Leaderboard

Great thread and I rarely if ever read every post of any thread. This last audition whilst not hellish was I have to admit bloody nerve wracking . The practise room is a little annex off the BL open plan kitchen. Everything's setup, tiny muffled kit, keys, couple of amps all crammed into this very small space and I'm starting to think...blimey this is cosy. We sit down and are literally rubbing shoulders with each other, not an inch of room between us. BL asks me what I want to do and I say well lets go from the top of No 1 set list. ( their a 60's tribute outfit, and they do three sets of twenty each!) First tune is the Beatles "I'm A Looser" with that fab two part opening harmony. I haven't played for quite a while and was almost knocked off my stool by the power and tightness of that opening vocal.....christ these guys are good I think. Then the BL wife who's on keys starts warbling and the whole thing goes stratospheric. Not bad for a bunch of 70 yr olds. I'm 58.... To be sat in the middle of a four part harmony reaching for the sky in a room you couldn't swing a mouse in left me feeling emotionally drained....quite an experience. I've subsequently learned they've been doing this for 40 yrs and the front guy had a No1 record in South Africa.....no reason to doubt it really. Our first gig is this weekend ( a mini festival apparently)...can't wait if a little apprehensive. They give the bass loads of frequency space, its all very jangly and trebly as would be expected, so no room at all for any mistakes.....yikes!

Hey all, I wanted to share my experience I had with my CTM 100, just in case anyone out there had been pondering this. A few months ago I bought a second hand CTM 100. Went and tested it at the guys house, thought it was lovely, and ended up buying it. Turns out I was a bit dumb, and I didn't really test it as properly as I should have, because when I got it home and played with it a bit more, I found that the EQ controls were not as useful as I'd originally thought. Mainly that the bass control did practically nothing. The sweep on the knob seemed to show it coming on, but nothing beyond that. It was almost like it could be an on/off switch. I couldn't dial out any bass in my tone on my next gig, so I sounded way too subby, and there wasn't a whole lot I felt I could do about dialling in a useful sound. At least not very easily. So I took it to a local amp tech, who agreed the EQ was pretty useless. He called Ashdown and asked them if there was a fault with the amp. They replied saying that's just how they are. I thought if that's the case, then this amp clearly isn't for me, so I did put it for sale on Basschat for a short time. But when I was failing to sell it on, I still couldn't really understand why the amp was like this. So I decided to contact Ashdown myself, with a little video showing me using the EQ of my amp, making sure that this was how they're meant to be. I got an email back from Dave Green at Ashdown, saying yes that is how they are, and that the bass control only has a boost of 3db, next to nothing. But he also said that there is an alternative solution that he thought I might prefer. Dave send me over (free of charge) a new set of replacement EQ pots to put in the amp. The new values of which were - (Bass - A220K) (Mids - A22K) (Treble - A220K). A change from what was in mine originally - (Bass - B470K) (Mids - B100K) (Treble - A1M) The point of this probably unnecessarily long post, is that I now love my CTM! I had these new pots fitted, and now it's infinitely more useful and versatile. Sounds great with everything set at noon, but for those awkward awful sounding rooms we end up gigging in from time to time, I now have confidence that I can easily make the EQ adjustments to compensate. Even the Mids and Treble control have a wider sweep now so have become much more useful too. The EQ to me has become like a normal usable EQ on any other amp I've used. Do no other CTM users have an issue with the EQ on theirs? Because I was baffled that I couldn't find anyone with the same issue when I researched it. I'm also a bit confused as to why Ashdown don't make them like this as standard, but I'm no amp expert. All I know is my Ashdown suits me a lot better now, and I now rumble trousers with big fat valve tone for days. Thanks Dave Green!

Use it. That's what it was designed/built for. It's not an ornament.

What is this "upper register" of which you speak?

Nope. Everything I buy is to be gigged, as often as possible.

Just to confirm, user banned. It’s a Nigerian user who has done this a few times before so I’m talking to @charic about banning Nigerian IP. Thanks!

Hi All, Arrived yesterday a new ACG TKO from Alan. It is one of two he has made and it is absolutely stunning, the photo's only get you 90% there. The texture within the wood itself really adds something. It comprises: Black Limba body and top. 3 piece Maple with carbon Rosewood neck, 30.5" scale. Hipshot Type B in chrome.Hipshot string tree, Gotoh GB7 tuners, Dunlop straplocks, Newtone strings. ACG PB pickup with Alnico magnets. Weighs around 7.5lbs (not put it on the scales yet). It has what I would call a true PB sound but with more tonal variation available. Can't wait to try it out at band practice on Tuesday.

Dropped the Mrs at the gym and thought I'd pop into the LGS which is only a couple of minutes round the corner. Just browsing - mostly at guitars when I came across the Mockingbird MK3 below. It looked stunning so I tried it and loved it. It's a bit neck divey as you would imagine , but sustains forever and has an awesome array of tones. I wouldn't have ever imagined buying a BC Rich but it wasn't what I expected at all. The shop had set it up perfectly too. I now feel compelled to put gold strings on it (it's an obsession) It was marked up at £500 so a quick google found it for £386 in Thomann and the LGS (Sound Affects) matched the price. A good days work !

