Leaderboard

New Old Bass Day and a very early 50th Birthday present (which I still firmly believe is a typographical error). This is a '73 model, like me, which came from the good folk of BassBros. Overall, it's in pretty good condition (unlike me) and I think the only non-original part is the volume pot, but I'm not overly fussed by that. The frets are quite worn, but I've not noticed a significant problem with it in the very short space of time I've spent with it so far. Worryingly, it looks as though inheritance claims have already been made, so if I'm found suffocated at some point, there may be a clue as to the culprit...

Pretty much all done now. Looking forward to our first practice in here next week. 😁

Clamps are off! Most important first check - has that set-bow gone? Yup - it's straight: Next is using a cabinet scraper to take any remaining glue squeeze-out and edges off so we can see how tight the joint is before merging the finish: There's more to do to fully merge the original finish and the new joint, but the basic joint seen below is looking OK. I will be fine-sanding between the edge and the existing finish to make sure that your playing hand doesn't feel any irregularity and then use some tinted finish (probably the same stuff as used originally, based on how it behaved when I was removing it) so that also visibly it doesn't shout out : Oh - and I've just given the rod a 1/4 turn clockwise...the neck bends smoothly and in the 'conventional' direction

The heart of my pedalboard is an HX Stomp, I am far from utilising anywhere near its full capabilities yet but still find its 3 foot-switches ... limiting. (I always have one setup for tuning/mute) ... time for an extension foot-switch. Having a rather demanding feature list and limited bank balance (I've spent too much already on my new gear) I found that then available off the shelf control units were out of reach price-wise. I'm a "maker" and love to fiddle with electronics, 3D design/printing and software development and so was born the idea of Trampa (Swedish for tread). Feature Set Compact so as to fit on my wee pedal board. 8 switch controller with digital scribble strips. Configurable via web interface (Acting as a WiFi hotspot running a web server). Support for BLE midi. Built in rechargeable battery. Not out of my price range (The bits used come in well under £100) During my research I found a really cool project (PedalinoMini) that almost met my requirements and so Trampa v1 is using it. I'm incorporating 4 OLED displays to support scribble strips for each pair of switches and want to be able to assign actions for when I depress two switches (For instance activating the tuner) so will need to modify the software; more likely I will do a clean room build as I also have plans to integrate it with a pedalboard based synth/looper/recorder (Think zynthian with a totally web based user interface). Mock-up I wanted something like this Design Housing design done in Fusion 360 Prototyping You can see a few of the prototype prints in the next photo as I dialed in the size/layout/fitting of the front panel Elements At it's beating heart is an ESP32 microcontroller (I'm using a WROOM-32 kit board), this is an amazing powerhouse with a dual core 32-bit cpu running at 240 MHz, with onboard WiFi & Bluetooth, it has 4Mb of flash/ 520Kb SRAM and can be programmed in python or C/C++. Every switch will have its own multicoloured LED (To tie in with the Stomp) and each pair will share a 0.96 inch OLED display (Crisp, clear and low power) scribble strip. the "final" enclosure is printing at present (About 6 hours left to go) and on the morrow ... assembly.

I posted this over on GC but thought it might be of interest here too... I was in my local music shop, Matchetts, this evening. They are having a pedal week and had Adam Ironside from D'Addario in to demonstrate their new XPND pedal board. I am an absolute beginner when it comes to electric guitar, so I went along to try and learn something (and because I was at a loose end). The pedal board looks like a really useful bit of kit. The one he showed holds about 4 pedals but has a section that slides out which can accommodate another 3 or 4. He encouraged us to ask questions, so I asked about powering the pedals (I did say I'm a beginner) and I ended up coming away with a D'Addario Pedal Tuner Plus for asking what Adam considered to be the best question of the night. Happy days! He also gave us some t-shirts. The moral of the story is, support your local bricks and mortar music shops, because you don't get this sort of thing from online retailers.

If anyone has younger children like me, you may endure the CBeebies program Number blocks. Imagine my excitement when a song (series 1, episode 5) includes the words: "Five strings on a Five String bass"!

