Leaderboard

Manchester...erm, mid-80s... Our drummer (in an originals-with-the-odd-cover 80s Rock Band) was about to become a Dad, and had reluctantly decided he'd have to shelve the rehearsals and gigging for a good while, so he'd stepped down, and we were on the urgent look-out for a replacement. As a thoroughly nice chap, and knowing we had gigs booked we needed to fulfil, he had even left his kit at the rehearsal rooms for new drummers to use, in part or whole, for the auditions. We organised a Sunday afternoon, with an hour slot for each drummer we'd contacted, and it started unremarkably, but then, second to last, was the standout. And not in a good way. He turned up in a six-wheel Transit, immediately earning about a thousand bonus points, but it became terribly clear that all this thing held was his kit...and there was little room for anything else. After refusing to use of any of the already-set-up kit, he began ferrying kit in. And more kit. And more kit. After ten minutes of watching boxes piling up, and with his end of the rehearsal room beginning to look like the dockside of the Queen Mary before a round the world jaunt, we volunteered to help, and then we all spent the next 45 minutes setting up a furry tigerskin-covered double-kick kit, with six raised toms, three floor toms, eight rototoms and so many cymbals we couldn't see him any more. As he tightened up the third china cymbal, I said "No gong, then?", and he froze, looking concerned. "I didn't bring it...should I have done?" I assured him it wouldn't count against him, and eventually, with about five minutes left of his allotted hour, he was ready. The singist had been forced to nip outside to intercept the last auditionee, apologise and ask him to bear with and go for a pint in the local for twenty minutes, and then our hero launched into the first intro, to a then-bog-standard Bon Jovi tune we'd decided would make a good starter audition song. Now, in 35 years of bands, I've never played in a freeform jazz ensemble, and I certainly hadn't back then, so I was unfamiliar with the five-count intro, and the thirteen-bar drum fill*, but this chap was clearly a master. We couldn't possibly fault him for brio, enthusiasm, and certainly energy...it was his counting which left quite a lot to be desired**. In addition, having taken so long to set up his mahoooosive kit, he was determined to hit every single drum and cymbal as often as he could, with scant regard for the song, or indeed the befuddlement he was creating amongst his prospective fellow band-members. I shall leave to your imagination the meal he made of the drawn-out ending, suffice to say Richard Wagner, had he been hanging around the rehearsal rooms (unlikely) and not dead for about a century (for once, fortunate), would probably have shaken his head and said something unflattering about bombast. In German. He finished by standing, his arms aloft and his eyes shining. Had that thing Usain Bolt does (not the running, the archery-arms thing) been around, he would have been doing that. We shuffled our feet, unable to maintain eye contact with him or each other, for fear of collapsing into hysterics. Eventually the singer thanked him for his time, and we all heaved-to loading his van again, while the singer went to buy the other auditionee another pint. He didn't get the job. * I'm probably doing an enormous disservice to freeform jazz ensembles around the globe here, so apologies if so, but I'm at a loss as to where else to place it musically. Perhaps amongst those gangs of glassy-eyed, saffron-robed enthusiasts one encounters on the city streets, each banging a drum in a random manner with a blissful expression and no regard for hard-pressed shoppers... ** I note that 'dyscalcula' is the numerical equivalent of dyselxia, and apparently A Real Medical Thing. It may have been that he was a secret sufferer; that would explain an awful lot. Edit: I've just spotted that I've spelt 'dyslexia' wrong in the footnote above. Oh, the irony...

Still cold from the back of the UPS truck is my new Harley Benton PB-50 which will soon be disassembled for some minor modifications: swap bridge for a more traditional looking example, reshape the headstock and apply amber tint to the neck. I may upgrade the pickup at some point but it’s perfectly adequate for now, and I will probably change the scratchplate for a white one. Also I’ll fit some flatwounds. I’m impressed so far, the neck in particular is fantastic. The set up is pretty good, it was even in tune. For £300 this would be a decent bass, for a little over £80 it’s incredible. The only gripe I have is with the pots. The tone knob did nothing at all at first, although the more I turned it the more it gradually came to life and now works - weird, it’s as if it just needed some motion to get it going. The volume control works, but instead of gradually decreasing the volume as you roll it back, it stays at a constant volume for about 80% of it’s travel before just falling off a cliff with a silent final 20% of the turn. Not a massive issue as I’ll probably change the pots. I was kind of annoyed at first, but then again have to remind myself it’s an €85 instrument. I think we are so spoiled with decent cheap gear these days we have high expectations even of budget stuff! So yes, I’m happy, and with the completion of my self build Precision two days ago that’s two new basses in 48 hours, can’t argue with that!

