Longwheelbass

According to his last transmission on YT in July he had an injury that damaged his right arm and hand so that's probably why he's been off air for a while.

Thank you Steve, shall follow up on your link!

Well since I don't have the space or a compressor and guns since I moved over here a few years ago from spray-painting friendly weathered Melbourne, I began hatching a build plot recently, and began casting about for dudes with guns. Finding the Golden Era Guitars website by chance blew my mind - dude or dudes who are responsible for the product on that site clearly know/knew what they are/were doing. So I emailed them - once about six weeks ago then politely again about four weeks ago asking for a quote on a body and paint job. No response. Nothing in my junk mail, zip, zero, nada... Anyone on here know if they're still trading? PFA...

Yo Steve, Just came across your post. Did you ever get a solution? I ask because I am just ordering a 35" four string neck for P Bass (well it's going on an old Jazz Bass body) through Musikraft in the US because I hate five strings but love the low B. You are on the right path with your original musings, the extra inch in scale will give you a better B fundamental. Two options - order a 35" "conversion neck" from someone like Musikraft, which would mean in effect you'd have a P Bass with a slightly brighter treble tone as you don't move the bridge - and the pickups are effectively what move in the scale length, or order a full 35" scale and move the bridge back half an inch on your P body to get the full 35" scale. Which will still be the beefy P Bass tone but without the silly 5th string and ridiculoussly wide neck to accommodate said silly 5th string. I'm not sure how the doom guys get the low B sounding good on Rics, probably by using a lighter gauge string, but if you've ever played a 34" Musicman fiver they're pretty loose and muffled when you hit the low B. The extra inch in scale gives a much better fundamental note. Weird bridge bizzo to get a good sounding low B on 34" doesn't seem to make any sense. There's a reason why so many of the expensive five string basses are 35's. Anyways

Years ago I had a 64 P Bass - one year older than me, and recently the closest I could manage without mortgaging anything was a 66 Jazz that has had the paint played off of it...the neck came from a different bass as did the pickguard. But it's great. I cannot imagine ever ending up with a 1965 Fender, even scraping up the parts one by one is price-prohibitive these days. And a BYB shouldn't loom so large in my tiny brain - scientists have confirmed it will not make me play any better 😆

Jazzmasters got the larger headstock in 67, along with a new logo and different tuners with F stamps on the back gear cover.

Huge gaps

I've had two Mocha or Walnut finish 74 P Basses since I moved over here in 2018. Both were killer, and instant regrets when the bills came a knocking. But the second one came back a few weeks ago after doing a bit of a tour of the countryside from South to North and back again after I covid-sold it... At almost 8 lb 8 oz with a B neck and that lovely tone that drips out of the factory windings, it's cool to get a second chance at keeping it.

Water damage.

It's a 74, but no-one likes to be 86'd...

All original except for the £10 Chinese made pickguard. The link above says 1986 but the ad actually lists it reasonably accurately as a 78 - but the S8 serial numbers could be found on headstocks up to 1981.

The dude is a frickin conman. It's a 74 neck. The body MIGHT be earlier than 74 due to the stamps in the neck pocket which were definitely not in any 1974 neck pocket but more likely 1968/69/70, in fact I have owned a couple of 1968 Telecaster Basses with the 42909 stamp in the neck pocket, and the almost totally faded out red band being very common in the 68-72 P basses, attributable to a specific paint supplier - by 72 Fender had sourced a much more UV resistant red paint which was less susceptible to fading from exposure to sunlight. As a parts bass maybe 2.5k max.

No problem Paul, will do.

No hum, no faint blue glow in output tubes. Thank you Sandy. And yes I should check my total upload count. I'll bet that's it...

Doggoes are family! I can't get any images to upload on this site any more for some reason, no matter how small I shrink my images to I keep getting "too big" notices, but anyways, the tubes are all glowing normal, they're all new and all look good but there's zero signal getting through to the cabs.

Sorry dude I've been out of town for three days - our vet is over an hour's drive from us and one of our dogs has just had a massive surgery, we had to stay closer to the vet and we've just got her home with a 10 inch long scar in her belly. The amp issue has gone on the backburner, but I will have a closer look at it tomorrow. I appreciate your offers of assistance, I'll fire it up tomorrow morning and check the visuals on the tubes. I did fire it up a few days ago after you initially asked and noticed that there is zero signal of any kind getting through to the two 15's. No hum, nothing. But did not look at the tubes. From memory last time it ship itself the tubes were a-glowing.

Thank you Paul. Will run some checks. I should mention I did check the fuse when it quit a few months back, and the fuse is fine.

Well the 73P and the 66J were my two best. The P came in one piece, the J took a couple of years and came in seven pieces from seven different donors. If I don't get back into the workforce soon, the 73P may become the worst purchase!

Thanks Spyder! That's two for Darren.

Hi Paul, yes they are pretty basic, and I'm an electrician by trade, but don't have enough amp knowledge/schematic experience to trust myself, nor do I have a cap discharger and all the other tech tools the amp men have at their disposal, plus the 135's have the extra twist of the ultra-linear output transformer, which isn't much of a difference I guess, especially not to the guys who work on em for a living. What it did initially was simply stop volume-wise. It remained powered up, tubes getting juice, standby still engaged, it just stopped converting bass signal to dB's. So I took it to this guy's place who I'd been recommended to, with a cab and a P Bass, set it up in his lounge and it worked perfectly. He had a fiddle with it, we couldn't get it to fault. So I took it home, continued using it at home for a few days, then it quit again. Back to his place, this time DOA. So left it with him, and it dragged on for two years, him trying to get it to fault, then eventually he just started changing out parts as he couldn't get it to fault. In the end, it sounded amazing with fresh caps and a new set of tubes, but like I mentioned, a few months after he'd finished the job, it quit in exactly the same fashion.

I found from Reggae's link that Steve the Ampman is a 45 min drive from me and he seems to speak my language. I'll give him a bell and see what he's got to say. The last tech replaced a ton of caps and seemed to know what he was doing - I did spend time at his place, but he wasn't exactly well set up and his health wasn't the greatest.

Wow cool man, thank you! Will trawl through that list.

So for brief periods over the last couple of years I have revelled in the luxury of owning two 135 Bassman heads. I only ever run one at a time, one is more than enough with two single 15's - it will shake ship off the shelves if you dial channel and master vol up to 5's. But about 2.5 years ago the silver grill cloth one in the pic above up and quit on me stone dead. I was recommended a tech north of me, I'm in Exeter, and it took him 2 years to actually repair it. I must have driven the 45 minute trip to him around ten times over that timeframe and every time he had a new reason for it not being ready - after calling me and telling me "it will definitely be 100% done on Wednesday/Thursday/Friday..." you get the picture? Finally around 6 months ago he had it finished. I picked it up, took it home, played it for 5 minutes and it quit again. he came out to my place a couple of days later, I fired it up and it ran perfectly, he hung around for an hour and it was absolutely fine. He left, promising to fix it again if it ever shipped itself again. Of course, three months later it came to a dead stop AGAIN and now I want to find someone with their act together who can diagnose it and fix it - I'd even drive to Bristol or Plymouth if there's no-one else close by in/around Exeter. Anyways, it aint going back to that guy...anyone have any recommendations for guys experienced in CBS era Fender tube amps in East Devon/Bristol/Plymouth?