Terry M.

I am currently working with a lead guitarist who uses modes,he's not "obsessed" with them however. I picked random modes just to illustrate my point so substitute Locrian with any of the others. Knowing modes has helped me in scenarios where I'm asked to improvise over changes and it's helped to steer me towards notes that nearly always sound contextually correct. Only sharing my limited practical experience of them.

It wouldn't hurt to learn the Greek names of the modes and shapes at some point. If you're playing for example in C Major but the bandleader wants you to play the intro as two bars of F Lydian and then two more in D Dorian before vamping on B Locrian and shouts that out to you,your fingers will automatically know where to go and what notes are available within those modes.

So no help then 😂

I have two Warwick basses with wenge fretboards and would describe them as "articulate" No idea if that's the wenge or other factors. Someone has a Streamer Broadneck on ebay for sale at the minute (I also have one) with the fretboard wood being described as rosewood. I messaged them letting them know it was wenge a few weeks ago but was ignored and the description still says rosewood. I guess I was surprised an actual owner of one would make that error but hey...

Pronounced wen-gay apparently. Does that help? 😆

It would appear then that Sadowsky adopted the 4+1 headstock before Fender did.I've always preferred that personally over the 5 in-line design.

Sorry to dig this up again Kev on a Friday afternoon but what about nuances like pickup placement? Can you or anybody explain how acoustically you can tell if it's in P,J or Musicman bridge position without plugging in? I've not lost any sleep over this but I've just been in Andertons and played a bass acoustically until a staff member handed me a cable so I could,you know,plug in,and it came back to me 😂

It's definitely Marcus mate I was just messing about. What's not clear on the video to me however is the headstock logo. Doesn't mean it's not a Sadowsky though.

OMG they've cloned Marcus!!! He has hair,he's playing a 5 string AND he's not slapping 😁

Yes indeed. There's currently on Ebay right now a Squier Vintage Modified Jazz Bass V with a John East preamp modification,SD Apollo pickups and a Schaller bridge and the bidding starts at £771. I'd love to know the final price if it sells.

And there's me thinking the price of vintage Fenders was over the top. I'll see myself out...

Exactly that with regards to what we get used to 👍Do you mean the greenburst J Type there? I also tried it and fell in love with the fretboard 😂 Yes 20" definitely feels flat to me too.

That's fair enough ☺️ I own two Warwick Broadneck basses with 47" radius and as I mentioned I tried a fully flat ACG. If I was blindfolded and was handed a 47" radius fretboard and then a fully flat one I would not be able to tell the difference,in fact forget the blindfold! After a certain radius size (I can't say which but for the sake of this conversation let's call it 16") you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between that and a fully flat one. I definitely notice the difference between 9.5" and 12" but after that(to me) it becomes imperceptible. I totally favour flatter boards where I don't have to go searching "downhill" for the outer strings 😂So my Warwicks although technically not flat feel just like the ACGs in my experience.

You may be surprised how much easier it is to play a bass with a flat board. Leo only put a radius on his creations to mimic classical instruments that were played with bows. Electric stringed instruments are not so the concept is actually redundant even though we've become accustomed to them. Leo as you may know wasn't actually a player.Flat boards are part of the reason I favour Warwicks. Never owned an ACG as of yet but tried a few used examples in Bass Direct. They are something else ☺️

Did you catch the part where I said I could be wrong? No way am I getting into a debate about this,life is too short for that.

Interesting,I'd never heard this before. See attachment from Warwickforum.com

Hmmm I'm not so sure you know. I wouldn't necessarily use the word magic but I feel there's definitely a "formula" Warwick cooked up to create that sound. Obviously I don't know for sure but I've yet to hear anything else sound close to a Thumb. Those brass bell frets may even be a contributing factor and wood and fretboard choices. I could be wrong of course.

Thanks Kev. I'll admit defeat on understanding/experiencing this one 😂

I had to Google Gus basses. Isn't the Corvette design older?

I'm happy to have got this wrong but as I've said before I basically think the sound of an unplugged electric bass is irrelevant but are you saying you feel the Thumb bass even FEELS differently acoustically to when it's plugged in? When you arrive at more insight on this please let me know? I think my mental struggle with the sound is the sound shaping options available when plugged in versus unplugged. How for example can I expect the MEC preamp on my Warwicks to translate to them before they're even plugged in? Again I'm willing to learn.

I promise I'm not being deliberately obtuse here but I've heard this before and genuinely can't understand the point of testing a bass unplugged other than to get the feel of it. It doesn't mean you're wrong however so don't take it that way.

Now it's the Dolphin I think looks weird. They sound really good though,went to a gig once and the bassist had a 5 string version.