Ziphoblat

I've had enough incidents of GAK misrepresenting their stock on their website and then downright lying over the phone that I won't be using them again. I've had nothing but good experiences with Richtone though.

Alternatively, offer to front the extra charges from eBay/Paypal yourself. If you want that insurance, pay for it. I doubt many sellers will have much objection to doing it that way providing they're not losing out for it, and if the bass is a valuable item it's a small price to pay for that peace of mind.

[quote name='Lowender' timestamp='1381618698' post='2241580'] You're probably right. But that's just YOUR opinion. : ) Tell you what, since you're familiar with the piece and the players execution was so void of musicality, record 16 bars of it yourself and let everyone hear how it REALLY should be done. I'll look forward to that -- as I'm sure everyone else will as well. [/quote] And I'm sure next time anybody reads anything by a critic they will assume it invalid until the critic can prove his or her ability to achieve something of the same level.

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1381507688' post='2240094'] I'm obviously a cultural heathen, as my idea of a bass solo is still Cliff Burton's 'Anesthesia'! ...it's what made me pick up a bass as a grebby young teenager. From my experience, you can mask a helluva lot of mistakes with sufficient amounts of fuzz and wah [/quote] Mistake would imply that he knew what he was intending to achieve in the first place.

[quote name='White Cloud' timestamp='1381503542' post='2240002'] You are all entirely wrong...this is THE GREATEST bass solo ever captured. [media]http://youtu.be/waIhJDgC5dQ[/media] [/quote] Quality. The unplugged jack parts were especially good.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1381501075' post='2239956'] Needs the silk gloves to lose those string squeaks as he changes chords. I use elixirs to lose then from my significantly less fiddly chord changes. [/quote] Yeah, very nice playing, the string squeak just gets a bit distracting.

[quote name='molan' timestamp='1381490984' post='2239752']Lots, and lots, of people have tried BF and really don't like them - look at how many come up for sale in the classifieds.[/quote] A good chunk of which are from people looking for another Barefaced cab (bigger or smaller than their current one). To me, it's fairly simple. Most "serious" gigs you'll be going through the PA. If you prefer the sound of a more coloured cab to a less coloured one, that's because you're not 100% happy with the sound of the signal coming out of the amp and want it coloured more. If you use a cab to achieve this, you'll be sat on stage enjoying a sound while what the audience are hearing is far more similar to what you'd hear using something like a Barefaced. Make it sound "right" through a Barefaced however, and you can be fairly sure it's going to sound right out front too. This is all assuming you're using a DI and have a competent soundguy of course, but bringing mics into the equation just introduces a whole load more unpredictability because you're then imparting the frequency response of the cabinet and of the microphone on the original signal.

Surprised by the lack of love for the Corvette. I think mine looks great. [url="http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/7783/02bridge.jpg"][/url]

^ I think the way to avoid such "animosity" would be not to introduce the person by trying to objectively compare them to an established player. It kind of goes against everything you described in your post.

[quote name='gjones' timestamp='1381440723' post='2239306'] I've got a friend who's a great bassist and usually plays a relatively new Fender Precision, with which he gets a really nice deep, punchy sound out of his GK combo. I heard him the other day playing his Warwick Thumb bass and it sounded horrible. He was playing just a bog standard covers gig and the bass sounded horribly thin and weedy - like a Jazz bass with just the bridge pickup turned on. It sounded so wrong for that gig, as it had zero bottom end - just a very nasal, middy, growl. Yuck! Do they all sound like that? [/quote] I can guarantee that if you tried you could make the precision sound just as bad; and that if you knew how, you could make the Warwick sound just as good.

[quote name='Lowender' timestamp='1381416296' post='2238784'] We can debate preference all day long but i have to disagree on the technical aspect. I know I can work out what Victor plays on that clip by the end of the day. It's mostly fast pentatonic stuff and I can play fast. But I wouldn't be able to do what the guy in that clip does if I practiced it 5 hours a day for the next 5 years. Now again, if you don't like it you don't like it. [/quote] I wasn't suggesting that what Victor plays on that clip was technically more challenging. I was simply using at as an example of good musical playing by Victor against the argument that his playing within a band is uninteresting.

