Truckstop

I have two Workingman's 10's! £100 is a steal for the 15. Great build quality and great tone. Even if you're not 100% on the sound you get out if it, you're guaranteed an extremely well built piece of kit. The 10's I use are extremely efficient and the volume I can get out of one is normally enough for the gigs I play. I only use the second one if I need a bit of headroom. Don't get me wrong, they look a bit dated and are quite heavy, but again for £100 you'd be an idiot not to take it. There's one in my local music shop and they're after £375 for it! Truckstop

Get it! Truckstop

Not sure if I'm missing any sarcasm here but I think the dude sells postcards. Truckstop

John built me a bespoke solderless wiring kit for my Yamaha RBX170. From first enquiry to the finished product John was extremely helpful and only took a couple of days! Would literally use no-one else ever if I ever need similar work doing again. Cheerz Alex

My BB's J was actually much louder than the P so I spent about 4 seconds adjusting the heights of the pickups and now they're perfectly balanced. I love PJ basses. P's are all fine but sometimes I just want that burp you get from the bridge pickup. It's a great way of clearing up a bassy sound in a live environment. If I'm ever on a wooden stage or in a boomy room I just switch to the PJ blend and it tidies me up. Truckstop

A quick tip; Doesn't matter how many holes the scratchplate you buy has, you can drill new holes and fill in the old ones with filler. If you're going for a re-finish then that's a way to sort that out. Obviously as long as the pickup hole is centered properly and the cavities are all covered. You could do a lot worse than to get in touch with kiOgon. He's a member on this forum and he builds incredibly high quality wiring harnesses for P basses; he gets the best quality pots, capacitors, knobs and wires and charges £23 (iirc). It's an effective way of turning a low-value instrument into something a little more competitive! Wizard pickups are awesome and great value. You can get them custom wound and great emphasis is placed on recreating the type of pickup sound you prefer. Well worth getting in touch with them! Or, put an ad up in the 'Wanted' forum here for Wizard pickups and I'm sure someon'll have a set kicking about. Good luck, looks like fun! Truckstop

Sort of... You can use it as a preamp directly into a PA system capable of reproducing bass properly. But then you'd need to sort out monitoring etc. They're very useful for studio recording; plug in, get your settings and blast away! Truckstop

Electric drum pads seem to work quite well. You can assign certain samples to each pad and the drummers triggers everything. Roland and Korg make them. Alternative is some sort of sampling keyboard. Again, assign the sample to a certain key/bank and trigger it when you need to. Things get more difficult if you're using time sensitive samples (extra instrument/vocal parts). One way is to play to a click and run a track (with all the samples on it) for the duration of the song. If you just want to utilise sound effects and keep it simple, a drummer-triggered sample pad is the easier and cheapest way to do it. Sample pads tend to have a massive library of percussion, vocal sounds and sound effects built in. Loads of fun there! Truckstop

P.I.M.P. Truckstop

Some reworkings of Ray Lamontagne would be awesome. 'Repo Man' and 'Trouble' I think would work the best and have fairly simple structures so can be learned quickly. While you're at it, you simply must get ahold of the 'God Willin' and the Creek Won't Rise' album. Stunning! Also get creative with some classic rock n roll! The only thing stopping that kind of music from being country/americana/folk is the electric! Nadine (Chuck Berry), Kansas City (Wilbur Harrison), Shake Your Moneymaker (Fleetwood Mac) and I've Got My Mojo Working (Muddy Waters) would be great candidates for simplification. Good luck! Truckstop

Signature models are also a good shout. Basses like the Bob Glaub Laklands should rise in value when they stop making them and if you've got a branded case with all the candy then in 20 years time you should have a banker! Things like the original Ibanez K5 and the first Yamaha RBXJM (again in good nick with a nice case and candy) should increase in actual value over the next ten years. You can pick them up for around £400 at the moment! I think the used market will become oversaturated with signature models over the next five years (especially high-end stuff; Will Lee, Bob Glaub, Roscoe Beck etc) they'll be discontinued; and then wait another 5 years and that's when you start thinking about selling! Truckstop

Well that's just lovely! Truckstop

I might also suggest that higher-end basses have a higher level of functionality and greater flexibility due to higher quality EQs or more pickups etc etc. That's worth a lot of money to some people! Truckstop

Quick! Play Rawhide!

I've mainly been learning loads of old blues numbers. The band's been running the same old set for a while now and we're having a bit of a shake up. Obviously the structures are fairly simple and the keys aren't too tricky either (mainly E, A and G) so I've just been working on ways to make my walking baselines more interesting. Grabbed a copy of Ed Friedlands 'Constructing Your Own Walking Bass Lines' and I'm raring to go! Songs that got special attention for being so frickin' awesome are: Mess of Blues - Elvis Walk the Dog - Rufus Thomas Kansas City - Wilbur Harrison Something Else - Eddie Cochran Before You Accuse Me - Eric Clapton All totally walk-tastic and great fun! Truckstop

Depends what the gig is. I once got asked to play seated for a blues gig because the singer/guitarist wanted to make sure that he was the focal point of the band. Which is fair enough; after all it was HIS band playing HIS music. Otherwise I'd always play standing. Why wouldn't you? Truckstop

Yes. You'll look ridiculous and I have difficulties bringing my 1x10 combos in and out of pubs let alone a stinking great 8x10 fridge! You only really need a relatively efficient 2x10/1x12/1x15 cab to fill a pub with lovely bass. Truckstop

Had a lovely afternoon (a bit because quite severely hungover ) and found Lawrence's talk illuminating. Great player! Also blown away by the custom Carvins displayed by Barrie (Molan); amazingly versatile and articulate. Looking forward to some photos! Truckstop

I would say you should shut up and put up. Look, being in a serious band these days is a massive commitment. You need to put the money in, put the hours in, and spend a lot of effort doing things for the sake of the band. If you have faith in the music and you have faith that you'll get somewhere than it's worth persevering, right? If you sit down with these guys and say you're not happy with the way things are then you risk changing the dynamics of the group forever. You risk creating an environment where none of you are happy at all. Aside from a little criticism and financial hardship (by the way, a good piece of advice is to not buy things you can't afford) what's the big deal? Truckstop

[quote name='MoonBassAlpha' timestamp='1369866744' post='2093843'] if you just run from the send of the first I think it will mute the output unless the signal is returned in the, er, return socket. I'd send the tuner out from the first into the return of the second. Shouldn't be too hot a signal because the effects loop runs at line level. [/quote] And there's the winner! Had half hour to myself earlier to try various things and yes; 'tuner out' of combo 1 to the 'effects return' of combo 2 works! Just have to control the volume of the second combo using the FX blend Cheers! Alex

Exciting!! I've missed the last two local Bassbashes for various reasons and I'm definitely not missing this one! Alex

Nah, staying in tune's for chumps and mugs. I was thinking if I couldn't link the two using conventional means then I'd have to go through something like that. Looks like the effects send is a winner though! Alex