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Some Latin music Poncho Sanchez - Short Dog |Tony Banda

Not quite, it's short scale 29" but the difference isn't too noticeable.

I bought a flight cased Peavey 215. The seller helped me load it into my hatchback, but when I got home I found it was so heavy I couldn't get it out of the boot!! In the end a neighbour had to help. I was very red faced after this one. There were 2 gigs, one was called Blues On The Farm and the other was called Blues At The Farm. I went to the wrong one! I turned up at Blues On The Farm in Billericay to discover I was the only person there. The band was waiting for me at Blues At The Farm, in frigging Chichester, 156 km, a 2+hr drive and 4 counties away!!!! It was a festival and fortunately the 2 bands after us were already there and didn't mind going on early!!

Yup, I’ve always left it as ‘I’m the sound man’ and sometimes I need a little more without tweaking the desk. And the desk is set for me to have the stomp at 12 o’clock generally. Possibly need to rethink that logic…

I disable the volume knob for this exact reason!

Scott's bass lessons is very good, you'll learn a lot there but if i were you I just would take a couple of lessons to start up from a good teacher. When i started on bass there wasn't internet and I started with a bad teacher.. I took lessons for half a year before i realised this teacher wasn't very good.. So i found another teacher and it seemed i had learned a lot the wrong way. Do I had to unlearn that and learn good techniques. So to learn more efficient, find yourself a teacher (at least for the beginning) and just continue with Scotts bass lessons. Have fun, keep on practicing and good luck!! :)

My HX Stomp ‘died’ during a gig. Lights on but no output. 3 songs left so pulled my cable out and went straight to the desk (small pub, no back line). Spent the rest of the gig wondering how expensive it was going to be, and then how I was going to replace it for the wedding gig we had the following weekend. Got home, had a sleepless night, but in the morning realised I’d pushed the volume down when I put the tuner on! 🤦‍♂️. Did make me realise that a ‘spare would be a good idea!

Ashes to ashes - David Bowie

OK. . . . a few years back, I did buy a Thumpinator, but either it was broken or I didn't have a problem in the first place, because I didn't see or hear any difference.

Possibly a really dumb question, but is there any way to plug headphones directly into the jack of a bass for amp-free practice? I have one of those MightyAmp plug-in thingies which works fine, but just wondered if there's a simpler (or massively more complicated?) solution. I feel like I should already know the answer to this question but my electronics knowledge is fairly hopeless! I'm sure if it were something simple we'd all be doing it already. Obviously you need something to power the headphones and boost the signal, so a plain passive bass is out. Would a normal active/pre-amp set-up work that way? Is there a readily-available electronics package that would work? Ideally something just using a normal 1/4" jack and 9v/18v batteries, no midi or weird cables and such. Purely hypothetical, money and luthiery skills notwithstanding.

I'm a fan of the Sadowsky preamp pedal. With my eyes shut I could almost mistake my Cort for a Sadowsky. Flats beef up the tone of a bass. If that's not the sound you're after then they won't be any use to you, but if you want a full blooded thump, to strengthen and reinforce your tone, then flats will be perfect.

Forgetting that I’d strung a bass with BEAD strings (as an experiment prior to buying a fiver) and trying to tune it as EADG. Wondering why the PA was dead and, in the process of trying to track down the issue, turning up every gain and volume knob to max before spotting that the master Mute button had been pressed and….

Ive never felt that either, but I do get caught up in the hype sometimes, especialy if it's something I feel could benefit me. HPF's definitely one of them. There have been times where im just reading posts and see a throw away comment of something and it just clicks, I have to get one. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not.

I've bought stuff over the years that I thought would be a good move. Sometimes I was right and sometimes I was wrong, but I've never bought anything because of peer pressure or because "I felt I ought to".

See what I did there..?

Personally I love flats on a jazz bass. I've got a second jazz bass just for playing with flats... It has La Bella flats and I love them! Now TI Flats... I loathe them! Lots of people on here love them but I just couldn't get on with them at all: sticky, expensive, thin and just did not sound good (for me) at all. I'm sure in the hands of others they do sound just as good as everyone says but for me they are just lifeless, sadly.

Just re-listening to your sound clips Johna and this band is so blooming good. Dave

Curious what Sadowsky model you tried?

Having owned this beauty for a fortnight now, I have to say that it not only looks stunning, but plays beautifully and sounds just like a good Spector should! 😎 I'm impressed with the onboard Darkglass Legacy preamp too - a decent attempt at a Haz clone for sure...

Two of my basses have split-pickup outputs. My Epiphone Zenith bass and my Rickenbacker 4003 (Rick-O-Sound). I normally use a mono effects chain setup from the mono out. In order, Tuner (Boss TU-2), Compressor (MXR M87), Distortion (Electro-Harmonix bass Big Muff Pi), Pre-Amp (Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI). I also have a Zoom B1 four multi-effects processor and a Joyo A-B selector pedal that I can use if needed. The output then goes into either my Mark Bass Little Mark III, my Ashdown ABM C210H-500 EVO III, or direct to PA. I want to start experimenting with a split-pickup setup. I think, using most effects on the bridge pickup and keeping the neck pickup chain minimal, but I'm not sure about compression. What do people recommend? Most comments I have seen say just experiment, but with the number of possible combinations it's hard to know where to start.

As it happens I really like old flats for rock and metal too. As the guitar sounds have become higher gain, seemingly year on year, adding the now so ubiquitous Darkglass type bass tone just seems to make everything thinner and fizzier. I've been writing and recording with a mate and the guitars sound ace and he wanted a DG bass tone. So we spent a solid day trying all the presets available in the Neural Parallax plugin and then tweaking them and it was getting worse by the minute. Completely lacked any balls. It got a bit better when I swapped to a flats bass as the fizz from the top disappeared but it was still bad. So I went for my Helix instead with a slightly dirtier than expected Motown sort of thing. Like Jamerson / Dunn but with the Jive preamp on it and played with a plectrum. It worked so much better. Rhythm section sounded like a unit, clear separation between guitar and bass, and the narrower frequency range of flatwounds allowed the bass to be a little louder but still not get in the way of anything else. This is the way!

I think as with most players Bernard's sound was more about technique rather than equipment. He has quite a unique 'chucking' style. I don’t think he used effects pedals, and seem to remember hearing that his recorded sound was straight to desk. He did apparently use quite old flatwound strings and most famously used a Stingray bass - but he did also record with a Precision and other basses and made them all sound like him.

A few more. Sadowsky DI. Does it actually do anything? Had it and quickly sold it after finding out it was pants. I read so much about how among it is, maybe mine was broken 🤔 KZ IEM's. Didnt like the sound, didnt like the fit. More drivers the better also seems to be a myth.