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Aw jeez, the latest installment of the Who/Zak drama. The lad must be getting whiplash(not a movie pun, BTW). Just put the whole thing to bed, Pete, Rog. It’s all way past embarrassing in the first place, and has been for at least 10 years…

I was randomly looking at stuff at work and then stumbled upon this beauty that was in another store in Winnipeg. Immediately jumped on it. When it arrived I didn’t even play it long when I booked it in for a full setup and asked the tech to check if the pickups were the stock CS60s. They couldn’t confirm 100% but based on the DC resistance readings, they safely guessed they were the CS60s.

The original white pickguard unfortunately was sort of warped and bubbled (looked like someone accidentally melted some parts of it?) so I swapped it out with a black pickguard. Classic black n’ maple look.

Absolutely stunning and an amazing complement to my 2014 Olympic white MIA P. I promised the missus this is the last one, at least until January.

I’m so stoked to own now two pieces of Fender’s arguably best era of the 21st century (2012-2016). I guess my next goal is to have a bass from each year??? Actually that might be a cool goal to have.

I put a Hartke neo 12 into old Hartke 12 combo when the original speaker started to go south. The tech guy at customer service said it would be fine even though it's 4 ohms and the original speaker was a 6 ohm. So it gets a little more heft from the head with the lower impedance.
I'm looking to gig with a small rock band, and all I really need is stage sound, I can run to foh via a SanSamp Bass Fly Rig.
Think this little guy is enough?

If you were going to choose one of these two, which one would it be?

Hello,

40 some years ago my teacher had me warm up on an exercise that started on C going up major then down minor landing on F (or maybe A) and going up and down a similar way through all the keys. I can't remember what book it was out of but for some reason Simandl sounds familiar. I'd love to find that exercise again but I can't find the Simandl books locally here in San Diego. Before I blindly order one can anyone help me find that exercise? Is it in Franz Simandl New Method Book 1?

thanks in advance

I've had this Fender bassstreet.com poster hanging on the ceiling over my work area in the garage since about 2001 when it was made.

Does anyone know where I can find a list of all the players pictured? I tried a few internet searches and came up empty.

It's pretty cool, 25 years old now...!

Hi,
I'd like to draw on your experience and ask for your thoughts on my plan to put together a pedalboard for practising at home and playing along with MP3s, entirely through headphones. Alternatively I might use this with a power amp and cabs. I don't play live anymore. I suspect it may be overkill, but I want to get the best possible sound out of my high-end basses. May I please ask for your opinions, advice, suggestions? I am not into cab-sim and adding distortion/grit.
Many thanks!

So, like the title says, I'm getting a custom build from Canadian builder Ian Ross. I ordered it before the current tariffs went into effect but it is not complete. Curious if anyone has a clue whether this will be impacted by the tariffs, as it will likely price it out of my reach. I've perused tariff schedules in the past and they are, to me, about as clear as mud. Any experience or insight welcome. Thanks!

BBB

Some random thoughts on a rainy, dreary Sunday. First off, Im not that old but at 59 I am " old enough ".

A few months back I thought I was done playing entirely as I hadn't touched a bass in at least a year due to some health issues ( back surgery followed by shoulder surgery )

Well, I've recently started playing a little bit again, basically 30 minutes a day and I will spend that time on either reading, time-groove, or learning/picking apart a tune and getting things as close to whats recorded as I can.

It's actually bringing me some enjoyment spending that little bit of time playing, enough so that I agreed to partake in a jam session focusing around a half dozen tunes or so.

What I am finding out is that I apparently have little interest at this point in playing with others or playing what others want to play. I am sitting here picking apart some tunes that other people that will be present at this thing want to play and have zero interest in these tunes. It's not that I dislike the songs, they just aren't things that I'd sit down and work on myself.

Its funny/not funny that 2-3 years ago I was so " in tune " with getting gigs and playing out that I'd basically sit down and learn whatever song someone threw at me and I'd spend a fair amount of time on it so that it would sound good on stage with others.

