BigRedX

There's no evidence of a truss-rod at the head so this will be a body end adjustment that's now hidden behind that neck extension. While it's a great idea I think the finished bass is one or two mods too far to get the maximum potential out od it.

Now as an idea for a custom bass designed with that neck and cutaway in the first place...

Which is ironic when you consider that the technology now exists and as pretty affordable for you to be able create almost any kind of music from the most complex electronica to simple single instrument and voice in a live situation with ease and fidelity of sound.

Record shops suffer from the same problem - there's simply too much new music being produced these days for them to keep up. Plus over 50 years of back-catalogue to contend with.

Unless your musical tastes happen to co-incide with a local specialist shop or you like what Radio 1/commercial stations play thses days you're going to be out of luck. Plus with the sub-categorisation of musical genres it's being increasingly difficult to actually find anything anymore without asking one of the assistants.

The majority of people using this site regularly and commenting in threads like these are going to be taking their music a bit more seriously than the average listener. I still buy from my local 'indie' shop but nowadays they are only able to supply a fraction of the CDs I'm after. The internet has made it simpler to go directly to the band's or record company's web sites and buy directly from there.

I a way both Jase and Jester have hit the nail on the head...

Two things have happened: firstly the means of distribution of music and the dissemination of music has shifted. Secondly it's easier to create 'contemporary' music both from access to resources and encouragement.

When I started to get seriously interested in music in the mid-70s there were 3 weekly inkies easily available in the UK. As well as he standard pop fare served by daytime radio 1 there was Peel and Freeman. Punk and New Wave caused that to explode. Fanzines and self-pressed singles. It was much easier to create and distribute your music, but you still needed a certain amount of drive and money in order to actually produce something, and it's continued to be like this until the mid-90s.

All of a sudden anyone with a web connection and a tracker program can create music and get it out for other people to hear. Even guitars and drums are cheaper in real terms than they've ever been. The cr@ppiest starter pack sub £100 instrument is light years ahead in terms of construction playability and sound compared with the Woolies specials we started with. In real terms what you would have paid for the original PortaStudio when it first came out will now buy you a computer, a really good DAW app and probably a handful of extra instrument and processor plug-ins.

And there, in a way, is both the revolution and the problem. There's still proportionally just as much good new music out there, but there's so much more of it generally that there's even more rubbish to wade through to get to the good stuff. Also in this explosion of music and the fragmentation of the means of distribution, the traditional means of getting the information has struggled to keep up. Of the 3 inkies only NME has survived and that's by becoming a pale shadow of what it used to be. Radio 1 haven't even been able to replace Freemnan let alone Peel. Music classification has also become a victim to this fragmentation. Has anyone ever tried to browse for a CD in the Rough Trade shop (or any other specialist outlet)? The sub-sub-sub categorisation of the CDs means that in many cases it's easier to go and ask for a CD from one of the assistants rather than try to figure out where it might actually be on the racks.

IMO the revolution Roger Daltry wanted has already happened but it's not a (single) musical style, it's in the increased access to quality music production facilities and the ability to be able get your music to the ears of your audience.

I would have said that with only four strings you could do with the extra cutaway to give you as much top-end access as possible. However the thickness of the neck and body past the heel pretty much wipes the cut away advantage out...

That is a scary thing indeed! Probably more in terms of construction than looks. I think that bridge construction is the only way that they could fit one on without it over-hanging the end of the body (although that hasn't stopped Reverend).

Had a look at the RPG site as well and there's plenty of other scary stuff including some of those weird combination double necks that have been turning up on eBay recently, and all of it left-handed.

Actually looking at the site makes me glad that I ended up playing guitar and bass the 'right way round' as it brings home the sorts of compromises that left-handed guitarists have to endure (and normally while paying a higher price) in order to get something outside of the mainstream Gibson and Fender styles, until they reach the custom build price point.

Zoe Bonham (John Bonham's daughter) nearly joined my band...

About ten years ago the singer from the band I was in at the time quit a few days before we were about to send off the master tape and artwork for our first self-released single. Because we thought we were worth it we took out display ads in both NME and MM in the musicians wanted section and received a flood of responses, one of which was from Zoe Bonham. Having chatted for some time on the phone and getting the feeling we were both on the same wavelength musically we exchanged demos. Hers' was really good and streets ahead of what we were doing at the time and unsurprisingly she wasn't sufficiently impressed with our offering...

(I still have the tape somewhere)

PM'd

Looking very nice indeed!

And great to see a build diary from a different luthier than the usual crop...

;-)

Thanks for all the comments, and glad to see that this thread has resulted in at least 1 purchase! Please if anyone else buys a bass as a result of the info on this thread please post them up...

I'll continue on from where 7string left off with my latest purchase...





A Reverend Rumblefish JJ 5-String.

After failing to buy a couple that appeared on TB just before Christmas, this turned up on eBay in the UK.
And very nice it is too... In need of a setup to suit me, and some attention to the controls which will happen over the next week or so, but the initial impressions are good; I can certainly see what all the fuss is about them on TB. A cool retro-modern look and an punchy sound, with just a hint of hollow body colouring through my studio monitors - I won't have a chance to use it through my rig until our next rehearsal. There's a slight tendency to neck-dive given the light body and the wide 35" scale length, but nothing a comfort strap can't handle. Given what I'm getting from this bass I definitely need to get hold of the Brad Houser model...

Here are pics of my short scale basses





Burns Sonic Bass. 29 5/8" scale. My very first bass bought in 1981 when it was already 20 years old! Heavily modified both by it's previous owners and myself to keep it playable.





