Leaderboard

“We have emailed you yesterday that the bass you ordered should only arrive with us on the 22.01.2025, this was an error by our product management, the year is 2024 and not 2025. So the bass you ordered is now due to arrive with us on the 18th of January 2024. We are sorry for the confusion and the mistake that was made here.” I’m back in the game! Thank god they emailed me, I almost impulsively bought another bass to replace the 1st one I bought on impulse that was delayed. 😬

Current board with everything I need - it’s cured the GAS (for now!)

just a small update to the flyboard.

Hi, As part of my work on 3d printed guitars, I started thinking about what was the best pickup to use for either six string or bass. Currently my six string has a pair of Tesla P90's which sound great to be honest. I have an 89 MIK Squier Telecaster which I love playing but the neck pickup sounds like, well something very muffled and bad. I did think about buying a replacement pickup but to be honest, I haven't a clue. So I thought about making pickups and wondered how difficult it is. After reading a lot, it doesn't seem that bad to do, you have a bobbin, you have some magnets, you have an awful lot of wire and you turn it. I saw people doing this with electric drills, by hand and by using various automated winders. As I'm stupid and can't resist a challenge, I looked at doing my own pickups. I have a few Arduinos and stepper motors sitting around and I used to be able to code, so had a good walk with the dog to think, had a play with a 3d printer, an Arduino simulator and a lot of coffee. My working assumptions were that the major problems are: 1. Actually feeding the wire onto the pickups in a controlled manner 2. Keeping the tension correct all the way through. Since people were using their hand drills to do this, I figured that its not the worlds biggest problems and if I could use a computer, a lead screw and a stepper motor I could control the feed back and forth across the bobbin ad that tension is a simple felt pad to slightly slow things down. So below is the schematic on the Arduino simulator that drives two stepper motors, the top one at full speed and the bottom stepper motor at a far lower speed. The lower stepper motor drives a lead screw that moves the copper wire across the bobbin back and forth with no user intervention. As this isn't a video you can't see it working, but it does The actual core of the code is written, it didn't take that long, a few hours for a few days as I tweaked it. What it doesn't have is an interface to enter all the values, such as the number of loops, the gauge of the wires, the width of the bobbin, the number of steps of the stepper motor per revolution, the pitch oft he lead screw. Thats this load of code here. int ratio = 10; int stepperSpeed = 1000; // int stepper2Speed = stepper1Speed/ratio; int noLoops = 10000; unsigned long loopCounter = 0; int currentRatio = 0; char buffer[21]; double coilWidth = 3.0; double wireWidth = 0.0564; int stepper1Steps = 200; // 200 steps per revolution int stepper2Steps = 400; // 400 steps per revolution int leadscrewPitch = 2; // 2mm double step = (double) stepper2Steps / 360.0; double distancePerStep = (double) leadscrewPitch / (double) stepper2Steps; double numberOfStepsPerRevolutionAsFloat = ((double) wireWidth) / distancePerStep; Putting a simple menu system on here is probably 10x the work of writing the code so am thinking of ways to cheat Along with writing code, I started to physicallty put together the start of the winder. This is the first cut, it has an 8mm lead screw that will be attacched to a Nema 17 motor on the left hand side. This stepper motor will move 1 step every 11.28 steps for the main motor that winds the bobbin up. After 3mm of movement, the bobbin width, the stepper motor will reverse and move back. Each step is around 0.005mm of the lead screw, thats the level stepper motors can do even without microstepping (which TBH I don;t know how to do yet). So as the main stepper motor puts 10,000 loops on, the wire is carefully moved back and forth across the bobbin in a highly controlled manner. Thats the principle anyway. I know that there are screws missing and its a bit Heath Robinson, I didn;t have many M4 and M5 screws to hand. Moving the lead screw by hand is smooth and allow coils up to 120mm to be wound. No idea what that would be, but thats the options available. Next steps are Nema 17 mounts, adding in menus (masses and masses of work), putting in switches to detect the lead screw holder hitting the ends by mistake, adding in PSU, working out CNC shields or stepper motor drivers, mounting on plywood, designing a bobbin holder, designing a bobbin, getting some cheap AWG44 copper wire, but the basics are in place. Thanks Rob

I just sold my fretless 4003 but still have my fretted Rick. Made in 1983 I think? I had a real problem when I got the Rick at first.... it sounded terrible! But it was my playing, I was far too heavy a player. My other basses were obviously more forgiving but the Rick was clancking and buzzing and rattling. I had to just stop playing so hard which ironically has improved my playing overall.

