GarethFlatlands

After much complaining of having nothing to do at the weekend, I dug out my old Vintage 5 string bass which I haven't touched in many a year. I bought it in about '99 and used it for a year or so while I played bass with 65daysofstatic before it got upgraded to a Warwick Rockbass. It was a pretty good bass apart from the dire active circuit and pickups so I ripped them out and put in some Kent Armstrongs but left it very much unfinished and it's been sat behind my bed for a long, long time. I thought I'd finally try and address the little problems I've had with it and see if I couldn't make it workable again as it seemed like a waste of a usable bass. I also figured I'd do a photo journal type thing to see if it helped anyone or if I was doing anything massively wrong. Depending on whether or not it inspired me, I thought I'd ask for suggestions on what to do next with it, eg do I stick a nice 2 band EQ in there or leave it passive? Does anyone fancy cutting me a nice bone nut to replace the crappy plastic one? That kind of thing. First things first, there was a lot of built up dirt on both the frets and the fretboard. The strings also hadn't been changed in probably 7 years or so. So, old strings off and masking tape next to each side of each fret to protect the board. Then, using fine grade wire wool, I cleaned the frets with some vigorous rubbing. Spot the difference between old, dirty fret and nice shiny clean fret. Once done, the fretboard was treated to a rub down with lemon oil. A fair amount of dirt was being picked up by the cloth (as you can see) so I re-oiled it every 5 frets or so and moved to a clean bit of cloth. Again, I used a fair amount of elbow grease to lift as much of the muck as I could. Board oiled, I left it for 20 minutes or so to dry and grabbed a coffee.....

There's an Encore P bass in the lounge. That's me done apparently.

[quote name='Kongo' timestamp='1353638776' post='1876927'] I guess I could flip your question around and say "Why play fretted if you don't slap"? :-P [/quote] I was being facetious which I don't think really came across. For the record, I have one bass which I actually play which is fretless. And while you can play normally and not put in a lot of 'mwah' and vibrato, the harder thing for me was not doing it all the time.

[quote name='Kongo' timestamp='1353602649' post='1876499'] Also might be worth adding here, a fretless bass can just be played as is. You don't HAVE to slide and have a huge amount of "mwah" at all times y'know. :-P [/quote] Then why have a fretless in the first place

[quote name='umph' timestamp='1353540388' post='1875971'] Great stuff dude look forward to having it in! what model is it? [/quote] GT1, probably another month or 2 before it needs to come in as I've not played it much this year but usually gets done around August/September time. I usually use JJ EL34's.

[quote name='Conan' timestamp='1353600204' post='1876459'] To be fair, I'm not sure that's a terribly good example. I find it quite hard to pick out what he's playing - especially when he is playing in lower registers. Would that sound cut through a dense mix? I have my doubts. Nice playing though! [/quote] The bass is quite prominent in the mix on the quieter stuff but isn't too clear in the heavier sections because of the dense guitars. Give their stuff a listen! This one is off 'Valley of Smoke', good album.

The guitarist from my last band had a 4 channel amp with one channel on full gain, full treble and all the other tone controls on zero in honour of this video. I made him a vallnott Dymo label for his footswitch.

I just use basic Levys ones that go for about £15, never had any problems with them. I still use the 2nd one I ever bought back in the late 90's on my main guitar. The Bear ones do look nice though.

Dean from Bedford Guitars has set up my last 2 guitars, I've known him for ages and he's learnt his trade extremely well over the years doing guitar tech work for some big name bands. I'll be taking the Matamp there for it's next re-tube.

Check out Intronaut's bassist Joe Lester. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMcj7x-J96o"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMcj7x-J96o[/url]

Phwoar. Depends on the price but yeah. Nice.

I'm not actively playing bass at the moment, just guitar in a band so that made me hold off. Still tempted though. I'll have another think about it today.

Someone mentioned it a thread called 'Bargain!' in the 'General Discussion' section but yeah, very good deal. It took a lot of willpower not to order one last night.

Watching it now, they still sound pretty good but damn they look old.

Heavier music never sounded too good on Jools when I used to watch it, which is a shame as it was often one of the few places you could see it on terrestrial TV way back when.

I had a go on one ages ago, there were some good sounds on there and an expression pedal would have made it good fun.

Guyatone SV-2?

Never heard of them before, but now I instantly want one.

Alembics. Can't stand the design, they look horrific and the price tags are equally painful. All the more annoying as in every vid and sound clip I've ever seen, they sound amazing. Really nice, full tone with a good zing to the top end but very balanced.

I haven't found the monotron on it's own to be very musical but it's a very good tool for learning about how basic synths work without downloading a VST and getting bogged down in 50 controls. It's also good for noise making and filtering external sounds so overall, well worth the £40. I'll check out the other ones mentioned but I know the tenori-on is very expensive. Might be time to get a smartphone and some synth apps.

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1350546597' post='1840219'] You know, this sort of points out a glaring gap in the market for a REAL pedal compressor! (with metering please)... I'm not much of a hotshot when it comes to wiring etc but maybe I should learn! [/quote] The only pedal comp I can think of with metering is the MXR, even the higher end stuff like the FEA pedals don't have it on. Get your designing hat on!