cytania

BTB470, SR300, ICB2000EX and GSR200 all com in PW models, PW=piano white in Ibanese. Hmm, only 4...

Overall the guitar market is overheated. There are alot of brands with very similar offerings often owned by either the Fender or Gibson cartels. Logic dictates that some brands will be rested, many were only recently revived for retro appeal. Setting yourself up as a luthier seems to be almost a middle-class pose in the UK and there are some very marginal back of garage operations (often in solid body electric guitars). I just hope that any contraction will preserve the real craftsmen with a different take on building. However the cynic in me expects buyers to gravitate to the safety of Js and Ps. Am looking for bass2 myself at present, just haven't found that perfect combo of looks and sounds...

Cynical answer is probably like their other Precision clones, only differences appear to be new purple colour and bridge and pickup covers which are absent on the Power bass. Unless anyone from Bass Centre can illuminate?

So there was I looking through Ibanez's 2008 catalogue (great download area they have) for a second bass and it struck me. Where were all the candy sparkle colours of old? Well there were a few but I was suddenly struck that most basses were black, white or gray. Looking at a jazz and precision project and again I was struck by the fact that although Fender has a huge range of colours most of the standard basses are B&W variations. Perhaps I could get a red tortoiseshell plate to liven things up Glenn Matlock style, but pickup covers again were monochome. Is this something to do with playing bass or the current metal band endorsees (Slipknot [shudder])? When will rock bass reconnect with it's inner hippy?

Well we spent two hours in the pub after rehearsal and I think we are called Jukebox Messiah, or was it Jukebox Assassins? My favourite was Jukebox Jedi. As you can guess from the name the range of cover material is broad. everything from Elvis to Metallica...

As far as I can figure it Tokai only made Rick copies in the 70s. The new Rockinbetter basses you see in shops today are made for Indie in China and do not related to Tokai in anyway. So if that is a Tokai expect it to show plenty of wear. Beware the new Rockinbetter's because their 'fireglow' paint looks more like a 'fadedglow'. When I first saw one for a few minutes I entertained the fantasy that they had been in shop window for decades and could be mine for a 70s price... Neckwise my humble fingers found them tiring, very like a new issue Burns Bison bass. Nothing like a real Rick neck.

Well since I posted that post I've been round a few shops. I've tried out a 'Rockinbetter' and a genuine Rickenbacker. Visually the Rockinbetter makes you go 'ooh, a Rick', you then check the price and wonder if the store owner is aware of the mistake. Perhaps it's been there a long, long time as the 'fire-glow' paint job looks very window faded. Then you notice a Chinese checker's sticker and the cheeky Rockinbetter logo. Darn! I suspect this may be something by Indie as the store I saw it in had a whole load of new Indie guitars of a similar quality (sorta decent, sorta wrong). As an actual bass it wasn't bad but the neck was utterly wrong. Neck profile was a squarish club, sorta thing I found latter on a Chinese made Burns Bison bass. In my hands it was soon tiring and encouraged unmusical buzzes from the start. This week I finally got to handle a real Rick, Cardiff Guitars have a lovely natural one. First thing I noticed over the fake was the lacquer. Not just a mean Fender gloss, the neck lacquer was deep, glassy even. Immediately could see how it would alter the tone just because it made my fingers respond differently. On the down side I found the big Rick guard totally off-putting for fingerstyle (sure you can remove it, but...). I'd tried a maple necked Ibanez ATK a few weeks before but the Rickenbacker is so different fret and curvature wise, a whole different world. I've always found that 'only a real Rick, plays like a Rick' adage totally pompous and too a degree it is. What Rick fans are trying to say is that Rickenbackers are built so differently that no standard factory is properly set-up to make anything remotely similar. Rickenbacker's product is sort of old fashioned, all that spraying and cutting back, it's something no faker wants to bother with. A home hobbyist could produce something close but only at a great investment of money and man-hours.

