51m0n

[quote name='AM1' post='493310' date='May 20 2009, 02:51 PM']A fellow honker! A year! Respect, you minging, stinking, rotten, rancid sweaty! [b]I bet you smelled like a rotting corpse inhabited by skunks. [/b] Clean clothes for gigs are over-rated anyway, it's just not befitting to punk rawk to be putting on clean attire to play in.[/quote] In that particular T shirt I did. Mind you - our percussionist was a lot worse than me

On the delightful subject of being a sweaty gooey lump at a gig. I used to regularly be able to literally wring out might T-shirts like a drenched towel after a gig. On several occasions the offending T would be chucked into a bag until next gig. At one point we had a few one off T-Shirts painted up, which effectively couldn't be washed. I wore one for a gig every couple of weeks for over a year until it disintegrated. In between gigs it went back in the bag. It never ever got a wash. Was really really fruity before it fell apart though Got me well in the mood for going mental on stage. This was a very long time ago however! I was a m*nger, I admit it

Roscoe Century Standard. Although I think it will hit you a bit harder than 1500 now (due to exchange rate nonsense) Fantastic tone, ridiculously playable, light as a feather. To hear it have a listen to the first track on my myspace page (What It Is). Its all my Roscoe. Looks lovely too (not too much of a bling bass IMO)....

[quote name='Kongo' post='492876' date='May 20 2009, 12:52 AM']I hope your tone stays true.[/quote] Cheers, Ragnarok is a great name for a bass

I destroy strings. In minutes.... I think I probably sweat unfermented nitromorse or horse s**t or something Rotosounds I can kill completely in half an hour I currently use the tried and tested denatured alcolhol (methylated spirits) tube. One set on bass, one set in tube. Rotate as required. (Every gig/recording at least) Thats with DR strings. Nothing else feels right and sounds as good and lasts as long for me. Shame they aren't cheap too. I always kink the strings before cutting. Thats how I was taught when working in a proper old school music shop (by a luthier). Remember when fitting strings to make sure that the length of string after the initial kink is such that the string winds around the peg getting closer to the headstock the more times it winds (ie its longer rather than shorter). In that way the break angle over the nut is increased the more turns. Restringing a bass is a skill not to be underestimated IMO. I wipe down my basses after playing with a microfibre cloth, taking care to get the neck and strings thoroughly clean. My strings never go black. My tone is now consistent. It zings on my 4, and less on my 5 - but thats the nature of the basses. They both sound great

This si what I'm talking about:-

[quote name='truegeminis' post='491863' date='May 18 2009, 09:09 PM']Just an update. After swapping messages with WoT and some further thinking I'm going to go for Bergantinos. Just have to keep saving for a second one (if necessary). The fact that Mark at BassDirect is such a pleasure to deal with helps too.[/quote] I had a feeling you'd be persuaded by all the positive waves man I'm positive you wont be disappointed at all.

[quote name='chris_b' post='492434' date='May 19 2009, 03:38 PM']I just wish this gear was around 20 years ago! It really is a [i]good[/i] time to be a bass player.[/quote] +lots

[quote name='OldGit' post='492394' date='May 19 2009, 02:36 PM']So nice to hear good news .. I never get the chance to crank my MB/Berg rig .. It's always on about 1 [/quote] By 'crank up' I mean get the master up to about 9 O'clock. That is easily enough to be mixed correctly with a drummer who is hitting drums with authority (ie not holding back, but not being an animal). Any more than that and it is too loud for the drums; we were both wearing ear plugs (always do), but at one point I did slip mine out for a minute, and it was properly loud all the same

[quote name='Sean' post='492314' date='May 19 2009, 01:25 PM']The MB/Berg combination is phenomenal - I've been over the moon with mine and have no desire to change. Can't say the same for the Roscoe I have. Nothing wrong just doesn't give me the zingy goodness the Spectors do. Glad you're happy with your rig - let's hope you have many happy years with it [/quote] What Roscoe have you got? I'd not call my Roscoe zingy at all. Its a very woody tone IMO, love it to bits. Pops have a real visceral punch to them that really harks back to good ole' funkiness for me. But its too refined a tone to ever be confused with an old workhorse Fender with tapewounds or dead strings for instance. My old 4 banger with the EMGs does all the zingy I'll ever need though

Just wanted to post to say I had a jam with someone last night, and for the first time in a fair while I got to fire up my rig in anger. I've been mainly recording for the last few months, and either used someone else's amps for a specific tone, or gone direct. Damn my rig is fantastic The Roscoe sounded utterly staggering, and was way easier to play than a 35" scale 5 string has any right to be. Haven't really tried it at gigging volumes, just for recording. The Focusrite just 'worked' as a set it and forget it comp, I've not had a jam with the drummer in question before, and he was well up for some silly nonsense, so I got to show off with some tapping grooves (disgraceful I'm sure!), and the compounder did exactly what I got it to do, brought the level of tapping up to that of fingerstyle and slapping, without me breaking my fingers. All the while being really transparent. The Berg ae410 / MB sa450 combination is superb, we were jamming in his studio which has a not overly large but very comfortable live room which has been acoustically treated so as to be really useable for recording - nice home made bass traps and diffusers etc. After the first five minutes the drummer was just blown away by the fantastic sound of my rig, and to be honest so was I Its bl00dy brill! Absolute tone nirvana for me, its just so punchy, without being too bright, or too dark, and this is with pretty old strings. Sorry to rant on about this, but I couldn't resist

I think my drummer made me watch some of his video, if its who I think it is ('and now we do the paradidlle with the feet at half the speed of our hands' - was a memorable line!) he's clearly not human! Whats it like playing with a drummer like that?

