Gareth Hughes

Welcome. If you want to check out some local gigs I'd heartily recommend the John Hewitt bar in the Cathedral Quarter on a Thursday night. Has a very fine bass player in the form of Mr. Trevor Dyer. And you'll also find fellow BassChatter MachineHead there too.

This is a good read: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Double-Bass-Playing/dp/087487081X

Bought an Electro Harmonix Bass MicroSynth from Jon this week. Excellent seller. Great communication throughout, and awesome bombproof packaging.

One thing I've found that has helped pupils who previously couldn't grasp anything other than playing a single note on every beat, was to have them count out loud the beats - 1234 - for every bar and then clap the rhythm. Start of with quavers on beat one, or three, or wherever - something relatively simple, and then start introducing other groupings of rhythms. A great book to help with this is 'Improve Your Sightreading - Double Bass grades 1-5 by Paul Harris. It has excellent exercises that help you see where the rhythms lie on top of the beats.

Bottesini only needed three strings!

Thomann 22 series basses are excellent value. Not just 'for the money', but plain just excellent value. I loaned mine to Jon Thorne of Lamb for an Irish tour with Yorkston, Thorne and Khan and he was very impressed with it.

Just to chime in that me and my Elwood 6P are still happily in love.

Interesting. I have a similar rig. Never had any bother with my Streamliner before. However - I did have a weird one with an Acoustic Image amp that I concluded was down to dodgy power. The amp lit up, the preamp was working as there was a signal going through the DI to the soundman, but the power amp wouldn't do anything. Gig the night before with the same and next day at home, everything was fine and never any thing like that again.

[quote name='Fisheth' timestamp='1498898064' post='3327805'] Bass has literally turned up and it's been named Bass Of The Month on the Public Peace website, so I'm chuffed. [url="https://www.public-peace.de/bass-of-the-month/2230-public-peace-proudly-presents-the-bass-of-the-month-july-2017"]https://www.public-p...month-july-2017[/url] Didn't think Fed Ex delivered on a Saturday with International Economy, however! [/quote] Lucky you - so far they haven't delivered mine on a Saturday. Should have been here yesterday according to the tracking, now there's no scheduled date which I'm guessing means Monday at the earliest. Bah humbug. Anyway - enjoy yours!!!!

Hey eude - nice one, I'll have to check out the FB page - can't wait to see the video Adrian made. Specs are fairly standard - 24 fret bound neck, rosewood fingerboard. Body is chambered alder. Pickups are Delano's, hardware is Hipshot. Only non-standard-ish thing is the controls are vol-balance-tone instead of vol-vol-tone. Hey ezbass - cool, I'm really looking forward to hearing these pickups in the flesh. I loved the demos of them. Was tempted to get the models that could be coil tapped, but then I knew I'd go mad with options. "A man with a dog has a problem with a dog."

So, I'm waiting on this with baited breath. Delivery before 6pm today. Allegedly.

You're absolutely right. It's a viciously steep learning curve. In my case I was gigging my electric bass at 14 and did that and nothing else right through my teens and into music college, finishing that at 20. At 21 I bought my first upright and was gigging it within a month. I stress that it wasn't out of any talent, but simply a mix of having one and being too stupid to say no. Many bad habits were learnt on the job, but then I was happy to have a job!!!

Hey Bill - Just watched this and loved every second of it. That's a great, tight band you're playing with. Off to the shed I go!!!

PS - no need to apologise for your English. I guarantee you it is better than my Spanish.

Hi Spark - and welcome. I'm just up the road from you, across the border.

In defence of Rotosound, and I'm no fanboy, I got a set of strings once from a guy I played with who is an endorser. So no receipt or shop to go back to. Set had the right amount of strings but two D strings and no G. Wrote to Rotosound, explained the pack had been opened but no strings installed. Asked if they wanted the single string back or the whole back. They were happy to send out a replacement string immediately with no proof of purchase or returned set. I was more than happy with that.

Thomann stock them. I bought a Precision model and it lined up fine with the existing holes on the bass.

There's a great pedal by Wren &Cuff - the Suppa Phat Phuk. You can set it to remove some lows, overdrive the signal and add upper harmonics. To me it's a convincing enough Rick sound like Chris Squire or Geddy Lee, but without the talent.

For arco/pizz changes I found using a volume pedal more natural, especially as sometimes it happened during quiet sections where th click of a pedal was a bit noticeable. Something like a Boss LS-2 pedal might be a better choice as the input is the right impedance for a piezo pickup and the switching is silent.

Lovely stuff. I'm not a fan of active basses, but I tried several Xotic basses in Japan a few years ago and, besides being wonderful to play, the preamp had what I can only describe as an integral feel - it didn't change or sit on top of the passive tone, but rather expanded it. I'm still a passive guy, but I have a Tri-Logic II and a Tri-Logic III preamp pedals working their magic on my pedal boards.

[quote name='StuartCrawl' timestamp='1462831035' post='3046170'] Ha ha, yes indeed. How's things mate? [/quote] Nice one. Aye, all is good here. How's the four/five string treating you?