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Well after a few weeks of going between Sandberg and Sadowsky Metroline I finally pulled the trigger on the VM4, and what a bass it is, it plays so beautifully and the tone is nice and even across the strings. Things that I struggled to play on my G&Ls, and I put down to my rubbish technique, are a breeze on this, every note rings out clearly...yes, obviously I'm in love with it 😆

Ok. Finally managed to get my editing done. Here's the latest.

About A Grill — Nirvana

I forgot to add.....anyone 'still' considering this bass also needs to be made aware of the nigh on base-jumping realms of neck dive....gravity loves that headstock with those generic high-mass tuners. I have it on a sheepskin-backed suede strap, so it does at least stay put. Forget about a nice lightweight polyprop/nylon strap, it will be ground-bound as soon as you let go of the neck 🤨

My ‘68 P had them and also my first ever Fender - a Mustang in metallic Blue with a ‘go faster’ stripe.

So, today on the way home from a work trip I met a chap that sold me an amp... That amp was a Marshall VBA400 with a Jubilee 410 and 115. The cabs have seen better days, cosmetically they have their war wounds, but the work a treat! The amp has a few tiny little marks, but would probably rank 8.5 out of 10 for condition. Just lugged this colossus down to the garden studio some 300ft away from the driveway (yes, my spine is now dust) and set it up. It's quite monstrous... it's current set at about one quarter volume and gain and its still making my ears bleed. Given it has 8 KT88 valves powering it I shouldn't be too surprised. Pumps out +400w of glorious Marshall valve bass goodness! Given I play 6 string bass, and mostly prefer a more HiFi sound, I am pleasantly surprised that the 'bright' button really does hit the mark for me. Been lusting after one of these for probably 20 years! Happy to now have one and not be disappointed.

The bass is really starting to take shape now.

Hi all, I’ve posted a wanted ad in the classifieds for a T-70 v2. I imagine anyone who goes on that thread regularly is sick of seeing me post about a T-70 but I’ve been on a mission to play as many of Tom’s fantastic pedals as I can over the last few years and that is the one left that I would really love to try. If anybody has one and would be willing to at least have a conversation about parting with it, I’d love to chat. I can’t offer trades in the wanted ads I don’t think but, in case I’m allowed to say such things here, I’ve got a few rare bits that may be of interest if you’re not looking to sell it. Basschat has been an incredible place to help with my COG journey so thank you to those that have helped. Here’s a picture of where the collection got to last week. I’m also waiting for one more Star Wars pedal before I can finally make that board. Cheers all (and thanks Tom!)!

This is my LB-100, I think I've had it about a year now. It's on its third pickup and second pickguard Ruby Red Metallic turns out to be quite dark in a sunless northern domestic environment, and the vintage tint neck turned out to be still quite a light tone. That combination with the original pearloid pg didn't hang together well. The replacement black pg brings the life out of the dark red finish, its a much more coherent look now, especially with the cream covers. I bought the bass to put a Dimarzio Model P and steel rounds on. It sounded exactly as hoped, and the very low action made it very easy to play. Unfortunately, it felt a bit soulless. During a period of experimentation I discovered that the bass comes to life with flats. I also came across a demo of Chromes with a Fralin pickup and thought: that's exactly the sound I'm after. So off came the Dimarzio, and in came this stock-wind Fralin. The Chromes are 45-65-85-105, about the same tension and feel as 50-70-90-110 Rotosounds, but that low action means they're still comfortable to play. I've another G&L, which is spending the winter in California, getting a new neck — the truss rod wasn't doing the job, so the neck was gradually getting more bent.

Gratuitous, string changing fretboard shot!

+1 to the above... And to so many of the other posts too.. And thanks to @Rayman for such a great post! 👍😊 I've lost count of the times I've said to people how I wished something like Basschat had existed when I first starting playing bass in my teens (which was a long time ago..). Gotta say @ped and @Kiwi really did something good when they started this - and the fact that it's still going is amazing IMO..! In terms of 'bad run ins' and confrontational or contentious posts etc anyone remember Big Beef Chief?? Those were the days.. 😂🤣😂

./~ and then I go and spoil it all by saying thumb fin stupid like I love you ./~

I prefer BC to magazines, either online or printed. Just as example, taking into account their other brands such as Gretsch, Charvel and Jackson, Fender account for a huge chunk of all guitar related advertising revenue. No commercial guitar related business can afford to give a Fender product a negative review. Here on Basschat people offer up honest experiences and opinions and have no problem describing the negative aspects of any instrument or amp.

