Jean-Luc Pickguard

Freebird!

The charity gig at the Grove Tavern in South Wimbledon one Sunday afternoon about 10 years ago, but this time there will be people in the car park waiting for the scrote(s) that broke into my car while I was on stage.

The Justin Meldal-Johnson signature mustang would be my perfect bass if wasn't for the nasty looking damage inflicted on its finish in an attempt to make it look grotty & unloved. If Fender offered a version that bypassed the psychopath station on the production line, so it looked like a new one would have looked in 1966, I'd be waving a wad of cash in the direction of any shop that had one in stock.

I gig with 30" scale basses & I'd suggest you don't worry about what people think. If you like the bass, play it. Most punters won't even notice that you're playing a bass and just see it as a bigger guitar; a mustang bass will look more substantial than whatever the band's guitarist is playing. Anyone who does say something is probably trying to be a smartarse so can be disregarded.

I have an eastwood Warren Ellis tenor guitar which I bought it second-hand on ebay for just under half the cost of a new one which was quite a bargain. It is without a doubt my favourite non-bass instrument. I have it strung with all unwound strings as a low-G tenor uke and it records really well. It is very well made - the neck/body join is tight, the neck feels comfortable and worn-in with the fretwork as good as I've played on any instument. If I felt thast one of the Eastwood custom shop instruments was calling me and I had the cash to spare, I wouldn't hesitate to place an order. Although I didn't buy it from the custom shop, the first batch of this model was originally sold as a custom shop run. I don't know whether mine was part of a custom shop run, or whether I was just lucky to get a particularly good one.

I recently got a Micro cube rx secondhand for £100 to use for acoustic rehearsals and home practice. I'm very pleased with it - sounds fantastic with all my basses even the Kala u-bass and NS-design CR-5M, and is much louder than the spec suggests it would be. The documentation said that rechargable batteries wouldn't work, but they do - I'm using 6 eneloop AAs and they last for days.

A guitarist in the band was swapping over from electric to acoustic between songs and managed to smack himself in the face with one of his guitars. He played the rest of the set with a nose bleed pouring down his face onto his shirt & guitar.

I found another supplier: http://www.croxguitars.com/decalbass.htm I can't vouch for the quality but they look pretty good on the website. If I ever get the neck refinished on my '72 musicmaster bass, I might try replacing the non-original music master guitar decal it currently has with one of their much nicer repros of the one it would have had originally.

I've taken a set of ancient Rotosound short scale jazz flats off my daphne blue '72 musicmaster as the intonation was all over the place and the tone was a bit indistinct. Had a look through a huge box of bags of removed strings to see if I have anything suitable and in better condition to replace them with and found some that looked practically new, although out of the original packet so I can't be sure of what they are. I think they might be LaBella deep talking flats (short scale) which I may have put on my mustang for a short while before I discovered that a Thomastic JF 324 set of 32" flats was available, although they could also be a set of short scale GHS 3020 L Precision Flats I remember having on my squier jag shortie briefly before putting on a set of TI JF324. The bass has a cool rails strat sized humbucker fitted so it doesn't sound like a standard musicmaster, but these still have a lovely deep punch. They are not as floppy as the thomastics I normally use on other basses. They fit the musicmaster's 30" scale perfectly and have orange silks. I'm enjoying how the musicmaster plays and sounds with them, so if anyone can suggest what set they actually are that would be good to know. Is there a resource online where strings can be identified by their silk colours, or does anyone know which sets of short scale flatwounds have orange silks at the headstock end? - no silk at the bridge end and brass ball-ends.

PM sent - I can do a tracing of mine

It would appear that Adam Clayton takes a similar approach to designing his signature basses as Homer Simpson did to designing a Car.

It doesn't look like the same shape - the top horn is longer on the old version and it has a 2+2 headstock. I think the name was reused rather than the current dimension being any kind of continuation of the old design.

Eastwood did a version of the eko rokes a while ago: [url="https://airline-guitars.netfirms.com/rocket_bass.html"]https://airline-guitars.netfirms.com/rocket_bass.html[/url]

buy a new bass

I'd agree to it but not show up so they'll learn that no payment means no contract and they might decide to treat musicians with a bit more respect in future. F'kem.

When I had my Ashborys (a black one & a blue one both Korean-made with 'Ashbory' logo) the only strings that snapped were the Gs - once I opened the gigbag to find one of the strings had snapped for no good reason at all. I did aquire a set of Pahoehoes at the time to replace the stock strings on the black one & it was a massive improvement once they'd settled in. Wouldn't entertain the idea of trying fender ashbory silicone strings on my U-bass. It is interesting that the Bass centre has reerrected the ashbory name for their own-brand u-bass copies which appear to use aquila thunderguts: http://www.basscentre.com/bass-centre-ashbory-bass.html

its a waste of everyone's time & effort if 1. Any band members don't understand that there's a difference between practice & rehearsal 2. The drummer can't keep a beat and never practices

I’ve recently acquired a secondhand kala ubass which still has its original black pahoehoe strings - it is totally different to the crappy harley benton cheapo as it records beautifully and it is difficult to get a bad tone out of it whereas I struggled to get the HB to sound good. This is probably at least partly due to the u-bass’s shadow pickup/preamp rather than just the strings though. I’d like to try the aquila red strings as the red low G I use on a tenor uke is much better than a standard wound low G, but I’m wary of spending £40 to discover that i still prefer the stock pahoehoe set.

I have heard of Mexican Squiers previously, but I've never actually seen one & I don't know whether they were every officially available in the UK.

They also have Les Paul & strat versions for sale. They all look like they're either cheap instruments stripped & ruined with something hot or assembled from cheapo kits which have been ruined with something hot. Either way they look like a failed experiment that wasn't worth the effort. Decorating the back of the neck like that is not the kind of idea you'd get when sober.

The grolsch ones work so well that Fender decided to get in on the action

I don't use any metal ones since I had a schaller diconnect itself and drop my first Fender bass onto the floor during a rehearsal in the early 80s. Since then I've only used grolsch stopper seals and rubber shower hose washers

It depends - A band can sound exciting with an average singer, keyboardist, guitarist etc but playing with a drummer who can't keep a beat is unbearable..

[url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSxzBxuRte0"]https://www.youtube....h?v=zSxzBxuRte0[/url] This looks just like the polytune clip, but tuning one note at a time & should be a bit cheaper - its currently available to preorder for £30 at g4m. No mention of one with a black casing, but if one is available I will be getting one. I use my polytune clip all the time & was planning to get another one in black, but the unitune will be more approriate for me on bass & uke.