Search results for query: *

Something unusual has happened to my hearing over the past few days. A little background context first - back in January I had an infection in my left ear, which I was able to treat (mostly) with antibiotics. I've continued to have some unusual pressure behind that ear though. Over the weekend...

I'm making some changes to my practice space which will allow me to hang my basses up on the wall. I have 48" of space in which I'd like to hang 5 instruments, and I'm looking at this rack from String Swing. I've used their single instrument mounts in the past and liked them, but I'm curious if...

I recently acquired a Rickenbacker 4003, and have been playing around with the stereo output. I got a Saturnworks 2 channel mixer to blend the signal back together after running parallel effects, and I've been really pleased with what I can do with it. I picked up an ABY box so I can use this...

I have been playing bass since the summer before my freshman year of high school - 1998. I don't remember exactly how long it was after that that I saw a Rickenbacker bass for the first time, but it wasn't long, and I've wanted one ever since. 26 years later, I've finally made it happen. I...

I received this bass today in exchange for some shop work and soldering lessons with @Riff Ranger, who made the drive up to Eugene from Southern Oregon. This bass is a 1984 Peavey Fury, which is special to me for a couple of reasons - first of all, it's a birth year bass, which is something...

I began work today on a project I've been planning for a couple of months. I've never built an instrument before, but as this is the year I turn 40 (in less than a month) and my Dad turns 70 (in November) I thought it would be a fun project for us to work on together. Dad has a well equipped...

I am in the planning phase of my first scratch build. This will be a Telecaster-style guitar, using only woods grown in the Pacific Northwest (I hope to learn enough from this to make a bass in a similar style). My lumber for this is a 2" x 7" x 4.5' board of doug fir for the body, a 3" x 1" x...

Well, I pulled it off! The shaft of my neck pickup volume knob, I mean. Trying to get this push-on knob off didn't go exactly as planned... but fortunately I had the spare parts and a new soldering iron I was keen to try out anyway. The weather was nice enough out yesterday that I just set up a...

Over the weekend I had a discussion with the other two members of the band I've been playing with for the past 2 years and change. To shorten a long story, we all recognized that I had been disengaged and distant over the past few months, and recognized that it was time for a change. I slept on...

By this I mean the pickups themselves, not the cavity. I have a Yamaha BB735A that I love playing, but the pickups are unshielded internally and produce a lot of noise from EM interference (single coil hum too, but I'm less concerned about that for now). I've shielded the control cavity and...

I have a small pedalboard as well as a couple of amplifier heads, most of these have LED indicators on them telling me when they are on. This is useful but I have eyes that are sensitive to bright lights, and some of these LEDs are (to me) painfully bright to look at. If I need to make...

Polling because I'm curious where folks here land on this. I suspect that users of this site are more heavily skewed towards the self-sufficient end of this spectrum than bassists as a whole, but let's find out and discuss. No wrong answers here, select as many as apply to you.

I've put some DR Low Riders on my Ibanez Soundgear. These have a stated winding length of 38", which is just below the tuner post of the E string. Here's what this looks like on the bass. As you can see, the taper does start at the 38" point - but what I failed to account for is that the taper...

Yesterday I finally finished (well almost) a project I've been wanting to do for a while now. I have my brother's old Ibanez SR800, which he bought new in 1999 but only got to enjoy for a couple of years before he died from issues related to heart and lung conditions he was born with. Nate...

I spent a good portion of this morning working on a wiring job. For my first time it went pretty well... up until I went to tighten down the nuts on all the pot shafts, and I overtightened one. The pot moves now, and it works along the full range of the sweeper, but it doesn't move very...

I am making progress on a mod project to convert my late 90s MIJ Ibanez SR800 to fully passive. I've ordered parts, and now that some have arrived, I'm realizing that they are the wrong size. In researching this I've also come across some other factors that I hadn't initially considered when...

I bought a pair of capacitors off Amazon, needing only one for a mod project I'm doing to turn an active bass passive. I got .047 uf orange drop caps but I was surprised at how big they are when I opened the package (Amazon's pictures do a poor job of showing the relative size of things like...

I've posted about this project here a few times, and I've managed to piece together a draft of a wiring diagram. What I am aiming for here is a P/J bass using Wilde P46 and J45 pickups, with the bridge and neck pickups going through a series/parallel switch and a pickup selector switch and then...

