Stub Mandrel

And can you explain what these are, sir? 👮‍♂️

My feeling is that the Jack is pretty tapered - at the nut it's about the same as my p-bass, but the bridge is spaced the same as the 4-string, which seems bit odd. Does take a bit of getting used to. Just remeasured, the Jack V is 44mm at the nut, 16mm string spacing and 26mm thick at the 12th fret compared to 24mm for my jag. That means the B-G string spacing flares from 36mm to 64mm.

Received a couple of nice Fender straps today. Posted out quickly and wrapped well, condition of the 'used a bit' one almost as good as the virtually new one! Thanks!

I'v tried Chordify a few times. Whiles it's a great interface, I assume it is working out the chords 'automatically' it seems to get confused an awful lot. It seems to randomly insert minor and 7th chords, or put in wrong ones at random before a real change (perhaps confused by a bass run or similar?) Or is it accurate and my ear that is out?

I always wanted a TE back in the day. My Laney has virtually the same controls but not that special something 😞

Seeing how most basses have 24 frets and few rock songs go anywhere past about 19, it surprises me how few people do this, although lots of 'heavy' bands drop a whole tone.

I've had a Hohner B2 (four string) for about thirty years so when I found a virtually mint Hohner Jack Custom 5 for £130 (with case, strap, strap locks and lead!) it would have been rude not to get it. It was a cheap lead though. I'd assumed the advantage was diving low, but what I've found, from relatively little practice, is that five strings gets you thinking more about scale shapes across the neck. This seems to have helped me in visualising scales in different positions when back to four string. I love skinny four-string necks though.

You want to see the arguments about 'engineer'. In mainland Europe 'engineer' is a protected title, like 'Doctor'. Over here our 'technicians' are 'engineers' and we have plenty of 'hobby engineers'. the professional institutes have given up the cause and rely on chartered engineer to make the distinction. In plain english, a musician is just someone who make music. I like the idea that ANYONE can be a musician simply by making music - it's too glorious a gift to keep it to an elite few. Worrying you aren't good enough is classic imposter syndrome - I know I suffer the salmons of self-doubt myself despite having played plenty of gigs in my younger days. There's no professional body to decide who is and isn't (thank goodness) but there are things like graded exams and the obvious distinctions of pro and amateur for those who like to classify, but the question for any classification is how useful is it? Clearly it makes sense to identify professional musicians as those who make a living (or part of a living) from their craft. What about the bands who (truth be told) don't make enough to cover the costs of strings, gear petrol and rehearsal space? (P.S. it might be useful for mere mortals in smaller bands to know you can turn over (i.e. total income) £1,000 a year without having to pay tax on it from minor trading. That's £4K a year for a four-piece so I doubt most small bands playing a pub or small club once a month or so need to worry about tax).

He probably can't do alternate picking and failed his shredding exams, so he's p****d that you can. I don't like using a plectrum much. I like nice low action so it tends to make a bass sound clanky, and I can pluck faster with my fingers (my one and only flash move is a Sheenan-style three-finger trill). I also play guitar fingerstyle more often than with a plecky.

I'm working hard to get back my mojo. I put on Planet Rock and try and play along to whatever comes on. If I get stuck I pull the chords up on Ultimate Guitar. If I 'click' I pull up the bass tab and try and learn the main parts properly. No ones listening so if I just bash root notes to 'The Real Me' who cares? It's great practice for (1) identifying the keys of songs and (2) learning to anticipate chord changes. And yes it will amaze you how many songs are basically just I - IV - V so it's worth googling what that means!

