KingBollock

Until I started using the nylon version of the 3mm Big Stubby I used the old Lexan ones. I thought they would be too thick if covered in felt, but I was wrong. I wasn't enjoying the flat feel of the other Dunlop picks that I had covered so I thought I'd give the Stubby a go because of the shape and the dimple. It works a treat! It'll be interesting to see how long they last.

They're a doddle to make, I've just made one. Got a sheet of thin but dense felt from my wife and, using strong double sided sticky tape (meant for holding carpets down), stuck it to both sides of a red Dunlop pick and cut to size. I used double sided tape because I figured if I used a liquid glue it would soak into the felt and make it go hard. I have to say it sounds really cool. EDIT: Been experimenting a bit. I have found my ideal combination. I have a green felt that is thinner but more dense than the other felt that I used. I have used it on a slightly thicker, orange, Dunlop pick. This time, instead of sticking two separate pieces, one either side, to the pick I have used one piece of felt, applied the tape and folded it over the pick around the pointed end. I believe this will help the felt last longer, where as on the first one I did the felt started coming away from the tip quite quickly. Sounds absolutely bloomin' lovely.

I started getting pains in the little and ring finger of my left hand years ago. It turned out to be because I spend a lot of time at my computer and my computer desk is a corner one, so I have the habit of leaning on my left elbow. I stopped the problem using a mouse mat that has a built in gel wrist rest. Now my elbow rests on the gel pad and I no longer get the pain. Sometimes you have to think laterally to source the problem.

Anyone witnessing someone spitting unnecessarily should be legally required to punch that person in the face. If there is more than one witness then all witnesses should have a go. This includes Football players.

I am a pick player. Unfortunately I have let other techniques get rather rusty. The thing about picks is that they are surprisingly flexible. With a 3mm Big Stubby (I now use the nylon ones because they last longer) I can get a nice soft, mellow sound or a hard clicky or thumpy sound and many sound inbetween. In my pick tin I have 8 different thicknesses of picks, from very soft upto the 3mm Stubbies to a 1mm steel pick I made from a washer. I also have metal finger and thumb picks that I started using for Banjo but find fun to use in a finger style on Bass, it's like fingers+. When people knock picks I often think that they probably aren't aware just how flexible they really are, they are far from a one trick pony. Some Bass players seem unaware that you can use alternate picking and sweep picking. I've even come across Bass players who think that you can't string skip with a pick! I started playing with a pick in the first place because I was 13 and was always injuring myself, so the fingers of my right hand seemed to be perpetually covered in plasters. The pick seemed a good solution and it just stuck.

Arthritis can come at any age, so don't dismiss it too off-handedly. I have some in my lower spine, caused by damage taken when I was 17.

Perhaps there is hope for me after all! I just need to find something similar around here.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1354466340' post='1886269'] If its pickup ring or scratchplate mounted, you need springs or rubber tube. silicon fuel hose from model shop works, and loads less fiddly than springs. [/quote] That's not the case for me, no scratchplate or mounting ring. The only reason I thought about springs was because when trying to raise one of the pick-ups it wouldn't come up because the foam is too compressed. I am going to have to take the strings off to get the pick-ups out to get at the foam and I was hoping to have a bit of manoeuvrability once I had replaced the strings without having to take them off again.

This is what I was going to ask for: [url="http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Guitar-Stand-Workstation-Acoustic-Electric-Flying-V-Warrior-BC-Rich-not-Hercules-/00/s/MTYwMFgxMDcx/$(KGrHqZHJBoE7yJMVJ(eBP!d4JRVBw~~60_12.JPG"]http://i.ebayimg.com...RVBw~~60_12.JPG[/url] [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Guitar-Stand-Workstation-Acoustic-Electric-Flying-V-Warrior-BC-Rich-not-Hercules-/220988693322?pt=UK_Guitar_Accessories&hash=item3373f3db4a&nma=true&si=gAjjYaqSJFpIUGVSBwlymsZ1vII%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557"]http://www.ebay.co.u...=p2047675.l2557[/url] But you can't get them anymore, apparently.

[quote name='louisthebass' timestamp='1354393730' post='1885592'] Failed guitarist here - too ham fisted to play the skinny stringed instrument, so a mate of mine who wanted to start a band said "why don't you learn bass - it's only got 4 strings & can't be that difficult?" Have never looked back . [/quote] Gah, only four strings! 20 years ago I could play the Violin a little and I think I could have been quite good at it, I seemed to take to it naturally. Unfortunately I got fat and can't do it anymore, I just can't squash my fingers close enough together on the neck. Wish I could afford a Cello.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1354320002' post='1884919'] Something i discovered yesterday- going from playing bass, to learning finger style guitar.... it isn't right. If anything, it is down right difficult. Hard to get the old head around using your thumb and finger across different strings while playing a chord. [/quote] I started to learn finger style with thumb and two fingers, when I started playing the Banjo. I find it transfers nicely onto the Bass, galloping is ace, especially with finger and thumb picks on. Metallica's Orion is a really good song to learn that style to, on Bass.

My Dad decided he wanted to manage a band made up of my three brothers and me. He, for some reason, wanted me to play Drums. My thought process went something like this: I sure as sh*t ain't going to do what my Dad says and I don't want a Drum Kit, I want a Radio Controlled Monster Truck! (The Tamiya Lunch Box. I was 12... I still want one). I was a huge Motörhead and Iron Maiden fan, bands with very prominent Bass players. I knew some Guitarists and Drummers and I can't sing for the life of me, so if I took up Bass I'd have a better chance of getting into bands. I explained most of this to my Dad (missing out the bit about not doing what he wants) and he thought it was a good idea and that Christmas I got my first Bass. It was probably the best thing he ever did for me. The band he wanted never got started. I did start a band with my next youngest brother, who played Guitar and was into similar music to me, but after a year of playing I started playing with proper bands. I'm the only one that ever went on to play in bands and the only one still playing at all. I do own Guitars and have done for 17 years, but I still tend to play them like a Bass player.

