BigRedX

Like this? [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/soundgarden_04_zpszeapawtm.jpg[/IMG]

Personally I'd be cautious about using water on a lacquered fingerboard, as the slightest crack in the finish will allow it seep in and affect the wood underneath. That would include all the fret slots, because you can't guarantee that the finish has sealed all the gaps - especially on a factory made mass-produced instrument. Something like white spirit would be a far safer option.

It must be bloody cold in that workshop! Omg a more serious not I see it uses fret sensing technology, which IMO is the only practical way to do pitch to MIDI. However a video which only shows a couple of seconds of each mode does make me rather suspicious of how good the tracking and false note rejection actually is. On a more positive note looking at the price of the guitar version and comparing it with that of the Industrial Radio MIDI guitar, the bass version should be a lot more affordable than the IR MIDI bass.

This Mortal Coil - "Song To The Siren" The Sundays - "Wild Horses"

[quote name='Crawford13' timestamp='1486675653' post='3233828'] Ben Folds - Such great heights [/quote] No, no no! Go and sit on the naughty step and think about what you just wrote.

[quote name='Killstarz' timestamp='1486656324' post='3233611'] I never understood why folk wanted to emulate Flea's tone. It works in the Chilis but at least to my ears it's not what I'd ever consider a 'good' tone. I mean, like everything it's a personal taste thing, I just never liked it much. [/quote] That goes for any player's "tone". What makes it good is the way it works in the arrangement of the song. Wanting to emulate anyone else tone is a complete waste of time IMO unless the rest of your band sound like the rest of the band whose bass players tone you are trying to emulate.

[quote name='LayDownThaFunk' timestamp='1486597449' post='3233233'] Thought I would bump this thread - Tonight I auditioned for a band looking for a bass player. Audiiton went well and they asked me to join there and then. Tight band with some catchy tunes - but they have a gimmick. On stage they wear jodhpurs and riding boots. Okay, some bands like to stand out from the crowd but is this necessary?! Could be a double denim onesie so I guess it's not that bad... [/quote] If they say so then yes. Unfortunately IME musicians who can't get into the non-musical spirit of the band never really fit in and generally don'y last long.

[quote name='Andyjr1515' timestamp='1486593386' post='3233191'] Now that is very interesting . I have been looking at the SD cool rails neck pickup. A number of jazz players seem to rate them and it would fit with the fact that my string spacing at the pickup is likely to be non-standard. What rails did you try? I'm also looking to extend the bass strings to 26" and also fit flat wounds, again heading down the Jazz tone rout. It's an interesting project already [/quote] I don't know what the pickups were. Manne make their own rails picks, but the ones on my bass didn't look like any of the current models. Hopefully the SD Cool Rails will have a lower output and a less "rock guitar" tone that the ones on my bass had. I would suggest getting something that can be wired in series and parallel - I think mine would have benefitted from a parallel setting.

Regarding the pickup, IME what you choose to fit will very much depend on how the owner of the bass is intending to play it and what sort of amp he is going to be putting it through. My Manne piccolo bass had guitar hum buckers with rails rather than pole-pieces and IMO they were somewhat on the "hot" side for playing through my bass rig and getting a bass-type tone out of. As a 4-string guitar through my H&K Tube 50 guitar amp it sounded lovely, but I originally bought it so that I could do faux 8-string bass parts on recordings which would have weird things happening in them like the octave part not always exactly tracking the bass strings, so I was constantly fighting against the "guitar" tone of the pickups and the fact that they really wanted to be driving some pre-amp valves hard.

My band has done it and it was pretty successful too. This is what we discovered: 1. Anything other than Friday or Saturday night is a complete waste of time, money and effort, unless you have a suitable venue and enough money to be booking bands who are well known enough to entice people out on a school night. 2. Pick a format that works for you and stick with it. Decide whether you want covers bands, originals bands or an open mic night, if you are looking to build up a regular audience, because IME there is only a little crossover between the three. 3. Start small and grow carefully. There's a point at which something which is doing a turnover of a few hundred pounds an event suddenly turns into something that requires a lot more financial risk if you want to carry on expanding. Don't get too over-ambitious. And this is what we actually did: We made it work by using a venue that was already putting on bands although so they were already set up with an in-house PA and a roster of people to work it. We got a once a month Friday night slot with a percentage of the bar takings that was used for publicity and to pay the bands. We put on bands in a very specific genre rockabilly/psychobilly/garage rock so that over the months people knew what to expect and we could be a little more daring with our choices of headlining bands once we had established an regular audience. We started off by booking reasonably well-known up and coming bands from out of town (such as Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons, The Franceens, The Ricochets), with our band plus another popular local band as support. That way we could maximise our audience for the evening. We called in a lot of favours from people we knew for poster design and general publicity, as well as having proper DJs to play music between the bands rather than just relying on an iPod playlist. It helped that we made it into a proper themed evening, where it was more than just a few bands playing in a pub. After the first 6 months people could simply show up even if they hadn't heard of any of the bands before, but know that if they had enjoyed it last month, they were going to enjoy it this month as well. Good luck!

Unless someone is going to be permanently collating the information into the first post of the thread, pretty soon it's going to be very difficult finding the info that you want from several hundred posts. Forum software isn't the best way of displaying this information IMO. Just have a look at the recommended luthiers and amp tech threads.

Why is the centre section of the body un-coloured and stripy, when it's a bolt-on neck (that isn't stripy)?

As I have said many times before, the various different Thunderbird models available from Gibson, Epiphone and others have very little in common with each other except for the basic body shape. They vary considerably in construction, woods, electronics and hardware. Because of this, just because you like one version doesn't mean you'll like any of the others. My advice would be to go and play as many different ones as he can, and see what suits him the best. Having said that, there is a new Epiphone model coming out later this year which appears to be the best attempt yet to get close to the original 1960s Gibson version (if that is important to him).

