Graham

All interesting points, I'd certainly agree that my willingness to ignore outside factors about the person producing the music is proportional to how much I like it. I suspect I'll end up continuing to listen to some of these artists, but the material will be tainted to some degree. I think the best route is to continue what I've been doing the last couple of years and find out as little as possible about the people who make music I like; I remember being really disappointed when I found out Nate Mendel is an AIDS denier, and it was around then I decided to stop reading interviews with musicians. I don't care what they have to say about things, I'll judge their work on it's own merits.

Please forgive what is probably going to turn into something a bit rambling (TL;DR - Can you happily reconcile listening to good music by unpleasant people?) With the recent revelations about Kevin Spacey and the bloke from Brand New who's been revealed to be a sexual predator, it's got me thinking again about the artist/art issue. Will I watch The Usual Suspects again? Will I listen to the new Brand New record again? Probably. Will I feel uneasy about doing so? Definitely. As a fan of black metal, I've had this issue for a while, a quick history for the un-initiated: back in the early-mid 90s there was some criminal behaviour from members of certain Norwegian black metal bands - the drummer from Emperor was convicted of a homophobic murder, the guy behind one man band Burzum was convicted of murdering the guitarist from Mayhem. Now, I do listen to both Emperor and Burzum, but I tend to feel a bit uneasy when I do, less so with Emperor as it's just one member rather than the entire band, who was later replaced. Similarly, when Phil Anselmo got drunk and let his racist side out on stage a couple of years ago, I stopped listening to Pantera and Down for a bit, but eventually decided that my enjoyment of the songs was greater than my disapproval of un-acceptable behaviour from their frontman. Currently all four members of Decapitated are in prison in America waiting on trial for gang-rape, I will really regret not listening to The Negation or Nihility again, but if they're convicted, I doubt I will. Even if not, the taint will be difficult to remove. Whilst my examples above mostly come from the metal genre (that being the one I'm most familiar with), there are plenty of others out there - Jimmy Page "dated" a 14 year old; realistically, I understand he held her prisoner, but a lot of us love Zeplin. As mentioned above The Usual Suspects and American Beauty are great films, but star Kevin Spacey; I've watched two Roman Polanksi films recently, and he was a child rapist too. What I'm getting at is, when you find out a musician/actor/producer etc of a piece of art or entertainment that you enjoy is an abuser, a criminal, an anti-semite, racist etc, do you stop consuming their output completely? Or do you decide that the art trumps the artist and carry on listening to it, but feel it's tainted, or do you just not care at all?

"If you're reading this, you know what it is" Well, no actually not necesarilly, any chance of some detail?

With my main band, I only go through the PA via an EBS pre-amp/DI. We use subs when the venue is large enough, but quite often don't. It keeps down the on-stage volume and lets the singer balance the FOH volume. I can find the subs add an overpowering amount of low-frequencies to the mix and turn my bass into rumble beneath everything else, rather than a clear instrument. Thinking about it, removing the (EBS) amp and just DIing, rather than doing both has improved things in that regard I think

So you're going XLR out of the amp, to 1/4" input on the desk? Why not go XLR to XLR? The advantage is then the impedances of the input and output are matched so you get the most efficient transfer and the balanced XLR output should have a lower noise level.

That looks more like a Fender Prophecy, like Troy Sanders used to play.

Absolutely, I play in a pretty standard covers band, but mostly listen to extreme metal: black metal, doom, grind, post-hardcore, thrash and death metal. Sadly not had a request for Carcass at a wedding yet...

[quote name='gingerfish' timestamp='1510228618' post='3404748'] I don't need another bass, I don't play 4 strings.... but I want it. [/quote] Same

[quote name='thebrig' timestamp='1510229483' post='3404759'] To make matters worse, one member actually complained about nearly all the gigs being over my way, well you should have seen the look I got when I said, “[i]well you know what the answer is, go out and get some gigs in your area and I will happily travel to them[/i]”. [/quote] That's a bit arse-ish Six months ago I moved 30 miles to the south so I could afford to buy a house, as a result my commuting time to gigs now averages about an hour, but I don't complain about it - it was my choice to move, it's my choice to remain in the band. I'm also (with so far no joy) looking for gigs local to me, which the others have all said they're happy to play.