I sorta got into bass playing from hybrid picking on regular guitar; where you hold a pick with thumb and first finger but pick with middle and ring fingers. It wasn't a straight-forward transfer but I did try both pick and fingerstyle. My first observation is that it's hard to switch between them. Hats off to anyone who can play one number fingerstyle and the next tune with a pick. Second I find getting into a fast start is easier with a pick but if you work at it fingerstyle you can do replicate most speedy stuff. You'll find mnemonics like 'bogger-bugger-bogger' written on my song sheets to help me. Observing full-on pick players I reckon what the pick grants is easy aggression. Finger style seduces you to be more subtle, sometimes this isn't required, but I'm now finding that if you push into rock playing you can land notes with satisfying 'twang' on demand. Picks are getting a bit dusty I'm afraid...

(Mods: wrong forum?) [/quote] Yep, I got the wrong forum, sorry chaps, can't work out how to flip it somewhere better :-(

My band's lead guitar/vocals is desperate to do 'Every Day Is Like Sunday' by Morrissey. The original track starts off with a lovely slide on the A string up from C to the tenth fret which gives a real Joy Division/New Order sound (there's even an analogue synth under the note). But the band want to do the track in the key of G not C. The same 3 - 10 slide on the E string doesn't have that Northern atmospheric grimness to it. What's going on? Should I restring down one gauge to get that tone or do I risk the flabbiness problem that 5 string players complain of? I'm intrigued by the possibilities of 5/6 stringers allowing easy pitch shifts but wonder how much leeway there is with gauges etc.

Thanks for that chaps, glad I wasn't missing something obvious. Got to handle an ATK300 today, good news was the neck profile was OK for a traditional D type, bad news was I couldn't get on with the maple top. Best news was I bumped into a Levinson Blade Tetra Standard, very nice bass, light and smooth not heavy and clunky like other jazz clones I've picked up, superb neck too. New high watermark for bass GAS :-)

Go to Ibanez's website and you can see many lovely finishes. Yet UK retailers often only seem to have the model in one finish. I had GAS for an ATK300RSP - that's red sparkle finish (perfect with the white pickguard) but can I see it anywhere? Two theories occur to me; 1) They make them in batches and the absent items will surface in the rest of the year, or 2) The elusive beasts will appear in the big run up to Christmas with great fanfare. Third possible theory is that distributors say 'oh that's too bling for dull old Britain, just send them trans grey' :-(

I guess what I'd find off-putting about this bass is looking through and seeing the folds of my jeans behind it. Wonder why they always use transparent acrylic? Guess I liked the neck, had just been round another shop with some Precision & Jazz clones that had awful feeling necks.

Just picked one up in a store, played a while then put it down. I had thought those remarks about it's scratchplates were nit-picks but they really did throw out my thumb placing. Doesn't feel right against the pickup or the neck. Also they're far from tortoise-shell-like, very plasticy. BAS deflating...

Well what dya know? This is acutally quite a playable bass; [url="http://www.hobgoblin.com/local/bigpic.php?ID=GR5658A"]http://www.hobgoblin.com/local/bigpic.php?ID=GR5658A[/url] I was wandering around guitar shops this lunchtime and the orange arcylic wonder is great fun. Easy modern neck, no fret buzz and good compact shape. Cheap too. Goes to show you never can tell...

I'm not after a Rickenfaker but I'd like a bass that can get that classic Rickenbacker sound (indeed from what I read not all the lookalikies soundalike). Someone here mentioned Ibanez Jetking yet a Harmony Central reviewer says they don't sound like Ricks. Any suggestions then for neck-thru maple with single coils. Nothing over a grand price-wise or I might as well shell out on the real thing (but could I gig with it?). Ta.