These days ? I really only want to spend time on the things that interest me.

A lot of this has to do with being older and more tired, but also has to do with the fact that I have higher priorities such as a dog, realizing I need to downsize and get out of my house, etc...etc...

That is all..like I said, random thoughts lol.

There was a laptop heyday when they had everything you wanted. Lots of I/O for monitors, speakers, power, card readers, ethernet, a bunch of USB ports, even Bluray drives.

But then at some point, usability took a back seat to Jobsian minimalism. You want to watch a DVD while you wait at the airport? You're gonna need a dongle for that. You want to transfer pictures from your camera to your computer so that you can share them? There's a donge for you. Is your workflow more efficient with more than one monitor? Well here's one HDMI out, and if you need more than that, guess what? That's right: it's dongle time.

In my searches for computers, it feels like there has also been a choice between durability and functionality. I used the card reader on my previous laptop enough that it was something I wasn't going to go without when I was shopping for my current one. But laptops with card readers were, for some reason, low end models with cheap plastic shells that looked like they'd break if you breathed on them wrong. I was ready to give up when I found the one that I ended up getting, an HP Envy that I'm pretty sure is a model made just for Costco.

The last couple years I've been looking to upgrade again, and it seems like the trend of laptops not letting you do all that much without accessories has gotten even worse. And durable options seem even rarer than they were.

I paused my search a couple months ago, but was thinking yesterday that I might like a nice calculator. Sure, our phones do that these days, but sometimes you just want the real thing. Apparently Sharp Corporation, which I've barely heard of, is known for their calculators, so I looked at their website. If they make calculators today, they sure hide that fact, but they do make ovens and TVs. Looking through their site I saw a link for laptops, and clicked it.

Damn if these are not exactly what I have wanted. They've got two models with a bunch of ports that also have card readers. And their whole gimmick seems to be that their laptops are hard to break.











They've even got ethernet ports, which I've seen a few people complain that they can't find on laptops these days.

A downside for me is that the SD card slots are microSD, because I do have a couple of regular SD cards, but at this point I'll take what I can get. Also, their docks aren't cheap.

Starting to drive me nuts with this 810e (I forget what year, but its the plywood version outside of the "dark years").

Check out the audio which is an iphone recording. Synth-ey sounding buzz, or fuzz probably more accurately when the held note decays. It goes away when the string vibration is muted; and isn't really audible when played with normal attack. It is definitely artificial and annoying.

Background: the fuzz follows the cabinet only. Persists with different heads connected to it. Fuzz is not present with same heads connected to other cabs (Aggie DB412, for example).

Thoughts / experience / diagnosis techniques requested. Thanks!

I probably don't have to explain which band this is based on, but here it is. Multitasking is hard. I apologize if it's already been posted. I looked and I didn't see it



I know some of you probably would be interested in this!

Hey guys,

53 year old Irish bass player here. I used to be a member of the now long defunct Activebss Forum in the early 2000's.

Just wondering are there any Other ex-Activebass members round these parts?

Nice to meet you all here at Talkbass.com and I look forward to chatting with fellow bass nerds.

I put a Paradactyl preamp in my Modulus Q6. First, though, a little backstory:

Ca 1999, I was not a fan of Modulus basses. I felt like they had a plastic-y sound. But, I was listening to an old Aquarium Rescue Unit live tape and it clicked. I really needed to get that sound, but it was beyond my means. The very next day, I got an email from a fellow Bottom Line'er selling a 1991 Q6 neck for a very reasonable price. The next step was to get a body for it and I had a friend, Larry Pogreba, up in Lyons CO, who is known for his resophonic guitars for the likes of Bonnie Raitt and Keb Mo. Larry had a big piece of a 100 year old mahogany barn door and he cut a body out of it and routed it for the pickups. I lived not far from Harry Fleishman, who hooked me up with tuners, a bridge, and the rest of the hardware. I bought some EMG 45DC pickups and got to work sanding and shaping the body which took a few weeks. Finally, I finished the body with some gunstock oil and put it all together and had a bass. Then, I swapped out the pickups for Lane Poors.



