molan

[quote name='ped' post='163922' date='Mar 26 2008, 05:03 PM']The most laughable shop I have been in (excluding London's Bass Cellar which I don't even regard as a shop) was Rudy's in NYC. I went up to the bass area and could not have been treated with more contempt if I had gone up to the bloke behind the counter and laid a turn on his forehead. I made a point of taking down lots of bases and playing really badly and annoyingly on them, hitting things with my rucksack that I would otherwise have taken off, and pointed at several basses and loudly exclaimed 'WOW IS THAT A SADOWZKEY'(sic) really loudly when it was blatently something else so that I could watch the bloke grunt to himself with self important ego-amusement. It was really quite enjoyable. I went next door and got chatting to a really nice guy in another music shop (Manny's?) who said he was completely with me. I told him what I did and he went right off to do the same!! ped[/quote] I was in Manny's in December and had a wonderful "Wayne's World - may I help you" experience. Vaguely wandering around not looking at anything in particular & the staff left me alone (which was fine as I wasn't looking for help). I spotted an interesting looking guitar and went to touch it at which point an assistant appeared at the speed of light and thrust himself between me and the guitar. He was quite friendly but asked how "serious" I was about buying one. I asked why it was so important and he casually pointed out that the Gretsch 6120 I was looking at was the recently released Brian Setzer model that retailed at about $25,000. . . . . . . . . . . Interesting footnote is that he said he could offer it for less than the sticker price and when I got home and looked it up over here it was about £17,000 in the UK - should have bought one on my credit card, smuggled it back & sold it for a tidy profit

[quote name='SJA' post='162273' date='Mar 23 2008, 05:08 PM']come back Billy Sheehan & Wolf Marshall, all is forgiven...[/quote] Saw Sheehan playing in Steve Vai's band at a charity gig towards the end of '06. He was just amazing to watch is a small(ish) club environment. Pretty good gig all round really. We were on honeymoon having been married on a bike at a drive-thru in Vegas. Ended up in LA for my birthday and I spotted the charity gig at HOB. Dragged my new wife along to see it and the poor thing had to watch about 3-4 hours of instrumental rock from Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, Steve Lukather, Dweezil Zappa, Scott Henderson, Johnny Hiland, Jonny A - I'm sure there were more as well. Not a single vocal part until they played about the third encore, by which time the wife had disappeared outside for a smoke! For me Sheehan was the star of the night with Paul Gilbert the most interesting guitarist. Vai himself was excellent but I found Satriani a bit dull (although he got by far the biggest support from the LA crowd).

[quote name='Thunderthumbs' post='162194' date='Mar 23 2008, 02:14 PM']For use on your PC (works with MP3 and CD), try "Best Practice". It's free too. [url="http://www.xs4all.nl/~mp2004/bp/"]http://www.xs4all.nl/~mp2004/bp/[/url][/quote] Downloaded already - just thought that the only initial problem is that I don't have a simple interface to link my bass through my laptop so I can balance signals and have the option to listen through headphones. Maybe that Tascam is beginning to make more sense already!

Hi everyone, I've been thinking about buying one of those funky little Tascam phrase trainers which allow you to slow stuff down to learn parts or to loop the same part over & over whilst slowly speeding it up etc. The one I'd been looking at was the Tascam MPBT1 which has 1 Gb of MP storage onboard. I then thought that as these days I tend to be learning from MP3 which sits on my laptop I wondered if there's a similar software tool available? Also - has anyone used either the Tascam or any similar devices - they sound good to me in theory but I wondered what they are actually like to use as a teaching device?

[quote name='thedontcarebear' post='161957' date='Mar 22 2008, 08:26 PM']IOrdered the F1 tonight, and it was only £515 posted, so not much more then the LMII.[/quote] Sounds like a good price for an F1 - I haven't seen them for less than around the £575 mark with postage?

Anyone out there listening to BBC Radio 6 on DAB? Check the Stuart Maconie Freak Zone show on Sunday evenings - downloadable as a podcast too I think. All sorts of weird and wonderful stuff, well worth a listen, it's become my regular "bath time" slot on a Sunday Definitely opened my ears up to some newer prog stuff. And, whilst I'm in the prog slot, I'm surprised to no mention of the Ricky 4001 as the bass voice of prog. The standard from which to measure others in the prog world and maybe the first bass to really cut through the mix of late 60's and 70's music as a true solo instrument in a group environment. I fell in love with the Ricky sound as a teenager in the early 70's and finally got round to buying a '73 black & white 4001 last year. To be brutally honest it's the least favourite bass in my, small, collection but it's dripping with character and always makes me want to drag out a pick for some classic clanky sounds!

