neepheid

We have reached the frustrating "waiting for stuff to arrive" part of proceedings. But little things have happened. - the neck shims arrived, and I put the middle one (0.5 degree) one in. Can get a low enough action now, but the G saddle is pretty near the deck. Will try the 1 degree one and see how high that makes the saddles then decide which I prefer. - With it all strung up, did a basic setup on it and it intonates fine, not a lot of room left on the E saddle back travel, but there's a fix for that if needs be. - I found my nut files and lowered the slots to somewhere where they need to be, might chance my arm and grind them down a touch more. - I dealt with a high second fret by recrowning it - I know you should probably get the neck straight and check all the frets, but it's playing really nicely apart from that one so opted to spot fix it instead. Today a scary router bit should arrive and I'll be able to deal with the excess neck pocket material. And hopefully use the router on this bass for the last time.

Where would you put a hat anyway? You're headless!

+1 for the Duke, was sounding great last night in my Fazley Hot Rod. Also consider the Entwistle PBXN (Modern) if you fancy a brighter, more "modern" sounding pickup with plenty of output. Just watch out for those super strong magnets - don't pull them apart, slide them apart - the magnets can be stronger than the glue sticking them to the pickup itself...

Fine steel wool. Yes, keep it away from pickups...

It was mostly used to dry off cables and monitor wedge - it was one of those kind of nights!

Well, spill the beans then! You can't leave a comment like that hanging...

Played with Nine Lives last night at the Balaclava in Fraserburgh. Pretty good night, was a bit quiet at the start but it filled up during the first half and was nice and busy in the second half. Saturday night is the night to play in Fraserburgh, by my experience, should you ever find yourself playing there. We had a hen party (I think) and a divorce party all in one night. The divorcee in question was well oiled by the time she arrived though - spent half the time on the floor, she'll feel that today! Also in a new first for my gigging career, I got my bottom spanked by a lady with a miniature tambourine - a new peril when going for a wireless wander! Spanked all the way back to my amp so I was and to give credit where credit is due, her timing was not awful - kept me right anyhow! I took a highly unprofessional course of action and brought two basses I had been modding and mucking about with this fortnight - the Jet Star with the added Peavey T-40 pickup and the Fazley Hot Rod which recently arrived at Neep HQ and got a pickup change (Tonerider Duke) within an hour and a half of arrival, and copper shielded the night before. What could possibly go wrong? Well, nothing, as it happens. Maybe I'm lucky, or - whisper it - maybe I'm getting half decent at modding basses... The Fazley Hot Rod in the first half was a joy to play. With no controls to eff around with I could honestly sense the freedom from thinking about it and just enjoyed playing. The Tonerider pickup is a great sounding pickup - lots of output but more than enough low mids to really punch through with quite an aggressive sound. Really happy with it. As for the Jet Star, being wary of a boomy sound from the T-40 pickup neckwards, I hedged my bets at the start of the second half - both pickups on, T-40 in single coil. And it was... OK. Compared to the Fazley in the first half I was having a less good time. Part way through the set, I switched to T-40 pickup only, in series and wow, what a difference. I needn't have worried - the sound was much more satisfying, heavy but not boomy, lots of low end substance but never muddy. Much bettah! You know what my rig is by now! Which again only needed to be up about a quarter on the master to easily fill the pub with bass.

Telling us what's making you unhappy with the OBP-3 might help.

Next gig for me is a rare live outing with The Inevitable Teaspoons on Friday 5th September at Krakatoa in Aberdeen. Please come - the original headliner bowed out and we could do with some more bodies in the kirk, if you know what I mean. https://www.facebook.com/events/1246508667088048

Basswood's not balsa, what's the BFD?

Maybe - but the hole pattern is wrong - the Sterling bridge has three holes along the bottom and two on the outside edges of the plate. The three in the middle *might* line up OK, but even if that happens you'd have two redundant holes in the plate left and right, and you'd either have to ignore them and hope that three screws is enough, or drill new holes for the first and fifth holes. Definitely not a direct replacement.

Yes, they've got modified cattle prods in the ear pieces, but shhh, don't tell anyone!

I bring headphones to the bashes and they will be made available at all times on both my rigs.

Well, I had it to a band rehearsal the other night and I forgot to mention another source of cost saving in my initial blurb - absolutely zero shielding, not even shielding paint. Needless to say it did not like being in the rehearsal room very much (but the noise gate in my Spectracomp made it bearable when I wasn't touching the strings). No matter, not much cavity to shield! Also, the knob arrived... Looks even better in person - the black knob with silver highlight complements the pickup beautifully. Really pleased with it!

