Leaderboard

1991 EBMM Stingray 2EQ. Great bass with cool Bernard Edwards/Louis Johnson/Timmy C vibes. Thanks again, @Dov65 for finding it for me 👍

I’m at home surrounded by family, kids and grandchild. For the first year ever, I haven’t got a single card or present (maybe they’re teasing me 😂) but you know what? I’m not bothered and I couldn’t be happier. I consider myself a very lucky man and truly feel for those not as fortunate. A new Precision would have been nice though 😀 Happy Christmas to you all!

Big Ears The Night - Patti Smith / Bruce Springsteen

A Christmas Elf!... Nice...

I just have been a good boy this year because Santa (MrsRocks) has been very generous with me.

Played a particularly busy pub in Hornchurch, Essex which I've just returned from. It was a ticketed affair and was sold out. Load in wasn't great due to the amount of people we had to get past and I was dreading the load out. The band leader (it was a dep gig) neglected to let me know that I wasn't the only dep. There was a drummer there that I'd never met before. Any reservations were dissipated after a few songs. Unbelievably good player. Hooked up with him on social straight away. We finished playing at 11.20pm and did everything we could to break everything down and escape before it went completely nuts at midnight. We made it out with one minute to spare! 25 min drive home with double the usual fee in my sky rocket. Showered and in bed with a glass of vino by 1am. Happy with that.

I'm not really sure what my best purchase was as they've all been positive purchases and still a bit early to say. My Boss OC-5 Octave pedal is brilliant. A proper workhorse that sounds fab and tracks brilliantly. I couldn't be any happier with it. My Ashdown RM Evo II is also brilliant. Sounds great out of the box, super functional, light and has been reliable so far despite only having done about 5 gigs with it. I also bought a fretless MIJ Fender Precision 62 reissue which is very beautiful and for the brief moment I tried it at home, seems very nice. However, I noticed the neck had some indents and grooves in it which caused certain note to vibrate or die prematurely. So it got dropped off at my luthier who's going to fix it so until then, I'm not really sure how it will pan out. Might be the best bass I own or may get sold next year but early indication seems it's a keeper.

My Zon Legacy, 7lbs of back joy and funk tone to die for 😁

I bought/downloaded the iReal Pro app. Has transformed my ability to play jazz standards to chord sheets and other stuff. Has tons of other stuff as well for those moments when you get asked to play Stand By Your Man or Black Velvet and you can’t remember it. Highly recommended.

A nice Mono GS1 Long strap. Had them before, sold on as wanted to stay with the look of my Dunlop ones but the back now dictates make life as easy as possible.

Very pretty! But looks quite fragile.

Closet To You - The Carpenters HAPPY CHRISTMAS PEEPS

Thanks folks. Finally a bright day, so I got some better pics.

I got a cool gig bag, a new strap from mother in law and an lusithand alma compressor! And akg 240 mkIIs

Probably this bow. When I picked it up in the shop I intitially thought it too tip-heavy, but then I tried it out and even on the beginner bass in the shop it felt great. It has taken over from one of these, which I have kept for "last note of the ballad" jazz jam duties.

A very worn, annotated and well thumbed book about bass improvisation that I picked up from Reading’s oxfam music store. Every-time I leaf through the shelves I find a load of bass titles.

My better half bought me a Christmas Elf. Not had much time with it today for obvious reasons, but what time I did have was very interesting. How can such a tiny thing be sooo loud? It’s not just that, it has great tone too. It’s going to be my main amp, with the One10, for the jazz band I’m rehearsing with. Rob

Wedding in Stoke. Thankfully many of the guests didn't want to stay too late, what with today being Christmas. Two sets, nice venue, average food and decent crowd that started leaving straight after last set so we could pack down and get on the rd by 11.30. Groom was a bit self obsessed and insisted on getting up to play a song, of his choosing, with us which we were reluctant to learn so we just winged it a bit. Luckily he didn't suck.......unlike the in house sound system which was shocking. VID-20221223-WA0004.mp4

Grew up with Bowie, Zeps, and all that peachy 70's cool...then in 1980 I heard 'A Forest' at a disco...and was blown away by the dark repetitive but soooo musical monotony.....still blows me away even now, especially when they do it live. Some of their later singles lost that coolness.

"The definition of insanity is reading TimR's posts and the definition of total insanity is arguing with him."