I work about 3 mins walk from Denmark Street and am always astonished at the appalling standard of service in most shops there. Tried the "place for bass" recently because I was interested in a new pedal. Ok - so I wasn't spending big bass money but was happy to spend up to £200 for a decent Auto Wah. First of all I had to "interrupt" the two people behind the counter to get any sort of recognition, shop was empty and they were nattering about where to go for lunch. Having got some attention they looked at me totally dismissively when I said I was looking for a pedal. Got some vague advice but they looked even more grouchy when I said I wanted to try each of the options before making any sort of choice, I'm sure they thought I should have just bought something off the shelf without trying. One of them got the pedals out and, which I thought was a positive thing, asked what sort of bass and amp I had. However he lost it again really quickly when I said that I tended to play a Zon VB4 through a Euphonic most of the time. I got a "well, we don't have anything like that here" comment, a rolling of eyes and another dismissive glance shared with the other salesman. He set me up with a Lakland & Markbass combo and it was quickly apparent which pedal was best. By this time the guy who'd been helping had gone off to lunch. Having struggled, for the second time, to get the attention of the other (non) sales person. I asked how much it was, cue quick rolling of the eyes yet again and he told me it was the most expensive of the three I'd tried and was about £160. Quickly followed by something about it was the pedal everyone would choose "if they could afford it". There was a real implication that he thought I couldn't afford it and the whole process was a waste of his precious time. I really didn't want to give him my money and walked out of the shop. Got back to work, checked the Guitar & Keyboard centre who I knew were good at delivering stuff & bought it from them instead. It was arather frightening £50 cheaper than Denmark Street and arrived in less than 48 hours with a nice email follow up to check I'd received it. For the sake of a bit of basic civility and customer service that's another £100 gone to a dealer via the web. I have heard some shop owners complaining that the web is wrecking their business but I've been to this place in Denmark Street before and never been treated with anything other than utter disdain. Seems a shame really, bit of basic customer service might mean that people would be happy to pay a bit of a premium for decent service. One thing to add to this - I bought a tuner pedal in a store in LA last year. They couldn't have been more different. went out of their way to help, the guy serving was a guitarist who tracked down a bass player to ask specifically how the pedal he liked worked with a bass and the pair of them gave me great advice on both the operation of the pedal and how it would work in a live gigging situation. All done with a smile and a "hope it all works out for you - bring it back if you're not satisfied" attitude!

Anyone tried the SWR LA 10? I've been offered one really cheap so kinda interested!

[quote name='steve-norris' post='155272' date='Mar 11 2008, 01:21 PM']Hi i most likely have the same combo ( iAmp 350) perhaps you could buy or build (omni 10.5) a small cab and just take the head out of the combo, it comes out very easily and while not as light as say mark bass stuff is still portable. Failing that i have owned both the Roland and the line 6 110 and much preferred the little line 6, awesome for a 12" cube. Another option if you have a decent audio system is a Line 6 pod into an aux input, that can work well at moderate volumes. By the way what extension cab are you using? I am thinking about a compact 12" cab to go with mine but can't decide which would fit my needs.[/quote] Now that's a clever idea - I'd never thought of taking the head out of the combo, really easy to remove as well. I'm using the Euphonic CXL112 - nice piece of kit and obviously works well with the i-Amp 350. Really expands the sound and the extra depth helps to cut through if you're up against a loud drummer.

My regular setup is a Euphonic 1x10 combo with a matching 1x12 cab for larger gigs. I also have an old Trace V-Type with a simple 200w power amp as a backup. Because of complicated travel arrangements I now have to leave my Euphonic at the rehearsal rooms so could do with something nice to practice with at home - I'm fed up playing through headphones all the time! I can use the Trace and my Euphonic 1x12 to practice with but it's very "warm" and I'd like something really portable I can cart around the house and play in whichever room I feel like. I used to have a GK MB150 which was perfect for this but a double bass playing friend made me an offer and I sold it a while ago. I've seen these for around the £350 mark secondhand but that's too much really to justify purely for home use (well that's what my wife says anyway!). So the question is - what's out there that has a decent low volume tone, ideally with an input for an MP3 player that's easily portable and doesn't cost the earth? Answers on a postcard please. . . . . . .

[quote name='bassboy115' post='154731' date='Mar 10 2008, 05:29 PM']haha, but what im saying is that alot of people judge Ashdown without even trying them, In many cases it is only because they do cheap amps that affects people's opinion not necessarily the quality of the amp. I dont disagree the quality of Ashdown has fell since they started making them outside of the UK, but unfortunately i havent been playing bass long enough to own a UK made Ashdown( i have played some) and it just seems that a lot of people have a very unjustified dislike to ashdown gear other than that they cater for all standard of players.[/quote] As someone who works in marketing - it's very common for a large well know brand to produce a few top of the range products that really help to sell their "ordinary" ranges. Obvious examples are things like cars, BMW make the M3 because the image and kudos of such a fast machine rubs off on the entire range and make people think more favourably of them. However, when a brand starts flooding a market with inferior product it can equally work the other way and the cheap products can damge the rep of the better ones. A lot of this depends on volume of course and BMW sell ver few M3's relative to a bog standard 3 series whilst I'd suggest that theeven the bulk of the BM range are still fairly "mass" market within bass circles. This is precisely why brands like Fender have Squier & Gibson bought Epiphone etc. Allows them to use the more expensive brand to add a bit of glam to the lower end brand without damaging the rep of either. Personally I would say that it seems like Ashdown are damaging their brand at the moment and almost certainly losing sales of their higher end products. However, if they are selling the cheaper ones buy the crate load and the balance sheet looks good then who can blame then?

[quote name='Machines' post='154653' date='Mar 10 2008, 03:56 PM']I remember them being £149 in SoundControl..[/quote] They are currently quoting £79 for a Perfect 10 Mini-Stack but this may be the guitar rather than the bass version.

[quote name='The Funk' post='154314' date='Mar 10 2008, 01:13 AM']Nooooo! I missed it![/quote] I'm not sure if it's repeated anywhere, I recorded it on Sky+ so not even sure when it was actually broadcast other than it was some time over the weekend. They talked about Bootsy and the whole concept of "The One" but it was very much about Clinton's role rather than Bootsy, Bernie Worrell, Maceo etc. They all got good mentions though. They did say that Bootsy was fired from James Brown's band (possibly for drug taking) but when he walked he took Catfish, Maceo, Fred Wesley etc. with him so JB was the one who lost out there then!

I spotted another thread that mentioned the Motown shows on BBC4 this weekend but just wondered if anyone also saw the Parliafunkadelicmentthang show that ran as part of the season as well? "Aaaaw we want the funk, gotta have that funk" Bootsy is the man!