My Vigiers... all Series III, build 1994-2004, neck-thru, all original, 3 Passion, 1 Arpège... I REALLY love to play these basses...

And I'd say it's not about me at all. There might be a few personal references I use for examples or to justify a position. But the thread is clearly not about me. The CD promotion was off topic, a mere side note. Blue

Hardly, Christine. If you can knock up basses like you're doing, i'd say you have a bit of mileage left.

Also forgot to mention the Fender Precision Special - MIM, PJ pickups and narrow jazz width neck. Current/ recent models are active but the first ones if you can find one were passive. Again, s/h your best bet, around the £400 mark.

Maybe one day Blue will leave his current band and we won't see these threads every 2 months and he'll be a regular poster in Jack's "auditions in hell" thread instead.

http://glguitars.com/product/sb-2-2/ Very under rated basses.

First thing that comes to mind is a Marcus Miller P7. P body, jazz neck, PJ pickups, plus active preamp. Easily found for under £500 new. Not sure about weight as I've not owned one, but should be fairly light (especially the alder models). Not sure about Squires/Fenders specifically, I'm sure others will though

The current “main” Bass > Temple Audio pedalboard side input > Keeley Compressor Pro > Helix Hx > side output > Mesa amps The Hx also acts as the control centre for the other pedsls, loop 1 “Synths” has the Future Impact and COG T65 in the chain and loop 2 “Dirt and Grit” has the Bearfoot BBO and the Darkglass Duality. I find the B7K emulation to be very close to the original so I no longer have one on the board.

Sadowsky + Aguilar DB751/SL410 Best I ever had.

My mate had a band which has now disbanded I think which had a great name for a bunch of codgers getting together to play: 'Old Country Union' That name always tickled me.

Thanks I will give them a listen If you are not familiar with Peter hook the below... Monaco -what do you want from me Joy division - Love will tear us apart New order - Sunrise

Google too much hassle?

bartelby - I ended up emailing the vendor of the Gotohs I'm interested in he said that 3L+2R was correct - so the eBay one looks like it's wrong. T-Bay - think I'll probably go for the Gotohs, the ones currently on the Hudson are... OK, not great on tuning stability for an otherwise very nice bass, and considering the price I got for, putting £50 into it for tuners isn't so bad. I put Gotohs on a Bass Collection SB100 a while back and was very pleased with the result... so probably worth the investment.

How's the DI out in your amp? Does it have the switch for mic/line? If you could send it in "line" and in "pre" then you could cut all the lows you want in the EQ without affecting the signal to the sub. There are a few amps in wich the "send" output is post-EQ so you would be cutting lows before sending to the sub. This is how i would be doing if i wanted a similar result from my Genz Benz head. I don't know your amp so you should check these things first.

Thats my attitude also, but to be fair I'd think twice taking an origional 65 jazz or something similar down to the dog n duck. If I was a full time pro touring session player in theatres etc then I would!

Blue, We get it. You play in a bar band and make a bit of money at it. We're very happy for you. We all play music for a variety of reasons - financial, for personal satisfaction, to get away from the family for a few hours, etc, etc. They're all equally valid and even "flakes" are perfectly entitled to play music if they want.

Ooh look darling, how about a side table for drinks? No, she said.

I once took my 3 Gus G3 Basses and and Gus G1 Guitar to a gig. Total value along with the bass rig I was using at the time, somewhere around £25k...

That's one heck of a list for a pub band, in my opinion. If looking for a full-time job, or career, maybe I'd agree with a lot of the points, but for 'week-end warrior' bands, for folks with a 'real' job for the mortgage, I'd suggest it's royal overkill. Is it fun..? Do you get on with the band members..? Is the gigging frequency compatible with other stuff going on..? That's about it, I'd say, for a great many of us. For a more serious gigging musician, I'd say that depping brings about the best opportunities, with the bonus of knowing exactly what the band does from having played with 'em on gigs, if a permanent offer comes up, as well as the contacts it offers. No real need to go about it like an accountant, I say. Just my tuppence-worth.

Band Name Woes isn`t a bad idea................

These are third party cases (Stagg) for little money, very light, perfect fit for the vigiers (rectangular for the 6-str, conventional for the 5-str), 3D sticker home made... I got the basses w gig bags only, however prefer cases... Just in case you need one - here it comes ... 😉

Black basses... Washburn Xb-100 Hohner B2a Peavey GBass Hohner BBass (now white and in bits) Geddy Lee Jazz Status Groove Bass 5 this one... god ive had too much gear.

Tell a lie, I had an early 80s G&L SB2 in black and maple. Another fantastic bass I let slip through my fingers.

