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Ed_S

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Everything posted by Ed_S

  1. I made a bitsa out of a Fender official spare-part MIM body and a Fender licensed Mighty Mite neck that had a dodgy decal already applied to it when it arrived from the eBay seller. I didn’t feel the need to remove the decal for my own use, but I would if I ever sold it as, legality aside, I wouldn’t want anyone to buy it believing it to be something it isn’t. That said, Fender will happily sell you a spare-part neck with the logo applied and must be aware that you could match that with any body and try to sell the results as anything you were cheeky enough to attempt. Certainly if I were to buy one for my Squier VM (as I keep considering) and then subsequently sell the assembled instrument, I’d do so honestly but I wouldn’t be sanding the logo off just because the body wasn’t MIM Fender.
  2. I started off on a Squier P/J which I owned for maybe a day or two before it became apparent even to a total beginner that there was a lot wrong with it. We took it back and the guys at the shop agreed, so by way of an apology gave me a great deal on a Yamaha BB which they said I'd have no problems with - and they were right. Rightly or wrongly, that experience negatively coloured my opinion of Squier and, by association, Fender and anything fenderesque for the next 10 years. But then Fender seemingly upped its game massively and released the revamped MIM Standards so, having read a lot of good reviews, I went and tried one. It was a 4 string when I'd played 5s exclusively for years, it was white/white/maple when my main basses at the time were all black and pointy (a BTB, a Warlock and a Vampyre), and it was light and ergonomic at a point where I was suffering back/neck issues that worsened with every rehearsal and gig. It was smooth and tactile, singularly the most comfortable instrument I'd played in ages, completely honest in all its limitations and just sounded great with both controls on full, so I bought it there and then. I pretty much instantly connected with it and the more I played it, the more it felt like the way forward.. so I proceeded to ditch all the black, pointy, heavy, uncomfortable instruments that I'd amassed, re-imagined all my original bass parts for 4 string and started to really enjoy playing again without always being in pain. So yes, a good P can be a revelation and even dig you out of a hole - probably literally if required!
  3. Genuine and totally un-troll-ish comment here (which I say because I realise it might easily sound like one) but speaking only for myself, if you play by ear and don't actually know any of the notes you're playing - just where to find the next one you want to hear relative to the one you're currently playing - 6 really doesn't add any complexity or take any time to 'learn' at all. Just like as long as the intervals between the strings are 'normal', the note that each one is tuned to isn't that important; just find the start note and work from there. I admit freely the downside is that if you can't hear yourself on stage it doesn't make for a particularly fun gig, and any bass that's drop/open/nonstandard-tuned is just an unplayable, out-of-tune bass, but in most other circumstances it does make for an easy time with the additional strings on 5s and 6s. I imagine it's maybe like a keyboardist pushing the octave up/down buttons - everything is where you expect to find it, it's just either higher or lower - but I don't play keys so I don't know for sure! If anything adds any complexity for me, it's changing the string-spacing as you pack more of them in. It's fine - it just takes a few minutes to adjust, which is why I don't swap and change at a gig, because 'a few minutes' is 'a song' which I'm likely to have multiply fluffed, especially if it's a quick one with a lot of string-skipping!
  4. I was quite pleased with my walnut brown version for £140 ex-demo, so £50 is a proper score! They seem to get a lot of stick as cheapo instruments for beginners who should aspire to 'better' things as soon as they've shown some kind of lasting interest, but mine is (I'm fairly sure..) the lightest bass I own, and the neck is really nicely finished and fretted. Sounds good, too - I find the little bass boost control thingy applied really sparingly just lifts the sound and adds a pleasing bit of weight. Great little basses! And I'm with you on the cleaning, masking, oiling and polishing - very satisfying little job indeed. I recently added to my inexpensive Ibanez hoard with an SR305 and even though it was brand new, the frets were tarnished and the board was looking a bit factory-grubby and dry. I can still smell the Duraglit now...
  5. Learn the lyrics to the songs, even if you don't sing them, as they can sometimes provide the best cue in a sea of repetitive guitars and drums. Especially useful when you've started to enjoy yourself, zoned-out a bit, then crashed back into reality and have no idea how long you've been on auto-pilot or where you are in the song! Maybe that's just me.. but I doubt it 🙂 And for those without IEM systems: Accept that the acoustics on some stages (especially loud ones) will make you sound like you're out of tune when you're actually not, which can be very off-putting. Accept that on some gigs you won't be able to hear yourself usefully at all. Sometimes you can sacrifice your ideal on-stage tone for something that better allows you to hear yourself, but sometimes you just have to be able to play by the numbers.