You are perfectly right. I'm probably being a bitter old man, but: Personally I think there is too much music available nowadays. The figure being headlined is 60,000 new tracks being uploaded to Spotify every day. Various attempts to to debunk this have resulted in revisions down to between 5000 and 40,000 track daily. However, just 5,000 tracks a day is staggering, considering that in the days of vinyl there were probably significantly less than 1000 new singles and albums each week (That's just a guesstimate - I have been unable to find any serious stats on this if anyone has them please post). This combined with the dwindling number of listeners prepared to buy recorded music, means that there is an ever growing number of songs vying for an ever shrinking audience's attention. When anyone with a computer, an internet connection and $50 can produce and album and upload it to all the download and streaming sites, it's not surprising at lots more people are doing it. Unfortunately all that "background noise" makes it much harder for listeners to find new music that they like. And as a listener in the 70s when I started getting into music beyond what was on TotP, my sources were John Peel and Alan Freeman on Radio 1. I'd probably hate at least half of what they were playing and be indifferent to a lot of the rest, but there would be a handful of new records played every week (out of the 120 or so I'd heard) that I would like enough to consider buying. By contrast last week I listened to a 500 track modern post-punk/goth playlist on Spotify. That's 500 songs in specific genres that I really like. However I found less than 10 new bands that I enjoyed enough to warrant further listening. What particularly struck me was how derivative and how poorly recorded much of it was. I've always been worried that my band's home-produced recordings weren't up to scratch, and while so far we've not managed to emulate Trevor Horn or Martin Rushent, by comparison with most of what I heard we are doing pretty well. When someone like myself is struggling to find interesting new music from curated playlists what chance do most casual listeners have? Also when you consider that if my band puts out a single we are in effect competing with every other song ever released for listeners. In the days of releases on vinyl and CD a single (unless it was very popular) had a life of no more than 3-4 months, so it was only ever competing with a few thousand other songs at any one time. These days Spotify and other on-line sources have to apply negative weighting to streams of "back catalogue" tracks otherwise hardly any new music would make the current charts. It's not the cost of living that is crushing new music. It is the sheer amount of music available

I would go further than the OP and argue that the cost of living (which is a systemic failure by governments and central banks) is not just crushing music but it is crushing the social contract and eroding the democratic process. Unless we are careful (and this involves tackling the thorny issue of politics, global rather than party politics) western liberal democracy is in trouble. Far right political parties are on the rise in Europe. Trump is on the path to re election in the USA. This is a pivotal year for elections. Choices made will have a profound impact. Tensions (internal and global) need to be calmed not exploited. Anyhow this is political (thread lock alert) and a personal issue for me that is always in the back of mind these days as we are sleep walking into dangerous territory and the media (mainstream and social) are getting hung up on all kinds of peripheral issues but ignoring a very real threat.

Thought I'd share a nice post from a guy on another forum (for people who play extra-short scale six-string piccolo bass) "Back in my bar band, weekend warrior days, I finally realized buying another piece of gear wasn't going to improve my playing. So when I needed some retail therapy, I would buy a book or video lesson instead. Over time I collected a decent library of materials. Trying to decipher the information laid out in some of the 'must have' tomes [...] I thought I would never get much out of a lot of the material, save for a few basic concepts and ideas that I already understood. But perserverance has won out. Nowadays, I will often realize a concept has worked it's way into my playing "

Nice!

I've already built a CNC machine. Admittedly it was around 800x600mm. https://forum.v1e.com/t/new-build-in-clapham-north-yorkshire-uk/16519 This is not a CNC machine. A CNC machine doesn't have to loop back and forth for the winding. You could program it to do that I suppose in Klipper or Marlin but itwouldn't be ideal. You could argue it's closer to a 3d printer. Also a CNC machine doesn't get to 0.005 mm accuracy at the price I can afford. Mine certainly didn't. I also didnt happen to have a small CNC machine lying around. I did happen to have a few arduinos and stepper motors. No idea what I am winding. I'll build it and play. I may not put an input interface and just reflash from a laptop for awhile.

The print magazines became increasingly full of advertisements in order to try and survive. It became so irritating that every other page was an ad, that I gave up on all of them.

