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Rehearsing on your partner's birthday - now that's dedication/sheer stupidity 😟

In the interests of accuracy I am prepared to disclose certain pertinent facts: * I am not Dr No. In point of fact my former associate Julius No worked for me between 1957-1961 but we parted on difficult terms, mainly because he complained that I 'expected him to be a Yes-man'. Nothing could have been further from the truth; I always welcome constructive discussion. Nevertheless, Julius became far too wedded to the whole Caribbean Island thing at a time when super-villainry was trending more towards space stations and / or lairs in dormant volcanoes. I was all about the volcano. Julius wanted an island. We parted ways. C'est tout. * My affinity with the game Cluedo dates from 1944 when I lent my chum the pianist Tony Pratt the not inconsiderable sum of fifty guineas towards the development costs of his idea for a board game. I'd known Tony from his days playing the piano on cruise ships; he tickled the ivories while I plied my trade as a gigolo / lounge lizard among the ladies of a certain age travelling first class. (That Barbara Cartland? Had her). So when Tony needed some cash for a working presentation to Messrs Waddington it was I to whom he turned. * I do not live on the South Coast, rather in South Central Wiltshire. My bungalow (decorated in a tasteful, un-ostentatious Louis XIV stylee) forms part of a more extensive compound including a small airstrip, weapons testing bunkers, a communications centre and a compact but efficient miniature nuclear reactor. I've given up on shark tanks. IMO, they're both passé and de trop.

I nearly bought it, but I tried it out and it wouldn't play Rhythm Stick properly, kept fluffing some of the notes, so I gave it a miss...

Warning! Bass solo content! 😂 What a brilliant player Gerry Mc Avoy is. Shame he doesn't get the recognition he deserves. 😢

Just over 30 years and still learning new things, still improving and certainly still loving it. When I was at school along with my parents, I was told that I will never make a musician and I don't have a musical bone in my body. I must of been about 10 and I then picked up the bass at about 17. I played it every day in my bedroom for 2 years and then went out and joined a band. I've played Stadium Rock, Indie Guitar Punk Pop, Folk Pop, Acoustic Soul, Electronic EBM, 50s/60 pop, 50's sounding Rock n Roll and depped for a U2 tribute band. I've had a record deal, been on TV, written music for an advert, multiple live radio sessions, many tours either supporting or on my own. I've worked and recorded with many named artists, did 119 gigs last year and have gigs booked up for the next 3 years. I consider myself very lucky but every day there is something new I learn about playing bass, it never stops, it never gets boring and I love it to bits. No idea how long I will keep going as my fingers seem tighter these days and a couple of knuckles get sore occasionally so gonna make the most of it while I can.

I can’t ignore the lead singer... he’s just... THERE. Like a creepy uncle.

Personally I have used a rack compressor (a Focusrite compounder) for years and years, but then I had a very specific set of requirements with my rig that it helped out with a lot. New rig now, may even ditch the always on compressor completely, and get a pedal comp for some very overt compression fx in a few distinct spots rather than the always on comp set up I've enjoyed for the last 10 years. In general the single biggest weakness of 90% of compressor pedals is a lack of serious metering: by definition you cant hear compression work when its transparent, unless you are in the mix, in which case you are playing your bass, not setting up a compressor! If you want really transparent compression then I recommend looking at parallel compression, or anything with a blend knob. Parallel compression allows you to 'get away with' heavier compression settings without them becoming so obvious, its all about psychoacoustics, it also can act more like an expander than a compressor. Most compressors with an LPF dont compress the bottom of the signal at all, anything under the LPF frequency is not compressed and so you have to bear this in mind, they are great for transient shaping but not so good at taming wayward low end. Multicomp pedals are the solution to this, but the truth is you need a huge amount of parameter control and metering to get the most out of them - or some kind of computer interface (and therefore a digital pedal) - and masses of experience. Things like the spectracomp are fine, but unless you really know your beans dont go fiddling with the internals. Personally if I want an obvious effected compressed sound then I love optical compressors, they have this gorgeoues bwoooOOP sound to the front of the note when set right, its so funky I love it to death, but its definitely not an always on thing! My favourite is the Joe Meek FloorQ btw. For an always on compressor I like to emulate the compression of a tube amp (not the saturation though), I have explained exactly how I set this up on a bunch of other threads so a search will help you, but basically its a very very low ratio (1.3:1) and a threshold set so its always on, just (this ends up being a very low threshold indeed), attack slow enough to let the transient through, a bit of low pass, a medium/fast release ( I play a lot of 16ths) and make up gain to match on/off output when digging in. This way you cant really feel it, but its always helping atad to even things out, your dynamics are unchanged in the main. I've even run this in parallel with a much faster attack too, it stays really transparent but fattens up the front of the note a bit.

I've seen the guy from D.A.D's version before - not sure why, but there's something about these that just makes me want to punch whoever thought this was a good idea.

My birthday too - many happy returns

"Dr Nowt" 😂

As a long time fan of both Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush, it's seems to me to be an utterly pointless argument to say that one of them is a (musical) genius, whilst the other is not. They are both extraordinarily talented songwriters, singers and musicians in their own right but they come from very different cultural and artistic backgrounds IMO, which makes comparing them more about personal preference and opinion than fact. Their back catalogues, record sales, worldwide fan bases and respect from amongst their own musical peer groups tells its own story though and they both have those things in abundance. I'm just grateful that they have made the fantastic music they have over the years; my life's been all the richer for it.

Feel free to come, @MoJoKe We’ll have sessions of people showing off and giving talks about bass related bits so let me know if you’d like your name down for that.

Oddly enough i do see it as a plus and never a negative. Not sure my wife shares my opinion as we normally go out for dinner but as you say .......never on your wife's birthday Dave

Surely playing with your mates is a plus not a minus? I would take it as a birthday present, anytime.

A great pedal, no doubt. Having said that this very forum proves that if you ask 10 bassists what the 'best' compressor is you'll get 47 different answers.

They’d go bust.......

Thomann advising 'In stock within about one week'. Getting a little moister. 😄

Had an email yesterday from Andy @ Wing Instruments. They’re just putting the finishing touches on my Wing. Things got somewhat delayed, partly due to NAMM amongst other things. I decided to take the plunge and order the UDG MIDI Controller case I posted about above - it arrived today and is fantastic. Obviously I just have the empty case and no Wingbass yet but the guys who designed the case really thought it through. Very high quality. I’ll post pics once the Wing arrives! EDIT: Just realised I’m actually hijacking @Grantd‘s thread so I’ll start a new one when the time comes

Giblin played some lovely things with Chris de Burgh and with Jon Anderson. This is from the 'Song Of Seven' album. The opening bass solo is sweet.

Apologies for not meeting your high standards. I've just spent a week in A&E in Ipswich Hospital, so I'm slightly behind the curve.

As soon as you send any contact details to each other before buying, phone, address etc its robots will automatically pick it up and flag it.

One question, Mr D... Do you have an industrial laser that could burn a bloke's jacob(s) off if required? 😬

Nice introduction Gary and welcome back to the world of bass, how are you finding it with giving it a break? More passion and interest than before? Not too bad equipment as well, pretty much ready to go pro 😉 hahaha Just.... word to the wise, steer clear from the marketplace on here. You'll end up penniless like the rest of us haha. Welcome to BassChat and I hope you enjoy your stay here.

'The Space Ritual' by Hawkwind. Most of Hawkwind's early studio stuff was pretty lack lustre to say the least, but this album was something else.

My take on it is.... 1. They must have written procedures to follow. Written by themselves. These are there to ensure the job gets done correctly. 2. They clearly haven't followed their own written procedures. AND they have admitted this. Therefore they are responsible not just for loss, but for being negligent and not abiding by their own procedures. 3. They're offering the standard cheapo payout because that's just what they do. It doesn't make them right.

