peteb

My current, pretty stripped down, gear that I take to a gig is somewhere in the region of £5k. I've had plenty of £500 cars in my time, but these days they are few and far between. I tend to spend £5-6k on a car then run them into the ground! However, the guitar player in a couple of my bands recently had his car written off by an old fella doing something erratic at a junction, so he went and got a pretty decent focus for £1.5k that allows him to gig all over the country. According to the drummer (who used to be in the motor trade), you can still pick up a perfectly decent car for £1 -1.5k if you need to...

I don't have much invested in Metallica - I bought MOP and the Black album (both great) and unfortunately someone gave me Death Magnetic as a present (awful) - and I have no interest at all in what passes for 'metal' these days, so I can perhaps give a more balanced view. The new track sounds OK, better than anything I've heard from them for many years (not that I take a lot of interest). Yes, it does sound a bit like a better produced Diamond Head (from what I an remember of them), but it's not bad at all...

I know that they have their haters, but I reckon that a Fodera very similar to yours is the best bass that I have ever played...!

It has a bit more history than you might think, but not just with me! I bought it when it was a year old and I had got my first (temporary) job working backstage in a theatre. It was with me for a couple of bands oop north and then all of my time playing in London. When I moved back, I joined a band that played the 80s rock club circuit all over the north & midlands. After a while, I discovered active basses (it was the late 80s) and sold it through a local shop to a guy in Leeds who used to play sessions. He then swapped it with a studio owner in Manchester for a Squire and enough money to settle a drug debt. It stayed in Manchester for a quite a while and then he traded it to a mate who ran another studio in Leeds, who kept it for many years until he got a 60s P bass. I saw it on Facebook marketplace during lockdown and recognised it immediately (it is quite an unusual colour / neck combination and I had put a Schaller bridge on it) and sold a Stingray five string to fund buying it back...

I was exactly the same. I got my first P bass just over ten years after you, but I grew up with pretty much every bass player that I aspired to be like playing a Fender P bass. If I was five years younger, then it might have been different as many pros started using all sorts of other basses. But when I was a kid they all played either a Precision, a Jazz, a Rick or a Gibson EB short scale thing - most of them had a P bass It was a big thing for me to get my first Precision in December 79. I felt that I had crossed a rubicon, that I while I may never be a superstar or even particularly successful, I would always be a serious gigging bass player. Forty three years later, I'm still doing gigs with that same Fender Precision...

I think that you have to look at why would you need a Fender? For many people, especially band leaders and producers (but also fans), a bass guitar is pretty much a Fender Precision or Jazz. That is the reference sound and image for an electric bass, more so for some genres than others. If you are chasing new gigs, then you will never go wrong turning up for an audition or a gig with a Precision. If you are playing within a scene where you know all the other players and there isn’t a lot of band leaders who want you to meet their expectations of what a bass player should be, then you just need a bass that sounds good to you. That could be a Fender, or it could be one of many other basses. Fifteen years ago, I was exclusively playing hard rock with a couple of Warwick Streamers that sounded great. Then I started playing more blues and other gigs and it became apparent that I needed to turn up with a Fender, or at least something that looked / sounded more like one. Now my gigging basses are a 70s Precision, an active Xotic ‘superjazz’ and a sunburst Am Std Jazz (for the Zeppelin tribute band).

It depends on how tired I am (and motorway closures), but there is something quite satisfying and peaceful about driving home after a successful gig.

The trouble with having a 'band meeting' to discuss material is that he is going to feel that he is outnumbered, whereas if its a chat with just one or two of you he may feel more able to discuss things properly. The other issue is, why did the old drummer leave? Are there any unresolved problems there?

Of course he can be, if he actually wants to stay in the band. He seems to have issues about the new material other band members are coming up with and that the old drummer (who he seems to have liked) has been replaced by someone he either doesn't like or rate. He seems to be dealing with this by sulking and making himself difficult to talk to. Why not get one or two of you who he gets on with to meet up and have a chat with him over a beer. You might be able to clear the air and move forward. I always have a little chuckle when the first thought of people on here is always to leave a band or kick out a key member as soon as there is a problem. It is always pretty difficult to replace a decent LV / frontman, so it's worth at least having a chat with him about what his issues actually are...

Apart from the tuners that look completely out of place, I think that it looks fine for a 73 P bass. I would probably change the scratchplate as well as the tuners, but the price isn't too bad. I would want to check the date stamp on the neck / body and the serial number, just to be sure.

Why? Surely the only difference is a few hundred years?

The DBS amps were decent, but not great. Marshall actually got music shops to ask local gigging players to test them before they were released, so I got to use one before they went on sale. It was a perfectly good amp, but not noticeably better than the Hartke I was using at the time and certainly nowhere near as good as the Mesa mpulse I got not that long after! One of the problems that they had was that they never really caught the imagination of many pros, so you didn't see many of your typical session player / gigging pros using them on gigs, unlike the early Eden amps.

But did they? Certainly Marshall never produced a bass amp any where near as good as the old Eden World Tour amps to establish them as a pukka top bass amp manufacturer.

You're making the mistake of thinking that your average punk rocker is necessarily a nihilistic, angry young man with no respect for material objects or anything else! This is not necessarily true, just as someone with a shaved head and bad tattoos isn't necessarily a hard guy. When I was a teenager (a long time ago), I worked in a theatre for a bit. The pit band were all big drinkers and generally much more rock and roll than all the bands I knew, despite the short hair and dinner jackets. I'm told that when classical orchestras travel for engagements away from home (their version of going on the road), they are notoriously rowdy!

I saw them a few months ago with my guitarist from the Zep tribute (who knows Sless a bit). I was doing the usual checking out the bass player bit (trying to see if he was playing The Stealer like I do), but was being a bit too obvious about it! They took a break and Rhino marched over to me and said "you look like you know what you're doing, what did the bass sound like out there". I just said that appearances can be deceptive, but it sounded fine to me. My guitarist mate thought it was was pretty cool / amusing...! Rhino is surprisingly tall, where the rest of the band are all on the diminutive side! It was an enjoyable night.

Was that Terry Sless' Kossof tribute?

Very much so. I saw them with Paul Chapman many times and they just dripped attitude and a down at heel coolness, but were very musical at the same time! When they were on, they were a great live band...

Maybe, but not necessarily in a good way! They were imploding at the time and were struggling to keep it together live, leading to Sheehan leaving halfway through the tour.

Funnily enough, I know the guy who replaced him in WA (Mark Abrahams, who's from these parts).

Pino and Jimmy Copley - great rhythm section...

I've just looked at some of Shaun's old posts and see that he was the guy who's family took in the girl who was a refugee from the war in the Ukraine. He seemed like one of the good guys - a great shame he has gone at such a young age.

I've just put a band together to play the blues circuit and got my 68 year old mate in on vocals. A great rock singer in his day and has been around the block many times. Unfortunately, he got nodes on his vocal chords about 12 years ago and hasn't really gigged since. He's just getting his confidence back, but good to hear him singing properly again. He's never going to hit the notes that he used to, but still sounds great singing blues stuff.

Unless you're the ghost of Phillip Lynott, every black P bass should have a tort scratchplate...!

As they do to virtually every producer and band leader out in the real world...

I think that Bass Direct just have made a bigger impact on the type of people who visit BC. I remember there was a guy who worked at the Bass Gallery years ago, who some people had an issue with (although I certainly didn't). Funnily enough, I've always found the Gallery to be helpful and enjoyed talking to them. However, their website is terrible - far worse than the Bass Direct one!