To my mind the problem regarding cost of living isn't that it makes it harder to make music - it's cheaper and easier than at any time in history to record an album and make a video. The problem is that so many people are struggling financially that it's harder than ever to get an audience out, especially for ticketed events as opposed to pubs. Venues are closing down, audiences are falling and you can't make up for the low fees by selling self-published CDs any more. It's live music that's suffering, not music within digital media.

Quinn - GSRM25 Fyra - GSRM20B ʻElima KALA California 5 string fretless ubass Sam x

You’re saying it’s good for Methil?😂

I still think back to the 70s/80s where a musician would have one decent-ish guitar & one amp (often paid for by student grant, and said musician if no longer a student would more than likely be unemployed as unemployment was a big problem then), would be living in squalor eating virtually nothing all day (which is why they were all stick thin back then). Sure we have a cost of living problem at the moment but there were plenty of hard times years ago as well.

new bridge in 2020, new truss rod in 2023

I saw 3 hips come sailing in. - Trad.

What A Waste - Ian Dury and The Blockheads

"It's gonna be free practice for us tonight...super quiet"... Lead Singer Well it was the start of "dry" Jan, but that's maybe going to be the worst prediction of 2024 already in the bag! Was a huge amount of fun!

I certainly didn't, or would have shown much interest, even as a lover of theramins, but somehow, I had to sign up for this: https://stylophone.com/theremin-pre-order/

What a stupid name! I should clarify - I find the name very amusing because I am the last person who enjoys a bass solo, so to play anything that has "Soloking" on the headstock is ridiculously off the mark! Points for the cheeky, Gibson-esque logo though. Right, now that's out of the way, what have we got? Something which has been heavily inspired by the Fender Roscoe Beck IV - in terms of body shape, pickguard shape and electronics. It's not a full blown rip of it though - the pickups are different, the headstock is different, 21 frets instead of 22, less switching options (no push/pull mids thing and the mini toggles are two way, not three, no detuner). Enough waffle, pics please. So, what to make of all that then? Well I've spent a bit of time with it, but only in headphones and at low practice volumes. There's a lot to like here, especially for £250. If you hadn't told me the price I would have guessed at least £400. There are little touches that I would not expect to find at that price point - Roasted maple neck Sculpted neck heel Better than expected hardware quality - tuners feel good and tune up surprisingly quickly, bridge is decent Strung with D'addario XL strings Pots turn nice and the taper for the volume control is actually useful (tone is a bit all or nothing, but I'm not bothered about that - rarely use the thing) Fit and finish are really good, lovely metallic black with a cream three ply pickguard goes very well together, fretwork is decent with no sharp ends, satin finish on the back of the neck (gloss haters rejoice - I'm not bothered but I know some people are). Soundwise, it's pretty punchy, if a little on the "generic" side - it sounds like... a bass. There's nothing wrong with that, it's very functional and even pleasing, but it doesn't really carve out a voice of its own. You've heard these tones before. The series/single switching makes a useful difference to the tone, single is quite sweet and airy, series beefs up the lows and mids in a satisfying way. I'm not a big fan of bridge pickups as I might have mentioned, but the bridge pickup in series definitely has some useful bark about it and less of that annoying honk that they can exhibit. I'll reserve final judgement on the sound side until I get it in a room with a band. All in all, I'm very impressed. To my eyes at least, this is a damn fine looking instrument, feels great to play, punches way above its weight in terms of VFM. It's so cliché to say it's a steal at £250 but I am left with the slightly naughty frisson of having gotten away with something I shouldn't have. Right, enough of my waffling. Hope you like the pics, and I would definitely recommend this bass to anyone. It would make a fantastic instrument for anyone but in particular would be a stunning intro to bass for a beginner and at £250 it's well within beginner budgets IMO.

The capacitor was an insane pain in the backside to comfortably fit into the guitar body. I had to do some wrangling to get it to fit! The pickup is lovely with this set up. A huge improvement over the stock pickup!

I'm The Slime - Frank Zappa

Looks wrong. I've never seen that decal before. This is a 64L

I sent 8 basses and an amp to Will for commission sales and he has sold 7 of the 9 within 6-7 weeks. Good comms and prompt payment to my bank, so I have no complaints!

I wouldn't order anything time sensitive from Thomann (or anywhere non-UK come to think of it) - too many variables, too many opportunities for delay/points of failure - none of which are Thomann's fault.

Thanks for your offer Rayman, I am going to pick up a new battery and order a set of new strings just going to put another post up for string recommendations but I’m sure I’ll be able to sort it myself, the string height seems pretty good to be honest, I think the problem is the strings are dead and the battery is probably coming to the end of its life, but thank you for your advice and offer, appreciated.

