bassbiscuits

I did a solo acoustic guitar gig (rare for me) for my mate's 30th birthday. It was full of people we both know but not in the context of music, so they were all a bit surprised to hear me playing and singing. Went down really well tho, and I could only get off stage at the end by telling people my parking was about to expire! Job done. A lot of very happy drunk people judging by the photos emerging on Facebook...

[quote name='Twigman' timestamp='1452872867' post='2954337'] Before I joined basschat I had lived for decades (yes decades-plural) with just 1 bass and 1 hard case......and for much of that time no amp (rehearsals used house gear/gigs hired backline) but basschat has induced me to spend hundreds if not thousands of pounds.....I now have 4 and a half basses, 2 guitars, 2 amp heads, 2 cabinets, several pedals, 2 pedal boards, 4 hard cases, 2 gig bags.....and I've still got GAS. basschat can damage your bank balance. [/quote] This^^^ It's all you guys' fault. I had simple tastes before I discovered you lot!

I've lost track of the number of times I've been smacked in the teeth by my own mic when some drunken tool stumbles into your mic stand while you're singing.

Yay I'm definitely an asshole according to this. Unless the journo is just a ranty idiot with a chip on his shoulder and we're all just happy normal bass playing folk...

I've had to push drunken punters off stage before now - wouldn't begrudge them a tambourine as long as they stay away from the stage itself. Had too many drunken tw*ts falling over pedals/mic stands spilling their drinks and hurting themselves. If people get up and dance on stage and they seem sober and harmless i'll usually gently 'guide' them back into the audience with my hand after about 30 seconds. If they do it repeatedly, are annoying or refuse to go, i'll push them off. Last time I did it the guy look round horrified but i smiled and gave him the thumbs up, so he felt like he'd had the bit of attention he wanted, and it worked - it sort of diffused the situation, he looked delighted with himself and threw himself back into dancing in the audience. Takes all sorts i guess. To come back to the original point, I agree you're probably better off not having to play there and put up with that nonsense again.

Well done! I sometimes get caught up in an urgent need to buy stuff, and when it subsides, i realise i could probably survive with half the amount of stuff I've got. Still, its fun buying and trying out new things. But fair play to you. I bet its quite liberating doing the opposite and scaling down to just the essentials.

I've got two Precisions, and i'd happily have more if i had the room/money. Best all round basses i've played. I've mentioned it before but whenever I take a different bass to a gig I find myself wishing I'd brought a precision. When I take a precision, I don't wish for anything else. It's exactly my sound.

The worst bass I ever played by a country mile was the first one I owned back in 1986 - short scale plywood bodied Satellite bass. Utter garbage - seriously I mean unplayable, with a neck like a banana, sky-high action and terrible thin clanky sound. Cost me £60 at the time and I soldiered on with it for a year. Rest assure that almost any modern instrument, however budget it is, is likely to be better than that.

Wow well done! I'm kind of in a similar situation - main gigging bass is a 1995 USA P, but my eye has been well and truly caught by a brand new USA J on a post Xmas special offer. Currently trying not to think about it, and utterly failing!

I played a 2013 USA jazz a few ago and it was intriguing. I'm a fender fan anyway - they just feel right to me - and also a P bass fan really, but this jazz had all the additional tonal variations but with a big dollop of Fendery character too. My wallet is currently deciding whether I need it or not....

Agree with all the above - the flip side is that when I've bought a bass that's right for me, I've known absolutely straight away and it's become my go to bass from the outset. I bought a secondhand precision about 11 years ago, which had been hanging in the shop for ages. I hadn't given it a second glance either until I eventually played it. It just sang - it was everything I was looking for, and was immediately comfortable and right. I gigged it the same week and it's still my main bass. Tho I'm slightly in the same boat as the OP with my Sandberg TT4 I bought in the summer. It's much lighter, better built and set up, and better condition than the Jazz bass it replaced, and I really bought it with a view to being something specials for me. But six months later, I'm still preferring the sound and feel of my precision, which just feels more right for me as a player. Splashed a lot of cash on it, and desperate to click with it rather than sell and lose money again... Hmm.

