Leaderboard

Our first indoor gig and it was pretty well done. 150 tickets, table service and loud music. For a gig with restrictions it was pretty good! 2 plus hours and I was canny knackered, a bit outta practice 😂 Roll on Friday and Sat this week 🤞

Music is different since the 90s. Back then you bought an album, listened to it to death and then you bought lots by those people, and those people who were related to those people, and you were passionate about it, so went to see them etc. Now music is basically valueless, you can hear it everywhere, and the tribalism and intense listening to one group is not really something that does the same now. Music shows are about some singer, as the only one that matters (hense the lack of groups), and xfactor type shows are shown as the way to get famous. Its just the age it is now, the era of the band is sort of over

So, new bass day for me, a Fender Precision in black/black/maple. So what’s new I hear you say? Well it’s a five-string Precision, that’s what’s new. I’d seen this on here for a while and although never had a fiver before it’s my preferred brand/model/colour scheme, and as I’m not in a gigging band at present should I join one and then need a fiver it made sense to be prepared. Plus it would have really irritated me if that happened and I’d passed on this one and had to get a fiver that didn’t match the rest of my basses (CDO is a terrible thing, I even have to arrange the letters properly/alphabetically). Here it is, currently strung with flats and they just really work, more than likely I’ll keep them.

I have two of these, one with the humbucker and one with a split-coil. Really good basses with quality parts, not sure why Washburn faded from the market.

Started my dust collection from the fretboard!

Today is all about the last flattening, now the main coats are relatively hard and cured, to remove any dust buggies, runs or roughness followed by a few whisper coats to re-establish the shine. Because of the drying time that usually lasts a couple of days. So, if all goes to plan, final assembly and start of set up should start middle of this week

1993 B-200 - Metallic Dark Blue. 🤘

Good shout on Jacques Dutronc above, too

I used to be part of a very poppy female-fronted metal band, but we haven't done anything in almost 5 years. When our lead singer had her 4th child, her family life became so demanding she unfortunately had very little time left for our band. She has 5 now, and it's become a fulltime job! And then our lead guitarist left to pursue an academic career in chemistry at Oxford University for 3 years. He now lives in Barcelona and has little desire to come back to the Netherlands unless he can find a good position at a university as a teacher or (assistant) professor. It was fun while it lasted though, and we're still good friends! The 3 remaining members (the other guitarist, the drummer and me) are now more or less permanent substitutes in a doom metal project of our drummer's brother. It's a one-man project, but when he plays live we're the first guys he calls Here's my old band playing live on Dutch national radio a few years ago (2013, just after releasing our first and only album, between 1:00 and 4:00 nighttime so probably for 5 listeners at best ). I play my lefty Warwick Streamer LX5, which has been my main axe for most of my time in that band. I play it through an Ampeg SVP-PRO 19" tube preamp, straight into the mixer. Live, this was usually my setup too. No effects, and if there was an amp on stage I would only use it for personal monitoring. That Ampeg preamp was one of my best bass-related purchases ever, I love it! It's basically the preamp section of the SVT-2 Pro in a 1HE package, with a great built-in DI. In this video I use a pick, but I mostly play fingerstyle. The backing vocals and keys come from our live backing track, we never played live with a real keyboardist.

One of the best Standards ever

Rob Halford would approve no doubt..

Booked myself in for my first ever bass lessons Despite having played for nearly a decade, being able to read music and stuff, I feel weak and plateau'ed - no idea what to expect from lessons but hopefully some guidance!

I went to Bass Direct today expecting to buy a Lakland 5502.it was sold. So i looked around and spotted a Nordy. .I really wanted to stay away from the JJ pickups as they never really have the heft that i like in a bass. This bass has Aguilar Super Double soap bars. an Aguilar OBP3 preamp. It sounds monstrous. It still has the Jazz bass sound but its just way more variable. No flashy top wood, its light. It sounds killer. The build quality is pretty spectacular as are the matching knobs. Its a Nordy.

Just joined the club! Spend a good few hours trying many basses more than 10 (some more than double the price) two others came close another Sandberg and a dingwall superJ this bass just felt right and sounded great. Deal was done and it's now at home with me and will be my main gigging once we are up and running again.