Crikey, I got my sa450 for £475 new a while back (admittedly I held out hard for that deal, arm twisting to the point of a chinese burn was delivered ) And before anyone quotes exchange rates, the US prices have not hiked nearly as much as ours have, last time I checked.

Thing is, if its supposed to be a clean valve (ie like the Hartke LH500) then you really shouldnt hear any diff at all. Only if you drive it hard, and even when I had the little blue light on all the time, although there was breakup it wasnt especially 'nice' to my ears. The LH500 is clean as a whistle, you'd never know there was a tube in there IMO. Well as far as I could tell with the LMIIItube 800, I couldnt tell either. So why bother..... I qualify all this with stating that I am not a 'tube guy' or any kind of officianado thereof. I do have a decent pair of analytical ears IMO, from years of mixing etc, and just refuse to be taken in by all this tube gash.... YMMV (a lot!)

Well I've had a go on the tube versions and frankly couldnt tell any diff sweeping the preamp control, yes the sound changed (could hear it 'summing' differently during a sweep, but couldnt quantify any real change in the sound once I stopped sweeping. This was with the 800w variant, so class D amp. Sounded hugely loud mind

I think the power stage is the same (judging by a recent post by Peter Murray on TalkBass) so you should be fine. My understanding is as follows:- The LMII, LMIIITube & LMIII share a power amp, the new versions have an updated limiter though so the issues with 8Ohm operation should have gone (apparently) The LMIII800 has a digital power amp They ALL have digital power supplies. I may be wrong though (ping them an email, they will clear up any doubt)

AT the begining of the year I picked up a new Korg DTR2000 for £125, which is a steal. There are offers out there if you look for long enough. Oh, and its brilliant too.

ONe thing that can be good to bear in mind is that it can be a bad idea to use the same mic on bass cab as kick drum Esp with a dedicated bass mic (a la D112), since they are designed to colur the sound (ie eq it), and the last thing you want is the same eq on kick and bass, quite the opposite in fact, using a different mic is a great way to start the process of frquency mixing the kick and bas together. Remember you can put back with eq what isnt there in the original signal tracked to tape....

[quote name='AM1' post='488379' date='May 14 2009, 11:42 PM']Ignore all these man-boob wannabees, my boobs are the bounciest, can I join? [/quote] Nope still cant seem to see them....

[quote name='crez5150' post='489387' date='May 15 2009, 10:58 PM']Sucks teeth.... [/quote] oops sorry - bound to hit a nerve for some!

Well I used to use quite a lot of effects, octaver can certainly help especially if you have a line thats based on the A D & G strings. Envelope filters are [b]the[/b] funk effect thanks to Bootsy, they are rarely up to much in a multi-fx though. These days I only use some compression and leave off all the squelch, I even gave my BP8 to my eldest to get me away from that particular distraction. I foound myself plugging in to practice and then playing with sounds all night I can still do that just with the focusrite if I'm not careful - have to leave it off if I want to practice for real

[quote name='Jon Liebman' post='489086' date='May 15 2009, 05:08 PM']Hey, folks! Just stumbled across this thread and wanted to say thanks. Feel free to contact me anytime with questions, comments, etc. Enjoy! Jon Liebman www.JonLiebman.com[/quote] Hello, lovely to have you on board!

[quote name='alexclaber' post='489065' date='May 15 2009, 04:52 PM']Sadly I don't hold much hope for their writing skills having improved - though you never know, it took the Chilis three or four albums to get the hang of it![/quote] OOOFFFF - Er no mate, gotta disagree with you there, from Freaky Stylee to Blood Sugar are all top IMO. Then it all started going terribly wrong, they never got back to the greatness of Blood Sugar, not even close in fact

[quote name='The Funk' post='489031' date='May 15 2009, 04:25 PM']There was a horrible time when every guitarist's sound was drenched in chorus, when every keyboard player used the weakest synth pad patch they could find, when every drummer had the life sucked out of his kit with abused noise gates - and when every bass player slapped on everything. Slap can be funky - it can also be totally unfunky.[/quote] Wow, that describes Level42 to me perfectly

[quote name='JackLondon' post='489010' date='May 15 2009, 04:01 PM']With regards to slapping I don't like it that much to be honest but my guitarist thinks that slapping=funk.[/quote] Sounds to me like he's the one in need of education, sir!