  6. That does sound great! Probably won’t be a popular idea, but I wonder whether it’d work for venues with bands on all the time to get a decent shell-pack and guitar/bass cabs, and get people to chuck a few quid in a jar for the pleasure of using them, then put that money back into maintaining the kit so that it was always in good order and people wouldn’t mind donating to its upkeep. I’d chip-in to use a decent, well maintained cab that I didn’t have to carry round.
  7. I like that way of putting it 🙂 Some have said "there's nothing you can do on a 4 string that you can't do on a 6 string" or words to that effect, and whilst I fully believe that's true for them, I don't find it so myself. I don't think I'll ever be able (or want) to conflate the way that I approach and feel about playing each, so the thing that I would contend I'll maybe always be able to do on a 4 that I can't do on a 6 is play-like-me-playing-a-4. It's not that I'm massively more used to playing a 4 either; I started there like I imagine most do, but then very quickly moved to 5 where I stayed exclusively for years before reincorporating 4 and now adding 6. Both are fun for different reasons, and 5 is 'home'.
  8. Surprised he didn't want your clothes, boots and motorcycle as well! 🙂 I do sometimes oddly envy people like that, though. I'm stood there in the hallway an hour prior to setting off, looking at a pile of cases and setting everything up in my mind's eye so I know I've got all I need. Meanwhile somebody else is probably just having their tea and a beer before heading out to play the same gig with whatever happens to be in their gigbag when they swing it onto their shoulder. And on balance of probability... they'll get away with it, too! I remember one guy turning up to a gig with literally just a bass - it wasn't even in a bag. He had a strap, but that's because one end was permanently attached using a small screwdriver that had been hammered fully, parallel to the neck, into the hole where the top strap button used to be. People, eh!
  9. Just before the world changed I bought an Ibanez SR506, and I've had a fair bit of extra time to play in general this last year-and-a-half when normally I'd have been commuting, so it came in at the best possible time. I did play it to the exclusion of all else for the first week or two (which I think is normal/helpful if only to tweak the setup and make sure everything works as it should) but now it's just part of the collection and I play it when I feel like it... so no, not addicted personally, but quite happy to partake in moderation. That TRB looks great, btw - my first bass was a BB-N4 and I spent a long time looking at the Yamaha catalogue back in 1999 thinking just how impressive the more adventurous models looked.. but also wondering as a complete beginner how anyone could ever put that many strings to use! Now I know.. 🙂
  10. If you ever see an Ashdown ABM1000 on your travels, I'd urge you to give it a go. Might not hit the spot, but with some decent cabs it's the closest I've ever found to the 'feeling' I think you're describing, just with the basic tone of the ABM preamp and Class D power/weight. The only thing I find different on the dynamics side is that where a valve amp will eventually run out of steam when you push it hard into the red, the ABM just keeps kicking harder. I don't know whether it's that power module or the particular way they've put it to use (or maybe just that mine rolled off the bench as a very hot ship, even for the class) but it almost feels exciting to be connected to that much well-controlled power. Perhaps how those Ferrari owners feel until they run out of petrol 🙂
  11. We suffered a night of that game. Of course, they neglected to let us in on their 'travel light' plan until we turned up, which made for some interesting conversations given that we'd been told to just bring breakables as usual. By showtime everyone was annoyed, the sound was terrible all night, the gig had hardly been promoted either so the crowd was thin, and the touring act went down like a brick. By contrast, we got one where we'd been told to bring everything and get there early, which seemed a bit suspect and we assumed meant another sneaky 'lend us all your gear' gig. We got there to find the headliners doing a meet-and-greet soundcheck with everything set up, then they vacated and we were invited to set up in front of their stuff and given a proper soundcheck. Turned out we were the only support band that night and we had an hour to fill on the main stage, instead of the 20min first support slot in the little room that we were expecting. That gig was a pleasure to play and the touring band were excellent!
