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Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/03/21 in all areas

  1. Early logo Westone Thunder 1A bass all original and excellent condition. Both toggle switches pressed down bypass the active 18V electronics and gives the standard Thunder 1 tone, which IMO is as good or even better than the Precision. Probably down to what looks like a Dimarzio pickup. Volume, active and passive tone controls. Active on/off and ‘dual tone’ switches. These can assist a slap tone or produce a big reggae thump. Warm, balanced note volume throughout, nice action, solid as a rock and sounds as beefy as it looks. Selling due to boredom. Lovely example.
    9 points
  2. Here are some real world numbers just to show the bare bones of the actual situation. I don't know why people are so protective of this information, everybody should see how things really are. This is for some original music I wrote and released in 2019 and used CDbaby to publish to the streaming services which cost around $90 to do, if I recall correctly. This is all streaming activity since it was released right up to today. I hope to recoup by 2030. Ok, 2040 😂 Granted, the style of music we play - slow stoner/doom type stuff where our shortest song is 7 minutes long - is exactly the opposite of how to play the streaming game. Ideally, songs should be as little over 30 seconds as possible to register a play, hence why so many albums now feature short songs, short skits and other filler. We're in it for the doom, not the money, though. I have had to go to 4 decimal places to make sure everything gets covered. Pay is counted in US$. To clarify, we're getting 1.05 cents per stream on SoundExchange, for example, and 1/3 of 1 cent on Spotify. Why would you bother, I hear you ask? Well, something is better than nothing, I suppose, but only just. People are going to post your music to youtube and the likes, "share" it on your behalf, whether you like it or not, so you might as well get paid (yes, I know) for it rather than them. That was my logic, anyway, based on it being uploaded to Youtube by several different people unassociated with us. I felt forced into it rather than waste my time finding it and having it pulled down (we did that too, a few times). By contrast, we have around 100 digital sales on Bandcamp, priced at €3.00 and get roughly €2.33 for each sale there. If I ever come across as a Bandcamp fanboy, it's because they are, without question, the only decent digital music provider who aren't ripping artists off. Bandcamp also give you free streaming and downloads for every purchase of music you make. If anyone wants to check out the music behind the numbers, http://witheredfist.bandcamp.com is my shameless plug 😉 If you actually want to support an artist, Bandcamp or direct from the artist is the only way to do it, in my opinion. I'd be interested to hear what people think of those numbers, is anyone surprised by them?
    9 points
  3. STOMP by the Brothers Johnson - with walk-through of the Bass Solo Located on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhuSY5uXA2k Please post if you were able to pick up the solo.
    7 points
  4. I remember reading in Glen Matlocks book that he and a mate went to see Teenage Rebellion thinking what a great name and how this must be a band worth seeing. The band were made up of 40+ year olds. When they asked about the name the reply was that they were rebelling against teenagers.
    6 points
  5. G&L JB Fullerton Cool high quality Jazz Bass from G&L, made in the USA. Its a very classy appearance with its metallic red (I'd say it's pretty much candy apple red) body finish and matching headstock. The build quality is as you'd expect from an expensive USA G&L. The bass feels good and sounds like a good jazz bass should. Pictures: The bass is in a very good condition. It has a few small usermarks, but has an overall fresh appearance. All electronics and hardware work like they should. The weight is very moderate for a jazz at 4,3 kilo's. The original heavy quality G&G tolex case in included. Asking €1.450 I am located in the Netherlands, but registered shipping is possible at buyers risk. Tradewise I am interested in (old, avri) offset Fender guitars like Jaguar, Mustang, Duo Sonic...
    5 points
  6. I'm sad/bored enough to have done a little research. It appears that any wood used to build a guitar is labelled a tonewood, regardless of any actual tonal properties it may, or may not, have. So as long as it is structurally capable of being used to make a guitar, it's a tonewood. It's as stupid as that. So when adverts/luthiers blither on about magical tonewoods then as long as they've built an instrument with it it's a tonewood, and by default means that every guitar or bass ever built from wood is built using a tonewood. So let's just call it wood. I also found out the best way to get spalting started in a wood is to pee on it and store in damp, humid conditions to let the bacterial growth develop. Mmmm 'Tonepiss'. 🙂
    5 points
  7. A fan and friend of mine linked the copies of these transcriptions that are on my Facebook page Neil Murray Bass Guitarist to a FB page to do with Berklee music college in the US and their associated bassists. A very respected bass player and teacher, Steve Bailey, who I've met at Warwick Bass Weekends in Germany, saw the transcriptions and quite rightly made the criticism that sometimes the notation is not exactly 'correct' - I assume he means that you’re supposed to see where each crotchet/quarter note starts in each bar, by using e.g. two tied quavers/eighth notes instead of a crotchet, indicating that one of the four beats in the bar lands in the middle of that particular note. In my defence, I would make the following points: Although in certain situations (Gilgamesh 1973, National Health 1976-7, We Will Rock You 2002 onwards) it's been necessary to be able to read music (but not sight-read), for the entirety of the rest of my career playing by ear and not requiring the 'dots' in order to do the job has been the most important skill. I assume, perhaps wrongly, that the bassists who are interested in my playing are more likely to look at the tab, with help from the notation, particularly for the rhythms. Tab is probably banned at Berklee, and mostly I wouldn’t use it much myself, but I didn’t transcribe these bass lines for Berklee students, and if I'd known they would be scrutinised by one of the instructors, I would have made sure they were notationally perfect. For me to do these transcriptions, my abilities are not good enough to use a pure notation app such as Sibelius. I need to be able to hear the notes sounding similar to a bass guitar, and to at least enter the notes in tab, based on the fret positions I used when the songs were recorded. The program that is best for this is Guitar Pro, though certain bends and effects are difficult to notate, even in an app designed for guitarists. Some parts took a huge amount of time, partly just hearing and working out what I played, particularly on the live versions, given that I often haven’t listened to some of these tracks for 35+ years. So occasionally if I got it sounding correct rhythmically, I left the notation as Guitar Pro had entered it, even if I knew it wasn’t 100% 'correct' according to the rules. Given that I am not earning anything from the transcriptions, I feel they're good enough for people’s purposes. The criticism has left me less enthusiastic about continuing with more transcriptions, though anyway at the moment I am extremely busy with non-musical family situations, soI don’t have time. My main plan was that the transcriptions were just an add-on to videos of me replaying these songs, but that’s a more difficult task, to do well, especially as I'm not an extrovert who loves seeing their face on social media etc. Thanks for everyone’s very kind words!
    5 points
  8. Mines only wrapped on one side with a seam of tape around the edge;
    5 points
  9. So after playing Fender basses for 40-odd years I decided to give my back a rest and look for something lighter. After months of waiting, a Yamaha RBX-A2 came up on eBay which I bought and loved, then a second really tatty one came up which I got for £135. I don't have much guitar tweaking experience beyond the odd pickup swap, but on the basis that I had little to lose I decided to have a tinker. This poor bass was quite badly abused although the neck only had 2 dents which I drop filled with Superglue. I filled a much bigger ding on the body edge with epoxy putty. Then I decided to try vinyl wrapping it with a carbon fibre look. I’d never done that before and I’m pleased how it came out, although how long it will last is anyone’s guess. Has anyone else vinyl wrapped a bass? The Yamaha is flat topped which makes it easier, I can’t imagine how you’d wrap a curvy Fender. I couldn’t avoid the odd tiny crease at the edges around the horns, so I covered the edges with car pinstriping tape, which seems to work well and should help to stop the edges lifting. Photos attached. For a £135 bass I don’t think it looks bad, and it plays and sounds great. If anyone’s interested I’ll report back in a few weeks, after a few pub gigs, as to how its bearing up.
    4 points
  10. Most Stranglers bass lines.
    4 points
  11. I was watching a video of Scott Devine interviewing the great, Bobby Vega. Talk turned to his famous ‘shark’, 61 J bass. Scott asked what wood it was made of, Bobby replied, “Brown.” Utter genius.
    4 points
  12. For sure. I installed a tonebrass nut on a bass recently, along with tonestrap tonelocks.
    4 points
  13. I'm old school and still buy CD's. Only downloads i get are when i buy the CD on Amazon and i get the free album download too. I don't use Spotify or any other streaming. I'm a great believer in the artists should get some of the profits from their own albums. Some of the stories i hear are quite surprising and such a shame really. Dave
    4 points
  14. It's a bit coincidental that the woods we're told give the best tone are the most expensive and rarest raw materials. Imagine how much less money they would make if MDF or plywood were the best woods for tone.
    4 points
  15. Almost anything by the Minutemen. Do Public Image Limited count as punk? If so, anything with Jah Wobble on.
    3 points
  16. I find the first fret quite easy to reach 😁
    3 points
  17. Aye I have had a blonde P bass and its had plenty grain showing through the paint, thats deffo an Oly White finish.
    3 points
  18. That wasn't important on the Moon, anyway. ..
    3 points
  19. Don't suppose you have any photos of it "the right way up"?? Here we go...
    3 points
  20. Here's my recent purchase, a Musicman Sterling with a lovely roasted maple neck 😊
    3 points
  21. Alabama Thunderpussy. No cats, no meteorology, not even from Alabama.
    3 points
  22. The Dukes Of Stratosphear - What In The World??...” Side note: Over a decade ago I had a short lived p/t job selling instruments (the last time I did anything that resembled a real job really) and I met Colin Moulding / The Red Curtain. He was looking for “one of those old sixties Vox basses like Bill Wyman with all the buttons on it and the skinny necks”. He was quite softly spoken and seemed actually a little shy, initially it wasn’t easy getting a conversation out of him, but we had a chat for a couple of minutes and he was super nice. He was polite and quietly friendly and I was polite, and quietly awe-struck. I’d met plenty famous people before and rarely (if ever) been star struck, often it’s no big deal, they’re just other people. But this was Colin Moulding! Of XTC! So I took his phone number and told him I would call him if a 1960s Vox bass came in. Before he left, I told him his playing was always amazing but especially on “What In The World??..” and he looked a bit bemused* but said, “Oh yeah, er, thanks” and that was it. A few weeks later I’d found a 1960s Vox bass, possibly the Wyman model, but definitely with THE skinniest neck, so I phoned Mr. Moulding and told him. He sounded quite interested when I was telling him the details etc, so I was happy to be able to help out. The Vox bass didn’t hang around long at all though. Pretty quickly I sold it either to Sébastien Tellier or his touring bassist, can’t remember which now, but they were super nice guys. Don’t know if Mr. Moulding ever found the Vox bass he was looking for, but anyway *A few years later I was looking at the reissue of “25 O’Clock” and the notes for “What In The World??..” said the bass was by... eh.?? Sir John Johns..?? Andy flipping Partridge!! One of my favourite recorded bass parts ever! Darn. It was a bit like finding out your dad is actually your uncle, or something. No wonder CM looked bemused when I told him it was my favourite of all his playing 😂 In my defence, my default setting is “bit of a div” but I did feel embarrassed about it later. Andy flipping Partridge though!!! And I still want an Epiphone Newport with batwing headstock. 😎
    3 points
  23. Thanks all, I plumped for the sparkle blue (Sire calls it lake placid blue but it looks more like a sea blue and appears to have a nice subtle sparkle to it (I am a sucker for block inlays, a bit of sparkle and a matching headstock). Due on Monday so fingers crossed it’s a good’un.
    3 points
  24. Thank you, thanks to doug, he is a bit of a star, he is just doing me a flame maple topped ash body for my fotoflame jazz bass, and refinishing the worn out body on my 82 wal, also doing a lacquer crack on my early goodfellow. and his prices are very good too, any repair work needed he is very VERY reasonable, yea give him a bell the bass is now done, as said i went for an antique finish, doug is very perticular about his finishes for example on this he did not just spray the edges black but hand done the finishe in an "antiquey" as he calls it brown and also adds something to the poly to blend in, a bit like a violin finish and its like a mirror, here ya go, thanks doug.
    3 points
  25. And (bar some tweaking) done. Not perfect by any means (well the neck carve is ) but pretty happy with this.
    3 points
  26. I'm using the same shape that I planned to do the 6 string body but I've taken about 20mm out of the middle to keep the dimensions right Gluing up the body blank which is Sapele and the top is going to be Oak with a Ebony-esque demarcation line between as I really liked that combination when I did my $$ build The top is going to be Black grain filled again then just danish oiled, I'm thinking of maybe doing a chamfered edge on it instead of rounded for a change? I'm going to go for a full paddle head flat headstock neck I'm not sure which would look better Rosewood or Maple fretboard? As far as pickup config I'm not entirely sure I'm leaning more towards a single MM but that could change? hardware will probably be Black?.....👍🏻
    2 points
  27. That's probably the nicest looking board I've ever seen! I use the aguilar db751 when I'm not using my tonehammer amp though. I find the low and high cuts and the aguilar drive control enough to get a good warm sound from the digital emulation. Although I can see why you would want your own preamp and combining the hx stomp on a board is where it really shines.
