bassbiscuits

Oh well - I ended up buying one! Gave it a blast thru my hot rod deluxe when I got home and it sounded great. Hopefully a bit more time to plug in, play and analyse it a bit more over the coming nights. Looks beautiful, lighter than expected considering it's a fair thickness, neck is far more comfortable than I'd expected too. So far so good. Expect a NGD post to follow!

I'd have to say worst (i.e. most disappointing) were a couple of different faulty Ashdown ABM heads I had about six or seven years ago. They kept breaking down and were really quiet for the rating, so I eventually sold them. Though in defence of Ashdown, the little Mag300 head of theirs I'd bought a few months beforehand was great - very loud for the 300w rating, smooth and nice sounding and plenty of juice in it. I used that for a hell of a lot of loud gigs without any problems, and I still have it as a spare.

Just bought a Korg tuner from Nige. Top man, easy to deal with, good price, and it arrived well packaged and on time. No complaints at all.

I've got a Schroeder 1210R I got from Basschat a few years back - and I've used it for almost every gig since (paired with a Little Mark III). Its not lightweight, but its the best single cab rig for me. My Aguilar GS410 is arguably better and bigger sounding, but it a lot, lot bigger and heavier. I love my Schroeder. Brilliant cab.

Had a wedding gig in Leicestershire last night. I honestly don't know how we got thru it - both myself (bass/vocals) and keyboard player have colds - he was sweaty and feverish the whole time, and we both felt bloody awful. But It turned out to be a brilliant gig! We somehow managed to come out fighting and absolutely nailed it, and the wedding party loved it! Should have been sponsored by Sudafed, Echinacea and any other medication we could lay our hands on. So pleased it went well. Feeling it today tho. Dreadful. Need tea.

I play bass firstly, but guitar a close second, and I think they definitely help inform each other. Bass playing helped my rhythm guitar and timing skills, and lead guitar playing helps me when I want to do something flashy or fast on the bass (ok it's not very often I admit!) It's nice to have a wider grasp of music than just one instrument, and I find in the work I do there's lots of room for depping as a multi instrumentalist, so it's all good stuff.

Nice one Walbassist, that sounds pretty encouraging then! Seena lot about this model on the internet, plus a fair bit involving the good man himself, and frankly they sounded great (Bernie and the guitar in fairness). I was slightly put off by descriptions of it having a massive thick neck, thicker than the PRS wide/thick neck profile, but I guess that helps impart some serious tone. Gonna have to try one out I reckon

Hi, Has anyone tried one of these? I've been sniffing around a couple of PRS Se models recently and they seem pretty decent - budget guitars but nice nevertheless. There's much online about the Bernie Marsden signature model, which seems to be the cream of the crop Has anyone on here got any experience of one? Ta

i had to learn a bunch of songs for a dep gig and realised that the bus trip to and from work was 30 mins each way to work thru stuff. i managed to sketch out the songs in my head based around the key i estimated them to be in (which was more often than not correct), with all the various nuances and changes etc, so that when i sat down with a bass i had it 90% in the bag.

My action is quite medium/low to me but probably higher than some people would like. I'm quite heavy handed both with finger style or a pick, so it's more important for me to get buzz free notes than to have super slinky action. I also go for medium amount of relief on the neck - definitely a visible slope when sited along the fingerboard - to get a good bit of clearance. I've used 40-100 round wounds until recently, when I swapped to 45-105 for some depping work tuned to Eb, and found I actually preferred the extra meat anyway. My two main basses (Fender Ps) have been worked on a bit over the years (one had a refret and new nut, the other more than one fret dress) so they're probably pretty far away from how they left the factory. Their lack of buzz etc is more down to the work of the pro luthier involved in the overall set up than my own minor tweaks since then.

i wish i got on better with flats - i really love the idea, and the feel, and the sound in certain circumstances, such as recording, but for every day gigging etc I keep falling back to round wounds as for me they give me a better all round sound and feel. I had some flats on my old Precision for ages, which really suited it and sounded good, but once I swapped back to round wounds the bass just became so much more alive and responsive. I've got Rotosound Sm77 flats on my fretless, but that's all.

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1441628245' post='2860341'] 8x10"s can be very cheap secondhand, as I reckon just about every bass player buys one at some point and then realises they can never be bothered to haul it around for gigs. [/quote] This ^^ I had an Ashdown 810 for a while and it did sound amazing. But carrying it to and from gigs, even with a Volvo estate, was a massive ball ache. It had to go in the end, replaced by an Aguilar GS410 from BC's own Richardd, which in fairness is hardly a poor replacement...

