12stringbassist

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Jim Lea of Slade did a truly mean bass / violin solo in his day. Here's the one he did at Slade's last ever UK show in Liverpool in 1983

Gretsch basses are as cool as they come, but I couldn't justify the expense. I bought an Eastwood Classic 4 in white to match my GWF guitar. Wonderful.

I was just going to say that, seeing as Wal are starting up again, you may be able to pick up a fretless neck, then you have the chance to revert if need be.

Hmmmm... An excursion into twerpdom from myself...

Ok, it's a guitar.... but.... I was in London the other day and Music Ground on Denmark St in London have a John Birch guitar on the wall labelled as being an ex-Slade instrument, with it having been used by Dave Hill. It's also in their store on EBay - at over £2k. I asked them when the guitar was ever used by Dave Hill. They didn't know. They just said that it was ex-Slade. I told them it wasn't. I run a UK Slade website which includes a quite comprehensive page on their live gear at [url="http://www.slayed.co.uk"]www.slayed.co.uk[/url]. They just shrugged their shoulders at me. It is the VERY same guitar that they have tried to pass off as being Ex-Sweet. Andy Scott was apparently furious about the idea of playing a bright pink penis / testicles guitar on stage and claims that the guitar was ever used by him were withdrawn. Photo at [url="http://i.ebayimg.com/13/!BSd91K!BWk~$(KGrHgoOKiwEjlLmVWD3BKDW1OW!dQ~~_12.JPG"]http://i.ebayimg.com/13/!BSd91K!BW...#33;dQ~~_12.JPG[/url] [b]Perfect for the local Jehovah's Witness PopStar? Not.[/b] According to Ebay "The instrument was custom built for 70s Glam Rock Band Shawoddy woddy" Pure class!!

[quote name='bh2' post='686181' date='Dec 16 2009, 11:40 AM']Sonic blue ricky? OMG!!![/quote] The colour is known as 'Blue boy'.

This one's lived in its case for a good while and I've enjoyed taking it out for the last few shows. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=327Gb97Unlg"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=327Gb97Unlg[/url] Camerawork by John The Fire Hazard.

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I had one years ago (A Pro 1e) and sold it after a while because I couldn't get a dirty sound out of it, no matter what I did with it. It wasn't the bass for me, even though it was beautifully set up with gorgeous low action. A joy to play, but timid sounding. It was a single pickup model - a twin pickup Wal bass may have been what I needed, but I never ran into one. The only way to find out if ANY bass is the one for you is to try it through your own amps and give it a good sesh to see if it ticks the boxes for you. As to whether it is worth top dollar - that depends on your attitude to the amount of money that someone wants for one. The right bass is the right bass. The most I've ever paid for a bass is £2000 for a Warwick. Good luck.

I bought my Classic 4 from a guy near Derby who'd bought it for use in a blues band that sadly didn't work out. It's a rather limited bass with a dull, thumpy sound, which would have been just great for blues. It was a good choice. It is nearly impossible to get any significant twang out of it. One pickup is much louder than the other and the tone controls are a bit of a mystery. It does, however look really good in white and people sort of go "Ooooo" at it. Nice and retro and it matches my Gretsch. I mainly use it to play a few blues tunes and also Pink Floyd's 'Money' at the end of our set. It's just right for that. I doubt I'd take it in the studio.

My band had a new year's eve gig at the E**and WMC in Bradford a few years ago. We were on a rather nice £1000 through our agent, who'd handed the gig on to us after getting it passed on from another agent. Whatever. We turned up early and went in through the front of the rather nice club to get the stage door open. One of the committee marched me down to the back of the club to open the doors to load in. As we passed various people in the club on the way, he pointed to them and said what an utter shower of bastards they were. This was the rest of the club committee. Mmmm nice. We did our first 45 minute spot at a nice, very relaxed volume and went down quite well. We were asked to get a short 30 minute easy-listening spot together, before we came on to do our last spot... so we obliged. We noticed a number of the blue-rinse brigade were walking out. You could see by the way various parts of the club were emptying, in a definite pattern, it was down to the war between the factions on the committee. After the 30 minute spot, the Concert Sec came in and paid us off in full. He apologised and said the committee wanted to abandon the entertainment for the evening. So, we packed up and went. I was back in Bolton for about 12.30am. Unbelievable. A couple of days later, our agent rang us up and asked us what went wrong. I told him our setlist and what had been said to us since our arrival at the club.. We'd done an amount of work for him and he fully believed our side of it. He did make me ring the agent who had passed the gig to him, as the club were asking for their money back!!!!! In a slightly disgruntled fashion, I rang the other agent and duly repeated the tale. He said it had actually happened to a number of acts and that he was going round to argue face to face at the club. That put us off club gigs so much that we let our own agent go.

Basses have to have lots of knobs!!!

I've had one of the guys from Lt P****n play thru my Trace Elliot bass cabs. The band I was in was supporting them at a bash our drummer had organised. They whacked the backline up unbelievably. I walked onstage and turned it down mid-song. As to letting anyone else use my basses? No way.

Streamer Chrome Tone. Walnut Custom Shop Thumb NT.

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If you can find one of these (CORT), they are quite good. Tanglewood also make a fairly authentic looking one. [url="http://www.tanglewoodguitars.co.uk/products/default.asp?cID=26463297&sID=66460053"]http://www.tanglewoodguitars.co.uk/product...mp;sID=66460053[/url]

[quote name='BigRedX' post='582841' date='Aug 27 2009, 08:06 PM']Cool pics - thanks for posting those. Looks like there used to be a pickup by the neck - what's the story with that and also the extra hole in the pick guard?[/quote] I would have to check with Jim about that next time I see him. He's a bit vague on technical details, but would prob remember that.

This is one with a trem arm he made for a certain Mr Jim Lea:

Jim moved over to the John Birch EB3 styled bass in about 1976 because the original Gibson EB3 he was using was stolen from John Birch's workshop. Here's a couple of photos of it from my Slade site - supplied to me By John Diggins (Jaydee) who was giving it a good servicing at the time.

No.

Here's my SG Supreme.

I have all the basses I want. I would probably double up both my bass rigs if I was in bigger venues. That would mean 2x Hartke HA3500 amps / 2x 2x10 / 2x 4x10 and 4x Trace Elliot 715 combos