SAVE THOSE USED BASS STRINGS!

    If we are Bass players and I proudly am as I play just about anything with strings except the piano, and that doesn' t mean I don't try when I am near one.

  So, being a professional Bass Player, I can always use advice and specialtricks that others have used or know of, and one of those tricks were how to save your used strings, which I found in the booklet basically:"100 tricks Bass players know of and actually use"!

  I tried to locate it so I could spell the trick out for you and save you $30.00 for another set of strings the next time that you go to replace yours.

I have used a short Scale Kent Bass from Japan which I bought back in 1965 when my band wanted a Bass player and they were at a premium, I.E., there were none around!

  So, leaving my 1962 Gibson Les Paul Junior (SG) home I picked up a matching pair of 1965 Kent Short Scale guitars. (Short Scale means that the neck is about 4" shorter(30"long) than the one that put your friend's eyes out as you're playing like "Chuck Berry" did to "Doc Severenson", while the GOOD DOCTOR was doing a windup song , ending the 1 hour show of rock stars and basically :the pros!

  "Doc's", eyes opened and I thought they were going to roll across the floor as that was a heckova whollop in the lips when the Doctor was into blowing the front row back three rows through his trumpet.

   I digress, as usual and I will get back to saving your bass strings, instead of throwing them away!

  1.) Get you a pot of  "H2O" and half-fill it with the "H" and when you have it rumbling so the neighbors are looking out of their windows and porches wondering "when and where the LOBSTERS are going in"!

   2.) When you get it up to a real decent boil, coil the strings and tie them together with a few of them ties that electricians use when they use 100' of wire to connect a telephone 7 feet away!

   3.) Drop in your coil of bass strings, and what the opurpose of this excersise is go get all of the grime, dirt, bed-bugs, roaches (the cock type and NOT the short smoked type) out of the windings of the strings, and this will return a decent , if not much of the playability to the strings, and you may be fortunate enough to be able to play and hang on to these until another change, depending on your style of usage!

   4.) Take them out while still boiling with tongs,( the stainless style, not the swinsuit styles, you dog!) and let them dry and cool and you may hang them up for re-stringing a bass, and save the "crinkle" and I assure you, that you will be satisfied. I did that to a set of strings, after reading through the boohlet about the "Bass Tricks that Bass Players actually use", I put them up as I am rebuilding the Kent of 1965 which took a beating and kept on ticking, ala, "John Careron Swayzee".

   5.) There are no more steps as you string the bass, and do not forget : to restring ANY guitar, you must tie a knot in the tuner as you pass the strings through: like this: insert the string into and all the way through the hole in the tuner, and as you turn the tuner knob so that the tuner staff is rotating, the first thing that you want to see is the first part of the string rotating "OVER" your next legnth of string, trapping the following portion of the string under the first part onto the tuner shaft, then as you turn, keep it going down the shaft and keep trapping the loose end of the string under and between the shaft and the string knotting kit all the way up, (or you can use a square knot or a knot like you put in your daughter's hair before she leaves to school), after all the string will tighten up, right...??? NOPE!

  You will have to keep adjusting for tune and pitch for a dozen times per hour as you play!

  So, there are 2 nice tips for you from the great "Bass Playing 'ole Bass man' "....Rick!