fusionbassist1

Hello everyone,

It's been a while.

I'm currently using an Ampeg Portabass 800 through a Gallien Krueger Neo 212 (loving it niceguyhomer) and also a Hughes & Kettner "Crunch Master" pre-amp thing that all together look like this.....



I'm now lucky enough to be looking at gigging abroad in the near future and recently experienced my first domestic flight where a bass had to be taken with me (and thank god I had a hard case after seeing the tears on the case's tolex :| ) so I've been thinking about a few things to do with my gear that I was hoping you fine low end warriors could help me with.

firstly I've read that the portabass comes with optional rack ears but as i bought second hand from the states i don't have the luxury of having them so could someone please tell me what kind of ones I should be looking for to put the head in a 4/3U flight case?

The other issue is that the preamp is rather delicate and allthough not great in an expensive kind of way (many of you may snigger but it's the tone not the means that counts in my book) it still gets what I want and therefore deserves to be looked after so i'd also like to have it rackmounted. It gets EXTREMELY hot and is an unusual size (from what I've seen) so I have honestly no idea how to go about this. The front panel is 8 and a half inch across,near abouts 2" tall with it's tiny little rubber feet and very nearly 8 inch deep.it's front panel (with all the knobs) is held on with 6 screws - one on each side, 2 on top and 2 on bottom (they can just about be seen in the picture).

In regards with flight casing cabs. In my head it should be done because speakers if not aluminium are extremely fragile and if a fragile piece of my equipment is out of my sight and very likely in the hands of someone who doesn't quite respect the usefullness of a Gallien-Krueger 2x12" Neodymium bass cab then I'd quite like to have something in place to save any un-necessary costs.
How much money and from whom can I get a flight case for a neo2x12 (and possibly a neo115 in the near future) in the uk?

**I'm now going to post a thread in general discussion to do with endorsment and the funding of a trip to a competition in Sweden with a young band I play with and it would be very much appreciated if anyone with experience with that kind of stuff could go have a look and get in contact**

thanx very much for any comments, much appreciated.

I'd have the 2x12 from you as I already have one but want another to get some serious headroom and the most out of my ampeg head but like a typical musician i have no money. I'll trade for the entire contents of my pockets though...there's about £4.97, some fluff, various buss passes and two headphone adapters. Deal?

Good uck mate, they'll make someone very ver happy.

Hello everyone.

There's going to be a night of oasis covers in the British Legion Club in the town of Llanrwst, N. Wales Friday January the 4th (that's this friday btw). I'm not just posting this because I'm playing, it's going to be a good night - all nice staff, good people on the door so there'll no nappy wearers drinking themselves into pools of sick, no rip-off drinks, great singer + band and if you didn't go out on new years night then why not indulge in the opportunity to get lathered singing along to a back-catalogue of tunes you've always known but never admitted to due to it being 'cliche' or not arty-farty enough for you. Or alternatively you could coem along to argue why Ampeg is "sooooo last year" and that the Fender tele thru a marshall cab + head the gu***rist is using isn't much better.

All we're asking is £4 at the door and these magical doors shall be open from 7:30 'till late.

It'd be cool if a fellow BCer came along and said hello, I'm the only bass player on stage so it's not too hard to spot me.

Hopefully we'll see you there,

Ben.

That's a hell of a lot of gear, and nice gear too. I hope you get it back and that there's a decent ass woopin' waiting for the baddies. Wish I could help but it's not my area at all, I'll keep an eye out - just incase for some strange reason any of it ends up near me.

doesn't zender de-badge most of the ol' ampeg gear he's currently using as well? I'm not a massive follower of mr zender but from what I can tell he has had a massive turn around in the equipment he uses, from modern amps/basses in his older stuff to now using old fenders and valve gear so perhaps it is an endorsement issue. Someone should ask him i guess.

I thought the song was cool but I must admit I'm not a P man myself at all *shock horror*. Song reminded me of Donald Fagen a bit. Great band and tbh I couldn't care if it was a compelte cover of a 70's song it's still fun listening to it and hearing it on the radio these days, I'd swap Stevie Wonder cover group for Girls Aloud any day.

