MoonBassAlpha

The spacing of the Rumblekat bass gives nice tones with middle/neck positions

there's some awesome stuff in biab.My mate used it on a tune he did backing for me to practice drums along to in lockdown. I used it for an early lockdown composition challenge entry, Frantic Hamster Wheel. Everything except the drums sounds amazing!

Basschat composition challenge January 2021, as promised yesterday! Piece inspired by this month's photo. Any fans of Janek Gwizdala will be familiar with his Baby Elephant sound, which is what I'm using here, played on my new Mustang bass, with half-round strings, it's first competition outing. The usual poorly played drums and a couple of guitar tracks on the Eggle (Berlin Pro)and that's about it. Mostly in a slow 12/8 but slips into a bit of 13/8 near the end (I just can't help making things bloody difficult for myself!) and a bar of 13+1/4 / 8 just on the drums where I got a bit confused.

I must admit it looked like the opening sequence for an episode of Casualty...

I think mine is done. I'll sleep on it and put it in tomorrow. Any fans of Janek Gwizdala will know what to expect for a baby elephant sound. It's slightly annoying, but that's babies, eh! A first outing for my new Mustang too.

Roughly what scale did this end up and did you add side dots? Looks nice.

I like the consciously utilitarian control plate. The whole hangs together really well.

Only just seen this thread. I did wonder if you were heading in this direction: https://eastwoodcustoms.com/projects/backlund-100-bass/

Another tip to get good contact in the neck pocket is to slightly loosen the neck screws when strung up to tension. The string tension will pull the neck tightly into the body, then jus tighten the screws again and retune. Needless to say, you don't need to loosen the neck screws very much at all!

Have you concealed the strap buttons?

@BigRedX @Bassassin are these things ridiculously heavy?

My first bass was a Melody Grabber copy. Was actually pretty good, though I recall that the sliding pickup was quite microphonic. Probably nothing that a good wax potting wouldn't fix though. The body did look more like a pine kitchen table than any other wood too.

I can't agree with the neck dive comment as a generalisation . The 2 shorties I've played recently, a Squier jag ss and my Mustang PJ both head south. With a suede strap the Mustang is just about horizontal but the Jaguar wasn't.

Ooh, yeah, Iforgot about the Hofner, how's it coming along?

I'm kinda surprised you don't see a kind of light waveguide up the edge of a fingerboard. One led at one end and notches or small conical indentation at the marker positions. I could picture a gentle glow along the fingerboard edge with small points of light.

Thanks! I wasn't always a big fan, but had a lot of time for In the Village of the Apple Sun, and got to play Guru 7 live, which was nice!

You might want to try half rounds. I got some from Status on my new Mustang and they are brighter than flats with almost the same feel. Not expensive either.

Cool, he's still quite a niche artist and not all that well known over here. I was lucky enough to play as part of his backing band in UK gigs, and was on half of his previous album, Kenny vs Thrust (in the band "Thrust", which is really my 3-piece, Charms Against the Evil Eye)

I'm still thinking pickup height too. If it is, this will probably sound worse if you fret the low strings high up the neck.

Haven't heard all of this yet, but Anton Barbeau's Manbird is good, so far! It's a double album too, didn't think that was a thing any more! Disclaimer: I'm part of the small choir doing backing vocals on the track Space Force! P.S. good to see Spygenius getting a mention earlier, they're lovely folks.

Or the Parker one? Not a huge surprise, if it's not here 6 pages in....

Just out of curiosity, how much weight do those Hipshot tuners save over the regular Fender ones?

I found the Vox bass amplug and earbuds more than adequate for hearing yourself when practicing. There's input from your phone for playing along and even 3 built in drum patterns

Nice one Mr. D!

Voted. Some interesting choices this year, mostly more left-field than I expected, ;which is great!