Linus27

This is my thoughts and why I am hesitant to go although the event I am thinking of going to is a 5.1 surround sound mix and played loud though uncompressed audio on our powerful cinema sound system. I still ask the question, is it going to be that good that I am left with wow, what incredible detail and clarity or am I going to think, wasn't much better than through my system at home or through headphones.

Has anyone been to a Pitchblack Playback event? I'm thinking of going to one and I'm really not sure if it will be worth the money or something that will be an incredible listening event.

Yeah that is way over priced, Bass Direct has them for £122.

I'm a big Fender fan and have and have had some killer basses over my time. I'm on the lookout for a backup to my Japanese Fender 60's Classic Precision and will probably buy the Harvest Green PJ. Green is my favorite colour and I adore the look of this bass, it is the perfect bass for me aesthetically so thank you Fender for making it. I'm not a fan of active basses though so I'll likely just use it in passive mode and I may even gut it and fit Barts to it.

My updated fretless pedalboard. 1. TC Electronic Tuner 2. Boss OC5 Octave 3. Harley Benton Custom Line Chorus 4. Walrus Audio Slo Reverb 5. Mooer Ambient A7 Reverb 6. Sonicake Boost 7. Ampeg Optical Compressor 8. Sansamp BDDI V2 Preamp Super happy with this and it sounds amazing. The only thing I would like to try for a possible change is replace the two reverb pedals with a Strymon Cloudburst. I'm happy with these two reverbs but the Cloudbust has a few features I would like to try out and still does what my current reverb pedals do.

Very nice indeed. This is something I thought about doing and even looked at putting a fretless neck on the yellow Mike Dirnt when I had one. he pickups are awesome and the original Mike Dirnt neck is a baseball bat so it would have made it quite playable with a fretless neck.

It does look mighty impressive but being an old skool bassist, even the Helix HX Stomp seems too fiddly for me so this totally blows my brain. It does look bloody brilliant but I'll stick with my Sansamp, Compressor, OC5, Chorus, Reverb, Tuner pedal and bit of foam under the strings 🤣

Me to, I think I might of listened to one Rush song in my lifetime.

I kind of started the other way, my bass lines sounded like a fretless despite starting out on a fretted Jazz some 38 years ago. So I eventually moved to a fretless and my bass playing came alive. I also totally agree about the reverb pedal, I actually have and use two on my fretless board. @Ben Jamin if you want to try an excellent but inexpensive reverb pedal as suggested by @Hellzero then I use the Mooer Ambient A7 pedal. It's an awesome little reverb pedal and with settings 1 with everything at 12, it will do the trick. However, setting 6 has this string pad setting which sounds brilliant, especially with harmonics.

You're welcome and you might actually surprise yourself at how not so daunting it is. My first introduction to fretless was in 1998. I had just signed and we were recording our debut album. The album cost £120k which at the time was more than my sister's brand new 4 bedroom house in Preston and was producer was Mark Wallis who did the Travis, It Bites, Primitive's albums and engineered U2's Joshua Tree so quite serious stuff 😂 The studio was owned by the singer/bassist of the prog tock group Asia and the keyboardist of the 80's pop group, Buggles. We turned up at the studio on day 1 and in the live room on the wall was about 20 basses including a beautiful Washburn AB20 fretless. I thought, let's give this a go and I ended up recording the hardest bass line on the album on it. The intonation was a bit off so I put a few bits of a post it note in places to know where to fret accurately but it was fine. So just go in with an open mind and play the bass lines like it's a fretted and you'll be fine. This is the track in question.

Just approach it just like a fretted bass, so don't try and make it sound like a fretless and do lots of slides and trying to get that mwah sound. It is no different to play than a fretted bass, you just have to be more disciplined with your technique and train your ears. Good ears and strong technique are the two key things you need to play a fretless well. Don't be scared of it either or think of it as different, just play what you'd play on a fretted and you'll be amazed at how normal sounding it can be. Over time, you'll then start to bring out the nuances of the fretless as you become more competent. The Jack Cassidy is also an unlined fretless so you either play ON the dots or in the gaps, it's that easy. Oh and buy an octave and chorus pedal, you'll thank me later I promise 😂

Oh, that's super sad, I never met her but she seemed lovely. I always think of her as the ukulele bass player.