    2 points
  28. For some OTT punk bass lines check out Brian Ritchie on the Violent Femmes first album - e.g Blister in the Sun.
    2 points
  29. Babylon’s Burning by The Ruts is pretty decent, and worth checking out Booze & Glory - mainly the Chapter IV album - their bassist at the time, Bubbles, was a very busy bassist.
    2 points
  30. @neilmurraybass ' assume, perhaps wrongly, that the bassists who are interested in my playing are more likely to look at the tab, with help from the notation, particularly for the rhythms' Bassists who are interested in your playing 'prolly come in various guise and at various levels... The majority i expect are fans of your work, and someone like me, starting out and familiar with the songs after listening to em all these years are simply thankful for you 'time and tab' so we can look to enjoy the songs by starting to get a bit of it right then participating at a greater level... Thanks for the caterpillars!
    2 points
  31. I play mostly pick and naturally play sooooooo much lighter than most (all?) of the players posted, except when I’m purposefully hitting harder. Speed is absolutely the easiest thing to achieve if you play lightly. Look at most shred guitarists; they’re no different physically, so you should absolutely be able to achieve that level of picking technique and control - allowing for heavier strings and greater distances to travel - if you practice.
    2 points
  32. And.. so what? Your job isn't writing transcriptions so that other bass players can see what you were doing, you are doing it because people have asked (neh, nagged!) you too, as a favour. Before you did it, there wasn't a definitive version, now there is. The world has gained something. If the transcriptions aren't right, and it bothers someone, they can just take those transcriptions and redo them now they are on the internet, or they can just ignore them. But for those of us who wanted to see them, they are fantastic, and we can listen to the tracks and look at the transcriptions and know how to do it, and it keeps us going waiting for your video lessons
    2 points
  33. I wonder if the wood you use gives you colouration
    2 points
  34. Having seen (photos of...) the studio and rehearsal space, I'm not sure that I agree..! ...
    2 points
  35. But if they made a guitar from those 2x4 beams then they would become tonewood. I looked up oak as that should have the structural properties needed to make a solid body guitar. It does but it isn't normally used primarily because it's very heavy and hard, and not particularly pretty. But this is the silly bit, and the phrase that keeps cropping up, "It can be used as a tonewood".What do you mean "as a tonewood"? Is it a tonewood or not? Basically if it's made into a guitar then it's a tonewood, but if that same piece was made into a stool seat it remains just plain old oak. It's just a stupid, pretentious load of nonsense dreamt up to make a fairly mundane material appear somehow special.
    2 points
  36. Yes, 666MrDoom is the main guy who shared our album too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkcohmp8Unw We are up to 9k worth of streams in two weeks. I'm pretty sure the band are up on CDbaby but I would need to check. There is one Youtuber who run the Stoned Meadow of Doom page who was pretty much accused of monetising the work of artists by sharing albums but claiming he was helping bands via giving them the old 'exposure' explanation. Of course, he took a hit when accusations of bullying towards bands who didn't want to work with him came to light, along with him having various worldviews which would politely be called 'non-inclusive', which resulted in loads of albums being recalled from his page. I shall give your EP a listen later today and contribute about £0.00001 to your streaming revenue. Long form stoner/doom is pretty much my genre of choice!
