mowf

Hello, I have one and a half tickets (one adult, one child) for the UK bass guitar show in Liverpool this weekend (April 2nd/ 3rd), free to anyone who wants them. I bought them two years ago when the show was going to be in Manchester; a combination of the show's move to Liverpool with my having (apparently) too many basses to put myself at risk of buying any more, and frankly other things I could be doing this weekend, mean they're up for grabs for anyone who wants them.

I’m worried that buying a ‘64 P bass has cured my GAS.

Wow. That’s disgusting. And wildly overpriced.

Put me down for one too, looks great!

My first bass was a Hohner Jack headless. It was bought as a Christmas present and hidden away, but in the weeks prior to the 25th, unbeknownst to my parents I used to sneak it out of its box and have a go every day after I got home from school. One afternoon, I broke a string and because they were headless they cost a fortune. I ended up selling half my railway set to the next door neighbour to pay for a new set of strings and my parents were none the wiser. I'm only admitting this now as they are no longer with us.

Don't know about you but on our 3 days of summer sunshine the conservatory's too hot to sit in...

That's impressive. I've got a Sunbeam Alpine and have on occasion taken it to rehearsals with a 2 x 10 cab, 2U amp rack and bass (albeit with the roof down). I'm in awe of anyone who could fit a drum kit into it, even though the boot is bigger than you'd expect. My first thought when seeing the title of this thread was that the best car for carrying "gear" would be something fast with plenty of cubby holes that could be easily overlooked in the event of being searched by the police, but having read some of the replies I think it's possible I got the wrong end of the stick.

Here you go. Bought from Bass Direct in 2020, all original (as far as I know). I put a tort scratch plate on as I prefer the look, I've got the ashtrays too which I love but it's just easier to play without them!

I've fallen down the rabbit hole now. Curse you @Reggaebass! Started looking at VintageBassWorld.com which tells me that my #410xxx serial number makes it likely my '74 is actually a '73... Checked the pot codes and yes, they're all from 1973... Checked the neck date stamp and it's too faded to be sure. The last 2 discernible digits are "53", which suggests a 1975 neck (!) (unless there's a digit missing from the end)... Checked the pups. No stamp on one, on the other the last 2 digits are blurred but I think it's "73". So, none the wiser then. And of course it makes no difference to how the bass sounds or plays.

From what I can tell this is 510xxx. I've got a '74 Jazz #410xx and an early '75 Precision #590xx so I'd have thought this was more likely to be a late '74 / early '75 bass. Intrigued by the "tortious guard"... Although having said that, I don't know if you could still get black block inlays after they started doing mother of pearl on maple boards in '73 - '74.

Yep. They realised they'd make more money fixing a broken truss rod than just doing a normal service.

I did do a setup course with Jon Shuker, fret levelling and everything, it was great and I learned a lot. But I'd still rather take my basses to him for any servicing works, partly for peace of mind because he's very good but mainly because he's got a lovely dog.

I was sound engineer for some corporate roadshow once, many moons ago. Can't remember the company (think it might have been BT?), but basically they were going round all their offices and putting on a big show talking up a massive new merger / corporate buyout they were pushing through with a rival. Head honcho would come on stage, tell everyone how great this deal was, bla bla, then a band got wheeled out to play "Can't Stop this Thing We Started" just to drive the point home. Fist pumps and chesty bumps all round. Goes without saying the merger never went ahead.

Yep, until about the second to last number when they all decide now's a good time to start dancing.

Not sure it qualifies as a "train wreck" as such, but we played a wedding gig on the day the Queen Mother passed away. The happy couple (now divorced) had asked a friend of mine to put a band together, and she in turn asked me. The easiest thing to do was do the gig with my own covers band rather than put something together from scratch, so they ended up getting us for free. I was feeling a little hard done by because of this and perhaps not in the most charitable frame of mind during the gig when I said, "This next one's dedicated to the Queen Mother. It's an instrumental number called All Wrapped Up". Two things happened. One, I could literally see the shockwave of disapproval go through the (older members of the) audience from front to back and Two, I turned around at the end of the song and the drummer was still laughing.

I was watching one of the Andertons videos on YouTube the other day and the Captain mentioned that back in 2017 they spent something like a million quid on revamping their website! I can understand why a small business like BD might struggle to find sufficient funds upfront to do their website justice, however much of a good investment it may prove to be long term.

This strikes me as a slightly flawed business model. Surely if it's your job to sell basses, you want to talk customers out of having a single bass and into multiple basses, not the other way round!

According to the title it used to BE Alan Doodad, not belong to him. Impressive, but hard to prove I suspect.

Bought this from @LouieM last summer. Definitely didn't need it, didn't really like the colour but I"ve always fancied this style of P-bass and the extra neck pickup was too much for me to resist. I've never played a bass with such light strings before and liked it more than I thought, who knew string bends could be so easy! Anyway, after a while I decided that even though I didn't want to buy any more basses I really fancied something flamboyant. I looked round one day and saw this white one in the corner and the rest is history. Just got it back from Toby Diggins (T-Dog Customs) and he's done a stunning job. I've also upgraded it to a Ric-O-Sound type stereo arrangement courtesy of a push-pull volume pot, just for fun. Might change the scratchplate at some point but the black works better than I thought. Also don't fancy cutting a neck pickup hole out of a replacement 'plate!

Billy Sheehan.

I stood in for a mate with his band once, a long time ago. The singer very kindly introduced me to the crowd and invited me to do a little solo, which put me on the spot somewhat. Fortunately, prior to the show I had a bet on with the sound engineer that I could get the 'A' Team theme tune into the set somewhere, so I just played that and won myself £20.

Worth checking Bassdirect too. They've currently got a 1961 P for £14.5k...

I had a '78 Jazz refretted, ended up with stainless steel jumbo frets and the fingerboard being re-lacquered. It looked absolutely stunning afterwards, although I do also love the look of a neck that's been used hard. I don't think it affected the value either way, (I subsequently sold it for about what I'd paid for it a year earlier). I think a refret is part of wear and tear and it wouldn't put me off buying a vintage bass that's otherwise 100% original.

I've used Schaller straplocks for years and years on all my basses and they've been absolutely bombproof. Then I bought a set not so long ago for my daughter's first bass and found they'd changed the design. The older ones are just the strap buttons, and you screw them onto the bass with your original screws (which meant sometimes you might need to sand down the screw heads for them to fit in the buttons, but that's not a big problem). The new ones I bought have the screw as part of the button, it's all one piece and there's a hex socket in the end of the button you use to screw it onto the bass. So I put a set on my daughter's bass, and after a few months, one snapped off. To be fair it had worked slightly loose, but I think the problem there was that the Straplock screw was slightly thinner than the one it replaced and so it did not screw in as tightly. Anyhoo, it's not really a game changer on a cheap Ibanez but if this had happened on a really nice bass (i.e. one of mine) I would have found it disappointing. I've bought a couple of nice basses recently and now I don't really want to risk using the new Schallers, so I'm just wondering if anyone else has had this problem?

I'm trying to get the hang of playing with a pick and am struggling along to "Uncle Walter" and "Theme from Dr.Pyser" by Ben Folds Five. Lots of fun, and very efficient as they allow me to make a mess not only of pick playing but also backing vocals and turning a fuzz box on and off at the same time.