NancyJohnson

I just watched from a few minutes in (and only a bit of it) and honestly it made my chest hurt. You know, there's this whole thing that we refer to as showboating; you know the type of guy, you're in a music shop, someone comes in, picks up a bass, turns up, goes rackity-rackity-slap-pop-pop-pop* and frankly it's just an unmusical mess that contextually you ask yourself how the feck does it fit into a band scenario. (*In fact, this will be the soundtrack to next month's bass show.) It's almost like these guys have found something they can do with a bass that has little or no relevance whatsoever; I used to have a Saturday job in a butchers, the guy who ran the shop had a party piece in that he could juggle with meat cleavers. Man alive, it was the highlight of my Saturdays, but that alone doesn't make him a good purveyor of raw meat. OK, that guy can do something we can't, but meh. Irrespective of the talent elsewhere, to repeat a quote from an earlier post, yes, it does sound crap and while initially I was going to say I'm sorry if this upsets anyone, my apologist period was last week. Those little double thumb nuances will just get lost once you start adding other instruments and a voice. It's a nonsense.

Ooh, I just found a chrome pickup cover. That's going on.

For a while now, I've had a load of bass bits sitting around in my garage...essentially enough to make a Precision bass. Everything was a bit knocked about, so it seemed only right to knock it about a bit more and screw it together. The basic neck/body are from an old Sunn Mustang; an Indian built Fender-licensed Precision bass copy. The neck was covered in a really think varnish, so I sanded that back and oiled it. It was originally black, I'd sprayed it red years ago and done a matching headstock (which I also rubbed back). The bridge? Dunno, It's roughly a BadAss II in size, heavy...it's been in a box for years. I bought some Wilkinson tuners (£25) and a Warman pickup (£13) - I've used Josi Warman's stuff on other guitars, it's cheap and top notch. Old set of Dunlop Straploks. Bought a pre-wired loom (£10, incl. knobs) and a minty-green scratchplate (£17)...broke out the soldering iron and it lives. I was considering putting in an MM pickup, but to be honest, it was more hassle than it's worth, so Josi helped me out. It doesn't sound too bad really. Neck is nice and straight, action is good an rattly. I might put a decal on the headstock (not a Fender one). Dunno if it's a keeper, but it plays nicely, so maybe.

Fiebing Oil Dye maybe? See my thread elsewhere...they do different colours, so you could try and blend colours.

Lasers. You need lasers.

It was/is oil dye, so it's not going to dry out the mahogany. I'm unsure whether I'll (lemon) oil the board again either; it's the only board I've ever oiled and to be honest I only did it to darken it.

Just to revisit this, there has to be some direct correlation between manufacturers and headstock shapes. I figure that there's a ton of old Jazz and Precision copies that are reasonably faithful to the originals they're based on. Whenever the headstock design changes to something a little less Fender, we probably feel that as it's less faithful, it must be awful. Thing is, while there's a slew of terrible instruments on the market now, hiding behind Aria headstock logos, these are probably still a country mile better than the stuff I had when I was starting out with 30 years ago.

I'd be up for one with a 10,000 year old mammoth nut.

Just to get back on track, I'm thinking of ordering another Mike Lull with a bradypus pygmaeus body, a brachylophus top and a honey badger fingerboard.

I do have the ability to play clean as well, Rich! It's amazing. There's this control on my pre-amp that has the word 'GAIN' on it, just roll that knob back and the dirt disappears. Who knew?

Mate, you're on a hiding to nothing here. I'd watched that film some time back and yes, it's interesting to see into the mind of a luthier, BUT irrespective of being meticulous, he's dealing with a natural product, the matter that he's drawing his wood from the same stock is meaningless, even if it all came from the same tree, while the DNA would be the same, it's still a natural product; it contains flaws and nuances that do not carry from plank to plank. It's no more identical than two bananas in the same hand.

