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Played it live

BOOM! Got the job!!!! Band is called Fraudio btw. Absolutely stoked and in need of a beer or two. Now begins the hard work!

Not a bass - my first-ever 6-string guitar was a quite decent Columbus SG copy which I had in 1980. Aside from a bolt-neck & fake humbuckers, it was a pretty reasonable facsimile of the original, down to having a very slender, volute-free neck/headstock junction. Can't quite remember how it happened but it probably involved the enthusiastic execution of inept powerchords, playing along with Motorhead or somesuch, and a surprise meeting of Columbus headstock and bedroom wall. I do remember a sudden loss of string tension and very rapid de-tuning. And then the "plop" as the newly-liberated headstock hit the floor. I lacked the skills to correctly repair my newly decapitated guitar - but I didn't lack imagination: I've still got it now.

Hi. In no particular order....(brain dump) Sounds are obviously identical. Addition of headphone output and master volume is Awesome! loving the colour screen, all the info in one place! and color represents block type so its easier to see at a glance what the blocks are doing. on the HXFX there's a lot of info, but its all spread around, and in B+W. moving blocks around the chain is harder, and unnecessarily so as there's plenty of knobs. You have to use Cut/paste the knobs seem to respond better. i love that it shows the midi PC on the preset selection screen. this makes it so easy if your using a midi controller. love the form factor Its TINY!!!! i wish they had put the screen on the RHS as i tend to play notes with my right hand and change parameters with the left. doing this mostly covers the screen with my hand. still, better than the HXFX i will miss ability to turn off more than 3 pedals on the HXFX addition of HPF and LPF in the global is awesome!!! HXFX doesn't have this copying blocks to another patch is easier on the stomp ill come and edit this post if i think of any more differences

Did you know....I only found this one out two weeks ago!........ When using youtube....Bottom right there is a wheel/cog/settings sign next to the YouTube logo. Click on that and you will find Speed. Click on that and you can slow it down to 75 % which also keeps it in tune. I never knew this all this time and have spent many extended hours trying to catch micro snippets of something going back and forth. Learning things slowly really gives me a chance to grasp exactly whats being played. Once I really know it slowly, I find it a lot easier to bring it up to normal speed. I can learn something I find complicated so much faster overall using this. Probably a bit of stating the obvious for a lot of folks but its a new discovery for me so if that helps anyone who like me didn't know🤩

Sold it on eBay for £26

Adam Clayton managed two gigs in a row once without a new signature model for the third gig, does that count?

So a while back I fancied having a mess about with a foam mute with the flats. Of course, dish sponges got sliced up as one does. But to be honest, they always looked totally naff and we’re a pain to thread into the tiny space between the bridge and pickup on my two Wals. Fine on the single pickup Aria. Still looked crap, though. Then I spotted these mentioned on a thread here or on Talkbass... https://www.facebook.com/pattonmutepadbassmute/ - maybe it was @wateroftyne who got one and posted about it a few years ago. Unfortunately by the time I spotted them they’d stopped making them. ☹️ Fast forward a couple of years and a few months ago Amy from Patton Bass Mutes drops me a mail saying, I’m starting making them again. So I ordered a set, one for each bass - she makes them individually to fit the dimensions of your bass. They arrived a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been messing about with them at home to good effect. However, last night was my first chance to try them in anger - on my ‘79 Wal Pro IIE. It’s got a slightly more old school sound than my other one so was a great candidate. I was so impressed. It worked perfectly. The custom size and little loop meant it was dead easy to pull in under the strings and gave the perfect amount of damping - also to whip back out for a couple of tunes I wanted to play unmuted. Played a number of songs fingerstyle and with pick and it really did add a totally old school tone. Particularly liked the pick sound on a couple of rocky, funky numbers. Brilliant. And picking without having to palm mute was surprisingly freeing! The big surprise was that it changed the pitch of the strings by about a quarter tone but when you think about the change in the free vibrating length of the string that makes sense. I was doubly surprised that it didn’t completely mess up the intonation which was still fine. The mutes are beautifully made and several cuts above some scraggy bits of old foam both on operation and in how they change the aesthetics of a beautiful bass. If you fancy trying that old Motown, Wrecking Crew style muted sound then the cost of around $15 plus postage for a Patton mute is well, well worth it. And hey, Christmas’s coming soon! Here’s the mute for the Pro Bass in action. Tell me this doesn’t look better than a bit of old dish sponge from Tesco...

