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Erm…armchair.

The thing to remember is that this thread is a bit of a "safe space", so people can and do vent their frustrations or ask for advice with awkward situations. Chances are that if you're active on this forum then you probably take music and your playing more seriously than many other people who can play an instrument but for whom it's not a passion. Many of your fellow band mates may only play in church, and hardly practice other than for the service. That's OK - they serve as they can. It is annoying when people could do far better for a modicum of effort, or change songs at the last minute, but we're called to be gentle with each other. We're called to be Christians first, and musicians second. If it ever becomes the other way round then we've screwed up and need to get our priorities straight. I am not a great player, I'm adequate and improving. Some services go well, others not so. Today I was constantly ahead of the beat on "Lord Reign in me", correspondingly late on "Build My Life", and goodness alone knows what happened on "Big Family of God" when the low D suddenly came out 12db louder than expected, clipped the input DAC, and sounded like a herd of farting elephants! However the BL (who is 30 years my junior and a superb musician), knows that I'm putting in the practice and slowly getting better, so he wants me in the band. As he's tolerant with my playing, I'm tolerant that he sends songs late, changes his mind, and is considerably less organized than I am. Maybe see if you can turn up and play "socially" with the band with no time or service pressure and just see how you get along? So as @oldslapper says, don't let this thread put you off if you feel you want to worship.

Congratulations to both @Doctor J and @NickD on their joint win in a tightly fought end to the April Challenge. After a small discussion the photo has been offered by NickD and agreed by all parties The preamble ... " I was messing with vapour and light for a photography project last year, and this reminded me of the smoky, fleapit cinemas of my childhood, but I reckon it's pretty wide open to interpretation." Simple rules ✔️ Entries must be <5 minutes and recorded this month. ✖️ No illegal samples, copyright infringements or other snide goings-on ✖️ No Bagpipes. please no bagpipes, the April fool's day truce now well and truly Expired. panpipes only if you have too. ✖️ No voting for your own entry. We'll know. And we'll shame you. A line or two offering an insight to your inspiration/track choice will be good as well , it works nicely on the voting thread. The Deadline for entries is Midnight on Tuesday 24th May good luck everyone

I don’t think Alex gets nearly enough plaudits, especially for his rhythm playing. Geddy and Neil are revered, not so much Mr Lifeson. Plus he’s hysterical.

Marvellous... Thanks folks! Congratulations to Doctor J, and to everyone who put an entry in, I enjoy listening more and more, there's some great stuff going in every month. I was surprised that this one did ok, as by the time I put it in I bloody hated it. Damn thing wouldn't do what I wanted it to, and blocked me at every turn. Just goes to show how much I know! 😅

And the winners are... @Doctor J and @NickD ..! Here, then, is your Winner's Certificate (download and save as pdf file, then proudly print and frame...) ... BC_Chal_Cert_2022_04.pdf ... which looks like this (but bigger, of course..!)...

Muzz Skillings rarely gets the props he deserves for his playing on the first two Living Colour albums. Nice little bass solo on this one off Vivid. Solo around 2:20.

Thanks, everyone, and congrats, Nick. It's fantastic to be a part of this, so many excellent contributions every month. Well done, everyone 👍🏻

These days I would say nearly anything by Charles Berthoud

Not for me, his solos are amongst the most meaningful and significant and affected my guitar playing growing up (not enough to make me good mind!). He has a style that was not like the standard samey rock / metal / blues riffing that most other have got, with a few notable exceptions, and are still solos I really listen to. Considering them wanting to be zep style at the start, going somewhere totally different I guess its the variations to what we like. Solos don't have to be 8 bars of pentatonic noodling.

Agreed…

This may be a bit premature, as there's not a lot to show yet, but I've ordered a P-bass from Jon and I had the first pictures yesterday of potential neck blanks. I intend to keep posting as I receive more informatuion and pictures, but the spec is as follows: 34" scale 20 frets 43.5mm nut width (since reduced to more like a Jazz at 40mm - I have small hands) 20.5mm neck depth at 1st fret 22,5mm at 12th gentle c profile flamed roasted maple neck flamed rosted maple fretboard two way truss rod carbon fibre reinforcement jumbo stainless steel fretwire brass nut satin neck lacquer 3mm luminlay side markers 6mm black face dots triple string tree gotoh GB 528 resolite tuners - the standard choice is Scahller Schaller bml lites, but I do like lollipops! alder chambered body reduced heel and recessed neck fixings Usual carves (the internal chambering is graduated around the rear ribcage carve to make the carve possible, not simple and its a shame all that work is covered up! haha, i would send pics of this before the top goes on) polyester basecoat black wet look lacquer gloss coat carbonlite shaped s/plate 3 positions on the s/plate, vol, mid/mid freq, treble/bass s/plate mounted jack rear flip top battery compartment, although may be possible to have the battery under the s/plate in case you ever wanted the bass to go passive, i could do a cover section or split the s/plate so you didn't need to take the whole thing off. recessed s/plate cover for the access to the truss rod. custom wound split coil pickup gotoh multi tonal bridge schaller s-locks black hardware rotosound 45-105 swing bass as standard shuker / hiscox logo case So far, the only pictures I have are of the neck blanks, but it's a start! Jon suggested nos 2 and 5 were the best, so I've left the choice to him. (Much) more to follow! Pete

