Belka

Here's a photo of my bass collection circa 2015 in Kyiv. Apart from the MusicMan all the other basses are SPs. The birdseye fretless and the 4 string I still have now. The orange one I sold shortly after this photo was taken, and the purpleheart 6 is stuck in Kyiv (I intend to go back and get it but due to the war it's not that easy to get there and back). The sixer was made in 2004/5 when he still had Fodera parts. The bridge and tuners are all Fodera badged and the Bartolini soapbars were the ones Fodera used in the Anthony Jackson contrabasses before they switched to Duncans.

I used to live in Ukraine and knew Stas well. I still have a couple of his basses with me here in the UK (as well as one which is still stuck in Ukraine). They're very well made instruments. Going by the serial number, this bass was built in July 2009. I can't be sure but I'd guess everything is stock on it as he used those bridges and the Wilkinson tuners quite a bit on his no frills basses (for a higher price you could get fancy tops, Gotoh/Schaller hardware, etc. - at some points he used to get electronics/hardware from Fodera if they no longer needed them - their old bridges and Bartolini pickups when they switched mainly over to Seymour Duncan for example).

That's no '75 - 4 bolt neck and a white pickguard so probably late '73 - early '74. I know the '76-83 S series Jazz basses always get the worst rep for quality control, but I've always noticed that the shoddiest routing/fit tends to be on mid '70s (around '73-75 basses). QC actually picked up through the late '70s and the later S series basses are quite well put together, although as we all know the weight increased a great deal which puts people off them. I understand it's different for P basses - the early '70s seems to be one of the best eras.

I've played there 2 or 3 times - the last time being Easter weekend 2023. Both times the crowd were quite boisterous as Burns-bass says, but we didn't see any real trouble and when we played there were a couple of bouncers working. I quite enjoyed the gigs but parking is a nightmare. we had to park in some unloading bays in Marsh street across the road, then leave the gear in pub and drive to a multi-storey and park there, walk back to the pub, set up, play, and then the same in reverse order at the end of the night. The payment takes a few weeks to come through too but they always pay in the end and the manager is quite easy to get on with.

Here are Dave Richmond's own words on the Walker Brothers (taken from the Talkbass thread): I did some work with The Walker Brothers before they split up. That was at the very start of my session career just after I had left the John Barry Seven. On that Solo album with Scott there were three different musical directors. Herbie did play on some of the tracks. I can usually spot Herbie’s style of playing. As you know he played on ‘War of the Worlds’ on it you can here him playing a lot of stuff very high up at times. As far as I know he always played a Fender Bass Guitar. You can spot the difference on the ‘The Old Man’s Back in Town’ where the sound is more ‘Gutsy’. I had no idea I was playing on ‘The old man’s back in Town’ until last year. In fact I had never even heard it before. I was asked by Paul Osborne of KPM music to be interviewed on Soho Radio (a small independent radio station based in Windmill Street in Soho, London) When I arrived there they asked me about The ‘Old Man’s Back’ track. I said ‘Play it to me and I’ll tell you’ As. soon as they played it I new it was me (one guy nearly fainted, he was so excited!) It was exactly my style of playing at the time. If anyone is interested you can go to Soho Radio’s website and hear the broadcast as it went out. Just search on ‘Dave Richmond’ and it should come up.

As great as Herbie was, the album was all Dave Richmond. Live was certainly Herbie though.

I've recently bought a new set of Ernie Ball strings, along with a set of DR Lo-riders, Newtone nickels and LaBella RX nickels as I wanted to experiment and find a good set for one of my 5 strings. I don't know if it's just me but they all sounded thin and somewhat scooped. The LaBella had a decent enough B string (nowhere near as good as their old 'Slappers' set though) but none of the others were particularly impressive - thin, scooped sounding strings seem to make for quite a hollow B. I wonder if due to problems/price rises in the global supply chain quality is going down or something. Most US manufacturers at least buy their wire from only a couple of suppliers so it might explain why various companies are suffering.

Thanks!

Still not sure about this to be honest. It's just that I've seen quite a few basses purported to be from late '65 with unbound fingerboards and lollipop tuners, but I have never seen a '65 or '66 bass with binding and elephant ear tuners. I mean, I've just never seen one. Not saying they don't exist but if they do they must be very rare. Andy Baxter has two late '65 J basses with unbound fingerboards and lollipops at the moment (neck stamps on both show late '65). I've scoured Google images and the vintage stores, and I can't find a single example of a '65 Jazz with binding, or any J bass that has binding and elephant ear tuners. Binding did appear in mid-late 1965 on Jazzmaster and Jaguar guitars however - perhaps this is what Leo meant.

Just out of interest, do you have a link to this memoire - would be very interested to see it.

There are some minor errors I can see on that site. It says that binding on J bass fingerboards appeared in mid to late '65 while lollipop tuners came out in '66. That's definitely an error - it was the other way around - the lollipops appeared in late 65 while I've never seen binding on a '65. I think I've even seen some early Jan 66 models still without the binding. Noel Redding's original Jazz is an example of a late '65 with the lollipops. Don't mean to be too negative though - it's obviously a very useful site.

That's almost certainly a refinish with a non-original guard. Sonic blue was phased out as a custom colour in 1972 and from around 1974-1980 Fender only produced black pickguards for P and J basses (the white ones only reappeared in 1980 for the International Color series). Of course, there's always the small chance that it really is a factory special order but without documentation to prove this it has to be considered a refinish.

If that's the case, why do old strings sound deader than new ones, both acoustically and amplified?

Its 'original' white pickguard is also clearly not original - from the neck pocket it looks like sunburst so would have been tort on there originally.