Graham

The photos from the current Rancid tour have Matt Freeman playing one of his Squires, can't tell whether it's an off the shelf one, or a CS with a Squire decal. I'd like to think it was an off the shelf, but if I'm honest, it probably isn't.

There's a gorgeous greenburst ash/maple version of this on Ebay in the States at the moment, looks gorgeous and I'll bet sounds brilliant.

Friday's was pretty good, pub gig with a new dep guitarist, the venue wasn't designed with bands in mind and so wasn't brilliantly laid out for dancers, so we had a few people watching and enjoying themselves but not many dancing. Dep guitarist was fantastic though, could realy play but didn't over do it and had great vocals too - was like having two frontmen, but in a good way, so we just leapt around and had a blast. Paid for it the next day though, shattered and ached all day long. Saturday was a different ketle of fish all round, was a 40th birthday party at an equestrian vetenarian's farm in the middle of nowhere in the Sussex countryside - about half way between Horsham and Cranleigh for anyone local. I'd voiced concerns about the weather to the guitatist from first thing but he was confident we had a waterproof marquee and staging so thought it would be okay........well you can see where this is going: staging turned out to be a couple of pieces of plywood not dramatically bigger than the drumkit and the "marquee" was not exactly waterproof - there was water dripping very close to the electrics and I couldn't find anywhere dry to put my amp to start with. I suggested to the singer that I'd forget the amp tonight and just go through the PA with my Sansamp but he wasn't keen as it only had 12" speakers and he didn't think they would handle the bass frequencies; I disagreed but didn't press the issue as it's his equipment and if he's not happy no point In antagonising him and then have him worry all night. So I ended up putting the amp infront of the snare and hi-hat and squeezing into whatever space was left, fortunatly with my Compact/Steamliner I wasn't taking up all the space left. We decided to play a shorter set than usual and they got about an hour and a half from us, which I think wasn't bad in the circumstances - constantly worrying that the rain was going to get worse and come through the marquee or if we'd get electrical problems from the lightening nearby. And, I almost forgot, virtually no light in the marquee too, singer was using a torch to see his lyric sheets by the end. Still, once we did get started it went pretty well, had dancers at the end after we played Sweet Home Alabama - party had a wild west theme so that seemed to do the trick, and I think played almost flawlessly - probably because I didn't have space to move around much. Was not happy to start with though, almost walked away and I did drop Alex at Barefaced a message this morning saying how happy I was to be able to run to the car through the rain with my cab and most of the rest of my gear rather than drag it on a trolley in several jorneys.

[quote name='Si600' timestamp='1374737363' post='2152484'] Secondly, listening. I don't seem to have the ability to work out a bassline from just listening, I can hear what it's doing and where it's going but I can't catch it. Is this innate or can it be learned? [/quote] Can definetly be learned - I used to be hopeless at it, but am now pretty good, takes a while mind. The best thing that ever happened to my ear was the tab sites being shut down

Aye, as abov, are sure it wasn't a Boss tuner pedal and the overdrive came from the amp?

I forget who made it, but there was a $100000.00 bass in Bass Player magazine a few years ago - it was some ancient piece of wood, with the body and neck covered in gold leaf and real diamond inlays Edit: it was a Ritter, this one infact - Mammoth tusks nut anyone? [quote] The Ritter Royal Flora Aurum, as it’s called, has a body carved from a rare, solid piece of maple while the nut is carved from 10,000-year-old mammoth ivory. The fingerboard is decorated with a floral inlay pattern made of 24-karat gold. There’s even a black diamond set in platinum decorating each leaf. Even the bridge, tuner buttons and knobs are cast in gold. The knobs on this luxurious bass hold an additional embellishment, they’re both topped with brilliant-cut diamonds (3.3 carats total). The Flora Aurum is a work in progress and is on hold for one lucky buyer.[/quote]

Can't find any decent videos of them, but Palehorse are great - 1 drummer, no guitarist, 2 bassists and an angry bloke shouting