Decided to pull the trigger on the full Orange set up. Really pleased with the sound as much as I can test from home. Will put it through its paces at the next rehersal in the studio but if I'm honest, I quite like this sat in my front room as a piece of artwork 🙂 I have noticed some resonance in the amp on the open A string - a vibration which is audible but which disappears when you pick up the amp. Not sure if this is just the accoustics in my front room, something loose in the amp or just a lot of virbration from the cabs. I can always leave the amp on the floor but that's not idea and likely to get kicked. Perhaps a foam cushion between the amp and cab might also work.

(Bass apparently played by Ricky Reed, of whom I am blissfully ignorant)

Just bought one of these from a fellow basschatter and wow…they’re phenomenal. I’ve got everything set completely flat. No effects, just bass and Bluetooth audio streaming. The quality of sound is top notch, no farting out even when maxing the bass volume - plus to my surprise the cans themselves are actually very comfortable! I wasn’t sure what to expect with the rectangular cups but I’m very pleasantly surprised. I haven’t touched a manual, just unboxed the kit, downloaded the app and worked it all out. I was up and running within 5 minutes. Without doubt the best headphone practice amp I’ve ever tried. The previous holder of that title was the Phil Jones BigHead, which will now be up for sale I suspect. Bravo, Boss!

I was in Germany with a group of students from my school and another for an Honor Jazz Festival. I was tasked with coaching the rhythm section in the big band and also playing both fretted and fretless bass for the Vocal Jazz Ensemble. We worked with a clinician from New York, who assigned me a couple of challenging parts. It was a great week with some really talented teenagers and a super final concert. I hope to post some sound files soon.

Was in a band called Gypsies Kiss in 80's

Played Desertfest London on Friday. Absolute dream come true opening up the black heart stage. Room was full and we hit our stride pretty well I think. Sound, as always in that venue, was on point and I got my GT200 near enough to exactly where I like it on gain and volume through an orange 810. Seemed to go down pretty well, and rounded off with a few pints and more bands. Been waiting for this one since 2020 so a blast to actually do it.

Just played out for the second time at our lead singers local. Just a practice gig to be fair as we still haven't written enough material for a full set! It was awesome, I'm now doing backing vocals as well and the three of us produce a really good set of harmonies.

This is owsome, never heard any bass playing with slide, but this is great !!!

Dune Tune - Level 42

No Rest for the wicked as they say .

Many thanks to everyone who offered advice re my Hofner strings query. Re suggestions of the Hofner HCT not being suited to the sound I'm looking for, a couple of things to clarify - I'm definitely in the market for a well built, more premium solid body short scale right now, but I'm going to ask about that in a separate post! I actually get a lot of versatility out of the Hofner Contemporary's tone with rounds, and being specific with playing style (fingers/thumb/palm muting) and position over pickups, I can get it to do fairly good imitations of both a standard electric bass sound and a more hollow vintage sound. My main issue is, as has been mentioned, string choice is highly restricted due to the tiny tuners, and with the Hofner Contemporary Rounds I've found that almost as soon as I've broken them in, they start to tarnish, turn a coppery colour and look pretty horrendous, so I was hoping for something with more life expectancy to get out of that cycle being stuck between overly bright strings or tarnished eyesore! When I said I wasn't going for vintage I realise that wasn't being specific enough to be useful. At that moment I was thinking 'vintage' in the sense that 90% of people with Hofners on bass forums seem to believe that there is only one correct way for them to sound - McCartneyesque, flats, picked, thumpy - that does nothing for me whatsoever. But I suppose there's also the sense of 'vintage' as in the opposite of what most of us would perceive as a modern bass sound - i.e. that bright, active, zingy, slappy tone. That modern sound is also the antithesis of what I like! My Platonic ideal of a bass tone (like many other people my age I imagine) are things like Flea's sound on Blood Sugar Sex Magic, or Stuart Zender on the first Jamiroquai album. Actually quite warm dark tones but with that roundwound funky growl and bite. Anyway I ordered the Labella White Tapes specifically for Hofners. Despite the increased gauge they fit they HCT Club perfectly fine at the nut and felt great to play, much preferred them to the flats I tried. Ultimately after trying them out for a full 10 hours or so playing time I switched back to the rounds. Although I liked the sound I was getting and it was certainly more expressive, growly and brighter than flats, it was less so than the broken-in rounds. Also with rounds the HCT Club just has this absolutely beautiful unique full-bodied tone in the upper registers, and it lost that completely with the tapes. Above the 7th fret of the G sounded like the nylon strings on an acoustic - not what I wanted at all. So, I moved the tapes to my Hofner Ignition Club (which has been unmentioned until now...) Previously I'd put the flats on there to give it a raison d'etre after getting the HCT, which had ultimately had the effect of making me want to play it even less (doh!) I did have to slightly file a nut slot on the Ignition to get the D string to fit, mostly because that slot happened to be wonkily cut to start with, but once on the tapes sounded absolutely made for that instrument. Full, warm, expressive, responsive and articulate, and oddly didn't have the same 'nylon acoustic string' effect in the upper register at all. It's one of those long term goals of mine to one day own a German Hofner Club bass, and if/when that happens, I will be putting a set of Labella white tapes on it. In the meantime, I may just have to learn to love the lived-in look of rounds on the HCT.