It was really fun to play and I got a lot of use out of it and developed a bunch of ideas about putting a modular system with removable plates with different preamps and output options, mono, stereo, EMGs vs. Lane Poors, etc. So I had a luthier cut the top of the bass where the control cavity was and shape some maple plates.



Eventually, I cut up the body up so much and discovered that the body/neck angle wasn't great. So, I contacted Jack Read about having him build me a body. He was game, but he had a burled maple Modulus body at his shop that a client had left because of the weight. The only thing is that it was a 5 string, but I sent Jack the neck and he modified the body to fit the neck and sent it back to me.




In the meantime, the Lane Poors sounded great but were very noisy. He and I went back and forth and I sent him back the pickups and he had them for a while and then, before he could get a new set back to me, he went out of business, so I went back to EMGs. Which I didn't really love. I moved on to other basses for a while and then bought some SGD Neo Sidewinders. I tried various preamps from Bartolini and eventually Glockenklang, but the sound was kind of lackluster. To be fair, the original mahogany body sounded better to me but wasn't practical in the long run. So the bass gathered dust for years. I thought recently about putting Zen Blades in, as they sound fantastic in my TBX with a John East preamp, but as I thought about it, I thought I'd try one last thing, which was to install a preamp with an active blend, which I have always preferred. It makes the pickups sound more alive. I've also enjoyed filter based preamps from my Alembic and Alembic equipped Starfire, so rather than getting another John East, I looked into an Underhill Paradactyl two band. Holy moly! Tonight was my first gig with it and it just brought the bass alive! After 27 years, it finally sounds like I imagined all that time ago. The Underhill is incredibly versatile, powerful, and clean. The bass speaks immediately and has a very authoritative low end. I had attributed the lackluster sound to the SGD pickups, but I think they work fine. It's been a hell of a journey!

I highly recommend Underhill. The construction is immaculate and robust. His systems are modular (harkening back to what I was trying to do 25 years ago), so different modules can be swapped in. I'm looking forward to trying some of the others. Excellent communication and very quick shipping. I'm a fan.

Current pic to be added shortly.

I got this back from my luthier yesterday and could not be more pleased. It turned out exactly how I designed it in my (very weird) head.

Specs:

Body: 2021 Fender Player Jazz (buttercream, tasteful light relic by a previous owner)
Neck: Recent model Fender Aerodyne P (factory second from Mighty Mite, was originally for a sunburst model which had a black headstock that matched nicely for this project)
Hardware: Hipshot Ultra Lite tuners and unknown high mass bridge
Pickups: DiMarzio Model J (hum-cancelling) with cream covers
Pickguard: ThreeStools black cat design in matte finish
Strings: LaBella Super Polished IMA
Controls: Standard VVT
Case: Generic ChromaCast

I have one on my board, and wanted to get a second for backup.

Problem was, I couldn’t dial in my sound from the new one. I assumed maybe there was something wrong, exchanged it, and the other had the same issue. A little anemic, a little darker. Even factoring in some knob differences and playing with the EQ, i just couldn’t get the sound of my 5-year-old VT DI on either brand new one.

What’s going on here?

....and yet here we are. Or were, some four odd years ago.

Jessie Jeanne Stinnett, the daughter of Jim Stinnett (yes, "our" Jim, the legendary bass educator, who is noted as having used Kaye's books in his teaching, as well as turning his daughter on to her legacy), performed in a show inspired by Carole Kaye. Hers was the only original music written for the show, with her brother and double bassist Grant helping with a piece called Legacy.



Kaye said of the performances:

“I was always thinking about different lines to make the tune sparkle and the singer sound good,” says Kaye, who is thrilled with the celebration of her legacy through the choreographic project. She adds, “That they want to interpret my line in movement — I’m blown away. It’s beautiful what they’re doing.”