I like it!

firstly I would like to thank basschatters for the posts of advice they have made. secondly thanks to Andy and bass bunny for the phone calls for all the pickup experts here the dimensions of both pickups the bass are collection pickups are 94mm long 18mm wide and the lug centres are 40mm

So looking forward to seeing this project's progress.

I bet you will!!

Me too 😄👍

I just hope there won’t be any higher offers through PM to him now I let you all know...

I thought I saw the word “it” in the title and completely miss read the rest of it. The actual thread content was therefore not what I was expecting.

@BrunoBass Congratulations on joining the ranks of PB-50 owners That was pretty niffty delivery timing since it only shipped Wednesday. @machinehead I've owned 5 of these and all have hovered around 9lb using luggage scales

Dude you can kill small dogs with that rig, nice Sire too..

[Pedantry] I'd have to disagree; it's counted in (typically on the hihat...) as '1-2-3-4-1' for the riff to commence on the following 'and' off-beat. [/Pedantry]

Not gear, but when our singer fell off the side of the stage at one gig i couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the song. I am not a nice person lol.

I am the proud new owner of Lorin's 735A, and it is gorgeous. It replaced a black 425X which I loved, very sorry to see it go, but boy was it worth it! Very comfy to play, lighter than the 425, very even tones everywhere on the fretboard. In passive mode it has the usual BB smoothness, and when flicked to active you can very gradually and gently mold that smoothness from a thick deep tone all the way up to a farty honk, in combination with the rotary pickup control. Such a well-thought-out design and execution, it is easy to fall in love with it! I have tried it with nylons, chromes and nickel rounds, and it is great with all of them, depending on the sound you want. With Chromes in the studio it will be gorgeous. I am going to gig it with rounds as that is the sound I want. A good demo of the 735A (and all good things Yamaha) is here:

spilt a pint of Shandy (hey I was driving right?!!!) straight off a table onto my pedal board, ruined a markbass compressore, managed to save my DHA VT 2, just before a gig, had to go direct into my Ampeg, sounded exactly the same if not better!

Not the kind of stress you want. Life is difficult enough without idiots making it worse.

New wardrobe GAS?

If PG Wodehouse had ever auditioned drummers this ^ is how he'd have written it up. Sterling work, Sir

Oh man I'm in!!

If anyone’s interested, I made a little video about the build...

Been waiting for this after the hint by Andy a couple of weeks back.

34. Low B tone is more about the quality of construction than scale length. My 34 inch Marleaux has a deeper clearer B than any bass I’ve ever heard, even when I’ve had Dingwalls.

My favourite basses are Precisions and Stingrays/Sterlings so 34" for me I've had a few 30" ones and my TRB6 was a 35" - there may be others. I've never bought a bass for its scale, only because it looked nice and shiny

I currently have one, even though I have replaced it, but I’ll still happily share my thoughts I bought mine after watching quite a few different video reviews, at the time I had managed to get through a Darkglass Alpha Omega, Sansamp VT Bass DI, and a Sansamp Deluxe Programmable Bass Driver. Each pedal was great for certain tones, but I struggled to find that perfect type of distortion. The Alpha Omega was far too much of everything and I really struggled to find a sound I liked. The VT Bass was nifty but the drive was more tube like and not gritty enough for me. The BDDI was a bit better, but I found it heavily coloured my tone and that in order to get that Sansamp sound, you had to really compress your tone and I felt I was loosing too much of my tone. After a couple of videos of the Battalion, straight away I much preferred the distortion on it, and the added features of compression and a noise gate, as well as an extensive EQ section for both clean and distortion. I managed to sell the last Sansamp and it paid for it comfortably. Straight away when I plugged it in, it felt more neutral, my clean tone wasn’t too coloured by any tube emulation, it gave that tiny bit more control over my tone instead of only relying on the amp. The distortion was instantly more to my taste, it was merely finding the sweet spot for the blend and I was loving it. I used it for in-ear rehearsals many times and never had a problem dialling in my tone. The compression is actually pretty good for what it is, I use a TC Spectracomp for my compression so I never needed it too much. The fact you can’t adjust the compression ratio/threshold etc...does put some people off from using it, but set to about 10 o’clock seemed to be the best place for me. The noise gate is a cool extra, but as some reviews make note of, it’s not the best, it’s functional but a bit clunky and can give unwanted noises in your signal chain. I’ve only recently replaced it with a Darkglass B7K Ultra V2 after being impressed by the new cab sim options and more options for mid control. So since then it’s been sat on my desk looking sad for it self. I would recommend it for its price and features alone, it’s a great bit of kit even if you don’t use everything on it. I hope that helps mate

particularly like the first track. She's got a lovely set of pipes and a bit fit looking n' all!!