'Guitarist' magazine devoted alot of pages to these in last months issue. The basses are available long and short scale but I immediately found a couple of duff points (and I'm a sucker for a 60s retro design). First the strap button isn't on the horn but behind the neck joint. Second the tuners are guitar style and even the headstock is guitar size just with two holes not drilled. Not showstoppers but a recipe for an unbalanced instrument that don't tune too great :-(

Great advice about going along to a shop, one factor with bass is body shape, yours and it's. You can't tell this online. We all have different rib-cages and hips. Most basses feel fine standing up but try sitting down or getting your knee under it. My friend swears by his Warwick but it never feels right to me, not enough body to wrestle with. I settled on an Ibanez SRX400, not something I'd have picked on looks, the body is hardly contoured, but somehow it fits me. Ibanez have many body styles even within the SRX line that look similar until you pick them up. The other thing is don't worry about playing great in the shop. Everyone's fingers turn to rubber in guitar shops, must be some device they have over the door. Pretend you are one of those heads down no-nonsense brute players ;-)

Great News. Last night's session was like one of those movies where the aeroplane is heading into a mountain. Myself and the drummer are tugging back on the pilot's controls, hitting the button marked 'the one' to restart the engines and whoosh, we turned the thing back up to the blue sky with a roar of jets (bit of snow on the nose cone though). Intersting thing though is the guitarists were confused, disgruntled even, by the backline taking control. So part of the problem was a group pack-drill thing. Until we started stopping the song, working on the rhythm trouble (sometimes drummer changed pattern, so I had to match back in with it again), I was never going to get 'on the one' with guitars racing ahead. One guitar even left the room for a while such was the shift of control, but when he came back in we got 'Brown Sugar' rocking. We're no Stones but it was a proper band sound. Keeping my parts dirt simple also worked this way. So I was saying "When my pinky goes to 6th fret it's the riff and it takes two bars. You come in and riff, doesn't matter if it's early or late the groove train goes through that station and on to the verse", "This is what I'll do on the verse it's a different pulse from the intro and chorus.". Sounds overbearing now I write it down but it worked. We not only got through the song but were jamming at the end. Great result for what I had thought of as really crude bass playing. Seems like part of the bass job is advocate for the drummer and guitar-herder ;-) Thanks Bass Chat.

Many thanks Jake, yours is a great post. Thank-you for the advice on catching the bass drum envelope, I've never thought about it like that, you've opened my eyes. Will do more drill to simple closed loops, practising 1 and 3, I'll assume that if a backbeat groove came up I'd lapse back into it. Meanwhile I've habits to fight...

Thanks for the replies so far. I've been doing some soul-searching and can see two points. 1) Alot of my note choices were in upper registers, my old pro mentor was after lots more booming low end, maybe because this punches through more in clubs. 2) I was also playing alot of nice single notes, so I've worked on a straight on pulsing roots-only approach to 'Brown Sugar' (with an under riff sequence that no longer slavishly echoes the guitars). I still wonder if he was simply expecting more thud and rasp. I'd added a tube preamp before the head to make things sweet to my ears (best tone I'd ever got IMHO, but too polite for a club maybe?), maybe I should have used a bass fuzz pedal ;-)

Rehearsing like crazy but a real old hand at bass playing has recently let me know that I'm playing on the off-beat 'like a guitarist' which of course I am, but I really do need to get the bass parts nailed. I know he's right because some rhythm parts have been dragging or plodding in a leaden way. At home I'm working with loops to correct this and get on beat but when I'm with the other chaps I tend to get drawn into guitar-esque parts and slip into the off-beat. Anyone got advice? We have had kick drum problems making it rather hard to hear but that sounds like a poor excuse... The other niggle is I suspect some of the tunes we are attempting have guitar-esque bass parts in the recorded version. One is T-Rex's 'Get It On', I really enjoyed the break and groovy part on seventh and ninth fret, and yes it seems like an upfront guitar line. I almost feel like there's a second bassline buried in the mix and Bolan just liked the bass tone for the audible part. Does this make any sense? Another one is the old punk classic 'Teenage Kicks', again I've been following the guitars down D through to B then up to G and A, drop in some passing note and some opens and it sounds glorious. But it's not really a bassline... Help! You could save our band from terminal groove-drag.