rushbo

I think an inverted headstock makes it easier to tune, than a standard 4 in a line. Your arm isn’t going over the top of the neck, but coming from underneath. This isn’t based on any scientific testing, though!

I don’t think it was... I put it together and loved it so much, I wanted to play it straight away, so I just widened the two narrowest slots, so they could accommodate the E and A strings. My intention was always to get a new nut, but so far, that hasn’t happened.

Here’s my upside down bitsa. The body is an Indonesian Squier PJ, the neck is off a Mexican Jazz, the J pup is an Entwistle, the P pup is an American Fender. It’s got a Schaller bridge, Gotoh tuners and a Kiogon wiring loom and selector switch. It’s been my main bass for the last three years and has never let me down.

Yep. Proud owner of a Squier PJ bass with a left handed, Mexican Jazz bass neck. It's my go-to bass. No issues with tuning stability, intonation blah blah. It's a great sounding instrument and a bit of a head turner.

With a lot of these "deep dive boxed sets, the pleasure is in the acquisition of the item, rather than playing it.

I love everything about the Marcus Miller P7 bass - from the affordable price tag, to the high mass bridge... but then I see this: ...and I feel a little queasy. To me, the headstock shape looks really cheap and nasty and the colour of the graphic looks insipid. I'd happily use a bass with MM's name on the headstock, but not in that font, colour or position. Does this make me a bad person?

These are nice instruments. I found one in my local Cash Converters for £25. It was all in bits, but it went together pretty easily and with a set of new, cheapo strings, it sounded decent. Mine was in a rather nice sunburst and I moved it on easily a week or two after I'd re-assembled it.

I use a separate BDI 21 pedal for dirt - I tend to use it in a very ad hoc way, so I like to keep it separate from my B3, so I can avoid having to swap patches.

That’s a great idea, I’ll give that a go- cheers Japhet.

You can pick the expression pedals up quite cheaply- mine was £20 from Reverb. They’re really useful - I use mine in a pretty unorthodox way, but for things like wah effects, volume control and the ability to add a variable amount of the effect to the signal, it’s a great addition for not much of a financial outlay.

I ditched a board full of pedals a few years ago, in favour of a Zoom B2 and I’ve never looked back. I upgraded to the B3 and I can’t see myself moving away from that in the near future. I have a pretty minimal board, consisting of the B3, my SmoothHound wireless receiver, a Behringer pre amp and a Pitchblack tuner. I use the Pitchblack as a kill switch as it responds a little quicker than the B3. I struggled to find a slightly overdriven/gritty sound that was suitable for the songs I needed to use it on, hence the pre amp, but everything else, the B3 covers brilliantly. I use mine in the same way as you- a bank of 3 pedals, but I switch between a few banks. The only unusual thing about my rig, is that I use a Zoom expression pedal to trigger the effects. All my effects are set so that they only work when the the pedal is rocked up. This means, I can cue up my effects silently and I’ve got a bigger target to aim at with my uncoordinated feet! I’ve done hundreds of gigs with my B3, from pubs to large festivals, and it’s never let me down. The sounds available are brilliant and more than enough for most bassists, I'm sure. Take the time to get to know it and always audition your sounds through your gigging amp, as the difference between that and listening through headphones or a practice amp is immense.

Bass players and technology - it's a dangerous mix... That's a bit more like it, pricewise - I'll check that out. Thanks Skinnyman.

What page turner do you use? I've been looking at the AirTurn doohickey, but I'm not sure I can justify the cost...

Another happy ForScore user here- I use an iPad with a Hercules attachment for a mic stand and it’s been brilliant and surprisingly discreet.

I've always used these guys: https://www.ultimateproaudio.com/ Decent prices and I've never had one of their leads fail yet.

Even 10cc had a go...

I've got the precursor to this - the "Icon" model. Unless Hofner dropped the ball significantly when the model changed name, these are great basses - not just "good for the money", but good basses full stop. Light as a feather, easy to play and they sound great. Limitations? Well, the string spacing may seem a little narrow at first, but you soon get used to it. They do lend themselves to a thumpy "sixties" sound, so if your looking to go for the JJ Burnel sound or something to slap yourself silly on, this won't work. Played with a pick, with a lump of sponge at the bridge, they sound fantastic.

As interesting as these isolated tracks are, when the bass lines are taken out of context, all the fluffs, timing errors and miss-hits spring to the fore in a way that they don’t when there’s other instrumentation around them. Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with this at all. I’ve heard the backing track for this, on a “Classic Albums” TV program, I think and it sounds incredible- tight and powerful. I can’t agree with the comment that it sounds random- to me, it sounds incredibly focussed and is very much a “written” as opposed to an improvised bass part. Would I have fixed anything about that take? I doubt it.

Now I’m worried. Like a few people commenting, I’ve never even thought about string wrap alignment before, but from this day forward, that will be the first thing I notice on a bass, and my OCD will cause me to do unspeakable things...

I've just stumbled across this - an amazing version of Air's "La Femme d'Argent" that I'd never seen before. Maybe I'll dust off my copy of "Moon Safari" and find my good headphones....

Ha! Fixed.

I've got one of these. The guy I bought it from is based in Rugby and he bought all of the stock from the defunct Roberts retail business, including a bunch of basses. Mine was considerably cheaper than the one on eBay as the tone controls aren't connected. It's a lovely instrument- very distinctive and well made. Even without the tone controls, it's a great sounding instrument. I think they’re Korean made, but I could be wrong. They're active and mine also came with a good quality hard shell case and a few other bits and pieces.

For the last 2-3 years, it's been this - one of my collection of mongrel bitsas. A Squier body (stripped and resprayed in rattlecan racing red) a Mexi Jazz neck, a Schaller bridge, one Fender pup, one Entwistle pup, Gotoh machine heads, and a Kiogon toggle switch and loom. It's strung with flats and is a dream to play and incredibly versatile.

I came across this while trawling the Interweb... a cool idea, which I'm sure must have been done before. No bass version as far as I can see and the pedal assignment seems a little odd, but it's a great concept.