[quote name='Billy Dowdall' timestamp='1373925651' post='2143368'] on paper it's perfect for the style of music I player but I just hate the look of it! I might grow to love it though.... I'm really considering the modern player though. It's £200 odd cheaper and very similar specs to the MIM one! [/quote] [quote name='Billy Dowdall' timestamp='1373925651' post='2143368'] on paper it's perfect for the style of music I player but I just hate the look of it! I might grow to love it though.... I'm really considering the modern player though. It's £200 odd cheaper and very similar specs to the MIM one! [/quote] That's a shame, but I know what you mean; you could of course add a jazz bass style after-market pickguard which would look sexy. Unfortunately it would have to be a custom pickguard, but I'm sure The Bass Doc on here could knock one up.

I must confess to not having played the 5-string version, but a G&L L2500 sounds like what you want :-)

It's just booze, 2 weeks without it won't be hard - I reckon if you try it you'll find it a lot easier than you may have thought.

[quote name='jmchich' timestamp='1373734488' post='2141117'] Amen to that. If you like it, it doesn't matter too much what genre it's in. Only thing it's useful for is to find other similar bands. For example, when I started listening to Stoner/Doom/Sludge metal I only knew a few bands, and knowing what the genres were called helped me find other bands. [/quote] As an aside, if you're a doom fan and don't already, I can heartily recommend following "DOOM And All It's Sub-genres" on Facebook, a bloke who puts up a load of YouTube links to doom songs every night, I've discovered a few bands I really like from there.

Really good, played a summer fete in the next village, was silly hot but I had a big 2ltr bottle of water so was okay. Crowd were up for it and were up and dancing in the second half - probably helped that the food stalls were packing up as we arrived but the beer tent was open until the end. I played pretty well, odd duff note but I played through and I'm not sure many people noticed. Best bit was as it was an early gig - on about half 6, finished about 8; my wife came and brought both our daughters with her, the older (4) loves seeing me play anyway so she had a great time but this was the first time the younger (20 months) had seen me and enjoyed it rather than just crying / sleeping through it. Also, the band leader ended the evening by confirming what I'd suspected over the last couple of months that rather have me in as a dep he's going to split the gigs half and half between me and the other guy as he's got a lot of other commitments at the moment. It's the best possible result from my perspective, I get a decent number of gigs but am not out every weekend and the other guy, who's a mate, still plays too. My youngest watching the band

[quote name='cameltoe' timestamp='1373495855' post='2138393'] If anyone mentions Mark Hoppus they're getting punched in the balls! [/quote] I do like the intro to Carousel though :wink:

I'm a big Rancid fan - Old Friend, Timebomb, Black Lung and Axiom all jump to mind, but Babylon's Burning by The Ruts is my favourite punk baseline at the moment

check out James Pearce from Brighton's Stone Circle who were our old tour buddies. They are heavily influenced by Opeth and he more than rises to the occasion.

My daughter keeps saying "mummy can you get me a bass with four strings like daddy?" As she is a real girly girl and loves pink I'm quite tempted to buy one, stash it in the attic and spend the next few years upgrading the pickups, hardware etc until she's big enough to play a full-scale bass.

Where are you based? You'd be welcome to try my Tribute L2000 if you're nearby. I have serious SB-2 GAS, but can't find one local to try out.

On Radio 4 this morning they mentioned that Brian Travers formerly of UB40 is currently gigging with tribute act UB42 and wants to play with every UB40 tribute going. Class act there I think.

You may be on to something with the bass enhancer, as enhancer circuits tend to scoop the mids in favour of the top and bottom, though I'm not familiar with SWR amps so can't be sure in this case.

don't worry about that, just enjoy playing it :-)

I have thin frets on my Lakland Duck Dunn, which I think of vintage and bigger ones - jumbo I'd have said on my G&L L2000, I find I do prefer the frets on the G&L and make the odd fretting error sometimes I wouldn't have made if the fret was bigger. It's far from the end of the world though and doesn't stop the Lakland being my go to bass.

Don't know how much use this is, but here's a video of me with my Duck Dunn which has Fralins, the P pickup would have been soloed in this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZJhwuQf91E