Some of Victor Wootens stuff is great. He loses musicality a bit sometimes, but usually when he's playing by himself in some booth or something (advertising some product by playing a million notes a second, he's just doing it for the money). His playing Bela Fleck and the Flecktones is awesome. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrlpFA5BbuU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrlpFA5BbuU[/url] And on a purely technical level I think he's above anything in that video you posted.

Not sure about some of the other stuff (generally ignorant to it, through choice) but I reckon Fatboy Slim'd go down a treat in a lot of places.

[quote name='Annoying Twit' timestamp='1381266481' post='2236820'] MIDI is utterly the wrong technology for bass/guitar/stringed instrument synths. It requires accurate detection of the note right at the beginning. This is easy on a keyboard with micro-switches, but much harder on a stringed instrument. I think the opportunity is there for someone to make a much better bass or guitar synth by avoiding MIDI and therefore the compromises that format places on the communication between the detection and synthesis. OSC is a better technology that could be used. [/quote] Look up the approach used by the Industrial Radio Midi Bass.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1381260417' post='2236707'] If it was that simple - then there would be loads of guitarists and bassists doing wonderful things with their MIDI-enabled instruments. However for most musicians it involves such a massive change in technique to get anything useful MIDI-wise out of a stringed instrument that you might as well learn how to play keyboards (which is what I did). [/quote] Right, but that's just with technology where it as at the moment. Things like the Industrial Radio Midi Bass seek to change that, and the technology can only get better. Sooner or later someone will manage to do it in a neat package that most players will feel at home on with little adjustment (and by all accounts the Industrial Radio Midi Bass isn't far off). At the end of the day, MIDI is just a string of numbers generated by a controller, which is conventionally a keyboard purely because tracking the notes being played on a piano is far easier than on most other instruments. The notion that controlling MIDI with a bass guitar is redundant is no more valid than the idea that notion that controlling MIDI with a drum kit is redundant; and if a drummer wanted to control MIDI to play drum samples, I doubt that many people would be recommending a MIDI keyboard over an electronic drum kit. [quote name='Lowender' timestamp='1381261126' post='2236719'] But you don;t need monstrous piano technique -- just a basic knowledge of where the notes are and all musicians should be able to do that. And with quantizing and such it makes up for lack of technique. The thing is, you play different instruments differently.[/quote] Surely basic technique is only suitable for playing basic parts? Synthesiser parts need not be simple; and the tendency towards writing them as such is purely because people are often pigeon-holed into playing them on an instrument they're not particularly comfortable with. Quantisation is only really applicable in the studio anyway. For me the real appeal of a practical and playable MIDI system would be the live applications.

[quote name='Lowender' timestamp='1381255508' post='2236582'] Cool stuff. But a bit of the tail wagging the dog. if I want those sounds I'll just play a midi keyboard. I want a bass to be a bass. [/quote] Or if you've spent years learning to play the bass and never bothered playing piano/keys in your life...

[quote name='Ben Jamin' timestamp='1379797844' post='2216940'] Hang on... two humbuckers and an 18v pre-amp with a 3 band EQ? Surely the HH model is literally just a G&L M2000/M2500? You could probably pick a G&L Tribute M2000 for half the price of the American Deluxe and I imagine it'd be just as good, if not better. And then you've got the USA-made G&Ls... [/quote] Fenders USA basses are twice as expensive as G&L's overseas basses? Well, what an entirely pointless observation. Surely it would be more fitting to compare the overseas G&L bass to the overseas Fender bass? (which happens to be half the price )

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1381249120' post='2236443'] yes and no. I bet if I ordered and bought a ACG graft bass or equivalent stuck it in a container on a ship and shipped it to the USA and back then played it it wouldn't need a fret job straight out the box. Some of it is quality control and what is being sent out not being good enough. I agree about the shops though. At work we have a bit of machinery that broke and needed an imperial allan key - realised it was the same size as a USA fender truss rod would be... ring up PMT in Leeds to buy a truss rod tool - told they don't have any tools at all and don't have an inshore tech either..... mad really. [/quote] Explains a lot. Nearly all the instruments out on display there have a terrible set-up. Played a Stingray there once on which I could literally (and I'm not exaggerating here) fit half of my hand under the strings between the fretboard without pushing them at all.

