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Meant to post this earlier but forgot... A while ago I joined a newly-formed Eagles tribute with a lovely, talented bunch of lads. Months of rehearsals and a handful of gigs later, we're really starting to settle in to it. Here's a couple of clips from a gig in my home village the other weekend. Gear-wise, it's the usual for me. Handbox R-400, TKS 212 cab.... and the Maruszczyk Jake PJ to cover Randy's P tone in the early days, and Tim's Jazz tone from the Kong Run era. Eventually I'll probably switch between an actual P and J. I'm new to this IEM lark, and I'm still getting used to it. We have lots of refining to do. We don't run a silent stage, 'cos we like amps. 🙂

Earlier this year I was about to quit playing / gigging but I did start up with a new band and I felt it was worth one more go. Last month I quit that band and I think I’ve decided I’m going to sell up and enjoy watching / listening to others and stop playing. I have a lot of gear to sell which folk on here could pick up some bargains I will be listing it all and the collection of amps, basses and gear is substantial!! I’ve enjoyed it in the past but I really can’t get my mojo back and at 64yrs old I don’t feel I need to get my fix anymore. End of an era but I’m happy and slightly relieved that I am no longer sitting on the fence thinking shall I or not !!

Hi Some natural Black Limba Grafts are on their way. And the Standard Series are about to be launched. Will feature natural and coloured finishes.

Hey folks! So, last week I scored another BB from my favourite era of BB's, a lovely BB405. Super pleased with it, it needs some TLC (which I've already started on), but feels great instantly. I love the necks on these! I'll be rewiring it with my usual circuit, VBT with ungrounded blend. I'm thinking of refinishing it, but struggling to decide what to go with? Current top picks are either Seafoam green with a black pickguard, or maybe a dark stain or burst stain... What do you guys think?

some cable management was needed and while I’m looking for a hx xl ive taken it of the board added a ps5 for a whammy up and the slicer (the unicorn sticker improves it )

Apologies folks, I committed a sin of omission and forgot to add my newest 32" scale acquisition to this thread. Strung with Long scale EXL170BT strings. Here's the NBD post:

My new Monza was delivered just over a week ago. Having put it through its paces coupled with the Mesa WD800, I'm pretty sure it is a keeper. Hasn't been gigged yet but will definitely be more than loud enough for what I need. A big shout out to Stephen for his prompt and courteous service. 👍 Ian

You gotta keep one, dude.

Even more exciting...

I'm happy to arrange to book St. Lukes church in Hedge End which is modernish, has a decent PA and carpets (helps with the acoustics!), is close to the M27 so easy to get to, and has a Tescos two minute walk away for refreshments. But will need to collect a couple quid from everyone to cover the cost if others think this is suitable. But looking at some of the other bass bash threads can someone else start compiling a list of attendees and kit being brought?

Tried my luck and won out. just drove over to the local DHL depot and said it was out for delivery tomorrow and would lile to pick it up now. I can't fault it with just tuning. Leaving it be in my house for a while before looking at checking intonation or any further setup checks. Playable out of the box. Think my fingerstyle needs a little neatening as I seem to whack the string on the pickup from time to time, which needless to say doesn't sound great! Oh, and the talk of this girl's weight is not understated. At 5.6kg more a shot putter than marathon runner!

This exactly sums it up. My last band was my best, it was fun and great people. The band I tried recently just didn’t work for me. However I think I’m going to park my plans for now. See how I feel in a few months and then decide to sell up or not Maybe I was being hasty ??

Oh, is that Rod Stewart singing? I thought someone was mixing concrete.

Well, it was a bit subtle as when I was looking I was wondering if this was the midi out thing you were saying about, or if it was just the sounds of the FI. Seeing as the FI is a synth its a bit hard to say. But plastic on your keyboards - nice to see someone else who has pigeons in their room!

I eventually took a punt and bought a 32” Jazz style neck from China off eBay. It wasn’t as painful as I had imagined. It took over 3 weeks to arrive but when it did, it was in good condition and the import duty had been sorted. It was unfinished but had a nut installed and the frets had been nicely executed. The heel proved to be a little wider than the Fender standard, so I had to ease the neck pocket on a Precision body to fit it. Anyway I’m at risk of straying into build diary territory, so suffice to say I now having a working, lightweight, medium scale P bass with Jazz style neck. It sounds pretty good IMO, if a little bright (full size P body, so pickup is a little close to the bridge). The whole thing, including Tonerider pickup and Schaller machine heads cost me a little more than £200, plus a lot of finishing work. I still think Squier could sell a lot of medium scale P basses if they would only bite the bullet. Here it is in action:

This bass seems to be incredibly under-represented in terms of review, and those I've seen don't fit entirely with my impressions. So I'm going to have a go. I'm not going to compare with other Sire basses. The body First thing you notice is the bookmatched flamed maple to, supposedly AAAAA. The figure is very dependent on the angle light hits it, so sometimes one side will look much more pronounced than the other. It's a veneer (apparently the new DX model has a slab) over maple backing. The main body is alder, and has an almost square edge and the front carve has a longer than usual curve so it's a bit like a precision version of an Aerodyne Jazz. The alder is a rich dark colour and the maple is paler giving the impression of a bound top. IMHO it looks fabulous and is what caught my attention. There's no scratchplate, but an abundance of tasteful black knobs and one switch. It's not a heavy bass IMHO though I haven't weighed it. The Neck This is 'supposed' to be a P-bass, so I'd expect something comfortably above 40mm at the nut. It isn't, it's well into Jazz-bass territory, I measure mine at a smidgin over 37mm. I would say the neck is the best feature of a good bass. It has very 'rolled' edges, more pronounced than my Squier Jaguar; perhaps because the frets are set back, so the roll goes all along the edges, rather than the rolling being just between frets as on the Jag. The profile is supposedly an asymmetric 'C', I think slightly deeper on the bass side. This is genuinely one of the most comfortable necks I have played, feeling instantly at home, very like my Flea Jazz but perhaps 'fitting the hand' a bit more. Neck radius is quite pronounced. Headstock is the tasteful (some will disagree) and distinctive Sire shape with Marcus Miller P10 and a Sire logo in thin, slightly 3D silver writing that appears 'embedded' in thick lacquer. Visually, the neck is stunning. Roast maple with a nice figure and a fingerboard of even darker heavily figured maple with gorgeous abalone inlays. The dark bands along the side of the fingerboard slab oozes 'boutique' Tuners are the open type, chrome, nearer to Squier size than standard Fender, but with cast rather than pressed back plates. They work well with littel backlash. The new DX version has golden hipshot ultralites (but I prefer the more traditional aesthetic). The Nut It's a bone nut, not synthetic. The Bridge This is a 'slightly beefed up' BBOT with 'high-mass' bridge pieces. (DW version has a full hi-mass bridge in gold) String spacing is about 18.5mm and fixed. You can anchor stings on the bridge (this is how what seem to be a new set of decent stainless strings are fitted) or fit them through the body. I quite like the strings and will probably replace with Rotosound 66 Swing Bass through the body when they lose their sparkle. I can't comment on the 'as new' setup, as it was secondhand. It was pretty good, but I made tweaks. Truss rod adjustment is at the butt end, but there's a large recess making this easy. I had to add a 1/6 turn to get my preferred very slight relief. I dropped all four bridge pieces by about two turns of all the adjustment screws, a hefty drop in action. Any more and the g-string started to rattle; I suspect the E, A and D could come down a tad, but action at the 12th fret is about 1.75mm or less on the E, which is fine for me. Lets me dig in and clank if I want but sounds clean most of the time. I had to deepen all the nut slots quite a lot, maybe approaching 0.5mm to get the light action on the upper frets that I like, nowhere near buzzing. Pickup adjustment seems fine since I dropped the action, may adjust them once I have played it a bit more. Pickups and Preamp Pickups are standard PJ arrangement labelled Sire x Marcus Miller. With the switch in passive mode the bass sounds bright and punchy compared to my precision and jazz which have vintage style alnico pickups. You have a stacked passive tone and volume and a blend pot, all of which do what you would expect of them. In active mode you get four more controls (the passive ones still work). These are bass and treble and a parametric middle control. I found I could get a good range of tones by choosing a level for the mids, then adjusting frequency to taste. Repeat for different boost/cut settings. Helpfully, the controls have centre detents (except tone and volume) and if you set the active controls to the middle the sound is very close to passive mode with a touch of volume boost (apparently you can set the volume with an internal pot). This makes it easy to get a good starting position. Others have criticised the Sire preamp; I found it much easier to get useful sounds than my two basses with simple bass+treble active circuits. I have only played through fairly small rigs so far, but ones with a very good bottom end response. Through my brother's Elf/Portaflex 15 setup pushing the bass up gave a huge sound. It certainly excels at harmonically rich, mid-heavy, funky sounds, and you have to work harder to get a good punchy but dark rock tone. It would be a sin to put flats on this bass, it brings the richness of new roundwounds out front and centre. Overall Looks-wise it's a complete contrast to all my other basses, it is very 'boutique' (and the new DX version even more so with gold hardware). It's a very nice, comfortable bass to play. The neck is lovely; utterly different from a precision despite the 'P' designation, although jazz bass afficionados should feel at home. The sounds it produces lean more towards the funkier end of bass playing to my ear, I look forward to seeing what it does in a blue or classic rock context over the nest couple of weeks... Biggest surprise? I'm a pretty meh slapper, but I actually find this bass relatively easy to play slap on, although this may be helped by me using it mostly with my Joyo BadASS with the compression turned on. Some more pics tomorrow, not got the light to get decent ones.

