you. They were a little confused by the fact that my P-bass pickup is installed "upside down" on my left-handed Frankenbass (treble side in the front), but they went with it in the end. I will post a report when it's installed. BTW for what it's worth, they told me a lefty version of the Bruce Thomas Profile bass is coming out around July.

Sounds like a job for the black tape! 😆

I've just PM'd @fleabag Originally, the plan was for this to be sprayed black - and I have neither the skills or equipment to do a spray job. But, assuming that something like Fiebings is actually black enough and even enough on this particular wood - and I have an offcut I can test some on - then stain and poly varnish is fine. So that's the plan. And if the trials on the offcut are not great, at least we know

Can’t be The Skids, they were - and still are - great. My old band supported them a few years back and their set was awesome, and Richard Jobson was an incredibly nice chap.

So as I've recently bought back an old bass, a few of my posh pedals had to go. As I haven't gigged for nearly 3 years seemed daft. I've still got a few decent noisemakers on the board though. The usual signal chain setup EBS Microbass 2 - A/B box/ Preamp/DI/ Overdrive/ headphone amp and Effects loop. Very very useful bit of kit and great quality sound. In the loop I have all of the effects, so I can use them through the Headphones. EBS Multi Comp- I've owned nearly every high end pedal comp there is and loved a few of them. I've used an EBS comp in some way ever since my first in 2002 (I've had 6 😂) I always go back to this, easy to use and it sounds great, versatile with the modes and adds to the tone which i love BOSS LS2 - splits the signal after the comp, so all effects have compression beforehand. Has two seperate lines of FX that I can switch between or run in parallel Loop A - general effects. MXR Bass Octave Deluxe- I had one of these before and while I loved the tone and tracking, it had a noise issue. I really needed an Octave thst tracks well with active basses, and this was the best I'd tried in that application. To different voices to mimic the EBS and OC2 Sounds and this one isn't noisy. EBS Bass IQ - this is a great sounding filter!! Lots of variation with the modes and simple to use. Not as fat or resonant as my 3 leaf, but has a great tight/clear filter tone that cuts through really well. EBS Unichorus - Chorus/Flanger and pitch mod. Gorgeous Analog tones in a bombproof box EBS Dphaser - As above but a funky, swirly,fat and very cool Digital Phaser. I love this thing Donner Deluxe Mini tuner- kept losing the Headstock thing and got fed up of asking the the Keyboard player to give me an E 😂 Loop B - Synth Channel 3 Leaf Audio GR2 Envelope filter- very fat and resonant filter with a handy Effects loop, so anything in it, doesn't hit the input Detection stage, making for very dynamic synth sounds. This is set for a funky Downsweep, in the loop we have the following Iron Ether Subterranea - Octave/Synth- is a fantastic lofi sounding octaver, with two synth voices and 3 waveforms for each. Very dirty and Analog Synth sounding! I love it Iron Ether Frantabit - Bit Crush and Sample rate reducer- very funky/noisy/mental pedal that's actually really really musical and sounds fantastic. One of my favourite pedals 😂 Emma - Okto Nojs - Octaver and synthy Dynamic Fuzz in one pedal, can be used individualy or combined for Dirty. Funny how I've gone back to EBS pedals, I've always used them,and while maybe not the mist exciting or flashy, they do what they do very well. Fantastic build and great sound, they can also be picked up very reasonably.

I am loving Alex Lifeson's new post-Rush project. If nothing it more than proves that old guys know how to make decent pop music, because that's what this is. It's a bit of a departure for all you Rush diehards, reminds me of Curve. A bit of Missing Persons.

