EliasMooseblaster

I managed to do the opposite years ago: disconnected the head from a Laney combo after it started playing up, and connected the speaker to a new head. So I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

Oh dear - arguably, having one member of the band not playing along looks worse than nobody trying it! I do remember sharing a bill with one group where the guitarist and singer were obviously making the effort (leather jackets, dark colours, and other such accessories) but the drummer and bassist were just in hoodies and tracksuit bottoms. It made it look like the rhythm section had failed to turn up and the singer and guitarist had asked the roadies to fill in for them!

(It sounds a bit like this if you want a quick demo)

This is the nub of the question, I'd say: is the pedal going to be used for fat, fuzzy tones to thicken up your bassline, or do you want it as more of a boost to make your solos audible? If you're after a soloing pedal, I'd recommend the Ibanez Bass Tubescreamer every time. If you just want to fuzz up your basslines, you could do a lot worse than the Bass Big Muff (or clone of the same). I know it's technically a fuzz, but it certainly allows you to get dirty tones without sacrificing bass frequencies - heck, mine even has a bass boost option if you need to overcompensate!

But those that do tend to be trustworthy sources.

This is broadly correct, at least insofar as if your song is in E, you'll get the most convincing results out of an A harp. It's a bit different from the idea that you transpose for the instrument, like you would with brass or woodwind - rather, you buy the harp at conert pitch, but play it modally. A diatonic Blues harp in A major will give you the notes of the "standard" A major scale, or Ionian mode. But if you try playing the E major scale on the same harp, the closest you can get (without bending notes) is the Mixolydian mode of E. This mode lends itself better to Blues and Americana more generally, but also puts the notes you're most likely to want to bend (3rd, 5th) into inhale positions, which - believe me - are far easier to bend than the exhale. (You can also get a Dorian mode of B out of an A harp, should you want to play a minor-key Blues with it)

On a more positive note, the inlay on the fingerboard looks quite pretty. Presumably somebody else did that.

And there I was thinking I was free of GAS. They always manage to come up with something, don't they?

If I'm using my own amp, I just use the preamp that's built into that. If I'm not, I've a Hotone B-Station. My reasoning: I wanted something with a midrange control for as little money as I could get away with. The Behringer BDI-21 had been fine, but I felt like I was fighting the mid-scoop the whole time. The B-station also has a drive circuit and compressor, which put it in the same ballpark as things like the EHX Battalion, and I was able to get my hands on a B-station for a good price. I've been pretty pleased with it so far, though I've yet to try it out in a live setting.

This one might surprise you, but: Gibson Thunderbird. If I've not picked mine up for a while, I'm always amazed by how light it is. You wouldn't think it for a bass which needs a 5ft-long case, but the awkward shape is misleading. If you're looking to keep your budget tight, I hear good things about the new run of Epiphone T-birds (the "Vintage Pro" seems to be the series to go for) - if the weight is comparable to the Gibsons, you'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Not strictly a bass pedal, but I've found Joyo's guitar chorus pedal surprisingly good for fretless bass. Might be a tad toppy for your tastes - it was certainly brighter than the Boss Bass Chorus I also tried when I bought it - but certainly good for a vaguely convincing Pino impression.

My current home recording setup is quite simple - mics -> Focusrite interface -> computer. It does a decent enough job, and I've been certainly been impressed by how much the Focusrite has improved the sound going into the computer. But, as ever, GAS finds a way to strike, and I see that it's possible to get one's hands on some relatively affordable mic preamps with valves in them. As I'm mostly recording acoustic stuff at the moment, I've found myself adding a touch of "tube-like" saturation in the mix to warm up the overall sound, so I've wondered whether it's worth trying a valve preamp in between the mic and the Focusrite. Has anyone else tried this, and does it make a worthwhile difference to the sound?

Oh yeah...further to my response yesterday, I've just remembered that I would quite routinely switch basses during Cherry White's usual set. But that was because most of the songs were fine on a 4-string, but a couple of songs needed the 8-string. I'd like to think that was a big enough change in sound to justify swapping guitars.