Initial assembly First I cut out the perspex screen protectors for the OLEDs. Not the tidiest of cuts! (I think a "table saw" mount for my Dremel is needed ... a 3D printable one of course!) They fit in nicely. A couple of drops of superglue will hold them in place. Buttons, OLED module and LEDs fit in also. The inserts for mounting the base are a tad loose, a drop of superglue will sort this. The ESP32 controller uses Micro USB (yuck!) for power and programming, so I'm mounting a USB Micro to USB-C panel mounted adapter. First blooper! I goofed in positioning it, even with the buttons mounted at their extreme position (Which I do not like) it still does not fit correctly. I'm sure that at some point I'll need to reprint the enclosure so will correct it then. Next stage is to mount all the hardware (with glue as needed) and start with the wiring. I'd love to be able to get it up and running by the end of the day. I've spent many hours thinking/designing/testing small prototype prints over the past couple of weeks based on the following (apocryphal I believe) quotation S'manth x

I'll just leave this here. My 235 next to my Rumble 500 stack...

It's like a P but easier to play. Also, more EQ options. 😁

I'm outraged that we are bombarding kids of that age with pro five-string propaganda. Let them enjoy the simple pleasure of a 4 string while they are still young!

Thing is, people know what they like and they like what they know. As entertainers we've got to do what the punters want.

This. It's why my J is a Sandberg.

And balance was restored in the universe

Ok, here goes. AC/DC are utter tripe. Give me the Ramones any day. Thank you for your time

I like Duran Duran!

A Forest ～ The Cure

That was precisely my arguement in my last covers band. There are an uncountable number of songs in the world. It should be perfectly possible to string together a couple of dozen that everybody in the band likes, without being forced to play something that any member of the band can't stand.

I couldn't agree with you more. Whenever possible, I now try to purchase from physical stores rather than online. However, the problem is not always helped by the retailer, especially when stock (say of a pedal, for example) is only available online and no stock is available in your local store. Sometimes the convenience and confidence factors of shopping online is too much of a pull to trump driving x number of miles just to find that the shop is out of stock etc.

Many basses and guitars are works of art in their own right, never mind being played, and warrant display space in the home even if they're never played. Of course some are downright fugly although as with people beauty, beholding and all that jazz. I wonder if there's anyone who buys them solely as decorative furnishings even if they can't play. If I were rich but didn't (try to) play them I think I'd still have some on the wall in place of pictures, definitely this for starters... IMO guitars and basses are much more interesting to have on the wall than pictures...apart from that poster of the tennis girl scratching her 'arris... My old lady also thinks my basses and guitars are beautiful and let's me hang my 8-strong collection on the living room wall. over to you 👉

Hi guys, I have a second Jaydee on order... will confirm the model but it will be fully binded & sea foam green pearl colour. A few thoughts on my first Jaydee that i received in January: Being a Mark King fan since the first time i saw Level 42 on Top Of The Pops in the 80s, I always desired that distinctive Jaydee look & sound through out the nearly 30 years i have been playing bass now. So 3 years ago i put in an order for a blue series 3 Jaydee.. yep 3 years! When the bass arrived the first thing i notice was the beautiful craftsmanship & attention to detail, the construction was flawless. The neck was solid and super stable, so much so that i could get the most ridiculously low action. The paintwork was gorgeous, it actually changes colour depending how the light hits it, I would definitely recommend a pearl style colour if you like this effect. The negatives: Picking up the bass i did notice at first that it seemed a little heavier than my other basses which are all chosen for their lightness. This did bug me a bit (more on this later). On playing the bass for the first time sitting down, I found it a bit weird to balance on my knee as the shape of the contour pushes the bass backwards compared to say a Fender sitting position. Also, generally playing the bass after playing Fender Jazz basses for years, felt a bit strange, I couldn't get used to the tone controls, and the tone wasn't like my Jazz bass ...... 3 months later, negatives turn into positives: I soon got use to the slight weight increase, since lock down i had done virtually no exercise, after a few barbell curls I stopped to even noticing the slight weight difference. I soon got used to the shape of the bass in a sitting position, i experimented positioning the bass in between my legs (it actually helps your right hand finger style technique in the position) but also in my normal - resting just on my right leg position. One thing that has surprised me is how amazing these basses play and sound but - it didn't happen out of the base case, it took a few months to get use to the Jaydee sound and playability. Now, I can't even play as fast or articulate on my Jazz bass! Also, Jaydee basses are meant to be played mostly with the back pickup on, yep even for slap! But if you select both pickups you can get that Marcus Miller smooth slap sound as well. Also, It can handle an amazing Jaco style growling mid tone, perfect for staccato funk or reeling off bebop licks. By far this is my favourite bass I have owned, and iv'e owned quite a few. To conclude, my experience with Jaydee basses is that they are really professional basses for pro bass players. You have to make a few adjustments if you're coming from a Fender style instrument & probably need to play it in for a few weeks / months but once you do there's no looking back! I'd love to hear your similar stories & thoughts on your Jaydee bass experiences.

