Brother Jones

No thanks Tino . Thanks for the suggestions guys. I think Brandoni might be a good option - assuming I can ask them to make sure it's a three-bolter.

I've had a 1978 Jazz for about ten years now. The original body, in black, is absolutely horrible - very heavy and with a completely knackered finish (totally crazed and flaking). A few years ago a local luthier put a pretty good swamp ash aftermarket body on it and it plays very well now. But I'd like to source an alder sunburst body for it with a bit of relic'ing (not too much though - it's only a '78). I'm not sure Bravewood (if he's still going) would be willing to do a relatively small job like this - can anyone suggest an alternative UK source for such a thing? Thanks.

Apparently (and this was quoted in the bass mags of the late eighties so must be true...) JJ would coat his strings with margerine and leave them for weeks until they were really, really, really dead.

Best fretless I ever played was an Aria SB1000 in a pawn shop in Leeds in 1989. The mwah was [i]incredible[/i]. I think there's even more variation within particular models of bass than there is with fretted basses. The tone, sound and playability are a very subtle blend which in many cases is quite specific to the bass itself. Some Stingrays are quite nice, while others just don't do it for me. Some Jazz bridge pups have the tone, and others don't. Wals are really, really good fretlesses if your pockets are very deep. Mind you, even some Wals are dogs (sacrilege!)

I've never really owned a shocker, because even though many have their bad points, I always end up adapting to them, tweaking the set up, etc, until they work. The least inspiring bass I've ever owned was, surprisingly, a through neck Warwick Thumb from 1993 or thereabouts, which at the time I thought would be my dream bass. Sounded completely anonymous and weedy and I hated the massive frets.

What a lovely collection. I can understand why you like these so much. Hope you're enjoying the Red Devil...

Jesus H Corbett that is beautiful. Am I allowed to be tasteless and ask...how much? Sorry...

For the past three or four years I've been a delighted WT300 owner. But it's only today that I've realized that both the Gain and Enhance controls have pull switches on them. The one of the Gain is almost certainly a pad for active outputs (quite a severe one though...). I have no idea what the one on the Enhance control does. Is one of them a compressor on/off? Thanks.

CD2 of Musiquarium - Higher Ground, Sir Duke, Reggae Woman, I Wish, Do I Do. Standard practice CD in my house, so standard in fact that my girlfriend has gone right off Stevie...

I love playing this - the only bits I can't really get are the little fills in between the verse parts. I'm guessing that detuning a 4 (rather than playing on a 5) helps with those...

I tried to figure out Rhythm Stick for months and months, but the little pedal notes in the verse part kept tripping me up. I can play it pretty much spot on now after a miraculous rainy Sunday afternoon two or three years ago when I finally figured out what he was doing. Great fun to play live - just don't have too many drinks beforehand. Most of Sir Duke is quite straightforward - except for the famous horn break, which is a total bastard to learn (especially the timing at the end), but great fun to play. I could play Teen Town when I was, er, a teenager, but am pretty rusty with it now - unless you play that regularly it tends to go and you forget which section comes next. One thing I can never really nail is the intro to 'Hair' by Larry Graham with the little slides and greasy timing.... What these lines have in common, and why I try to learn them, is that they're different ways of looking at the fretboard, as opposed to the usual, cliche'd things I come up with when I'm being lazy and plateau-ing. For example, a lot of the Stevie Wonder lines (possibly because they're written on a keyboard) have things in them that make you think 'that just shouldn't work there', but they do.

Agree that the body shape is odd and very Peavey-like. I'm guessing it has something to do with trying to minimise the costs of the production process. The top horn, in particular, and the upper half of the body just look a bit too big for the bass. However, that PJ looks great and I would pretty definitely buy an 'Overwater by Tanglewood' Jazz, especially if it had matching headstock colour. Even more so if (as suggested) there was a 4 over 1 headstock 5 stringer (with actives ofc)...

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='507358' date='Jun 7 2009, 07:40 AM']'Groupthink central'? ha ha ha. You funny man. I've been using them exclusively for.. ooh.. eight years or so. And I'll still be using them when everyone goes back to rounds. SHAZAM![/quote] Good for you matey. Like many things, it's just a question of personal preference. If 'your sound' involves flats then great. What I'm concerned about is the way that less experienced players seem to be using flats because they are easier to control - in the same way that we played 30-90 Superwounds in the 80s because they had lighter tension and (often) lower action.

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='507017' date='Jun 6 2009, 03:05 PM'] Don't worry... it's just a fad. They'll never catch on in the long term.[/quote] You know what I mean - ten years ago hardly anyone played them. Now everyone's jumping on the bandwagon. Ah well, welcome to groupthink central..

I'm sick to death of flats. They have been flavour of the month for a little while, probably because the sounds people are after are increasingly nostalgic. It's gone too far in my part of the world. Last week I tried a second hand five string (a [i]five[/i] string people!) that had been strung with flats.

I have a near-identical black 78 Jazz that I bought from Andy's about five years ago. It too has the same paint-crazing. In fact it's so bad now that the paint is coming off in flakes. There is no white primer underneath it, and the neck pocket is about 80% black too. For a little while this evidence led me to think it might be a badly done refinish, but I've seen several black '78 Jazzes in the same, or near same condition. Fender finish quality was seriously hit-and-miss at the time and the black Jazzes of the time seem to have had it particularly bad. Perhaps there's a good chemical reason for that. You might consider doing what I did with mine and just ask a local luthier to swap out the body for an aftermarket (Warmoth, Allparts) one (they'll have to drill a third screw hole for the three bolt joint, but it looks okay) and get them to finish it in your ideal colour. That way you don't destroy the 'original' value of the bass, and if you sell it on the buyer has a 'modular' vintage bass...

God this is lovely. What is such a rare beast doing in Leatherhead? ;-)