The next episode is where I discover that what I thought was an 2mm pitch threaded rod is actually an 8mm pitch threaded rod. This means that when I send down 400 steps to the motor, I expected the threaded rod to rotate 360 degrees and to move the winder mechanism 2mm whereas in fact it turned one turn and moved 8mm. As none of my children seem to possess a ruler, I possess digital calibers and do not need rulers, I work digitally and rely on my school age children to provide simple things like rulers, so I guessed how far it was moving until the kids finally found a ruler. As I'm a man, my guesses at distances were perfectly accurate (not). I've just spent two hours looking through Arduino code, trying to understand what I was doing wrong. I've checked motor speeds, distanceToGo(), current settings, aceleration, pulse width settings, written loads of debug code . I must have compiled the stuff 50x trying to find out the problem. I then looked on Amazon and checked what I had brought. This is the diagram I saw Note the words "Screw Spacing: 2mm". Now I thought this meant that one turn means 2mm, it doesn't mean that at all, what I should have looked for was this highlighted below. As I've been working in single steps on the motor, which is too small to see, I never noticed it was all wrong and 4x too much. It was actually one line of code to change a parameter from 2mm to 8mm and it now homes properly. I wonder if I'm actually gone mad and this is all a bad dream Why can't I have have dreams with enormous amounts of alcohol, fabulous food and beautiful women hanging on my every word. Why do I have dreams about debugging things? Off to take the dog for a walk and clear my head. Rob

I’m actually going over to Overwater in the morning so I can choose the actual colour I’m going for. Chris and the whole team have been a great help to me. It’s a little daunting with all the different woods and upgrades you can have. Chris and team work with you to make sure the end result is exactly what you want.

Oregano Go My Way - Lenny Kravitz

That's AI generated blurb. You can recognise if from the trite phrases - "whether you're a beginner, performer, etc", "sure to impress", "perfect for right handed players", "taking your talent to the next level" and so on. All the sort of tripe that non-musicians (the wallies who developed the AI spiel generator) believe musicians will be persuaded by.

Looking for a 80s Roadstar II in royal violet if anyone feels like selling theirs...

QUACK...

I've been listening to a lot of Johnny Osbourne lately (ahead of seeing him and Horace Andy live soon). Truth wave Rights being one of my favourite reggae tunes, but 'Never Stop Fighting' is a great album, these first 3 tunes especially: (the scientist dubs are also really good, on 'Scientist Wins the world cup')

Nightslimming ～ REM @DCS222-🙇🏼‍♂️😉

Well, the sad day eventually comes and @Gasman ascends the to the pearly gates. St Peter checks his clipboard - "right, Gasman, bass player, would you mind going over there with all the other bass players". So Gasman is having a fab time shaking hands with Jack Bruce, James Jameson, Ray Brown, when he hears some incredible fretless playing, coming from behind a wall. "Who's that?" he says. "Jaco Pastorius" says Jack Bruce "Why is he behind the wall?" "He thinks he's the only one here!".

Phil brings up two or three times that, if one does get a digital mixer, it can be beneficial in many ways even if you don't use a lot of the more advanced features. However, IME it actually starts you down a path to using them. Yes, a digital mixer has a lot of channels usually, yes it can instantly recall settings, yes it's easy to meter and monitor. My hard rock band quickly outgrew the ancient desk, Maplin power amps and passive 1x15" tops we'd used for the first six months or so. We agreed to buy an active Alto system of tops and subs and whilst the band plan was just to keep the analogue Soundcraft desk I took it upon myself to treat us to the then-pretty-new Behringer XR18. What we found is that, because of all of the features that could really be used to tighten the sound up, we started putting more and more through the PA. It helped that we were already bringing a more capable speaker system too, which meant that the guitarists could bring smaller amps, but even just in terms of the mixer the eq, highpassing, dynamics processing and in built effects meant that over about 3 or 4 years we just started putting everything through and we slowly became an 'everything through the pa' band. Because we could do more monitor mixes it meant that the drummer could finally hear what was really going on, so they played better. We finally had enough channels for us all to sing backing vocals. We can multi track record to a laptop and listen back to the gig after the fact, allowing us to work on both our sound and our performance. I wired in a music player permanently so that the second the set is over the drummer just leans over and instantly the break music comes on. That makes us look super slick. When we ask "what's the best bass for metal?" the real answer is "it doesn't matter". Most gear choices we make are more to do with want, gas, lust and epeen than anything else. But the revolution in pa, both in terms of affordable digital mixers and small lightweight active speakers, has really been transformative in a way that I don't think anything else has been recently.

I reckon if the title of this thread had been something like "question about serial numbers" it would have got waaay fewer views than calling it "Please ignore".

I've played at a few beer festivals. If you think people went there for the bands, you'd be very much mistaken - the beer's definitely the star here! Still managed to get a few folk to hang around and have a listen/boogie, but most folk were enjoying our output subliminally I reckon...