  12. That's a perfectly reasonable position. Our guitarists like to use their own cabs and don't mind who plugs into them, so they tend to chip-in our band's contribution and I'm usually the person doing the borrowing and being responsible for having the right cable. 🙂 On the other hand, many promoters won't pass on any more info than "a bass cab will be provided", and many bassists that I've spoken to have no interest in tech anyway and think that a speaker cable is just a short guitar cable. Given that the cab I'm willing to let other people play through is 4ohm and has a single non-combi speakon socket, I expect to have to help at least one person out with appropriate cables and settings every time it leaves the house. By way of compensation, I do get a little laugh nearly every time somebody else uses my S12 and flicks their amp on with the volume control still where they left it at the end of their last gig, though!
  13. I really rate jack-to-speakon converters for getting out of those situations - as long as they're not cheap knockoffs. I take a speakon-to-jack lead and one speakon-to-jack converter since all my gigging amps have a speakon out, but you could make up a lead to cover every combination with a jack-to-jack lead and two converters. Biggest problem, though, is making sure that nobody accidentally forgets that they've got one of your converters in their pocket for safekeeping!
  14. We usually do exactly that, so that each band provides something and is consequently just as captive invested as the rest. Obviously if a band has travelled a long way and needs to get going before the end of the show in order to drive several hours home, then sense must prevail; I'd rather lend an extra cab than send somebody off to pilot a van full of their mates home whilst nodding off. I don't think I've ever played a multi-band gig without some sort of gear share, but it's always been cabs and shells only - rarely stands and never heads unless it's to cover an equipment failure. Bring your own breakables has always been the norm, and combos have generally been classed as breakables.
  15. I had a problem with my passive and assumed bulletproof precision bass. Fortunately it was at a sound check and we were close enough to home that I could nip back and get a different bass as I hadn’t taken a spare with me. The sound just kept crackling in and out so, after much wiggling things to no avail, I gave my wireless pack and patch cable to one of the guitarists and he could play through my rig just fine; it was almost certainly the bass at fault. To this day I have no idea what was wrong with it! I tried it out at home and it worked fine. I took it apart and it looked/tested fine. I resisted the urge to mess with it and it’s been fine ever since. But in that moment it wasn’t working and I would have been much better served by having a spare with me, so now I always take one and, perhaps predictably, haven’t yet taken it out of the bag at a gig. I’m fine with that, though - I hope I never need to. As a frequent player on the multi-band-night circuit, I don’t take any issue with people having complete faith in their one bass and not carrying a spare, but when it fails on them I do take exception to being asked to borrow mine and then being blamed for ruining their gig when I refuse. As long as you don’t become that person when your luck runs out, it’s all good with me.
  16. Hey! I don’t think it warrants the investigation at this point since that particular ‘venue’ closed down years ago. But I do agree with the point you’re making nonetheless. I actually asked at the time what was going to happen if somebody required the facilities, such as they were, and was informed that the toilet was out of order so couldn’t be used anyway. I could equally have picked any one of a number of other inappropriate, dirty or dangerous cubbyholes... we’ve been expected to stash gear in communal bin stores, disused greasy kitchens, 3-phase distribution and gas meter cupboards, riser cupboards with scalding hot pipes in them and filthy janitorial supply closets with wheely-mop-buckets full of whoknowswhat in the corner. The one time we got a dedicated store with a locked door, it was a code lock with the code written on the wall next to the door. I guess I was just saying that I play very few gigs well suited to a multi-thousand-pound bass, no matter whether or not I can perceive the difference in quality 🙂
  17. Heh, yeah, that's always an option! I wish it were different, but it's been the reality of just about every venue we've ever played so I cut my cloth accordingly. I'd rather play a bass that I don't mind leaving in a gear store along with everyone else's stuff and then be able to head out unencumbered for an hour to get some food and enjoy 'being' in a band rather than just 'playing' in a band. Of course if I got back to the toilet venue and found out that my gear had gone, I'd be absolutely raging and it'd certainly mess the gig up, but after I'd calmed down I'd know that I took a calculated risk and lost.
  18. Absolutely - I have an SR506e that is a brilliant instrument and mercifully they seem to have dipped only lightly since it still has some colour variation in the right light, as well as my wonderfully cheap little GSR200b (not sure whether b means 'brown') that I was referring to before, which got hit with a slightly more full-on smothering! I've never tried a Fodera, but the ones I've seen pictures of look chunky in a TRB kind of way. I personally have no problem with that, though I question whether any of them would look particularly right on stage with my band. My real problem with the concept of a Fodera is leaving it in a disabled bog that's being used as an impromptu gear store in a rock bar, while I nip round the corner to grab a burger. Granted, most people are fundamentally honest and wouldn't dream of pinching or damaging it, and even those who might stray towards that behaviour would likely have no idea what it specifically was worth... but I would, and it'd actually reduce my enjoyment of gigging.