Bit late, but I did promise some recordings of my ACG Uber Finn with the DFM 5K preamp and MC Series pups. It's the one on the left here >> Just for the nerds here, the bass has a mahogany body, with a very hard katalox top, a super tight bolt on neck joint, with threaded inserts and bolts, 5 piece red oak/bubinga neck and a pau ferro fingerboard. The real reason for sharing the specs is that I really think that construction and technique play as big a part here as the preamp. I did a few quick and dirty snippets of some BSSM lines, I think it's getting quite close. The bass is recorded direct into GarageBand with no effects of processing whatsoever. The pickups are pan 50/50, both filters are wound back a little, about 25% and the resonant peaks maxed out, the treble stack is out of the equation and I've dialed the passive tone off a bit, as it's a very bright bass and I was giving it some with my right hand. Hope they're of some interest, and apologies for the sloppy playing! Give It Away GIve it away.mp3 Suck My Kiss Suck My Kiss.mp3 Funky Monks (Outro) Funky Monks.mp3 Cheers, Eude

I think this is true of a lot of people from the 60s - the bass was not very audible at that time through the sort of record players and radios people listened to the music on - it wasn’t until the end of the 60s when multi track recording using a lot of tracks became the norm, and in the U.K. at least, people started to seek out ‘hi fi’ stereo systems to play the new stereo records on (prior to that most output was mono). Who listened to it on the hissing coming and going Radio Luxembourg as well - I know I did!! However there was enough bass for players to be influenced by the Motown style - I certainly was - and in the later 70s you encountered new musicians like Bernard Edwards and Pino Palladino displaying their advanced take on Motown style, on far better instruments through far better amplification and recorded far better also - and these guys showed us the way!!! The original Motown thing only became major for bass players more generally in the late 80s with the general unmasking of the hitherto unknown players and with transcriptions and playalongs from the ‘Standing on the Shadows of Motown’ book. Along with people insisting on playing it on sunburst elderly Precisions (but forgetting about the Motown interface they played them through and effectively turning the clock back to the 60s)!!! Rather a lot of rose tinted glasses and complete ignorance of the improved instruments and amps, and players who developed from that style in the altogether more bass focussed 70s and 80s!! I don’t have a problem with 60s stuff - I do with the insistence that this was the be all and end all of everything - it was characterised by pretty poor reproduction of generally mono recordings recorded on embryonic multi track systems - with pretty rudimentary amplification and many cases, instruments!!

I have done 93 transcriptions since January. Target is 200.

@evan47 is - as it should be - slightly ahead of the rest of the forum on this He's asked me if I could do him some offset dots on the face of the fretboard. Here they are for the rest of you to see Just got to wait for the tinted finish to arrive and then I can blend the joint line to the original finish and have something that feels right and looks right.

"I am a very good bass player"

I have two GK MB amps, one is 500w and the other is 800w. When I gig I bring both of them, as they're not much bigger than a paperback and both are extremely loud. You can pick them up pretty cheaply secondhand.

Next time you'll grimace your way through 30 seconds... Soon you'll have to listen to 45seconds until you buy one of their albums. Then everything else will start to sound twee and tame and you'll look for more Brotzmann, perhaps discovering Derek Bailey and Zorn's Naked Eye. Before long you won't be able to play any normal songs without frightening your band mates with loud unexpected dischords and high speed chromatic runs while playing The Final Countdown... I know, cos that's what happened to me! 😝

Love a big fat J. 🔥

Well that would be me then... After close to 30 years in the music business, there's nothing that I wouldn't listen to at least once. Twice is a different matter of course, but then I already said that some time ago. There do seem to be a few ghetto dwellers around these parts. I can't think why anyone who thinks of him/herself as a musician would refuse to listen to something they haven't heard before sight unseen (so to speak), whatever the genre. Call me {insert vaguely offensive adjective here} if you must, but it's an attitude I simply don't understand.

