petebassist

I can remember Henry very well, great player. And Diedre, ditto, and the occasional guest drummers on this programme, such as Ian Paice - class.

F@ck it, when I turn up at the studio I'll have my custom bass & if they don't like it they know what they can do...

Love it! And an awesome bass and bass tone...

@jrixn1 Blimey, how d'ya manage to get so many offers? What's the secret? 😁 I've never been to Ronnie Scott's BTW, my point was that only in some scenarios is an acoustic double bass a must-have. But I'm no expert. I do gig an acoustic upright, mainly in a vintage swing jazz outfit, so as well as the superior tone (hopefully), it fits in better for vintage-type events.

If you're doing Jazz gigs at Ronnie Scott's the crowd will probably expect an acoustic upright, maybe with very expensive guts. Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it. What I'd make sure is that whichever one I got, it doesn't spin on its endpin, has a proper upright concave neck, has roughly the same neck length as a normal double-bass, and takes normal double bass strings (stock strings are usually rubbish).

At the weekend I saw a news headline about a shop (not a guitar shop) in Japan where they charge people to go in - I don't blame them either. A lot of people use shops as a free try-the-product out place, then buy it online at a cheaper price, or expect in-store prices to be the same as online. It's tough competing against online-only retailers, so I guess having price on request enables them to be more competitive. What next? Subscription-only shops?

Plugged my SRH500 Fretless into GarageBand last night and recorded some tracks to see what kind of tone I could record. Here're a couple, with the out-of-the-box 60s Combo GarageBand amp and 60s shuffle drums, and the bass and mids turned up, and a bit of drive to try to fatten up the tone on the So What track, but clean on the EveryBody Wants To Be A Cat jazz standard. Still stock strings at the moment, which I'm enjoying, so I'll leave on for the time being then I'll probably try some tape wounds. https://soundcloud.com/james-bllonde/fretless-bass-line-so-what https://soundcloud.com/james-bllonde/everybodywannabeacat I'm just using this as a rehearsal instrument at the moment, so I don't have to drag my double bass along, so I made a couple of adjustments to slightly raise the action to take off some of the mwwahh that it had originally, which sounds great but not exactly what I need right now.

He doesn't care anyway 😉 Great musician. Always thought Aaron Copeland was his dad, but just googled it and he wasn't.

Unless you know every pop and rock song on the planet in many keys, I doubt you'd be expected to know songs. If someone shouts out the chords then I'd expect to be able to improvise something, and it's easier with some forms that have a regular structure, such as blues n jazz. Or I'd get one of those busker books with chords for hundreds of songs.

Hope it goes well, sure it will. When i think of bongos two bands come to mind. Raw Sex, the house band for the UK French and Saunders comedy TV show. And early T-Rex with Mickey Finn. Very funny and very cool :-)

In an old roots/Americana band we used to do a couple of Katie Melua songs, Moonshine, and Life is like a slow train (John Mayall cover), and one of my favourites the Diana Krall cover of Temptation,, and Chocolate Jesus.

Congratulations mate. Keep on truckin!!

Hadn't heard this - awesome bass tone !!!

Danny Thompson on Glory Box cover by John Martyn - killer tone.

Could be the next David Bowie, you never know. Or could be a David Brent. As to what next, when my current band fizzles out, I'll look for another one, start my own, write and play instrumental music, accompany singers at open mics, learn new stuff, basically keep on truckin...

cow poop alarm going off big time. If it was me I wouldn't give my bank details to a complete stranger. As to showing good faith, I'd wouldn't waste my time pursuing this....sorry. Good luck.

@Djooh Welcome to the forum! There're a lot of people here who play both double bass and electric bass.

https://www.headfirstbristol.co.uk/#date=2018-11-21&event_id=49536 Cruise into the night on Bristol's harbourside, starts around 7.30 PM.

@bassbiscuits Inspiring stuff, gonna listen again and check this out, as I haven't listened focused on the bass before. I've got all my Bowie albums in an old 1970s album box that I call "the Vault" :-)

@CyberBass Well done mate, fantastic bass. I was in there myself looking at Ibanezs a week back and I asked the guy if I could try the MJM, just because I'd seen the MJM video and fancied getting one before. I loved the way they've worn the neck and frets so it instantly feels comfortable and played-in. Looks ace too, bet it sounds fab. I'll bet you can't put it down :-)

Nice to hear there're people around who can do this type of thing - and it looks ACE! That's a very nice looking EUB, I'll bet it's a very usuable instrument.

You're right, I wouldn't say common but upright players with gut strings sometimes don't like the response from the E & A gut string, so they have something like a Thomastik Spirocore metal would E & A and a pure gut D & G. Also upright strings, especially guts, are more expensive (often £150 - 300 a set) so tend to get reused/resold/repurposed more than electric bass strings, though I just priced up some La Bella tapewounds for an electric and they aren't cheap either...

I see today that this story has been recycled in the Grauniad. Not quite the Great Rock n Roll Swindle, but this guy's gonna be temporarily very famous/infamous. Sounds like he might be looking for a bass player if anyone's free at the moment...

@mangotango I don't blame you for being p!ssed off from the sound of it - they sound like a couple of nobs. One thing though, snobbery aside, with electric uprights there're no standards and so many different types, compared to acoustic instruments e.g. shorter scales, non-concave fingerboards, different body & support styles, so it doesn't surprise me that some tutors would be dismissive. Some EUBs are designed to feel exactly like a (typically 3/4 size) acoustic upright, e.g. the Yamaha, SLB and some are not, e.g. NS Designs. I think from the look of the Bassix, it's probably in the former camp, except for the bouts, but I haven't tried one. Being a bit let's say person-adverse, I stick to online lessons & a DVD that I learnt from, Ed Friedland's jazz upright bass, which showed me all of the basics. But but keep on looking, you might get lucky and find a brilliant tutor. Good luck mate!

Yeah I did look at a few Godin clips myself but could only find those with a fretless EB sound, so I guessed it was the tone dialled in with more of the the magnetic pickup, but I don't having not tried one. The only thing I thought I'd miss with the Ibanez was the thumb-rest so I did think about buying one from RedDogMusic on eBay and adding it myself, but so far I've just been doing my usual thumb anchored around the end of the finger board so probably won't bother. The AeroSilk piezo seems to do the job & works nicely with the stock strings (D-Addario ECB81 flat wounds), which growl and resonate nicely.