Beedster

Stu, if this story results in a Wal being returned to long-lost owner or similar I'll happily donate £100 to a charity of your choice. If it turns to out to have been a noble attempt at the above - which it's looking like is the case - I'll still donate £50 to the same charity. I'll let TrevorR be the judge of the outcome. Either way, my apologies for the scepticism and thanks for your public spirited attitude, a rare thing on the internet. Chris

Folks Many thanks for the above. I came across a solution by accident, although it had been sitting under my nose for months without me realising it. I simply took the octave strings off my Ovation Melissa Etheridge 12 and now have a beautiful sound and recording six string, with the necessary access to the dusty end. I'd always assumed that de-string a 12 was a no-no due to the heavier bracing etc stifling the sound when tension was removed from the neck/body, but I hadn't really considered that the Ovation, plastic back and carbon top, was not going to suffer from this problem. Saved me quite a lot of hassle! I'd still be keen to know if there might be a downside to this that I haven't considered? Thanks again for the above Chris

There was a thread on here a few years ago that was really similar; "found this old bass in my Uncle's loft, says 'Fender' on the end and I don't know anything about basses but a friend of mine said it was about 50 years old and pre-CBS or something.......". It was just a way of selling through the back door - that is loads of people contacted her re buying the bass without it ever being offered for sale and open to the scrutiny of the BC collective* - what was a quite convincing at first glance bitsa that had been deliberately made to look like a pre-CBS. The bass - a Lake Placid Blue Precision - did the rounds on eBay under various descriptions for months afterwards, being repeatedly bought and sold by people who'd fallen for the hype and who were just dishonestly passing the hype on to recoup their costs. It ended up with one of those eBay sellers who sells 'vintage' instruments at an extortionate price. * I know this because I was one of them. I went to visit the seller to check out the bass, and she was correct about one thing, she certainly knew nothing about bass guitars :) As I said in a post above, I'd love it if this thread was the real deal and I'll happily apologise to the OP if so. But despite the several posts above, we still don't have the story re the Wal...........?

So, reading cynically between the lines, if the OP wants to reunite a recently acquired bass with its owner and s/he has sufficiently short memory to have already forgotten where they bought it, s/he either knows it's stolen and has pangs of guilt and wants it gone, knows it's stolen and is using this thread as a way of selling it (I bet s/he's already had a few PMs saying "I'll give you a grand"), is trying to get a Chinese Wal faker into circulation etc etc, the permutations are endless. Having said that, I sincerely hope it is what it seems, it would be quite life affirming to think that someone who recently bought a stolen bass was honest enough to want to find its rightful owner.

Even odder....

I'm not getting this, the cynic in me says there's more to this than is being said above....?

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1509620120' post='3400304'] This /\ That's £75 to stand still in terms of value [/quote] Good point

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1509620267' post='3400311'] The finish on a maple fingerboard isn't that hard wearing. It tends to last reasonably well on a fretted instrument only because very little actually comes in contact the board itself. The string stop at the frets and only part of the finger will touch it. Keep and play one for long enough and eventually you'll start to see finger wear patterns on the most commonly used notes. However as soon as you remove the frets it's a different story. Unless you plan to use super smooth flat wound strings, they will tear through the finish in no time, and even flat wound strings will eat into the finish on a fretless board quicker than one with frets on it. [/quote] ....which is why to do it well costs a lot of cash, you need a very hard and extremely even surface

[quote name='Cato' timestamp='1509618068' post='3400277'] That's useful to know. If I do go down this route then I'm planning to get a local luthier to do the work, so hopefully he'll be aware of the potential pitfalls of chipping/removing the original finish. [/quote] To do it well will cost more than the £75 or so you'll need to pay on eBay to buy an equivalent quality fretless Neck, there’s a thread on here somewhere about low cost maple fretless necks, worth checking out.

[quote name='SpondonBassed' timestamp='1509093012' post='3396505'] I am no stranger to intoxicating substances myself. I am aware that altered states of mind are a major influence on art in general and especially in music. In this context however we are talking about doing a job. Employers generally make intoxication during work time a sacking offence. I see little difference here. May I also point out that there is a vast wealth of creative music out there that was created by sober people. Many of the survivors of the so-called rock and roll lifestyle who have cleaned up their lives say that they wished they'd known earlier that they could still play without help from substances, legal or otherwise. Peer pressure on musicians to get intoxicated at gigs is not such a problem today either. [/quote] I don't disagree, in saying they're was a link I wasn't suggesting the link is healthy [quote name='matski' timestamp='1509097100' post='3396551'] Once upon a time when I was living in Amsterdam, a drummer friend of mine invited to go and play with him and a guitarist he had met with a view to starting up a new band - the guy could play well enough, but he had this unnerving habit of psychotically staring at me directly in the eyes when he was playing solos. I dismissed it at first, but after a while it was really starting to freak me out. Afterwards, my drummer pal mentioned that maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to play with that guy again as he 'looked like he wanted to kill you!'. [/quote] I played in a band with a singer who did that, he would just stare straight into my eyes as if I had really offended him. First time he did it I said "what?" and he just carried on. I didn't stay in that band long either

[quote name='SpondonBassed' timestamp='1509083494' post='3396459'] It's sad when someone needs a "sharpener" to boost their sense of self worth. [/quote] We auditioned a singer years ago, he turned up looking nervous as hell. In front of us he shotgunned two cans of 1664, and then knocked out the best version of La Grange I've ever heard, well it was as good as the original (the vocals anyway, we were as crap as usual). We didn't hire him because we were a bit worried about how stable his confidence was going to be if it needed that kind of kick start, but booze and creativity/performance has been a pretty effective strategy from at least as far back as Mozart BTW I still wish we'd hired him

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1509045171' post='3396315'] There is, of course, the possibility of being too good. You might intimidate them by having the ability to play what your imagination tells you is right. Maybe having an imagination is bad too? [/quote] Possibly, I think it's an issue of 'technically good' versus 'musically good', but that's another story of course

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1509004024' post='3395869'] Are you certain there are no bass players out there who never stop practising their slap chops through every minor break in the action? Thankfully we don't get to meet them too often. [/quote] I was sacked by a band a few years ago, largely 'cos the guitarist said I wasn't putting in enough effort. He owned the van, the PA, the singer's expensive mic, and therefore the band. The catalyst to the sacking was my repeatedly playing one note in an Eagles track at odds with the recorded version, no joke. I kept doing it because I preferred it, he got really wound up every gig. Amusingly, I was asked back once they realised that 'lack of effort' equated to "generally playing what the song needed" as opposed to "riffing the f**k out of every song", which was apparently what every other bassist did at audition. I politely declined Key point is that I know one of the bassists that auditioned and he was pretty furious to be knocked back, saying with a straight face that he was a much better bassist than the band were were guitarist/drummer/singer, which was probably true.

50 mins by train