Mr. Foxen

Now they look very tempting, if I make a bunch of money selling ym other gear, one of those is going to get tried out. However, I've always preffered Rosewood boards for their not getting really grotty properties.

I just realised I spent nearly as much on a pedal as I did on my main basss. Then I had a think and realised that Fender are probably struggling to keep a place in the market as the have pretty much nothing to trade onbut their name. Theres just a limit to how good you can produce a piece of wood with strings on, and theres plenty of competition at that point, the Yamaha stuff is great quality as an example, and theres plenty of no-names that are near as good as a Fender once you switch a few choice pieces of hardware, the downside being that it will hold no value. Will anyone give me £200 for my Johnson P bass? No, its got the wrong name on the headstock, but you have no idea how it plays or sounds. Consequently, manufactureres must keep shooting out products that appear to have a premium value in future, especially considereing its not a consumable product, they are pretty much around forever. Barring Townshend moments. In fact, that last point is probably the most important one.

Lefty Riks are expensive cause this guy bought all of them [url="http://www.uglybassplayer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8152&highlight=lefty"]Heres the thread where he gives the other pics.[/url]

Anyone catching Jazz at the Duke today?

Whereabouts in Bristol? I'm in Kingswood, not far from Shockwave and his collection of truly hideous basses. Hit me up on pm with an msn address, I'm cherful to show you some stuff for free if you fancy it, gives me a chance to talk basses, play someone elses bass and alienate my housemate for being every bad guitarist cliche there is.

I bought some super cheap Alice strings on ebay, thoguht they be good for restringing basses for people who asked me to teach them and turn up with some attic find. Two sets for £7, the D string from both sets just buzzed, all on its own like fret buzz, but with no fret touching, tried both on a couple of basses, gave up on them. Lesson learned there.

I've seen a sweet custom with one, built to be a P style: www.gwbasses.com bigging him up because he always has time to give me guidance on mods and stuff I'm working on.

Hi Lorne, I recall you from the Ugly forum, you should visit there again too.

If you can use a blended signal somehow they work ok, I have seperate outputs from the two pickups on my bass and run one throught effects and one clean then recombine into amp wia a stereo eq, gives guitar sounds and keeps the bass there. Alternatively I canuse the fx loop in my Proco Juggernaut.

I did a defret on my first bass, when I got a Wishbass, I decided to refret it, rosewood board, and only glue and rosewood dust in the slots. I bought some fretwire on ebay, came cut in 2 fret strips, and already curved, which is the hard part. Cleaned out the slots, which was the worst part, involved lots of masking tape to protect everything. Once the strips were clear, I cut a piece of wire with some overhang, enough to poke over the edge, but minimal to save filing later, made sure I supported as much of the neck as possible, put some wood glue in the slot and tapped the new fret in with a block of wood and a rubber mallet, many small taps rather than one big one, figured les chance of bending anyhting or dinging the fret that way. Basically took my time over it and thought every bit through, covered everything in lots of masking tape, once they were all in, keep the tape on, filed the ends roughly, pulled one out and redid it because I hadn't cleaned the slot and it was proud. Got a very straight piece of hard wood and fine wet and dry paper and flattened the tops of all the frets, any that were obviously proud got a tapping with wood and mallet. didn't take much to get them all even, since there was only a small flat on the top dressing them to round didn't matter, not it plays just fine, although polishing the fret ends took ages, and keep the tape on for this. That was pretty stream of conciousness, but you should get the gist of it.

[quote name='Machines' post='42063' date='Aug 6 2007, 05:26 PM']Looks like they share some features Staggs do - possibly from same factory ? I'd say as a cheap backup bass you can't go wrong. As a main instrument ? No thanks. EDIT: I'd fancy this though.. kind of a Jaguar meets Stingray. [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/WESLEY-MARK-II-COUGAR-SONIC-BLUE-ELECTRIC-BASS-GUITAR_W0QQitemZ290146104924QQihZ019QQcategoryZ4713QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/WESLEY-MARK-II-COUGA...oQQcmdZViewItem[/url][/quote] I keep eyeing them up, I really like the look, and standard replacement parts would cheerfully fit, so could probably make a very reasonable bass out of one. As long as its not plywood or something.

The Johnson basses, the P and J copies at lest, are pretty reasonable, solid wood bodies too, I got one to use as a base for various mods, it was ok to start with, became pretty good with all hardware replaced.