Some late thoughts on this. I can play fretless but I am not brilliant at it, but I have a decent ear and no-one has ever told me I'm playing it out of tune (even when I have been!) First, accept that its harder and that lo and behold you won't hit notes dead in tune every time (that's why Leo invented the 'precision' bass LOL! The secret is in putting your fingers into the right place NOT constantly trying to adjust to get dead in tune. Even on a fretted bass strings typically sound high and drop in pitch a bit, this seems even more true of a fretless and also the timbre of the note changes. These things not only give fretless playing its distinctive sound (apart from slides etc) but help to cover small errors. My bass only has side dot markers. I've set the intonation so that I'm in tune when I play dead in line with the marker. With the amount of adjustment on any fretless you can can move this 'right spot' around a surprising amount by fiddling with intonation. I play one finger per fret, and try and hit just behind the fret in all positions (I have big hands, my one big advantage!) It makes a bit more discipline to keep accurate spacing on a fretless but its the only way to hit the right spot for unmarked notes. It takes time but try and get used to how your fingers need to close up as you move up the neck. DO keep reference to how you sound and be prepared to shift your playing position a bit to keep in tune rather than fudging individual fingers. In summary, I'd say fretless is really about developing 'muscle memory' as much as your ear and don't expect to find it easy, I feel it is a lot harder. If you despair - think about violin, no markers and you need to be about three times as accurate in placing your fingers to be as accurately in tune (no wonder violinists always use vibrato!)

Strikes me that rather than falling out, the two of you are on the verge of starting to step up to the next level. You need to tell him that you can add to the songs, but he needs to trust you and understand that you'll develop your style over time. You don't say what style of music you are playing. If it's funk you are going to be putting in very different 'fills' to blues and if it's death metal you might want to simplify your bass lines (joke). I'm not a flash bass player at all, but I love putting in little runs and decorations (just not at turbo speed). Knowing what key you are playing in, understanding a few basic scales - pentatonic major and minor are good starting points. You can't go far wrong putting in a little run up or down to lead into a verse or chorus. Another trick is just playing an inetrmediat noe (e.g. the the third or seventh note of the next chord) ahead of the first downbeat to 'lead into' the change. Very cliche but it's popular for a reason.

According to Wikipedia David Vand De Pitte wrote the bass line and Jamerson (lying on the floor because was so drunk) played it exactly as written. It's stunning.

I saw Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons last year. They do a little bit of an audience interaction routine as a sort of 'ritual' before Tyla Cambell goes into the bass riff og Ace of Spades. Of course this time he hits the e-string and his pick flies off into space 🙂

Brian Bromberg had so much distortion that after the first couple of bars you could hardly distinguish any notes it was just static... I learn one big lesson from that video - if you want to be a great bass player, start wearing baggies.

Ask Fender for the old neck back. It's your property.

Well that proves guitars are a waste of time 😈 Wayman Tisdale makes his bass look like a Ukelele!

Plectrum? Just. Say. No. 🙂

Apparently Ivor Biggun and the Red Nosed Burglars song 'The Winkers Song' isn't about winking at all! Hmmm. I would say it's anti-big corporation/pro-socialism not anti-free world. He's kind of being ironic that the so-called 'free world' is not as 'free' as it would like to be. I won't say anti-capitalism as by his own admission NY is an entrepreneur and likes money.

Interesting. This is always going to be challenging as it is easy for a ham-fisted person to keep tightening a truss rod and strip the thread, then how do you prove it's a manufacturing fault not user error? As you are clearly not a clueless beginner and tehre's a known fault with these guitars, I have a theory: the truss rods haven't been threaded for a long enough distance so you simply run out of adjustment. In running past the end of the thread, the nut strips. It's likely the upper parts of the thread are still fine. If you still had the neck, I would recommend seeing if you could still wind the nut right off, get a new nut and use it with a spacer 6-10mm long on the still intact end of the thread.

Should it be Eroctica?

That is pretty 🙂

On the subject of the state of that guitar it's worth seeing http://www.rorygallagher.com/#/archives/guitars " I’ve had to take the neck off occasionally and dry it out – it was getting damp with doing so many gigs and I started to have tuning problems. " It also says he had unusually acidic sweat due to his blood group, whether this was why it was so copious is another question!

That's Ringo Starr's forte. You can recognise Beatles songs just by the drum line.

Regularly playing a bit of acoustic guitar should help with dealing with narrow spacings.