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Good idea, I've done that -- she sends her thanks to you all.

Social media is society's cess pit. The very worst of human personality flaws are allowed to flourish and grow there without any kind of consequence and, as a result, it just gets worse and worse. Do yourself a huge favour and remove yourself from it, forget it exists.

Boring update from me (at least my wife struggled to feign interest). I got some longer screws for my bridge so I can intonate properly without the saddle being partially beyond the length of the screw. This necessitated a lot of research into the correct type, for which Fender were quite helpful but beaten to the punch by someone on Talkbass. If you look at most vintage mustangs you’ll see that the screws are not long enough to offer much adjustment, particularly in the D and G strings. Perhaps this is why the bridge is a tad further forward on reissues, who knows. Anyway the correct screws are Phillips UNC 6-32 2-1/2inch (or 2 inch for E and A). Exciting 😜

It's finished, again. Still not totally happy with the envelope filter, but it's the best small one I've found. I'd like a noise gate, but there's no room...

Its so your flag doesn't get a crease down the middle where the cabs would otherwise meet.

yep been there also, you would not believe some of the stories i can tell of .... timewasters, scammers, people taking the pi$$, buyers that dont live in the uk, people asking stupid questions, people that have not read the description, people asking will i deliver half the country away people that do not turn up even though you waited in for them people asking 10 questions for days then "its ok iv found another one" people sending you dodgy links people asking you to swap for this, then sending you a dodgy link people asking for your address and contact number then radio silence. people offering a courier to collect with cash. people whos mum really want it but he is working off shore on an oil rig peoples buying for a son or daughter cus its their birthday they can pay but are out the country. people then when you click their profile have pics surrounded by palm trees, and live abroard people that are a pastor and want you to send to a friend yep facebook is rife with scammers, you have to be cautious. and can be a real pain in the crack. on saying all that, once you can navigate the minefield, i have met loads of really nice buyers and sellers. and the best bit.... no Ebay fees ! .... but at the cost of all the sh!t you have to put up with. my rule number 1,.... if it has to be sent....i dont except paypall, only bank transfer for obvious reasons. and if collecting its cash ONLY !

Sadly it's the world we live in. There are some wonderful, amazing human beings out there but there are equally some complete and utter tool's with toilet paper for brains. They walk among us and we sadly come in contact with them now and again.

It's not quite day 1 of the project as I've spent a while doing research. I play mandocello in a renaissance-folk-rock band. I have two mandocellos - both acoustic with pickups, both really quite loud. I started off thinking an all-electric would be good for quiet practice, but the more I looked at donor electric guitars the more I thought I wanted to work on a more 'rock' sound. So today I bought this 6-string donor. In red, devil horns shaped body, in the Angus Young / Epiphone SG style. Rather than a full 8-string mandocello, I'm going with a single C string on the bottom, so the tuning will be C-GG-DD-AA. The plan: remove three tuners on the lower side of the head. Dowel the holes, make good & re-drill for four tuners - making 3 on the top, 4 on the bottom. make a new 7 groove nut New bridge & saddle - probably modified bass parts New larger pickguard to surround the new pickups TBD: Pickups. Hofner bass pickups and Telecaster neck bar pickups are on my list Edit to add: I fall in the "expectant customer" category. I'm doing as much of the work as I can, but the skilled work will be done by my local guitar technician.

once a buyer asked me to deliver an item (giant bean bag!). I put it in the car and drove to their flat. I rang the bell and…. They switched the lights off, closed the curtains and pretended they weren’t there. It was actually quite funny. What was less funny was the guy messaging me again asking for details and if he could pick it up. People are genuinely mad.

For me, the bass is the bridge between rhythm and melody. That's where it should stay to complement the song. When players come out of this pocket, that's what turns me off. I hate w***ing of any kind over a piece of music, be it bass, vocals or even gratuitous overly played guitar.

In my write up of my home-made fretted bass, I mentioned that the original neck I mad earmarked for it was damaged by a badly behaved bandsaw. This is the story of what I did with that damaged neck blank. For about two years, that neck blank sat propped up against the wall in the attic. I had a vague idea of making a headless bass with it, even though I've never been a huge fan of headless instruments (this is before their sudden renaissance really got going). However, I'd looked at how much decent headless bass hardware cost and scampered away with my tail between my legs. (A Hipshot bridge/headpiece set costs like £400, which was more than I was planning on spending on the whole project). Then, one day, I stumbled across someone (perhaps of this parish) selling a set of ABM individual bridge-tuner units and a hand-made brass headpiece for £100 on eBay. I snapped them up because that's about £200 less than they would have cost new, and this was during the pandemic, so no-one had new ones in stock anyway. With this stuff delivered, I made some measurements and started working on a design. My main priority was that I wanted to have the tuners easily acessible without having them hanging off the back, or having the body cut inwards to make them acessible. Like the odd annulus things on some Alembics – I've always thought those access cutaways give your bass a sort of flabby cloaca thing. Below is the design I settled on. My thinking was that without a headstock to counterbalance, I could dispense with the top horn, and if I followed the staggered angle of the bridge units with the lower edge of the body, I could handle tuner accessibility with a routed-out recess. The little shape in the upper bout was going to be either an inlay or a soundhole-like thing – I hadn't decided which, but I felt it needed something there for visual balance. The idea was that this would be a two-piece ash body with a walnut top. The ash would be chambered to keep the weight down. It was to have simple passive electronics and cheap jazz pickups because I wasn't sure about the integrity of headpiece, and didn't know how I'd go about replacing it if it didn't work, so I bought all my parts with the possibility in mind that the whole thing might be a bust. I'll continue this tomorrow, but I should note up top that I took far fewer pictures of the process of making this bass than I did with my other one. I think this was because it was the spring of 2021, and I was in an Omicron-lockdown fugue state. That means this write-up will probably be a bit more concise than the last one (it didn't require a "15 years earlier" prologue, so that's a good start).