Other half reminded me of this one -

Now label it … and then make a custom rack for your collection out of 1100 year old spruce trunks hauled from a riverbed

I think this is evidently just descriptions meaning different things to different people. I just find Barts dark and polite. A ‘dirty’ sound to me suggests aggressive, which to me doesn’t suggest dark and/or polite. I took his request as meaning how could he get a more aggressive sound, i.e. the opposite of polite. Of course YMMV.

Well I think so. On @neepheid review I'll be getting this delivered tomorrow. Probably be putting flats on as soon as I can.

Is the red one, I hate white pickguards as they look so cheap, also I felt that as it was such a lovely colour it seemed a shame to have such a cr*p colour pickguard, the black pickguard was a huge improvement

In my opinion as someone who has done a fair amount of remote recording, the less you do to the stem, the better. Unless there is a specific part of the brief that says 'make it sound like an SVT', I'd be recording DI (as you are), and letting whoever is mixing the piece do whatever they need to, whether that's re-amping it, or using an amp/cab-sim on your track. To me, there's little point in mixing a great bass tone, only to then send that to the mix-engineer and it not fit well in their mix. Si

I think it's a cycle that is still turning. How many pubs (remember them..?) have a 'joanna' for an 'everyone in the bar' singalong..? T'was all the rage, not so long ago. Is there going to be a resurgence of skiffle..? One or two local hot-spots, but I doubt it becoming, once again, the focus. Disco dancing..? It was massive for a decade, but is now just a side-line. I'd say it's the same for rock groups. In the Twenties, it was roller skating. Roller rinks (sometimes several...) in every town. They were converted to cinemas when the fashion changed. Then cinemas, in their turn, became bingo halls, which evolved into furniture stores, and are now mostly empty, I think. It's a wheel, still turning; it seldom turns backwards. Nostalgia is all that's left, for each generation. The present and future generations will be exactly the same, looking in their rear-view mirror. It's normal; nothing to see here.

Does this count?

I have one of these basses. Is it neck heavy? Well to be helpful I just popped the nastiest, thinnest, smooth, nylon freebie strap I could find on mine and put it on with just a t-shirt on my shoulder. It was maybe a little neck heavy, but it didn't dive for the floor, more it found a level equilibrium. With a decent strap (in my case a Neotech Mega strap - wider and grippier) it balances fine. It is helped in this regard (versus say the Thunderbird whose pickups and bridge/tailpiece it shares) by the relative shortness of the neck (bridge further towards the bottom of the body), the smaller headstock, the smaller tuners. If you like the sound of it but are picky about balance then I'm sure swapping out the stock tuners for some Ultralites or Gotoh GB350s will further alleviate any heavy feeling.

Reminds me of Roxy Bowie Nite at Angels when I were a yoof: As does this:

Kraftwerk - Autobahn is a classic example.

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Some won't have heard this... Bend your strings at 90 degrees before cutting to length to remove the risk of the windings unravelling.

Well... Since writing this I got a Facebook notification one day and within ten mins had done the deal for this beaut. I've got an 80s band starting up, OK I've already got an 84 Aria SB but this has more of the obvious 80s look. It sounds great and it was 1/6th the price of a real Status. So where are all the Washburn basses, I can't answer that. But one of them is in my office and I'm very glad of its company.

Couple of favourite vintage Bernard Purdie breaks come to mind. He played on some Pucho & The Latin Soul Brothers tunes in the 60s and when he lets loose here at 1:16 it’s wild. The congas on the intro are great as well. He recorded with Mongo Santamaria a few times, and his playing on the cover of James Brown’s “Cold Sweat” is brutal. The intro is standard funky Latin and everyone is holding back slightly but the solo drums at 4:36 are hard as nails. Miles away from all the slick, polished stuff he did in the 70s with Steely Dan and Aretha Franklin etc. Wild snare and tom tom accents, plus some brilliant ‘across the bar’ fills that were rare at the time but later you’d hear them on Zeppelin tunes, or Sly & The Family Stone or whoever. Love it. I could post favourite breaks all day long (my main instrument is percussion) but I’ll save them for when BreaksChat is up and running

I can't think of any quick tips but one, write in the nut-slots with a pencil, the graphite is a great lube, & will help keep the strings from sticking when you're tuning.

