Kiwi

I wonder if many people will forget its daylight saving this weekend?

Welcome to the club Steve

[quote name='Shifrin' post='165788' date='Mar 29 2008, 11:27 AM']Hey there, I'll take some Zubrowka vodka straight up if you're buying Simon.[/quote] +1 but with apple juice.

Stick with the best and forget the rest, mate. Welcome aboard BTW

I have a custom HSS strat that I got for a cheap price considering it has a 2 piece SOLID quilted maple body. I'm in the process of slowly upgrading it, just sticking EMG's in it transformed the guitar. If anyone is interested in a loaded scratch plate with Seymore Duncans in it, feel free to drop me a PM. [attachment=6971:610f_1.JPG] [i](in original condition)[/i] Upgrades will be (in order) 1) refret and natural refinish the ESP supplied maple neck (or get a replacement neck if its cheaper) 2) Wilkinson VS100CV convertible tremolo 3) Body refin to purple sunset tint (a bit like on the Steve Morse sig guitar)

I spoke to Andy today about doing a rewind on a pickup and he seemed like a very nice bloke. No wonder you guys like him. He confessed to me that he's had so much demand from Basschat that he's now short of certain parts. Nice work!

[quote name='ped' post='164146' date='Mar 26 2008, 10:37 PM']Just how good is the neck exactly? Perfectly straight, or a bit of relief, how much are we talkin'[/quote] There's a tiny amount of relief, the frets have been poorly crowned as well so the bass could probably do with a stoning around the dusty end of the neck. I think the bass is probably capable of lower action than the Cutlass 1 which is good news. I opened up the neck pocket to find two sets of makers initials in pencil and no date stamp (which apparently did happen sometimes). The initials were E.V. and G.G. (Geoff Gould?). If it was inspected by Geoff Gould, its unexpected - maybe he got back into quality control after too many duff necks were produced. I couldn't see any initials apart from a "T" in red marker on the Cutlass 1 pocket. I had a closer look at the Cutlass 1 pocket and I wondered if the bass might have actually been resprayed black over an original white finish given the thickness of the white "undercoat" which also had scratchmarks from rough sanding. That could mean both basses should be white! The seller of has offered me some compensation which might actually cover the cost of a coil rewind by Andy at Wizard Pickups.

The bass arrived today. Delivered without a case - not even a gig bag. Luckily the courier was careful! So the good news is that the neck is pretty good, particularly for an '84 bass. The neck needs a bit of a shim (more tricky with a 4 bolt neck because of the lack of a microtilt feature) but otherwise looks OK. The bass is pretty good nick otherwise, even still has the crusty old foam on the mutes! The bad news however is that the bridge side coil in the neck humbucker doesn't work. I've tested the connections with a multimeter and the windings around the coil appear to have broken at some point. The other coil is reading fine so it looks like I'm either going to have to get the coil rewound to the same impedance OR get a replacement sabre neck pickup from somewhere. I've asked the seller (who was selling it on behalf of his Son who is overseas at the moment) what he suggests we do about the extra cost the coil repair is going to require...

Did Jon give you any tips for making sure the neck was carved in a consistent and parallel way? Was there anything to stop you from taking a large chunk of wood out by mistake?

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120237627391&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:GB:1123"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...ME:B:SS:GB:1123[/url] No need to leave the house for a demo, regardless of where you are in the country. Just get him to turn it up a bit.

[quote name='lonestar' post='163375' date='Mar 25 2008, 09:15 PM']I'll be coming on Saturday accompanied by my US Jazz, Peavey Tim Landers Signature five string...[/quote] Now thats a bass I'm quite curious about. Looks the parts and the other sig basses I've tried like the Rudy Sarzo and Jeff Berlin model were quite impressive. That Jeff Berlin is actually a bass I wouldn't mind having at some point. Great workhorse bass given its got a graphite reinforced neck.

fascinating thread now if only we could see some photos of all those commissions some of us waiting on as well...

