Leaderboard

All done. Bridge back 10mm and loads of intonation adjustment. @simisker - I have a Hipshot here and the holes weren't quite lined up so no. @miles'tone - Haussel Bassbars (N & B)

Had a good gig on friday. Someone dexcribed the crowd as 'muso night' so no pressure... in the end we probably played one of our best performances. Even did a bit of call and response with Alex and took an insanely fast solo for Bullfrog Blues. A fair few new songs too which was nice. Great prep for the Earl Haig next weekend😁

Folks, some sad news today. I visited our very own @ash this afternoon for our annual P bass exchange and to my horror it would appear that ash is down to his last 3 P basses. This is very worrying indeed and I have offered a much emotional support as I can. In order not to aggravate ash's condition could I ask for a short moratorium on posting any pics of P basses or indeed any listing of P basses for sale. It's a difficult time for ash and I'm sure the BC community will support. Thank you.

Picked these two bad boys up this weekend... Looking forward to giving them a proper run over the next few weeks. They nicely complete my home rehearsal space/man cave!

Garry Tallent..

I've got two. I think they're superb instruments, I used to own a yellow MIJ version and I don't notice mych difference when I play them. If anything the Squiers are more comfortable. I bought the white one with the intention of modifying it into a Chris Squire tribute but I'm not sure if I can bring myself to carve it up 😄 The natural model is about 10 years old and has a slightly wider neck - the current version is a bit comfier for me. The only possible downside is the weight - mine are both 10lb, but that's not an issue for me.

I finally got around to fitting a set of these to one of my precision’s that had labella LTF’s on, first impressions are they feel like the same tension which is nice as most of my basses have the labella’s, they don’t feel as smooth but nothing really noticeable like rounds which I don’t like, sound wise they seem to have a lot of mids especially the E and A compared to the D and G, but definitely not lacking in the lows , for what I play I’ve rolled the tone knob right down and the mids come through nicely , I’ve got another set now to try on one of my jazzes, overall they are really cool

The whole of Stop Making Sense is a masterclass as far as I’m concerned. Cities and Found A Job especially.

Once in a Lifetime. A masterclass in minimalism and stubbornness.

She played a Veillette Citron bass - only 270 ish instruments were made before the company ceased to trade. There are probably 3 in the UK - I've owned two of them.

Have done all the varnishing, also oiled the neck and fretboard over the past couple of weekends. Still needs a final buffing, but happy with how it is coming together. Back view first, with test fit of the tuners. And the front. Hardware roughly positioned. Next up for today was securing the pickup, no pics as it was a bit of a pain and just got on with it, went with magnets and a couple of panel pins with the heads snipped off to push it onto and keep it in place, didn't want screws showing but will have to see how it is when it is strung up. Next was positioning the individual bridge saddles, out with the string and marked it up. And then did a strip of copper underneath the saddles, attached to the earth wire and passed into the control cavity. Then screwed the saddles in place. It is great having a job again, but makes build progress very slow. Not getting any time in the evenings, so just weekends at the moment. Hopefully can get on with the controls next weekend.