I'd say you've got to try them. At the recent South West bass bash Ashdown loaned us some of their latest offerings. Stevie and Chienmortbb were very impressed and I think Stevie bought an Ashdown. On the other hand one of the other guys there hoovered up every lightweight that wasn't nailed down to try with his own rig, at the end of the day his favourite was my Mark Bass Tube 500. As someone has already said class D amps are getting pretty sorted so there aren't any bad ones out there, it's just about finding the one that suits your needs, style and sound.

Probably the ideal pub band name is 'Free beer and barbecue sponsored by local cab firm', just need to agree on a font.

That's simply too complicated for a Friday before midday.

When I was 15 I bought a fender musicmaster. I really had no idea what I'd got but I loved it and started running around the house playing pop punk basslines. I got carried away and ran into a door. The door handle gouged a bit horrible chunk out of it... Still, I'll be able to identify it when I finally get the chance to buy it back!

'Oh, it's a lot harder than it looks says guitarist'

Oooops, just bought a set. Thank you folks!

I know Slipknot tune down to A for some songs and they’ve always used 4-strings do it is doable.

You might be better to route it all out and forget about the forstener. If you're using a flat bit rather than one with 3 or more cutting edges, it's going to be hard work with a hand drill and more likely to lead to accidents. A lot of people remove the bulk with a forstener to save the cutting edges on the router bit. It's perfectly possible to route it all out, as long as you go steady and take it out gradually. Cut with the direction of spin and only take a few mm of depth at a time. Stay a couple of mm away from the final edge as you work your way down to the final depth. Then tidy to the final shape with a finishing pass or two. Make sure your comfortable and in control. If you feel tired then stop. Routers want to maim you! (Sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs btw, but other interested people are watching who may not have handled a router before)

This is rhyming slang, just in case there is still someone out there who doesn't know... As in 'I'm just nipping out for a gypsy's'...

I once sold a bass hard case to a guy, and we got chatting "What's the name of your band then" says I "ZZ Birmingham" came the reply, "Oh, ZZ Top tribute?" I replied "No" he says "We don't do any ZZ Top songs and we're not from Birmingham" Wonder if he's on here?

@12stringbassist cheers for your initial thoughts above. As Cameron said these are a handsome design. I'd love to hear your 12 string through this; the point being you've clearly worked that into your set (and I'm trying to get my head around ever using one / an 8 string). If you get anything recorded / uploaded please do share - it would be great to hear your Hamer being used live in anger!

And that's why everybody is deaf. Screw rock and roll, I say. Let the dinosaurs have that mind numblingly bad mix and non stop ringing in their ears - Cos that's dead cool. Why on earth anybody would want to go to a gig where they could hear anything portrayed in a balanced mix is beyond me. Theres a reason why the dinosaurs became extinct. I never understand why people don't embrace knowledge and technology.

Huis Clos - un drame de JP Sartre (Scène: une chambre en enfer. Entrez John et Henry). John: Regarde! Une guitare basse qui intègre des fonctionnalités de marque déposées par Rickenbacker! Où est mon avocat? Je veux menacer quelqu'un! (Henry inspecte la basse) Henry: Est-il possible de fabriquer cette guitare basse mais beaucoup plus bon marché? Et de le fournir dans une couleur que personne ne veut? Avec des potentiomètres qui ne fonctionnent pas parce qu'ils n'ont pas été soudés correctement? Les deux ensemble: L'enfer c'est les autres! Fin

Yes, but I wouldn’t like to paint it. Welcome, and on behalf of all Essex residents, sorry.

Can I just say how relieved I am that it is "Underway using Engine". It would be quite worrying if they were using the oars ...

