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Hey Folks! i hope you’re all doing well. I thought this one might be of interest to some of you! it’s my all original 66p! The lacquer checking is pretty special right?? She’s the perfect weight too at 8.5lbs! 👍🏼

Not really, but I recently put an order in with Thomann and added some Harley Benton flatwounds in to get over the free delivery threshold. When the parcel arrived I forgot I’d added strings to the order but I put them on my Jazz bass today and they’re surprisingly decent. Certainly an upgrade on the Fender cables they replaced. Didn’t expect them to be as good as they are. Not as smooth as La Bellas or Chromes, and certainly not as pricey, but sonically they’ve got a good old thump to them. No idea how long they’ll last, but as I’m not gigging, probably a fair while. For the price of a couple of pints of Guinness in today’s money these are definitely worth a go. 👍

I wasn't planning on buying another bass any time soon, just got a CS Jazz with which I'm very satisfied but when this showed up... I've always wanted a late 60's/early 70's Jazz, with the TV logo, block inlay but with 60's bridge pickup spacing. I drove 3 hours, picked it up, took it apart (and put it back together) and took it home. It's a 1970 Jazz with replacement pots, bridge and case. It's also a refret and refin. But it's a lovely refin, the frets are good, the sound is thunderous and the neck is to die for. So, the 50th bass I've ever owned (yes, I keep a list) is my third vintage Fender. The colour is very hard to catch. It looks Lake Placid Blue, but it's more aged Ocean Turquoise. 1966 vs 1970: 1966 vs 1971 vs 1970:

I’m a pretty experienced bass player. In a band and also the house bass player for a couple of local jams. However, I attended another local jam just as a player and got asked to play for this ‘interesting’ guitarist/singer. He wasn’t even going to tell me what he wanted to play until pressed, at which point he said it’s a song from the latest Sparks album and would probably know it! 😂 With that he mumbled a few chords, which I didn’t hear and he proceeded to start straight away. After about 15 seconds of this car crash waiting to happen, I casually unplugged my bass, mic dropped the cable to the floor and walked back to the bar. It felt wonderful. 😂

Are Iguana Go My Way? ～ Lenny Kravitz

At last the day has arrived & I’ve taken delivery of a shiny new Roland Jupiter X. been playing with it for the past hour or so & what a superb bit of kit it is.

New pickguards on the Sabres Black abalone for the natural And white pearloid for the sunburst

Blubbery hill - fats domino

Half the reason we buy all this stuff is we read about it on forums or watch you tube and think we should have the next best thing… That aside we do change tastes too. I love my p bass but on a real jazz bass thing just now and have been playing jazzes exclusively for at least 6-8 months. Plugged in the p bass in the other night as I wanted to change the foam under the pick ups and tweak the heights to balance output between it and the jazz bass and did I not instantly play the bass bass for the next three days as much as I could 😀 Sometimes ‘different’ from what we’ve grown accustomed to is enough to make us think it’s the new best thing ever and make us rethink our rig. How many folk have pulled out an old dusty pedal only to have an epiphany moment that it should never have left the board but in six months time the one we took off the board will suddenly sound amazing again. TL:DR We’re fickle.😀

Arriving yesterday as a birthday present from my very generous bass playing brother, a black cherry Spector Coda from his overgrowing collection. He has a penchant from luthier built and out of the ordinary basses so he offered this to me instead of the more usual birthday gift of a CD or shirt. I have previously owned 2 Spectors and I’m always impressed how well they are built and how good they sound. This is no exception. It has the Spector Tone Pump Jr and EMG pickups, what’s not too like.

Off topic... I've never understood why so many Mac users seem to be content having having the dock at it's enormous default size and positioned permanently at the bottom of the screen. On all my Macs it is shrunk down to a size just big enough to make out the what the individual icons are and the applications I don't need on a daily basis or are easily accessible another way (like System Preferences) have been removed. Then on my desk top it is positioned vertically on the far right of the second display where it's not in the way of my actual work - especially as on wide screens where there is plenty of width, but vertical space is at a premium. On my laptop it is hidden and only appears when the pointer is moved to the bottom of this display - if I could find a way to hide it permanently I would.

Oh, that's excellent - haven't seen that one before 😁 Here it is :

There's nowt stranger than folk...

ALmost as good as the old Craigslist ads. Pocket Bass Player

It's a Christmas miracle! Thankfully, my package is out for delivery, so fingers crossed for an NBD today!

