Ed_S

Got invited by the drummer of a band I've depped with a couple of times to check out another band of his which is being rebooted. Went down to meet and jam this afternoon, and it's a four-piece alongside singer, guitarist/bv and drummer, playing upbeat rock/alt-rock/indie-rock covers that aren't my usual fodder but I can still see being fun. All involved seem to be affable and have realistic expectations, the singer can sing, the guitarist had his combo up off the floor and was playing at a reasonable volume... sounded pretty good, so I reckon I'll see where it goes. Travelled light as I was on the bus and knew there was a decent cab I could borrow in the room: RB Streamer LX 5 -> Telepath wireless -> Fly Rig v2 -> Markbass Nano 2 -> Hartke VX215

Hmmm.. fair! It all seems to be about fan-fret, headless 5 or 6 strings round these parts when I'm out and about at gigs. Maybe if they'd given this one a 35" scale and set it up BEAD out of the box it might have added something. At least two paragraphs of AI word soup, if nothing else!

If I was still gigging 4s I'd definitely have one of those. Not because of that advertising copy, mind. Seems odd to target the metal market and not offer a 5, but it saves me from myself.

I've only done my first few dep gigs in the last year, but off the back of them the band I helped out say they now consider me their go-to, and I've also been invited to check out one of their drummer's other projects with a view to joining. Pretty happy with that, tbh. It's their original material that I've been playing, so I guess it's a bit different to knowing a set of covers or standards, but turning up rehearsed, equipped and suitably attired was how I approached it all the same. I was very quick to check before accepting the gig that they were happy for me to play their songs 'as me' rather than trying to mimic their bassist's style; I just don't find that a fun thing to do, and fun plus a couple of drinks was the pay. Fortunately they were fine with that. The one thing I did which might count as advice, is learn more of their songs than they'd asked me to. As it happened, one of the gigs was on a snowy evening which stopped another band on the bill from travelling and unexpectedly increased all the other set times in the lineup by 10 minutes, so me saying that I could play them another three songs was appreciated. After the last gig, one of the singers came to apologise profusely for not having publicly thanked me on stage for helping them out (again, seems to be the done thing with originals; possibly less so with covers bands?) but said that she'd forgotten I wasn't actually in the band! I thought that was thanks enough.

Never had any significant problems with the DI100s deployed by techs at small venues. I've generally found DI20s to be quite noisy and/or susceptible to interference, though, which is a shame as they're handy in concept.

I played many a gig through one of the earlier Rumbles - not sure whether it was a 2x10 or 1x15 but it was about 100-150W and it had a red light in the port to make the whole thing glow. It was the house amp at a venue in the middle of town where available storage space and parking dictated that most would make do with it rather than bring their own, and in fairness to it, it had the absolute ever-loving kicked out of it for literal years and held up better than I would ever have expected. It never sounded great, but it was identifiably bass and it was loud enough. Having also played through a few loaner Ultrabasses and Lowdowns, I don't think it'd be much of an upgrade. I had a V3 Rumble 500 (2x10) for a while, bought as a "let's see what the fuss is about" kind of experiment. The fuss is legitimate - they're great combos for gigging and I agree with the consensus that they sound much better than the previous models. I sold mine on as, in preference order, I use a small amp head with whatever cab somebody is willing to lend me, or take a lightweight Barefaced cab if I really must; as good as the Rumble was, it was always surplus. I'd happily play through one as provided backline, though, and personally I thought the tone when testing it at home was really quite good. I think clearing the decks and getting one of the smaller V3 models would likely be a worthwhile upgrade. Don't think I've ever played through a Cube for bass. I used one of the guitar versions and found it somewhat underwhelming.. bit better than a 'Spider' but not as good as a 'Vypyr'.. but that's neither here nor there!

Referring to 'top' and 'bottom' strings in terms of relative elevation in conventional playing position, instead of musical pitch.

