Leaderboard

NBD! Moollon in da hoose!

Afternoon all, Well it happened didn't it. After much thinking and pondering I decided that with a bass as valuable (for me anyway) as the AB1, I'd be too precious with it and not want to use it out the house. So I set about getting a combustion. After a few emails and a phone call to Mark at bass direct, I put down my first payment on my first Dingwall. Really looking forward to playing it and can't wait for its arrival, but I think the AB1 will do me very nicely. Yep, irrespective of my own logic I went for the AB1. Heres the spec: AB1 5/3 candy cola finish maple board 3 pickup model Active preamp dual density ash body Dingwall USA strings Dingwall gigbag

Ding a dang my dang-along ding dong.

Mine is arriving in the morning The included hard case would normally set you back a third of this on its own!

Without taking anything away from Jaco (I am a big fan and adore his Weather Report era) I actually do find it very annoying that nobody ever wants to mention the contribution that the Welshman Percy Jones made during the same era with his fretless bass playing. His playing on Brian Eno's "Another green world" from 1975 is astounding, groundbreaking and it is blatantly obvious that he had a big impact upon the subsequent work of Mick Karn. In many ways his playing was in many ways more expansive and exploratory than Jaco ever was. Jaco stumbled across Percy in person once in the states (what are the odds?) and overheard him practicing...and was apparently completely blown away by his playing I remember the affect Percy's astounding bass work on the Brand X LP "Masques" had on me as a young player. As a British bassist he is criminally underrated in my opinion.

I am absolutely in favour of 'like the music you like', but I really don't get this! Why shouldn't a player utilise the full scope of their instrument if it serves to realise their musical/compositional/expressive goals?

The thing with Jaco is if you don't like jazz and R and B, you're unlikely to like his music. I think it's great - always have done - but there were plenty of other jazz influenced R and B players around at the time, and plenty of jazz upright players doing something similar - I always though Nils Henning--Pedersen, who played with Oscar Peterson, was absolutely a stand out player. I have taken the time and trouble to learn a number of Jaco's bass parts - some are pretty challenging - it has helped my overall playing and understanding of music greatly. However I am heavily slanted towards an R and B/ funk influence - jazz, rock, rock and roll and other genres influence me but not as much. There is no doubt Jaco was a superb bass player and musician whether you like him or not. Marcus Miller was a session player on R and B pop records (eg Somebody Else's Guy - Jocelyn Brown) - I first came across him knowingly (as opposed to having heard him on records not realising it was him) in Miles Davis's band in the early 80s - where he came across as a funk/R and B player with jazz influences - another fine player with totally his own style and musician-wise, way beyond just a bass player. I don't have a problem with people not liking Jaco - I suspect if you dislike jazz it's likely you won't like Jaco - similarly I dislike a lot of Paul Weller and Morrisey which is probably anathema to many people - just personal taste I guess.

OK You learn something new every day! Cheers! FWIW I didn't mind pressing return twice to create a paragraph....

I think when you asked for some replacement rubber feet, Alex got the wrong end of the stick.

I am indeed. Actually, I have an 8 string Warmoth explorer as well as my Hamer Chapparal. So, as to how they differ. The 8 (and all 8's I've ever played) have a more mid-range tone. The Hamer is much fuller in the low end. I've played loads of each. Only my opinion, but here we go. The Dean edge 8 is quite good. Circuit and pickups could get changed, but not bad. When I played a Spector I didn't like it. It's actually the circuit rather than the bass which plays well. A friend had an Esp (not the Frank Bello version). It was crap as it was a 4 saddle bridge. Avoid that and the Hagstrom for the same reasons. As for the 12's. I didn't like the Dean at all. Neck is ludicrously wide. The Hamer is much thinner and has better pickups and circuit. There's a reason they cost more. I've played a Jeff Ament Hamer 12 and the neck profile is the same, but of course the body is different and it weighs a lot more. As to how I use them, I use signal splitting via a crossover. Top is sent to a Digitech 2120 for distortion and in the case of the 12, quad chorusing. It's all mixed back to mono and there we are. I don't subscribe to the idea that an 8 is easier to get around because of the lesser number of strings. Set up well it doesn't matter.

