Kiwi

OUCH! OW OWOWOWOWOWOW!!

Tell us about the bits of gear you nearly bought but didn't and then regretted it later. Mine: Celinder J Update 5 at the Bass Gallery, sounded phenomenal but I baulked at the £2500 price tag and the colour wasn't blue. I was a fool to pass it up, it had everything I ever wanted in a Jazz bass. 1965 Fender Jazz, just didn't do anything for me. Didn't have The Sound, felt fragile, didn't fancy gigging it either. But what if... Wals...I have always liked them since playing a gorgeous 5 string fretless Mach 2 back in the mid nineties at the Bass Centre Wapping. But could never imagine myself with one...until now.

A matching pair of Modulus Quantum Sweetspot basses back in the noughties - imported from the US before shipping charges and the exchange rate went insane. The fretted had a treble attack like glass and the fretless had a warped neck because the phenolic fingerboard wasn't stiff enough I lost 500 quid on each bass. Also that Musicman Stingray parts bass with a status neck. Sold it for quite a bit under the asking price of a used Stingray and had my arm bitten off (justifiably, too). Finally - my first 'custom bass', made from parts I specified (hence no name or shame) but it was a disaster. The graphite neck was floppy. The bridge didn't hold the strings against the body. It sounded weedy even with EMG Jv pickups in. I sold it for about 15% less than I paid for it a few months after receiving it.

The current ones are hand assembled from Warmoth parts, not hand made. The electronics both inside the body and in the neck itself are extremely complicated. Each fret is divided into 4 pieces. Each fret piece is electronically isolated from the others and anyone attempting to bugger about would need to know the right way to reconnect everything after disassembly, there are no instruction manuals included.

Validity based on principle or pragmatism? Traditionally gigging bassists just wanted something reliable and predictable that helped them nail the track as quickly as possible because they're on the clock. Consistency allowed engineers to eq the bass quickly and get predictable results. Fantastic sound creation potential just made things more complicated, especially when a knob might get knocked accidentally while playing...although having said that Alembics were very popular Nashville studio basses for a while in the 80's. I think there is a difference between a player's personal, creative aspirations and the realities of working for someone who is paying the bill for studio time. As Madonna famously said 'time is money and the money is MINE!'. At least according to Nile Rodgers.

Wot? I tried to but got asked to stop faffing about between songs as it was holding everyone else up.

I visited Steve Chick in 2009 on my way through to NZ. Back then he had Charles Cilia making the basses for him. Charles is an outstanding luthier, his guitars play like butter. The basses he made were OK but didn't do much for me personally and they weren't cheap as they were handmade, faithful replicas of a preCBS jazz bass owned by a friend of Steve's. So Steve has been spending a lot of time thinking about how to make the technology more accessible pricewise and one way was to use prefabricated parts which he completes the necks and does extra body drilling for the wiring. It's intentional. He wants the technology to be accepted by as many players as possible so the rationale is use a standard bass that everyone is familiar with tonally.

A sequencer would require programming though. I suggest keeping the role of the pedal quite simple, ie. bass synth note generation and leave the effects to a separate pedal. Because there's no tap tempo, doing time based effects, like slapback delays in "I Feel Love" for example, would need an extra delay pedal anyway.

@Quatschmacher would it be too much to ask for a decent arpeggiator? I mean if they are selling and committed to the whole concept of bass synth thing, I'd like to think that a good, programmable arp is worth a tonne of occasional use modulation effects that are used in other pedals anyway.

Fair points but the Boss SY1 isn't programmable for arp though...and neither was the Eventide Pitchfactor that I used to own. Also the sound of the SY1 (at least when I tried it) was more like a synth waveform of indiscriminate pitch + pitched note from the bass. It's been a while though so perhaps that has changed with revisions? I haven't tried the SA C4 but I already own the FI and a Deep Impact so it's money already spent. The only outlay I face right now is the H9. In terms of value for money, it would be far simpler and cheaper to get a set of Taurus pedals and an old synth module like a Roland JV1080. But I would prefer to use my hands...so I'll probably sell the moment machine and use the proceeds towards the H9.