Dug out (and have updated) a review of various octave pedals I've come across in my travels, which included the Okto Nojs and discussions around glitching, which may be of interest... Octaver Comparison Review In relation to octavers the key things I'm looking for are: 1) authentic clean blend octave down to fill out my sound; 2) ability to track both (i) fast (minimal latency) and (ii) low without glitching; 3) play nicely with my dirt and filter pedals. I've managed to A/B a number of octavers and here's what I found (YMMV, IMHO): MXR vs TC Sub N Up These two pedals are good at tracking: both managed to get down the F# on the E string (and the Sub'n'Up perhaps lower). There was the tiniest bit of latency on the digital TC whereas the MXR felt completely 'tight' in typical analogue fashion. But the voicing on the MXR left me pretty non-plussed and I couldn't get that 'clean' octave down tone I really like on my COG T16. Whilst the TC Mini is COG T16 sized, I think the greater flexibility of the full size Sub'n'up (for a newbie to Tone Print editors) makes it a better initial choice (assuming space on pedal board permits). I also found that the MXR to have a very sensitive and consequently noisy circuit, which I personally found off putting - not least in that we often rehearse in railway arches and the train line electromagnetic fields amplify any inherent circuit noise. The other 4 analogue pedals COG T16 gen 2.0 doesn't have the Aggie's tone control. But for what I'm needing it for it does a great job and it's tiny, taking very little space on a pedal board. Aguilar Octamizer. Vocal range was synth to growl. It has excellent clean blend with tone control. Lovely at what it did, but struggled to track down well much below a B above the E string (which is too high up the scale for me - you can get that low simply by playing a 5 string!) Both the COG and the Aggie sat really well with other pedals and the 'glitching' when they failed to track was significantly less noticeable on these two (than Emma and 3Leaf) with the Aggie edging it on this particular test. Itch fully now scratched in relation to: Third: Emma Okto Nojs (nice additional dirt, but I guess somewhat superfluous if you already have a dirt pedal, which I do) Last: 3Leaf Octavbre Mini (ok that surprised me too!) Both these last two had very noticeable glitching on lower notes when they failed to track (particularly the Octavbre Mini) and neither 'sat' nearly as well with dirt or filter pedals as the Aggie or COG. Conclusion For a clean octave down and sitting well with my other pedals the COG T16 is doing a grand job. It doesn't track as low as the MXR or the TC SnU but I prefer the clean octave down on the T16 (I appreciate that's a personal choice). Postscript EHX Pitchfork vs Boss PS-6 - short review This tracks well, down to the open E without glitching. Result! Minimal latency for a digital pedal: perhaps a touch worse than the TC Sub n U in monophonic mode in that regard - but the EHX doesn't glitch like a trooper below an Ab like the SnU does when the SnU is on monophonic setting. Latency is slightly more noticeable on octave up than octave down, but I think that is just down to octave up being easier to discern aurally. However there is a difference in tracking latency as compared to the sure footed 'vice like grip' of my analogue COG T16 which is still the most authentic and enjoyable sub octave down that I've yet found. The COG and other analogue pedals don't provide an octave up and the COG does start to glitch below an A (on the low E string). So swings and roundabouts, I guess! I like the 'true' clean blend the EHX offers, and I also like (by digital pedal standards) the 'authentic' non-synthy octave down (I'll get all the synth sound I want from my dedicated filter pedals). The 50% blended clean plus octave down is just a lovely, rich, full bass line and will likely be my main setting for the pedal. The ability to adjust settings on the fly trumps this over the SnU for me as a 'live use' pedal. It doesn't have the granularity of interval adjustment and wider functionality that the Boss PS-6 offers or the degree of fun pitch shift on the PS-6, but the pitch shift is still very usable on the EHX. The Boss was also built very solidly - as Boss pedals so often are. But I just couldn't get around the noticeable latency on the Boss where the octave up, in particular, felt like two separate notes; which is why I moved it on. Conceptually the PS-6 is a great pedal (and I can understand why a recording pro guitarist took it off my hands). If Boss manage to address the latency issue on a PS-7 model I would definitely get one.

It took an old PC game from 1997 to hit the highest of high funktastic This is what Funk looks and feels like....

I am a simple man. I see a Tiny Desk Concert and I press like. There's no sessions from them that I didn't like. They have awesome groups there all the time.

That's planning a fair ways out, isn't it? I'm unfortunate in that Wunjo is about a mile from my work location, and on my route home. I do accidentally have to pop in every now and then.