neepheid

All mine are out on a rack, and I feel safe doing so - no kids and only one cat who thankfully ignores them completely and doesn't use them as scratching posts. I do (now) have a gig bag for each. Only got 1 hard case and it only fits my G&L - the rest have angled headstocks. I'd like to get proper hard cases for my Gibsons at some point - no hurry though as they always seem to be doing the rounds on eBay. I still wouldn't store them in the cases though - instruments are as much about looks as they are for playing. It does mean I have to dust them more often than I would need to if they were put away, but I love the convenience of seeing them all and just picking up and playing the one I want.

Not what you want to hear, but there will be more Bass Bashes. These guys will (hopefully) only get engaged once. You blow the engagement party off and you'll upset a heap of folk that you have to see on a regular basis whereas we'll raise a jar and look forward to seeing you next time. Sorry for being sensible, but you won't hear the end of it if you don't do the engagement party. Plus it's easier to slag you off when you're not there

Axesrus for pots/knobs

Nothing a refin wouldn't sort out. Rich and I have rescued worse. Mostly Rich, but I helped, damnit!

[quote name='absolutpepper' post='1096348' date='Jan 20 2011, 02:03 PM']You're not boring anyone. This is incredible! Good work all round guys.[/quote] Oh, no-one here, but people at work aren't quite as into it as your average BC member

[quote name='eude' post='1096078' date='Jan 20 2011, 10:16 AM']I bet some folks would be pretty dang interested though, perhaps a compressed diary thread. Your call of course, but I'd be shouting from the roof tops about that bass. I'd never heard of one before that day you showed me the one you where drooling over on ebay, that was arguably mint condition and gorgeous, but this is so much more special Eude[/quote] OK, TB thread done. You're right about shouting from the rooftops - I'm even boring people at work about it and I don't care!

[quote name='GreeneKing' post='1095918' date='Jan 20 2011, 06:12 AM']A master of understatement Have you put this on Talkbass Matt? Peter[/quote] Nah, I hardly ever post over there, just lurk. I reckon the last time I posted over there was a wanted post for a Gibson Victory Artist bass, funnily enough

[quote name='eude' post='1095995' date='Jan 20 2011, 09:18 AM']Wow Matt, that looks absolutely incredible! Hats off to both you and Rich, incredible work. (Tip for your printing, best use a high quality photo printer if you can get your hands on one and set it to over print black, oh and if you set the fill to C=100%, M=100%, Y=100% and K=100% in Illustrator, or whatever you're using, that should help a lot too. God I'm a geek... ) Eude[/quote] They should have a button for that setting - None more black Cheers guys, I'm happy to report that I'm as in love as one can be with an inanimate object.

Victory really is mine this time. It's home and back in one piece. Going through the motions of neck adjustment at the moment, but still managed to have a plonk on it and it sounds amazing to me. I took some photos (because without photos, it didn't happen), but I'd like to take better ones soon and probably put them up in the Bass Porn section where this bad boy was always destined to go. I'd just like to say what a fantastic job Rich has done with the refinishing - the body is beautifully polished and he's worked wonders on the neck, the repair to the edges of the headstock shows great attention to detail. I've let the side down with my Artist truss rod cover - it looks grey compared to the headstock and I will be redoing it - inkjet rather than laser print this time for the transfer. But for now, this is it:

I keep coming back and ogling these pics. I'm supposed to be requisitioning a laptop and then replacing a duff printer, but I'm finding it hard to think of work stuff

I'll nip round tonight if that's OK?

They're considered "vintage" now because enough time has passed?

I mostly run mine passive, and start the bass/treble knobs at about 75-80% then adjust from there. I have mine modded for single inner coils so with both on it's almost like having a third pickup in between and it yields a sweet tone which I love. That setting is parallel only, so I have gravitated towards a preference for passive, but series neck pickup does give some good old school thump if you back off the treble. Not a fan of the treble boost, it's too harsh - more like a finger squeak boost really.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1093980' date='Jan 18 2011, 03:49 PM']Actually, he's probably ahead of me now (his man-beard grows faster than my pathetic boy-fluff can) but last I heard he'd lost the mouser (as allowed in the rules) and is going for the Amish look. So pound for pound it could be close. [/quote] Nah, that was just speculation on my part. If I can get the right hat then I might do it

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1093673' date='Jan 18 2011, 11:43 AM']According to [url="http://www.glguitars.com/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=45"]this[/url] L-2000s should have solid shafts. Maybe yours are aftermarket (or maybe because it's a Tribute) and 6mm would be fine. Haven't you got a ruler?[/quote] Ahh, but look here: [url="http://www.glguitars.com/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=145"]http://www.glguitars.com/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=145[/url] According to that page Tribute pots are split shaft. I'm pretty sure my pots are Mighty Mite. I will confirm tonight on my Tribute L-2000.

