thisnameistaken

More often than not the issue I have with house sound guys is that they're rockers. Not that I have anything against rockers, generally, but they tend to have a pretty rigid idea of what the bass is supposed to sound like, and with the bands I do it's not really what my bass ought to sound like. I suppose it works for 90% of the bands they get in, but it means I always have to be "the awkward one". Sometimes you get a guy who's happy to change things up to suit the band's sound, but more often it's arms folded and staring at you like you're speaking Japanese.

Ah - I found that when I was looking for one, but it wasn't one of those. It was a relatively new combo, think it might've been a solid state amp, maybe a newer take on the Portaflex.

[quote name='Josh' post='196075' date='May 10 2008, 04:52 PM']Doug Johns, I've been getting shed loads of inspiration from this guy for a good while now, also I'm starting to get a strange liking for Pedullas.[/quote] When I was a kid they had Pedullas in Musicground in Leeds for the sort of money I didn't have - I always wanted one of those. Have to admit I don't always dig "bass virtuoso" types but Doug Johns has got a great groove. He doesn't play stuff that's just bound to sound awful like, say, Wooten does.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='229425' date='Jun 30 2008, 01:20 AM']See now I have this belief that there's a lot of bassists missing out on what a really good 15" can do on its own. People equate 'punch' with 10" speakers probably because most of the 15"s they hear are the terrible ones in cheap combos.[/quote] Actually I've got a 15" aversion that I think stems from bad cabs. Like everybody else I started out with crappy 1x15" combos, then switched to 410 cabs when I had more money. Later, for a summer, I gigged with an Ampeg 2x15" and never liked the sound of it, and never went anywhere near 15s after that. But recently I was at a friend's house and he had an Ampeg combo* with a 15 in it that sounded bloody brilliant - lots of lows, lots of high-end presence, really killer little combo. Apparently they don't make them any more. So yeah I'm currently gigging an Ashdown 410, but because I use an octaver a lot I'm a bit disappointed with it. And of course it's too heavy because I live in a first-floor flat. Next step I think is to try two 1x12" cabs. At least they'll be portable. * Maybe someone can help me find one: It was a 1x15" combo, the amp flipped upside-down into the cab for storage, and it had a metal spike that screwed into the back so you could tilt it. Cleverest little combo I ever saw.

[quote name='Fliplowe' post='195461' date='May 9 2008, 02:41 PM']Andy Rourke is a legend, great lines, heres my take on Nowhere fast (Bored on day off), forgotten how funky they were![/quote] Andy Rourke's Smiths stuff really was great. Pisses me off that Morrissey painted him as "just a session musician" during all that business in court over royalty payments. His contributions to their hits were huge. I never really spent a lot of time sitting down and working out other peoples' lines, but I had to with The Smiths. Funnily enough I've never played a P-bass with a pick. I should get one. Oh yeah, I should pick a bassist... Ernie McKone doesn't get much love. Played on all Galliano's stuff and for Push before that (anyone remember "Traffic"? That had a killer throb of a bassline).

[quote name='cheddatom' post='231174' date='Jul 2 2008, 10:50 AM']I don't think the jaco analogy is very valid. He had a playing style that was distinctive. You would recognise his playing style, but think he had sh*t tone.[/quote] That's sort-of my point. He'd still sound like Jaco, you'd still know it was Jaco. Whereas some other half-arsed faker like me given a '62 Jazz fretless and a huge Acoustic 370 rig would still sound like a half-arsed faker. I bet everybody here's gone through periods where they're frustrated with their sound and tried spending their way out of it. It never works. It's very rarely your gear that needs to change - unless you have majorly crappy gear - the only way is to learn/play your way out of it.

He's the one pro player I'm genuinely jealous of, seems to turn his hand to anything and still come out smelling of roses. Love the old cheesy fretless stuff with Gary Numan and Paul Young, love the thumpy deep stuff with De La Soul and D'Angelo, don't particular like John Mayer's music but - oh look - there's Pino again and suddenly he's coming over all John Paul Jones. Most natural player I've ever heard I think.