I'm such an idiot. I've just been doing a little extra fettling on my recently purchased cheap Precision. I decided to give the trussrod a little tweak now it's had Chromes on for a couple of weeks, and then set the intonation properly, it was only roughly done as I knew I'd be tweaking once settled. Anyway I slackened the A and D strings and popped them out their nut slots to allow room to turn the allen key (headstock end adjustment), gave it a quarter turn and popped the strings back in their slots. Reached up to the D string tuner and gave it a couple of swift turns to put some tension back in the string and the G string exploded. Yep, that'll be the G tuner I was turning, not the D. D'oh! Anyone had any similar D'oh moments (D'ohments) when afterwards you think, how did I manage to be so stupid? 😁👍

Having been on the “journey” of gear I’ve found that my faves are US Fender Precisions and specifically the 2013-16 Series. I’m happy with pretty much any Precision but those are my faves. And yes, no matter what bass I’ve used most of the bands I’ve been in couldn’t tell any difference on the new pickups/strings/pedals/anything, you know, the stuff that was clearly obvious (to only me it would seem).

So true. And also the quality of the soundman which can make the worst bass sound passable and the best bass like a bag of spanners

It's like everything in the modern economy - basses / cars / bikes / clothes / furniture / TVs / glasses etc. etc. - its all designed to make you part with your money ultimately. Buy hey, that's why we have the marketplace, to keep that wonder wheel of recycled GAS spinning. All of which puts a smile on our faces and makes life a little more enjoyable!

11lbs unusable? My breakfast weighs more than that.

Could be quite a stylish way to unload at a venue with some practice

He said to me "Nice bass. Is it a five string? Cool!"

The D'Addario mini tuner that I use on my EUB tailpiece(Yamaha SLB 200) sometimes gets a bit loose and the vibration gets picked up makes a weird buzz/rattle through the amp. This caused a major crisis at a rehearsal the first time it happened and after much fiddling about with the EUB, amp and PA I finally figured out what was causing the problem. A few weeks later the same thing happened, this time at a gig, and I went into crisis mode until it finally dawned on me it was the same problem. That would be bad enough but it happened AGAIN at another gig and more sweating and swearing until I got the offending tuner off the bass and things returned to normal. It amazes me how my brain can get so addled when something like this happens and I have no doubt it will happen again sometime. Maybe it's old age but you would think I could remember something so obvious. Definitely a D'oh moment and awfully embarrassing.🙄

At a sound check, I couldn't work out why I could hear my bass through the PA, but not my amp. Forgot I'd muted the amp when I turned it on. Bass through the DI box was fine 😖

Real Electronics are the authorised repairers of MB products and here are their charges: £35 to diagnose the problem, which you get back if you go ahead. £69 fixed labour, £18 courier fee to send it back + parts. I am pretty sure they don't repair to component level. It's likely to be north of £200 which is why I didn't get my SA450 repaired.

It is, and it was. If anyone wants to know about it, let me know.

I bet you were just expecting "the bridge is fine/could do better" but as I'm a proper nerd who keeps records : Between November 2015 and January 2019 I played 58 gigs on it and changed the strings 6 times. The bass would also have been used for all of the rehearsals and jam sessions etc during that period. There was only one slight issue during this time , one of the screws that helps grip the strings at the nut end stripped and had to be replaced. The screw in question is probably surplus to requirements as the strings are also bent at 90 degrees and held with an Allen key nut. I found a replacement in my bits box and carried on, it doesn't match but it does the job. I will probably use Overlord again to keep the cost of what is still essentially a prototype down but I will look into alternatives.

Just realised I've never actually posted a pic of my three. Let's remedy that.

My old one. https://youtu.be/rsTP543lpqQ

Give Me Just A Little More Thyme - Chsirmen Of The Board

Anyone who'd heard Victor shouldn't be remotely surprised it's nowt like Rush.

My sound is akin to having spent £1600 more than I needed to as it's the same sound as the one that was £1600 less.

I popped into Ashdown yesterday to buy a CTM 100 & they repaired my ABM1000 & serviced my LB550 while I waited. They gave me a tour & I can't believe how much time Mark , Dan & the team gave me .They even tried to fix the clutch on my Van .lol. I love this company for loads of reasons , They take great pride in what they do & over the years they actually listen to the customer & act upon it . I think what ever make you use now you should A/B it against an Ashdoown .