Its bad enough having to spend it with 60 kids but having to go to Doncaster as well I feel your pain!! 😁

But they'd never know I even existed, y'see. Blue's not the only one with a flake-o-meter

Well MacDaddy, I stand corrected ! 😏 As far as I can understand after a bit of browsing, it seems: For all classical instruments, legato still has it's traditional meaning - i.e the opposite of staccato playing. For rock guitar (and bass) it has come to have a rather different meaning, referring to hammer ons and pull offs. Always pleased to extend my knowledge. Thanks. 🙂

Agreed 100%. I’ve had Superbrights on two very different basses and have to say they feel lovely.

You've paid for all those frets, might as well use them from time to time!

I also have a 735A and didn't know about the function of the treble knob until I read that review. The first 50% up to the indent does indeed only control the passive treble, and the second half does only control the active treble. Before I read that, I thought it was 100% for both active and passive: but they are correct! The tone changes are quite subtle, but effective. I upgraded from a BB425 (which I highly rated) and now the sound of the sound of the whole (blues rock) band is much fuller and richer, thanks to the 735. A very well thought out instrument.

Crazy amount of detail in your build Andy. Awesome to see it. Nice job, again!

Oh yes. I work in a large university Computer Science department and at least six of us have instruments in our offices - I can think of three guitars and two keyboards, there may well be others. I have the only bass afaIk. I bought a cheap old Encore P to keep in the office just so I could noodle around a bit during lunch breaks, or after working hours waiting for the rush hour to calm down before going home. Turned out a few peeps I've known for many years were getting together after work on occasional Fridays for a jam best described as drinking session with a music problem 🙂 That was actually the first time I'd played with anyone else, and I still love those crazy evenings. And my students think I'm cool 🙂

I’ve not tried the Marcus set, but I found the regular Dunlop Super Bright steels great for slap, very low tension which made it much easier. https://www.jimdunlop.com/product/dbmms45105-7-10137-08601-2.do?sortby=ourPicks&refType=&from=Search&ecList=6&ecCategory=

The YouTube stuff seems to be a more common complaint these days, but if I remember correctly there was some sort of change to the Youtube algorythm lately that prompted a need for longer videos to keep your visibility up or something like that. Anyway, I've been a member for the past 3 years. I've learned a lot. I would go as far as to say Scott's 'Harmonic Layering' course on there is the best thing you can do to learn about harmony aside from a one to one teacher. Even then some one to one teachers are awful. The other thing he really drives home is the need to actually put the work in if you really want to get better - which is the thing which has probably had the most impact on my playing. I never had a structured practice routine until I joined, now I do.......... So yeh, I would recommend him!

Les Paul Triumph? Defeat, more like.

I had dithered about buying a Cloud guitar when Schecter put a limited run out and missed out on one. More fool me. He who hesitates is lost. I saw an advert on Facebook for a Cloud replica from a company called Sunfield in the USA. The price was reasonable, including case, so I thought I'd have a punt on a purple one. When the tracking information came through, it showed it was coming from China, so I prepared myself for the worst. Chinese guitars can be either good or horrid. The tracking info showed it was on the way to the airport, but nothing else, but it arrived here in the UK fairly quickly. It came extremely well packaged but not in a case, so I am in the process of chasing them about that. The guitar: Well, it looks absolutely superb. The action was quite high, so I took it down. The strings choked on the top frets if I did string bends. Bah. So it went into Jack's Instrument Services in Manchester and they have made it into a pretty good guitar. New posts for the bridge. Fret leveling. Tweaking the bridge ferrules. Packing under the pickups (No, they are not EMG's). Setup, etc. After that work, which meant I was without the guitar for a week, I ended up with a pretty spectacular looking and really playable guitar.

I was in a band that never got going on full, sadly. Good singer, very good leader player, we worked well so we auditioned a drummer. A guy turned up and he could talk and talk and talk... Nice enough bloke in that his heart was in the right place, but just not very self aware. He had a billion suggestions for everything, even down to the way the lead player played. Alarm bells should have rung when he talked about how many bands he'd fallen out with, but his reasoning being that if you don't like suggestions you talk about it and agree or compromise, which sounded sensible. His playing was ok but not spectacular. A few errors but ok. He had spent an age faffing about asking for specific weird drum bits from the rehearsal rooms and making a fuss now I think of it. Anyhow, we've all worked out that he's ok, talks too much but we could get used to him... No. Last few songs and he's giving us all orders. Including that at our first gig the drum kit shall be at the front and singer and guitars at the back. We make our excuses and we are trying to get out the door. Oh and he's decided he should lead sing on a few tracks. Then as we are desperate to run away he slams the door shut, lights go off and he gets out his glow in the dark drum sticks. It seems the gig with him at the front of the stage, singing, with us as his backing band, shall also be played in full darkness apart from his sticks. We put it down to excitement and think we will bare with. Then he emails us a thirty song set list that includes Robbie Williams, the Osmond's and other caravan park karaoke classics. We were playing talking heads, etc at the time. Robbie Williams was the final straw for him. Drummers, eh?

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...