I'm assuming this was at a Bass Bash, but what were the control conditions? I remember one of the cabinet shoot outs a couple of years ago, every cabinet was on display and Nick was wiring the speakers in front of everyone, so everyone knew what was being used. When you were demonstrating basses, were you behind a curtain or anything so people couldn't see what you were playing? As a species, our objectivity is swayed by visual as well as aural input; one persons desired tone is not someone else's and if, for instance, someone loves 1960s Jazz basses, they will always love what it sounds like irrespective of what it sounds like. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of maple boards but that's just because I don't like the look of them, but that said, the sole bass I own with a maple board sounds pretty much the same as the ones I have with rosewood or ebony boards. Strings, pickups, tone cap, outboard, pre/power stage, cabinets all have way more input on what the instrument sounds like than a 24x2" plank of rosewood.

Mine just arrived...it works fine, looks a little flimsy, but it was £2.00. As it's going to be clipped to a headstock, it does surprise me that the display isn't 90° rotated it's more easily read, but I'm a selfish right hander.

I was awake at 4.00am this morning and like you do, I fired up the my tablet and did some reading up on CITES (or Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna), or more specifically what it's impact will be on the manufacture, sale, import and export or musical instruments. Remember too that CITES covers a whole gamut of species from Honey Badgers to Bubinga. I read a few articles and it really is getting to be that there's a load of guff circulating about rosewood, it's use, it's historical use etc. Getting my crystal ball out, I see a distant future where sellers will replace 70s lawsuit with pre-convention rosewood. One of the shorter and more concise pieces was on the Music Radar site. It's short enough to hold your interest and there's enough in there to make the enquiring mind do more research. I suppose the thing that I find laughable to this day is the insistence that, away from the decorate stance, rosewood sounds better on fingerboards. Yes, there's an obviously an argument that there will be an infinitesimally small difference in resonance from rosewood over other woods, but I'd wager that in a blind-test shoot-out* of fingerboards (on several basses) made of ebony, maple, rosewood, pao ferro, ironwood, aluminium, carbon fibre etc. no one would be able to score 100%.

I do really like that double-cut body design...it's very reminiscent of Pete Haycock's gold Veleno guitar and more recently the Gabriel Currie/Echopark Guitars El Cabillo model.

Yep, well you knew that anyhow...

I don't like natural finishes or sunbursts, slab body basses, body-binding, headless, single cuts, non-cloverleaf machine-heads, anything with more than five strings, things that look like coffee tables. Basically this :

As a man of a certain age, I'll always have a soft spot for the 1980s SB range and also the Integra models that Billy Gould used on The Real Thing. I've got an old Japanese (1978) Primary P-bass; granted it's really just the body and neck that remain original (everything else was shot), but it's a very robust well made bass.

While I have much love for Tech21 products, the VT Bass never really cut it for me, but I guess that if you consider the legacy of the VT stuff (I've owned the rack and the BDDI stompbox versions), the class-D VT500 head has obviously paved the way for the combo. I am a little surprised that TC21 have put so much focus and effort into the VT series and it obviously works for a lot of people...IMPO the RPM/RBI/GED (and what I've seen of the dUg) all deliver tone head and shoulders over the VTBass, so maybe a few years down the line we'll see combo versions of the signature models at least.

Without prejudice, but I have to say these two sentences sent a shudder through my spine, especially taking into account the man's bullying tactics against this site. If he's so lovely, lift the ban on selling Rickenbackers and Rickenfakers, then you'll probably see how absolutely charming he is. I read online recently that the only reason he's never taken on eBay is because they'd destroy his company.

Is it only me who finds the bloke with Lee Voss just a little bit irritating?

I went to see Public Service Broadcasting last year and they do a thing before the show starts; they played a pre-recorded thing saying 'a few photos is fine, but no one really wants to watch your blurry, distorted camera phone footage.' This met with a huge cheer. It was almost as if that statement simply ridiculed the proposed usage...I saw one or two people taking stills, but that was about it.

Here's a link to the for sale thread: