EliasMooseblaster

I could also get behind this - the title track from London Calling as such a promising start, but then I find myself skipping every other track. Quite the anticlimax!

Sounds like a good choice to me - my first one was a Hohner (in D). I've since acquired a few Lee Oskars for different keys after a friend introduced me to them, but I still play the Hohner (when the right key comes up!) I can offer you two tips: 1. Don't expect it to sound great in C. Ironically enough, diatonic harps sound best when played in "second position", also known as "cross position", which is in G. Basically the fifth of whichever key your harp is tuned to. Cross-position gives you a Mixolydian mode, which most harp licks are based on. "First position" (C) can be made to work, but I've only ever got horribly Bob Dylan-esque results from it myself. (1a. Similarly, they also sound good in "third position" - D in this case - as you get a nice wistful Dorian mode.) 2. Learning how to bend notes is worth the effort. It takes a while to work out what to do with your mouth, but it will give you a lot more control over the instrument once you nail it. Hope you enjoy it - for such a tiny instrument, it can be a lot of fun!

What beautiful specimens! I know the feeling: I once went out to buy a pair of jeans, and made the mistake of taking a route through Denmark Street. By the time I got home I'd somehow acquired an 8-string bass as well.

Ooh, what flavour? I've been playing diatonic blues harps on and off for quite a while now - often been tempted to give a chromatic one a go, but I suspect it may be a very different beast to work with!

Trout Mask Replica ...and I'm sure I won't be alone in this respect. I quite like Beefheart on the whole. The Magic Band were wilfully weird and "out there" at the best of times, and I will readily defend several of their other albums. As a huge fan of Tom Waits, I can see why the Captain was such a big influence, and having come to love a lot of Waits' more "challenging" albums, I felt compelled to give this one its due attention. I still don't get it. It's just too incoherent. I can see from previous attempts that it has its merits, but I just can't see it growing on me.

There was a guitarist I played with for several years, who always had a lovely tone - one thing I noticed was that he always had the output volume on his Blues Junior fully up, and adjusted the input and guitar volumes to get things sounding right. I was reminded of this while reading WoT's very interesting and highly GAS-inducing Handbox thread (see below) - the chap who built it apparently suggested running the volume fully open for best results. Now after years of playing with (admittedly never very high-end) SS amps, I always started with the bass volume on '10' and relied on the output volume to set my level. But I recently tried the above with my guitars (into a little hybrid amp) and found the clean tones much more satisfying, even through headphones. Tried the same at the last rehearsal, where I can run the Ashdown at a decent volume, and the tone was certainly good...I didn't have enough time to experiment and decide whether it was "better." Since I can't really use my bass valve amps in anger at home with a sleeping toddler, anyone care to validate these findings for me? Have you found better results backing off the volume on your passive basses and making the power stage valves do the heavy lifting?

Did anyone else click onto this thread hoping that the "Japan Confusion" might be an exciting new design by Fender?

It's even better when you're playing bass for a bloke who's rushed through his set with 15 minutes to spare, panics a bit, and starts blasting through a load of new songs that he's never even played to you before, let alone rehearsed with you, hoping that you'll "pick it up in no time" - not only have I never heard of the song, nobody else in the room has either...

Ha! Not so much "the fifth Beatle" as "the fourth chord"...

Vary it to suit - it depends on the bass I'm playing, but also on the room I'm playing it in, who I'm playing with, and even what mood I'm in!

As Chris rightly points out above, it shouldn't be a case of following one member of the band. Of course it can often feel like you have to follow the drummer if they lose control of the tempo, partly because so much pop and rock music have each beat of the bar emphasised by the drums. That said, if the band are listening to each other properly, you can rein in a drummer who's getting a bit overexcited. Play behind the beat a bit more, emphasise any notes on the beats - especially while they're playing fills - and a good drummer will realise they've sped up, as opposed to dragging the whole band away with them!

Once I got past the beauty of the brushed aluminium body (it took a while), I couldn't help but notice the slightly purple hue of the fingerboard. Is it a trick of the light, or do you have a fancy and exotic wood under those strings?

Remind me to schedule any future amp purchases around mid-February!

"...after several days' exchange of evidence, EHX's lawyer summed up her case for the prosciutto. The judge then allowed the jerky to retire, giving them 12 hours to come to a unanimous brisket."

+1 - I read glowing reviews of their C-1 condenser while I was looking to upgrade my home recording setup, so I took a punt on two of them. Turns out they were good enough to record a solo EP with!