BA wont benefit from any “burning in”. Dynamic drivers - the jury’s out… but I’ve always been in the camp of just use them. Unless you are using earphones for mixing and mastering in a professional capacity (and you don’t use IEMs for this anyway) - just get on using them. Especially in a live situation, the nuances between a burned in vs non burned in will be so negligible in real world terms.

Mrs Bassfinger bought me a mandolin.

I've been staring at that for 5 minutes now, looks like perpetual change.

Its quite nice, in a roundabout way.

If they didnt pay huge salaries and bonusus to senior management, and give big payouts to investors they may have had an argument. But its not just about pay, they want to change working practices and pensions to workers. The media fails to give the full story.

My GX-100 is amazing. So pleased I took a punt on it and didn't settle for something with fewer footswitches. I've got a great sounding patch with an amp on one channel that I can send to the desk, while the other goes to my amp. Plus it's much lighter than my pedalboard full of pedals and has a smaller footprint. Not that weight reduction was a motivating factor, but it is handy.

This is a bass owned by @TheGreek Its a Kawai Alembic copy from the 1980s. This is, I suspect, from the Matsomoku factory on Japan. Certainly its well made and the headstock is the right shape for one of theirs. Mick came to me with this, asking if I had seen his thread on here discussing new pickups and electrics for this bass. I hadn't. In the past 3 years I've scarcely picked up a bass, let alone fixed one. Work has me pretty busy, but I've taken this on because it's a beauty of bass. I'd like to have if working and playable. Plus I need to stop working 7-days a week.

Wow - I would get that if I was anywhere near there!

Merry Christmas Folks! 🎅🎄😊

One of these. The tree was more kind of sitting on top of it rather than the item being under it. Early 80's MK2 GP11 1110 100watt 4x10 combo. Thank you Santa🎄My back hates you! Oh and a Boss TR2.

My Quad Cortex

I bought a MIM Player Jazz in July because it was underpriced on the Bay. I didn’t have the funds so needed to sell another bass if I was going to keep it. I didn’t sell the other bass in time, so the Fender had to go (for a slight profit)x In the month I had it, I learned a lot: I absolutely love the Fender “modern C” neck; I quite like the punch and clarity from a single coil p/u; I hate the variations in volume across and up/down the neck with a single coil p/u; I don’t get on with VVT controls. So it was my best buy because it quietened that little voice telling me I need a J. (And because I soon sold the other bass and got a Sandberg Electra VS4 which - for a relative beginner like me - is light and punchy and feels like it was designed to be gigged, unlike the Fender).

It’s Only Cholesterol (but I Like It). - the Rolling Stones

Patty is going back. In terms of short scale five stringness, she is fairly good ... but her overall weight is on the high side (She will no doubt sulk about this judgement!) and the neck dive troubles me (ymmv). My initial hope was to do a headless conversion, which would have addressed both of these; taking into account the cost (of the headless gear), the effort (my intent was to do all the work myself) in getting a nice end result, the benefits (which I feel are major) and challenges (getting the look/layout I want with the space available on her body) I've decided this is not a route for me to take. As others have done, I considered replacing the tuning machines with lighter ones, which would have gone some way (perhaps all the way) to addressing the neck dive, but would not have resolved the overall weight. On top of this, the cost and effort of the path to improving the electronics and the constraints on string choice all started to mount up and, well, reasons not to go forward. I've decided to go down a different path to get the bass I desire. So back to GAK she will go this week. S'manth x

We have a December 30th and 31st gig. Both venues usually degenerate into crazy parties. The one on NYE especially. Tha band is happy as we make bundles of $$$ usd. In Florida USA.

One scotch, one bourbon and one beer - George Thoroughgood

This thread is about a triple-course 12 string. If you want individual strings for 11 or 12 string basses you probably need to source them from SIT or somewhere like that.

My hands are occupied with the bass that I bought in May to temporarily replace my other bass, while it was in for repair... I had a successful 2021, and will try again in 2023.

I thought this was going to be a thread about U2…..

Excellent work, Richard. Nice bass too, Mick

I do believe you just done fell down a TimR hole. There's an escape hatch but you have to leave the computer behind to get through it.

A comment on the Grauniad site from 2014.................. The Royal Mail has to compete with companies that operate with nowhere near the contractual obligations that RM have. It's set up to fail. Similarly, an NHS general hospital - which has to provide A&E and all sorts of other expensive services - is supposed to compete with a private facility that can do cheap routine operations on uncomplicated patients (and then rely on the NHS hospital fixing it if it does go wrong).

Eight buttons, so it's simply M8. Every bassists' Mate.

The more I play my Stingray special the more I love it. It really can do it all.