NancyJohnson

Does this count? John East stacked knobbage.

My wife just listened to that and said it sounded like rubber bands on a cardboard box. Haha. Ponk!

Shouldn't that be 'clank, clank'?

At last years SE Bash, during a conversation with @cetera and Mr Reddick, I coined the term Ponk with relation to how some old basses sounded when committed to tape. Not wishing it to be too detrimental or derisive against early 60s Jazz basses (et al), the recording below dropped into my feed earlier. While I have no issue with the tone in context, if nothing else, to my ears, it's ponky.

I own an Epiphone Phantomatic, like this one. I'd done a few mods, Dunlop Straploks and updated the machines to Sperzel Locking. Really didn't like the stock pickups - tonally too muchy - so swapped these out and after a couple of ins and outs I settled for a pair of Warman HBAP90s (humbucker sized P90s). I know Josi and these were stupid cheap, something like £40 a pair, if that. I suspect that at some point I'll pick up a MusicMan St Vincent HH:

G&L SB1

Blimey. It's almost like someone playing who's never played before.

I think we need a Basschat Ikea Hacks thread in the off topic as well.

All solved. Considering the complexity of the issue, we seemed to get it sorted. Turns out a ground wire had come off one of the pickups. I mean, you pay thousands for a bass, soldering fails...sigh.

You might be OK with the Thunderbird neck to be honest. The neck profile on the Spector 8 is very close to that of the Euro LT; the nut width is 38mm there or thereabouts and there's 3-4mm clearance each side (so the strings sit in the centre, spread over 32mm. String spacing is comfortable. If you did use the Thunderbird neck - and taking into account Adam Fogo's conversion, you'd need to plug all the tuner holes and start over - or, I suppose, source a neck with a paddle headstock and do a four-a-side thing and go it alone. You could, at a push, install banjo tuners along the lower edge of the headstock for the octave strings and use these things that are on the paddle Moderne headstock to rout the stings to the tuners: Alternatively just go with reverse banjo tuners:

My old yellow Thunderbird?? lol

Thanks for these. John has been brilliant so far, we're still not fixed, but he's been great. I have made a suggestion to him about how the pickup wires are connected and he's been positive about that, so maybe something might change on that front in a later iteration of the unit.

I've owned a Waterstone 12 string and currently own a Spector 8 string bass, in both instances the manufacturer has opted for a two part (tune-o-matic and tailpiece) bridge, which (according to Bob Singer of Waterstone) avoids the (unlikely) potential for a one piece bridge from pulling out under tension. The Schaller should do the job; but if you have the space, consider a two part bridge. And, yes, you need a bridge that will accommodate separate saddles for each string as it won't intonation at all well. What are you converting? Now then. Waterstone still make 8-string basses and in truth, they're not that expensive. Bob is a very approachable bloke and I'm sure that if you lay it on that you're doing a conversion job on an old bass (cough, before pulling the trigger on one of his TPs, cough) and does he have a spare bridge you can buy, he may come through for you. [email protected] While this is an OLP Stingray-5 to 12 conversion, it's interesting...https://www.12stringbass.net/adam-fogo-12-string-bass-conversion

Despite the fact that the band are all in isolation at the moment (we're only about a mile apart), our guitarist/erstwhile producer has taken it to throw out some new stuff, albeit cobbled together from bass stuff I'd recorded yonks ago (he always asks me to just record stuff and will start a drum loop and I'll just noodle away). He put this up this morning. Never heard it until about 20 minutes ago although I do kind of remember recording parts of it. It's a little different from our usual stuff.

At Christmastime, I installed a John East Uni Pre 3 knob into one of my Lulls. To be honest, what with what's been going on in the outside world, I've not been doing that much playing, but a couple of weeks back I picked up the bass and was noodling. During my little session, I noticed that while the neck pickup was fine, the bridge pickup was very buzzy when you touched it, although it was silent otherwise. I popped John a quick email - to his credit he's been great - and the determination seems to be an earth/ground fault with the pickup. I've problem-solved at length here, run the pickups in isolation, swapped the pickups around etc. every conceivable combinations and the evidence leads to the pickup, although the pickup was fine pre-installation. Now then, does anyone know how to solve buzzy? Can I run a bit of wire from anywhere to anywhere?

I remember going into Kingfisher Music in Fleet one time to ogle the basses and there was a guitarist playing Queen stuff. He was amazing, tonally it was very close to Brian May but just using whatever was to hand. It was quite a surprise to hear people showboating something different.

Today it's all about Stone Temple Pilots. I've maintained for some time that if I'd been born about ten years earlier, my big band would have been Pearl Jam, but I feel STP are less copyist and just a little more clever; Dean DeLeo is an exceptionally good (and underrated) guitarist, he plays some weird shapes.

Well, it turned out OK...from a distance, the body carving didn't really seem that visible from a distance, but even so, it seemed so unnecessary.

Just watched the current one (4/5)...now I know Ben is more than adept at instrument building, but I just lost interest when he started carving out the body. It really was a, 'Why is he doing that?' moment. The body looked fine and this step seemed really unnecessary.

A girlie I used to work with saw them supporting Interpol at MSG last year, she remarked how good they were live. Interestingly, also on the bill were a band called Car Set Headrest who have also popped up in despatches recently. Might give them a spin later as well. Currently I'm spinning Sugar.

I'm really hoping that everyone who reads this thread at least gives a few of their seconds to having a listen to what other people are listening to. It's 8.55am. I've just fired everything up in the home office (aka the dining room), so it's time to decide what I need to listen to. Today, well this morning at least, it's going to be Lindsey Jordan, aka Snail Mail. It's a delightful mix of lo-fi with a Pavement/The Cure style bent.

The Alto is proving perfectly fit for purpose, so much so that I think once things get back to normal I may pack the big stuff away and just use this for home use.

When I was a kid, my mum and dad bought me Sweet's Sweet craddock Adams on cassette and a year or so later my then teenage girlfriend (aah, Tracey), bought me Desolation Boulevard. I'll profess to this day that I often think about those photos of Steve Priest with that Rickenbacker 4001 and believe this was the catalyst that led me to where I am today.