This journey, into bass playing? What made you pick up that first bass at the start of this long and winding road? I was given a musical aptitude test at school when I was in Y2 (age 6-ish?) and got picked to take violin lessons. Kept violin going for about 10 years, hit maybe grade 7 practical-wise and enjoyed playing in big orchestras with a G7/8 entry requirement and audition.. but played by a mixture of sight-reading and ear-training, refused to take grade exams or learn any more theory than was absolutely required, and almost never practiced at home. I give myself an A for blagging-it, looking back. In a Y9 music class (age 13-ish?) I had a classical guitar shoved at me and was taught the chords to play along to 90% of Everybody Hurts by REM, and that was enough to get me interested in guitar and signal the beginning of the end for the violin which, if I'm honest, I was mostly keeping as a way of avoiding PE lessons by that point. I bought a cheap electric guitar and amp (a Session Pro black and white Strat copy and a Peavey Rage) from the son of a friend of my mum, and proceeded to get absolutely nowhere with it because the focus of everything I read was learning ever more chords. Traded the guitar and amp against a bass working on the theory that it was more violin-like; 4 strings and focused on one note at a time instead of bloody chords. The difference in pitch and the idea of playing the 'bass part' never came into my thinking at all. Brought it home, tuned it up, sat on the sofa and proceeded to just play along to the football show theme tune that happened to strike up on the telly in the background. It made near-instant sense to me and I had a new instrument. Do you still have the same fire and enthusiasm? Do you still love it? Yeah, it's still my thing. My other thing is being the kind of computer geek that has an 8U rack of switches, routers and firewalls where most people have a BT smart hub on top of a Billy bookcase, so I need something mainstream-cool going on outside that. What has changed along the way? Your taste in music, taste in basses? My mum was (..and still is) into rock music so she passed that on to me and it's always been home. The classical years were great ear training but I don't seek out classical music. Meeting friends and playing in bands has forced me into some slightly heavier metal styles but if I can't hear a definite note from somewhere at all times then I just can't play along, so bands that are constant blast-beats with a wall of guitar-noise, flappity-fingered bass parts and growling/screaming vocals are still completely inaccessible to me from a playing standpoint. Basses-wise, I've gone from playing 5-string Vampyres and Warlocks for 10 years, over to 4-string Precisions and Jazzes for 10 years, and am now back to 5-string Streamers and Stingrays. Thought it might be Spectors and Ibanez SRs for a while, but nope. What was the first bass? And what’s the latest? First was technically a black/white/rosewood Squier P-bass Special, but it had issues which I now know were to do with the truss rod, and the shop eventually let me know the distributor was recalling the batch so I should return it. They fixed me up with a Yamaha BB N4ii in 'yellow natural satin' (read: wood), which was orders of magnitude better. Latest is one of the new '24-spec Warwick RB Streamer LX 5s in gloss white.

Possibly, though I'm not sure what I could do much differently. I don't get obvious callouses but I just find that if I've not done a few 15-20 minute practice sessions in the week, and then try to hit a 3 hour jam session on the weekend, I'll be at risk. If I've put that bit of pre-work in then I'm good to go, but I don't always have the time, inclination or advance notice.

I realise nobody was asking me, but... I play acoustic rock and singer-songwriter stuff with fingers as I prefer the sound for those genres, and I use a pick for pretty much everything else. The 'everything else' is a much greater proportion of my playing time, though, so my fingers aren't always in the kind of shape that can withstand hours of playing without risking blisters. Some seem to accept blistered fingers as an occupational hazard (maybe because it's their only option) but I can just switch to pick and not have to suffer, so having a pick and/or pick technique that gets me somewhere in the ballpark of my finger-style sound is really useful as it keeps things consistent-ish.

That's just it, isn't it - what works for one falls completely flat for another. Genuinely glad yours worked out for you 🙂 I tried again with a Fender Kingman when they first came out, and that was a nice bass. But I had to put one of those rubber feedback bungs in the sound-hole to use it live, which made it sound broadly the same as a P-bass and meant its only advantage was aesthetic.

I'd not been playing very long when I bought an acoustic bass because I thought I ought to. I was playing alongside a couple of acoustic guitarist / singers so it'd be the right tool for the job, and imagine the convenience of none of us needing to plug in to rehearse. Yeah. Just imagine it. There have been plenty of bits mentioned in this thread that I've bought 'to see what the fuss was about' and found that I genuinely liked, though... Precision basses, Markbass LM heads, Barefaced cabs, Thumpinator HPFs, SansAmp preamps, digital wirelesses (starting with the L6 G30) - they all arrived via that route and haven't left yet. Of course, I did also buy a TE Elf 🙄

Heh, yeah, all its pointy bits are still attached. The one and only time I ever tried to gig it, the damn hard case was too long to fit across the back seats of the car and allow the doors to close! With the boot already full of cabs and the back footwells full of everything else, it just wouldn't tessellate in so I had to leave the KB at home and take a different bass. Maybe next time I have to do the dreaded band photo-shoot thing I'll take it as a prop...

Nice one - I'm not normally a fan of gold hardware, but that works! Here's a naff photo of my cheaper KB1. Probably the oldest piece of kit I own but, whilst I don't play 4 string basses any more so it just sits in storage, there's just no point me selling it as it's hardly worth anything and it's very 'mine'. I should get it out and check it still works, but even if it didn't I'd just bung it on the wall as art.

I'd been a bass player for about 19 years when I picked up a GSR200b by chance at a local shop and thought it was not only good, but actually too good not to buy right there and then. I'm sure there are some individual examples out there that have issues, but that can be said of just about any production bass. In my experience the neck was smooth and straight, the fretwork was well done, the hardware was solid, the pickups and preamp sounded good, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it alongside other basses that cost anything up to 20 times more. If you get a good one there's no reason it can't be much more than just a beginner bass, and the only reason I don't still own mine is because I switched back to playing 5 strings exclusively and couldn't quite justify the space to store it.