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Ready for takeoff!

The incomparable king. Stuart Zender. Never overly flashy and completely 100% in the pocket at all times. With a tone and feel that are utterly to die for. My hero *stops fawning*

NCD (New Cables Day): yesterday I re-made the cable snake for my effects board. Two lengths of Van Damme cable, four 90º Neutrik plugs, a 9Vdc power supply wire, and black & silver braided sleeve. Oh, and colour coded heatshrink for Send and Return. The foldback clip is there to clip onto the back of the amp, thus relieving any pull on the cables plugged in at that end. OK so it’s not glamorous and more than a bit nerdy, but it’s neat & tidy and works very nicely. Must say I really enjoyed putting it all together – there’s something very soothing and satisfying about tinkering around with wire & solder. I must get another pedal build on the go, get some more quality soldering time in!

Man you guys are nuts, I boost the mids on my 3 band Stingray if anything. It's fretless though, so that might be part of it:

Four years after a bicycle accident still having trouble with the fingers of my right hand..two of them are curled which makes it hard to reach for the G and D string and I can't bend my thumb because of a constant frozen shoulder but things could also be worse. This is a hard one for me because of that and I'm missing a couple of notes but I'm glad I can manage this more or less..

After some delays, and stuff getting in the way, it would seem that I have taken something functional but ugly, and repurposed it into something weird and functionless. An improvement? Who am I to judge? Anyway - next, a little bit of fret dressing, then slapping on some Danish Oil. Wonder if I can get the cloth to spontaneously combust this time?

Ampeg B-15N Preamp built according to original schematics (except power supply...)

Hi! I'm currently using a P bass I made up with parts: the body is laquer finished alder by an Italian luthier I scored used, the neck is the Fender replacement part 51 tele neck I got new on discount, the pickup is a Re'62 I had since 2011 I think it plays and sound great for the expense!

I quite like this guy, but when asked for a video showcasing his playing, this was his response:

I used to play jazz guitar to a pretty reasonable standard in the 70's & 80's but once I saw this guy he turned me.........................

Isolation - Joy Division

The power isn't strictly daisy-chained, although they are paralleled... the 9v feed plugs into the box with the rude word on it, which contains a distribution arrangement (posh name for connector blocks ) for the five separate pedal feeds. The green LED is just a tell tale, so if there's a pedal problem I can see if the 9v feed from the rack is still functioning. It's a bog-simple arrangement and I suppose in an ideal world the separate feeds would be isolated, but it seems to work ok.

No, that's why we just don't listen to guitarists.

Lemmy... particularly with Hawkwind

The one 3-band EQ I ever had, the bass and the mids were like a see-saw: whichever was up, the other had to go down. With both up, it was just a mush.

After what felt like the longest 3 weeks of my life, my BTB605MS arrived on Monday. It's my first multi scale and a bit of a departure from what I usually look for in a bass but my god it's good. The electronics package is amazing, passive mode is identical to preamp flat. My favourite setting so far is low mids slightly boosted and bridge pickup slightly favoured. The overall tone is super clear and punchy. It's super resonant unplugged too. Multi scale feels really intuitive, it took next to no getting used to. The 35-37 scale is big, scales around the 3rd fret D are quite a stretch but I'm sure I'll adapt, also it makes the B string enormous.

Asking $1900 is one thing, getting it is another! I've just decided that my Aria faker is for sale at £2500, it doesn't make it worth that... and it will never sell. 🙂

A little detail finished - an aluminium thumb nail cover opener thing. This is what will be the back of the second bass. It needs to be flattened before I do anything with it as it has cupped slightly since I bought it a year or two back. Should look alright though!! In the meantime, other bits of wood have been turning up so they can stand for a good while before I work on them. Nice slab of ash which will become a Telecaster shape (might be a bass, might be a guitar - no, no, no you say...)

Holiday in Cambodia... Dead Kennedys

😂 You win the internet! 👏👏👏

DIY Ampeg B15 head into a BF One 10. 22W of vintage tube tone in my music room, although the Origin Bassrig ‘64 has been getting a lot of love lately.

