BrunoBass

Cliquey? Oh yes. But that applies to most things related to musical performance in my experience. Certainly in my town you need to be friends with the right people if you want gigs, luckily we are to a point, but I’ve tried to get bands of friends from out of town gigs, only to be told there’s a huge waiting list, and then the landlords mate forms a new band and gets booked straight away. One chap in town plays in two bands, organises two festivals, and a jam night and you can bet that the only people playing will be his bands and his mates bands. It’s a bit annoying, but it’s just life isn’t it?

Old thread resurrection, rather than start a new one: I want a white ‘51 Precision style scratchplate and am struggling to find one off the shelf. I don’t really want to paint the black one I’ve got, but also I don’t want to pay the £65-70 I was quoted by a specialist scratchplate maker (the bass it’s for only cost £15 more than that!) Does anyone on Basschat make them? I considered making my own but don’t have the necessary tools, or more importantly, skills.

I can vouch for the vendor as I recently bought a body from him.

Thanks for the heads up on this over the weekend, I reckon you saved me a whole heap of pain!

+1 for paulownia if you want lightweight. Check this out on eBay: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F332551617312 Although it looks more Explorer like than the TB it’s described as, nothing a bit of sanding won’t resolve for something a bit more ‘Bird-esque though!

He did. I got the stare at the same time.

I saw Muse do the same thing, Chris Wolstenholme totally tripped up on the bass intro to Hysteria. In some ways it was reassuring that even bass monsters get it wrong sometimes...

I make mistakes at nearly every gig, everyone in the band does I think. It’s never anything major, and probably only we notice it. I aspire to make no mistakes, but I don’t beat myself up about it if I do. I’m sure the pub crowds we play to wouldn’t notice anything but a complete howler anyway. My worst mistake was some time ago when we played Seven Nation Army. I start the song with that famous bass riff, but on that occasion I played it in the wrong key somehow. The drums follow, then the vocals, which follow the key of the bass line. It wasn’t until the guitar came in that we realised something had gone badly wrong...

Sounds great 🙂 I’m not entirely sure on the next build, I’ve got loads of ideas! First thing for me is to modify my recently arrived Harley Benton PB-50, but that’s fairly simple stuff and probably doesn’t constitute a build as such.

Before you veer away too far from the RD type shape, and knowing how you like orange basses, check out this beauty from the Czech Republic. It’s a Jolana Disco Bass and I can’t deny I took a little bit of inspiration from this 😁

PS: Knobs ...and to finally finish off, some control knobs. I wanted something different to the usual Fender types knobs. These are Gibson style clear knobs and they look great! Done.

Beautiful colour.

My first ever gig was on drums back in 1985 when I was 16. We played five songs at a school disco and I think it was the greatest experience of my life up to that point. My first gig as a bass player was about three years later, my band (only lasted one gig!) opened for another band at a rugby club gig. I played my Silver Series Squier Precision, through the amp of the bass player from the main band. All good, apart from the band starting the opening chords of an original songs that they all clearly knew but I’d never heard, never played, never practised. Since then I’ve done gigs on guitar, on keys and many, many solo acoustic shows, but playing bass account for the vast majority of all the gigs I’ve done.

I still love mine, I intended to upgrade nearly everything and so far I’ve upgraded nothing, I’ve not needed to. I gig it regularly and it’s a joy to play.

It was a really good night; our last few pub gigs have been a bit underwhelming mainly due to largely apathetic crowds, despite our best efforts. It does get you down a bit so I think we all needed a really good gig. We play modern-ish rock and indie covers, stuff like Green Day, Foo Fighters, Muse, Royal Blood etc with a few oldies given an alt rock treatment, for example Addicted To Love. It’s all energetic stuff but I think on Friday it wouldn’t have mattered what style we played; I felt like the crowd were just up for a good night regardless. Still buzzing now!

Nice, we were jamming Time Is Tight at a soundcheck the other night.

When I first picked up the bass I played only fingetstyle, I’m not sure why, it just felt natural, and over time I developed a fairly decent finger technique and never touched a pick. I started using a pick in my band on songs that dictated it, but there were some songs that originally were ‘pick’ songs that I still preferred to play fingerstyle. Over the last few year or so though I’ve gone from using a pick on just a handful of songs in the set to using a pick for 75% of the set, and I’m enjoying it so much I’m thinking of going 100% pick, I’ve tried it in rehearsals and it sounded and felt good. It can depend on equipment too. Owing to the position of the pickups on my Jazz and Stingray I have a convenient anchor point for my thumb near the bridge which is comfortable for finger playing, but my new 51 Precision copy doesn’t have that so it feels like more of a pick bass (I don’t want to install a thumb rest). I’m interested in the thumb plucking technique that Sting employs on his similar bass - does anyone here use that technique?

I love the contrast of the different types of wood, look great.

We had a blast of a gig at The Inn, Greatworth near Banbury last night. I expected a country pub with a couple of chilled out villagers. No, we got a pub full of the most ‘up for it’ party people we’ve seen for ages! Greatworth appears to be the kind of village where everyone goes out to the local at the weekend; it’s just far enough out of town that it’s easier to stay in the village than start getting into taxis etc. We were squashed into a corner of the bar which meant we were eyeball to eyeball with the friendly crowd, who made us very welcome incidentally, which I always enjoy. Pretty much the whole pub was up and dancing from the word go, and didn’t sit down all night. We were still playing at midnight, they wouldn’t let us stop. Really good tone from my MIM Jazz Deluxe and Genz Benz rig, sounded great. When we were packing down I asked the landlord if the residents minded bands playing into the early hours? ‘No’, he said, ‘they’re all in here!’ We left having made some new friends and a return booking for later in the year - can’t wait to go back!

Long scale, 34” because I’m a 17 stone 6’2”’ lump and it feels right. I like the idea of short scale basses but they look and feel wrong on me. I used to have Rockinbetter 4003 copy which was a bit of a stretch for me; I always assumed it was a 35” scale and was surprised to discover that it wasn’t when I measured it.

Is that a stock colour or a refinish? Either way it looks great.

Good stuff. I’ve not played a Sire yet, everyone seems very positive about them. Worrying hole in the box though... I had a bass delivered from Thomann yesterday and the outer box was completely open. Everything ok inside luckily!

Looking at the bridge in more detail, it’s screw points are at each corner, so replacing the bridge will involve drilling new holes and filling existing holes. No big deal, but as changing the bridge is purely for cosmetic reasons I might just leave it and get an ashtray. Here’s what I think of it so far...

If anyone’s interested, I made a little video about the build...

Yep like @kodiakblair mine is about 9lbs. It’s hefty piece of wood alright, but no more than my MIM Jazz Deluxe or Stingray.