The geezer from Subhumans was pretty good IIRC. No idea what his name is.

When I first heard Maxwell Murder I think I clapped at the end of the bass break. I was a proper anorak in those days... Not much has changed.

If you like the DL4, maybe get an Echo Park? The tap tempo is convenient to use, sounds like a DL4, but doesn't have expression inputs or looping or memory. On the plus side it's much smaller and cheaper.

Stamped on the end of the headstock on mine. A xx xx 91 (not trying to disguise the serial - just can't remember what the others are!). The last two are the year.

[quote name='lwtait' post='230899' date='Jul 1 2008, 08:58 PM']i see i have a lot of arguing my point to do here ... what i meant was that people are saying that the PERSON playing it and the way he/she plays makes most of the sound, so what i was saying was if that's so, if you don't have your perfect sound you'll never get it, cos its always you playing. ...[/quote] If you heard Jaco playing an Encore precision through a 10W RockTek practice amp do you think you wouldn't notice it was Jaco? Similarly: I'm willing to bet money that nobody's ever wandered past a venue and said "Wow, that must be Mark King's bass tech tuning up, I'd recognise that EQ setting anywhere!".

[quote name='ped' post='229979' date='Jun 30 2008, 07:55 PM']But I think the actual SOUND comes from other things more than the player's technique. A Musicman sound, for example, cannot be achieved on anything else (apart from a V bass obviously lol)[/quote] But can a player make a Stingray sound like something else? If you're going for a Stingray sound using a Stingray then the Stingray is the most important part of your sound. If you're not going for that sound then it probably isn't.

[quote name='ianrunci' post='229986' date='Jun 30 2008, 08:01 PM']I suppose we will have to accept the fact there is no one answer to the original posters question. Everyone will have their own view and each view will be right in its own way,[/quote] What? What sort of a conclusion is that? Sorry but I'm not going through nine pages of argument to settle on something so pathetically fluffy as "We're all right in our own way". I'm right and you're wrong, in our own way. How about that?

[quote name='jakesbass' post='229917' date='Jun 30 2008, 06:29 PM']I don't think you can actually stop people performing your material sorry to be such a dullard in the face of your joshing.[/quote] I'm not sure, but I remember Russ Abbott famously bought the rights to his song "Atmosphere" to stop it being played on the radio because he thought it was so sh*t - he went up in my estimation when I heard about that.

Fingers for me. I use a slightly unusual three-finger picking technique that I've only ever seen me and Percy Jones do (somebody else pointed out that I picked like Percy Jones - I'd never seen him play). Not that I sound anything like Percy Jones of course. I do like mixing things up with effects, and I have a couple of good basses, but I think my right hand has more to do with "my" sound than anything else.

We seem to have drifted from the original argument somewhat, and back on to the ire-inducing discussion of whether we should be publicly flogging people for playing Mustang Sally. Maybe we could set up a fund to buy the rights to as many of these tunes as possible, so we can ensure that nobody is ever allowed to play them again? Then you could turn around to those punters and say "Sorry mate, the PRS would have me banged to rights, it's more than my job's worth"...

I'm glad I wasn't the one to introduce the McDonalds analogy.

Think I've decided the Pulse Synth is altogether too harsh on its own unless the modulation is switched in, although it's very nice as a "low-bit-depth"-type fuzz. On my board though it's mostly going to want to have its hand held I think. It's basically just raw oscillator, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if you've got shaping controls elsewhere. The modulation goes a low way towards shaping it into something smoother, but I would've liked more depth available on a couple of controls. I've also found the envelope-following LFO speed setting can give more depth than the standard modulation, which is a bit weird - I would like that range without the envelope follower engaged. I don't know if these deeper tones are practical (I don't really know anything about analogue synthesis) but I know Mario has never had the opportunity to try it with a bass - the only reference he's got is guitar - so maybe there is potential for more bass-friendly tones. I've emailed him about this anyway so I'll no doubt get feedback soon. I'm definitely glad I paired it with the Meatwad. Through a particularly peaky, watery filter the Pulse Synth sounds very bonkers and had me grinning like a loon. It's also nice to set the Meatwad static and just dial in the filter so everything you want from the Pulse Synth comes through. Also if you set the Meatwad's resonance way up and the decay quite long it's cool to just play one note and listen to the Pulse Synth's harmonics get swallowed one by one as the filter sweeps back down. I also think the Pulse Synth will sound cool blended with my OC-2 so I'm going to try that tomorrow. Then I'll do some samples.