Click to expand...

while Jessie said of Kaye:

“I didn’t know how far reaching her artistic presence was,” says the choreographer. “So many of Carol’s songs are the ones I listen to to feel happy. She would innovate lines that would pull disparate ideas together, set everyone on course, making songs feel funky or groovy, making songs hits.”

Click to expand...

1973 PBass, tone knob doesn't adjust tone, it adjusts volume.
I've seen this before, usually it's a shorted cap, right? I replaced the cap ... same thing; I replaced the pot ... same thing; checked all the wiring ... same thing; gave up and put in a whole new wiring harness (a nice one from staytunedcustomshop) ... same thing.
Can't for the life of me figure this out. This is the harness. Ground wire from bridge and the black ground wire from the pickup go to the pads on the back of the volume pot, white hot wire from pickup goes to lug 1 on the left on the volume pot.

The pickup is on a brass shield plate, black ground wires from the pickup are soldered to the plate.

Tone control is still a volume control. What else could cause that? What am I doing wrong?






Found a pic of a 71 with a completely different wiring scheme

Just an observation, I just got a bass with only a position marker at the 12th fret. Actually it's large and goes in between the 10th and 13th frets. It does have side markers.
I've never had an instrument without fretboard markers and was a little concerned about them not being there.
Turns out no problem can't tell they're not there for the most part. I guess I probably shoulda realised that beforehand that especially standing I can't really see them anyway but now I know for sure.

I've been on a long rig search, documented in another thread, that recently led me to purchase two Mesa Subway 1x15 cabs paired with a Mesa Boogie BD-800. After testing across multiple environments, with two different amps and two different basses, I concluded the cabs are not the right match for my playing style and EQ approach. I run highs and mids down with lows boosted, playing reggae and roots on a 5-string and 2-Tone ska on a 4-string. The issue presented as a flapping/wobbling sound on the low B and E strings at real-world volume. The Genz Benz Uber 410 I own ran cleanly under identical conditions, so the issue is cab-specific rather than amp-specific.

The most likely culprit is port overloading. I reached out to Barefaced and Alex pointed directly to their oversized port design as the engineering solution to exactly this problem, adding that if my Uber 410 and my previous Ampeg SVT/810 rig could handle what I throw at them, the Big Twin 3 (BT3) should as well.

So the BT3 is currently my frontrunner. Before I pull the trigger on a transatlantic purchase, I'd love to hear from anyone with direct experience with the BT3, or from anyone who has found a US-available cab that delivers the same thing...deep, clean, accurate lows that stay composed at high volume with heavy low-end EQ.

I must admit this is something that I hadn't done a lot on, except for the odd unison line. Having started to work my way through the heads of many Real Book tunes, I am beginning to see the light and think more like a horn player, as well as develop my skills further away from the money positions (half and first on DB and up to 5th fret on electric).

I regret not having done more on this, but there is always time!

How many of you practice the same, as part of your routine?

Regards to all

i want my bass tone to be similar to tatsu mikami and jason newstead, and so far the closest ive gotten is a zoom b3 with exciter, squeak and fuzz smile with a behringer hb01 wah pedal before it, if you have tips to get closer to that sound, i would love to hear it

Hi all. It's been a LONG time since I posted here. I live on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. I have a bass I am planning to sell and I'd like to get an appraisal somewhere within a 90 minute drive or so from here. That could be in the Boston or Providence area. Any suggestions?

What's rare about this bass is that it was owned by Marcus Miller. It's a 1974 Jazz bass. He sold some basses in 2013 to raise money for the UNESCO charity. Here's a link about that (the one I bought is on the far left)...

I have the case that came with it and a letter signed by Marcus.

This is a video of him playing it (that he references in the letter I have)...
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I have only changed the strings since I got it. I'd like to get a good estimate to see what I might be able to sell it for.

Any help appreciated. Thanks!