Stub Mandrel

Crikey... I've just finished a Harley Benton kit and the tools I used were a fretsaw, sanding blocks, wet and dry paper in many grades, two screwdrivers and a ball end 5mm allen key as the one in the kit was no good for adjusting the truss rod with strings on. Oh, and a scalpel for he nut, I find you can scrape off in a more controlled manner than using files and keep the slot profile. A tiny mark on the body showed the neck had been put on with the neck plate in position, so looks like they do some basic QC. The neck is straight as a die and I found a few frets (the highest on the D) that may need a light dressing if I drop the action on that string. You are unlikely to need to do any major work so a straight edge and a cheap set of needle files shoudl cover any remedial work.

Pah. You think valves are woe. I'm one of those poor sods who insists on playing an old Trace Elliot. Transistor sound and valve weight combined...

Hang in there Stew, as someone whose been lucky enough to meet you, I'm sure it will all work out in the end.

I've seen your poster in Pirate Studios.

My 'fendery ones'.

If you search "<song name> bass tab" or "<song name> bass cover" you might find some helpful stuff, but be aware that a lot of tabs are full of errors, and some are very badly laid out. so look at a few and find one you are comfortable with. It's worth watching a Sabbath live video and getting an idea of what Geezer is playing - how busy he is(n't) and where on the neck (about 5/7 fret IIRC). Listen to the song and try to hear what the bass is really doing, not what you thought it was doing. Tab can be great for understanding fills. When learning, start slow and build up. Concentrate on getting the notes of each part right, then getting the right rhythm, then getting up to speed. Don't be ashamed to just play the root notes without any fills to help you learn the changes. Try to hear how your bass blends with the music when you are in time and in tune. If you start making repeated mistakes, take a break so that you don't 'practice the errors'

well.... oh go on then 😉

Well, Reaper was a good bloody brilliant suggestion. To explain, our drummer works with about three bands, he did a lockdown version of Schools out with a band of teenagers. In under half an hour I managed to synch the drum track to their track as a guide, including snipping out the mis-timed first crash and move it to the right place. Then I managed to record myself and play it back. Need to polish it a bit, but everything working now.

Amazing how the colour changes under different light. Very definite blue under LEDs. Very pale under fluorescent, photographing with a greenish cast. Some review type thoughts... Neck is pretty decent, the fretboard is effectively black, like ebony with more grain, does not look like rosewood at all. I think it looks really distinctive. Benefits from oiling. I didn't lacquer the back of the neck, it comes with a satin/matt finish that is very nice. Would build confidence if they had a guide to which screw goes where, especially as there are enough scratchplate and tuning head screws that you could swap them over. For those unsure: The larger headed countersunk screws are for the scratchplate. The four very long screws are for the pickups, beware of screwing them right down as they could pop out the back of the body... put them in a few turns and adjust when the strings are on. The same screws for the bridge and strap buttons. Personally I think they are a bit short for strap buttons. String guide uses a scratchplate screw; I reckon if you used a spare bridge screw it could come out the back of the headstock. The tuning head screw drillings weren't very well positioned. I had to take great care tightening the screws and the heads are all at a very slight angle. Body wood isn't super hard, but much better than the eBay strat body blank I bought a year ago. If I was redoing the build I would put on a light layer of primer then sand down until it was just left in any depressions, then skim the body with fine filler then sand with fine wet and dry. Videos that show people putting on 3 very thin layers of lacquer are over optimistic. Do more than that. Yes it is worth waiting a week to finally sand and polish, but give yourself enough paint thickness to work at with confidence. Sanding needs to be really light t-cut will take out light marks so you don't need to sand aggressively. Double acting truss rod needed to be tightend up, probably by 32-3 turns so not a huge amount. I expect it to need revisiting a few times as the bass settles down. Setting up meant adjusting everything, including the nut (except the A-string intonation was spot on...) Nut was cut very high, this does need care and courage as it's the one adjustment that isn't reversible. Pickup screw holes weren't ideally positioned, tilting the two halves forward. When I reassemble I'll move them so they are level. Controls work fine, no buzzes. When I reassemble I will strip a longer section of the bridge earth wire to make the contact more definite, am worried it could slip out but don't want to strip it yet to make threading it back through easier. Would be nice if it was about an inch longer too... Tuning heads very stiff until oiled with a drop of 3 in 1, get better with use. Not the best ever but I don't think they need replacing. A neck wedge may be a good idea as the E-saddle is almost at the bottom and I reckon I could drop it buy up to half a mm or more. Some of the scratchplate screwholes were way off, one or two not even visible. I put all the good ones in first, then fitted the other screws direct into the wood without a hole.

