neepheid

Yes, although my main passion is Gibson basses, I do have a soft spot for my old, battered Yamaha BB614. It's always there for me in the office to pick up and noodle on at lunchtime, but I've gigged it too and it's no slouch. It's just so easy to play, it's not heavy, the neck is a little slimmer than I like but it's about half way between a P and a J and that's ok for me. It sounds pretty good too, the bridge pickup is surprisingly hot and keeps the neck pickup honest. I couldn't give a monkey's if they're cool or not according to the general bass playing population. I think Yamaha BB basses (only the truly broad ones though, I'm a bit meh about the slimmer bodied BBs) are cool, so they are.

Yamaha. My bass tutor uses a simple RBX170 in his band and it works great for him. I have a BB614 that I picked up for buttons (although it had some issues to iron out) and I would say that a BB414 would be a great, inexpensive bass (I have heard some people say they preferred it to the active 614).

http://basschat.co.uk/topic/169384-what-strings-do-you-use/

IBTL = Irritable Bowel Total Laxative?

I've done outdoor and marquee gigs armed only with a Hartke HA3500 and an 8 ohm Ashdown ABM 4x10. I'm sure you'll be fine

The only time I've used anything else is some extra long D'addario XLs for my RD Artist for the through body stringing. Had a play with flats a while back - hated Rotos and Fenders, loved Thomastiks. Tried D'addario half rounds and didn't like them - felt sticky to me.

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1332762892' post='1592630'] But it is major depressing someone putting out some of the nicest original design basses at a decent price has to resort to putting out another Fender "Clone" . [/quote] "Clone" is taking things a bit too far IMO. Clone suggests slavish copying to me, even if you did put it in quotation marks. While some design cues have been taken from the Jazz, this seems like an evolution to me though, not a clone, and certainly not as Fender-like as many custom maker's Jazz-like efforts - which considering the antipathy I have towards Jazz basses is not a bad thing

I hate crap sound on stage. All I ask is that I can hear myself. It doesn't have to be pleasant, but it should be audible. At my last gig I could hardly hear myself, was going mostly by feel. People out front said it sounded great, but it wasn't a great gig to play, constantly wondering if what you're playing is right and realising that you'll never know so you just have to plough on and hope for the best. Disappointing.

I've owned three acoustic bass guitars (note the past tense) and the only advantage I can find is they're good to just pick up and play by themselves, particular ones with built in tuners. On their own they can be drowned out by a single acoustic guitar, and amplifying them brings all the problems already alluded to in this thread. I won't be partaking again. They can be beautiful of course: But regardless of how pretty it was, it was pretty pointless and no, you can't see an acoustic bass on the radio

[quote name='Matte_black' timestamp='1332719524' post='1592187'] I ordered the 250w head version of that thing, plan to use it with a self-made cabinet with Eminence 15" woofer [b](so the eventually bad enclosure of the combo is out of the equation)[/b]. Should receive it tuesday. [/quote] Can you expand upon the phrase in bold? I don't understand what you mean there. What does "eventually bad" mean? Over time it'll break? You'll outgrow it?

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1332703935' post='1591940'] and I'm not sure the 'clones' are the same high quality, component-wise. [/quote] As I have no evidence with which to rebut your suspicion, all I can say is ask me how it's doing in a year's time - the first year of my five year warranty.

[quote name='Oldman' timestamp='1332697336' post='1591789'] The T shirt looks white to me. You've tried this haven't you Mr Neep, go on admit it tsk tsk [/quote] I may have had a wee listen to it, yes

Heh, well, I tried

Right, let's put this issue to bed. Do we all agree that a Polytune pedal is white? It's cream. And loud

That middle pic with the organ pipes behind you, what a great backdrop.

Vote for repair. Headstock repairs done well are stronger than they were before the break. There are many vintage instruments out there with repairs and it doesn't seem to affect the potty prices they go for

Right, for all you amp geeks I took the lid off yesterday: All looks compact and bijou in there. If it goes pop then I guess it'll just go pop though - looks a lot closer to the definition of "no user serviceable parts inside" than my old Hartke HA3500

Would it be possible to stop going to the last unread post when tapping on the thread titles? This behaviour is inconsistent with the full site where clicking on the title takes you to the beginning of the thread. It's really annoying to have to scroll back to the top when I expected to get the start of the thread. The star/dot at the beginning of the thread title should perform this function, and a link referencing the last poster should take you to the end.

Another vote for Neotech straps here.

[left][url="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bass?s=t"]http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bass[/url] - click on the little speaker icons.[/left]

[quote name='paul_5' timestamp='1332198073' post='1584836'] sigh, you should never, NEVER have more knobs than strings. [/quote] Switches are OK though?

[quote name='Mornats' timestamp='1332076104' post='1582796'] The lack of tone change when I pan suggests that the bridge pickup may not be outputting at all. The bridge pickup is about 2.5mm from the strings so it's fairly close anyway. [/quote] But surely if you pan all the way round to the bridge pickup and it's not working at all then all you would get is silence? Unless the pan pot has a limited range? Dunno - I think I have exhausted my usefulness

Wow, 4 pages and only 3 mentions for Gibson (and only one of those is Gibson as an entire brand). I think just about everyone deep down has a secret hankering for one

Sounds like 2 problems here - bridge pickup quiet (maybe raise it up a bit towards the strings?) and are they wired correctly? If they're out of phase then they'll have the effect of cancelling each other out, and I might be speaking rubbish here but if the bridge pickup was louder then it would have a more pronounced effect on the volume when they're mixed.