Shaggy

Sounds like a fortunate blend of like minds and good planning, nice one 👍. Some of the musician websites and potential for online playing together in virtual rooms are fantastically useful of course. But personally (and bring old and grumpy 😠) I find that every new development in social media and personal communications relentlessly increases one’s exposure to other people’s verbal diarrhoea. Which is why I don’t do any of it, beyond texting. ’Course, when I were a lad it were all done wi’ little cards in t’ local music shop. And all this were fields........

16, in a pub in Cambridge I can’t recall the name of. It was 1977 and I think we were the only gigging punk band in Cambridge at the time.... Kalamazoo KB1 through Carlsboro Stingray 100 and homemade 4x12 cab

The pickups were definitely the weakest component; the magnetic field on mine were so feeble than an ant carrying a staple could have easily walked across both pickups without losing the staple. At age 17 I actually carried out my very first ever bass mod on it, replacing the neck pickup with a Gibson mudbucker taken out of my first bass (a short scale Kalamazoo KB1) - which made it into a pretty decent dub-monster. But it’s still the only one of my basses that I remember with zero affection. 🤔

My second bass, Columbus JB copy. Beyond awful. Hopefully no one will be suckered into buying the one in the OP. As the saying goes; “you can’t polish a turd......”

No “Bermuda shorts” scale neck then? 🏝 I’ll get my coat...... Seriously, great find. 👍

Bells catalogue 1977 (I perused my copy so often at the tine I still remember most of the models listed!)

I remember Kimbaras standing out from the other ‘70’s copies by having really attractive wood for the bodies, usually Sen wood (Japanese ash). This is nice, though not that special.

Fabulous grain on that, BigRedX! They were indeed known for the fragility of the pickup surrounds; my 650B has them intact, but on my 450B fretless they’re bust. Big shame these weren’t more popular, which as ever largely comes down to what prominent bassists were playing / endorsing at the time. As I recall Nick Lowe favoured a 450B, who was no slouch on bass.

as is this, I think.....

From Wikipedia re “You can call me Al” - The names in the song came from an incident at a party that Simon went to with his then-wife Peggy Harper. French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who was attending the same party, mistakenly referred to Paul as "Al" and to Peggy as "Betty", inspiring Simon to write a song.[2][3] Jon Pareles noted that the lyrics can be interpreted as describing a man experiencing a midlife crisis[4] ("Where's my wife and family? What if I die here? Who'll be my role model?"). However, as Simon himself explained during the Graceland episode of the Classic Albums documentary series, by the third verse the lyrics move from a generic portrait-like perspective to a personal and autobiographical one, as he describes his journey to South Africa which inspired the entire album.[5] The song opens simply, with its protagonist wondering aloud why his life is difficult, amid other questions. Simon structured the song's lyrics in a way that listeners would be given the simplest information first, before getting abstract with his imagery in the song's third verse: "Because there's been a structure, [...] those abstract images, they will come down and fall into one of the slots that the mind has already made up about the structure of the song." So it was all obvious, really. 😉 ”A winter shade of pale” really is pretty much random lyrics stuck together. People have done full PhD theses on songs like Eleanor Rigby - which I think rather bemused McCartney

A man of taste sir! 👍. Beautiful bass too, spoilt only by having one string too many 😉 I did used to gig the 1516 or 2x15 when I had a huge Mondeo estate, but yes the 2x10 plus 1x15 is very much more portable.

There are so many. Cover of “Comfortably Numb” by The Scissor Sisters springs to mind. Also that awful dirgey cover of “Mad world” a few years ago that spawned a thousand other awful dirgey covers - it would depress me too much to google who it was (though I guess excluded from the thread as he was neither great or good) Worst one for me - and everyone here will disagree with this, as for some reason it’s regarded as a classic - is Joe Cocker’s “With a little help from my friends”. I have to turn the radio off if it comes on...... Edit: Actually no, I have wronged poor old JC. I have a cheapo Christmas compilation CD with a cover of “Fairytale of New York” sung by Máire Brennan of Clannad (who makes a pretty decent stab of her part) and Ronan Keating (who really, really doesn’t)....🙁

Kevin send me a boxed set of Still Game DVD’s for free and gratis, wouldn’t even accept postage. Looking at posts above, the man clearly makes a habit of this saintly behaviour..........😇. I can only conclude that it’s either down to too much whisky 🥃, or Kevin is an unbelievably nice and generous bloke. Whatever - a true BC legend! 👍

Lol - you can still say it in Wales........🐏

Likewise! 🙂. With current (not very loud) band I’m now using Ashdown 1x15 and 4x8 mini-cabs with Neo drivers; superbly practical / portable, but just doesn’t move the air in the way the Mesa stack did. 🙁 Mind, if I had a roadie it’d be the Diesel 1516 every time.....

The EV drivers were mostly what raised the MB Diesel cabs a notch above everything else. I’ve got the Diesel 1x15 RR (with matching 2x10) and it has all the low end I could want......although have to say the 1516 I also own and 2x15 cabs I used to own go even deeper, so must be down to cab design I guess. Even though the Diesels are old school now, they’re quite compact compared to (for example) Trace Elliot cabs of the same era. Have you looked at the driver to check it is the original EV15L? I’d be inclined to leave as is, and if not happy go with a more modern cab.

I’m surprised that Seymour Duncan haven’t taken issue with the trade name....

Yet another iconic British (originally) brand thats been utterly screwed around with since their golden era........🙁

Yeah, quite a few were fretless, and they also pioneered the “semi fretted” format where the lower (nut end) part of the fingerboard was fretted, and the upper part was fretless. Didn’t seem to catch on though. The fingerboards are made from ebanol, a synthetic material also used for making bowling balls, which is very like a hard expoxied ebony board; mine almost looks like new after over 40 years of play. Kramers were never really fashionable, the late ‘70’s / early ‘80’s alu necked ones were superb, really boutique quality, but the later wooden necked pointy “hair metal” models rather ruined the brand image. I’d personally take a ‘79 Kramer over a ‘79 Fender any day.

PM sent 👍

Nice - I have the exact same model; they’re seriously good basses especially as a fretless - I found it got me closer to the Mick Karn tone than my fretless Wal does ( most of the Japan recordings were done using an alu necked Travis Bean of course). Mind, he’d have better chances of a sale if he could actually spell “bass” in the title and had checked it actually works. As long as it doesn’t fetch much more than £1K it’s a good buy. 👍

Have to admit I’ve been doing the same thing; replacing my favourite DVD’s - definitely including The Godfather trilogy - with Blu-ray Discs, but find that I can’t bring myself to get rid of the old DVD’s just in case Blu-ray (already superseded by 4K) goes the way of Betamax / 8-track.......🤔. Which means of course I now have waaaaaaaay too many discs 🙁 Anyway, as Burns-bass says above; a real treat for someone here. Godfather 1 is for my money the best film ever made - certainly the best of its genre - and the two sequels/ prequels not far behind.