EliasMooseblaster

Not with my settings...

Sorry to hear about your guitarist. Love the track though - your bass tone is to die for!

I always maintain it's a shame that Last.FM has been gradually going the way of the dodo for the last few years. Spotify might be alright if you know what you want to listen to, but I remain unconvinced by its suggestions for new discoveries via algorithm. Last.FM, on the other hand, switched me on to at least two or three artists who I happily follow to this day.

Bear with me, as I explain in convoluted fashion the small group of people who occupy the overlap in the Venn diagram connecting the Lithuanian version of The Voice to up-and-coming UK hard-rock band Inglorious. Early in 2015, I had arranged a gig for Cherry White in the Victoria Inn, Derby. It was to be our first outing with our new singer, Donata. I very much doubt any of this parish will be familiar with her work prior to joining CW, but before coming to London, she had enjoyed a few years of pop chart success in her native Lithuania, after winning their version of The Voice. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this fame had not travelled as far as the UK, but it did mean that we had an unknown but very impressive lead singer in the fold. (And if nothing else, it impressed the two Lithuanian colleagues in an office where I briefly worked around that time.) Also on the bill were a young band called Parasight. And I do mean young: I think the eldest was barely 18, and they all looked quite a big younger than that! But they were good. Full of energy, as many of us doubtless were at that age, but also tight and well-rehearsed. Notably, the two guitarists were playing off each other really well, and they had some nice Wishbone/Maiden-esque harmoised lines. And really friendly and unpretentious when we met them; nice guys to a man. I heard via the band's Facetube page that they'd folded, which I thought was a shame, but they mentioned that one of their guitarists, Danny, had landed himself a couple of really promising opportunities, of which I forget the details now. But following the ins and outs of his own Facetagram page, I gather that he has not only replaced the original lead guitarist in Inglorious, but has also played Slash in a biopic about Guns'n'Roses. So there you have it: that night in Derby is is, to my knowledge, the point of smallest separation between Inglorious and Lithuanian TV talent shows.

Or perhaps, "Man, I feel like a plonker..."

I know the type you mean - not wishing to detrail the thread, but donkeys ago I manned the phones part-time at a driving school. I never bit my tongue harder than when a guy phoned up one morning to ask if we had "a stimulator." "I'm sorry sir, a what?" (Thinks: I think you've confused us with the shop at the other end of the high street...) "A stimulator. You know, one of them computers you can practice on before you go in a real car." I politely explained that we didn't have a driving simulator, and asked whether he was still interested in booking any lessons. But throughout the conversation, he insisted on bring up the "stimulators" again and again, saying that the bigger companies had "stimulators" he could use, and how we should get ourselves a "stimulator", while I politely explained that simulators were quite expensive, and our office space was very limited. I hope he managed to find the stimulation he was after.

Probably the same way that various companies can offer unpaid internships without, apparently, falling foul of minimum wage legislation. It's within the letter of the law, even if it is a d!ck move.

And with a fretless Wal, how could you not love fretless bass? Enjoyed reading that - thanks for sharing!

Similarly, I look forward to seeing Fender's offering for the Mark Knopfler Strat starter pack...

Glad to hear the Ernies have done the trick!

I think this was several years before dear Al was bitten by the Schecter bug. (Even if it was him, he's not having that serial number...)

At least you might have got a sale out of it - way back when I had the patience to log onto another popular bass forum (which may or may not share its initials with a respiratory disease common in Victorian times), I got a fair old Spanish Inquisition from one guy who seemed to be desperate to know every little detail about my Schecter. I wasn't selling it - I'd just mentioned on a thread that I was very happy with my purchase. He picked up on my mention of the neck profile being "more Jazz-like than P-like" and wanted to know exactly which neck profile that would be - C, D, U, X, Y, Z? I went onto Schecter's website and quoted the measurements they'd kindly supplied for public use. OK, what's the nut width? I wasn't about to nip home and measure the thing - far easier to head back to the webpage and get it from the horse's mouth. String spacing at the bridge? There's a website I'd like to recommend to you, mate: it's called "Google." What's the serial number on your bass? ...and at this point it started to feel like I was being stalked. I stopped responding, and was very grateful that he didn't chase me up for further answers.

I can believe this. We played a festival in Milton Keynes years ago - all original bands and massive local attendance. I was chatting to one of the punters after our set, and I mentioned how nice it was that so many locals had come down for the weekend to support all these unknown, independent bands. He explained to me that they couldn't hear original live music anywhere else (apart from the Stables or the Bowl), as the pubs in the area stuck to booking tributes or covers bands almost exclusively. So any locals who wanted a fix of fresh, new stuff would come along to festivals like this one. (It's not often I hear about the supply:demand ratio being skewed the other way when it comes to live music!)

+1 I've often thought Pete Shelley's best songs could have been a hit regardless of which decade/musical era he'd written them in.

Yeah, driving from London to Leeds and back again the same night, in driving rain both ways, might have been the tipping point for me! Ironically, the biggest distance we travelled was one of the most enjoyable - possibly because we flew to Germany, all sitting in different ends of the plane (that's Queasyjet for you...), then I had to get on the U-Bahn to meet a friend of our drummer to borrow a bass for the night, so no time was spent folded up in the seat of a van. And the venue treated us exceptionally well, which helped (after hurrying from Schoenefeld, to somewhere in North Berlin, and then back down to Kreuzberg, a litre of Dunkelsbier on the house could not have been more welcome!)