My experience with Brandoni is from a guitarist who had a NOS Vox guitar made up from parts that they supplied, and AFAIK that was the main bit of their business. If they also do bog standard kits I wasn't aware of that.

[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1486475528' post='3232100'] I have no experience of the kits from KBG, but the Precision copy which I have owned for about 15 years, and which was my main bass for the majority of those years, was built from a kit. Essentially, it's like doing a parts build, except that all the parts come to you in the same box, so you don't get much scope to customise what you get. I got mine from a company called Brandoni - no idea if they're still active. I stripped it down and gave it a refurb a few years ago, but apart from that brief period, it's remained in active service throughout and it's an excellent instrument. (There are some "before" and "after" photos up at [url="https://thecrowfrombelow.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/precision-bass-refurb/"]https://thecrowfromb...on-bass-refurb/[/url]) [/quote] From what I've seen of Brandoni (and yes AFAIK they are still going) they are in completely different league to the kit linked to in the OP.

[quote name='markdavid' timestamp='1486404573' post='3231527'] Hi All Was having a band practice the other day and we recorded some of it , I dialled in a nice gritty overdriven tone, I was initially planning on just having a tiny bit of overdrive but once the rest of the band came in the overdrive effect almost seemed to dissapear and I ended up cranking the drive a lot higher, eq wise I boosted the highs to about 3 o click (+12db) and the mids i turned the selector to 2khz and up to about 2 o clock (+9db) and cut the lows to about the 10 o click position (-9db) In practice it sounded great, gritty and never lost in the mix , however when I played back the recording the bass tone was quite dark and lacked bite, seemed to be all lows and low mids, I know there is a simple explanation to this , just wondering what it is , thanks [/quote] Is that when you are listening to the recorded bass in isolation or in the full recorded band mix?

[quote name='Dan Dare' timestamp='1486466700' post='3231993'] You said it - "The guitarist wrote the music". It doesn't have to be an "orchestra or pit band" for there to be arrangements and it isn't "arrogant" for a writer of a piece of music to visualise the entire piece, rather than just a simple melody/top line and to want parts played in a certain way. Why, because it's "pop or rock", does that mean it has to be a free for all? Afraid you're being naïve. [/quote] [quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1486468750' post='3232016'] I agree with this - in my band I compose the music, apart from the vocals - I absolutely don't want a guitarist & drummer deciding to discard my work & rewrite the parts just because it's "their" instrument. They get a degree of free rein to interpret parts - and I'm always open to input & trying different ideas & approaches - but the bottom line is the song's the song and once it becomes a performance or full band recording, [i]everyone[/i] serves the song. [/quote] Very much both of these. I write nearly all of the music for my band and the majority of the time I have a pretty good idea what I would like the other instruments to play in the songs. I've been in bands that write with everyone contributing and jamming the structure out and IME there is almost always far too much flab in the songs and nothing is ever tightly focused like a good arrangement will be. Also IME the right musicians for most bands aren't "ten a penny" and sometimes it is better to make do with someone who maybe isn't quite up to the job rather than no-one and consequently having to put the band on hold while a suitable replacement is found. From the band PoV it's always better to have a suitable replacement ready before discarding any under-performing members. IMO the song and the band as a whole comes first and the individual musicians very much second.

I think it is very easy to take the high moral ground on the part of the existing bass player without knowing all the details. Lets face it if you're not a particularly competent player you might be quite glad that someone else is coming up with the bass lines for you to play and is going to be playing them in the studio where it really matters. Lets face it too - live unless you are persistently playing out of tune and/or out of time, if you are not the singer or the main melodic instrument no-one is probably going to notice. Maybe the existing bass player looks good on stage. We just don't know.

If it's a lacquered finish, then whatever you would use for the rest of the bass.

[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1486452247' post='3231795'] My Ebay | Account | Communication preferences [/quote] I looked there. AFAICS none of the options cover this particular situation.

That went relatively cheaply in the end - probably because the seller wasn't prepared to ship it.

I've been making up my own cables since I got my first electric guitar back in the mid 70s. However when I needed some new ones 5 years ago, I found that OBBM was only slightly more expensive than the cost of the components to make my own, and certainly after I'd figured in the cost of my time to do it, he was much cheaper! These days I'd only be making up my own cables again if I had a large number to do (at least 50) and a lot of them were very specific lengths and connector combinations. Otherwise It's a lot less hassle (and more me more cost-effective) to pay for someone like OBBM to make them for me.

[quote name='radiophonic' timestamp='1486072243' post='3229099'] Well thanks for that last bit. Sounds like a big no no. I've had similar bad experiences, but not in Nottingham! Live would be ideal vibe-wise, provided the engineer was up to the job of balancing isolation and room sound. We're very much a live band but the prog tendencies of a couple of band members and having a couple of 'proper' musicians in the band means we'd need a fair amount of control due to the vagaries of guitar sound switching and people playing more than one instrument in the same song (violin + keys primarily). I'd imagined going live in one room as a group to get the basic dynamics right, keeping a bed track of percussion, bass and rhythm guitar and then building it up. The line-up is Vocals, Guitars, Bass, Keys (emulating Organ and Harpsichord mostly, plus a few wind instruments), Violin and percussion (no drum kit though). [/quote] I that case I would suggest that you go and have a look at JT Soar and First Love studios, have a chat with the engineers and see which of them has the right attitude, vibe and is sympathetic to what you want to do.

I assume the truss-rod adjustment is at the body end of the neck?

Can you not choose to solder to either the top or bottom set of contacts? Or a mixture of both? That might make it a bit easier.