Don’t 👀

Here's my twin Stingrays....and my real twins 😍 They're my babies, all four of them.

Hence the forum name then, Bassassin?

Blame it on Woody's tip off about the 10% discount. PMT had two delivered to the store on Friday morning and they had both been sold within an hour of the store receiving; I paid my deposit and they kept behind the counter for me to collect today. Look on the bright side, at least you got a £46.50 discount...not to be sniffed at! And in my case it was third order lucky so I'm not feeling too guilty at having finally got mine

Late 1970's - The roadie of the band I was in somehow managed to leave my '63 Precision (in it's case) overnight leaning up against his gatepost at his house after returning home after a Sat night gig - we were playing the Sun lunchtime and he'd agreed to leave the gear in the van but take all the guitars indoors overnight. Two little boys had knocked on his door about 10am on the Sun and asked him if he wanted the 'old guitar' that he'd left outside and 'was it for the dustman ?'.....

Took a bass off over my head onstage in Derry and smashed it straight into the lighting rig above me. About 25 years ago after seeing a Mr Big gig I decided to try supergluing three picks together like a clover and sticking it to a drill. Too impatient to let the glue dry properly I fired it up, splattering the bass with little beads of superglue which I never managed to remove. Oops. If anyone out there owns a black Charvel model 1 bass with mystery little bumps all over the front, that's the reason....

Here we go. All cased up for recording tomorrow, so the expression pedal is elsewhere. Compressor >. ES5 > Hall Fame. All the rest are in loops, so I can run the PS6 as a detune chorus after the filter or as an octave down in front of the Rat, with clean in parallel or bitcrush in parallel with the Okto etc etc. Game changer. The only downside is needing to bench the Mastotron because the Rat is so big. A mini clone will fix this problem for about 25 quid. Sorting the patch cables won’t be cheap though. I have a bigger board waiting, but this is the practical limit for band gigs.

You'd think that people like Sting and Bobby Vega could afford a decent re-fin, wouldn't you?

We've been looking forward to this one for a while: We were so grateful to be asked back to play the John Peel Centre. Shortly after arrival the exited manager tells us its sold out! We knew we were in for a good one! Sound was awesome, crowd were awesome, no technical hitches. Why aren't they all like this?

Major update. Stomp replaces Hxfx and the Es8 is back. I missed the loops

On Saturday we played a breakfast gig (8:30 to 11:30) for an investment company and its clients and staff.Our jazz quartet has done this gig for about six years now and although it is essentially playing "wallpaper music" we do get some occasional applause and a lot of comments from individuals.Over the three hours about 300 people came and went while we played some lighter jazz and some Christmas songs and we view the gig as a good rehearsal and play some songs that we don't play too often on our regular gigs. It's always fun to hear our singer/keyboardist do "Santa Baby" and we do some "jazzy" arrangements of Christmas songs and we all enjoy "Everyone's Waiting For The Man With The Bag" and "Baby,It's Cold Outside" which the singer and I do and is a lot harder to sing while playing a good bass line that it sounds but we nailed it.I used my DB and had fantastic sound straight into our Bose PA using just the Schatten Mini Pre for volume control and the EQ on the Bose. I know it sounds like a dreadful gig to some of you but it is held in a beautiful venue, we are fed well from a huge breakfast buffet, easy load in/out, nice friendly crowd including some young kids who dance up a storm and we are well paid and can pretty much play what we want.We are booked for next year already. Downside...I leave home at 6:30 for a snowy one hour drive for 7:30 load in.

Nah - he bought it relic'd by some guy in Denmark Street to make it look like he knew what he was doing.