Best concert/gig/performance I've ever seen in 44 years of going to gigs was KB's Before The Dawn show in August 2016.. It had everything - incredible songs, musicians, vocals, stage sets, choreography.. It was as close to artistic perfection as I think it's possible to get. And KB herself was the strangest mix of down to earth 'girl next door' and charismatic diva all at the same time. Just brilliant! What she created was performance art of the highest standard and it was all on her own terms; no record label or product driving it - just the desire to tell her own story.. And for me, it was on another level of creativity altogether, better than most of my other favourite artists shows that I've seen over the years, including Queen, Bowie, Sinatra, Prince etc.. I love Joni Mitchell too, but to try and compare her and KB is pointless really - their musical DNA comes from quite different sources IMHO. We're just lucky that they've both created unique and beautiful bodies of work. Oh, and at the KB show, John Giblin with Omar Hakim on drums were absolutely unbelievable as a rhythm section.. 😊

Good suggestion. For really spiffing results, try ethyl mercaptan, aka the smelliest substance known to man. I used to play in a band with an industrial chemist and he put just a smidgeon in the loos of a pub that upset us. Place emptied in short order.

So you spent the day playing with yourself? Oooooer 😉

That tone? Nothing. A different, great bass tone. . . . lots of stuff. With the gear you list, if you have a bad back your only solution is to hire roadies. Other than that there are no PRO's for keeping heavy gear. My solution to a permanent lower back injury (because I delayed selling very heavy bass gear, that sounded too good to sell) has been to move to 6lb amps, several 23lb cabs and an 8 1/2 lb bass. It doesn't matter what your current gear sounds like. Find good sounding gear that you can carry and learn to love that sound.

I know exactly who you are hinting M.D..............

Hello Gentlemen, May I come too? As quite a few people here know, I do shows and a bit of demo work with Markbass, so I always have a few demo bits to play with if anyone is interested? I recently started gigging myself with the Casa (Michael League signature head. Its a huuuge sounding lovely warm, retro 70s solid state amp, which you can also drive to full on John Entwhistle!) into a pair of STD121HR cabs, which doesn't appear to be stocked in many places yet, and I also have one of the new CMD101p combos, for starters... Let me know if there is anything else you want to hear, and I can see if I can blag one?

I was also looking at those, read every thread there is out there... unfortunately I haven't tried either, only a Super Twin (or whatever the tweeterless BF 212 is called). Between those two, based on what I've read, I think I'd go for the Fearless if my top priority was the sound and for the BF if it was weight. But I'd like to add another suggestion, the Audiokinesis Thunderchild, which is what I went with. Should give you less low lows, but they are enough for me - and it helps avoid boominess. It's also more compact compared to the two you're looking at, with the weight a little above the BF. Might cost a little more when you factor in shipping and import taxes, but personally I didn't regret it. I have a TC212 and recently ordered a TC112UFT too. Duke, the owner, is also probably the nicest guy I've dealt with in the industry.

But that's not the point of what I am trying to understand! I do occasionally read these type of threads but what I want to understand is when someone states that Product X is the best bass/amp/pedal/whatever few people actually say why, or explain how they arrived at that conclusion. And that's what I want to understand. Maybe it's the scientist in me but when someone makes a claim I want to see the evidence in support of that claim, to test the validity of it. Otherwise it's just an unsubstantiated opinion. As Christopher Hitchens once said "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence". As I said in my previous post, I have no doubt that the two amps you have chosen are great. But why those particular two? What were your selection criteria? Why didn't you include some of the other suggestions in this thread? How and why are these the best? I'm not trying to be difficult, no more than usual anyway, and I appreciate that this is all a bit of fun and that maybe I'm just over thinking the whole thing. I just want to know why and understand some of the claims. I'll just sign of by saying that the Mini Metro is the greatest car of all time.

Thanks guys, yes I have been looking at Gator, Magma and UDG too. I was thinking of getting the Gator G-Club Control at £39, but then I remembered I have this! And it's perfect!

So it’s no longer, is it good for metal? It’s now, is it good for reggae? personally, I think it’s obviously all down to sound and attack. Playing with a pic near the bridge won’t give that authentic reggae tone.