I saw that a while back, been trying to get my sister's little boy to do the same but he's crap.

Clips will have to wait until the weekend I think - spent an hour with these boxes so far and I'm still none the wiser. Lotsa knobs + switches... Pulse Synth: Got some hilarious '50s B-movie-sounding stuff with the LFO modulation in, not managed to find an especially bassy tone without it yet, still more knob-twiddling to do. Everything's dependant on everything else so it's tricky to dial stuff in. Once I figure out what they actually do it should get easier. Out of the box it sounded like a harsh fuzz, although it seems possible to calm that down a bit (again, controls complicated, experimentation needed). There's a tone knob on it but even at zero there's a lot of treble. There's potential for shaping it with the Meatwad though. Meatwad: In a word: Lush. Tried it with a couple of fuzzes in the loop (Muff, Blowtorch) but so far not happy with the results, most of the fuzz is getting eaten by the filter. There's so many band selection options on this thing I think I just need to find the right tweaks. The combo of attack/decay/sensitivity/resonance/intensity controls really does let you set the filter response exactly how you want it, so much so I can't imagine ever needing another filter. It's definitely outmoded my Q-Tron already (Q-Tron coming soon to an Effects For Sale forum near you!). As for the expression pedal: The pedal itself that Lovetone recommends (Bespeco) isn't all that pleasant to use - it's a keyboard volume pedal so it rocks a bit far back for me, not too bad though given that the bottom of the range can get extremely low with the Meatwad anyway. Easy to use as a wah, was also doing some slow sweeps with the Pulse Synth in the Meatwad loop to get cheesy big beat/techno effects, definitely glad I got it.

[quote name='dannybuoy' post='227974' date='Jun 27 2008, 01:00 PM']Nice Meatwad! Has it got the switch added to retain the fx loop in bypass mode?[/quote] Yeah, actually I think Mario has made that more useful than I asked him to (seems to be a theme with this order!). The top two flicky switches you see on the left side of the unit (according to the sheet of scribbled instructions he sent): With both switches "on" it's normal Meatball operation - loop comes on with the filter. With both switches "off" the stomp switch switches between the Meatwad with the FX loop disabled and the FX loop with the Meatwad disabled. I'm guessing some other combination of the two will give the FX loop both with the Meatwad on and in bypass mode, and the other combination will be FX loop off either with the Meatwad on or in bypass mode. Remind me never to gig this thing when I'm pissed. There's a similarly complicated toggling mod on the Pulse Synth too, but I'll get to that later when I do sound clips. [quote name='dannybuoy' post='227974' date='Jun 27 2008, 01:00 PM']I'm after one of these myself - I thought if you wanted an expression socket you had to make do with a stereo fx send/return socket and use a Y-cable - or is having the exp socket on the bottom a custom mod too?[/quote] The TRS jack for the effects loops is only necessary if you order both the exp. pedal jack and the external filter trigger input. I decided the external trigger in wasn't entirely necessary (you could just put your filter-controlling signal in the input and your bass signal in the FX return) so managed to avoid having to do that. [quote name='dannybuoy' post='227974' date='Jun 27 2008, 01:00 PM']Also, did you get stung for import duty/charges?[/quote] About £80 of your English quids, but I haven't paid it yet. Big sticker on the box saying it must be paid before delivery, bit weird. Have to call them later to avoid having customs officers turn up and smash up my house I suppose. Right, now I really MUST finish this work...