Hello all I gig about 30-40 times a year on average, mostly playing bass in a covers band playing fairly a diverse range of rock/pop stuff. I have three basses - two Fender Precisions and a Sandberg jazz bass. I find they cover everything I need. I very seldom take more than one bass to a gig, tho I probably should as back up! If I had to narrow it down to owning just one bass I'd say I could get away with just a Precision. In terms of how quickly they wear, I'd say surprisingly slowly. I do play hard and loud but I don't treat them badly. My main Precision is 20 years old and has done about 75% of my gigs over the last 10 years or so, but the thick paintwork etc is miraculously almost perfectly intact. I'd expect the Sandberg's thinner soft relic finish to age a bit quicker tho!

Great tune! It was years between me watching Weekend World as a kid and discovering Mountain a few years back.

Totally. Ive been playing a P bass of some sort for 20+ years, mostly because it was what was available secondhand at that time, and sounded good. In more recent times I've explored a range of different basses, including jazzes, T-bird alikes and various other bits in an attempt to broaden my experiences and scratch that itch of trying some new gear. However in the last few weeks I've dug out my main P bass (a USA 1995 one since you ask) for a couple of gigs and totally realised how much of my whole approach to playing depends on this instrument. It's everything I live for in bass. It's taken me a big circular journey to realise I had the right bass for me in my hands all along.

Hi Naetharu They sound ace for blues - the neck pickup is rich and creamy, the bridge pickup is bright and barking, and the two together sound full but not muddy. The neck isn't anything like as thick/wide as i'd been led to believe, and is actually a really natural feeling handful. The tone control also works really well to roll off about halfway for that flutey woman tone on the neck p/up. Mine is actually really lightweight (same as my 2000s USA strat) which is very comfortable for two hours of singing/playing at gigs. On the strength of the handful of gigs I've done with it, I'd say its great for blue/rock and also surprisingly versatile for quieter more sparse guitar work, with the gain turned down a bit. Tho quite how good I am when it comes to playing blues is a totally different matter....

Looks like they can't shift those 2015 models for love nor money tho. £500 off an £800 guitar? That's practically giving it away.

Had a brilliant one on Saturday - our last gig before Christmas in a really packed bar, really hot and sweaty and loud, and with some festive beers flowing. It was definitely one of those 'string killer' gigs tho, when you sweat so much that the bass is all smudgy and smeared afterwards and the strings are just dull thunks. And finished with the obligatory "Merry Xmas Everybody" Slade jobbie. Even had people getting their photos taken with us afterwards, tho we are a bit too wet and slimy to hug by that point. A most excellent vibe tho. A proper gig!

Soon after we both started getting into music in our early teens, my older brother decided he wanted to play guitar. I didn't want to be upstaged, so decided bass was the sensible companion to guitar. I found out about 20 years later that he was really annoyed with me for doing it, but i think he's forgiven me now! Originally I really wanted to be a drummer and had all sorts of brochures with drum kits on my wall, but didn't have the money or the space, so bass it was.

I would add to all this great info - that fret sizes and neck radiuses do differ over the years too. Vintage ones tend to have more curved fretboards, ie 7.25 inch radius, and smaller, thinner, vintage frets. These are on a lot of reissues too, and some custom shop models. More modern ones (ie USA standards, deluxe etc ) have flatter 9.5 inch radius, and medium jumbo frets. Many older precisions and reissues (Mexican classic series 50s for example) also have wider nuts than the more modern standard ones. Personally I prefer the feel and playability of the more modern spec, which is much easier for string bending, slapping etc. But just as many people swear by the original older spec. Neither is better or worse, but worth bearing in mind when you're trying/buying.

For me it was those first bands/albums I got into. So people like Steve Harris, Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton and Duff McKagan from G'n'R really influenced me from the outset. Tho weirdly, the huge thudding bass from dance music I listened to a lot in my early 20s has also been an influence in terms of providing big, fat, pounding basslines.

I went for the old flight case option - fill it full of leads, plugs and lights etc to take to the gig, then set the amp up on top of it. It certainly projects better by putting the amp and a more listenable level - whether it affects the tone i couldn't say without a direct comparison. Sounds good for my needs tho.

At the risk of reviving an old thread, I can just update you that this has just come back from having a proper pro set up which has really put the cherry on the cake so to speak. The nut slots were lowered and smoothed off a bit, and the frets given a wee polish. Basically it now plays beautifully with lovely low action and holds its tuning way better too. I thought it played well beforehand anyway, but now it feels fantastic, so can't wait for next chance to gig it properly.