KingBollock

I’ve never exactly been mr money-bags, so it’s all relative… My first proper speaker cab was a Marshall 1960b 4x12. Unfortunately, little thirteen year old me could only lift it six inches off the ground (which was fine for getting it onto the trolley I nicked from the local Co-op warehouse, to wheel up to the youth centre for rehearsals…). I ended up doing a straight swap for a no name 1x15 (and returned the trolley to the Co-op). Quite a few years later, I sold that 1x15 for £50. About ten years after that, the chap I sold it to needed to make space in his house and, since he never actually used it (I don’t know why he bought it), he gave it back to me, for free. I still have it. Age sixteen, while doing work experience at a TV/video repair shop, I mentioned to the boss’s son that I played bass. He told me he owned one but had never actually taken the time to learn to play it. He said I could have it for a tenner. I turned up the next day with my tenner and he with his bass. I had a bit of a play on it, at which point he said I could have it for free. He’d been sceptical about whether I did actually play or not. It was just a Satellite P-bass, but it was free, and it actually played and sounded really nice. I later sold it for £35. A couple of years ago I was helping a mate get started to learn to play bass. He heard one of the pedals that I had and fell in love with it. I am rather fond of that pedal, too, but he really, really wanted it and was prepared to swap a Zoom B3 (which he was finding overly complicated) for it. So I agreed to it. He’s since decided to do the Van Life thing and sold all of his bass gear. He came to stay with us for a few days recently (staying in his van on our drive), and gave me the pedal back and wouldn’t take anything for it.

As SH73 mentioned drop D tuning, I remembered why I got my first five string. It was during the height of Nu-Metal and I wanted access to that D. But, rather than hobble a bass by keeping it in drop D, I figured a five string would be more versatile. Also, C# standard is quite a common tuning. Tuning up to it on a five string works really well. No more flubby bottom string. I think Cradle of Filth do a lot in C#.

The first band that came to my mind was Amon Amarth.

My ultimate favourite shape is the BC Rich Warlock with the Widow headstock. My number one bass is a glossy black Warlock NT and I love it to bits. I have an Aria Pro II Magna Series MAB 20/5, which is a fairly standard shape, and I hate it! It’s just dull dull dull. It plays and sounds great, though.

Indeed, I too love Son of a Preacher Man. I also love White Rabbit, which is getting a right kicking in this thread.

I really dislike the slightly stretched, drawn by a child, quality of Spector basses.

Perhaps you’d prefer this version…

OutKast’s Hey Ya. Almost as ear-gratingly nasty as the theme tune to the old tv soap Take The High Road. I almost put Meatloaf’s I Would Do Anything For Love. But the reason has more due to timing and a certain couple of women than the song itself…

Loving that track!

My first 5 string was a Magna Series Aria Pro II MAB20/5, and I hate it! It has a very narrow neck, which makes it really easy to play, and the jazz pickups are really nice and growly. It sounds lovely. But it looks so boring! The shape is a slab, all hard angles, and the colour is a dirty looking pearlescent white. Just looking at it makes me cold, and black veins crawl across my soul. I’d like to do something with it, though. I like really glossy, piano white basses. It doesn’t feel beyond me to sand it back and re-spray it, but it has a nasty, wood deep chip in a prominent place, which means I’d have to take all the paint down to the bare wood. Which would at least give me an opportunity to reshape it a bit, rounding over the edges. But my confidence that I could do a good job of it is not high. I have thought about filling the chip and having at it with an airbrush, possibly do some kind of design on it. Maybe something American McGee’s Alice inspired? I’ve thought about defretting it, too. I doubt it’ll ever get to the top of my stuff to do pile, though, and I’d probably have to give someone money for them to take it off my hands…

Are you having doubts about giving up the band you just left, or just in general? Maybe the enquiries piquing your interest might be a clue that what you really need is something new/different?

I love stickers. Meet Angelbane. Again.

I use a sandbag rifle support. Once filled with sand they get quite heavy and sturdy. But you could also fill them with beanbag beans for a more lightweight solution. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185027001692

What about replacing songs in your set that he currently struggles the most with, with simpler new songs?

I hope you enjoy them more than you think you will. I know you said that it’s the lead up, rather than the gig itself, that gets to you, so hopefully you’ll end on a high and be left with good memories.

Isn’t alt rock just anything that isn’t rock?

Have you tried the nylon ones? What sizes are you trying? I used 3mm Big Stubbies for over twenty years until I discovered Dunlop Primetones. They’re expensive but they have better grip than Stubbies and I prefer the sound from them.