No matter what the event i always engage with the band when they finish every song i'll applaude. Common courtesy in my opinion. If a band is good i get more enthusiastic in my response. Dave

I've now managed to get the limit switch working on the winder. The limit switch is used to check when the stepping motor that moves the lead screw is as far left as it is allowed. See the diagram below. Stepper motors have quite a lot of torque and so can easily destroy equipment or themselves if they try to turn and something is stopping them, such as a metal and PETG frame The limit switch was a spare from an older 3d printer and has three connections, a ground, Normally Open (NO) and Normally Closed (NC). This should allow the user to work out the most sensible way to use it. Good practise is that you fail safe, so you actively keep it working and so if a wire breaks or disconnects, its the same as if the switch is closed. Think of it as the deadmans handle on a train, you have to actively keep the throttle lever working, if a driver has a heart attack, the throttle will fail back to zero. So we want Normally Closed, so if a wire breaks, the circuit goes open and its as if the switch has been activated, saving your printer, or other expensive gear from shaking itself to death. The way the Arduino implements this on a CNC shild is 'odd' and I could not understand what it was doing and why. It also turns out that the JTAG to DuPont cable I had was broken, so basically I had no idea what I was doing, couldn't understand the documentation, on a piece of hardware that changed the pinouts, with a cable that I thougth was wired incorrectly anyway and which then turned out to be broken, with a switch that was unclearly marked. In the end I took two long female to female DuPont connectors, wired them directly to the switch and to the Arduino and epoxy resined the connectors into the switch, so nothing was ever going to change and it would work. I have rage quit in the past, I have shouted and cursed at kit and software in the past (Windows 3.1 TCP/IP drivers I'm looking at you, if I ever find the developer who put that pile of utter junk out, they will never walk again), but I have never rage glued equipment together I then went back to the kids who were cowering the corner learning very new words from their father and watched Ghosts Xmas special to wind down. This means that now I *think* I have all the bits done. They aren't necessarily in the right place and they aren't all complete, but I'm now down to stuff I know about (famous last words) and just need to finish the software, assemble the bits and screw things down (actually still waiting for the 1.8 degree stepper motors), and pull apart a pickup to then reassemble it. Target is next weekend to try and do a wind. Away this weekend so thats out. Rob

Absolutely did. Hard to describe how good they were… The entire evening was just brilliant. IMG_4575.MOV

Now that I've just bought a new compressor pedal, it's no more new gear for me in 2024. My pedal needs are now complete And I've just sold 4 pedals I am not using. Proud of myself!

Bit limiting of where you put your thumb / pluck the strings, isn't it. Never used a thumb rest myself, but isn't something longer and more parallel to the strings more useable?

So what do you think Pete, would a Yamaha 434 make a pretty decent Walish base for conversion, Alder body rather than mahogany with 6 bolt laminate neck with rosewood board , though body end bridge stringing, put the neck pickup in the existing P position, bridge in the J and toward the bridge, would need another knob and maybe extend the control cavity and make a new pickguard to suit, I have one here not being played 😈 🙃

Robbery, a salt and battery - Genesis

Shallot the Harlot - Iron Maiden

Mitch easier just to use an actual fridge. You can buy the stickers.

I have a 36" Overwater 6 string tuned to bottom F#. Djent for days.

Being Broiled - Human League

Bake 5 Dave Brubeck Quartet

Learning to fry. - Foo Fighters

Bass Review Magazine just launched issue 1 and is getting good feedback from the Bass Community on social channels. https://bassreviewmagazine.com (US) and https://bassreview.co.uk (UK) Free Ernie Ball Strings until 31st March 2024 when you subscribe too!

Exactly! I look at my rig - seriously, I want for nothing (apart from more talent...)

Well, some hope within my band situation; it turns out there are more musos looking for bands around here than I thought! We are having a rehearsal with a new drummer and guitarist next Thursday, so fingers crossed it goes well and we can start booking gigs again. It will be very weird after 13 years with our old pals though....

Same here. My acoustic duo have done a few and were just part of the background noise really. Didn’t overly bother us TBH, not as much as the constant dad rock / folk music requests 😆

If you're just playing pubs you only need vocals and kick drum, possibly guitar. You need to be able to have a separate monitor just for vocals. The band doesn't need any extra kick or guitar messing up stage volumes. The PA is just bringing a bit of presence over the top as kick drum and guitar will get absorbed by front row of anyone dancing. However, you're not trying to fill a pub with sound, if people want to listen to the band or dance they can come forwards. You don't want to turn the pub into a concert venue. If you're regularly playing big functions then go the full works with a big mixer, but really you can hire that kind of thing in for the odd big gig. Yes, sure, lots of bass players seem to revel in owning a PA and carting it around and setting it up and operating it during the gig. But you will be the one doing all this. Nowadays I prefer to turn up with my bass gear, plug in and play, and concentrate on my own performance.

Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps ～ The Splodges Expectations lowered...

I kinda like playing in a church band - morning gigs, no drunks, daylight for loading & unloading, free coffee and biscuits. Home by 1pm.

I’ve just picked this up a couple of weeks ago. I’m now on the lookout for a 1980 fretted version in great condition if anyone wants to move one on.