Grangur

No, they're not particularly high tension.

Me too. I buy basses to do up, and I bought a couple of sets for putting on any bass with no strings that I want to move on. I sold a bass with these and the new owner was over the moon. He plays punk and he reckoned they sound every bit as good as his Rotosounds. In a practical sense: their length is designed for a 4-in-line headstock. They're shorter than many other strings, and they're pretty light-weight. But what do you expect for £4.99?

Some old Westone basses used to have a black fretboard. They were painted. Which, I guess gives you a solution that others came to when they wanted a durable black finish.

The first thing I'd do is squirt switch cleaner on the valve seat contacts and make sure all of those seem to be clean. But I'm no expert. So have a bump, so someone else might see this.

What does the neck do when it has no strings? Does it bow back? If so, maybe you need to clamp it and get the neck to be flat when it has no strings. I've had a couple of basses with too much bow and clamped those, but not had this problem.

I was contacted recently by @Jezzer1 about a Warwick bass I'd had up for sale and withdrawn. He was interested in buying. We had a chat over PMs and came to a deal. It all went well and he paid by BACS, which made life really easy. We met up and he was there on time. Many thanks, Jezz. It's been a pleasure to meet you.

I'd come to that conclusion too. I guess, though, it depends on what music you listen to. I'm certain that, although jamiroquai get great acclaim for the basslines, I'm certain a lot are synthesized. Today i was listening to Elvis Costello today and the way Bruce Thomas changed from finger-style to pick and back again with great speed is amazing.. or is it 2 tracks. Then it was confirmed when you can hear both bass lines at the same time. I wonder how many 5-string bass lines are recorded on a 4-string and, after recording, the whole thing is dropped an octave?

@Meddle is, of course right. The signal takes the "path of least resistance". So if the P split-coil is low resistance, the signal will go that way. What surprises me is that a single Jazz pup bar is hi-Z compared to the split-coil. In many cases. @BreadBin clearly has one where this is not the case: Relatively unusual IME and surprising that Fender have got it right for once. Credit to them.

Hey @Johnfitz, Welcome to BC. It's good to see you've eventually found it to go for a bass. As @SpondonBassed says, it'll be goog to see your work. G'day

Hi there @wambamalubop, It sounds like you're doing well. The internet makes learning so much more accessible than it was "back in the day". Though it sounds like you did better tsnh I did in the 70s/80s. See you around.

What pups have you got?

Every PJ I've ever had has always been predominantly about the neck pickup and the bridge pickup has always been secondary. The only exception to this has been my Warwick Jazzman with a jazz and humbucker, with the humbucker at the bridge.

Satin is the same as gloss, but with chemicals to make the surface dry in a less-smooth finish. The easy answer is to get a seriously soft cloth, and T-cut and give it a polish. Whoops... sorry. You really don't want to know this now, do you?

That is really nice, Jez. You do a great job of making basses with real style. I raise my hat to you, Sir.

Before striping it's good to take a good, close look at the bass. If you're looking at a cheaper bass, such as the Spector Bass Legend... ... Take a look at the edges. See how they're dark? This is to cover the fact that the front is only veneer. The black covers the join to the cheap boring wood. I'm not a Spector expert, so I don't know which bass yours is, but you need to be sure the figured maple look you have is really wood. It would be a shame to strip it and find it was a very interesting and clever paint finish. As above... stripping is always a gamble. You won't know what you have, 'til you've wrecked stripped it.

The string will go more dull over time. I guess, there's nothing to be lost in getting a wood nut made if you have access to a guy who can make one. I did have some ebony laying around. If I can find it I'll drop you a line. After all, you can always change it back, it's not life changing like a body rout would be. Something I have found is a lot of the fretless sound is down to technique; more so than a fretted bass. The more you play it, the more you will settle down in "your sound". This may well be the same for DB, but I'm not a DB player.

Isn't there always a difference in the tone of a fretted note over an open note? I even had a bass with an ebony nut and a purple-heart fingerboard (fretless), the 2 were different on that too. I don't think I've ever had a bass which didn't have a difference. (Over 50 basses). One thing you'll never replicate with the 2 is a fretted note has a squidgy thing on the string, that will soften the ringing of the note.

With a lot of "successful" folk, the biggest thing they've achieved in life is their ego.

Oh, the joy of being a "Miserable Old Git".

@devinebass won't be stumped in the slightest. Your collection of TABs is fine, if all you ever want to do is twist and mangle your fingers to re-create some other bedroom-warrior's interpretation of a great bassline. If you want to add your own fills, and chromatic runs etc., then it helps to understand what influence these will have on the overall feel. If you're playing a song and you're mainly playing A, D F#, G, then it throws in some Fs in there too. Isn't is useful to know why? If your front man is hogging the mic and talking away to the punters, isn't it cool to keep playing a quiet bass line in the background, to keep the vibe going? Pros do that. But if you don't have a TAB for that, what will you do? If you're putting together a montage and songs are the same rhythm, but in a different key, but you want to "walk" from one to the next is it better to do this, playing notes that fall into both Keys?

Your dilema, @Allaboutthebass is a FAQ on SBL. There's tons of learning material there. These days they're categorised. You can start with the Beginner lesson about bass familiarisation and go on ... Bass 101: The Anatomy of The Bass & Getting Started Bass Guitar Foundations - The Definitive Guide Functional Theory for Bassists Vol 1 Essential Groove Techniques Technique Deep Dive for Bass Each of these courses, alone, consist of 10x 30 minute lessons. If you study each lesson in each course. The above courses could, if you really work on it, as you should, could take you over a year. Then you can go onto the next stages with intermediate stuff: Harmonic Layering - Arpeggios, Chord Tones & Scales A Masterclass in Time and Groove Development The Bass Line Series: 10 Classic Bass Lines The list goes on.

He found it was too heavy.

Hi Tania, Welcome to Basschat Another supporter here for buying "used" instruments. In the UK the shops don't carry a great selection of basses unless you want Fender, Squier, Epiphone or Yamaha. So, we too find we need to actually buy gear to get to try them out properly. You can lose a lot of money buying and selling basses to find what suits you. Personally, I don't like the tone from a Fender Rumble 15. To my ears the sound is quite "electronic". I would suggest you go for something with more power if you can. More power generally gives a better sound and will give you what you need to play with others, rather than waste money on something that won't meet all your needs. Finally, if you find something in the UK that you want to buy, you can post a thread here asking someone to go and try it out for you to make sure it's a good-buy. It then may still not be to your liking, but there's less chance there will be a problem with it. It might help folk advise you more if you tell us what music you like and would like to play. Good luck Richard Edit: as a lover of Flea. You might find a good bass to look at will be one with a good high-output bridge pickup. So, maybe something like a Musicman copy, or a jazz, as you say. You might also like Hartke amps. Victor Wooten uses Hartke for a lot of slap-bass.

Very true. If all you want is to ask others for TABs and know just enough to busk your way through a few covers and, then SBL isn't the place for you. TABs is something that simply doesn't get a mention on SBL.

Another fan of Jess Louerio here. His pups are fantastic and great value too. I just bought a split coil bridge pup to o with my Clasic P bass pup.