As Chris rightly points out, it's more common for the bassist and drummer to settle on one sound and stick to that; usually tweaking the bass sound to taste rather than changing it for something completely different. I'd have thought the most common reason for guitarists to switch guitars mid-set are: 1. Different tunings 2. Broken strings 3. Overestimating how much a rodent's posterior the audience gives about the different tones available from their three very similar-looking Les Pauls 4. Just wanting to show off. I distinctly remember seeing one group whose two guitarists had very differing approaches. One of them had a rack with half a dozen guitars, which he insisted on swapping over every other song. The other just came on with a Telecaster. After watching them both, my friends and I agreed that "Just-a-Tele" man was the much better guitarist, and that "I-will-definitely-need-all-six-of-these" man was possibly overcompensating.

That was my first thought as well - it's made it quite difficult to choose! And I'm sure my three worst offenders will change over time, as popular songs fall out of favour, and more terrible piles of shyte splatter down on us unsuspecting buggers below, but as of this morning, I'm going with: Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. (IT HAS NO TUNE. A vaguely funky horn riff doth not an entire song make.) Wonderwall / Don't Look Back in Anger by Oasis. (I'm allowing myself a joint entry for this one, because ten-year-old me, hearing them on the radio around the time that album came out, genuinely believed they were the same song.) Come On Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Pillocks. (It's not just that Kevin Rowland's slack-throated yelp is annoying, it's just that he seems to have inspired a legion of indie singers to mimic his style in a way that invariably sounds like a transparently affected grab for "authenticity." As patient zero, my condemnation falls squarely in his court.)

Obliquely related to this idea: I remember watching a documentary about Pink Floyd (20th anniversary of The Wall, or something like that) in which David Gilmour said, "In the past we have definitely thought, we are so faceless that we could probably send a different band up on stage, and a lot of people wouldn't know the difference." Whilst I think he did himself a bit of a disservice with that idea, musically speaking, there's a similarity with Kiss here - while Pink Floyd made themselves faceless by not putting their faces on their album artwork (I think Ummagumma was the last one to feature a picture of the band(?)), Kiss did the same by obscuring theirs behind the black-and-white face paint. Another man of a similar stature could copy the makeup, put on the togs, and probably make a decent fist of passing for Gene Simmons. After all, a Kiss show is all about the theatrics (I'm sorry: I've no time for their music), and as long as somebody could put on the same persona, they could probably fill that role and the band could continue in perpetuity. And, much as I don't like their songs, I'd take that over the seemingly endless barrage of crap musical theatre based on exhumed songbooks from yesterday's popular artists that seems to be endlessly clogging up London's West End these days.

The most obvious upside to having the external pre-amp is that you can use it with multiple basses. Obviously you can always unsolder the onboard preamp and pop it into a different bass, but that does rather interrupt the flow of a live show...

Absolutely, the Thunderbird cases are long enough to smuggle a small Howitzer...

Is that a more recent change? My CTM-100 definitely has a standby, though the smaller models don't.

I can believe that. I got really annoyed by the quality of the FOH sound when I saw Joanne Shaw Taylor a few years ago at Shepherd's Bush. I think the seat I had must have been positioned in a bit of a bass trap, but it wasn't a problem when the support act were on - King King sounded great, I thought the sound was really well balanced. As soon as JST came on, I was being assailed by some horrendous booming bass from the subs that just ruined the rest of the mix for me. I wondered at the time whether her bassist just insisted on having plenty of low end in his FOH sound, but now you mention it, they might have left some of the subs turned off while the support were playing.

Now that's a collaboration I'd be interested to hear (purely on the grounds of masochism and morbid curiousity).

You're close with the space theme...

I was looking speculatively at those the other day - I think Gear4Music might be a little confused as to what a Baritone Guitar actually is... (...it's particularly confusing as they stock another model which looks like it might actually be a bari, at least as we know them)

See if you can guess which one of those my parents had a copy of...!

Badmotorfinger for me, just on personal preference. Admittedly I was too young to be aware of these albums in '91, so I was late coming to the party. BSSM was good, but the Chillis were never a big favourite of mine, and I remember Nevermind being an eye-opener when I heard it for the first time. I don't think I'm the only one on here who went through a Nirvana "phase" but got a bit fed up with them after a couple of years. To be honest, when I discovered Soundgarden, Cobain & co got pushed to one side. I appreciate that Nevermind had a massive impact at the time. But I've gone back to it a few times since, and I just don't think it's aged very well. I think I understand why 14-year-old me was impressed by it, but grumpy *cough*-year-old me just thinks a lot of it sounds a bit dated and badly written. Badmotorfinger, in contrast, still sounds fresh and inventive. I'm sure plenty of you will disagree with me!