I find that if there is tab on the page as well I never learn the notation - I suppose I am distracted by the easy option. To the extent that in my official tab books I have put tape over the tab to force me to use the notation only. But sometimes I write the note names, particularly if it is in a key I'm not very familiar with - even just the odd note name here and there to remind me of sharps and flats in the key signature. Like any other language, it needs to become automatic. The best description ever given to me was to compare it to reading English. We start by learning phonetics of smaller bits of a word and then stringing them together. But as we get better at it we don't do that anymore, we recognise longer patterns instead and can read an entire word as 1 pattern of sound. We don't sound out the smaller bits anymore, but we still have that skill for an unfamiliar word. Music is like that. We identify each individual note when we are beginners and the sort of stumble that note into the next one. But eventually we recognise patterns and each bar of music becomes 1 pattern / word in conjunction with the key signature. The real secret is how the practice is done. 5 hours on a weekend is pointless and tiredness / frustration gets in the way. 10 mins per day is only 70 mins per week but will lead to far greater advancement because there is daily reinforcement. One of the best things I ever bought was a bunch of used Double Bass sample sight readings examples / tests for grades 1-5. As they are part of the classical double bass process they are in multiple keys and time signatures, and they are usually only 2 or 3 lines long. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1860960340/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (there's a used one there for 1 pence (+£2.80 postage)! I just started working through them from the easiest ones as slow as I needed. Flipping between them is important as I wanted to make sure I was reading rather than remembering. I didn't write the note names on these as that would defeat the object but I did have the note names on a bit of paper that I could turn over if I was stuck. Some of those types of books come with a CD or a download link to hear them done properly, but there's also smartphone apps that will use the camera and scan it and play it to back. It just needs 10 mins per day of dedicated reading practice and in a year the progress that is made is beyond what anyone hopes for.

The Housemartins. After a lot of success, ‘the fourth best band in Hull’ split meant two of the band, Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway, went on to form The Beautiful South, with Norman Cook morphing into Fatboy Slim as well as forming Beats International and Freak Power. When The Beautiful South split ( due to ‘musical similarities’ ) Paul Heaton continued to record and perform with Jacqui Abbott.

Was this another Nilorius post?

A friend of mine owns a back line hire company and keeps sending me pics of their bass gear. Which I can’t afford nor need but I will be going to play though some of their kit soon I hope. This is some of the SVT bass stuff he has. I know his dad used to work for Sugden amplifiers BITD IIRC and he is very good with electronics so together they have been able to keep them in great working order. He has GK and TC gear to hire out too. I am thinking it might be not good to go and play though it as I reckon nothing else will quite sound the same - but I have to, don’t I? (I won’t post the name of his company as not sure if it’s allowed? If I can I will do, any guidance?)

https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/3-4-Chicago-Bass-Guitar-by-Gear4music-Black/2CNT?origin=product-ads&gclid=Cj0KCQjwnrmlBhDHARIsADJ5b_lzofFwmCSYT0-4ucyvnJ4qkcRAbEbqKoKu1qANWqRIrcDXdsbQh8MaAnDIEALw_wcB If its this thats the most punk bass I've ever seen, well done that man.

I've just removed a load of stuff from the board, but this is essentially the ampless set-up, with the DI 2112 being interchangeable with a VT Bass DI depending on the gig:

Got to say that most of those "bassists" look very uncomfortable with a bass guitar.

Big in Japan with Jayne Casey on vocals, Budgie on drums and Bill Drummond on guitar.

That Bass just oozes class. Nice work!

Well I hope the outer packaging soaked up the worst of that! Find out later when I get home from work...

You'll never fool an expert. The F is the wrong way round. 🙂

@fretmeister You are absolutely right and I should learn, I have too many things I need to do, work, 3d printing, learn guitar, work, treasurer, play with kids, lose weight, work, get fit, coach (did I mention work) that I'm struggling to fit things in. I feel like this most days I'll try and see how it goes.

Good to know others have positive experiences. The right angled xlr worh selectable ‘orientation’ is a such a simple yet desirable service!

This may help you decide which is best for you. It's the bass response of both speakers as calculated by winISD @ 100W. Surprisingly both are equally loud but the 8" cab will handle another 100W at this point, adding an extra 3db, and whilst the 6 handles all of the second harmonic upwards equally well there is a lot of extra fundamental with the 8. In a small room at home the 6 sounds way better than you'd expect, light agile and crystal clear and not as bass light as you'd think. Perfect for not annoying neighbours and satisfying to play. The 8 has a more authoritative sound though and is comparable with a much bigger speaker..

And as you don't have to play the 1, you've got all that extra time to work out what chord he's playing. The skill I'd rely on is a bit rusty now, when I was playing in the house band at an open mic night I could read the guitarist's fingers.

I despise the Blues Brothers' 'Everybody wants somebody'. Not so much because of the song but due to its amazing power to cause a headlong rush to the dance floor from lagered-up lads (who normally prefer to booze rather than dance), knocking everyone aside, leaving a trail of death and destruction and lots of bro-hugging. See also Don't look back in Anger and Mr Brightside ....

I joined an established duo, 1989. I didn't know most of the set. I had to wing it. I listened very closely to the first verse in each song, knew the key. There could only be a few notes in the progression. I worked it out as I went along. I became quite good at busking and have done many gigs like this. (but not for a while now)

motorcycle emptiness - manics

Fretted bass is the Debbil's Work, let him play it if he so chooses.

Peter Gabriel and Genesis - the band were still ok for a bit, and PG went on to massive and better things.

It annoys me that someone went across the desert on a horse and didn't even have the decency to name it.

What a lovely pair.

Actually it's no such thing. It's potentially an infringement of copyright/trademark, however I doubt that in 1973 Fender would have felt too threatened by a kid putting a sticky label on his bass. They had bigger problems to deal with back then - such as every Japanese factory turning out Fender clones that were infinitely superior to their own lazy CBS-era crap.