You can't just say that and not explain what happened?! someone please tell.... even if its a PM...

As a footnote to all this, personally i find the build quality, wiring and hardware on cheap basses less reliable than on better built, more expensive ones. I've gone thru an awful lot of cheap bridge saddles which have worn thru to the cheap allow beneath, and chewed up a lot of frets (usually from playing a cheap, weaker sounding bass in the hope of getting more welly out of it.) I've also had cheap necks which needed regular tweaking to try to keep anything like a decent action. I eventually gave in and bought a secondhand USA precision, which i've used for 90 percent of my gigs over the last 10 years. It's still got all the original hardware, has needed one fret dress, and the neck has been stable and buzz-free all that time. Oh yeah, and it sounds loud, lovely, fat and full. To me, that's enough reason to play the extra. But that's me - I gig regularly, for functions and weddings as well as pubs, and I play quite hard, so I want something that's reliable and good. There are many people for which a cheaper bass will do perfectly well, and that's cool too. I use a couple of acoustic guitars for occasional gigs, and they're all sub £300 Far Eastern ones, which are good enough for me.

[quote name='jonsmith' timestamp='1441310408' post='2857877'] Some of my gear is quite expensive, one or two items are really quite cheap. As a few people have said, the audience does benefit from the expensive gear as most of it feels better and sounds better to me, which means I enjoy playing more and give a better performance. In my opinion it does also sound better and it becomes easier to give the audience a more pleasing overall sound (I think they do notice this, even if they don't always know why). Although I play better with a decent sound, I can cope with poorer sound, but I have worked with a few guitarists who went to pieces if their sound wasn't right - good players besides that too. Having said that, we live in a time where budget equipment is available at not massively higher prices than when I was starting out over 30 years ago. The difference now is that most of this budget equipment plays and sounds passable now - perhaps with a few rough edges - compared to back then when most of it was painful to play and often to listen to as well. When asked to go to the US last year I picked up a Squier P as I was worried that the airline might crush one of my 'decent' basses. As it turned out, this cheap bass was easy to play and sounded just fine for the music I was playing and by the end of the trip I was thinking I'd be upset if it got damaged too. It wouldn't be the first bass I'd pick up, but it still sees regular use at multi-band events with crowded stages where I don't want to risk something more expensive. I don't think there's any such thing as an unjustifiable purchase - if I can hear or feel something that attracts me to that instrument then I'm afraid that's all that matters and the purchase is entirely justified. Business sense doesn't enter into it, otherwise I wouldn't even be in a band in the first place. [/quote] This ^^^

Some of my gear is Far Eastern budget stuff, but sounds fine and works well. But when I use my more expensive better quality stuff, it makes me really enjoy more the whole experience of playing it, which I'm sure is reflected in the way I play and which is something the audience benefit from, whether they realise it or not. Nothing wrong with using great equipment if you personally can appreciate the difference, as its money well spent. But if you don't need that level of detail or quality, that's no problem either - plenty of decent budget kit out there. Regardless of what you're using, the main thing is that you're playing something good with it surely?

I'm gonna go back on my earlier comment about songs I don't want to play again. On balance, I'd rather play almost any song that suits the gig and keeps that dance floor full, instead of opting for something serious and muso-ish if it clears the dance floor completed. I go home after a gig remembering the overall vibe and energy, and if a couple of songs I'd regard as cheesy are necessary to keep the audience happy then so what? There are quite a few songs that bore the pants off me totally, but they tend to be ones that are less than kick ass for everyone involved too, including the audience, so I don't feel to bad about leaving them out of the set! Saying that, I'd rather aim for songs that are neither cheesy nor leave the vibe as flat as a witch's tit. The cool ones that make people think "wow what a great song, you don't often hear this" - that's where the fun is ha ha!

Weirdly as some one else has pointed out - I did all three of the original choices in a wedding gig a few weeks ago and the punters loved it! oh well.

In addition to the selection above I'd go for... Get it On Champagne Supernova Lucky Man Please no...

My boy is three and a half and is pretty fascinated whenever I start playing. Fairly soon he wants to join in and tries to play too and to be honest I'm quite relaxed about it. Tho he does often moan that it's too loud. I did catch him once about to tip my Gibson SG at the time out of its stand which would have been fatal for it, but since then he's more intrigued than destructive. At least in a few years time he'll have a few decent instruments to learn on should he want to. Tho at the moment things are limited to him nicking my mic to dance and sing Van Halen tunes (strangely he only likes Sammy Hagar era stuff).

Hiya Got my eye on getting a mini Dunlop crybaby pedal for my board primarily because its true bypass. Anyone tried one yet?