+2 - I haven't tried their basses, but I've had a Vintage VS6 for donkey's years now. I'm sure it's partly down to familiarity, but I've gone into shops and tried out some of the "real deal" Gibson SGs (admittedly the cheaper end of the series) and Epiphones, and come away feeling quite underwhelmed by the difference.

As a confirmed analogue luddite (playing my passive basses through all-valve amps with passive tone stacks), I had a big plate of humble pie recently when I helped my friend record a song at her friend's studio, and the drums were the only thing I played that went anywhere near a mic. Bass and guitar went straight into the desk, and I had to admit that the plugins this chap had sounded really good! However, the song in question was J-rock, a long way from the blues-rock I'm normally accustomed to. So your point about analogue compression got me thinking: how close are digital modellers to replicating the sensitivity of a Tube Screamer?

I can particularly relate to this with the one very specific example of a venue that insisted we use the house backline because our own amps hadn't recently PAT tested. Then, as the gig drew nearer, I chanced across something on Facetube to the effect that their house PA had given up the ghost earlier in the week. I got in touch with the guy to ask, was this going to be a problem for our gig? Should I arrange to bring our PA to the venue? No no, he said, there was a problem, but we'll have it sorted. Not exactly reassured by all that I'd heard so far, I reiterated my offer to bring our PA, if he could let us know ASAP. On the night of the gig, I arrived at the venue first to find them frantically trying to get a new desk to work. Unsurprisingly, it didn't. The guy suggested, well the other night we just put the vocal mic through a spare guitar amp, it worked fine. Not when at least two of the bands have backing vocals, it chuffing won't. I 'phoned the others to say, turn the car around, we're going to need the chuffing PA after all. Was he concerned about whether our PA was PAT tested before we set it up, about an hour before doors? Was he c**k.

It's also worth bearing in mind that if you're not entirely sold on the tone, you could probably get a Tonerider or Wilkinson pickup to replace the stock P for south of £50 - just make sure the neck feels right!

Ain't that the truth! There are a lot of musicians in my office, and they'd been putting on a few regular music nights long before I started in the job. After getting to know people I was invited to come and play at one of these nights. I arrived while they were setting up in a nearby pub, and they seemed to be having some difficulty getting the PA to play nicely. I don't know how they got the impression that I might know what I was doing...I think a few of them had checked out Cherry White online, been impressed, and somehow put two and two together to get five, with the non-sequituur that I must therefore know how to operate a 16-channel mixing desk. Working it out was a mixed blessing - on the plus side, I got a decent sound out of it all, and the gig went well. On the downside, they now expect me to function as sound engineer at all subsequent nights. As the saying goes, in the land of the needy, the man too polite to say "no" is at risk of becoming the band's b**ch.

Now come on, Rog, at least give your own band until '73, and Quadrophenia. For me, there's a stretch between '67 (The Who Sell Out) and '73 where they can do no wrong. They came off the boil a bit after that period, but plenty of other bands started peaking then. Waters-era Pink Floyd probably hit their peak between '73 and '77, for example.

This is probably a very important distinction to make! And now that you've made it, I shall be completely contrary and bring up the excellent bang-for-buck that can (sometimes) be achieved with parts or kit builds. My kit-build Precision and my shonky 3-pickup Frankenbass are probably still the cheapest in my collection; not necessarily the best tones but I'm certainly very happy with them. For one that I can stick a definite list price on, my cheapest bass is an Epi EB-3. I don't know about "best" tone - it's an acquired taste at the best of times, but after its upgrade (a DiMarzio to replace the stock mudbucker), it's greatly improved, and is kind of in a category of its own compared to my others...

Edited - duplicate post

^ this. My first thought for low-mid priced would be the Squier VMs - they do a Jazz and a Precision, but the fret lines are standard. On the other hand, I know from experience that you might be able to pick up a second-hand Warwick-Rockbass Corvette for not much more, and that likely have a blank board. Gibson-style fretlesses seem to be like hen's teeth from what I've seen. Short of a stroke of good luck, I expect you'd have to look into a custom job for a fretless SG. Though, speaking of custom jobs, you could always nab yourself a loaded Jazz body and a fretless neck to bolt together - you could probably do quite well off Fleabay without having to spend too much.

Buggrit, I'm going to bend the rules: Korg Pitchblack+. Yep, I know it's a tuner, but the "+" model is also an A/B switch. On the occasions when my pedals haven't made it to the venue, this has been the once I've missed the most - I can trust my guitars to keep their tuning reasonably well during a set, but most gigs really call for a 4-string and an 8, and having to swap leads around between songs is quite a discomfort in the fundament when you're trying to make a set run smoothly!