Kind of. Firstly I want to say I bought the bass through Merchant City Music in Glasgow, or Guitar.co.uk as they are known online, and they are dealing with the problem perfectly. It's not sorted yet but they're offering plenty of options. I hate complaining to a shop like this as I always feel like they probably think I'm trying it on, it's quite the opposite as I'll happily sort any little issues myself but this is quite bad, and I really didn't expect it on a higher end Yamaha. They're usually bang on. I sent the seller some pictures and videos of the finish but it's really hard to show a problem in clearcoat, the camera either focuses on the woodgrain or the reflections of the surroundings. This is the email I got back. Hi, I have spoken to Yamaha today to ask for an opinion and some assistance with this and am just awaiting a reply. The bass in this finish is out of stock at the moment and it looks as though the next available stock is due around beginning of September at the earliest, so seeking a replacement could be a little bit of a wait, but it is something we could make arrangements for. The best alternative we have in stock is the Black version. We can of course collect the bass and cancel down the order within the first 14 days if that seems to be the best thing to do. As the issues do not affect the functioning of the bass itself though, do you think if there were any scope for a discount to compensate that it would help in keeping hold of the bass as is? Thanks, Paul I can't ask for more than that! So not sorted yet, but it will be one way or another. 🙂👍

My setp-dad built 'Beavis' back in 1996 as part of an electronics course he was doing at the time and a couple of years before I picked up playing. Heavily rebuilt from a burned out Linear L50 chassis with the transformers and chassis being the only retained items, it essentially became a hot-rodded 50w Marshall using 3x ECC83 and a pair of EL34. I've had it modified a few times over the years including the addition of a master volume plus a change of output valves - it's had 6550s and KT88s although now, it has JJ KT77s and apparently makes about 60w. Beavis is very musical and I have gigged it on many an occasion with it offering (just about!) enough power / volume for my needs before heading into 'Lemmy' territory. To be fair, in terms of power, it doesn't really feel like it was much less clout than my Fender 135. It became my first bass amp as my step-dad never really got on with it - he was a Fender / clean guitar player and Beavis didn't really do the 'chimey' thing particularly well although, looking back, it was probably the speakers he used it with more than anything. I made use of it with a pair of Goodmans Audiom loaded WEM 1x15" for bass duties although these days, it's paired with a JBL K140 loaded Ashton 1x15"..

In equal measures, Aston "Family Man" Barrett && Stanley Clarke they are so different and their playing represent the largest influences on my taste in music. They are joint No:1

TB Raxx pre and Classic 60 power. Hardly ever use it, but sounds alright when I do.

Yep - he's a great guy and a stellar player. I took out a subscription on hearing the news- I think every little bit helps. And I now have access to all of his hundred-odd albums of improvised bass music! Whether solo improvised bass is something you might normally listen to or not, it's hard to hear a Steve piece and not just go "wow".

M̶a̶j̶o̶r̶ M̶a̶l̶f̶u̶n̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ～ B̷̶.̷̶ J̷̶o̷̶h̷̶n̷̶s̷̶o̷̶n̷̶ 🤔 K̶e̶i̶t̶h̶ L̶e̶b̶l̶a̶n̶c̶ The Party's Over 🤞🏻 ～ Talk Talk

Prime mover. Zodiac Mindwarp and the love reaction

Apologies. I was several beers deep when I posted, and it did indeed escape my clever drunken brain. 😆

I don't wanna grow up - Tom Waits

Something appropriate for today too… You’re Moving Out Today - Carole Bayer Sager

Ooooh... very cool!

I'll go with Steve Hanley, The Fall:

If you've lost the confidence of more than half of your band, and several have quit rather than have to play with you again, should you cling onto your role as front man on the basis of your conviction that you are the greatest performer since Elvis, or give up and leave the band gracefully? Asking for a "friend".

Just as long as we don’t start a separate thread for those PJs with a specific set of after-market pickups installed. Not sure we need the joy of PJ and Duncans.

Usually it's Bootsy. But as someone has already mentioned the funkiest mutha ever, I'll go for Mr Trujillo - especially in Suicidals and Infectious Grooves days:

So a bit of an update but after stalking all the places that sell basses for the last 6 months, this little beauty turned up for sale and not only was it local to me, it was also a fellow Basschatter 😃 Just picked it up and its gorgeous and the exact bass I was after. So thank you @JamesTun for a gorgeous bass and great to meet you and chat bass. I think we could of carried on chatting for a few more hours 😆 With the whole family as well,

Not necessarily. For one thing you'd need at least two premium fifteens to handle even 800w. Passive crossovers can handle that. The crossover wouldn't likely be below 800Hz, so the size and price of the components wouldn't be a problem. The amount of power loss with a well designed crossover is insignificant. Bi-amping and tri-amping make sense with large PA systems, but where electric bass cabs are concerned it's an unnecessary level of complexity. That was probably because they didn't sell well. My preference is for a 2 way, albeit crossing over to the HF element at 2kHz. The typical 2 way bass cab crosses over at 4kHz, resulting in poor off-axis response in the 2kHz to 4kHz octave. There's also no reason for having response above 8kHz. Even slap and pop doesn't go higher than that.