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'Ooh shiney....'' 'I'm sure that will make me a better player....' 'WANT ONE WANT ONE WANT ONE.......'

Boom! Sofa shot just in.

Now you see I like that a lot. So much energy and real talent too. Trying too hard?? Maybe / maybe not but if you're on Letterman then you could do a lot worse than milk it for all its worth and be memorable.

Just got this. Huge Kings X fan...

Let's share our weird and wonderful ideas for making life that little bit easier in the world of bass. Even if they appear long winded and silly and actually use more effort than they save. I'll start: One of those over the door clothes hanger thingies available from all B&M, Poundland type outlets makes a great cable tidy.

A bit of a pain to take a door to every gig just to use it though!

Because it's easier than sitting practising for hours on end.

If we're on about Chickens ...

Bought this from eBay & it turned up on Tuesday. I was after a rehearsal / crap venue bass to protect my Maruszczyk’s from some wear & tear. This fitted the bill nicely as I like old Jap instruments, & the active electronics & 19mm string spacing matched nicely to the M’s. Pleased to report that it lives up to the SGC reputation - great quality, easy to play & sounds excellent.

The same percentage who know what it means.

Will post some fancier pics later but here´s proof it´s now actually strung up!

I have ended up buying kit after I reviewed it. I AM completely skint!

Like the Circle of 5ths, there is also a Circle of GAS. The progression goes I'm happy with what I have. Something different catches the attention. Reasons to acquire said article begin chattering in the brain. Justifications for acquire said article begin to form. Said article is elevated from 'Desirable' to 'Must Have' status Previously satisfactory equipment becomes unsatisfactory. Rabid obsession with said article developes. New article is acquired. I'm happy with what I have. Rinse and repeat.

Honestly? Before coming on here I was blissfully unaware of the variety of basses available & was quite happy with my cheap squier jazz bass & old cheap bass stack. No one in any band ever commented on said bass/amp, only on my playing. "that's great, or that's not great"...end of. I then entered the black hole of bass forums which reached into my very insecure being, and I began to say to myself. "other bass players will look upon your lowly bass/amp, point and laugh!" Oh how I imagined being mocked by the multitude of low enders. So, I started a ridiculous 10 year journey of buying and selling equipment in order to feel better about myself, so that in my imagination, I could look another bassist in the eye and without hesitation spout forth the list of high end gear that I owned (but couldn't really afford). However, no one in any of the bands I played commented on said bass/amp, only on my playing. Hold in I thought, this has made no difference to anything other than my insecure ego & bank balance. I now own one cheap bass, and don't even own an amp. Still get asked to play/gig/record with some great players. So why the GAS? For me coz I forget what matters, & have to admit I can suffer from chronic comparing syndrome. I'm probably the only one, but I'm glad that's off my chest. My name's oldslapper & I'm a plonker.😁

I think we just get caught up in it - if you're gigging and getting some spare cash coming in, its just too tempting to treat yourself to some more nice kit. There's no obvious cut off point once you get beyond the basic necessities, and into the realms of fantasy kit. The bubble burst with me about a year ago, mainly cos i cut right back on gigs for family reasons, and then realised how much kit i actually had. The apparently amazing, life-changing aspirational gear I'd bought didn't make me play any better, or feel any better. It just tied up thousands of pounds, so I flogged the stuff i didn't really need. I still look on Basschat most days and see stuff I like - but then a reality check reveals i don't actually need it. It's nice feeling that you don't have to buy anything. Sort of the opposite of GAS. I'll probably get lynched on here for saying it tho. It's lovely to have shiny new exciting treats, but constantly longing for different things and working out how to get them makes me really stressed out I've realised.

Great idea...there's something similar in the Pirate Studios we use, but it's hung on the wall. My man cave / practice / music room is usually a sh*t tip, so I'll be borrowing this one!

"What if...?"

I'm disappointed. I was expecting a topic about new sources for band transport hire... (... and that young lad will hurt his voice if he carries on doing that for long ...)

I actually used excess string cut-offs to pick the lock, seemed approriate!

There's definitely a Linux version. No need to run it under Wine. I use it all the time. Linux is now quite a reasonable proposition for musicy stuff.

I can't see clearly but it might be that she's pointing to her euphonium to alert the sound crew that she's about to go solo on it.

If you find you can't do a weird routing thing you want interally then you can always use a patch cable in the FX loops and use separate send and return blocks to put stuff anywhere. You can jump the paths at will then.

I disagree. It would have been a waste of time doing it and not sharing your experience with the others here... perhaps. I mean; in addition to learning something new and finding that it works, you have inspired others, @stewblack for one, to have a go where otherwise they'd have been overawed by the prospect. That lickle cab might find a new home in a home cinema system. All you need is a mono amplifier module of suitable spec to make it an active sub. At those levels you might never get to fart inducing cone velocities and you'd have a really solid bottom end as a result. Not a waste of time. Well done!

You could hover the bridge pickup ABOVE the strings. Some small offcuts of wood and a load of Blu-tak should do the trick. This will give you an idea of how loud it will appear, and the compliance of the blu-tak will afford some adjustment.

You've inspired me! I have a lovely lightweight combo which just,and I mean just, about coped at band practice. It has an output for an extension speaker which could make the difference I need. However the entire point of the small combo is ease of getting the thing in and out of the car so I want something small. Now I also have a very nice 2 X 10 in a scruffy and above all heavy cab with damaged grill that I don't mind taking apart. I reckon I could make a little 1 x 10 like yours employing one of the speakers from this unused overweight cab. So thank you for showing me it can be done. To be frank I'm a little intimidated by the high tech talk around here, although I love reading the threads.