[quote name='Paulhauser' timestamp='1510063427' post='3403647'] For me my Spector NS-5XL is the closest thing to a perfect bass.... I[url="https://flic.kr/p/D8wh4U"][/url] [/quote] Wowser, what a beauty - love the grain on that

[quote name='Pow_22' timestamp='1510055590' post='3403549'] Cherry red Epiphone Rivoli (now lives with the bassist from The Sea Pinks) Vintage Sound City 200 (a mark 3 ones not one of the crap mark 4's) - now lives at Skyhammer Studios [/quote] Awesome - every recording I've heard come out of Skyhammer sounds fantastic

Fretted Wal Mk3 five string with sycamore facings and a 35" scale. Won't be anytime soon, but I hope to own one eventually. Not actually sure if they can do that scale length, but if we're talking dreams....

Best - my Lakland Skyline DJ5, I'm still finding it a really inspiring instrument, sounds great, light and has a very comfy neck - I think I've come to the conclusion 35" scale 5 strings are right for me. Runner up - EBS Microsbass II, no amp on stage, but still get EBS tone through the PA, great bit of kit, need to work out a way of affording in-ears now. Worst - Source Audio Sound Blox 2 OFD, I can't fault the sounds, really good distortion models, which are very tweakable, but I found the programmbale interface far too fiddly for live use, could never quite get the levels right. That got sold fairly quickly and replaced with a Deluxe Big Muff and Joyo Orange Juice.

Oh aye, definetly for fun this band, as I think this picture from Friday shows :-)

I just finished a run of deps with a band like that - Sabbath, Priest, Motorohead, QOTSA, STP, RATM, Velvet Revolver, Faith No More plus some more modern stuff like Avenged Sevenfold. In the right venues, they get a good response, and folk who do like heavy music are always pleased to find a covers band doing it, but the overall market isn't that big so they can't charge as much as other bands, I think the max they get here in Sussex is £250.

[quote name='bigjimmyc' timestamp='1508953840' post='3395621'] Re Fender that same thought occured to me, but that was a fretless wasn’t it? Anyway it sounded amazing. He used it for One which was doubly surprising - I am cetain Jason Newstead preferred a 5-string for that. [/quote] Guessing it was this one? If so he's had it a while and not the Jaco bass

Might be imperial rather than metric size

If it's just a nut, can you find out it's dimensions and buy a generic?

I don't get out to big arena shows these days, but from what footage I'd seen from a couple years ago it looked like they'd lost interest and were going through the motions, so it's nice to hea that they've found that energy and love of playing again. Trujillo is a monster and absolutely the right choice for Metallica today, he seems to be able to bring together the guitars and drums by weaving a real groove between them.

[quote name='JohnFitzgerald' timestamp='1508686114' post='3393774'] Here's a pic from Mayone website from the 2005 NAMM show - looks the same to me, with the exception of the pickups. [attachment=256028:2005-namm-show-first-mayones-namm.jpg] [/quote] I used to have one of those, the body wood was amazaque, which google suggests is another name for ovangkol.

[quote name='Kev' timestamp='1508360493' post='3391733'] Ryan Martinie is one of the reasons I picked up a Thumb, his work with early Mudvayne is great. [/quote] Have you heard his new band Soften The Glare? Well worth checking out.

Friday was my last in a short run of deps for a heavy rock covers band as they've found a long term replacement for their last guy now. It was a lot of fun playing with them and the singer from my main band dropped in for a bit and managed to get some video No One Knows http://youtu.be/QAVcmj_b04k https://youtu.be/QAVcmj_b04k Inside http://youtu.be/NUe0TCo13pY https://youtu.be/NUe0TCo13pY

Brand New - Science Fiction Not really been into them before, but I really like this record.

Had two last weekend, both went pretty well; Friday was a dep with a hard rock band, Saturday a 70th birthday with the main function act. On Friday, I had someone want to compliment me, but didn't have the musical vocabulary to do so, it was so nice that he wanted do so but I felt bad for him that he was stumbling over what he was saying - "I really liked how you played all the differnt notes". He also clocked that I play a five string and was genuinely interested as to why I play that instead of a four - nice bloke.

Did a dep gig Friday where we covered Screamager and Nowhere, great songs.