We could, and perhaps should, do a whole thread on eq and gain settings on the RB series of amps. I’m a big fan of higher boost settings, around 2 o’clock is where I’m at, and I’m not playing rock, it’s blues on a P bass with flats. Rob

Now I'm out of the gear challenge, I've ordered that new pedalboard I've wanted for years...

This is exciting! New lead time 10-13 weeks for new orders though 😬

Having contacted Yamaha (part no longer available) and spoken to a couple of well known guitar repair shops it seems that the old BB TR nut is officially extinct and there's nothing equivalent that can be used as a replacement (most modern metric TRs have an M5 thread). So it was DIY time. I found some 10mm long brass M6 connector bolts on ebay. Only available from China but I ordered them and they arrived 3 weeks later. As standard, these need a 10mm wrench which is much too big for the TR recess on the bass so I filed the flats down to fit an 8mm wrench. Et voila! I have a couple of spare M6 bolts so if anyone else needs to do the same just get in touch. You'll have to do your own filing though!

Definitely Floaty. Reason; that enormous top horn makes the balance so good that you forget it's even on, in spite of it being a middle-weight.

Thanks! Yep, Hotel California is a lesson in restraint. It’s a long pattern, and if you deviate it jumps right out.

Cheers, all! I’ve never rehearsed so much for anything in my life. I grew up with The Eagles in my DNA. I thought I knew all the ins-and-outs of all the arrangements, but when it came to it… turns out I was wrong. There’s so many little details and surprises hidden away in those songs. We’re lucky in that we’re blessed with a great Don & Glen, and everyone in the band is great crack. It’s good fun.

Hi @ezbass Good to hear that you are using the NS at least some times. Due to bands changing, and some venues not having much space, I have been through periods where I didn't play upright much. However, I "weaved" EUB into one of the bands - just to keep playing upright in a gig situation. Following that, a fiddle player joined another band I'm in, and it just seemed to immediately suit the sound a bit more. Plus, if I'm being honest, it made me a little less lazy about carting both EUB and Bass Guitar to some gigs. Then I joined another band, and they specifically wanted me to play upright - so Bingo! I was glad I had kept my hand in, so to speak. So you never know, there might just be a project out there for you, which involves more of you playing EUB. I also have to say, I get more comments when I play EUB than I ever do playing BG, or even when I play acoustic upright - EUB's are rather cool-looking instruments, it seems. Cheers now - enjoy your NS... they are cracking instruments.

Sometimes with pedals like this it can be worth buying the real deal (there's one on Reverb in France for £300) because you'll be able to sell it for the same if it's not for you.

Me too. I'm quite happy with my ear plugs, but I do worry about jamming ear wax into my ears every time I use them. Also one of the folks at one of our gigs was wearing a pair of over-ears and it got me thinking about alternatives.

Our drummer is quite pleased with the Vic Firths. Those alpines look fairly compact, maybe too small for old man ears. Interested in your findings! There's also a lot of over-ear protection available for the shooting/hunting stuff. No telling how they affect music quality. "that wouldn't work for me as we don't mic up the drums or mic/DI the bass)." One overhead mic in the room would do the trick, across from the drummer not over their cymbals.

Neither is Rod Stewart's now 😀

He does make a nice cup of coffee too☕

Seems I may need to spell it out as my hint is too subtle: I’m triggering an actual DX7 using my bass! I’m sure you can work out the significance of my having posted this in this particular thread!

My two finally together in the same room.

I am equally happy playing along with not my favourite songs. I tend to listen to songs on something that has a random mix and then just play whatever comes along in the shuffle, quite often songs you don't really know or wouldn't listen to, I do like the enjoyment of working it out on the fly and some songs really give you different ideas on playing. Or sometimes just doing whole other basslines than are already there.

Nicely balanced sound, tricky with that many guitarists!

Exactly this. Properly designed cabs (LFS, Barefaced) have great dispersion so the sound is hitting you rears even when the cab is on the floor.

Hi folks I have always loved the look of Gibson EBs, possibly/probably influenced by some of my favourite bassists using them, but I have been able to find 'that' bass. Not easy to find a luthier who offers them either, however I noticed a build by Alex at AGH and asked him if he would make me something similar and here we are. Specs in brief are: Rosewood top over a 5-pc maple wenge neck through with cherry wings, 32" medium scale. Lower horn shaped to suit me so somewhat asymmetrical. Artec Mudbucker with series parallel switch and a Thunderbird style bridge pickup. V/V/T controls. Gotoh and BadAss harware (mostly because they were in my spares drawer). Sounds mega!