thisnameistaken

My old guitarist was a lefty who played righty. Most irritating thing I ever saw was when a lefty girlfriend decided she would take up playing drums. I sat down with her and showed her some basic stuff, then swapped the hi-hats and snare around for her and she nailed all the beats really quickly, so I showed her some harder stuff, forgot to swap the set around and she nailed it all right-handed. I made her go to a proper drum teacher!

Just be thankful the keyboard player left, so you don't have to hurt people's ears with MIDI horn patches any more. The Who had a few poppy tunes. The Jam. Cream? There's plenty of replacements for Mustang Sally right there.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='266328' date='Aug 20 2008, 02:46 PM']I don't believe scales are the right place to start on bass. Instead, learn the basic arpeggios - major, minor, dominant 7th, minor 7th, major 7th, half diminished, diminished. If you're outlining a chord sequence that will help you far more than learning whole scales in each key. It's all about the root, third, fifth and seventh. You can do so much with those four basic notes.[/quote] But then you're half-way to learning the scales anyway - might as well just learn them and then those numeric intervals will make more sense. It's not any harder to just learn the scales IMO.

Meh... I've bought and sold a few things with people on here so far, had one seller change his mind but that's his prerogative and I certainly wouldn't get shirty about it. Also had a buyer ask me to "reserve" a couple of items for a couple of weeks, which I did and he was as good as his word. I don't think anything's broken. The good experiences far outweigh the bad and I've never been (or felt like I would be) shafted. Which to me is far more important than the occasional nervous trader pulling out.

Looks quite slick. Usually modern-looking basses try too hard and look really contrived, but someone with a proper eye for design penned that. Nice to see something different but not ugly (I'm looking at you, Bongo) for a change. Hopefully the whole '90s obsession with campy figured woods being used to make basses look like dining tables is coming to an end. Just saw the price. Hmm. Maybe I'd rather have generic hardware on a Jazz-a-like.

All my basses seem to come pre-named by the manufacturer. My girlfriend calls my white Stingray "the toilet seat", but she's mean like that.

[quote name='Matty' post='259065' date='Aug 9 2008, 10:36 PM']Is that one of the Gator Pro cases? To right its heavy. I walked from Kentish town Station to the Fiddler's elbow (a good half mile+) with a fully loaded one of them last night. I still dont have functioning elbows [/quote] Yeah they're not for walking with. But they don't have hard cases either, so what [i]are[/i] they for? Who knows! Maybe they were intended as instruments of torture.

I don't really want to go tying cables together anyway - I quite often shift bits around or only take a couple of pedals out with me - I use the board more for storage. Good thing too - it's heavy as hell. The patch cables I'm using are really stiff - that's the main problem. They're good cables, but too stiff. If I could be bothered to make up cables to the right lengths that would sort it out, but I'm thinking about getting George L's connectors for a lot of it because stuff like the LS-2 is a big pain in my arse with those six right-angle jacks sticking out of it. Pedal board spending is on hold for now though, got holidays and tax bills and stuff eating all my money at the moment.

Sorry for the crappy camera phone pic... I should really sort out the cabling. It's a bigger mess than usual because I took just a few pedals to a rehearsal on Thursday and I haven't been bothered to rewire it in a tidy way. It doesn't really get [i]much[/i] tidier though if I'm honest. Signal goes: Bypass looper (around EHX Bass Micro Synth) -> Robot Factory Meatwad -> Bassballs -> DOD 490 Phasor -> Boss CEB-3 -> Tuner In the Meatwad's FX loop there's the Boss LS-2 with a Boss OC-2 in one channel and the Robot Factory Pulse Synth -> MXR Blowtorch -> Pickle Pie 'B' in the other channel. The exp. pedal is on the Meatwad of course. Still got room for an Octavius Squeezer... Would prefer to downsize my board a bit though, really.

It's difficult to sell something like that - not a lot of buyers for them. Personally I love Warwicks but even I wouldn't want an Infinity, they just don't do it for me. As earlier respondents have said right now's not a great time to be selling anything, but with something like that you'd need to reach a wider market to get a good price for it at any time, I think.

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='257970' date='Aug 8 2008, 11:57 AM']Oh, what's this, a CUSTOMER telling musicians NOT to play Mustang Sally? But that can't be right, 'it's what the public wants'. She is clearly delusional. We must send here for reconditioning to the 'Commitments' school of musical appreciation. AAAAGA Do Do DO......!![/quote] This woman clearly needs to watch more feel-good movies instead of wasting her spare time listening to music or whatever it is she does. You've got to feel bad for her poor deprived guests who'll have to wait until someone else they know gets married before they can hear Mustang Sally again.

