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Back to the Bottom End, this is the complete Victor Bailey bass part for the tune 'Blue Victory' from a live concert by a band that I believe is led by guitarist Gyula Bados. A request from a regular. Decent 90s fusion with Bailey playing the lead and soloing. https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/blue-victory-babos-bailey-carrington-jinda-szakcsi/

My response is usually 'I really enjoy playing in the band, but I have come to the stage in life that all I really want to play is downtuned stoner doom music' Just insert a genre of music you like that the band isn't playing and is never likely to play and you are fine.

It's been a little while now but as I recall the main issue we had was that soldering the pickups to the back of the blend pot was a frigging nightmare. The solder just did not want to stick no matter what we did. Eventually we managed to rough up the surface of the pot to give the solder a better surface to attach to and that seems to have worked. Other than that it was just niggly issues: Wiring the battery harness was a pain Actually fitting everything in the control cavity was extremely fiddly There's also a free-floating earth wire you need to secure to the inside of the cavity so the bare wire touches the back of the shielding on the scratchplate, and if you forget about it you'll get an almighty hum until you take it all apart again to find out where it is You can rewire the blend pot so that the knob turns the more conventional way (i.e. clockwise = front pickup, anticlockwise = rear) because for all his wisdom Roger Sadowsky is wedded to the idea that they should work the opposite way. Soldering the pickups to the pot was so frustrating that we forgot to do that, so now I have to turn the knob both ways on a gig to remember which way round it is Overall though I'm extremely happy with how it turned out.

Hate to say but I've done this and noticed no real difference if any.

I tend to play Reggae and Ska (and Funk/Disco with Bernard Edwards as one of my favourite players/tones - and he used old flats) so flats are at least the perceived wisdom thing to go for - but I then changed to roundwounds for a couple of reasons: Flatwounds seem like they would be smoother for your fingers but actually I found the sticky/grabbyness of them quite uncomfortable, roundwounds are actually more comfortable to play. An eye opener was hearing one of the Reggae greats Bass players (I think it was Flabba Holt, but not sure about that) saying he now uses roundwounds as you can EQ out the highs - but you can't increase highs if they aren't there with the flats. I tend to prefer old roundwounds that lose some high end but even with new ones EQ'd and then through an Amp/Cab it seems quite easy to make them sound like flatwounds but not vice versa. Perhaps I'm missing something with flats though, do they actually produce more of a classic motown and Reggae low-mid frequency 'thump' than rounds? I haven't seen graphs that scientifically demonstrate this, but my assumption is that actually there is no increase in those frequencies (if using strings with the same core) but the rounds introduce more higher frequencies. Is some of the perception because flats came before rounds? Rounds weren't widely used until the 1970s so anyone looking up what players used before then for Motown and early Ska and Reggae etc. will see that it was flats and try to emulate that? ...but If rounds were widely available back then they might well have used them and EQ'd the highs out when needed.

Yeah, I've left a good few bands before. One was easy to leave, as the controlling nature of the members meant that I just hated my last gig I did with them. That was a new years eve gig. I quit on the 2nd Jan via messenger ( I had Facebook at that time ). To steal a quote form above "The guitarist was a monumental bellend". The other band I left because there was a change in the line up that didn't vibe with me. I was just honest and polite with that one, and it was fine. I still regularly speak to the members / ex members as I get on with them really well.

You guys are going to get so much more pleasure from the cake than you will from my little demonstration. I've decided to try and catch you all out this time, you have to guess what you are hearing and get marks out of 10. I'm hoping to puncture some myths and demonstrate some truths on the way. I'll not say more in case it gives it all away. It'll be fun for you if you get everything right and hopefully informative if you don't. Maybe I should bake a cake for the winner

I regularly use a Capo and Cali76 bass compressor so adding the bass synth to that puts me firmly in the club. And before the bass synth came out I was wrangling the three usual suspect 3Leaf pedals trying to coax out those exact sounds so I’m happy to have it all in one little box. Do still use the MXR bass octave deluxe for straight octaver sounds though. Suited my basses better than the 3Leaf.

Yep great basses made in that period.

If getting a US Fender 5 string then a Fender Stealth String Retainer on the B tightens it up a bit. Easy to fit, requires no permanent changes, just undo the nut on the tuning peg, take off the washer, put on the retainer, put the nut back on.

I've had some of them too, big box Cali (I actually sold that to Scott) and some 3 leaf stuff (proton and wonderlove). I have no need for a pre/DI. I'd like to try the MXR at some stage though experience with the FI and C4 tells me I wouldn't actually use it.

I did web searches when I had the idea to see if I could find anyone else trying it - no results at all! This is what happens when I'm left unsupervised! I've done it on DTF and on the Low Tension ones. After they are still not as easy as others but it's a welcome improvement and as you say, they sound DEEEEEEEEP. Duck Dunn is still my favourite player and nothing else comes close when I want that sound.

Floppy B is usually a string choice problem rather than a bass problem. Crap sounding B is often a mix of both. I've always been confused with gauge choices in sets. The makers seem to be obsessed with tension and gauge tradition rather than considering the feel. So many sets have really tight feeling D and G strings but the BEA can feel very floppy. Tension and flexibility are not the same thing. When I was playing 5 strings a lot I would always get a 4 string set and then pick the right B for that bass. I often found the D'addario Prosteel 130 or 135 to be the best option irrespective of what the other strings were. Sometimes a tapered string and sometimes a normal one. Then the flexibility / playing feel of the B was a lot closer to the rest. I think I mostly had 40-60-80-100-130 and 40-60-80-105-135 depending on the bass. String maker tradition of going up 0.020 out of habit makes no sense at all. End up with a .125 B just because the E was .105 and the B flaps around like the Inflatable Tube Man!

Welcome to God's clean Earth No, seriously I can see your thinking. I love the sound of flats for recording, but at the end of the day, 90% of my time is playing live and playing live with flats is like having all your sound sucked into a deep sonic chasm. It's really down to how you comfortably hear your sound. We did a little duo showreel at the weekend and I always think I play too bright, but out front it sounds perfect and audible. I often compare it to when I play in the live tribute show against a digital piano, two Epiphone Acoustics, a Fender Strat and a drum kit, complete with up to four of them singing! It doesn't matter how lovely my sound is. It's always going to get buried under that lot from my perspective, but it always sounds great out front, which is what matters at the end of the day.

Well there's a novelty, never come across that before!