So lucky to find this this week! Picked it up and straight down the practice room!! In absolutely lovely condition, recently revalved and comes in custom case too. Sound wise I didnt really know what to expect. It has lots of eq - bass, lo mid, hi mid (pull switch), treble, deep,, and high. It's quite scooped with everything at noon, but roll the bass back and put the treble up and it's a gorgeous sound. It took me a good few hours to find the tone I was after (as usual not much tweaking needed from flat it turns out) and it just began sitting really nice in the mix to the backing tracks. It isnt a SVT. In fact it sounds absolutely nothing like an SVT, for those of you who were wondering. It's more like a solid state amp with a bit of that 3D sound and warmth to it, but much nicer. It quite similar to my big gk 550. After a few hours I whacked the backing track right up and really dug in. THATS when it comes to life. Gorgeous tone there. And the big bonus - it's only 20 something kilos, so much much easier to move than an svt or any of my previous valve amps. Even in it's hard case it's a decent lift. Very happy purchase!

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/59RhYT5dLPwboS9u3njL4S big thanks to @Mykesbass for doing this 👍

Further to Tegs post with the vid, the guy there is using super glue as a "filler" and a colour fluid underneath... I discovered (and ordered) some stuff called Loctite 480 it's a black "self coloured" super glue which is obviously black all the way through rather than clear with a tint beneath. It's only good for black basses ( or guitars) of course. I wanted it to fill some chips on the back of a black paint finished neck. Just thought I'd mention it in case it's of use to anyone else.

In the 60-70s there wasn't hip hop, techno, drum n bass etc. so if you were into making music then being in a band was the main route, not so much nowadays - it's fragmented and there are lots of other ways to express yourself musically other than playing in a band and lots of other ways of being heard and making money from music other than signing to a major label and doing massive tours. So I guess it's inevitable there will be fewer new bands filling stadiums. Also, to get to the point of being big enough to fill stadiums takes a long time, over the last 20 years or so there have been bands formed like Ghost, The Strokes, Royal Blood, Arctic Monkeys, Maroon 5, Biffy Clyro, Arcade Fire, Bring me the Horizon, Mumford & Sons, Florence and the Machine etc. that all fill big venues and headline festivals. I guess if they can stay together and make a couple more well received albums they'll be filling stadiums in a few years. I wouldn't discount the likes of stadium filling pop stars like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Lana Del Ray, Ed Sheeran, Lorde, Adele etc. they often have live backing bands/session musicians and aren't really doing things that differently to the way pop star singers in the past did things.

@EBS_freak beat me to the Gipsy Kings, so here's another French track from around that time - Les Negresses Vertes

I’ve just pulled the trigger on one myself. @neepheid is the man to ask.

It would , of course be, remiss of me not to post this...

Couldn't resist

I think that's the slight problem bass players have compared to guitarists. - I think there is often a lot more colouration given by effects, amp and speaker, A patch set up to make you sound like John Squire of the Stone Roses for example, will probably get you in the ball park given similar pickup types.... with bass it seems a bit more subtle and playing with small margins, I'm pretty sure to get a specific tone that will work for a wide range of basses you would have to kill a lot of the dynamics. And yes, not enough clean amps. I liked the SWR and EBS sims Zoom have. Going back to John's Dr Tone stuff one thing I took from his latest flat mids amp settings is how low he ends up running the gain on most the models to get a clean sound. Also the fender bassman amp sounds nice clean.

Excellent selection @meterman keep them coming. I'd sign up for breakschat (I'm on a Facebook group called 'jungle beardstroke massive'!)

One twelve-year-old, absolutely fine with me and I'll probably learn some technique. One twelve- or eighteen-month-old, also fine and I'll teach them to say "Four strings good, five strings better" Twelve eighteen-month-old kids, maybe less keen on that.. 😅

This. My Shuker P has a Nordstrand that can certainly be impolite.

Actually, no, two more. “Cold, Cold, Cold” by Little Feat. When Richie Hayward comes in off the chugging drum machine intro, his fill that kicks off the track is ace. His playing throughout the whole song is pretty special tbh, and his drum sound is one of my all time favourites: And Paul Humphrey playing with Thijs Van Leer on “Street Rondo” is a great example of a rock solid break, but at a slower tempo that is hard to maintain unless you’re a real pro. The subtle hi-hat lifts and bass drum upbeats are class. (Warning: funk, prog and flute are involved 😂 )

Makes me laugh. As with punk, indie bands want to be different, only they all do different the same way 😂

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