Voted. It was between A, D and F for me. I really liked the snare sound in F, a bit higher pitch and lighter (sounds like a sample replacement or more top mic?). However the mix as a whole was a bit lacking in energy/depth as opposed to A and D. One of the things that swung it for me was the snare. It was a touch loud in A perhaps, but I just preferred the tone (seemed a bit dark/flat in D). On the other hand I preferred the levels in the final chorus of D. However, the introduction bit with the stereo percussion (beatboxing?) was a bit distracting for me, I preferred it straight down the middle. Was a close match for me, but I ended up picking A. EDIT: Shame about the lack of votes too, the mixes deserve more to be honest.

[quote name='SimonEdward' timestamp='1380444624' post='2225184'] Yes. Chalk & Cheese, and you're entitled to your opinion. As an established Bassist - I need a bit more than a store shifting another box of $ender or Gi$5on every hour can provide. Of course, they can sell what they want. I'm looking for a store which has suppliers competing against each other to lower prices.[/quote] Funny, because a vast number of established (let's go one further, even; professional) bass players manage just fine with Fenders. If their stock (which, by the way, seems to extend much further than just Fender) happens not to encompass the stuff you [i]want [/i](emphasis on want, rather than need) then that's absolutely fine, but the notion that an army of five-figure-sum coffee-table boutique basses (look, I can hyperbolise too) is a prerequisite of suitably catering to "established" bass players is entirely absurd.

The first port of call when you want a different tone etc should always be your hands, imo (unless you're trying to replicate Hysteria ). If that doesn't work out for you, you could try some pedals. The GK gear tends to be quite intense on the high-mids which might be why you aren't finding it massively appropriate for Motown. You could try cutting more high-mids on your amp and boosting some low-mids and see if that helps.

[quote name='dougal' timestamp='1380873412' post='2231665'] Personally I've gone the other route: a small USB audio interface into the laptop. Means the bass sound is raw, but you can, if you've got time, work out how to pipe it through a VST or two. They've dropped in price since the early days. I can't comment on quality, but this seems like pretty good value: [url="http://www.dv247.com/computer-hardware/behringer-guitar-link-ucg102-guitar-to-usb-interface--38128"]http://www.dv247.com...nterface--38128[/url] You can then also record what you're playing if you want. [/quote] Another +1. It's such a great way to practice, especially if you have some good amp modeling software (Amplitube with Ampeg SVX is my pick at the moment).

I've played a few Warwicks and they've all been high quality instruments. I played a Warwick Corvette $$ in PMT Leeds which wasn't great to play. However the set-up was rubbish (high action) and the only amp to play it through available was some Ashdown thing which could go a long way to explaining that. I don't understand all the hate on the visuals though... and I certainly doubt that they represent the majority view. My Corvette, a 2009 German made one with a Bubinga body looks absolutely stunning, and the build quality is among the best. It also gets a lot of comments from people who ordinarily couldn't care less what a bass looks like about how good it looks. As for the sound being outdated? Well that's just nonsense. It sounds as dated as the rig you run it through.

[quote name='waynepunkdude' timestamp='1380877926' post='2231738'] Flash only works in the standard browser. [/quote] Did you have to install flash or does it just work off the bat? Mine doesn't seem to like it in the standard browser for some reason.

Tried it on my S3 and it doesn't work in Chrome or the standard browser. I need to update my stuff though so that might be why.