[quote name='doctor_of_the_bass' post='258562' date='Aug 8 2008, 10:35 PM']I think it really boils down to the fact that any band is only really as good as its drummer[/quote] Very true. I think if I didn't play bass I'd play trombone. Actually I've got a trombone but I only ever feel like picking it up in the summer, so given that I live in England I don't pick it up very often. But yeah the old big band bandleaders like Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, and of course guys like Rico and Fred Wesley, I hugely admire.

Those old Bass Collection basses were considered good value for money back in the day. I thought they were a bit small and light, personally, but they sold well.

I remember those old Marlin guitars - they were total dogs.

I'd look at Yamaha. The cheap Peaveys are apparently nice too but the look doesn't do it for me.

[quote name='Lee-Man' post='255320' date='Aug 5 2008, 12:52 PM']I had my SR4, Incase and protools stolen 18 months ago, gutting experiance and as it's how I make my living really difficult while the insurance paid out.[/quote] I hope you don't mean the SR4 I bought off you!

[quote name='phil_the_bassist' post='253911' date='Aug 3 2008, 08:36 PM']Does The Count mind..? Bwahahah![/quote] I read it as "The drummer, the mouthy ****".

[quote name='bobbassguy' post='250572' date='Jul 29 2008, 04:50 PM']I've read that if your fingers get cut during live playing, throw in some salt. It'll probably hurt like a bastard for a few minutes but it helps to cauterize the cuts enough for your digits to survive the show.[/quote] Slices of lemon will probably be easier to find at most gigs. [quote name='acidbass' post='250997' date='Jul 30 2008, 04:25 AM']Always get your drummer to count into a song, be it on sticks or just in the air with mimed numbers.[/quote] It's rare we play any mimed numbers. [quote name='SteveK' post='253674' date='Aug 3 2008, 11:30 AM']... During the soundcheck we decided to change the ending of a song (it needed a more elaborate ending to do the song justice). We played it a couple of times...no problem! During the gig we came to the end of that song... total disaster!!! There's Steve Lukather and his band; The Hooters, all at the side of the stage looking on...not to mention several thousand punters. After much hilarity on stage and the singer explaining to the audience that we need the practice, we played the ending again... the audience thought it was a riot [/quote] In one of my old bands we had a little gimmick where we would offer the audience either the "normal ending" or the "Stars In Their Ending" for our songs. We had a good laugh with that.

[quote name='BassManKev' post='253364' date='Aug 2 2008, 04:13 PM']just too much money[/quote] Well... The signal chain is all analogue and the effect order is at least partially reconfigurable, you get their awesome gated fuzz, their seemingly-awesome filter, octave doubling, waveform synth, beat-locked modulation on the synth waveforms, portamento, it's programmable with an SD card expansion slot, and it's a tuner. And they're saying that firmware updates via the SD card could bring improvements in the future. If you don't need half of that then it's expensive. But if the tracking's any good and you do use all those effects (like I do), and the effects themselves all sound good then it's cheap, and having them all in one small box would be extremely convenient. The only downside is the lack of expression pedal control over the various params.

Bah! In the pub tonight I caught a glimpse of someone wearing a T-shirt with a slogan that ended "But I'm in a band", and practically rushed over to see if he was a drummer. He wasn't. There are only 3 drummers in York.

[quote name='basstard' post='251510' date='Jul 30 2008, 06:05 PM']Check out this baby... [url="http://www.chunksystems.com/os.htm"]http://www.chunksystems.com/os.htm[/url] The ultimate envelope filter/synth? Should be in the UK at the end of August according to the manufacturer...[/quote] It won't be in the UK at all - they don't have a UK distributor. If you want one you'll have to order it from Godlyke in the USA.

IMO the cheapest way to get a really good synth sound is the EHX Bass Micro Synth. You can pick them up used for about £100 if you can find one. I don't think you'll get much for £60.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='249731' date='Jul 28 2008, 04:16 PM']It depends what you want. Some people love the OC-2 because of the cool was it "glitches" in the lower registers.[/quote] I think most people like the OC-2 for its sound. With the -1 Oct soloed it's sweet. And of course they're dirt cheap, so that helps. Sticking with cheap, the Digitech Bass Synth Wah does a decent octave down. Getting pricier, the EBS Octabass is supposed to be pretty good but I've never tried one. The EHX Micro POG has very clever tracking but the tone isn't that great IMO. And the Foxrox Octron sounds good but it's a bit pricey.