Guitar talk: acoustic, bass, classical, twelve string? You name it!

[Andrew L Weekes]

Ooh! Look what arrived today...

It's definitely beautiful and it's definitely big!

As a 'coffee table' book, you need a coffee table to support it, it's immense and a clear work of passion, looking forward to working through this.

 

[cutting42]

Ooh! Look what arrived today...

It's definitely beautiful and it's definitely big!

As a 'coffee table' book, you need a coffee table to support it, it's immense and a clear work of passion, looking forward to working through this.

Well done. I did debate getting this being a Geddy and Rush fan and famous player of Wal basses but it slid down the list of priorities.

 

[claire.foxx]

I found “the one” quite by accident. Walked into Guitar-Guitar because I am working with them on a customer pedalboard for my setup to do dual Bass and Guitar guitar duties a la Royal Blood/White Stripes (as I am outgrowing the Fishman Powerchord now) and getting into chaining POG/Kraken/Darkglass Duality/Alpha-Omega territory — and I saw an unusual bass, picked it up, it’s just a smidgeon over 2.5kg and as soon as my hands touched it I wondered where it had been all my life. The neck profile is a strange trapezoid 5th fret switch over (which you love or hate) the weight (or lack of) and the near perfect balance standing, sitting or slung behind the back, the fan frets, the intonation, the active pickup, arrangement with a thoroughly modern Darkglass tone shaping preamp EQ. Sonically everything about it is perfect, I can play without looking at my hands, I can sing and play without having half an eye on what I am doing, I can play about twice as fast and I can start to lose the pick and just use fingers from now on — it has a low B so it’s a 5-er. Its also headless, something I am seeing a resurgence. It’s so simple to play and so responsive and low slung it has upped my game considerably. I found all the boutique basses either too folksy, too prissy, too... too “nice”... this does punk/queercore and grinding metal — but with the kind of panache a faggot like me approves of.

After an hour I just admitted to myself this was mine. **** it, life’s too short and I have nothing better to do with my life.

All my other bass guitars are rolled into this one bass. Fretless duties may remain on the NS Upright but I am going back to one extended range bass guitar, for day uses. Because it’s not a cheap instrument I decided to sell my existing collection of inexpensive basses which have been upgraded or modded to pay for a majority of it... With the Chapman Stick and the Moog Prodigy just sold, the Vped VST pedalboard pedal just sold, drum kit “dog-terrorizer” returned, pretty much all of it feels like a fresh start for a new me. I feel like I have finally found an instrument that is not trying to kill my back every time I go to a session or rehearsal which at the moment is (3 times a week).

https://strandbergguitars.com/eu/product/boden-bass-prog-5-brown/

 

[Enfield boy]

Looks great but it’s got dots!!

 

[graystoke4]

well done Weekes but does it say why he got rid of the almighty Rickenbacker, so this is his book just cought the last end on planet rock , he is coming to england to sign them,,

 

[Andrew L Weekes]

I found “the one” quite by accident...

That is one stylish and unusual looking beauty. I count 5 knobs though, I thought that was verboten

Enjoy it, it looks amazing.

 

[Tony L]

I’ve never understood fan-frets, I assume there is a logical reason for it beyond making it harder to play?! Looks very nice though and I definitely like the ‘light’ bit!

 

[Andrew L Weekes]

well done Weekes but does it say why he got rid of the almighty Rickenbacker, so this is his book just cought the last end on planet rock , he is coming to england to sign them,,

Yep he was in London today, but would only sign copies bought as part of the event, which cost £60 for tickets. The Ric is the instrument he's most associated with in many eyes, but he played a Precision early on, and since the 90's the sound he wanted for Rush was better suited to the '72 Jazz bass that partly kicked this book off. He couldn't find another that sounded the same as the pawn shop '72, and that kicked off the whole interest in how they are made and how they've changed over the years.

My brother had a Rickenbacker copy, and that had a particular sound that I'm still fond of, despite being a cheap clone.

It's a great book, makes your arms ache reading it though, it's heavy!

 

[-alan-]

After an hour I just admitted to myself this was mine. **** it, life’s too short and I have nothing better to do with my life.

https://strandbergguitars.com/eu/product/boden-bass-prog-5-brown/

That is a piece of craftsmanship and art all rolled into one. Just hang it on the wall if you don't want to play it.
Needs no justification whatsoever. Hope you have a ball with that thing Claire

 

[claire.foxx]

I’ve never understood fan-frets, I assume there is a logical reason for it beyond making it harder to play?! Looks very nice though and I definitely like the ‘light’ bit!

https://www.novaxguitars.com/
https://www.dingwallguitars.com/history-of-the-fan-frets

That low B string gets a lot of love this way... it has an unnervingly low action and it does that cl-THOnk that I like that the Chapman Stick used to do but in a less all-life-consuming package... as for harder, maybe for 30 minutes then muscle memory does the rest. I’m already back to not looking at the neck.