After a recent thread where I asked for string cleaner recommendations I have done some more research, taken as much advice as I can and come up with a solution. It seems to be the case that most string cleaner products are essentially mineral oil, sometimes with a little extra scent. However, if that's the case then £8-£10 for a few ml of mineral oil seemed like a bad deal to me, so I figured I'd do it for myself. 500ml mineral oil £7.99 (about 100x cheaper than any commercial string cleaner by volume) 5 lint free cloths £3.99 2 marijuana tins £7.99 In other words, for somewhere about the price of 2 lots of commercial string cleaner you can get two infinitely refillable tins, enough cloths to last ages, and enough oil to refill the whole shebang 25 times over. Nice! I poured a few ml into each tin, stuck the cloth in there so it got nice and soaked and put one in my office where I play bass and one in my gig kit bag. It's been about a week now and so far it's working just as well as anything I've ever used. Which is to say that the strings feel shiny if you wipe before you play and then they still feel a little shiny next time you pick them up if you wipe them down after you play. I'm not entirely convinced that any of these products inherently make your strings 'last' longer before going dead, but it can't hurt, right?

I forgot to post final pictures. Such an amateur.

I've been tweaking various bits to try and make sure it's tunable and that I don't fix into the design, things that are wrong. I've printed a few neck pockets, adjusted the height slightly so that when I follow the tuning guide that @SamIAm posted three pages earlier. The bass plays well in the lower frets but I still feel the strings are too high when I get to the dusty end of the neck. However I discovered that small changes in the truss rod do work, so I'm a lot happier. I feel that I might be getting to the stage where I'm tweaking for tweaking sake and not actually progressing the build. I have all the bits printed now and am focussing on the pickups and mounting them. I spent a few days messing around with body mounting the pickups but the height limitations of the pickup area means this is hard. I'm playing with a few mm here and there. This is due to three simple measurements, the aluminium backbone 15mm, the printed central spine, 10mm, and the maximum depth of the body 44mm. This gives me a depth 19mm, plus the height from the top of the body to the strings, in which to mount a pickup. Its hard work to design a pickup that connects to the body securely but also has enough movement to lower and raise as needed. So I'm now going back to mounting it on the pickguard and will (possibly) use some lightweight foam to dampen it. I may well steal the design from my six string to do all of this This means I'm now into getting the control panel fitted using a Squier set of pots and pickups just to get things going. I have other ideas for the control panel, but I want to get it going first before the mad ideas come into play. So things to do now: 1. Design a functional pickguard for the body. 2. Design a functional pickguard for the control panel. This means I'm going to have to glue things together <shock horror>. 3. Put the low tension strings on to replace the tug boat strings. Thanks Rob

@ped please lock my thread. It has become an argument-a-thon.

That Yolk Isn't Runny Any More ～ The Smïths

I've just snagged a used green one for £500 on ebay from a local seller I've bought off before. His basses are usually set up with the lowest action of any I've ever played so dying to get my hands on it tonight.

It looks interesting? TBH for the size of venues that these bands are playing on-stage amplification will make zero contribution to what the audience hears, and depending on how the monitoring is configured somewhere between zero and very little to what the musicians hear, so they might as well do something interesting with how the backline is arranged. For all we know the cabs are stage props only.

Facebook marketplace seems to bring out the worst in people. Just this weekend, I ended up staying in for a buyer that never turned up, no response to messages even though they'd been hassling for about a week with loads of silly questions and to arrange the collection time. I'd put off other buyers and changed weekend plans. I just can't fathom what's going through their heads to be such time wasters and so inconsiderate.

Love Me Three Times - The Doors

Well, it seems we're at an impasse...

Gig rig.

OK round one of the carving is complete. I left it 1mm thicker everywhere on purpose in order to give me a chance to see how the carving was going without risking it getting too thin. Time to get serious. I routed the perimeter down to 4mm, it's final thickness. Time to crack out the gouge and mini plane again. I'm not finding it easy planing it without getting tearout. Wood is like cats fur, it want's to go in one direction. Get it it wrong and the blade can get out under the fibres and pull out a chunk. Carving it is like butter, till suddenly it isn't. It's also a second grade piece of wood, so there's lot's of grain runout, making tearout even more difficult. So far so good though....