Kramer KXB-10. 30 1/2" scale. The aluminium necked Kramers all had exactly the same necks and were fitted with either 20 or 24 frets long or short scale. This one terrible neck dive due to the heavy neck and the body shape. However it sounds brilliant when you can keep the neck in a sensible position. Bags of zing and massive sustain.





Copy of Kramer's "The Duke" Bass. 30 3/4" scale. If this isn't a de-badged Hondo Alien, then it comes from the same factory, as it appears to be the same in all but the missing logo. Only differences from the real Kramer model iis the lack of ebanol fingerboard, cheaper hardware, and a few cosmetic aspects. Since all the hardware except the pickups have been upgraded to those found on the real thing, it's not too far off now. Not particularly light, but small and comes with a cool violin style case.

There's definitely a place for the short scale bass, but don't expect it to have the weight of a 33" or longer (unless you've bought a [url="http://www.birdsongguitars.com/"]Birdsong[/url]). Great for tuneful high register bass lines in the Style of Joy Division etc...

The two SG Supremes were part of Gibsons "Guitar of the Week" promotion (week 1 and week 18 models).

Recently the Fireburst was being offered for $425 on TB

And the natural sold for $1500 on Ebay yesterday.

Even figuring in postage and customs that's much better value than those nasty things Music Ground is selling...

On the other hand these two new SG Supreme Basses are the stuff GAS is made of...

Good thread!

This one's really got me thinking. It sounds like I'm from the same age as the OP and I'm missing the same things as he is in 'popular' contemporary music. Each year I do a CD of new tracks I've enjoyed for my musically inclined friends, so I just had a look through to see if there were any bass hero contenders...

Unfortunately for a start at least half the tracks don't feature any 'real' bass guitar. The bass is either synth or sampled loops. And on most of the other tracks the bass playing while sympathetic to the feel of the song is in a strictly supporting role only. There's some great songwriting, singing and even guitar playing, but not too much in the way of interesting bass guitar.

However there are three tracks where bass guitar plays a major role in the song and is a great bass line too.

So I present for your enjoyment:

"Here Are The Roses" by Dragons:



OK so it's very Joy Division, but in the absence of the real thing I think, it's an acceptable substitute and certainly an improvement over Interpol or The Editors.


"Tonyte" by Chrome Hoof



Giles Peterson's introduction says it all...

"Another Chance" by Mothernight



There's better and more prominent bass on some of the other tracks off their album but this has great guitar/bass interplay where the two parts fit perfectly together to form a riff that would be lacking without the other...

[url="http://www.waterstoneguitars.com/bass_indra.shtml"]Waterstone Indra[/url]

I have 3...

A Burns Sonic Bass, which was my first bass
A Kramer KXB-10
and a Kramer 'The Duke' copy (probably a de-badged Hondo Alien)

Pics coming soon...

You have to pick you're short-scales carefully as some have decidedly dull bottom Es although decent strings such as those made by Newtone certainly helped - I'd never used a note below A in anger on my Burns until I stopped using RotoSounds and switched to Newtones.

My Rumblefish arrived yesterday +1

1276

I was looking for a multi-guitar stand rack thingy...

Ta!

Spear do an "off-the-shelf" [url="http://www.spearguitar.com/product/pro_2/S-p/s-2e.asp"]single cut[/url]

I tried one of these at Music Live 2007 and it's not at all bad for the price. I found the body a little too chunky for my liking but I still haven't found a single cut I'm comfortable playing no matter how cool it looks...

I love the look of some of the RKS basses as evidenced in [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=5525&view=findpost&p=66658"]this post[/url]. However would say that not all of them are so visually pleasing. There's a particularly ugly one on [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/New-RKS-Original-Solidbody-4-String-A-Body-Bass-Guitar_W0QQitemZ300191129607QQihZ020QQcategoryZ4713QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD2VQQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p1638.m122"]eBay right now[/url]. Last year though there was a gorgeous one in all matt black, which I was very tempted by.

yorks5stringer, is yours the one that came up on eBay last year?

[url="http://www.gusguitars.com/news.php?news_id=21"]Gus[/url] do Barritone guitars in both the G1 guitar shape (28 1/2" scale length) and the G3 bass shape (30" scale length)

Don't forget that the customs and VAT is added to the price of the instrument [b]PLUS[/b] the shipping cost

[quote name='Hit&Run' post='125863' date='Jan 23 2008, 12:23 AM'][url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/rockstand_rs_20851b_guitarstand.htm"]this[/url] or [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/rockstand_rs20850b_5er_gitarrenstaender.htm"]this[/url] or [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/rockstand_rs20871.htm"]this[/url] or [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/rockstand_rs_20885_gitarreneckstaender.htm"]this[/url] for some thomann ideas.[/quote]

Thanks for the links.

Do you have any of those yourself.

I'm really looking for user experiences/problems, ease of construction when in a hurry, durability etc...

Looking for one of those guitar rack/stand thingys to hold my basses when I gig. I need space for at least 4.

Does anyone have a particular favourite?
Must be able to cope with reasonably asymmetrical body shapes (eg TBird type) as well as more normal ones.

Looking at [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Warwick-Rockbag-Multiple-Guitar-Stand/dp/B0002II99E"]this one[/url]. Anyone have one? Opinions? Anything better?

Ta

Gosh! will be playing another 20 minute set as part of a 5-band showcase at Yates in Nottingham on Wednesday 30th January.
Apparently this time the bands will be playing downstairs. Don't be shy or scarred come along and say "hi!"

Evening starts at 8.00pm

Gosh! on at around 9.00pm (might be earlier...)