I actually meant clear bass songs, but i am happy that You reply reply with different variants. So, at this case i would like to add one more track. A solo from Gary Willis - It's only music. It's amazing solo. Gary Willis - It's only music_bass_solo.mp3

Vid appeared from our gig on Fri night (see my comments earlier in thread) No idea how they took this but they must have been tall as band play on a stage.😂

Nice simple solo from Sean Hurley playing with vertical horizon Nothing too fancy, just the right notes, a lovely tone, a little bit of octave at one point and nod towards whitesnake at the end.

And remarkably cheap!

Played to one man and his dog on a dark stage in Bath last night. Got paid, could barely see my bass, but we were ok. The owner was embarrassed for the poor turn out and very complimentary about the band.

I'm waiting for someone to buy that black Status Kingbass. If it's replaced by something natural, there'll be a beige full house on the home page!* *Yes, I do have too much time on my hands.

As with everything there are good and bad implementations. My Glockenklang Blue Rock, for example, sounds bloody amazing even at war volume. No loss of “heft”, no thinness to the tone. It’s in the execution of the preamp and power stage. Think back to the early Ashdown examples - the Little Giants I think? They suffered from a weak preamp. Ashdown fixed that with the MiBass series then moved on even further with the RM series. The other thing to remember is the power amp class (A/B, D etc) is only part of the story. It’s the power supply where a lot of the magic can happen as that’s what needs to deliver to allow the power amp section to do its thing. The SMPS designs in many class D heads work differently from the traditional toroidal transformers etc but again, it’s in the design and implementation. Trace Elliot apparently used to use the big PSUs even for the lower rated amplifiers, which is one of the reasons those lower rated units could continue to deliver clean lower as they had headroom in the supply rails. Then you have the previously-mentioned Class A/B Markbass LM heads; they will have an SMPS for their power supply otherwise they wouldn’t fit in that box size - but clearly it’s been designed to work well The newer generation ICE modules definitely felt to me to be a better design than the earlier ones, but my Glock uses something else entirely (I can’t remember what!) which is slammingly good.

Yes! That’s why I love Prog. I’m still utterly impressed that Alex went from his blues-rock soloing that he grew up with on Working Man to his technically epic noodling in multiple styles all over La Villa Strangiato, in about 4 years.

What blows my mind a little bit is how fast music evolved back then. Ten years prior to Moving Pictures, your average prog fan might have been dropping the needle onto the newly-released Nursery Cryme by Genesis. Stylistically & sonically, that’s a massive leap. These days, nowt really changes in 10 years.

Have you asked them for feedback?

I thought I only had 10 basses, it turns out I have 12. How did that happen?

Update….

Glad To Be Gay ～ Tom Robinson Band

Are you sure it’s just the playing? Getting on with your band mates is 99% of the gig. It also sounds like you’re over thinking what you’re playing. A good teacher will be less confusing than the opinions of different videos on YouTube.

This. You need to know why you've got the bum's rush, otherwise there's no way to learn from it. It might be something you're doing/not doing, or it might just be that they're gits.

As if the Joe Dart announcement wasn’t amazing enough - this sounds fabulous as well (this guitarist sure is funky on bass!!)

Here's my current collection - pre retirement sale!!!