There is a lot of really interesting tech in this, the odd profile headless neck is not curved but almost triangular — like a parallelogram it has a trapezoidal shape with a flat that traverses the neck across the back and gently encourages you to move wrist thumb location from low to middle to high positions about the 5th and 12th fret. Carbon fibre and stainless steel neck tensioning. The heel of the bass where knobs are is such that it rests against the thigh

At 2.7kg it’s a full 3kg lighter than my heavy ash fretless PJ bass and 1.3kg lighter than the black PJ fretless. And this is significant for me as I have been quite sore after a day of travelling with three basses. Now I am down to 1. I’m still working on tones I like, (i’m no longer in agricultural neck-vol/bridge-vol/tone territory) but the Nordstrand pickups and the Darkglass Preamp put it more in the Steinberger upright’s parametric dual polar pickup sound. But more aggressive and punchy. Steinberger is softer and smoother — what I want in an EUB.

 

[claire.foxx]

Looks great but it’s got dots!!

I know, like my NS bass when in a playing position I still cannot see them... I just don’t get the point...

Anyway the trick now is to disentangle myself from the world of gear and not look at anything else for a decade. There are way more basses out there!

 

[Yank]

I’ve never understood fan-frets, I assume there is a logical reason for it beyond making it harder to play?! Looks very nice though and I definitely like the ‘light’ bit!

The fan-frets are a side effect, the main design feature is that the scale lengths of the strings are graduated.

 

[claire.foxx]

That is one stylish and unusual looking beauty. I count 5 knobs though, I thought that was verboten
Enjoy it, it looks amazing.

Yeah as was pedals. I’m building a pedalboard too.

They could have cheated and gotten it down to three with stacked knobs, but bassists can be simple folk driven by visceral pleasures... knob twiddling being one... well in this case five of them.

I could have bought a used Wal I lusted after but really those things are just way too freaking heavy — once I was holding one I needed to sit: it weighed in at 5.4kg and it was physically huge, I like short scale basses esp. after muscle atrophy following hormone therapy affected reach... and yeah, i’ll never be Mick Karn, like I will never be Tony Levin on the Stick, so I might as well just be me; ask the right questions pertinent to what sounds I like and find my own way from now on.

StupidPlainObvs, really.

 

[graystoke4]

not bad £40 for the book and £60 to sign it , and let me point out rush are my fav band

playing Carress of steel , in my op the best they have ever made

 

[Andrew L Weekes]

...so I might as well just be me; ask the right questions pertinent to what sounds I like and find my own way from now on.

It's something I've come to realise, I'm working on a project with a work colleague at present who is a really talented multi-instrumentalist playing bass, guitars, keyboards and sax amongst others. I partly did it for social reasons, partly to push myself out of my comfort zone. It's been difficult at times as I'm not a great bass player and started out feeling like an imposter, but equally with practice I've found myself improving as I now have an incentive to play regularly, I'm enjoying composing bass lines and have even found myself singing, something I'd never in a million years considered possible or that I would have the confidence to do.

Reading the Geddy Lee book interview with Bill Wyman was fascinating, he's a very understated bass player and suffers the same hand size problem I have, hence the reason he plays short-scale, light basses. I don't have the hands of a bass player so many instruments are just hard to play, hence the reason I've found the Yamaha and the super slim Ibanez neck on my SR300 perfect for me. We don't all have to be Geddy Lee, the key is to enjoy it. Reading an intro to the new Divine Comedy album by Neil Hannon was equally confidence inspiring “The funny thing is,” Neil Hannon tells Apple Music, “for all my high-minded objectives in lyrics, I'm really just trying to sing in tune most of the time. You'd be surprised how hard it is.”

Good to know it isn't as easy as it sometimes looks

 

[Marchbanks]

...i’ll never be Mick Karn, like I will never be Tony Levin on the Stick, so I might as well just be me; ask the right questions pertinent to what sounds I like and find my own way from now on.

Mention of the Stick reminds me of this silliness I saw on a TOTP rerun lately. I can only imagine they saw a Stick and thought ‘ooh, I know what would look cool...’

How wrong they were.

 

[Tony L]

The keyboard thing player still looks cooler than the prat in shorts!

 

[Yank]

Imagine what Keith Emerson could have done with that thing.

 

[Marchbanks]

Imagine what Keith Emerson could have done with that thing.

I bet even he would have struggled to play the top octave on both keyboards simultaneously without falling over.

 

[cutting42]

I could have bought a used Wal I lusted after but really those things are just way too freaking heavy — once I was holding one I needed to sit: it weighed in at 5.4kg and it was physically huge,

There are three current versions:
Mk1 only 4 string

Mk2 4 or 5 string, biggest and heaviest

Mk3 4,5 or 6 string but at least a kilo lighter

They can vary with wood type as well but they will never be as light as your Stranberg