EMG456

This pic is very similar to the last one but the eagle-eyed among you may notice the little rout in the body at the end of the neck to accommodate the truss rod wheel. This means that the neck is now installed on the body. I notice also that the excess "headstock" has now vanished.

SB 1000 was my main bass late 70s to mid 80s but I haven’t had one since then. These two are giving me a huge attack of Aria GAS!

Terrific band, great songs, great arrangements, great guest musicians and yes, Curt is a great bass player. This is from the Sowing the Seeds of Love era, with Oleta Adams in the band. Curt playing Pino's lines with aplomb.

Interesting - my Jazz 24 is my favourite Jazz Bass - I use it out a lot. I'm very much a "full range" kind of a guy so I like the snap and fizz but I thought to myself, "How can it be too trebly with the tone right off?" So I went and plugged it in and checked - you're correct. Even with the treble pulled right back, there is still a bit of the very high end there. A passive setup would likely get you what you want but cheaper, maybe just roll off the top on the amp or an eq pedal? I'm not normally a big fan of fixed frequency" Treble, Mid, Bass" preamps but I do think that this one is well judged and useful so if you do change it out, keep it in case of re-sale. Oh, also, if your cabs have tweeters, try attenuating them if possible or disconnecting them if not.

You beat me to it there. It’s funny how the Mac myth persists especially when they’ve all been built for years now with similar architecture. Yes, design does count and for years Apple had that aspect sewn up but there are now many premium Windows based machines available which look and feel every bit as good. You will almost certainly get more for your money if you go Windows but what OS you buy is really just down to personal preference.

Anyone here get this? No spare cash atm but I was sorely tempted. Looks like it could be a really nice bass.

Stop it- I’m getting really impatient now! Very nice.

Fantastic- time to dig the Ric out!

I find this an interesting thread... I'm not really a Fender kind of guy but I recognise their solid place in the history of the electric bass. That said, for whatever reason, I ended up gassing for Jazz Basses a few years back. Went into GuitarGuitar in Glasgow because they had a limited run CS 64 Jazz bass in Dakota red with a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard. It *looked* terrific. the very helpful guy brought me a selection of Jazzes to try - the CS, Sadowsky, Lakland Darell Jones, and Squier VM. The Custom Shop Jazz was a huge disappointment - clumsy, woolly sounding and generally unresponsive. It wasn't helped by a terrible setup which actually made it feel as if the bass had genuinely been lying around unloved since 1964 but I can usually see through those issues if the instrument shows promise. The Sadowsky was obviously good but a bit soul-less. There were two winners - the Lakland and the Squier and honestly, whilst they were different, they were both a joy to play and hear and I would have played either of them in any situation happily. And this brings us to the nub of the matter. Leo Fender designed his instruments to be easily assembled by a largely unskilled labour force. An amalgamation of identically shaped parts of similar materials is as likely to be good or bad whether it is done in a factory in Indonesia or a (Custom Shop) factory in the US. And make no mistake - the sheer numbers of Fender Custom Shop instruments which are flooding into the UK (Multiply by all of Fender's other international markets) makes it obvious that this is not the product of a nice, cosy workshop with a few talented luthiers hand crafting impeccable instruments, but rather a large volume, mass production facility. I'm not saying that Fender don't employ some truly excellent luthiers - they have a history of doing so - but the emphasis of effort in the Custom Shop is focused on finish and appearance. You're paying a lot of cash to have someone lovingly beat up your new guitar so that it looks old. My Jazz Bass gas was fulfilled three times over at a fraction of the cost of a Fender Custom Shop instrument so I'm likely to be Custom Shop free for the foreseeable future - I just don't see the value in them - but of course people are attracted to instruments for many and varied reasons and make the choices that are right for them. And of course the appearance of some CS instruments can be very compelling...

I'm blissfully ignorant as to how they are done but can confirm that whatever factory in Japan that was making Ibanez in the 1970s could do it too coz they're on my 1978 Antoria Fretless P bass. (black, not metal) I like them because it still has the look of an unlined board but the player gets strong guidance on where the notes lie. Particularly useful if you're launching yourself into a tune that starts somewhere away up the neck!