I'll take the opportunity to add my thoughts here about this LFSys Monaco cab, which I had a chance to try recenty (thank you @stevie and @funkle ) At the moment I am mostly using a Mesa D800+ with one/twoBarefaced Two10. Those are very coloured cabs by design, so not really useful to compare them in any way, except to say that one thing I loved about the Two10 cabs were the low end: it felt tight, fat, but always very manageable. I felt the same way about the Monaco. It can produce a lot of lows, but I found it very easy to tweak my amp to get exactly what I wanted. My first impressions, at home, were very good. I'm not a huge fan of the Tuffcab style finish in general, but it's an easy to maintain finish and when applied well it can look very good, as in this case. It's light and easy to carry. I really liked that kind of recessed handle, and being at the top given the shape/dimensions. At home it sounded very good very easily. I found my amp controls felt a bit more responsive towards the high mids and treble, no doubt because my usual cabs roll off treble at around 6-7 kHz. It was the low end and low mids that made me nod with a smile. Between the tight low end of the cab and my using the HPF and bass boost on the amp together it just sounded really nice. But in general I find it easy to make things sound nice at home, at lower volumes and in a room that absorbs a lot of the sound reflections. Then I had a chance to take it with me to a rehearsal with an old Rage Against The Machine cover/tribute band, so not particularly quiet, clean and dirty sounds, various FX, fingerstyle, some slap... We were in a prety good sized rehearsal room, as I wanted to walk around a bit and hear differences with position etc. They have an Ashdown RB800 with a 410. I brought the Mesa D800+ paired with the Monaco for comparison. This thing can get pretty loud! I can't tell exactly how loud because I didn't feel comfortable pushing things to extremes when the cab doesn't belong to me, but I was appropriately loud for a rehearsal with this kind of band. The 410 has more apparent low end, call it 'heft' if you like, but you can turn up the bass knob a bit and the cab responds well. I don't expect a single 112 to 'compete' in that sense with a 410. I used to use a pair of Barefaced BB2 years ago, similar story there (although I did have trouble controlling the low end on those sometimes): one cab is a good portable solution but I'd want a pair for playing in a bar without PA support, for example. Getting the right sounds was just as easy as it was at home. The volume was more than adequate for a rehearsal room. The thing that was outstanding, especially when being able to compare side by side against the 410, was the dispersion. At first I was standing close to it, a bit to the side and in front. I walked around and it was pretty uniform, with some variations as expected but I had to get nearly to the side of the speaker before the all important midrange dropped too much. This was with the cab on the floor as well. The 410, by comparison, is a nightmare: get the right balance at around 30 degrees, and you're sounding too middy in front and lacking lows. That's how 410s tend to be, some better some worse, I didnt think the Ashdown was particularly bad in that respect, very average. The Monaco would be a great stage monitor where others on stage can also get a very decent bass sound, and very good too in a rehearsal room. Another thing I did was play with modellers a little bit. I had recently bought a Zoom B6, as I often play with different people and need different effects and I don't want to be reassembling my main pedalboard every time. It worked well. I don't know how close various models are to the originals, but I got good sounds. However I don't like speaker emulations for bass unless I'm having some seriously overdriven sounds, in fact, even when recording I really like the sounds I get pretty much direct to desk with some compression and perhaps EQ/LPF/HPF. Where I find modellers a lot more useful is for guitar, and there's this new project I'm taking part in where I play a bit of guitar too. So, how will the Monaco work with guitar modelling? My needs for guitar are not very sophisticated, generally. I had a few valve amps over the years, including beasts like a Laney VC50, or sweet little nothings like a Fender VibroChamp from the 70s... and I'm not going back. Having a single solution for bass and guitar looks very attractive to me, especially if this project takes off. I started with my old trusty Behringer V-Amp2 that I bought in 2001. Those days I was heavily into guitar and finally these units started to appear that allowed you to get a decent overdriven guitar sound on tape at home. I checked the POD, the J-Station, some VOX thingy, I even had a Boss GX-700, but the Behringer just did what I wanted more easily. Things have moved since. The V-Amp sounded ok, but just ok. But that's just how the V-Amp sounds So I went and fished out my little NUX Amplug thingy, which has some really good on-the-verge-of-breakup type of sounds with a Telecaster. That was already so much better. I've ended up buying a Valeton GP-200 for guitar. It's a 'budget-conscious' unit, but it still sounds a lot better than the V-Amp and I found it to be the most logically designed (or at least with the interface designer that thought most like me!) and the sounds were more than good enough, especially the amp/speaker models. The Valeton GP-200 into the aux input of the D800+ (so used just as a power amp), and through the Monaco cab sounded pretty good. I don't think I would say it compares favourably to a very nice guitar amp, but the emulations sound good enough as they are through the Monaco. A little time tweaking things further would definitely get me much closer. I had a friend coming over one evening for a bit with his Fender Blues Jr. I like the cleans on that amp in particular. My 'interpretation' on the Valeton was good, but felt lacking something when compared to the real thing, but a little tweaking the EQ got me much better results. I think with these units you get used to their ultra processed presets and you end up creating patches that lack the raw punch I'm wanting. But it's there, you just need to play with the controls. And the Monaco sounded very good. This was just done quickly, we probably spent about an hour in total checking a lot of things out. My friend also uses a Line6 Helix, from which he gets amazing sounds directly into studio monitors. He also said he spent a lot of time until he got the sounds he wanted, and that initially it also felt a bit lacking. I'm not saying this to imply my lowly GP-200 is as good as a Helix, just saying that tweaking is probably necessary to get the best out of these units, with your own specific equipment, and that if the GP-200 gives me sounds I'd happily use live with the Monaco, a better modeller/user combination probably will be even happier I really liked the Monaco. It's very light, nice shape/size factor, well positioned recessed handle... it's got a very bassist-friendly tone, in that the 'default' low end is very present but tight... but it's definitely closer to the response of a good studio monitor than a typical coloured bass cab, which is a nice thing if you'd like to use it with other sources, like keys or guitar. Much like Pete, I find that I would be very happy with a pair of these as 'my cabs'. However, I'm also very happy with what I'm currently using so I don't plan to change, but if I did I would definitely consider one or two of these. I loved how it worked with guitar, but a 600W capable speaker is probably overkill for my needs... however, hearing about a possible 10" speaker in the future of LFSys, I'll definitely be watching with interest. If it sounds anything like the Monaco, in a smaller more portable package, it could be the perfect cab for those who want something they can play anything through. @stevie Thank you for letting me try this cab and apologies for taking so long before I put my thoughts in writing. @funkle Great to meet you in person and all the chat

On Talkbass and Facebook more bassists rave about the '50s CV Precision than any similar Fender. Must be some reason.

