Leaderboard

I'm a sucker for 80's basses, I'm a sucker for P+J basses and I'm also a sucker for pointy headstocks. Put all those ingredients together and... well... take my money 😂 Concorde is a brand it's quite hard to find information on, just a few bits and pieces on TB it seems. Apparently, this was made by Joe Zon in 85. It has stock active Barts, a quite Charvel-esque D-shaped neck with a 40mm nut, Grover tuners and a Schaller roller bridge. After addressing some things left of out the ad description, this thing is ready to rock. It's rather nice, I have to say. The neck is a very comfortable shape and, in active mode, it has output not far off an L-2000. Meaty. There are some Concorde guitars out there too which I have suddenly developed GAS for. Oh, yes, it's very good for Metal.

Charvel Pro-Mod San Dimas V courtesy of Andertons

Two Wal mk1’s. The fretless in particular is very special to me. Bought for my 21st in 1983 by my Dad, who unfortunately passed away just two months later. Obvious sentimental value but the fact that it’s a truly wonderful thing helps immensely. I’m 60 this year and this bass feels and plays as good if not better that it did 38yrs ago.

Clever playing. In fact he's excellent and it's just an experiment, so i'm not gonna slag him. I cant see me bothering though

Love this. Her voice is fantastic.

He doesn't trigger me. I just think he's a reprehensible prîck.

Picked this up today for a very modest sum of money. Didn’t go to buy it, it just kinda happened and was added to a deal. I must say, even with crappy old strings on it sure sounds nice!

… so I’m going to consolidate my many boards into a ‘Home only’ board for looping stuff etc and a ‘live board’ each for church and then Funk/Motown stuff. Just picked up a used Pedaltrain JR Max for a great price also 👍🏼. My current crop: … the new board: … and what it’ll hopefully look like with one more pedal purchase (Fredric Effects BugCrusher at some point):

My solution was to stop trying to use Jazz basses. Sorry.

People generally don't like the success of others. It's quite an ugly human trait really.

Wow. Off to sulkily pluck “another one bites the dust” and pretend I didn’t hear that acrobatic madness.

Really enjoyable! An enclosed, heated rooftop bar "battle of the bands" in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We were the old guys playing with a bunch of much younger bands. Our singer entered us in the contest on a lark. We played rings around the other bands and then the judges chose the band that had three very attractive young women in it. So it goes!! It doesn't matter; We had a lot of fun. The venue's management and staff, the sound crew, the video crew and, especially, the members of other bands were all really, really nice with no exceptions. It was a very fun crowd and a nice scene to fall into. Hopefully we'll play with some of these folks again.

I drove down to Andertons this morning rather than Guitarguitar as they seemed to have more choice. I tried the Charvel first it it was lovely. It sounded good, felt good and looked good. I tried a Sire V7 after that and it was fine but the Charvel had turned my head. I was interested in trying a fender Player Plus but they didn't have any in the little bass room. There were some Dingwalls but my missus would have killed me if I'd spent that much. I'm not a great fan of Ibanez stuff so I didn't bother with the Ibanez 5 string they had. So I bought the Charvel. My first impressions with the world of 5 strings are: I like having 2 octaves right there without having to run down to the dusty end. The B string doesn't sound as good as the other strings, though it doesn't sound bad. I will try some of the ideas re strings that @TheLowDown suggested but I have just brought it home and started noodling, I haven't set it up yet.

Take the Jack socket out, bend the pins in. 2 screws, 30 second and job done. Better than waiting days, or even weeks for a new bass that might have the same problem.

Ah, but if you don’t like Stadium Arcadium, you don’t like Red Hot Chili Peppers!

The new family portrait, with the newest member on the far left.

That screams Lace Helix bass to me Or am I missing something here?

As a fretless player I'm quite taken by the sound of this bass, at least what I've heard of it on YouTube. Love the fact that the fingerboard is continuous and apparently there's a magnetic pup under the board. There's going to have to be some serious saving up for this one but I'm tempted.

...so here I am. Colorado-based (USA) bassist who last visited the UK before I was even a bassist. Been playing pro over 30 years. It's amazing the stuff you can't learn on TalkBass...

Well, I picked it up earlier and just having a mooch around and looking at the functionality at the moment. First impressions of the unit itself are good - really solidly made and looks / feels quality. I was worried it might be really plasticky against the metal housing of the HX units but it appears robust enough to withstand some abuse. Touchscreen is great and will no doubt make navigation much more focussed. It’s lighter and more slimline than I anticipated and it think it’s going to be a great tool to have at my feet and for dealing with the things I’m going to need it for. I’ll have a play through it tomorrow but just want to learn the menus first.

At the risk of repeating myself (but I'm going to anyway!), every Jazz should have a series/parallel switch... cheap and easy to do, still retains the original sound but unlocks a humbucking sound which is already sitting there waiting to be unleashed with a simple switch mod.

S'funny - both sound to me (apart from Antwan The Swan's attempted singing) like an average, 70's Americana influenced US rock band. Groove and attitude toned right down in favour of MoR type radio play-friendliness! So I'd contend that if you don't like this, you don't like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. What you actually like is the Sweet Pimento Peppers!

If a pitch shift pedal gets you to where you want to be, then great. But there's quite a lot more that switching to a 5 string can offer.

Jazzes are what I play the most , and I find that tweaking the pickups /tone controls just very slightly can change the sound completely , have a good tweak about to find the sweet spot you’re looking for. just as an aside, I recently bought an Ampeg classic preamp pedal and the sound variations is really great

Go make another thread if you just want to hate on them. Cue quote in 3, 2, 1...

And on things KC, here's a short of Gizmodrome doing Elephant Talk. Mark King tapping away! https://youtu.be/Hl1OrgFh2EU

I was an enormous fan back in the day and will always have a soft spot for them, but I'm one of the ones who doesn't like anything they've put out since One Hot Minute (and I didn't think that was great). In fact the quality of their output has always been variable imo, even on the earlier albums I love. They got away with it for me because when it all came together the results were a spectacular explosion of energy and creativity and a punk rocking, funky sound unlike any other band. But I suppose they couldn't keep doing the same old thing over and over, and age will inevitably affect their musical outlooks etc. I listened to this in the hope that there would be something in there that would give me a little spark of the band I used to love, but sadly no. I've been going through this process with every new release this band put out for the last 2 decades, at some point I'll just have to accept it's not going to happen! 😄

I play with a light touch too, pretty much what you said Cato is mentioned in marks latest video 👍

You are entitled to your opinion and I thank you for pointing out that your contribution is an opinion. Can I offer some additional entries? I think that side to side adjustment built into saddles is a reasonable improvement - either by having the saddle on a thread like the Schaller 3D bridge or a sliding, lockable arrangement like the Hipshot A style. Also, G&L's Saddle Lock bridge is a good thing - set the saddles for intonation then lock them in place with the grub screw - kind of makes the grooves you speak of unnecessary. Also the rounded sides to that bridge make palm muting very comfortable. There are more "out there" ideas that I respect, like the "wedge" bridge on the Gibson Victory bass which instead of having two grub screws through the saddle for height adjustment had the saddle move against an opposing wedge shape - move the wedge back/forward and it lifts/lowers the saddle as it pushes against it or moves away from it. I always thought that was pretty clever.

I’ve found if I wear out my strings I get new ones if I buy another bass…

Too many to mention. Many, many pro players are far more able than you would realise from listening to what they do with the bands they make their names with. A few are mentioned above. There are countless others. A question. You are offered the bass chair in a successful outfit, playing relatively simple music that is massively popular. You can pretty well play the stuff in your sleep. Do you: 1. Say "Yes, please" and play the music to the best of your ability, enjoy the experience, fame and travel, etc, live in a nice house, drive a nice car (or cars), use the freedom from having to work 24/7 just to survive to play the music that really floats your boat in your spare time (not needing to worry whether anyone likes it or if it will sell), spend plenty of time with your family and give them the life you want them to have and retire to live in comfort after a relatively short working life? 2. Say "No thanks. It's not enough of a challenge" and continue to plug away for 50+ hours a week at the day job (which you can't stand, but, hey, we've all got to survive) whilst juggling your time to fit your musical endeavours around it, turn up at work feeling like cr@p because you got home at 4 am from last night's gig, squeeze practice and rehearsal into what little spare time you have, use up all your annual leave to do the odd bit of "touring" where you play to small numbers of people who think it's a shame you aren't better known and appreciated, worry about the bills and argue with your partner because the kids (who you don't see nearly as much as you should or would like to) need stuff you can't afford because you've just bought that expensive gear you have to have and work until you drop? I know which option I'd have gone for had I been offered the choice.

I'd never get rid of my GB Spitfire.

It's well known in the industry that Manfred Mann has exceptional taste when it comes to bass players he chooses to work with

Technical ability and musical ability are very different mistresses.

Like a broken pencil. Pointless.

I was thinking more about the time he boasted about sex with underage girls.