Having a bit of a crap few days, so to cheer myself up I've built it up. I can live with the grain showing on front and back (sides are great!) but the recoat on the front isn't hard enough to take a full shine yet, so in five days or so I need to strip it again and t-cut. Nut needed a fair bit of scraping with a scalpel. Wasn't hard to set up. Will fit some different bits - got a Fender TBX I can fit and maybe some better knobs. Might also tilt the neck to get the action down a bit more on A and E, is about 2mm but feels like it could be a tad lower. Otherwise, pretty good, Maybe need to look at the top three or four frets on the D string. Doesn't feel or sound like a £77 bass!

Abelton feels a lot like an AutoCAD product - expensive industry standard program, with an interface that is far from a standard windows one. A free entry-level version hobbled only in capacity so you invest lots of effort in learning to use it and this deters you from other less complex options when you need to go to something with greater capacity. I will download Reaper in a bit.

I was misled by the 'drag files here' dialogue in one of the views, I had to drag them into the other view. Took me an hour of deleting, reloading and random clicking before I got the two tracks the same length, I cnan't understand why it randomly stretches them. It may be autodetecting BPM, one time it loaded the drum track and made it longer than the other track, I deleted it and loaded again and it made it shorter. It also put reverb and delay on everything which was horrible. Aligning was OK once I had two tracks at same tempo and no reverb/delay. I've figured out how to record from my Focusrite scarlett. It takes me about ten minutes after recording to find a way of playing back. Every time I stop a recording and delete my fail it changes all the monitor settings. @BigRedX I think you are 100% right! All I can say is these dance mixers have more respect from me now... My brother suggests I get a digital multitrack that will work like my old 4-track cassette.

This thread is me. The Youtube clips I found show low-res versions of things that bear no resemblance to what I have got (I can switch views...) and the mumbled commentaries with dogs and children in the background give me no faith that the persona who made them know anything about sound recording... I don't want to mess with midi, I want to use it like my four track. I have an MP3 of 'Schools Out' and an M4A of our drummer doing the drum track which I've converted to a Wav. I can make them play and stop playing but it treats them as samples not tracks. I cant seem to get them properly into a track so that I can see their waveforms side by side and get them to line up (I naturally want the recorded drums to be out front so my bass lines up with that rather than the record if their are any timing errors, I just want to hear enough of the original to get my cues). Can anyone help? Do I need to load them in a different way?

Strangely enough, the real neck joint is as good a fit as I've ever seen. It's snug as a bug all round with no slop at all.

Will you tell him about patch cables, or shall I...?

Well.... disaster, IMHO. Gentle sanding with 1500 grit went trough to primer in a couple of strokes, t-cut got through in a few more places. A light grain pattern than was invisible before appears with t-cut. I should have put on more than the three layers of colour coat. I reckon over half the can was left. I've already started and I'm just going to put all the rest of the coloured pain on today. Finish off the laquer tomorrow. Then leave it another six days.

Look red in the video to me. Photoshop agrees.

Probably worth more without the decal bodge-job...

🙂 If he'd made the 'capos' sprung he could have left out all the faff with making it super adjustable...

To put some flesh on the bones (or tofu on the celery...) For me a change is as good as a rest. I find playing different instruments really inspiring. If you have several basses a new one might not make a lot of difference. But if you only have one, get one that's really distinct from what you have. A Talman or Harley Benton shouldn't break the bank and giving it a setup (if needed) is part of making it our own. I've been playing almost daily all through lockdown, sometimes for hours, sometimes just for a bit. Regularly changing bass, but for about six weeks I've just been playing my Flea Jazz. This thread inspired me to swap to my Jag SS, and I played Schools Out right through for the first time aside from a couple of changes at the end (I've been learning it today...)

Me

12 and I guessed Kim Gordon. Somehow got Tina Weymouth wrong even though I knew who it was! Spotted Steve Harris by his West Ham wristband.

For many years there was an ad in Private Eye offering to narrow unfashionably wide ties. I was disappointed they didn't ofeer to reverse the operation when kippers came back into fashion.