Arguably! I enjoy finding music for folks who come to my house who say they like anything... I usually put something like this on, just to see the look of horror: Those same folks wouldn't then reply "Anything" when I say "What would you like to eat then?"

Went back to J with flats for most of my live gigs and wow, what a tone!

So.... Mon morning: email contact Wed morning: dropped off Thu teatime, an email saying .... I've dowelled the existing hole, redrilled and refitted the button for you and its all secure again for you. Total for the repair is:- £25 .... and I've arranged to pick it up now, Friday morning. Quickly done. Phil met me, nice smiles. This all done socially distanced so I won't have a chance to inspect until I get it home.

Sadly it's not an option for some of us. The closest, half decent music shop to me is three hours drive away, even then, they couldn't even dream of competing with the likes of Thomann on stock, price, or probably even customer service. I can get stuff delivered to my door from Germany cheaper than I can drive to the city, park to go and pick it up. Online is the only way to go as far as I'm concerned.

This. I used to play rhythm guitar in a swing band. We loved playing Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Stan Kenton, but the audience loved Glen Miller. We played In The Mood in a very slapdash way as it was really the big band equivalent of Sex on Fire. We then decided to absolutely nail it - everyone learning their part with no chart. Still don't like the tune but we ended up playing it really well

FYI, a friend on Talkbass has finished tracing out the Wal preamp circuit. It’s not yet clear if the photos I supplied gave enough detail for all the resistors to be correctly identified, but he was going to test it out anyway in software and see if how it acted looked reasonable or not. I hope to be able to provide accurate schematics at some point in the near future.

I bought a double bass about 4 years ago, as I felt I should learn to play one. It's spent most of it's time in the corner of my living room (which is the only place I have room for it) where it looks great. When people come into the house the first thing they do is mention the DB, it's become a conversation starter. Every home should have one.

I almost thought my wife was bigging me up on Basschat then...........I can but dream. I love me a black/maple/blocks and binding Precision though - nearly as sexy as me in my budgie smugglers. Sounds top banana too👍

Bankers Of The Ohio - Olivia Newton John ( Aren't they Loan Arrangers ?? )

I doubt that a YouTube video of Jim Lill reading a book wood get many views though!

I'd like to have been able to watch it long enough to see them get to the bridge..... Then all jump off.

I won't let Fred watch that filth. Jaco only needed 4 and he turned out alright

Exactly! - You like 80s music? What sort of thing? Fun Boy Three? Flock of Seagulls? Duran Duran? Heaven 17? - No, The Smiths, Jesus and Mary Chain, Iron Maiden, Pixies, Stone Roses...

I agree. In terms of vocal range I'm pretty sure he's no better than a lot of modern pop singers who struggle to cover more than a fifth. As a base level, a competent singer would usually have a range of about 2 octaves.

Indeed - that is my take on it. you don't have to like everything you play, but there shouldn't be anything that someone in the band hates. OK, the crowd are always going to want wonderwall, but that is ok, there are a whole group of other cover bands doing that, and we are the only band doing timber, surfin usa and baker street in our area. There needs to be something different between you and the next cover band so that there is a reason to pick one band over another, and not just what level of massacring you do to sex on fire.

I’m a bit different re this, all my fave players played Precisions, I loved the sound of them, so for some reason instead of buying one early in my playing career I bought different basses and tried to get them to sound like a Precision (none ever did btw). When I eventually got round to buying one it was like switching on a light.

Mr Brightside and Dakota make me cringe, especially when the inevitable muppets take to the floor, all preening and pointing as the songs on their apparent inwardly ‘approved’ list come on. Once upon a time id’ve maybe voiced my dislike, but these days I have a different approach. Firstly, as a covers band I’m aware that the crowd mostly see us as essentially little more than a glorified jukebox. We’re there to entertain, and if they like the songs, then fine, I imagine they probably wouldn’t like my choices much! 😝 So I just crack on. My method to wring enjoyment out of those sort of tunes is to concentrate entirely on my tone and technique and locking in with mr drums, I make that my sole focus for those few tracks.. (Made easier by being in IEMs). It sounds odd, but I don’t enjoy the crowd going nuts bit, because it feels like ‘stolen valour’. Not my songs an’ all. Instead I guess I’m inwardly imagining that there’s someone in the room thinking something along the lines of ‘blimey, that rhythm section’s tight!’ Or ‘that bassist’s timing/technique/tone is bang on.’ it gets me through 😅😂