[quote name='wotnwhy' post='108251' date='Dec 22 2007, 05:43 PM']the bass is and acoustic guitar body with a home made (not by me) neck and a slab for a finger board. suprisingly nice sound and playability [/quote]

weeeeeeeird

[quote name='Platypus' post='108574' date='Dec 23 2007, 03:05 PM']Pretty sure it's where the M6 is cobbled

P[/quote]

DOH! I got excited and forgot to look 8-)

where are you based? V. interested.

where are you based?

Great video man !!! I'm thinking of posting a video of my progress so far with the technique. I've got 4 years of playing with an anchored thumb on the neck pickup behind me so it's just un-learning that from my haad and getting used to things like raking which was a conveniently easy thing to do previously but now requires more co-ordination between pulling my shoulder back and bringing my hand with it. also playing 3 note chords with my thumb for the bass note is proving rather different, playing P.o.T. and making sure all the notes ring freely is proving to be a bitch. I got to try out floating thumb in a gig yesterday and I didn't find the technique a hold back, just myself still trying to do my 'old' licks. It's been refreshing loosing a bit of confidence and having to step back from everything and analyse what exactly I'm doing as a whole and have noticed I'm probably over-complicating some of my lines. All is going well though, it's always nice to see new videos and putting hands/faces to basschat avatars.

Interesting bass you've got int he video as well wotnwhy.

I'm interested in this non-anchored technique (is that a word???) but am also trying to force my self to learn to do it as I really don't want to have to cut my musical career short when I'm older due to arthritis and other injuries that (clearly) can be avoided. I am finding my shoulder a bit sore but I'm taking this as a good thing because in theory it means that I'm taking away some stress and basically the weight of my forearm from my wrist.

Could someone such as wotnwhy do their own video of them using this technique please, especially demonstrating the technique in use during string crossing etc. I'd just like someone else's camera angles and explanations of how the technique works for them rahter than how they drileld it into their hands. Thanx for posting the link btw.

I think as as a teacher and a columnist jeff berlin is very valuable in modern bassplaying as even though I disagree with some of his views (and clearly so do a large amount of other musicians out there) he certainly made me question why it is that I do stuff like practice with a metronome and justify it to myself and others occassionally. For me doing something because you're formally taught to isn't enough, i have to ask 'why' otherwise it's redundant due to me not knowing how to apply it.

Specifically on metronomes and click tracks he is actually stating a fact that time and rhythm in most environments have never and probably wont ever be metronomic or perfectly constant. IMO i don't use a metronome to play constantly myself, it's more of a tool for me to be consious of where I am in relevance to a given beat so that when it comes to a live setting where the human aspect is present i am able to play more steadily or pick up where i should be by listening to the beat fo the drummer. Also it's widely given that studios will want artists to play along to a clicktrack so any practice towards that is a plus in my book. If anything I think it's easier to play with a clicktrack or metronome than a real drummer as it's more predictable, I'm pretty sure Dave Weckl's more likely to throw me off the beat than a steady 4/4 beat on a metronome is.

thanx for nothing.

Bongo's DOOO look like toilet seats.

I can see your point Ross and it's true that pc speakers and headphones don't do much justice to 4 string basses, let alone ERB's but I do think you need to calm down a bit.
Personaly on the death metal thing i don't find music that's designed to displease attractive at all so I won't bother giving an opinion on ERB's in that context as I'd be pretty biased i'm afraid.

thought I'd throw this in..........bassplayer magazine apaprently didn't believe jaco's portrait of tracy was a bass guitar when they first heard it and jaco still gets stick for being different even though he's been dead for 20 years, despite this he still won the '07 readers poll for best bassplayer of all time. change DOES happen, it's a question if you want to be a part of that group of people pushing the boat out a bit.

I'm all for it,like argh said - ERB players shouldn't feel the need to justify anything and mabye some of these people didn't stop so too much to think about why they want more strings; the sad person in that equation is the person who sat for hours at home in front of a pc trying to think of reasons why what they're doing isn't cool.

In the self explanitory words of zappa "shut up 'n' play yer guitar".

now i'm going to go to bed. It's a good debate so I hope no one throws something completely un-pc or starts having personal diggs at people (the penis thing is very very immature btw so don't try it).

no worries .