There, Marc, fixed it for you

There is an Ibanez ATK 400 for sale on the forum here (not mine) But great basses for the money. I rate them.

I kind of wish we could play Oh Danny Boy. Blue

Here are a few: - Squier Bronco - 30" scale with 17mm spacing - Hofner Club or Violin - 30" scale with 14.5mm spacing - Danelectro Longhorn - 30" scale with 16mm spacing - Status Mark King Artist headless - 32" scale with 16.5mm spacing - Overwater Scott Devine J series - 33" scale with 16.5mm spacing - Ric 4003 - 34" scale with 17mm spacing

Because we can?

That's be good for all the headphones and trailing cables in my little quiet practice corner. Everyday genius there Stewblack. Take a bow sir.

No problem Dave. Not sure if I'd necessarily describe many of our typical audience as young though You should hear them singing the SAHB version of Delilah that we do.

you can just select the bit you want press shift then play and it'll keep playing in that loop

Thanks for the replies, some really good suggestions here, as suggested I think I am going to take a short break from playing and hopefully that will bring back the desire to play again, fingers crossed

I think the MiM Fenders are decent value for money.

If you're after an aggressive, rocky sound then chances are you'll have the volume and tone turned up full. In effect you'll be shorting out the resistance, so it wouldn't make a huge difference which value pots you use. It's only when you back off the knobs that there would be a difference. A passive P bass would usually have 250k pots.

Learn "Forget You" by something called Cee Lo Green they said. Is that a band? A person? I wondered. Never mind let's have a listen. Ah good, given my hectic learning schedule a nice repeated three chord pattern is just what I need. I like days like these, they make up for the 'now let's learn Everybody Dance' days. Then, just as I'm smiling at myself for having essentially learned the bassline during my first ever listen to the tune, just under three minutes in and the bloody bass player wakes up and decides he's bored. Never count your tofu until it curdles folks.

UPDATE: Model T Session RAWKS!!! It's been a week now... and the initial doubts are well and truly over. Once I was convinced that I wanted it, I lost caution (I wanted to keep it pristine and clean in case I returned it) and really started to play it in earnest... and further adjusted the neck and pickup heights. Adjusting the pickup heights had quite a profound effect... and I can say that this is a great bass indeed. I know that pickup height is pretty important, but it seems to have much more of an effect on these EMG pickups (active) than on passive pickups. I've got it now pretty balanced across strings, and also between pickups. Well, no, the P is a bit louder... but I decided I wouldn't really play the J on its own, so I set the P first (did I say earlier just how great these EMG P pickups are???) and then adjusted the J so that the blend sounded good to me. The J is a bit quieter than the P, but boosting bass a bit gives me a pretty useable sound. As it stands, there are 4 basic tones that I really like and are easy to get to simply by using the blend control (I keep the bass EQ flat and the treble cut about half way). My favourite sounds are, in order: 1) Blend all the way towards the P. It's not a classic Precision sound, but it's a very nice and growly Precision sound. Finger style it has very good definition and I can make it more or less aggressive by dialling in more or less treble. Pretty cool slap tone too. 2) Blend set to centre detent and then a *tiny bit* towards the bridge. This way both pickups are on, but the bridge adds extra definition and compensates for the natural mid scoop you get with two pickups on. It sounds fat, defined and refined. Nice low growl. Cool funk sound, turn treble all the way off... hmmm. Nice slapped too. 3) Blend set to centre detent and then a *tiny bit* towards the neck. It's almost a variation of the P alone sound, a bit scooped in the mids, just a bit... nice slap sound. 4) Blend set to centre detent. The most mid-scoop setting, even if it still retains a lot of presence compared to your typical Jazz or PJ. I would not use this in a busy mix with lots of other instruments competing for bass, but in a sparse mix it will sound thick and glorious. Yes, I'm liking this bass a lot. I've got a set of DR Sun Beams (45-100) to try on the bass, as I like a more flexible/compliant string... I'll have to tame the initial zing by playing the hell out of it, but it doesn't seem like a chore So, if you were dismissing this bass from the race after my initial comments... I think you should put it back in. However, do so only if you are not after a traditional PJ type of sound. These EMGs are not going to give you a traditional passive bass type of sound, despite the look of the bass. It is a very good sound, 'though! And the neck is fantastic. It's just a bit slimmer than my 2002 Stingray. Nominally it's just 1mm difference in width, but it's also a little bit shallower, which makes it feel clearly slimmer but nothing like a Jazz (which would be a deal breaker for me). If it were lacquered it would be perfect (I had my Stingray's neck lacquered)... but no biggie.

Not half. This is what Mumford and Sons would be like if they watched Sister Act all the time instead of The Waltons.

By the way, they do an amber tinted version too...

Thanks everyone for your comments and feedback. A mint Squier VM Jazz has come up for £180 so I am going to give it a whirl this weekend.

Possibly. I find that toting a car battery and jump leads around is something of a tiresome exercise. By contrast, a handy little .32 automatic slips easily into one's pocket. Cork-sniffers tend to deprecate the .32 as a 'lady's weapon' but they're wrong. Loaded with something like the Lehigh Defense .32 Caliber Xtreme Cavitator you're looking at around 1,100 fps and around 14" penetration into FBI-grade gelatin blocks. Of course, were I to shoot erring retailers in the ear rather than the face I could probably get away with a .22 but I'd feel uncomfortable about the lack of heft and grunt.

Which gut-a-like strings are you talking about? And just how gutty are they? I've been very happy with Silver Slaps.

Ah - the Dave Swift move.

Squier VM J or P would get my vote.

Nice! Bonus points for it being strung correctly, it’s amazing how many of them you see with the headstock all arseways.