"Better strings" is incredibly subjective. The EBs will be just fine and dandy.

Hatfield 1980 - EBTG

Compressor: FEA Opti-FET Octaver: Aguilar Octamizer EQ: Tech 21 Q-Strip Overdrive: DHA VT1 Distortion: Idiotbox Landphil (Blowerbox with more eq) Fuzz: MXR Brown Acid (I actually prefer the sound from the Latent Lemon Brassmaster but it looses points for being unnecessarily large) Envelope Filter: MXR M82 Synth: C4 (annoyingly limited interface though) Modulation: Source Audio Gemini/Lunar/Mercury (all basically the same). Delays: I like multi-fx for delays as it allows lots of editing and parameter control and stacking effects (e.g. adding reverb to the delay) which I find useful for delays, I especially liked the Boss GX 100 because of easy access to tap tempo and assignable expression pedal to sweep through a few effect parameters changing at the same time and touch screen for easy editing. I've got my eye on getting a Boss RE-202 though. I think Multi-fx are nearly as good as individual pedals for most things (it's especially difficult to hear much difference when playing through an amp/cab and with a band), what I'm really waiting for is something a bit like the Boss GX 100 or Pod Go form factor but with a good envelope filter and synth so it is all I need in one unit. At the moment it seems all multi-fx fail there which is a hassle as it means I still also need seperate pedals/power supply pedalboard etc. and that then leads me back to having a board of individual pedals, it must be possible - Source Audio do it really well with individual digital pedals (a Source Audio multi FX would be great: Atlas, EQ2, Aftershock, Gemini, C4, Colider, Zio: all bunched together with a few footswitches and a big display/touchscreen).

@sandy_r @Paddy Morris @3below Thanks so much for your feedback - I am just going to bite the bullet and get a replacement. I do like the realist so I am going to stick with it but I appreciate of the suggestions and help.

I think the new truss rod may be a bit earlier. Mine has a 2022 serial number (mid 2022 if you believe the week numbering really does mean the week it was manufactured) and a single truss rod. It surprised both the guitar tech and I when he took the truss rod cover off. He was in the shop when I bought it, so I took it into his workshop for him to give me 5 minutes training on how to adjust a double truss rod. I adjusted it a couple of days ago - there is only one allen bolt to turn. I guess 2022 doesn't mean it appeared in the UK in 2022 though.

Or maybe the sheer amount of new music? Self-publishing on the internet combined with cheap home recording technology means anyone anywhere in the world can release their own music rather than it being something just for the lucky few. The downside being even fewer get to make a living from it as there's simply too much competition.

Shot By Both Sides - Magazine

The Vintage Circuit push/pull pot was from 2006.

Maybe a real book or two for good measure.

Ibanez released info on the new in 2024 models (scroll down for basses, some interesting additions there) https://www.ibanez.com/eu/news/detail/20231124144232.html?fbclid=IwAR1FSRh0zffZsagwmI-rgLY8lnbN5uz-z4JArskLWTVKf8daifIWjf4f4tE

Spit it out. - Whitesnake

It seems that Bassdirect can get me one by the end of the month 😀

Found this beauty in the mail today:

To put it bluntly, classics appeal to all ages. The newer you get, the bigger the risk of losing half your audience.

Being in a wedding band involves having a set list to cater for probably the widest audience demographic you’ll ever encounter! As you point out, the most often played stuff is in the safe zone of classic pop/ soul/rock which appeals to the widest section of the guests, but IMO you shouldn’t ignore some newer stuff for the younger people ( maybe even the bride and groom!) as well as having a few old tunes up your sleeve for the older folk or those guests who may want to show off their ‘Strictly’ moves. This is especially important when there isn’t a DJ to cater for these guests. In my old function band, we’d maybe start with a bit of Sinatra ( so the older guests could have a dance or two), then go into the pop stuff for the rest of the first set. Second set would be gradually getting more current as the younger guests would often be the only people left, and usually hammered by this time! We used to get a lot of wedding work because we catered for all ages, which many bands could not. It helped being an 8 piece with a brass section, enabling us to authentically cover most eras. For us the hardest stuff was often the most current, but done in the right way we managed to pull it off. With the majority of couples getting married (and their friends) being late 20’s to mid 30’s it would be foolish to ignore their preferences.