One of my students bought an embassy and it was delivered yesterday. He brought it to his lesson, and we unboxed it first impressions are very very good. For a £330 bass this thing is excellent. Solidly built, and a comfortable weight. a nice vintage styling, with an eye to practicality. Pups are sounding great. - the pro buckers didn't disappoint in the slightest. Setup was good out of the box- only a slight tweak of the truss required

Looks in great nick, D and G strings have never been touched

I'd get Nile Rodgers to produce it - that seems to work.

Not exactly changed my world at the time , but certainly let me know I wasn't alone in it , which helps sometimes billy bragg , a New England

Beck, not jeff

Think i heard about Stanley Clarke and Jaco round about the same time must have been mid to late 70's and it was only because i was playing bass and a bass mate told me about Jaco. I had heard of Clarke thru music Mags tho. Think Jaco and Marcus have influenced so many people over the years. Can't say i would rush out and buy their albums but i do like to listen to them on occasion just to impress me and make me realise i need to work a bit harder at playing. Dave

Thanks for all the good thoughts, people; I appreciate it. @roman_sub, yes, I figured it might be a useful opportunity to work on right hand stuff. It’s not the worst mishap I’ve heard of. A pro jazz pianist I know snapped the tendon in his right hand middle finger by putting on his socks! Was out of action for six weeks. He wrote a piece for left hand every day so all was not lost. Actually, some of the stuff he wrote and played during this time was incredible and he came away with enhanced technique and a body of new music. Silver lining indeed.

The neck joint should be as you have said should fit with a gentle push and you should be able to lift the body by the neck only without any slipping at the joint Well that’s the rule I work to anyway?

Ha ha - I think you're doing yourself a dis-service there, Bass Tractor! It's worth thinking about who was influential when Jaco was really popular - this was probably from 1976-80 as far as Weather Report are concerned. During that time period, Stanley Clarke (with Return to Forever and solo), Bernard Edwards, Louis Johnson, Anthony Jackson, and a steam of others produced memorable bass work. The point is that whole era of music contained bass playing which influenced bass players who followed like Mark King, Pino Palladino and others - would Norman Watt-Roy have played that line on Hit Me With Your Rythmn Stick without having seen Jaco live - probably not but he would still have done a myriad of others without (eg What A Waste). I think his direct influence is grossly overstated but he may have popularised Fretless bass and maybe increased use of techniques like harmonics incorporated into bass lines. So having top ten singles involving The Crusaders (a very prolific jazz/R and B band), free form sax solos (Ian Dury) or vocoder and jazz funk from a jazz act (Herbie Hancock) was the norm for a few years. Jaco is only a relatively small part.

Green Ferraris should be burnt.

Prophets of Rage.

Doesn't he look dignified with glasses on..

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It's hard to choose top three but the way I feel. No jazz though. 1. Piece of Mind 2. Master of Puppets 3.so many to include

Another great one just popped up in Off Topic. Inguinal Hernia.

Thanks for posting them, Silvia. Here's to next year's

He still is. His new album is mint.

Been mentioned already, but pretty much anything from Dark Side of the Moon. So much of is still very pertinent today over 40 years after it was written. Roger Waters was a lyrical genius back then.

