akabane

Edit: looks like this discussion is gearing towards 'all Ken Smith', so I modified the title accordingly! Good morning! I'm late with this, as I bought the bass now few weeks ago already - however! It would be a crime not to share it with you all I have a strict rule of 1 in, 1 out, and I generally only own 2 basses at a time (if not just one sometimes), AND I only have GAS attacks once every 6 to 8 years, so when that time comes, I GAS hard I present to you my latest purchase, this time justified as a birthday present to myself: a beautiful 2004 Ken Smith Black Tiger BSR6TN! Specs: Neck: 5-piece Laminated Aged Hardrock Maple & Bubinga with Graphite-Inlaid Bars Fingerboard: Macassar Ebony with MOP Top & Side Dots & matching Macassar Ebony Headstock Overlay Body Wings: 3-piece, Bookmatched Rare Figured Black Walnut Top, Walnut Back & Tiger Maple Core Hardware: Gold with Dunlop "Flush Mount" Straploks Pickups: Smith Custom Bass Humbucking Pickups Electronics: Smith B.M.T. 3-band 18-volt EQ Circuit with adjustable DIP Frequency switches for Bass, Mid & Treble with Pickup Blend and Master Volume Control (push/pull Active/Passive) + Series/Parallel Switches String spacing: 18mm Scale: 34 Finish: Classic Hand Rubbed Dutch Varnish over Stradivari Gold Oil Pretty much the most comfortable and fastest neck I've put my hands on, and it has an awesome character. Will enjoy spending the next few hundreds of hours getting to know her better! Happy times!

As it has been said already: -Pre-2019 Pedulla (he retired, especially I reckon the Hexabuzzes) -Pre-2019 Ken Smith (since he now shifted production to Brubaker) -Marleaux basses, once Gerard Marleaux will retire. Especially that damn gorgeous Marleaux Contra Bass. -Edit: Obviously Alembic. They were among the first, so I suppose they might be close to calling it a day? Unf. I just bought my first Ken Smith Black Tiger 6er a few weeks ago (2004 model, a beauty!) and now I'm already lusting for a 6-string Marleaux Contra and a 6-string Ken Smith White Tiger fretless...ah also yes! Yes! A 6 strings Black Tiger Elite. Are you still supposed to play the lottery in order to win?

Benvenuto Francesco! @Leen2112: Smileys are there because (I guess) we as Italians need to make sure what we try to convoy gets interpreted with the most correct mood possible (like we do when we speak Italian). Being a forum a written medium it's much more difficult to achieve that without the use of smileys. Just consider them as our online gesticulation

Since I got the TRB JP 2 (bought second hand for ~1200£, retail price £2700 according to Bass Gallery even if I think that should be dollars and not pounds ) I take it with me whenever I have to play anything, anywhere. No point IMO in not taking your best gear with you ...even when they're playing something where that monster would look out of place XD

He's a really great bass player - I do like almost all of his fingerstyle grooves and *some* of the slapped ones (a very few though) - even if I don't dig a lot of RHCP's stuff. The thing I guess is that people see Flea doing his slap fast thingy on youtube or bass lessons and compare him to good 'solo' players like Wooten and company, and Flea in that department (playing ALONE showing off) sucks big time. (and that's allright!) But that's just because he is NOT a solo bass player. He is a band member and his best stuff come from the songs with RHCP and you can hear that, wheter people like that kind of music or not. @BigRedX: [i]"Also I'm a great believer in the importance of the song and the arrangement over the instrumental prowess of the individual musicians. To me if as a musician you are more noticed that the songs you are playing that means either the songs themselves are weak, or you are over-playing. Either way IMO you've failed as a musician."[/i] I guess the 'oh wait, that's bs' line on this statement is really really thin - fact being that if you are in one of the most known bands in the globe you ARE going to be noticed (especially if you're in a 2 or 3 piece band). The fact that he shows off a lot as well does not help here. Your statement could be as well something like "IMO if you play notes higher than the 5th fret (possibly 4strings) you're not a bass player" and could be right AND so wrong at the same time, is a personal opinion but this way you have the risk of encapsulating some good players into stereotypes - which is always wrong I think. '...either way you've failed as a musician' is a pretty strong sentence (If I misunderstood what you wanted to say here I'm sorry - I'm sleeeeeeeeepy today XD)

Very very nice 51m0n, both to read and to listen to! Btw Is that the Roscoe V you sporting at the recording? Sounds lovely (grammar question incoming: "and to listen to" sounds correct to me but is it correct? looks rendundant now that I type it - sorry, English is not my first language so always improving )

Ahahah really liked all the album that song was in, never seen the video though! Amazing!

[quote name='Len_derby' timestamp='1327141626' post='1506830'] I think there'll always be a place for personal one-on-one teaching and learning. Even for the very basic stuff. [/quote] I'd say, especially for the very basic stuff. In fact, if you manage to get someone live to teach you proper basic technique (l/r hand, muting, alternating fingers etc..) then it's a lot easier to look at a youtube 'advanced' video and gather info from it. And with some study you'll be able to replicate that because you had a good basic technique laid down in the first place

Hi guys, I'm looking for a local (London) guitar tech/luthier to do a good set-up, some fretwork and maybe installing a ramp. Everything to be done on my TRB JPII. I have contacted Martin at the Gallery and he came up with a really reasonable quote - which would be probably my choice in the end. On the other end, I also mailed Dave Wild from wildguitars since he should be REALLY local to me, I picked him up from this thread. Unless I missed it, I failed to find feedback about this guy in the thread...where this recommendation came from? His reply was, to say the least, ugly-put, with typos one after the other, mentioning a price for a 'set-up and localized fretwork', and then another for a 'FULL set-up and complete fretwork'. I'm not mentioning what the prices were (but what I can say is that for the same asking price of the 'full setup and complete fretwork', martin does setup, fretwork and wooden ramp) but I was puzzled at the lack of attention put in the answer. He didn't even know what a ramp between pickups was. Which can be fair enough (well, at least heard about...) if you never done one, but at least look on google. I wouldn't like someone to say "I don't know what you're asking me for, what is it? But hey here's the money you should give me anyway". I sent a mail back trying to shed some light on the differences between 'set-up' and 'FULL set-up' (???). Will let you know. Not impressed at all for now anyway. Just thought I'd share my 2p with him for now. E

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWEZHHE_OpU&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWEZHHE_OpU&feature=related[/url]

To me, playing someone else's music is interpretation. That meaning, first of all, that if the original piece is successful is because the original band played it their own way, and people enjoyed that. If I'm playing a cover, I'd MUCH MUCH rather play it in my own view of the piece, more or less faithful to the original. I play what that piece 'tells me' to play, if you want. That said, there are songs that I keep playing the exact same as they were originally intended, for that same reason. E

Foamy Lagers from Integral Malt?