Hey Robbo, never too late to start my friend. I got my dad playing guitar, he's a year older than yourself but only a few years back he started and took to it like a duck to water, really enjoying it, never understood why he didn't do it sooner (perhaps not too soon or I wouldn't be here 😂) and something that's keeping him busy and still learning things new. I mean, tell me a dad that doesn't know everything? Haha Also had a few customers in my old workplace, many many years your senior who wanted to take up instruments to help with things like arthritis, dementia and other ailments*... Personally you're never too late to start 😉👌🏻 *This is what I was told by the customer and nothing Ive researched, understand or approve but I do back, as I'm sure learning something new to keep your mind young and keeping your hands busy can help backpedal certain things. That aside..... Some nice gear you've got and also welcome to the Yamaha club, we'll expect pics posted if it's a BB model Enjoy the forum and welcome to BassChat 😁

Anyone else here using one of these? i've had one for around a year now and its been a great bit of kit for tracking a solid D.I at home and on the move, I'm using logic all the time to create music and have still not yet purchased a bigger interface because this has been so clean!

Material composition and conductivity thereof aside, isn't it all about the degrees of rotation? Assuming the knob rotates through 300 degrees (of a circular 360 degree rotation) to operate from open to closed, then the length of the track size is of an irrelevance; it doesn't/shouldn't matter whether the pot is the size of a thimble or that of a dinner plate.

It's not so bad... think of it this way - many of the baddies in Sean Connery as Bond films lived in bungalows (or at least, cool & retro split level pads). Like the bad guy in Dr No, for instance. I can't remember his name, but he wears a black glove and dresses a bit like Chairman Mao. Or rather, he did in 1962 or whatever. 👍

Read his website. Jamerson claimed Cool Jerk and it was actually Babbitt on bass. Apparently Berry Gordy was a tricky character. Most Motown sessions were documented but some are a little sketchy. Some of the recordings made in LA were Motown masters, but were overdubbed etc in Detroit. Back then a song could have been recorded multiple times, for the single, album or film and many artists would cover the same songs. It is possible that many of these songs would have been recoded in separate sessions and vocals added later. Also the LA guys made demos for Motown. They got paid less because it was a demo, but because these guys were so good the demos had the quality of masters and some of the session guys in LA claimed that their demo sessions were actually used as masters. It's not an exactly clear picture, then add in the AFM Special Payments Fund rules that gave session guys a cut of the "mechanical royalties" of the songs they played on. In typical style the session guys were screwed over, because they were made to claim the sessions they were on and were not given very long to do it. Some had the lists of sessions but wouldn't have known what happened to those songs after they laid the tracks down. It was, and still is, a mess.

I'm not a fan of either McCartney or The Beatles - probably because they have no direct influence on my musical DNA, I've always felt fairly indifferent. However, it really bugs me (or "triggers" me, if we're gonna be all 2019 ) when this term "overrated" gets thrown around in relation to artists who are indisputable originators - absolutely pivotal and seminal in the evolution of both music as a creative & cultural force, and in the development of the role of the bass. McCartney is one such - his influence, direct or indirect, is enormous, it's probably entirely reasonable to say that without him & his band, none of us would be playing the music we play now, wherever we sit on the musical spectrum, or however we personally feel about McCartney. Fair enough to say you don't like him/them, or you think so-and-so would have done it better - but "overrated"? Look it up.

I used a jazz for a long time playing reggae, I have a different bass now with different pup configuration but get a similar sound. I've seen people get a good tone on similar gigs using everything, stingrays and Warwick thumbs being the more surprising. Its all about how you play like with any genre of course, for me its that and rolling off a fair bit of high mid. Obviously it can get muddy too depending on the room, and the other instruments your playing with.

I think you've spelled 'carrots' wrong...

My 2014 BTB1406 Premium has Nordstrands. A very wide (and shallow) neck, and fairly wide string spacing even at the nut, with a lot of taper outward to the bridge. I find it very playable, but I have big hands and long fingers, it wouldn't suit everyone. It's a thing of pure beauty. I don't know how they make a neck that shallow that takes the strain of six strings, but that's what makes it playable - any deeper and it would be a tree trunk.