[quote name='wotnwhy' post='163221' date='Mar 25 2008, 04:00 PM']laser cutting?? what and why?[/quote] For the kiwi inlay Its funny, I'm now wondering whether I should have asked for a radiussed top like on Warwick and Spector basses, I do particularly like how the pickups and strings project out from the body because playing is a little easier with my 'straight' thumbs. Its probably a little late for that now, but might ask about it for the workhorse bass.

Jon mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the facing with the kiwi had been sent away for laser cutting. No more photos yet

Apparently I have a band rehearsal for Sunday. But I'm going to try and budge it anyway because I rarely miss rehearsals as it is. One without me isn't going to kill the band.

[quote name='lowdown' post='162326' date='Mar 23 2008, 07:32 PM']Spent many a Sunday Night in the West end doing 7 hour Jewish Functions with Steve... When all the Notes sound the same by ten o'clock. And all the grooves are... Uncha uncha uncha...!!! Garry[/quote] Hahaha, yeah we talked about that with him as we had been asked to do similar gigs too. We've decided not to for the most part but still have to face learning 4 of them in a 20min medley for the Marbella gig. Oish, VERY tedious songs. I can usually find something to like in most music but those songs are mind numbing.

[quote name='lowdown' post='161274' date='Mar 21 2008, 09:24 AM']Yep Steve... Not seen him for a while... Good player that lad.. Not sure why he was wasting his time with Kylie though.. Garry[/quote] Yeah he picked things up remarkably quickly although its easy if you have something to rest your notes on innit?

[quote name='Sibob' post='162163' date='Mar 23 2008, 12:38 PM']Isn't it worth just writing into the BassChat rules that: "If any member is to visit Jon Shuker's Workshop, he/she is obligated to take photo evidence of all builds currently undertaken by said Luthier" Cos lets face it, the only work Jon gets is from this board! Si[/quote] LOL, I wouldn't say 'the only' necessarily. He gets a fair amount of repair work as well. But certainly a lot of commissions come from here and anyone offering good value, open mindedness to requests and attention to customer satisfaction probably deserves the same recognition. BTW, if some shots are possible and if the wings have been cut, I'd appreciate some photos of my headless MIDI 6 string

A-HA, so this is where it went! Welcome aboard ex-lurker Colin

[quote name='7string' post='162022' date='Mar 23 2008, 12:19 AM']It's going to be a heck of a trip !![/quote] Sure is, I did a similar thing about 10 years ago, only starting from New York and working my way back to LA. NY Port Authority to Alberqueque on the Greyhound bus because I wanted to get an impression of scale the US as a country. Turned out to be a real road trip with runaway lesbian teens, fights, near road accidents and some interesting characters. After getting screwed over by an unscrupulous car hire company in Santa Fe and being near dead with exhaustion after being woken up every 4 hours by a driver change, I stayed with friends in Santa Fe (again more stories). Then another friend came out from LA in his campervan and we took a tiki tour of Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, Four Corners, Hoover Dam and Las Vegas. Then I went to stay with a distant cousin who was then a TV presenter on a nationally syndicated entertainment show. Wouldn't have done it any other way apart from trying to get New Orleans in as well, but I wouldn't like to repeat parts of it either. Re: basses, Consider a limited edition Stingray 4 or 5 from Bass Central is good value if you want to buy and have someone you can ship it to a used Sadowsky is good value if you want to buy a lightweight amp head Try: Smith BSR bass (like mine), Alembics, Sadowskys, Avella Coppolo, Roscoe, Nordstrand, etc. etc., just have a look at some of the GAS lists on Talkbass

[quote name='bass_ferret' post='162145' date='Mar 23 2008, 12:14 PM']Finnbass have got it [/quote] still here?

[quote name='tonybassplayer' post='162065' date='Mar 23 2008, 08:44 AM']I think we would be looking at about double our normal rate and it would depend on where it was.[/quote] Thats the approach we took too. There ARE up to 10 of us.

Last quote we gave was for a gig in Dubai on New Years, which we asked £5k plus expenses (flights, accommodation, food, backline hire etc.). We're still waiting to hear back but they didn't dismiss us out of hand.