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And it's finished...holy fecking crap!

Strictly speaking this is Off Topic, but I put it here because it's a response to a thread within General Discussion. In the thread about the most musically talented musician of all time, I wrote a post that I now believe must have been way more hard hitting than I imagined when I wrote it, and Bassman7755 especially was (or seemed) its target. I have read and re-read the offending post, and now believe that it was an ugly thing to write. I therefore apologise to Bassman7755, and of course all others who may have felt they were its target, for that post's general tone and the aspects of it that put down other people. What I should've said was that the most talented person likely is not a person we tend to know. What I said instead was that people who mention McCartney have no clue about this stuff. I'm very sorry, and wish Bassman7755 and others all the best. Bert

I bought a Mono Vertigo gig bag from them in August 2016. it had travelled hundreds and hundreds of miles with me, on trains, buses and the Eurostar across Europe. The strap broke a couple of weeks ago, as luck would have it just as I was getting on a train for a gig in Bristol. Anyway I managed an emergency repair using my teeth to squeeze the broken buckle bak together and continued my journey. I emailed Mark on the Monday morning, he got straight on to Mono and the distributors, and within a very short space of time had negotiated a return and a replacement bag for me. He even offered to post the broken one if I could get it over to him. That is why shops like Bass direct should in my opinion be shown more appreciation, who cares whether they sell a set of strings with mismatched silks? We should ensure their survival in what must be a very difficult market, with so many apparently great deals available on-line. Can you seriously imagine Amazon who, although well known for their great customer service arranging a return on an item almost a year and a half after purchase?

Nick Smith, Doctor of the Bass is in Peterborough, has a shop and will do SKYPE lessons. He'll tailor them to what you want/need. Ring him on: 01733 311 469 07961 880770

Not particularly, since the response of typical tens, twelves and fifteens in the low end isn't all that different. There are atypical drivers that do have not only lower frequency response but also longer excursion, which is another necessity, but by and large the usual sources don't use them. For that matter with the majority of usual sources you have no way of knowing what's inside the box.

http://www.mjwamps.com/ Now back in business after a short break and relocation from High Peak to North East Scotland. MJW is a builder of custom valve amps for guitar and bass. Repairs and modifications are also undertaken. I have an MJW Taranis and it’s a beautiful beast of a thing. Like an Orange AD200 or Matamp GT200 but with 2-channels and lots of EQ options. http://www.mjwamps.com/taranis/ MJW has also serviced my 400+ and Walkabout and has provided top-notch customer service. Highly recommended. You lucky Scots have a great amp tech just moved in.

Now then. Some of you may recall the Smitten Kitten thread from a while back. I fell in love with a five-string Mike Lull NRT5, sold a bunch of basses and put in an order. Six months on, the photo below dropped into my inbox today with a brief message saying Mike Lull will be building it this week, so hopefully I'll see it before Christmas. I guess it's pretty rare to see his work like this, so posting here. I am heartedly excited. P

The Spector will provide you with a 'P bass on steroids' punch... and more....! Plus the reverse P means a tighter, piano-like tone on the E string :-)

Truth be told I am a little in awe.

As its Christmas (and I spent two snow days working the goshdarn bass part out...) I thought I'd pop this here. It's not 100% and there are notes where they shouldn't be and vice versa, but it was a lot of fun to play. Kudos to Tracy Wormworth for the original, epic bass line.

Glad its as good as you were hoping !

The only version I could find was horridly low res - so here's a new one

The circuit diagram for the TRB5 II is on page 7 here - https://www.manualslib.com/manual/539186/Yamaha-Trb-5iif.html?page=7#manual Both the series I and II have single coil soapbars with a dummy coil. The dummy coil is 'balanced' with the active coil on the circuit board to achieve optimum hum reduction. On the series II this balance was adjustable via presets on the circuit board (VR7 and VR8 in the circuit diagram above). Series I had the same setup but without the adjustable presets. Swapping in a new preamp without the dummy coil 'balancing' circuit opens up the possibility of the pickups being more prone to hum. Shielding will help of course, but the benefit of the dummy coil will be compromised. This is what the thread I read about swapping the preamp in a TRB was alluding too. There are a few examples out there of people changing the TRB preamp with good results so it can be done. It's just something to be aware of. If you do get more hum at least you'll know why!

Got the pro at home for a few days now and I love it! I put a set of rotosound funkmasters on it today and boy does this bass sound good. A bit like a mix between stanley Clarke and Mark king Absolutely brilliant!

Any top bass player list that makes no mention of Pino can be safely ignored

Most talented musician ever. Not enough people say that.

