josie

Thank you! Photo by Andy Hibbs https://www.andyhibbsphotography.co.uk/ at an Aynsley Lister guitar weekend in Jan 2019 when I got to work with the wonderful bass player and teacher Steve Amadeo (and it's his rig, not mine).

My Ibanez Premium BTB 1406 (bought from @paulie of this parish in 2018) is ridiculously light and comfortable and easy to play. Really came into its own in lockdown for playing solo, and with my duo partner, who has a wonderful voice but plays very flat rhythm guitar, I play conventional bass under his vocals and "guitar" instrumental breaks on the high strings. When my band was together I gigged a 5, sometimes a 4 depending on the set - I love the 6 but she is a bit bling, to be honest, so I tend only to take her out when I am planning to use that high C string.

Rest in Power. I was lucky enough to see him in the Byrds around 1970 and in CSN 2005. This is just breathtaking:

Mandolin was my lockdown project too - meant as a bit of a joke, but thanks to a good instrument (Ashburys, £250 on eBay) and an excellent teacher, much to my surprise, I've fallen in love with it. The tuning in even 5ths makes a lot of the shapes more logical (as noted above) and a wider range easier to reach than on a bass. I struggled to pick out some simple Bach cello pieces on bass, but on mandolin they just fall into place under your hand (which makes perfect sense as the cello is also tuned in 5ths). The shapes are upside down and back to front (as also noted) but the thing I still find hardest to remember is that the you sometimes need to play notes on the 6th frets. It's wonderfully versatile in genre, even just picked rather than strummed. There's the whole lute repertoire, some lovely Baroque stuff, Celtic dance tunes, folk songs, through to Grateful Dead, Rod Stewart, R.E.M. ... It is technically much harder to play than bass. One of the first things my teacher said to me was "It's a difficult instrument to play", and the better I get the more I realise how true that is. The slightest variation in pick grip or wrist angle comes through in the sound. I could never have learned from videos - ymmv of course, but I need Patrick watching me and suggesting tiny subtle improvements. And then I spotted an Irish bouzouki in Johnny Roadhouse - a relatively recent hybrid of a mandolin and Greek bouzouki, usually tuned GDAD. Filthy and battered, but still with a beautiful tone. I cleaned it, had a new nut and bridge made, and set it up in mandolin tuning with the G and D strings in octave tuning, A and E in unison - so the low notes have a rich resonance and the high notes are clear and pure. The wider fret spacing is easier than the mandolin, I agree, but the most important difference for me is that its tone range is perfect to sing with. A whole new world 🙂

The only bass I've bought new up to now was my Michael Kelly acoustic fretless 5 which was half price (£400 from memory) because it had been in the shop for a while and they wanted to get rid of it - and I wanted it. All the others have been second-hand £90 - £950. Apart from the 1966 Gibson EB2 ($2k) and the 1962 EB3 (not telling!) which are so much more than bass guitars, playing them is like an electric shock of plugging directly into history. The custom build 6-string fan-fret I've commissioned from Jim Fleeting (https://www.jimfleetingguitars.com/) he has capped at £5k, of which £2k is part-ex for two which did not cost me that much. I'm starting to feel a bit guilty about this, as the spec keeps going up (2,000 year old bog oak fretboard, my little dragon tattoo inlaid in mother-of-pearl on the back of the neck, ...) and his costs must be going up. It's going to be everything I could dream of in a bass, and I'll be closely involved in every detail of the design, materials, electronics, every stage of the build - so I'll be getting all that experience, that journey, and then the bass itself. Priceless for me, and I'm supporting a local independent craftsman of international standard. Btw this is paid for out of a small occupational pension, a less than full state pension, and an extremely frugal lifestyle wrt anything other than music.

Jim Fleeting https://www.jimfleetingguitars.com/ has worked on several instruments for me and for others I know. I trust him enough that I've commissined a custom-build.

I don't play one myself, but a friend does, and I'm always impressed by the quality of sound he gets from it. Over the years I've known him, due to arthritis, he's gone from a Jazz to a viola-bass to the u-bass - or he would have had to stop playing. So that's another advantage.

The obvious answer is the 1962 Gibson EB3 - pure joy to play and loaded with history. But I'm going to go for the filthy battered Irish bouzouki which I rescued from a dark corner of my local music shop and restored. That's a whole new world of music. (Back story: my band fell apart in lockdown and I couldn't cope with practicing bass in isolation - it's against the grain of nature, it's just not what bass is for. So I took up mandolin as a temporary joke lockdown project and fell in love. The bouzouki is really an overgrown mandolin, so an easy next step. You know what they say, one musical instrument leads to another... 🙂 ) ps hiding behind the box is my beloved MarkBass combo - I have to protect its felt cover from the cat!

In: 1 1962 Gibson EB3 (pure joy) Out: 4 Warwick Thumb 6 1992 Fender Jazz Plus 5 GMR single-cut 5 Ibanez fan-fret 6 Ordered: custom build fan-fret 6 from Jim Fleeting (part-ex'd the GMR and Ibanez) https://www.jimfleetingguitars.com/ Basses: -3 £: -lots, but worth it 🙂

A sad loss, although as noted above the real loss was a long time ago. Such a distinctive and influential sound. "Loved Another Woman" is one of our band standards and will be even more poignant now. RIP.

I've just bought Bill's Ibanez fan-fret 6 and couldn't be happier. Accurate description, excellent friendly communication, prompt and safe shipment. Excellent transaction 🙂

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome! Glad you're on the way back 🙂

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome! Plenty of good advice here 🙂

Welcome!

I use the low B string more than the G - the one 4-string I gig is strung BEAD. As said it's partly about having more chord / key changes under your fingers rather than chasing up and down the neck. It also allows you to root anything in B - C - D an octave lower. Sadly many 5s do have a floppy B string - if that 5th string is an afterthought to a 4-string design. I have a rare top-end 1992 Fender Jazz+V on which the B string is unusable. My main squeeze is a GMR Bassforce 5 on which the B is as tight and clear as the other four (she was my first bass, and it took me a while to realise that not all 5s are like that!) I'd say go out and try as many basses as you can. Focus on whether that B string *feels* the same as the other four under your fingers. Some will do nothing for you, and one will feel like a body part you didn't know you'd been missing.

I didn't sign up for this... but gear so far this year three sets of strings. D'Addario 5 tape-wounds for my fretted acoustic, birthday present from my band. D'Addario 4 half-rounds, passed on by a lovely BC-er who didn't want them. Leading to Bass Centre Elite 5 half-rounds for my main squeeze, nothing wrong except mis-matched silk wrapping on the B string, which when I gently queried they refunded the purchase price of the set. So money spent on gear so far £0. Only likely purchase before the end of the year is an Ibanez Mikro for my 5yo grandson - he's obsessed with guitars, and the sooner I win him over to the dark side, the better. Might also postpone the day when he steals my Jazz Aerodyne 🙂 Seriously, I'm trying to really work out and develop the different sounds and feels of my current hard core of six basses, thus trying out different strings to suit what I want to do with each. I might well end up taking more than one bass to a gig depending on the setlist...

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Welcome!