Ah ha! I shall remember that! You learn something new everyday.

Is foam better than springs? I suppose it would be as once you set the height you don't really need to move them again. I need to replace the mounting screws on one of my Basses, as they're too long, and I was going to mount them with springs. Can't find anywhere that sells the screws I need at the length I need, though. They're either too long or too short, bloomin' typical.

[quote name='leroydiamond' timestamp='1354288199' post='1884501'] [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]To be honest I'm not really arguing with people here.[/font][/color] [/quote] I said something that could too easily have been taken the wrong way. It was meant as a general thing but could have been taken personally. I seem to do that a lot on here and need to learn when to keep my gob shut.

EDIT: Nevermind, not in the mood for an argument. Sorry about that.

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1354216854' post='1883814'] You're talking about a bit of eq for reasons of taste, which as I said earlier I have no problem with. This is semantics though, you aren't 'fixing the mix', you aren't 'fixing the mastering' at all. You are merely getting your system in your room to represent the output in a fashion that is more pleasing to you. Which is totally cool. But, it may well not be the mix, or the mastering that is the root of the problem, nor even the fact that you don't have crystals on your shakra, far more likely is that the problem is acoustic (although I'll grant you that And Justice is a shocking mix, no amount of bass boost will actually turn up the bass, its buried by, well, everything, you just turn everything up in that area of the spectrum, as well as the bass). [/quote] To be honest I'm not really arguing with people here. I spent a very awkward few hours with a very drunk, Glaswegian with a very, very strong accent, who was also a Led Zeppelin fan and an Audiophile. He spent those hours lecturing me on the superior music of Led Zeppelin and his stereo system. He told me the price of every component of his system and why he has a little weight that sits on his CDs to hold them in place while playing and a large proportion of that time included a talk about why he doesn't have an EQ and why no one else should either. And to top it off, on my way down the stairs into the, busy, Pub he lives above, my belt buckle came undone and my trousers fell down. Every single word of that is absolutely true. Audiophiles make my teeth itch and my balls draughty.

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1354205811' post='1883610'] Why would you expect a stereo to 'fix' anything though? It just plays back what is there into the space it sits in. Cr4p in cr4p out. If the acoustic is also cr4p then you can end up with a cr4p filter on the good stuff coming out of the stereo too. [/quote] Sometimes you don't have much choice. One of my favourite albums is Cradle Of Filth's Cruelty and the Beast, but the mix is bloomin' rubbish. Adding a little treble and taking away a bit of the middle helps loads. Obviously I love this album for many other things than the mix. And, like I said, all of Sabaton's albums sound crap unless you do to it whatever the Jazz setting does to it, and I love those albums too. Then there are the early Metallica albums which are famously poorly mixed, especially when it comes to the Bass, but there are things you can do to help. And how many bands have remixed and re-released their back catalogues? These are brilliant albums with fantastic music (in my opinion...), but you can't always account for it when one bloke gets a stubborn idea in his head of how the music should be mixed, whether it's the mixer or some know-it-all from the band who is insisting on it being mixed a certain way. But I'd rather have to fiddle with it than not get to listen to it at all. I think one of the problems was that early CDs weren't specifically mixed for CD, requiring them to be remixed later. But until that happens you have to listen to what you've got. Maybe in the future it won't be such a problem, but there is always going to be a human factor.

I have some CDs that I probably couldn't listen to if I couldn't fiddle with the EQ a bit. Mostly it's because they are CDs by bands with not a lot of money. That is my main point but I have my own personal taste. On the stereo in the conservatory and the one in the bedroom there is no proper EQ, just Rock, Jazz, Classical etc, options, I have a tendency to go for the Rock option with nearly all my CDs, except the Sabaton ones which sound awful on anything other than Jazz (including no EQ. They're even the same when converted to MP3 and played through an MP3 player, they have to be set to Jazz.). Granted we're talking about a £500 stereo not £2000, but even a £2000 stereo isn't going to be able to fix a CD that was mixed on a shoe string budget.

So, are we back to what I said earlier? Not all sources are mixed perfectly so having a solution to tailor it to your own personal taste isn't such a bad thing.

When he describes the kind of person that would play his wide necked guitars it makes me think of that angry Treeman bloke.

I think someone's winding him up with that 5 string Banjo question.

No Bass, but there are a couple of items I'd like for my rack. Also, I quite fancy some of those huge Ashdown pedals. I'm hoping the current trend for tiny pedals might help bring second hand pedals into my price range.

I know an audiophile who swears that no EQ is the way to go, but I don't understand it. It's not just that every room is different, but also peoples' hearing is different. I suppose I might be able to accept it if every CD was mixed perfectly, but they're not. You might be able to tailor your equipment to the room it's going to live in, but the source and the receiver (CD and your ears) are too variable for such a feat.

[quote name='Hobbayne' timestamp='1353957629' post='1880286'] Unless he had made some MDP 'improvements' on it and felt a bit embarrassed about it? [/quote] I wondered something similar. Perhaps he'd knackered the truss rod or something and wanted to pass it off? You can't claim "it came to me like that, I had no idea" when it came from the person you're trying to sell it to.