Cool. I’m always interested in experimenting - I actually got the Sourcs Audio PolyMod Pro rather than the bass one when I discovered you could enable another lower band on the EQ. It sounds great with bass and other instruments too. Have ordered the Mooer Lofi machine as a starting point - totally blown away by you guys and the response. Thanks so much, this has really made my Christmas!

Hire or borrow from a Swiss player. DB players are great guys. When I have flown, I have hired, and boy am I glad. I had a Chadwick folding bass too, which I bought because I had had flying gigs and almost instantly as soon as I got it, my flying gigs stopped...so I don’t know how it is to fly with. I took it oodles of uk gigs though and it was a great instrument and a talking point pre and post gigs, so if you think of flying often you may want to look at Charlie’s site foldingbass.com, Charlie is a real gent to deal with. I also had an eminence folding bass: it sounds great but I missed the rest of the body so I sold it after only a couple of months, but it is a quality instrument. As you’ll have guessed, none of this is cheap, apart from borrowing, or hiring a ply bass, so I would go for that if it’s a one-off. All the very very best.

The Moeer lofi is a cheap entry point into this world. I've just got one and am pretty impressed with it so far. Am sure may end up upgrading but at least it's allowing me to try out sounds / develop ideas etc £54 from GAK - can't go wrong!

So took it to a gig last night, quite a busy hectic one. Took a backup just in case, as the string spacing is not my favourite and I was concerned about whether the slight head heaviness was a problem on a strap. And it was wired by gibson, so just in case it stopped working! The guitarist thought it looked great, which is odd, first person I have had make that comment, and also commented how good it sounded. It did sound good live, it had real depth to it and a growl similar to a thunderbird, which I suppose should be of little surprise. I fluffed a few notes due to the spacing, but not as many as trying to rescue my mic stand from drunk people knocking it, so the bass did pretty well. It also has a very sturdy, and frankly, sharp headstock The sounds on tap from the back to the front pickup are quite wide, and worth exploring (I miss the volume / balance of most of my basses, but that is always gibsons way), coil taps not as noticable as I expected when at gig volume. Only downside was considering it had sat in a case for 4 years not doing anything and I hadn't replaced the strings, at the end of the gig my fingers were black Think I need some new strings on that. But not tonight, I have another gig tonight, and I think it will be coming with me again. You know, yeh, its ugly, yeh its a bit rough round the edges, but I think I rather like it!

Just noticed - without the controls fitted my bass has got a face like this one: I really need to get out more!

Group Hug , hope it all works out

If you're clipping it could be that you need a more powerful amp and the cabs aren't the problem at all. Have you just started using a new bass? For instance MM Sting Ray's have very hot signals which could cause clipping. You could replace all your cabs but could also add a third 210 and run the amp at 2.67 ohms. Lots of options, depending on what the problem really is. If you like the sound of your amp then don't expect that sound to remain when you've changed the speakers. It could easily be better, could be worse, but it will be different. Just don't get hung up on the 2 4 ohm cab thing. 2 good 8 ohm cabs could easily out perform 2 not so good 4 ohm cabs and the best cab for you could be just one 4 ohm cab. My 2p. . . . if you want light and powerful cabs start by checking out Barefaced. IMO they are in the top 3 cabs being made at the moment.

Yes, the zoom ms60b and b3 also. Might be a cheap way in and easier to sell if you dont like them?

Zoom MS-60B has a bitcrusher I think? You'll get plenty of other uses out of it too.

No the best option for any player is the best sounding cabs at the right volume. To carry on with the car analogies: you don't see all the Aston Martins driving about down the High Street at 90mph because that's what they can do. They all drive at the same speed as my old Volvo. If you have a 2 ohm amp you can buy 2 4 ohm cabs but that isn't going to be noticeably different to the volume out of 2 8 ohm cabs, because the limiting factor is the level your band plays at. If a 4 ohm amp is loud enough for your gigs then a 2 ohm amp wouldn't be running any louder. At a fixed volume more speakers is going to sound much better but the ohms won't be making that difference. The 2 ohms will be letting you choose different cabs.

Looks like a full gigging rig for an elf.

As ive just got an instrumental/electronic project together, ive been getting increasingly interested in ring mods/bit crushers (especially as I've been listening to nerve) . I want to put them inthe loop of my cog T65, I, m seriously gassing for the co pilot orbit (they have a ten knob version on their FB page) as it seems a really versatile pedal, but is a ring mod as is the DOD Gonkulator which looks good (anyone any experience? ). Bit crushers seem to be really expensive, for something that isn't going to be used loads. The only cheap one ive seen is the Mooer Lo Fi machine, but I've gone off that ad the you tube demos sound awful!. so as per the OP any bit crushers which Aren't daft money would be great

@BassTractor Good work Bert, not the easiest of things to do.

