Happy Jack

So it's the band leader's 60th birthday, he's been on full-on shielding for over three months, the best we can manage for a birthday gig is to play his back garden in a civically-responsible, socially-distanced sort of way, and Paul The Drums turns up without his cajon. Solution? Raid the shed, of course ...

Mine was a bit more than that, but still ballpark. And that pink Status very nearly convinced me to have the Ovation done in the same colour. Working seperately, Chris Bowling and @Silvia Bluejay persuaded me not to.

Quickest way into peak Yes for a newbie ... get Yessongs, the triple live album. Seriously.

He was probably miming. Badly. 🤣

I'm rather fond of Ovation Magnum basses. I particularly like the outrageous styling of the Mk.II but there's nowt wrong with the Mk.IV either ... they share pretty much everything except body shape so they sound and play the same. I have one of each, but while my Mk.II is in a varnished natural finish my Mk.IV came to me in a rather unattractive translucent lilac 'wash', for want of a better word. It was neither transparent nor a solid colour, and the tint was unappealing. Apparently this was a popular finish at the time, although Ronnie Lane had the good taste to prefer a black one on Maggie May and Stay With Me. Apart from being unappealing, the finish had also developed a 'bloom' over the last 40 years. That stronger lilac tint that you can see on the upper horn and the upper bout is not a trick of the light or a reflection ... it was actually there. Not visible under stage lights, of course, but very obvious in daylight. It wasn't a surface problem either, that could be polished out, and I found it really, really irritating. I actually listed it for sale here on Basschat for a knockdown £800 because I was so irritated. Then @Beedster recommended Chris Bowling of Bow Finishing (near Godstone, Surrey) so I took the bass down to him. He agreed that the finish was way past its sell-by and also pointed out that the piece of wood being spoiled was an absolute cracker. So I bit the bullet and asked him to do a refin to match my Mk.II. This was NOT cheap, but By God what a job he did! Isn't she lovely? Isn't she beautiful? Ooh ... I've come over all Stevie Wonder ...

And I'd be there before you! Once you get past the "yer avin a giraffe" moment, it's actually a very sensible build, especially if you like to sit in on acoustic Americana sessions and the like. It's at US$59 with two hours to go. If I was anywhere near New York I'd have a punt.

So, this £22,000 bass? WTF?

Silver is the new Second.

Is there another sort?

Or just buy a Squier and get on with playing.

People are panic-buying them in advance of the second peak ...

Preamp pedal successfully exported to Belgium before Brexit destroys everything! Always a pleasure to deal with Tony ...

That was only about a month ago. You know ... things to do under Lockdown ...

It's only used when she wants a classical musician to play Get Bach or Hard To Handel. You want more? I've got a Liszt ...

I thought it was about the smell? And the fact that they're green.

Yes, but then nostalgia used to be so much better.

Nice, very nice. Desperately resisting the urge to start looking for a Vintage GP Artist - I really loved that neck and the punch it gave.

So the first photo is with the original neck, and the rest are with the Status one in carbon fibre?

This has been coming for a long time. Neither of their two shops was particularly profitable and the latest round of rent reviews has made it quite uneconomical to stay in business in the West End. Besides, most of their profit has for ages been coming from http://www.macaris.co.uk/colorsound Because they were the originals, they can still sell Tone Bender pedals at £439 each ... and guitarists will buy them!

So we're now in uncharted waters ... I don't normally do reviews of FX pedals but (rather bizarrely) this is an actual request! I've just discovered this pedal, which during its brief existence was often known as 'anti-chorus'. I've owned various chorus pedals over the years and they all have that seasick sound to my ears, and verge on being flabby. What I really wanted was a sound that would thicken up my bass when playing in a 3-piece (in an ADT sort of way) and work well with a nice octave pedal for fretless work. I stumbled across a YouTube of the LUXE and instantly thought "that's the one". For reasons about which I know nothing, this pedal was only on the market for about two years before DigiTech withdrew it, so there's not many of them out there. After strenuous searching (oh alright, I looked on Reverb) I found what I suspect is the last unsold LUXE in Europe and immediately bought it. I've done five sound files: Vanilla sound, no FX at all DigiTech CF-7 with all knobs at 12 DigiTech CF-7 with all knobs at 2 LUXE with Detune knob at 2 LUXE with Detune knob at 10 The bass is a Fender Precision Fretless (1977) played through a GB Shuttle into an ElBee 1012 cab. Recording was done with a standard Zoom H2 handheld. A word of warning. We all know that fretless bass demos are played by Bass Gods who cram seven Jaco licks into every bar and drown us with 'mwah', right? Well I'm not that guy. Clip 01 Vanilla.mp3 IMHO it's a nice enough sound, quite lovely in its own way, but not particularly engaging. Clip 02 CF-3 at 12.mp3 Despite being the simplest setting on the pedal, for me this is about as good as chorus gets. If only it didn't have that flabby, wobbly feel to it. Clip 03 CF-3 at 02.mp3 Oh dear. This is really not much of a tweak ... three knobs each moved by about 10 degrees clockwise, and look what you get! Clip 04 LUXE at 02.mp3 There! Now that's what I'm talking about. The bass is thicker and (to my ears) far more punchy, as if I had quickly swopped out the pickups for SD Quarter Pounders between recordings. There's no seasickness, and the flabbiness has disappeared. Clip 05 LUXE at 10.mp3 The difference isn't enormous, and I don't think this is an improvement, but it's still a completely useable sound. And that really is the key. The CF-7 is a marvellously flexible pedal which can do pretty much anything you might want, so long as you have the time and desire to fiddle around with it and note which combinations work for you and which don't. For stage use, I have only ever used one setting, because a busy pub gig with impatient punters and scowling bandmates is not the place to start twiddling knobs. Unless you're the guitarist, of course. And it's all too easy for your knob twiddling to result in completely awful sounds, silly noises to irritate others [see also Bass Synth]. The LUXE on the other hand has a Level knob which you shouldn't need to touch once set for the gig, and a Detune knob which has a simple, direct function and really struggles to generate an unuseable sound. This is a pedal which can find an instant and permanent place on even my smallest board.

And the acoustics are very different too!