[MIKE CONROY PLAYING ON A HARMONY H805 BASS]

PATRICK OGLE: Why couldn't I get this to work?

MIKE CONROY: Well it's --

PATRICK OGLE: What was my mental problem?

MIKE CONROY: I think it's just the jack is a little -- you know, it's probably been sitting around for a long, long time. There's probably like some dust or something in there and the connections might be a little bit corroded and it just needs a little bit of this [SHAKES THE INPUT JACK A LITTLE BIT]. You just shake it off and kind of.

[MIKE CONROY PLAYING ON A HARMONY H805 BASS]

PATRICK OGLE: So real technical stuff?

MIKE CONROY: Exactly.

PATRICK OGLE: So, you know, I said what I had to say about why I got this particular bass. What do you think of this little harmony monstrosity? This is an H805.

MIKE CONROY: Okay. Yeah, it's kind of neat. If you can get the -- The action's real high down here. I was trying to tune it up. I don't know if it's in pitch or it gets too high but it's [PLAYS A COUPLE OF NOTES] -- It gets a little tough to play up here. If you can tame that, then I'd say this would be a neat little bass. It's a real microphonic pickup so you can talk right into it sort of, which gives it sort of a unique quality. For one of my favorite guitars that I've had was a Univox High Flyer, and it had real microphonic pickups, and it just gives it a real different characteristic to the tone.

Yeah, listen to that pickups. It's very cool. I mean you can capture a lot of finger noise.

PATRICK OGLE: The reason I got this bass because I thought that I just wanted something to plan on. I don't really play bass but I thought that we would use it to write stuff on and --

MIKE CONROY: Oh yeah. It's always great to have a bass around the house.

PATRICK OGLE: And, you know, I thought I might even conceivably play it sometimes live because --

MIKE CONROY: Yeah, you could. If you can get this action down, that's the only problem. You can see it's. It could be a neck thing and we were talking about truss rods and that like I can almost stick my pinkie underneath there. We were just talking about truss rods before we started filming, and this one does indeed have a truss rod that you control through this little knob down here. It's that you can see that there's a little bullet with a hole on top, and you can just stick a real small screwdriver in there and just turn it [MAKES A SQUEAKING NOISE] this way or [MAKES ANOTHER SQUEAKING NOISE] that way, and just even that slightest adjustment could do the trick. But in -- you know, before trying that, what you want to do is try and lower the action which are these two screws right here, which unfortunately now this is a -- it's a flathead screw but it really doesn't have a head on it. It's just sort of a shaft with a -- you know, that sounds kind of funny -- just with a slot on top, and unfortunately this one over here, it looks like one of the sides is broken off, and so we're going to need to get like a pair of pliers and grab onto it and twist it down like that.

PATRICK OGLE: That's going to be a fun thing to change the strings on.

MIKE CONROY: Well, changing the strings won't be a problem. It's just lowering the action because what we want is this piece right here to just go down towards the body. Changing the strings is actually pretty easy.

[MIKE CONROY PLAYING THE HARMONY H805 BASS]

But it's -- Yeah, it's kind of neat. It stayed in tune the whole time that we're filming this.

PATRICK OGLE: Yeah.

MIKE CONROY: Since I got it in.

[MIKE CONROY PLAYING THE HARMOMY H805 BASS]

Yeah.

PATRICK OGLE: So basically, when I tried to plug this in and get to work, I just should jiggle the chord.

MIKE CONROY: [LAUGHING] Exactly. [LAUGHING]

PATRICK OGLE: You know. Yeah. That's great.

MIKE CONROY: Yeah, and what one is going to do is take some of this contact cleaner and just spray that in the pots a little bit to loosen them up because they're -- They're kind of -- I think there's a lot of gunk in there. They're real tight. There's a lot of gunk around the sides here, and I don't know exactly what that is or what that might be but I'm just going to spray a little bit of this in here [SPRAYS SOME CONTACT CLEANER ON THE POTS], and I can kind of feel these are just old, old parts that are not, you know, the highest quality that they had available at the time, so they tend to get a little corroded.

PATRICK OGLE: Yeah. I mean Harmony made -- I think at one point they were the biggest guitar maker in the world.

MIKE CONROY: Were they really?

PATRICK OGLE: But I think that...

MIKE CONROY: So many different [OVERLAPPING]

PATRICK OGLE: They weren't necessarily known for their high-quality instruments. But you can find some that are tad cool but I mean --

MIKE CONROY: Yeah, they're neat and they definitely have like a kitsch value to them for sure. Yeah, see here that's kind of -- It's a little better, and that's yeah the tone knob [AUDITIONS A FEW NOTES]. The tone knob works. [AUDITIONS A FEW MORE NOTES] Yeah, not too bad. Yeah, I'd say this is a nice little find that you got here.

PATRICK OGLE: For 65 bucks.

MIKE CONROY: Not bad. Not bad at all. [PLAYS A FEW NOTES] Yeah. If you want, I can go get a pair of pliers, and we can try to get the action down.

Yeah, I don't know if these are going to turn. There we go.

PATRICK OGLE: [SOUNDS LIKE] Got to say what - Down from what it was is better.

MIKE CONROY: Can you get in here?

PATRICK OGLE: Yeah.

MIKE CONROY: I'll try to do that. I'm just worried I'm going to break. I'm sure this is what happened with this one. This is that -- It just does not want to go. Let me get a little lubrication here. You know, I'm just going to go straight for the little pliers here and let's see if -- And I'm going to have to do that for the other ones.

PATRICK OGLE: Did it move?

MIKE CONROY: Yeah. It spun a little bit. Yeah, just a hair. I don't know if that's going to do the trick though. I really think we're going to be spiked with the --

PATRICK OGLE: Leave the action where it is?

MIKE CONROY: Or we try to adjust the truss rod. I don't know if we're going to be able to get this down enough even if we put it down all the way but it's worth a try. Yeah, it's a little bit better. It's a little bit more playable now. Yeah, it's got a little [SOUNDS LIKE] tighter there. It's real neat, real neat.