This is such a stretch that it starts to resemble goalpost moving - deliberate or otherwise. I don't know whether joking is involved or whether this is to be taken seriously, and a any rate, I'm not gonna discuss this further. Sparked by this post, however, allow me to talk about some concepts. LONG POST WARNING: MOST PEOPLE SHOULD NOT NEED TO READ THIS. See, I already sense/understand that this post is gonna be way too long, and only part of that has to do with me struggling to be brief in a foreign language. My apologies. Also, I'm not writing anything that I do not assume is general knowledge. It's just that some posts in this thread make it seem necessary to remind some people of some things. Apologies, again. Anyway, Bassman7755, in his very own words, said: In other words: he is able to judge that I lack social calibration. He's possibly right, and me defending myself is not why I use his text here. The point however is: WHY can he judge this? Because he himself is socially calibrated on a higher level. In his choice of wording, one of the unspoken premises in the whole enthymeme-like construction is that people have social calibration on different levels. Bassman7755 happily is one of the people who can judge that people like me (or me only) operate on a lower level. Now, I'm fine with this. I'm just about resourceful enough to realise that I'm a far-from-perfect being, and my social calibration is mixed. I do not agree with his assessment entirely though, supported by my happy experiences in the area, but I do accept that at least I should've worded more carefully and empathetically. BTW, when I used McCartney as an example, I honestly was unaware that that name was even mentioned already, and mentioned even by Bassman7755 in the same post I quoted. I naively used the name in expectation of people mentioning McCartney later. I'm truly sorry about that aspect of my post that Bassman7755 reacted to, and would have worded more sensitively had I remembered that Bassman7755 has used the name. I only had noticed him mentioning Kate Bush. But at any rate, Bassman7755 himself seems to accept the very concept that is at play here: Some people are better equipped than others in different areas. Some are better equipped than others to judge aspects about others. My neighbour judged that I had no talent at football. He was right. But if I'd shown any talent, then we'd probably need someone else than my neighbour to judge exactly how far I could go in my football career. In most or all aspects of life there are certain statistical distributions, and a startling amount of those distributions roughly follow the Gauss curve (standard distribution). This would for example mean that only few people function on a bottom level and very few on a top level - the easiest example being that few people have an IQ below 50, and roughly equally few have one above 150. Most people are less than a standard deviation away from average. As to being musically talented, without going into theoretical debates about what it is and is not, but just going by the regular term as we tend to use it, those that are least talented musically, either just have no relationship to music, or they only like the least demanding forms of it, and more demanding forms of music are deemed to be noise or similar. That non-demanding music is still easy to judge by others who're higher up on the staircase. The rest gives itself. The more advanced the music, the fewer people are able to create it or appreciate it. Theoretically, only one person at the top is able to appreciate all existing music and to create that stuff. In real life of course it doesn't work exactly that way. Oh yes, I hear voices in my head, Bassman7755's voice amongst others, but bear with me: What music can become very popular, and what music can become popular classics that we hear on the radio decade after decade? By definition it's the music that large groups in society can appreciate (not too demanding) and at the same time: that will not bore them easily. That last part is essential as it is there some of the quality lies.The quality does not often lie in the three chord harmonic development. Are those popular classics written by highly talented people? Very often: yes. Sometimes: no. Burt Bacharach and The Beatles are certainly highly talented, but others exist as well who just are not. Are they written by the one, single most musically talented musician of all time? Not very likely. Why not? Because that person very likely showed talent at an early age, and got this talent developed. That person would experience popular music as demanding little, and also as giving little, and would turn his/her brain to other music - music that is not only food of love, but also food for brain. Mozart at an early age could write much more well-constructed, well-flowing and error-free music than most of us can ever dream of, and since he only developed upwards despite his life style and general lack of Bach-like driving forces. In all likeliness, the one single most musically talented person of all time, unlike the many highly talented people of more regular shape who write popular classics, is in the group of people who are somewhere in that ivory tower that many people hate, where new concepts are created, and the borders of what can be art are moved. Bach conservatively stayed within that old baroque music, but at the same time let it go on paths where no music had gone before. If you know your stuff, the gap between Bach and Vivaldi is enormous! (I may earlier have written about how Bach and Vivaldi react differently when a certain chord/voice sequence brings the music to steeper, narrower paths with higher danger level.) As an example of what I'm on about: In the eighties, I heard two interviews. One was with a highly respected Norwegian folk music player. The other was with B.B. King. Both in all essence said the very same thing: "People always ask me what music inspires me, and what rocks my boat. But at my level, what I love, and what inspires me, is not the same stuff that the people who love my music love, and when I answer, they always respond: "But that isn't even blues anymore" / "That isn't even folk music anymore!". But it is blues/folk music! It just is more demanding, and it's appreciated by the likes of me - not by the masses who love my music." There! B.B. King said it, so it must be true even though I said it too. I'm sure I wrote some unnecessary stuff and forgot some essential stuff, but I'm quitting now. Again, I apologise for the length and for the low speed in the thought development area. I know some people on BC could have said the same in one sentence. I can't. I've started and deleted an answer many times, and have also thought many times I'd delete the whole thing written above. But I didn't. I just hope it's of service to one or two people.

