Doddy

I change them when they don't do what I want anymore. I've got a Precision with 15+ year old LaBella flats, and that sounds proper old school. My F Bass has had a set of LaBella Super Steps on for a few months, and they are still sounding pretty bright. On the other hand, I've got another Precision that has had Ernie Balls on for 3 gigs, and is already sounding a bit deader than I like. I don't particularly enjoy restringing, but I'd rather do it regularly than use those horrible coated strings.

You're obviously trying to justify keeping all 4, so keep them. Otherwise, you just need to be honest with yourself about which is your least favourite, then bite the bullet and advertise it for sale. If the Limelight is the best sounding, what makes the Fender more versatile? But if the Fender is the most versatile, why is the 5 your go to for gigs?

The main non bass gear that I look at, and want, is drum stuff, but I've already got quite a lot (4 kits, 20 something snares, bags of cymbals), so don't really need any more. Other than that, I mainly just want pedals and accessories now.

That's kind of my issue with most preamp pedals too. As most of them seem to have a DI out, it makes sense to have them at the end of your signal chain,but I like having my preamp/tone shaping at the start of the chain. So unless the pedal has an effects loop, I still generally use a seperate DI at the end.

For a passive bass, my favourite preamp is still the Sadowsky. For an active bass with a decent preamp, I'd rather just use a quality DI box.

I'm surprised at that because, if I'm not mistaken, his last album was mostly Nashville guys including Dave Roe on bass, and the excellent Fred Eltringham on drums.

I would take a guess that the members of his touring band don't go anywhere near the studio when he's recording.

I've got a few of the pedals you mention. The Emma is my main filter and I can't say that I've missed a volume control. I've never noticed any particular volume change with it. The DOD FX25 has some volume drop but it sounds great so I'll deal with it. The FX25B does have a clean blend, but I think the older one sounds better. The Pigtronix Envelope Phaser is really cool, and you can get some pretty unique sounds from it- I just don't use it too much because it's huge. If volume control is important, you can always put them in a loop of an LS2 or something. Personally, volume and mix controls don't bother me too much.

There are some great videos of Tim Lefebvre using the Pigtronix Mothership 2, and it sounds great. I bought one based on how he uses it.

With those pedals,I'd go... AB>Tuner>Comp>Octave>Chorus>Vibrato>Reverb>Gate I'd put the AB first so that you could run 2 instruments in to the tuner. The compressor could go at the end of the chain, depending on how you want to use it.

Are we talking about classic pedals that have been a big influence in the bass world, or are we talking about personal favourites? Because half the pedals listed on here wouldn't be classed as classic or iconic yet.

It only took a quick Google to find this quote by John Paul Jones in an old issue of Guitar World "This riff is rather tricky-sounding, as it's built from a repeated phrase that is four-and-a-half beats long. Each time the phrase is repeated it's displaced by half a beat. Notice how the E note, which falls neatly on beat one the first time the phrase is played, falls on the second eighth-note of beat one the second time around, on beat two the third time, and on the second eighth-note of beat two the fourth time. This technique of repeating an odd-length phrase in an even time signature such as 4/4 is known as hemiola and is a very effective compositional tool."

That's pretty badly written. I don't hear any 64th notes in Black Dog. I'll be honest, I've never heard that song as having bars of 2 and 5. I hear and count it as being in 4 with the vocal breaks being more rubato.

To be fair though, you said it was BS that people earn from day one, which is clearly not the case. Yes, I did a couple of freebies when I was 18 but I was still earning from all my other gigs. I also realised very quickly that playing for nothing gets you a reputation as someone who will play for nothing.

How is that BS? My first gig was subbing for my 1st teacher, and I was paid. I got offered more gigs by them, which were all paid. I then started to get recommended for other paid work, and so on..... I can probably count the number of free gigs I've done in the last 23 on both hands. I stopped doing them after I did a couple of one night theatre shows for nothing with the promise of more work, which just resulted in more offers for freebies. Since then, I've always asked for, at the very least, my expenses covered.