I do it because I've seen other bass players do it, and I think it will give the illusion that I'm quite professional. 😁

Sometimes... I have a thought that I'm not particularly fond of. But it seems to arise "out of the blue" as a natural response to some item of interest. Back in 1970, I was privileged to see and hear the great Peggy Lee at an outdoor concert with The Chicago Transit Authority. Chicago was in top form, but they're much more majestic on record than an outdoor concert in a football stadium. I could only imagine how they'd sound in a small venue. However, Miss Peggy Lee, as professional and talented and strikingly beautiful as she was, appeared and sounded far different from her recordings and glossy photos. Yes... Time marches on! And it stomps on us all as it does. I was content to finally see her perform, live on stage, taffy-pulling through an abridged medley of hits while the muses ascended and the crowd rose to their feet in deafening applause to a Fever finale. But the mental image that remains with me is Peggy Lee on a stage, post war at the height of the Big Band Era, interpreting a torch song in an emotional pantomime. I hate to be the one to say it aloud, but are we not all shallow in this respect? We hold up this romantic image of a star in their prime. Glowing, youthful faces with vibrant voices, trim and fit or shapely, striving with all their might to "hit" that finale note as the camera pulls back and the image fades out to black. Giants of talent all walk that lonesome path to Paloockaville... Sinatra, Tom Jones, Peggy Lee, Petula Clark, Julie Andrews, Cliff Richards, Elvis... Why, as we all age, others find us boring, bland and forgettable. Our voices waver and become hoarse. Some of us carve our faces with surgery to remain beautiful and youthful looking. Oh, but it only looks good in the dim light! A fool's fool we are... What is the cause for this phenomenon? Is it truly what the showbiz boys of yore once called "sex appeal"? This is perverse. We lose interest in talented entertainers as they wrinkle and grey, not because they have lost their talents, but because they are no longer fertile or capable of reproduction? Are we mesmerised by genius or simply transfixed on sexuality? Staring through a fleeting window of fecundity?

I jumped up and said what the f*** have you done, she said ,yeah I know, that was my last glass!

-

You would have been cheaper picking up the Magellen too Dave

Not quite twins, but definitely siblings.

That's the one that made me decide to learn it. She's a great player and makes it look effortless, during that fast run I mentioned she is smiling whereas I'm probably gurning with concentration!

Just passed Leamington myself. Last time there I picked up the missus!

I have an orange Crush 100 for my home noodling and practice and they are a fantastic combo. I have a different orange rig for live. I was contemplating selling it. I have wondered whether the crush would be man enough for small pub gigs etc, so it was nice to see your thread 😊

I couldn't swear to it, but I seem to recall that when Bass Gear Magazine measured the Markbass LMIII it was flat with all the tone controls at noon. Cabs aren't normally flat though, and your settings are probably compensating for your cab and the room.

Good morning, Richard, and ... Plenty to read and amuse you here, and lots to learn and share.

Apparently it’s fitted with double sided tape which doesn’t mark the bass, but I wouldn’t want to put that to the test 😀

I learned last night that we will be playing in Lille and Paris but not until next October!

Nice one!

Practice is the only thing that will get your ability and technique up to speed. Use a metronome and set it to a count where you can just about play that line. It'll get very boring, but you keep playing it until you feel comfortable and it is easy to play. Then you speed up the Metronome a little. Go around that loop until you can play along comfortably with the record.

You need to decide if you can reconcile the difference(s) and work harmoniously (sorry for the pun) with the guitarist. If the band had a distinct leader, its very easy - they deal with it/decide upon whichever issue it is, then a line is drawn under the episode and everyone moves on. If there is no one leader then all of you are going to need to sort it out somehow or other but it seems its you vs the guitarist, and that the others are only indirectly involved (and probably don't want to be drawn into it).

No. I'm not a fan of rehearsing at high volume. If you are rehearsing at gig volumes then you should be setting up as you would on a gig. So whether the problem is the way you place the back-line, or other players, or the room, or the volume you rehearse at I can't say, but my guess would be that the plugs are working as intended and they are high-lighting problems with your rehearsal process. My experience with band rehearsals is that the gear placed around the room in a circle and you all have each others amps pointing at you. I usually had the guitar amp pointing at me! Turning up the bass just makes the guy across the room turn up and you get nowhere. Everyone playing in a loud band is going deaf. This is happening at different rates but the end will usually be the same result. I'd guess that if you thought it was worth paying this amount of money to protect your hearing you are already experiencing some "issues". You've got to give these plugs a chance. One rehearsal is too early to give up on them. You are putting a filter between you and the sound waves so everything you hear will sound different. The balance can change but you just need to acclimatise. I'm not sure how you can have a sound that disappears when you put the plugs in. Maybe your sound is one that is filtered out, but I haven't had that. When I use the plugs the bass sounds bassier and louder to me. Raising the cab will change what you hear, but I think your rehearsal is the problem. IMO taking the plugs out and carrying on without them is the last thing you should be doing.

