BigRedX

Depends entirely on the pedals and what sort of of bass sound you want. There is no definite answer. Edit: as other have said if you like the sound and it fits into the band sound and/or song arrangement/production then it really doesn't matter if the effect is specifically aimed at bass guitars or not.

Also what is your set up? Bass into amp, or do you have effects? If so which ones?

Although "swamp ash" is simply any species of ash grown in a swampy environment. Therefore as you can see simply knowing what species of wood you have is only part of the picture. Ideally you also need to know the growing environment and the age of the tree when it was "harvested". And even then because every piece of wood is different you still don't know how it's going to affect the sound of the bass when in conjunction with all the other factors. Buy the bass that is the right weigh for you and if you are going to have one with a finish where the wood can be seen, what you consider to be an attractive grain pattern. Those at least will be known quantities at the time of purchase.

Unfortunately from a cooling requirement PoV it doesn't always work that way. In my guitar playing days I used to run a Marshall PowerBreak with my combo and some of the more extreme effected sounds would send the fan on that into overdrive irrespective of output volume setting of the amp or the amount of speaker attenuation being applied by the PowerBreak. And that fan cooling was definitely being needed with those sounds.

My "other" band Hurtsfall have their 4th single Revelator out today. We also made a video for it: Much more unashamedly Gothic compared with In Isolation, but I hope those of you who enjoyed that will like this as well.

The fact that we are unlikely to get enough people to agree on the same thing at the same time to make it worthwhile not withstanding, having just had dealings with Eastwood's custom shop, I'm not entirely sure that they would be capable of producing anything within a suitable timescale for Basschat's members. I have just this week received my Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 Pro bass. This is an instrument that was announced in January of this year at a point when the prototype had already been in use by Peter Hook for some considerable time, and therefore the bulk of the design process should have been complete (especially given that it is essentially a direct copy of his Shergold marathon 6 String Bass). That's a whole 9 months to produce and ship a couple of hundred instruments. Could we really wait that long once the design process was complete?

And many of them will be replaced by new venues once the "dust has settled". It's always been like this. Pre-Covid, apart from Rock City (and one other which has gone through numerous name changes and now bears little resemblance as a venue to the one I played at in the 90s), none of the places in Nottingham I was playing in the 80s, 90s and 2000s still exist as music venues anymore, but there are still plenty of places left to play, most of which are far better as venues than the places I was playing the I first moved here. Also it is now much easier to get weekend gig for originals bands than it used to be, when Friday and Saturday nights were strictly discos and covers bands. I see this as failure to acknowledge that things change and move on and as much as we would like everything to remain exactly as it was for ever, many of those changes from my PoV have most certainly been for the better.

Personally I've not had a lot of success with algorithms to introduce me to new music since Pandora stopped operating in the UK. They either bring up music I already know about and like or dull bands that IMO don't really fit the search criteria. This leads me to believe that: either I already know everything there is to know and have found all the bands I am ever likely to like in my chosen genres already, or that the algorithms are not very good. I would agree that there is more new music available than ever before, and that along with the fact that there is no filter is part of the problem. These days anyone with a recording (of any quality) and approximately $50 can get their album up on all the major download and streaming services. That is too low an entry point IMO. It swamps the market with mediocre music and makes the good stuff even harder to find.

Thanks for the clarification, and for the thought behind the process. Thinking about it myself it occurs to me that the vast majority of bridge/tailpiece acoustic guitars are also arch-top in construction. Is this due to the forces involved and their directions in relation to the top? Does it make a difference whether the arch top is carved or moulded/formed? Of course the most important question is now you have finished this... what's next?

My Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 Pro arrived today. First impressions are very good. Nut width 50mm with 41.5mm between the centres of the two E strings (slightly wider than original specified) and 65 mm at the bridge. I've just tied playing through the songs that I most often get wrong because of the closer string spacing of my other two Bass VIs and was able to play them fist time without tripping over the wrong strings. Hangs well on the strap too. I haven't been able to try it plugged in yet as my FRFR is at the rehearsal room and I've managed to break my current pair of headphones again. I ordered mine with the Eastwood gig bag which is very nice: semi-rigid and padded, not quite as good as the Mono M80, but then only about half the price. Looks as though the Squier will be up for sale shortly as it's unlikely to get any playing time now I've got this and the Burns, even though I used it in the video for the new Hurtsfall single "Revelator" which is out tomorrow (11th September) as I thought the white colour looked better than the pinky-red of the Burns in B&W. Full review when I have had more time to play and take some decent photographs.

Agreed. I'm another who ditched my conventional bass rig in favour of an FRFR and I can't ever see myself going back. The £2k I paid for my Helix and RCF745 might seem a lot, but it was less than I spent on the rig it replaced and most of that was bought second hand.