In my own mind, I've reached a point where I separate "playing the gig" from "being on the road." I think a lot of a people on this thread have alluded to the similar ideas; I've realised that I tend to enjoy the actual performance, but I find being on the road more and more tedious. The time on stage can be immensely satisfying; the time in the van can be incredibly boring, and it's unfortunate that the latter dwarfs the former. Since I started the solo project, I've been a lot more selective about the gigs I choose to do. It's early days, so the audiences are smaller, and the atmosphere a bit less exciting, but at least I know I'm not playing for free when I get there. Needing only a couple of acoustic guitars means I can jump on a train and come back the same night without too much hassle. Essentially, making the "on the road" aspect less tedious has made it less of a shock to go back to square one in terms of booking the gigs and building the crowd!

Following this one to the letter, I probably can't count my very first (proper) bass amp, as I I haven't switched it on in months! (I have a feeling I even put it up on the "Recycling" listings as it's need of some more comprehensive repairs than I can perform...Laney Session 40 Bassman, anyone?) So, I still have a Seiko chromatic tuner, which was in my case for every gig, probably up until the point that I bought a pedal tuner, and is still my go-to for tuning. Best of all, its low current demands meant that I could give knackered old 9V batteries a new lease of life by popping them into this tuner!

What if they could only find a bassist who would fall for it...would the Edinburgh Tattoo be brave enough to have an extended bass solo as its musical accompaniment?

I'd hazard a guess that the most effective thing they can do is encourage musicians not to volunteer for it. The thing is, that although it's pretty s***ty of REMT to expect highly qualified musicians to play without receiving a fee, there's nothing illegal about it. Nobody's rounding up vagrant violinists or homeless harpists and forcing them to play; their participation would be entirely voluntary. In REMT's defence, it looks like they've been (reasonably) upfront about what they are willing and not willing to pay for - to be honest, getting your housing and food paid for is a step above what I've received for some gigs in the past! And nobody's being forced to do it against their will. There may well be some musicians who feel charitable towards the Tattoo and wish to do play it just for the fun of it. That's up to them. I hope there are not too many highly-qualified-but-very-naive musicians who hope that playing this event will help them tap into some treasure trove of more lucrative opportunities; unfortunately many of us only learn from making these mistakes in the first place. In any case, REMT aren't breaking any laws, which limits what action the MU can take from a legal standpoint. But, as I say, their attitude towards the musicians' livelihoods is pretty s***ty - hopefully it will deter a lot of suitably qualified musicians from volunteering their time for such an event, and if they come a-cropper and have to pay for appropriate musicians at short notice, perhaps that will teach them a lesson. So now we just have to hope for a shortage of applicants, the better that justice might prevail...

Sounds good to me! Probably a slightly cliched choice - and I'm assuming historic endorsees count - but mine would have to be John Entwistle. Without his testing and input, the roundwound bass string could have been a completely different beast from the ones we know today. Nearly 20 years ago, I started using Rotosound Swing Bass strings in my endeavours to get closer to his tone, and despite the odd dalliance with other brands, I've always found myself going back to them.

I've a Little Bastard 30 (the original run, before they rebadged them as the CTM-30), and a CTM-100. Basically, I got bitten by the valve bug a few years ago, and haven't looked back. Though I am grateful that they're relatively light compared some of their competitors (the LB-30, especially)! The most tenuously British bit of gear might be my Precision copy: it was a self-assembly kit which I bought from Brandoni Guitars, who are based in North London. But I think I'm right in saying that their supply of kits was a huge stock of surplus parts they'd acquired from Fender's Japanese factories. So it's a set of Japanese parts licensed from an American parent company, sold to me by a British company! Made in Britain? Well, it was bolted together in my parents' garage in Surrey...

From a guitar perspective, it's often a bit of a surprise to people to learn that a lot of notable guitar tones over the decades were created by players with relatively light strings. Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of the few notable soloists to have routinely used .12s (and possibly .13s?) on his Strat; Pete Townshend and Malcolm Young have tended to favour .11s and .12s, but then they're both better known as rhythm players. By contrast, Dave Gilmour has always favoured .10s, while I believe Carlos Santana, BB King, and Billy Gibbons are all in the ".09s or lighter" club. The other notable member of this group is Tony Iommi, who was using the lightest strings he could get to ease the pain on his severed fingertips, but still created an absolutely genre-defining guitar tone. The moral of the above is that you can go lighter without sacrificing your tone. Yes, your tone will change with string gauge, but it won't necessarily make it "better" or "worse," and perhaps crucially for you, lighter strings needn't necessarily mean a lighter sound. The main difference will be in how they fare under your fingers: heavier strings will cope with the abuse better if you're quite a physical player. I've used RS66 45-105s myself for 20-odd years and found they handle my second-rate John Entwistle impersonation admirably well, and they have enough tension to handle drop D quite happily.

Probably true of a lot of "British" amps though, surely? I know my Ashdowns are British designs built in China. But if that counts, my amp choices have been quite consistently - if accidentally - British: two Ashdown bass heads, which have a succeeded three different Laney combos. I think the Berg cab is the only exception! (And on guitar, a Blackstar which has replaced a Vox. We'll ignore the little Squier practice amp I had to begin with!)

Congratulations on your new arrival, and welcome to the club! A CTM-100 into a well-voiced cab has turned out to be my absolute Holy Grail for live sound, and I hope it proves to be the same for you.

...similarly, how many of us have had to convince somebody that actually, making music can be a career if you're making money from it?