Not a very exciting update you might think, but I'm excited My quest to find the missing Posi-Lok strap button has finally come to an end thanks to Gibson Restoration and Repair (not their main customer services - who know nothing about anything they no longer manufacture). Took a month or so because Christmas got in the way but I came home from work to find a suspiciously large FedEx padded envelope. What was inside? AT LAST! I've been looking all over for these bad boys since the Victory arrived. I got messed around by some guy in Italy who wanted something preposterous like 50 euro for a single one, and the few that appeared on eBay were always gold. I am probably disproportionately pleased about this but it's just so cool to have landed the period correct parts in NOS condition. The final part of the puzzle if you will.

This is the place to put any extensive tinkering, building, repairing or restoring. I'm always interested in seeing stuff coming back to life.

My opinion is to save up and get a Squier. Better quality - I haven't heard many bad things said about the newest Squier output (Vintage Modified and Classic Vibe ranges). The trouble with buying a cheap, old bass is that cheap old basses in the past were (on average) a lot cheaper/nastier than the cheap basses of today. It might be a diamond in the rough, but there's a good chance it'll just be rough. For your first bass, you want something which is easy to play/look after/use, otherwise you'll be put off trying to work around all the problems.

[quote name='Johnston' post='1089299' date='Jan 14 2011, 01:25 PM']Isn't there something about Gibsons being really hard to date by the serial number. Something about them not actually going in any sort of sequential order?? Or is that only the real vintage stuff? Besides that if I went to another country and bought a high end instrument I would be pretty keen to check the authenticity of it before leaving the country and going home half way across the globe.[/quote] The current, sane system began in late 1977. There was a brief attempt at sanity from 1975-77, before then there's not a lot of rhyme and reason to it, serial numbers can mean a few things and you need something like pot codes or body/neck date stamps to make sense of it.

Tell him to prove it, take you to court or poke it. Don't send any refund unless you get the guitar back first. Oh, and if he gets arsey, make some kind of reference to the Falkland Islands, always a crowd pleaser. That last piece of advice might have been a joke.

[quote name='mcnach' post='1089033' date='Jan 14 2011, 10:37 AM']27 switching options... (where's the emoticon for an imploding head? I have been playing guitar for many more years than I'd admit, and I got into modifying the electronics early on. I learnt to solder when I was a kid, as my dad was often soldering stuff at home, so it was fun to get new sounds simply by changing a few cheap components and combining pickups. The thing is that at the end of the day, most options are subtle variants. Yes, sound A and sound B are different... but in a live situation they are not different enough and a simple change in EQ (for example) is more effective. And even recording, you are able to achieve enough variations from the preamp alone and/or postprocessing. 27 switching options playing live seems like a huge headache and in *my* experience, it all comes down to a handful of tones that I would really use. The geek in me worked out ways to separate coils in humbuckers and combine them in weird ways... a Strat with HSH configuration provided a lot of entertainment! But not every sound was distinct enough to warrant a "preset", and navigation among all the options to find the handful of sounds *I* wanted was complicated. Different people, different tastes! I'm not saying you're wrong at all, whatever works for you. I want simplicity, I want to play without having to think too much about switching. That's why I also prefer my basic pedalboard with individual boxes to a multiFX even if a multiFX can give me lots of other sounds: I feel more "in control" when I see the individual function leds and where the knobs are.[/quote] Most of what I said was not particularly serious, in reality in the live situation I find a setting that I can hear above the band in the room I'm in and leave it. I just like having options, even if I never use them. Put it another way - this was my calculator through secondary school and university - I mostly used it to add stuff and do a bit of trig and base functions. I probably used about a tenth of its capabilities. On the plus side no-one asked to borrow it I'm with you on multiFX though - I can't be bothered trying to work it all out.