Agent 00Soul

Hi - the P-bass pickup on my Frankenbass are shot and need replacing. I've always been partial to the punchy P-bass sound of the 1970s. Think Sting, Roger Waters, Bruce Thomas. Does anyone know if any aftermarket replacement brands lean towards that sound? Even including the stuff Fender themselves make. Thanks

You know the band you were in has developed cult following when someone is teaching one of your basslines on YouTube a decade after after the song was released. 🤪

I was able to buy a hardcase from him for this bass. I didn't realize the Bachbird was so long that it wouldn't fit in a regular case. And Bach was all out by the time I decided to buy one but luckily he had one for sale

Not a chance. It would have happened by now if I was so inclined. One of the silver linings of being a lefty is it's a giant wet blanket for G.A.S. spending! Although the amount of lefty stuff on the internet has changed things slightly as there are more than ever before for sale from all over the place. I never thought I would own a non-reverse Firebird copy, but a company in Bratislava did indeed make a run of them about 10 years ago so there you are.

That is one Goth looking bass!

Definitely true! I actually recorded an EP in 2019 that was a tribute to the library music used on the TV/radio shows of the time, and I did indeed string the Jazz with flats and used a pick. Palm muting is also quite important to nail the sound in many cases.

If you have one with flats already, you may as well try rounds on the other so you have options for different songs or gigs.

As someone who played in a shoegaze band where both myself and the guitar player used lots of stomp boxes and not rack mounts, I feel lucky to have avoided this considering some of the stories I've read on this thread. For us, we simply got as close as possible to the sound on the record without having to make changes mid-gig. If any one pedal absolutely positively needed to have a knob turned, we either incorporated it into the show, which can sound quite cool and psychedelic, or we would make a lightning knob twirl between tracks without a sound. You can memorize approximately where the knob goes to or use masking tape to show the destination setting. It took less than a second. The guitarist had more complicated pedal boards - yes, boardS - but they had patches that he memorized and could easily change multiple times mid-song without anyone noticing, including us. The trick with all this is rehearse, rehearse, rehearse all this in your normal practices. We got so used to doing all these, that we would play 40 minutes without stopping unless someone broke a string or had a similar legit issue.

Veteran rock and gear journalist Tony Bacon, a lefty himself apparently, just published this: https://reverb.com/news/musical-implications-of-being-a-left-hander

Thank you! Very helpful and also good news.

I got to try an Aerodyne in a Japanese music shop. One of the best bass sounds I've heard for the "rock" end of the rock n roll spectrum. You can easily get lefties in Japan, but for some reason they don't export them - or didn't last time I checked. Interestingly, the models they do export have Strat-style output jacks with knobs flush to the body which I prefer over the standard Jazz jacks/panels on the domestic models.

Hi - I have an RH450 bass amp head that I bought in the USA a decade ago. I recently moved to the UK. Can I simply swap the USA power cable for a UK one like I do for my computer? Or do I need to plug the unit into a step-down transformer to externally convert the 220 volts to 110 like on my vintage amps? Its plug is removable and goes into a generic three pronged socket, so I wasn't sure. Thanks in advance!

Wow - I’ve been interested enough in these bases to keep my eye on them since they first came out in 1982, but I’d never seen a lefty in anything other than black before. I just assumed they didn’t exist.

Today's email blast from online music empire Reverb features a video and article about what they call upside-down guitarists, that is left-handed players who play lefty, but with the strings reversed (the low string is on the bottom). The vast majority of these players seem to have learned this way simply because they picked up right-handed models, flipped them over into the more comfortable/natural left-handed position, and never changed the string order. It looks like a lot of people featured were self-taught and didn't know any better, although some, including host Malina Moye, knew but preferred it upside-down: https://reverb.com/news/a-brief-history-of-upside-down-guitarists-with-malina-moye No bassists, but I have seen photos of lefties who do the same thing.

I hope this thing survived it's six weeks on a container ship!

The Twin Peaks theme song on the streets of Brooklyn, 2013. (The woman in the middle playing guitar went on to write "Nomadland," a best-selling book and later an Oscar-winning movie!)

The black one? It's a Frankenbass. It started as a 1993 Fender Custom Shop 61 Jazz. By the time I bought it in 2001 it had been played to near death, and bits gradually failed. So the neck is now a Warmoth and the front pick-up is a Duncan P-bass to replace the original J-bass after the electronics also went kaput. I think the only original thing left is the body and the hardware.

Hello - I'm relatively new to this forum. It seemed more fun to introduce myself to my fellow lefties first. I've been playing bass in bands in New York for almost 30 years. Got married and now I live in Chelsea, London. At 53, I'm not sure if there's anything left for me to play in, although I have to admit that gigging in London never gets old - unlike me. Here are some piccies of the basses I've acquired over the years. I brought them all with me to the UK so who knows....

I realize I'm late here, but I wanted to confirm what Pineweasel said. I bought two Hiscox standard cases and they fit my lefties fine. They really are as strong as they advertise. My bases just spent 6 weeks on a container ship and two moving trucks and they - the cases and the basses - were completely undamaged.

Agh - Jack, where were you a decade ago?? I would have jumped all over it then when I was touring and recording a lot.

I'm sure you all know this, but leftybassist.com has had tons of reviews over the years specifically about models made for those of us born with that recessive gene. And on the subject of Macca's Gaskill above, Slovakian company Bach produced a run of lefty non-reverse Thunderbirds about a decade ago that have been nicknamed Bachbirds. There are reviews of those on leftybassist.com also.

A blast from my past in Soundpool: 2010 was soooo groovy! "Kite of Love" - music vid "But It's So" live - shot by an audience member but pointed at the bass by chance

Great article. Quick, un-official, visa-less gigs in Canada and the EU (when the UK was a member) were incredibly stressful for me as a US citizen. I was terrified I would be caught and banned from visiting. It wasn't worth it.