Mr C has been busy as ever in the workshop and has just sent me this pic of the neck/ fingerboard. Side/ top partial fretlines and position dots are in some kind of metal alloy and look great to my eyes. You can also see the 5 piece laminate of maple/ wenge that the neck is made from at the "headstock" which of course will be disappearing as this bass will be headless.

If you want the amp to be quieter when you're driving it hard, there used to be devices you would put in the speaker circuit that would soak up that power - had a quick look on line and they are still being made although mostly not cheap. Search for amp attenuators. Or get a less efficient cab. Or, how are the speakers wired in your cab - if in parallel then maybe they could be rewired in series to present a bigger load to the amp - no idea if that would affect the tone or not but as long as the effective resistance was within the amp's capabilities, it might be worth trying?

I don't know you Andy, other than reading some of your posts on here but I suspect that although you are asking this question, you already know the answer- the time has come to take a break. I've done this before- I've been playing the bass since school in the 70s and at a point just before the millennium, I had had enough. I wasn't enjoying gigging, wasn't getting a buzz out of original material so I wrapped it in. I did no gigs for about 5 years and the break did me good. If you feel that you need to liquidate the value in your gear then plan it carefully so as to avoid regret later on down the line. For me, amps, cabs and effects would be the first to go - you won't need them and if you ever do again, the gear you'll be able to buy will be louder/ smaller/ lighter than the stuff you got rid of. If you don't have one however, get yourself a good practise amp - ie one that really does sound like a big rig only quieter - if it takes headphones and an aux input that's all you'll need. Basses to me are more personal and I form a greater attachment to them. You may be the same so work out the one(s) you would save first if the house was on fire and keep them. If it was me, I'd need to keep a fretted and a fretless - you'll have your own criteria. Also bear in mind that older instruments are likely to retain their current value or increase whereas newer instruments will still generally be on a depreciation cycle. Life's too short to be unhappy. I wish you well.

Did you make them yourself - could you do left hand ones to order?

@MPU any left hand ones? It's a habit I can't break- I've always played my right hand Steineys with left hand strap pivots but I don't have enough and so end up having to swap them around all the time.

I'm running Cubase 9.5 on my Surface Pro 4. It's an i7 with 16Gb ram and 512Gb ssd. Use it with a MOTU Ultralite Mk3 interface and if at my desk a big 27" touchscreen monitor. It's working well so far and it is also running the rest of my life - ie not a dedicated music machine. Robin Vincent runs a very informative Blog on using the surface range for music here - http://surfaceproaudio.com/ Laptops and in particular ultra mobile devices like the Surface line will never match the processing power of a big, dedicated desktop but may well be enough to get the job done especially if you apply some tweaks to help optimise for audio.

What a great story! I also remember the desks with the inkwells to take the little glass jars of ink! The perfect footnote to your tale would be something like “and later, Brian May built his famous guitar from the wood in that floor and that’s why it has that deep red colour.” 😀

I don’t know the technical details but it’s basically a piece of wood that’s dyed using a vacuum process to draw the dye right into the wood grain. On a figured piece of wood, the different parts of the patterns have different densities and so draw less or more dye, which gives the overall effect that varied,organic,natural look.

It is indeed something to look forward to but of course it's also a test of patience. In fairness to me, I do have form with this so I don't treat the decision to have an instrument built lightly. There has to be a requirement which isn't met by any of my existing instruments and I'm quite careful with the spec and choice of builder so that there's a good chance that it will match what I'm looking for. That has been successful so far and all four instruments I have had built are still with me. Only once did I cave in to the frustration of the wait and that's why I now own two Chapman Sticks!!

snap!!

'On song' is pretty comprehensive for lyrics, chord sheets, setlists. You can sync all band members tablets together, project lyrics to a big screen, connect your pc for editing. It does metronomes, audio playback, quick key changes etc. etc. etc. I only use a tiny part of it's fuctionality but it's good.

Haha - yes. very good! If you tilt your head to the left, the red area on the top looks like some scary character from Donnie Darko! In fairness, a lot of those extreme figurings along the centreline will be covered over by tuners, bridge, pickups and fingerboard. Still going to look pretty amazing though.

Next, the body has been assembled and preliminary shaping has taken place - this is going to be good... and the back... And that's where we are at the moment. I can't wait but I just have to. Exciting!