Definitely. I've always preferred to play original songs, it's certainly more interesting than playing covers, especially when people berate you for not playing it exactly like the album version (usually the guitarist!).

niches is the key word here. If the audience is only a niche, no matter how popular you are in that niche, there will always be a limit I've been making an effort to listen to more modern pop music. It seems pretty original to me, at least a stinky poo load more original that the stuff on Radio 1 when I was growing up - Boyzone, The Spice Girls etc. That was real dross. The playlist on Radio 1 now seems much more varied. If there is a formula, I'd guess it's not a lot to do with the music, and more to do with what you do with the music - how you market it - but in the end no-one really knows what's going to be a hit

I had a pair just like those. I think they came with my Compact. Must be a Barefaced thing... ?

Matt Johnson & TheThe - a fine body of work.

On the active passive front - we are strongly considering for 2018 to do away with the "Active" and "Passive" split and just have one option. And that'll be "Active" but with a Push-Pull Volume pot that switches between active and passive.

This does it for me, Mr Neil Young: "Rockin' In The Free World" There's colors on the street Red, white and blue People shufflin' their feet People sleepin' in their shoes But there's a warnin' sign on the road ahead There's a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them So I try to forget it, any way I can. Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world. I see a woman in the night With a baby in her hand Under an old street light Near a garbage can Now she puts the kid away, and she's gone to get a hit She hates her life, and what she's done to it There's one more kid that will never go to school Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool. Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world. We got a thousand points of light For the homeless man We got a kinder, gentler, Machine gun hand We got department stores and toilet paper Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive. Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world.

I'll repeat my suggestion from a few years back. Scan the topic titles here on Basschat. At any given moment, you'll find at least half a dozen workable band names. Off Topic is a particularly rich resource. How about The Onscreen Abbreviations?

Hype. I used to go see KT Tunstall when she lived in Edinburgh. I could see she had great talent but I was watching her playing in coffee bars, with her looper peda,l for 50 quid a gig. Then one day there's a cancellation on Jools Holland's show and she suddenly gets exposure to a UK wide audience. The next thing you know her album is a No 3 in the UK charts and it goes multi platinum around the world. Talent is not enough, it needs exposure. There's plenty of people out there who are as talented as KT Tunstall but they'll never make it big without a bit of hype. Just to jog your memories.....

Glad that you ascribe to what Andy says..."you can never have too many clamps"...

OMG, ok, I'd love to replace Doug in Kings X. Replacing Daryl in The Stones would be cool too. except he's a bit too far in the background for my taste I hope everybody is happy, making me choose fantasy over reality.? Blue

Even if I was playing with the MG's I'd definitely think twice if Stevie Wonder called!

The greatest is entirely subjective. The most influential of all time? In the western world my vote would go to the classical greek who first developed harmonised choral singing, or the 5th century AD monks who perfected it and discovered and formalised the scales and chords we still use today. We don't know their names, but they're the ones who set us on the path to harmonised instrumental accompaniment, leading to everything from the three piece punk band to the full orchestra and everything in between.

Good evening, Dedindi... Quality playing, a decent arrangement, a good composition... What's not to like..? Not much, really, except for the style; one either 'gets' this kind of music or one doesn't. So did I like it..? As much as I can listen to Bach time and time again, I'd not put this on 'Repeat' in my playlist. Not because it's not Good (it is...); just that, for my own personal tastes, it's a bit 'twee'. The rhythm changes didn't help endure it to me, either, although the notion (and execution...) is perfectly acceptable. Good Stuff, then, but not my favourite blend of tea, I'm afraid. Sorry. Thanks for sharing, and well done, just the same. Have you others..?

Top of the pops. Thanks buddy. I shall search out the video and appreciate the insight. I think this is the route I am going to take

It's why I position myself front stage with a mic,right along side of our lead singer/ lead guitarist and the other guitarist and play with a pic. People think I'm a guitar player. They certainly can't tell the difference. When I joined 6 years ago, I made it clear I was not a stand in the back by the drummer kind of guy. I'm a poser. Lol Blue

That's Norfolk for you!