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I've never heard Will Lee "disappear into the mix" and neither does my Sadowsky MV5 Jazz. IMO when basses don't cut through it's due to user error. When they haven't been EQ'd correctly or when the signal chain isn't working in harmony.

Is the colour Daphne Blue?

So I've made a tool to hold everything safe, secure and flat. It's now adjustable and is designed for 9.25" radius necks. Its easy enough to make it for flatter or rounder necks. I can move and adust the position of everything to keep it balanced. I've made it so it fits a guitar neck as well, so there's two clamps on the drill. This is a broken Squier neck from something. It appears that somebody drilled through the neck and out through the fretboard (wasn't me). Using this as a test to learn from. This is the 5mm drill and the laser guidance. I know the depth is 18mm as I already tested it. First 5mm dowel And all four done The lesson to learn here is don;t make the dowels too short First drills done. Drill, glued and inserted. Now we leave it for 24 hours to dry. I'll probably cut the dowels with a Dremel and then file down the tops by hand (carefully). Rob

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=qBU4gWk09Sw&si=rj7GT34DsFAgo6EB Moses Yoofee Trio

Very nice looking!

I agree with @TimR it's a long time since I played HtoH but I'm pretty sure my bass line included a lot of what the brass section were doing. In a lot of songs over the years I've found a lot of the original bassists playing things musically wrong but those things survived the edits and are ther in the original rerecording. Famously Jean Genie contains quite a 'few slips' including in the bass riff that runs through most of the song. Trevor Bolder the bassist says he can't remember what he played. The whole idea of original is quite a blurred vision of music. Is the 'original' the first take, what the bassist played or something the composer wrote down before the session man walked in? Is it the album version or the single version? Or maybe the version wher the original bassist played the wrong note? I think those of us who have played in multiple bands probably do it differently. We've often got a lot of songs to learn in a short time often in bands that prove to be unstable/short lived and with people who work full time so rehearsals are a luxury. I'd have 'learned' this as part of a batch of 30 songs and I'd probably have known 10 of the songs. I'd never heard the Black Crowes before. Learning would have been lots of listening followed by downloading the chord sheet and initially just playing the rhythm and the root notes and making notes of any fills, stops and stabs etc. The aim would be to be able to go through the first rehearsal with a firm base from the rhythm section so the rest of the band can do their stuff without any startling errors. If it worked I'd take that to the gigs. I'd also know that the band might be missing some of the instruments or that the drummer would be playing four to the floor and I might add in bits to the bass line not in the original. Each song sets up musical challenges and with limited abilities I do my best. Set lists often change and songs get dropped so with 20 songs getting things 'correct' is a waste of time, if the songs last I'll add in refinements but this is often based upon what the rest of the band are doing. Like @Al Krow I take a pragmatic approach. Go Your Own Way is a good example. There are at least three guitar parts in the intro and I've played with drummers and guitarists that struggle with the intro. I've variously started the song playing one of the rhythm guitar parts on Bass and I've also played it properly. It's got that lovely run at the end and initially I played the notes all 'wrong' but with the rhythm and feel of the original and nothing that would clash with the guitarists solo. Later I went back and learned it properly but I doubt a single band member noticed and the audience not at all. It's great to sometimes learn things note for note and you learn loads by doing it but criticising people by describing it a lazy isn't seeing the bigger picture IMO Now I must go and learn the proper ending to that Monkees song btw it's the Black Crowes in the original spelling, couldn't resist it

This is the way I do since so many years as my ears are meant to hear mainly from the front 😂 , but it seems that musicians ears are designed the other way round as they always put their amp and many cabs in their back, or maybe they listen through their butthole... 🤔🤪 Joking aside it's simply a thing from the past when there was no P.A. or F.O.H., so use your amp the right way from now on @ped. 😉

I was able to try one out recently and this post sums it up perfectly. It's very subtle in what it does, you're not going to switch it on and dazzle anyone with an obvious effect. But it's more of a feel thing, it's still very much your tone but somehow bigger, more 3 dimensional, with a subtle compression that slots the bass into the mix a little easier. It's one of those units that, I imagine, some people won't see (or hear) the point of and others will consider essential. It's neither a drive, EQ or compressor but it has subtle attributes of all 3 that adds a pleasing something to your sound. It's one of those things you need to try for yourself to see if it works for you as there's not really anything else to directly compare it against.

Something like this

This cropped up on my instagram stream. It's not often that you hear one of these played by someone who knows how to play an acoustic upright bass - to my ears this is a really usable tone if you wanted an amplified acoustic tone for a gig, and Marcus reckons there's no extra tone-shaping going on here. Maybe it's the amp. Whaddaya reckon?

The band in question had a very dense sound and the two guitarists would want to hear an on-stage mix that sounded as close to the recording as possible. OtOH I was quite happy so long as I could hear the drums so I could tell I was in time and the vocals so I knew where I was in the song. Being able to take the bass guitar out of the foldback certainly helped with the on-stage clarity for the other members.

Still worth seeing, Mike Clark still quite dynamic and Chris Severin sounded fine on a Seven String schecter. I'd go again, specially since I might scrounge another guest list spot from Mr Clark.

I mentioned artistic freedom and reworking with reference to projects that are avoiding playing songs as was originally composed on purpose. That is separate and apart from projects that look to nail an original note for note. I'm not suggesting that hitting a wrong note accidentally should be passed off as an interpretation,by all means it should be corrected.

Turn the tone control down?

Nothing out the ordinary to me. Why not arrange a rehearsal and see how it goes?

Parental Guidance - Judas Priest

You can't have it both ways. You brought up the notion of entire reworking/artistic freedom and then claimed we were discussing one semitone. Make your mind up. Interestingly, we play this number in my soul band. Our keyboard player was playing the major third on the way up as well as on the way down. We had a quick word and played him the Otis original and, being a sensible grown-up, he didn't try to double down or claim he was "interpreting" it. He just said "Thanks, chaps. Got it" and played it right from then on.

I do that at rehearsal where we don't PA the bass, and it works well. However on stage I've actually used it next to the drummer but pointing away from him and towards me, so that his monitor mix isn't muddied by my amp. Given that I'm off to the side with nobody else next to me, I think it gives the rest of the band less bass bleed and a cleaner stage sound.