molan

It's generally much better today, longer quieter periods. Less slapping generally and more volume control. There are some bargains kicking around too. Early Gibson era Tobias for £500, Sadowsky NYC active P for £1,500, unplayed MusicMan reflex for £1,300 etc., etc.

Other thing about the slap idiots was how disrespectful they were to some of the stands who put on short artist demos. I was watching Enrico Passini (builder of Wood & Tronics basses) and his main demonstrator Roberto Badoglio on the Vanderkley stand. They were playing some really nice, and very tasteful, stuff. Lots of chordal harmonies, and fast high end runs etc. Some git sat down at the stand next to them, cranked the volume pathetically loud and a good go at drowning them out with, out of time, random slapping. Enrico & Roberto took the piss a little and played bad slap right back at him but he carried on regardless. Eventually The two Italians were about to give up playing as they couldn't hear themselves and refused to turn up any louder. Then the 15 minutes klaxon sounded, Roberto played a nice little descending flourish & they stopped. The git on the slapfest just carried on randomly whacking away. This wasn't a young guy either, I'd say he was well into his 50's. . .

I'm working on the BassGear stand again this year. We managed to get Paul Turner on the stand for 20 minutes or so. He arrived with an awesome pedal board & three Jamiroaquai songs taken from masters with all the bass removed. He played along to these and was absolutely awesome. Seeing someone as good as him from such close range was amazing. The 'official' line was that there was only supposed to be 15 mins per hour of 'noise' but several stands simply refused to conform and that started others off. We took a multiple headphone set-up along but some people were so loud it was ridiculous. Today they are planning to limit to 30 mins in each hour of noise and say they will pull power from people who don't conform.

This is my current favourite slice of soul / funk. Love some of the playing on this: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzGkZ1TGIyI[/youtube]

[quote name='BigBeatNut' timestamp='1329576921' post='1544452'] Has this been on here before ? Worth hearing again anyway. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc_QFGzTl7g[/media] [/quote] I love this song - Tower of Power horns I think

I've played a few of the acoustics - nice basses http://www.bassgear.co.uk/bass-guitars/boulder-creek/

I often play with my thumb resting on the neck pickup - depends on the bass really. Don't enjoy the feel of playing right over the bridge pickup. Tried a bass with a ramp fitted recently and found myself moving my plucking hand around a lot more. Felt a bit 'alien' but I think I could get used to it.

I should add that the songs that really bothered me were ones were I think the bass line is an intrinsic part of the song. Obvious examples I can remember were: I Feel Good - just didn't play that core bass line that holds the verses together (it's not like this is hard to play either) My Girl - again, to my ears, the bass is a crucial part of this song and overplaying with lots of extra fills is just pointless Honky Tonk Woman - a great groove with dynamics brought up & down between the initial verses & choruses by simply not playing any bass. When the bass comes in it's such a simple part. Last night the bass was played all the way through the song with many more notes than old Bill W ever played. With the whole band going hell for leather through the entire song it just seemed to lose all the feel.

I went to see a friend's band tonight which was full of 'seasoned' pros who have been playing covers for a very long time indeed. I was listening to the bass parts (as I'm sure we all do at gigs!) and couldn't believe how far away from some of the original lines he was playing. I'm not talking about wildly over-playing or just sticking to simple root notes. He was literally playing bass parts that were 'wrong' compared to the originals. They were in tune and timing was fine but some really well known parts were simply ignored. I'm talking about some lines that, for a bass player, almost define some songs - stuff like James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Marvin Gaye etc. The rest of the band were obviously striving to cover the original parts so it wasn't like they'd chosen to rearrange each song. It really irritated me and I wanted to grab him by the lapels and give him a good shake, lol. I mentioned this to a fellow muso in the audience, a keys player, and he hadn't noticed anything untoward. Am I wrong in thinking that if you're covering a classic you should aim to be faithful to the original as possible or am I just being a 'bass snob'?

I moved to London in the late 70's as a, very impressionable, 18 year old. Had already been to see several punk bands live - Clash / Jam / Souixsie / Gen x + lots of smaller bands like the Lurkers, 999 etc. I moved into the room that Billy idol had just vacated, he'd moved to the flat next door - most immaculately dressed & coiffed person I've ever seen at 8:00 in the morning for breakfast by the way, lol. We had various Pistols, Gen Xers, Chrissie Hynde, Marco Peroni, some new bloke who reckoned he could sing called George O'Dowd & a host of others round at out flat before heading off to party in the evening. It was a fabulous time to be living in London and the city felt so 'alive'. Even just being out & walking the streets became all part of the social scene and there were some fantastic gigs - The Clash tended to kick everyone else's arse when some of the bands started moving up to larger sized venues like the Rainbow. I think it was a massive change in the way the whole music scene worked for a few years. It became easier to get up & play live and, maybe more importantly, the independent label and distribution networks sprung up which meant you could much more easily track down your favourite latest single. The way this affected some of the independent record shops made them much more exciting places to visit & meet friends, browse for rare stuff etc. Quite a few started branching out into imported reggae, harder core funk, rare groove soul and stuff. Cost me a bloody fortune in Jamaican 12" imports at £4.50 a pop! Truly a great time to be alive and for me it was absolutely about the social aspect as much as about the music.

[quote name='Musicman20' timestamp='1328539453' post='1528667'] Nope, all Genz amps have a voltage selector on the back. Just use the correct plug, and select the voltage. Away you go [/quote] I don't think the old Shuttle 3.0 has the power switching - I bought a 6.0 from the States when they first came out (rather than the 3.0 which was all I really needed) because of this.