Our horn players are fully integrated into the band. When not playing, the bone player does BVs (and occasionally sings lead), and the sax player dances. I feel like I need to point out that I'm talking about The Inevitable Teaspoons, which is an originals band. We have no guitars, it's all keyboard driven, horn laden nonsense that we play so there isn't a lot of downtime for the horn players. We've only had one bone player and two sax players (the original one quit on medical grounds). I have a sneaky suspicion that the mercenary horn players alluded to above are the preserve of the covers band world?

As a practical user of the BSW, I have barely scratched the surface of it, but I'm always in mode 7 (OctaSub) - there's a super squelchy synth sound which I use in half of one song, and in a few songs I use the suboctave it provides on its own ("control" knob set appropriately, "range" knob off - that's the synth) because it's a pretty damn good suboctave.

Ahh, so reverse peer pressure telling you not to get/use something?

I guess the only major faux pas I can think of is my first bass - because I was too green to think for myself. Bought an Epiphone EB-3 "because Jack Bruce (kinda) plays one". Little did I know that the body shape was doing much of the heavy lifting when it came to direct comparisons between an Epiphone EB-3 and a Gibson EB-3. Needless to say, I don't have it any more. However, it did lead me down a Gibson/Epiphone path of lifting two fingers to conventional norms and wisdom in bass, so I do have that to thank it for. I've never bassed "properly" since! Everything else has been my fuelled by my own personal curiosity - I don't give a flying monkey's toss about herdthink/peer pressure/received wisdom. I trust my own eyes and my own ears.

Huh, just you wait until the knob I have ordered arrives - Joe Dart will have nothing on me...

Nah, I'm not fussed for the tele headstock where it doesn't belong, but thank you for that document - it will come in very handy for me on one of my projects - got an idea of what to do to the front of the headstock, it's pretty regular F shaped so this'll help me lay out my ideas in Inkscape - cheers!

HA, Bax came through!

Well, this is a NBD thread I honestly didn't expect to make. Some of you might know that back in September 2024, I set myself a challenge - to achieve a "giggable" bass in a £150 budget - new parts only, ignoring postage costs. The core component of this challenge was a bass I spied and really liked the look of - the Fazley Hot Rod - a no-nonsense, pickguardless FSO, reverse P, volume only. Bax are the only vendors of these as far as I could see so even though they were out of stock and on back order, I laid down £84 for the bass. Yes. £84. Unfortunately, most people know the story now - Bax went bankrupt in early 2025. Womp womp. And you know how it is with companies going bust - the customers are at the back of the queue when it comes to making things right, so honestly I had written it off. But, Bax coughed back into life after being bought over. Then I started getting emails suggesting that they would be honouring past orders. I was sceptical, but I played along, answered any questions I was asked (confirming the order details, and a bit later on asking if I still wanted to wait, or take store credit). I opted to wait and have the order fulfilled as originally intended. Well, would you believe it? Look what arrived this morning... I tell you something for nothing - there's a lot of bass here for £84 (well back in September last year they were, they're £94 now - oh no!). It's the neck which surprised me the most - absolutely no raggedy fret ends, and even a very slight attempt to roll the edges of the fretboard. No swarf in the nut. Tuners are serviceable - not the smoothest turning but no play in the gears. Bridge is a BBOT - it works, nothng more. The only places I could see where money had been saved are in the finish - it's a bit uneven in places (but you have to look closely in the light to see the unevenness) and then the pickup. The stock pickup is comically low in output - I was giving it a test in my Tascam Bass Trainer and with the input level set to 10 (the maximum) the Fazley was barely getting to half way on the input monitor! Of course, the stock strings are hot garbage, thin, rougher than Rotos and went straight in the bin. In probably the quickest time from receiving a bass to replacing the pickup (about an hour and a half) I had the stock strings in the bin, the fretboard oiled (because it looked as dry as a camel's hoof) and the stock pickup out and a Tonerider Duke in there. What a difference! Much better output. The stock strings weren't giving the truss rod much to do - after I put my beloved D'addario XL nickel rounds on it, the neck was a banana and I had to tighten the truss rod three quarter turns! Further tweaking may be required, but I gave it a quick and dirty setup and now it's playing great. So that means so far I've spent £119 (£84 bass and £35 pickup), leaving £31 in the budget. I was expecting to have to change the bridge and/or the tuners, but in all honesty they have been unobtrusive and perfectly serviceable. Which leaves more room in the budget for some silliness/extra credit. I think I will fit one of my preferred Sire/Reverend style 3 string retainers, and I will fit a silly knob - which was the plan originally, but I stole the one I ordered and put it on the Epiphone Em-bassy (which I got when I was sure that this one would never materialise). EDIT - because people like to know - this particular bass weighs 3.6kg - or a smidge under 8lbs.

Oh forgot to mention yesterday, I also fitted the string retainer/tree. I really like this Sire/Reverend style 3 string retainer - super compact, at the cost of the D string being captive through the middle and not quick release. I'll take that for the compact, minimalist look though.