I agree about the punk thing, it's like if a punk was bragging about how he can't play his/her instrument it's moving away from what should be the focus ie the music. It shouldn't matter is someone plays a one string bass (and they do exist) or a 12 string (and i'm sure there's basses with more than that...) - the aim is to make music, forget the rest.

This convo just got a bit Victor Wooten on everyone's arse so i'll let someone else get a word in now guys.

[quote name='6stringbassist' post='86567' date='Nov 10 2007, 06:13 PM']True, in fact anything higher than Eb (6th fret on the A string) is a note that's also on a guitar.

And why do bassplayers who choose to play a 4 string, appear so smug about it when posting their comments on this sort of thread.[/quote]

was that aimed at me by any chance??

i play four.....never played any mroe than that either...

my only thing to contribute to this debate is that in my eyes bass is a role rather than an instrument with 'x' amount of strings or 'x' amounts of frets. As long as you're playing lower than the melody instruments and contributing some bass frequencies to the mix then i honestly don't care what's producing these sounds. it's then down to the tone you want, whether that be a synthetic keyboard like bass sound, bass guitar, tuba etc is up to you. If high notes is what you want then in the same way it shouldn't matter what kind of instrument is making the sounds. it's a fact that at the higher frets of even four string bass guitars you're starting to dabble in guitar freq territory but you don't hear people complaining about that on such a level either. the higher notes on a 6 string or 5 string with a top 'C' could be played much easier on an electric guitar so if that's ALL you're going to play on your '6 string bass guitar' then i think you're making more work for your self. if someone wants the tone that a 50 string 'bass' has at higher register then that's up to them and tbh if someone wants to be able to play guitar style licks occasionally and still be able to go right down to a low B then I can't imagine an instrument more convinient than the 6 string bass.

In most comercial atmospheres the look is equally as important aswell, can you really see the spice girls coming on stage soon with the bassplayer waving a 12 string beast, the guitarist being on a 8 string thing and the guitarist having a huge drum dome??? of course not, image is equally as important if not more so than the music they pump out. you can factor that into why you don't see so many ERB players on MTV i think.

Anyone's opinions on what I said would be very interesting for me o read through

i always go for a 15" to have the ground contact of a big speaker, bit of 'wmph'. Gives me a balanced tone between both cabs. Nice having a tall rig i think aswell so there's some sound near your ears.

But as a rule of thumb, don't take other people's opinions too much for granted, go try stuff out, see what's good for you.

[quote name='bass_ferret' post='84191' date='Nov 5 2007, 08:20 PM']The daddy of all speakers is either the Cerwin Vega 18 inch Earthquake with 2.5 inches of cone excursion or the EV 30 inch that I think was used by Accugroove in a silly cab.[/quote]

i noticed accugroove at the bass gallery, 20"+ speakers..........us bassplayers need roadies......and bill dickens doesn't really look like he does much jogging imo.....

[quote name='Jack' post='84218' date='Nov 5 2007, 09:21 PM']Did someone wake up cranky this morning? [/quote]

of course not i've been using a ashdown evo3 (i think), ashdown 4x10 and 1x12 as a lent rig with a band i've been playign with recently as my setup's out of action and i must say we don't get along very well.

i'll admit that if you want that bassy round, phat sound that lies underneath everything (what i now call 'the ashdown sound') then they do that ok but nothing special. but that's ALL they do. after jamming every button and vomiting on the silly slidey things and the not so responsive turny things i got nothing but a sh*tty trebly sound that sounded like all the speakers had been replaced by tweeters, and poor ones at that.

nothing against mr ashdown, it's just not my thing.

PM sent on the AI Clarus, oh and I'm based in north wales, i forgot to mention that, if it makes a difference.

I'm sure she'll be going mental christmas day. If only we all had that kind of encouragement as youths, it seems to have worked pretty well for Victor Wooten hasn't it !!!

We'll have to keep an eye out for your daughter as the next big thing then I suppose

Burpster's right about them not beign taken seriously because they're aimed at girls, that's like saying BC Rich shouldn't be takens seriously because they're aimed at a specific heavy rock audience. I never played a Daisy Rock tho, haven't heard much crap about them tho I must admit.