I've got a lovely 1999 Ibanez SR800, made in Japan. Lightweight, neck feels like butter... but I rarely play it because I can't seem to coax a tone I like from the pickups. I've tried several different string sets, fiddling with EQ, but like many other owners of Soundgear basses from this era, I...

I have a 1999 Ibanez SR800 bass with stock electronics (see photo). I like the way this bass feels but the sound of the pickups is weak and thin – I’ve tried a few different string sets and none of them has really fixed the problem, so I am looking into pickup replacement now as a way to get...

Apologies in advance of this is the wrong forum. I noticed this in the midst of doing a string change/fretboard cleanup on my Yamaha BB735. My jazz pickup cover has some discoloration on it, with pretty obvious stripes running down between the pole pieces where my strings are positioned. I...

Last night I went out to see a show at a local venue here in Eugene to see Tony Levin's band Stick Men. This is a three piece with Tony, his King Crimson bandmate/drummer Pat Mastelotto, and Markus Reuter. Tony exclusively plays the Chapman Stick in this band, while Markus plays an 8-string...

This is my favorite question to ask at the end of the year. Looking back on the past 12 months, what is something (music/bass related) that you've done or accomplished that made you happy? For me, the biggest accomplishment was playing my first live show in over 11 years. For a variety of...

I was inspired to create this space for fellow parents of young kids by a comment in another thread (thanks @Riff Ranger). It occurs to me that as parents and musicians we often have an extra set of challenges balancing our responsibilities, and (if we're lucky) an additional set of joys as we...

Do you have any essential gig/rehearsal/practice accessories that aren't explicitly music related, but still make your playing experience better? Could be a box fan, a lucky charm, a drink stand... anything that makes your job a little easier, but that you WOULDN'T necessarily find on Sweetwater...

My drummer has started bringing a little Zoom recorder (similar to the H4N, I'm not sure exactly what the model is) along to our rehearsals and uploads the results to our private YouTube channel, which I've found very helpful both as a way to go over mistakes I make after the fact and as a...

I played a show last night with my band. This is our second show as a group, and before I joined them I had taken several years off playing shows so I am shaking off some dust still when it comes to gigging. We ended up being the last of four bands to play, this was a show at a bar where every...

Hey TalkBassers. I've got a question I want to run by the hive-mind and see what your thoughts are. I apologize in advance for creating a potential argument over tonewood (I know, I know). Please remember the words of Bill and Ted and be excellent to each other. I ran a little experiment...

This weekend's project has been a revamp of my "practice corner", which is a funny little corner of a room in my house that used to be part of the garage. When we bought the house, this corner had a shelf in it right under the electrical panel, but the panel was an older style that apparently...

I ordered one of these recently and have just now had a chance to plug it in and try it out. @Azure Skies does very nice work - the craftsmanship on this is flawless. I got this to tame down the muddy low end and sizzly top end noise. Current settings are as shown and I think it sounds pretty...

Tonight was the first night back at band practice after a 3 week break. I took advantage of the time off to make a few tweaks to my bass: new strings, filed the nut slots, better foam under the pickups so they'd raise up to the right height without wobbling, adjusted my preamp settings... I'll...

I'm sure this has been noted before, but some of the product descriptions on Nordstrand's website read like they were written by a rogue AI, or by a human practicing some real Hunter S. Thompson style gonzo journalism. For example: Ripping from the atmosphere of fat-slap angled-P tone, the...

Yesterday I braved the snow to go out to my local guitar shop, which had a bass I've had in my sights for a while now. I've never owned a 5 string before, and I haven't bought a new bass in almost 20 years. But when I played this one I was just so impressed with how it felt in my hands. It needs...

Hi Talkbass, I am very inexperienced as far as modding bass guitars is concerned, and not super savvy when it comes to electronics in general, so please forgive any questions here that seem like basic knowledge. I have a 1998 Ibanez SR800AM, an instrument that belonged to my brother. Invalid...

I'm playing a 20 year old Fender mexi P bass, a few months back I put some Labella Deep Talkin flatwounds on it. They've broken in very nicely with one exception: the D string produces more of a "mwah" sound than the usual punchy thump I get from the other three. Almost like the attack on the...