Whatever it cost, it would have been far more than I could afford. My first proper bass rig put together in 1982 (after I stopped using my Carlsbro Wasp guitar practice amp for my bass) was a no-name 100W transistor amp obtained in exchange for a Shaftesbury Resonator Guitar, an ex-soundsystem 1x18 Cab that cost me £25, and a home made 2x12 cab that was given to me by a friend of a friend who was moving away and couldn't be bothered with the hassle of taking it with him. That lasted me for about 10 years as a bass rig and then as part of a rehearsal/PA amplification system for my synth band.

On my school report: "His design of guitars is stunning. I wish I could say the same for his history." This was based on the fact that I spent most of my history lessons doodling guitars rather than taking notes. I managed to scrape a C at 'O' Level. I hoping that I'll be able to afford to get Simon at Gus Guitars to build my version of the Bass VI before the teacher in question dies. I know that he is still around because he runs one of the U3A history groups that my mum attends.

As always stunning! I notice you ended up going for a guitar-style bridge with sting pins rather than what appears to be the standard bouzouki separate bridge and tail-piece. Any particular reason why?

Something that is simultaneously weird and elegant at the same time. I don't think that you can put it down to individual things. It's everything that goes together to make up a musical instrument.

As a seller I always take responsibility for the packing and selection of the courier. I am also happy to ship a bass or guitar in either a gig bag or a hard case because the outer packing and padding will take the brunt of any mis-handling. IME, anything that will damage an instrument in a gig bag will do the same to one in anything else less than a full custom-fitted flight case.

A guitar or bass in a decent padded gig bag, and then properly boxed should be no more vulnerable than in a good hard case. And have a good read of the excluded items. One of them is magnets. That technically excludes every piece of electric musical equipment.

If the case is part of the sale, then it should be wrapped up in cardboard.

Depends on when the various photographs of the cars and guitars were taken. Also as you can see from the swatch chart above the colours fade by different amounts over time.

No. Relief and the angle of the neck in relation to the body are two completely separate things and do not affect each other.

@leftybassman392 I don't think that you've hijacked the thread at all. More like some interesting observations that probably many of us who were at school in the 50s 60s and 70s had never considered. I think also that in the more academically orientated schools, like the Grammar School I attended, music was very much second class in terms of importance and facilities along with subjects like RE, woodwork, metalwork and art each of which took up no more than one period per week over the course of the school year. And when it came to picking your 'O' Level or GCSE subjects they were very much reserved for those pupils "too thick" to be assured passes in the sciences and arts. I know that even if I had wanted to do Music 'O' Level, it would not have been possible as for me the only choice was between History and Geography as my 10th subject - school and parents had already decided which other 9 I would be doing.

I have agree with you. The guitar version sports a standard tune-o-matic bridge, and I have no idea why the bass version didn't do the same. There are several aspects to the design that show the builder's strengths lie in engineering and not traditional lutherie. However the Born To Rock instruments are radical in more than just looks. The design does away completely with the need for a truss rod since the string pull is countered by the arm above the neck and does not act on the neck itself. That does mean that if a string breaks the whole instrument goes really badly out of tune. Overall it was a great playing and sounding bass and I'd still have it if it was a 5-string. BTW just to reassure everyone the bass isn't actually sitting in the water, but supported on 3 small posts raising it a couple of millimetres above the surface. The "trails" the flow of the water made around these were removed in Photoshop to make it look as though it was floating.

Overall string tension will almost definitely change. The average high C string is a much higher tension than that of a low B.

You'll hate this photo then:

Mostly no. On the face of it my school musical education in the 70s (I was at Grammar School from 72 to 79) was much the same as the majority of other posts from people my age. Our music teacher was uninterested in anything that wasn't classical, and the only time we got to hear any pop music in class was when something in the charts had "borrowed" a pice of classical music for its main theme (Greg Lake with "Troika" by Prokofiev and Beach Baby by First Class which used part of Sibelius's Fifth Symphony) when he would take great delight in "proving" to us how second rate pop music was that it had to use tunes from the "greats" to get noticed. Everyone had the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. However if you wanted to learn anything other than violin, you needed an aptitude test to see if you were worth teaching. For some reason I chose the trombone. My test consisted of seeing if I could manage to blow a note on the mouthpiece (yes after a number of attempts) and if my arms were long enough to reach the full extent of the slide which I couldn't manage and therefore that was it with regards to learning an instrument. No alternatives that might have been more suitable for me were suggested. TBH right to the point that I went to Grammar School, music of any kind had completely passed me by. My parents had taken me to a number of classical concerts which I found boring and was uncomfortable sitting still for so long on a chair where my feet didn't touch the ground. Pop music also held no interest for me until I heard T.Rex, Slade and The Sweet, and then I started to get obsessed. My parents had much the same attitude towards "popular" music as school did. Somehow at the age of 13 I persuaded my mum to let me accompany her to "folk guitar" evening classes (which she was doing to improve her employment chances as a Primary School teacher) where I spent an entire year struggling unsuccessfully to play any of the dull (IMO) songs we were being taught on a catalogue-bought steel strung guitar with unplayably high action. And that might have been the end of it, except for the fact that during the summer holidays I borrowed a copy of "The Beatles Complete" songbook, and suddenly it all clicked and I could finally play something vaguely recognisable. I pestered my parents to buy me a half-way decent acoustic guitar for my 14th birthday along with my own copy of the Beatles songbook plus the music to "Simon And Garfunkle's Greatest Hits" album and surprisingly I was successful, although it was the last time that they supported any of my musical activities. One of the few things I remember being taught at school in music lessons was the names of the notes on the treble clef, and using that I had worked out that I didn't need to learn how to play any of the "difficult" chords like Eb, Ab, Bb and C# but I could simply transpose the song up or down a semitone and play it with the easy ones I already knew and could play. Armed with that knowledge I could now strum my way convincingly through all the songs I knew in both books, and therefore I was ready to start writing my own songs and form my first band with a few classmates from school. Because there was zero chance of persuading my parents to buy me what I really wanted, which was an electric guitar and an amp, I sold all my Mecano and model railway stuff and raised just enough money to buy either a solid electric guitar, but no amplifier, or an amplifier and a pickup for my acoustic. Since I couldn't see the point in owning a solid electric guitar with no means of amplifying it, chose the latter. It still didn't make me sound much like the guitarists on the records I was listening to, more like the acoustic sound of the guitar but louder and with a slightly less pleasant tone. A home-made fuzz box helped a bit but it didn't make the acoustic guitar any easier to play. When it came to choose my 'O' Level subjects at the end of the 3rd year there was no room on my schedule for music lessons, so what little I was learning there dried up completely. I did learn a bit more simply by working stuff out for myself. And school did come in useful in the end. During my final year, when I should have been studying on my own for my 'A' Levels I spent all my time in the woodwork shop building my own electric guitar (I worked later on that I had spent more time doing this than I had on any one of my exam subjects). I was able to buy the hardware and electronics as and when I could afford them and without my parents knowing what I was up to. The school didn't seem to care so long as I wasn't making a nuisance of myself when I wasn't "proper" lessons. The finished instrument was brought home at the end of the year as a "fait accompli" and there was nothing my parents could do about it. Besides I was about to leave home to go to University where I could finally be my own person. In a way, I think all the obstacles that school and my parents put in the way to me learning about the kind of music and wanted to listen to and play, actually made me more determined to succeed in learning how to play, write songs and form a band. Back in the 70s pop and rock music was still seen as being rebellious, and IMO learning about it at school would have sucked all the fun out of it. I did learn some useful music theory from school music lessons, but I leant just as much by dissecting the terrible sheet music I would occasionally buy of my favourite songs, and I learnt even more in the early 80s when, in order to submit my songs to the PRS and earn some royalties from the radio play they were getting, it was necessary to score out all the major musical themes to allow me to register the works. Because I am almost completely self-taught I think it made me see music in a completely different way to those who had lessons. By the time I was 16 I was writing my own songs and music using all sorts of non-mainstream (even by rock standards) influences, which meant that when post-punk and with it the DIY fringes came along my band's songs and recordings fitted right in. This was brought home in a rather depressing way some 15 years ago when I was in a band that also included a couple of teachers. On several occasions our band were asked to provide entertainment during the intervals of various school music evenings and "battle of the bands" competitions. Whilst the standard of musicianship from the kids was far above what myself or my class-mates were able to achieve at a similar age, there was absolutely no signs of any real creativity. Just endless cover versions done as far as possible to the same arrangement as that on the best-known recording. Not one performer played a song of their own composition. Had there been something like this when I was at school (there wasn't as that sort of thing was definitely not to be encouraged) my band would have been up there inflicting our weird music performed on our weird and home-made instruments, to the befuddlement of all. I'm sure everyone (except us) would have hated it and we would have been told as much, but we wouldn't have cared, and if anything it would have made us even more determined to follow out own path. For all the slagging off that I give to my school musical education and the obstacles my parents put in my way to playing music and using instruments that weren't of the classical tradition, I am completely sure that for me it was an advantage, and although it was massively difficult at the time, in retrospect, it has made me the musician and songwriter that I am now, and I am glad that it has.