  19. Speaking as an IT guy who pretends to be a musician 😉 I freely admit that I’ve thrown too much money at questionable upgrades. As a result, experience tells me that a Sterling Ray35 can sound miles better than a ‘proper’ Stingray 5, that a MIM standard Fender P can have more tonal variation in one passive potentiometer than a MIA deluxe P manages with a spare J pickup and a full onboard preamp, that you can have a bass made for you by a very well respected luthier which is an utter disappointment, and that you can pick up the cheapest Ibanez in the ex-demo discount pile and find a genuinely nice instrument which weighs less than a Sandberg SL but has been ignored just because it’s finished in what Dulux might call ‘gravy brown’! Go on an open-minded cheap bass hunt - you never know what you might find! 🙂
  20. Oddly I agree almost equally with both of these suggestions at the same time! I had the NY121 extension cab for my Markbass combo and used it very little for its intended purpose, so I sold it. I've regretted my decision to some minor extent since because I liked the sound of that cab with other heads I own, but I wasn't selling my Barefaced cabs and felt that I needed to free up space at that point. I haven't re-bought the cab even though I could have done so at any point in the last howevermany years it's been, so I clearly don't miss it enough. I never considered getting the extension cab to go with the Rumble 500, but that was mainly because I only bought one to see what all the fuss was about! Having ascertained that the Rumble is worth keeping, if I didn't have any other cabs I'd probably have bought the 210 by now so I had the matching set... partly to facilitate 'that big gig' that may or may not ever happen, but more to allow me to buy lots of different lightweight amp heads and play them through a familiar cab that doesn't cost the earth, doesn't weigh all that much and doesn't change the game of Tetris in the boot of the car or my footprint on stage. I reckon either ditch the cab and get more basses, or start amassing a collection of car-stereo-size amp heads! 😉
  21. 'Bat out of Hell' and 'Dead Ringer' were both albums that I really connected with as a kid when I was raiding my mum's LPs, and I remember Bat 2 coming out and pretty much playing the tape to destruction. But I've got to give special mention to 'Bad for Good' - I know it got some mixed reviews, but I still prefer a lot of those original and slightly more raw recordings to the versions that eventually ended up on Meat Loaf albums. A proper chunk of my formative listening and still some of my favourite music to this day. Cheers, Jim!
  22. This looks alright for a couple of hundred depending on your ability to pick it up. Both from the shop initially and then in general. https://www.richtonemusic.co.uk/product/ashdown-mag-300-ii-bass-combo-**collection-only**-2nd-hand-yashdown105596/
  23. That 1U/100W bridged LX-II looks pretty nice! You might say I have the properly low-budget version languishing under the bed; an all-tube amp on a technicality... ...and something else that doesn't get used because of how bulky and heavy it is. At least the most expensive component was probably the rack case! 🙂 Not the worst way to scratch the valve itch, mind.
  24. A mate who plays in a pretty well regarded classic rock tribute band uses that exact Hartke rig, and he always sounds great. I've had HA2000/VX410 and HA5500/ABM410t rigs in the past, playing everything from acoustic covers to death metal, and they were great all-round rigs. The only thing I can say against the Hartke HA series is the cooling fans can be a bit loud if you were planning on using the head and one of the cabs for quiet practice in the corner of the living room, but if you're going to use them to get out there and make some noise, as long as you can carry them then you'd probably be hard pressed to beat them for the money.
  25. I personally don't miss them because I always* turn them off on the amps that have them, and feel that the basic tone** of the nano is near enough the same as that starting point with them turned off. I don't think they offer a lot you couldn't replicate reasonably well with an EQ pedal, but at the same time I could fully see how they might class as a loss too far for some who particularly likes them and finds them useful on the larger amps. *The only MB amps I've actively used the filters on are the micro801 and mini802 because they don't have an EQ. **I guess I should also say that the other MB heads I've owned and am basing my 'basic tone' comment on are LM2, LM3 (Combo Head 2), LM800 and F1. I can't comment on the various tube, modular, modelling or signature variants that are out there, but I have played (although not owned) a Big Bang and that sounded how I expected it to.
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