    2 points
  37. That was exactly the situation we were in and felt pushed into publishing it on the streaming sites. This one, which we gave permission for as the guy is good about publishing links back, was getting almost 1000 plays per day, initially, which was the trigger behind taking ownership of the music in the streaming world. It had gotten to around 14,000 plays before the licencing kicked in, which you can now see in the description. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9mCQ9JXYYA Youtube can recognise the music published to it and will automatically apply a licence like that into a previously existing video. A lot of the people sharing music are monetising it themselves. They're getting paid for someone listening to your music. If they're "sharing" loads of band's music every day, however, it can start to add up. If you want to... not control it, you can't, but at least establish your ownership, setting up publishing with the likes of CDbaby is the way to do it. We didn't get paid for the first 14,000 or so plays of this and, granted, it's not like I'll be buying a speedboat, but I think the people who wrote and played the music should get something out of it instead of someone just putting up music they didn't have anything to do with. I am not a Spotify customer, they are the very worst thing to happen original music, but you're in a corner as an original artist. If you don't take ownership of your music, someone else will do it for you, sadly.
    2 points
  38. I would have the HB without doubt. As mentioned by ribbetingfrog, the neck and body are good, and that's all that matters because I consider them to be the chassis and the framework of the bass. A bass is after all a collection of parts put together such as the neck, body, bridge, tuners, pickup, preamp and so forth. The electronics are just bolt ons, and you can change them out like replacing the sound card in a PC. As long as the motherboard(ahem, body and neck) is good and you're getting it for a great price, just add the bits you want to improve and save some money. I would much rather have that than paying 3 times the price for a PC with a graphics card, sound card, and slow RAM, none of which I would have wanted. In this case, the Sandberg but it could be a Fender or some other bass whose pickups or tuners I wouldn't have wanted.
    2 points
  39. One big upside today is bands who wouldn't have got a deal under the 'old' system, can self promote and sell internationally in a way no-one could before, Bandcamp etc. The one constant of the music industry since it started is the musicans themselves are quite far down the list when it comes to getting paid. Rare to come across anyone in the industry who pre streaming felt they were getting a good deal.
    2 points
  40. My band are in the same boat. We released an album last month and it has been received fairly well in the stoner/doom circles which is great. This means that numerous different sites/blogs and fans have already posted the whole album to Youtube, which means that we get absolutely zilch for those plays. At least a couple of the larger blogs had the decency to ask if they could post the album and made sure to include a direct link to our bandcamp when posting the video. The process of sharing of the album has helped the band in terms of 'exposure' and our bandcamp physical and digital sales are more than they would have otherwise been if the sharing had not occurred in the first place. Essentially, the band have almost written off streaming revenue since we don't operate in a genre where that will ever be a significant revenue driver unless Lady Gaga changes style entirely and does an EP with Sleep. We are still relying on people who find the Youtube links to check out the bandcamp, maybe buy the physical album to listen to it in better quality, possibly buy a t shirt and maybe catch us at a gig sometime when it becomes possible. The revenue the band generates helps keep the band going but there is little to no individual income for any of the band members. Even if the band 'made it' within this genre it would not be particularly financially lucrative.
    2 points
  41. 2 points
  42. Instruments made of the same woods, sorry, tonewoods, sounding very different to each other? What trickery is afoot? We all know that if you take 10 of the most basic and mundane bass out there, the Precision, with ash bodies, maple necks and fretboards, they will not all sound the same. Wood is organic. No two pieces of the same species are the same. To apply blanket characteristics to something which, by its very nature, is inconsistent in cellular structure - before you get into age, how it is dried, how it is cut, etc, etc, etc, is just prone to error. Still no-one can present a list of wood species which are structurally suitable but tonally unsuitable for solid body electric instruments?
    2 points
  43. Although not an original band, these ladies can really rock. 👍
    2 points
  44. Wow! They are women! They are in a band but they are women! They are playing their own instruments but they are women! They are playing metal but they are women! They are doing what men do but they are women! Whatever next? Maybe we'll have women driving buses, and possibly even women being politicians!
    2 points
  45. IMO the best 300 watt head is a 500 watt head turned down a little. Especially if you are using a single 8 ohm cab.
    2 points
  46. During the first half of a gig once I noticed my top strap button had worked loose in the last song. I finished the song by holding the neck up with my left to take the weight for fear of the strap button pulling out, and sending bass tumbling groundwards. In the break I tried to tighten it but the screw wouldn't tighten properly so I went to the bar and purchased a box of matches, pushed one into the screw hole and broke it off flush. The strap button screw now did up nice and tight, great stuff, now I can enjoy the second half worry free. How wrong was I? All the way through that second set I could hear that the wood composition had changed in that bass. Like an idiot I had not asked for tone matches. What a fool I felt.
    2 points
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