I have a Joyo JF 14 American Sound on my guitar board - what a great pedal that is! It's a work in progress at the moment, mainly due to the cost of the H9 and I don't have the Deep Impact with me at the moment. Right now I can play dry plus arpeggiator. The Freeze pedal is really interesting though. It's like the sustain pedal on a piano, hit it and whatever it's hearing is millisecond sampled and looped. Great for sustaining an arpeggiator. The only fly in the ointment at the moment is that it's still possible to play through the Freeze pedal once the Freeze button is pressed. This is fine for solo accompaniment but for my set up it means I can still trigger the arpeggiator with any notes that are passed on by the Freeze. It would be really nice if they had a microswitch on the pedal which said 'play thru: on/off". Speaking of arpeggiators, I have both an Adrenalinn III and a Cooper Moment Machine at the moment. The Adrenalinn has a little extra attack at the start of an arpeggiated note but it's a PITA to programme without paying extra for an editor. The Moment Machine is a bit more portamento style which makes it harder to punch out dance riffs but it has a pretty friendly user interface.

I've been doing a spot of planning too although currently stuck between using the loops and just using it as a splitter. If I use it as a splitter, I can preserve the stereo imaging with stereo Soundlab Micromixer. 1) Dry: FEA Labs Double Compressor 2) Bass synth chain: Akai Deep Impact -> Eventide H9 (future purchase) 3) Arpeggiator: Future Impact -> EHX Freeze pedal -> Adrenalinn III The idea is to be able to trigger arpeggiated bass synth at the same time as I'm playing a different bass synth patch. Or hold a drone using the EHX Freeze while playing bass synth over it. If I was gigging, the bass synth pedals, adrenalinn and H9 would be MIDI connected for specific song patches.

Funny, I came on here to suggest a DHA pre and it ended up being the preferred choice. I don't know how Dave managed it but it really is a lovely Ampeggy type sound.

I'm a bit late to the party here but I've just bought one second hand and, apart from the user interface, I've been extremely impressed by it. The drum loops are all professional quality and, dare I say it, inspirational? The amp sims are far more convincing and dynamic than those from my Zoom G3X but I really bought it for the arpeggiator. I'm still exploring the arp functions but, compared to my Cooper Moment Machine, it seems to give each note in the sequence a tiny bit of attack which helps with clarity and dynamics. Even my main gripe - the user interface, is still very logical in it's concept, which makes it refreshingly easy to access an overwhelmingly large range of parameters with relatively little training.

Made by the same factory in the Czech Republic who were originally contracted by Spector to make their CR basses.

He had rounds on his basses but he never changed them. Forget about the mythology around electronics - for bass it doesn't really matter. It's the construction which makes the biggest difference. Think structural.

Bernard Edwards got his sound from thick, dead strings. If you want to make your bass sound less lively, put something in the neck joint, like some paper, to decouple it from the body a little and get some old 45-105's.

Me too! With a splash of Lennie.

Yes, I believe she decided to mark the moment of her epiphany by having the newsprint mirror image remaining on the right side of her face permanently tattooed for posterity. Special K is a cruel master although some speculate that it wasn't just ketamine but a custom blend that included datura.

Yes! And here's the backstory as to how the bass got it's name. It's a little known fact but all those controls were master volumes. According to the Tour Manager, Tam McTavish, one soundcheck lasted two and a half days after one of the stage hands inadvertently turned down a control on the bass as they were setting up the stage. Tony struggled to work out which one it was and eventually admitted defeat. At risk of date cancellations later in the tour Polly, the band's wardrobe assistant, eventually suggested he turn them all up just to see what happened. Thus...the tour was snatched from the jaws of defeat! It's a wonderful story, really brings a tear to the eye.

I managed to find this picture of his Jaydee signature bass. After undergoing a third liver transplant, he went back to using his trusty 1 stringed signature Fender. He claimed he didn't have the patience for multi stringed instruments any more.