My latest go at a pedalboard. I am pleasantly surprised at the quality of the X5 effects, but at present no OD hence the MXR (Inserted using the FX loop between the octaver and chorus, the X5 is chained R to L). The X5 tuner does not cope with a low B hence the KORG at the front of the chain. I have a lot more tweaking to do with the settings on each of the X5 toneprints to dial in my 'perfect' sound. And I need to sort a wider board so the KORG is not sideways! (Slight OCD). Sam x

Sorry, I forgot to post final pictures. What a lightweight.

I tried several times to play 6-string guitar and just can't. I tried playing this SG today... still can't. But I bought a mandocello in December 2022 and went from zero to playing a gig in about 4 weeks... they just suit me somehow. I will definitely post a video when it's finished.

Home practice rig I'm going to add the Line 6 next to the Impulse.

I am familiar with both these basses and there's pros and cons to either. The Fender sounds hefty with the active EQ and P/H pickup configuration. It does classic Fender tone with a bit of a modern twist. It does not however, sound much like a Stingray on the rear humbucker. It's much more of a chunky Fender tone than the typical scooped-out Music Man zing. The early model of that bass ( late90's early 2000's) had a very big chunky neck, but the one pictured looks to have a narrower nut width. It's worth investigating if the neck profile suits you, though. The Bongo is an entirely different proposition. It's a big, beefy and very modern tone with loads of punch and attitude. On the five string model though, I would be aware that the G string is usually very close to the edge of the fingerboard and has a tendency towards slipping off the edge. It's a major irritation to a lot of players, myself included. The 17.5mm string spacing is also a little tight to some people. Other than those idiosyncrasies it's a superb bass. Sounds as good if not better than any modern boutique bass on the market in my opinion. If you specifically want a modern non-Fender kind of sound it's a very good proposition.

Hotone Thunder Bass. 5W only, but an amazing lounge amp. Sounds just like a good SVT. Under £100!

I never really got The Who either, but I did like Entwistle's playing, and I for one actually think it suited the songs (as far as I am concerned the only thing interesting about their otherwise pretty boring bland generic rock songs, but in my opinion despite that his playing didn't sound out of place or forced in any possible way).

Dunwich Volt Thrower clone

In all seriousness, i am a big fan of the stomp. I think it's a great device. I'm not the type to dig deep into multi effects, but at a surface level I'm very impressed with it. The stomp would replace a lot of what you have or at least make it redundant. If you want to augment what yoi currently have, what about a plethora X3? It will give you all the delays and modulation you're missing in a tidy package for a good value. Get an HPF/LPF combo pedal, stick it under the board and boom. You wouldn't be able to insert it wherever you wanted though Too much?

Verdine White :

Some pics arrived from Sat nights gig iin Arbroath at the Royal British Legion Club with BLOCKBUSTARZ. (see earlier post)

Another of our semi-regular acoustic duo gigs at The Lookout in Scarborough this evening. Took two basses with me ( Taylor and Ibanez) to compare, but somehow managed to leave my holdall behind which has all my leads, stand and mic in it! Disaster averted though by my guitarist pal having spares, and the venue having a euro lead for my Rumble combo. Anyway, a full house of diners and shed loads of requests. Along with the usual kind of stuff you’d expect a duo like us to play, we also did some we hadn’t done before / for a long time - such as ‘Sir Duke’, ‘Mr Bojangles’ ( which I really don’t like) and ‘Little red rooster’ with my mate using a half pint glass as a slide for his guitar. Ended with ‘Come up and see me’ in tribute to Steve Harley. We return there in three weeks time, when I’ll make sure I have a full compliment of kit with me.

First time in Arbroath with BLOCKBUSTARZ last night in Royal British Legion. Sold out again which is always a great morale booster. Audience were up for it from the first song. Lots of people turned up in Glam gear too which is always great to see from the stage. It was so enjoyable we had a contest for best dancer and best glam dresser who both won one of our T shirts. A few others we gave out our new pin badges. Was very warm even with our fans on but air-con units above the stage were firing out warm air all night. We had a smaller upstairs function room to get changed in which was good too. Lot better than a small cupboard sized room that some venues have given us in the past. 4 blokes and a female singer doesn't work in cramped spaces My usual gear, Sandberg VM4 into Ampeg SVT7 and Mesa SW210/115 cabs. Shure wireless unit. Stage a bit boomy even with gramma board it was a bit noticeable. Had to turn the bass EQ down a bit on the amp to clean it up but no big deal. They want to book us for 3 nights in 2025 incl a Xmas gig. Bit of a drive tho 2.5hrs on way there and 3hrs on way home. On way home the roads were quiet but they closed the main M90 right after the Queensferry bridge crossing meaning i had to take a detour. Wasn't home till 4am so by the time i unloaded the car with my bass gear and the 3 way 15" PA cabs it was 4:30am and then a coffee to wind down getting to bed at 5am and back up with a cat banging cupboard doors at 8am. Bit tired this morning to say the least. Probably one of the most enjoyable gigs we've played. Just great fun all night. One or two wee hiccups but nothing we couldn't cover. Dave