I was once in a band that disbanded and reformed with a new name and different lead guitarist and singer. I had no idea it was going on. They all knew each other socially but I was quite a bit younger, not old enough to go to the pub with them. I was just told that the band was over. At the time I was working in a guitar shop and the lead guitarist had come in for something. I was out of the shop, on my way back, when I met the guitarist coming the other way, and he told me there was someone on the phone for me. It turned out to be the second guitarist. He and the drummer had organised the split and they wanted me to join them again. I said yes. A little while later the lead guitarist had found a really good drummer and they asked if I’d like to join them… I really wanted to but I had no idea that you could be in two bands at the same time, so I felt I had to turn them down. The new band was a mess and didn’t last long. Guess who went on to have a proper career in music…

This seems such a shame, but I understand some of the cruel treacheries of the human mind. Is the lead up to the event the only thing making you want to quit? If you have made your mind up, then I apologise for this next bit, because I can’t know your precise problem and so throwing different, possible solutions at you may not be welcome. Have you considered counselling/therapy/hypnosis? I don’t imagine you’d be able to get it on the nhs, and I don’t know your financial situation. I have no idea how much such an option would likely cost. I think someone has already suggested virtual recording. Do you play any other instruments? Could writing music be an option? Do you have to be in a gigging band to play? I, personally, would be perfectly happy just to write music and rehearse it once a week with a band, with never having gigging as a goal. Just to play with other people would be enough. Recording would be cool, too. One of my biggest regrets is having to walk away from a whole circle of musicians and never being able to find my way into local music scenes since. I miss playing with other people so much, and I have only ever played a handful of gigs. But, the most important question is: Will, you be sticking around BassChat? I hope so.

Find some musician friends that have nothing to do with your current band. Get them to form a folk band. Get them to ask her to join as lead singer, on the condition that she leaves the current band. Get your current band a new backing singer. Dissolve folk band (unless it actually works out…).

Probably Neperia. Quite a recent discovery for me. Sort of like a cross between early Nightwish and early Opeth.

Only one of my basses is fussy about string gauge, my BC Rich Warlock only likes 40 - 100s. Which is a bit inconvenient, as they can be difficult to get in the brands that I like (it currently has D’Addario NYXLs on it because I couldn’t get Elixir Nanowebs), but it makes such a difference that it is worth persevering. I have tried alsorts of other strings, brands and gauges, with proper setups, and it just don’t like it. I’ve also got a Dean Cadillac guitar that only likes 10s, but it’s not a bass so blah!

Ah, now if it comes to (electric) drums… Since April I have bought an Alesis Nitro kit, two thrones, four extra cymbals and a new snare. The parts to make a junction box (so that I could plug extra stuff into the module). Two (yes, two) whole racks (the Nitro rack is non-standard and rather crap). And a 9 pad thingyummie that I can also plug cymbals and extra pads into. Along with several pairs of sticks (to find out what would work for me as I am new to drumming (unless you count my bongoes and bodhran)). Some of it was secondhand and some of it returns. None of it particularly expensive (the non-Alesis stuff is Millennium from Thomman), but it does add up. I am really enjoying it and play every day (I started mostly to help with fitness and joint problems), but there has been a couple of things here on BassChat that I might have bought otherwise. A lovely Cort fretless bass and my dream amp, a Laney Nexus.

I was going to mention my Epiphone Thunderbird here, but then I remembered that it came a couple of days before the year started. So the only things bass related that I have bought are new machine heads and knobs for said bass. Oh and some black acrylic sheet to make new scratchplate and a truss rod cover for it. Many of my other hobbies have been getting most of my attention, I haven’t even played bass since April (when I, coincidentally… bought and electric drumkit). I haven’t play with other people for over twenty years, and I have kept up playing regularly all that time. But more recently there has been interest by musicians and things started looking up. But things are going so slow that it’s drained my inclination to play.

In 1987, 12 year old me wanted nothing more in all the world than a Tamiya Lunchbox radio controlled monster truck. My dad, however, had other ideas… He was a mug for get rich quick schemes (some of which are illegal now), and he decided he could get rich managing a band made up of my brothers and me… For some reason he decided that I would play the drums. I wasn’t going to let him get it all his own way though, and being a huge Motörhead and Iron Maiden fan, bass felt more “me”. Besides, I knew some guitarists and drummers, but didn’t know a single bass player. So I figured that I would always be in demand (which I was, until things went tits up about five years later…). I suggested my playing bass to my dad and he went for it, having not even considered bass. One of my brothers was a natural on guitar, he kept going for a few years but, in the end, I was the only one of the four of us that kept it up. And I was the only one that ever played in bands. I finally got my Lunchbox a couple of years ago.