My 64 Daphne blue (Sonic?) 64 Fender Precision

Been held up in Indonesia for the last 48 hours for, erm, 'customs irregularities' but, having stowed aboard a slow boat to Australia, happened upon this lot...

I'm 6' 1" and I still have to get a taxi to the low F on a T'Bird.

It had me scratching my head and actually wondering if they'd got the scale length wrong. HANG ON... they have messed up and I know why/how! The bass has a nut and a zero fret. I reckon they have measured the baseline setting from the 'nut' rather than from the zero fret which if the bridge was placed based on the zero fret it would move the bridge a good few mm further back! Shame on you Maruszczyk!

About two years ago, I bought some kit from Thomann, including a passive DI box. At the time, I had no need for it - all of the amps that I used had a DI built in, and the venue that I played at had spare DI boxes. This morning the DI Out on the Ashdown wasn't working, so, I got to use my Thomann DI box. I was delighted that I had the necessary kit in my equipment case (or as I should call it, my Just In Case...). We also had to read music for one of the songs this morning. The music including chromatic runs of notes, and even a written E# - so, play an F when looking at an E on the stave.... The guitarist (Worship Leader) did an excellent job, working out the right inversions, and kept it rhythmically straight. Pianist was very good too. As for me, I surprised myself, and managed to play what was written - but I shan't be buying the live album of this morning's service! In other news, the vocalists wanted to change the key of one of the songs - G to E. Just as well I practice in other keys, rather than only the written or expected keys. And we had a different drummer, who seems to play more complicated and technical rhythms than I am used too - his proficiency is beyond my skill levels, but I enjoy learning how to lock in with him. All that took one hour of rehearsal. All in all, a recipe for disaster, but it worked out okay.

As weird as this will sound, my OCD is really excited to see the Capo on that board

They guy from Golden Earriing had a number of odd ones - a double neck, one with a Fender neck. https://www.voxhumana.nl/content/rinus-gerritsen-signature-basses

Wow. I think the seller should change their name to The Dream On Vault.

...and look how much it's popped up on Reverb for: https://reverb.com/uk/item/66798899-fender-precision-bass-with-rosewood-fretboard-1966-sunburst-made-in-usa-ser-no-1xxxx6-includes-hard-case

My rig from last night.

This old girl has just had a set up, fret dress and polish, hand carved bone nut and a new Jack and pot clean. I can’t wait to get her back. I keep looking at some of the budget basses that look really good for the money, Harley Bentons etc, but I decided to spend the money on getting my first bass match fit. I’ve not gigged her regularly since 2013. I’ve got her back in time for the weekend and a gig in a tight spot where a lyte bass will be welcome.

Faith Keeler - The Sensational Alex Harvey Band

Well, Jack. Who'd a thunk it? I believe was at that gig too. So have you been stalking me these past 46 years? 🤣

I presume you've seen the TV programme 'and on bass Tina Weymouth'. An interesting watch all about bass and her journey.

Just picked this mark rig up today after months weeks and days contemplating what to get. This came up and it also involved a day out by the seaside. I’m hopeful going to be gigging a lot more after I threw my toys out of the pram a few years ago and quite the gigs I was doing. I’ve had mark gear before so happy as can be.

Playing to a click is actually a discipline in itself. Playing to a drum machine/Logic Drummer track is actually a lot easier.

I'd only ever had 34" or 30" before, actually I've got 32" acoustic bass but the body is huge so hard to compare. I picked a used Warwick Rockbass Starbass on here within your price range. 32" scale and I really like it. Big enough to feel like a 'proper' bass (I'm six foot) but compact enough to not feel unwieldy if using it sat on someone's sofa. Hollow but with a centreblock so no feedback issues, sounds great, feels great, looks great.

It's interesting how obvious it is, right, even via a compressed Instagram upload? In terms of recording: was my usual set up of Rode Stereo Mic --> Sony a6300 (with the internal camera recording levels cut to avoid distortion). The recording was done via my desk with all settings identical - I simply panned left or right. I was particularly interested in how the speakers handled vocals and I think that particular song illustrates it very well. I only recorded that one song unfortunately and the 732A PA is now in the possession of our lead vox. We did use at a gig last night for, bass, keys and 2 vox. It was very good. My conclusion from this past year (with some very helpful input indeed on this thread, thank you!) is that in terms of relatively compact PA set-ups, with no bass line or subs: RCF310A (relatively budget) --> RCF 912A = big improvement in bass handling --> RCF 732A = further significant improvement in vocals / mids (but looking at double the price of the 310As)

Hopeless technique ... look at the way her hair strays across the fretboard. 😂

GNU Terry Pratchett

Nah; never did like the beggar...

Why would a noise gate be cheating but a bit of foam or one of those 'bass wraps' (I think that's the name) would be fine? There's no commercial recording where the bass is uncompressed. It'd be silly to deny yourself any advantage in creating the sounds you're after.