I’d say it’s odd. I’m in an originals band - we are effectively a backing band for an original singer songwriter - he even does the same material solo on his own. For bass duties I’m given a full free range - I decide what to play, when to play it, what kit to play it through and whether it fits or not. There’s the occasional song where he will say “I’m thinking drums and bass come in on V2” or “Maybe keep the bass going through that quieter section for a bit of dynamic variance?” But that’s it. It means we all have a shared responsibility to the sound overall - we have skin in the game. If we write well and it works we feel collectively responsible - and visa versa. Actually makes me want to turn up and play.

Did you try turning the trussrod nut the other way?

Pitchshifter at the Garage on Friday night. Haven't seen them for close to 20 years. Superb gig - full of energy, playing an excellent collection of songs, and the singer is a brilliant frontman. Aided on one song by Mikey from Sikth Excellent bass sound - crisp, full and dirty, and very present in the mix. Finished with Genius, great song led by the bass. Loved it

There's an interesting point here imho. The op, and most of the discussion, is about musicians who have been good and successful all their lives - indeed, why should they stop if they're still good and successful? But @StringNavigator is talking about the joy of coming to it late, or at least taking it up seriously late, and finding that it still flies. In my case - as said before on other threads - I wanted more than anything to play bass when I was 14, and my mother beat it into my head that I never could. For 45 years I would go to gigs and glue my eyes and ears to the bass player and go home and cry because I wanted to play bass and I knew I never would. It wasn't until I was about to turn 60 that on one of those nights instead of crying I got angry - life is too short not to do the things you really want to! - and went out the next day and bought a guitar and soon after my first bass. Thursday night I played a fairly high standard local blues jam. The three other bass players there were all very experienced, semi-pro and much better than me. But dâmn it, for 20 minutes I pretty much nailed some simple but adequate basslines at high speed and high volume to a packed (small - maybe 70 people?) and very appreciative popular local music venue. Joy. I'm re-training at my own expense for a new career in mental health care, and I'm seriously looking forward to at least ten years work (I hope) doing that, but to be honest if I was to be offered the choice between that and ten years in a real gigging band I'd choose the band. I wrote a song for my first bass - I was drifting through life like I'd lost my way / Had no original words to say / Road was empty and the sky was grey / Praying Lord, get me home tonight I was drifting through daytimes, not even trying / Long bitter nights of drinking and crying / Cursing myself for wasting my time / Praying Lord, let me sleep at night Now I'm playing 12 bar blues on a 5 string bass / Finally know I've found my place / Electric adrenaline, state of grace / Singing Lord, let me play all night Blessing 🙂

Kubicki EX

This. It takes less than a second and avoids that schoolboy-error embarrassment as your lead comes out and you look like a total twât. Or more of one.

I never understood this. You're literally giving away your bank details [*] to strangers all the time. It's good to be cautious but... On the other hand, bringing a stranger to my place, I may be more cautious about that. [*] By bank details, I mean account/sort code. There's nothing anybody can do with that other than put money into your account If that's a scam, scam me all the way to Chicago.

I think a better thread would be to explain in layman's terms what all of these technical phrases mean, then to demonstrate them with simple diagrams and calculations. This would allow each member to work it out and then post on the thread to ensure they are correct. For example La Bam, your question: The cabinet provides the load not the amplifier. So, you amplifier has a minimum load (in ohms) that it is happy with. I am going to assume that as above, in bridge mode you can have any impedance as long as it is higher than 4 ohms. Since your cabinet is 6 Ohms, your amplifier sees that load and thus that would be the "measured ohmage" across the output terminals. This is of course Impedance which is an AC measurement, not to be confused with Resistance which is a DC measurement that you'd make with a simple 'multimeter'. What the 6 ohms measurement does do (on paper at least) is affect the power reading of the amplifiers output. At 2 ohms difference though in this scenario, it's not worth bothering about as your 6x10 cones are moving plenty of air anyway.

My Wal photos have gone from this post. Must be because of the web site update right? Here they are again....Sorry to be a bore : )

Forgot to post the result of the new red Mk2. And it has joined its siblings in the stable.