I'm so impressed by this post. Says a lot for someone who acknowledges he may have mis-worded something. We've probably all done it at some point. Well done BassTractor and wish you a very Merry Xmas and Guid New Year. Dave

Paging @bassman7755

Always up for a challenge, I had a good old internet trawl on this one; scant evidence online does lean toward Gallon Drunk. Funny is it? It was only 1993 and it seems like the dark ages. If you were to fast forward 25 years to 2043 and ask who were third on the bill when <insert band name here> played <insert venue here>, you'd have zero problem finding out what you want to know.

I've really enjoyed this thread, it's made me feel better about my unscrupulous money making shenanigans... My most recent; I bought a bass earlier this year for a tour that didn't happen... played a few rehearsals and one gig... then listed it on Ebay for more than I bought it for, cuz I love the cash. Just to make the story even more perfect, it sold back to the original seller, for more than he sold it to me. To his credit, he didn't complain once, he just accepted that it was now mine and I could charge what I liked... and ultimately he's just happy to have the chance to buy it back and hopefully won't make the same mistake of letting it go again

Top man. I wouldn’t be to hard on yourself. It’s ok to have an opinion and voice. One of the reasons bass players are so intelligent, and this forum is so great

The new Styx album 'The Mission'....... just fantastic! A proper, old-school 'concept album' featuring supreme musicianship, songwriting, arrangements and vocals. Here's a vid of their amazing drummer Todd Sucherman playing my favourite song on the album:

So what was my experiment? It was seeing if something I did on Mick's Psilos bass in matt, would work on satin. The above is halfway through the process but I'm confident it's working. On Mick's Psilos, I experimented whether you could do the same 'slurry and buff' approach with Osmo as you can with Tru-oil. And the answer was that you certainly could. Using the same approach as Tru-oil, the process eded up as a self-grainfilling, super silky finish. So what's the issue with higher gloss levels? Well my problem is always about trying to keep the coating thin but it actually levelling properly without leaving brushmarks or cloth-wipe ripples. I knew I wasn't going to be able to buff satin while wet - because the additional applications tend to soften the earlier coats and that affects the gloss level - but I could do a variation. So basically, what I have done so far is: Apply a decent coat with a soft brush Slurry with 400 grit wet and dry, working with the grain Wipe off with (industrial - cheaper and bigger rolls) kitchen roll Let dry Repeat Repeat, but using 800 grit The results are very encouraging with the shine coming through but the thin-coat-organic-silky feel retained Tomorrow, I will repeat, using 1500 or 2000 grit. It shouldn't need any more. For my 'piccolo-bass turned electric' project that I'm doing for myself, I'm going to see if I can get it to work with full gloss. I've tried Osmo full gloss once before and had a few issues, but the above approach might just work. Worth trying...

Ooooh, now that's more like it! Wonder if he'd build one?

Not finalised yet - but basically a B15 clone with a few surprises..

[Pure Pedantry] Fixed [/Pure Pedantry]

The greatest is entirely subjective. The most influential of all time? In the western world my vote would go to the classical greek who first developed harmonised choral singing, or the 5th century AD monks who perfected it and discovered and formalised the scales and chords we still use today. We don't know their names, but they're the ones who set us on the path to harmonised instrumental accompaniment, leading to everything from the three piece punk band to the full orchestra and everything in between.

I run a Mex P bass with US pickups and a swapped out Mighty Mite Jazz neck due to the small size of my hands. Hi-mass bridge too. Works a treat for me.

I've been using a 3000mA PSU with a daisychain for 8 FX to power my pedalboard wich has: Korg Pitchblack - MXR Bass Octave Deluxe - Darkglass B3K - 3Leaf Groove Regulator - EBS Multicomp It's been used regularly for the past 7 or 8 years and i only get noise when i kick in the b3k. Fortunetly the sheer wall of OD/Fuzz produced by the b3k is enough to get by without bleeding that noise/hiss/feedback to the audience. I'm sure that if would use a separate PSU for the b3k the noise would lower or even disapear but i don't want to lug the extra stuff unless it's an outdoor gig with hired PA company where everything needs to go smooth and without noise. For pubs and given that i only use OD in a couple of songs the daisychain will keep being used. Having 3A i've used it to hook up multi-fx boards at the same time as my pedalboard and even the guitarrists pedals along mine during rehearsalls. Never missed a bit. BTW, my PSU was bought from effectpowersupplies.co.uk a long time ago before they changed their name to fxpedal.co.uk. Now they have diferent producs and maybe some of them will address this issue. I'll know about that in another 8 to 10 years when my PSU finally breaks down and i'll need to buy another.