Biaeothanata-Bassist

Sorry, i did make a mistake there. I was meant to say that the number 2 bass was the one that got refinished in black and white checkerboard. This was done so that whilst the main number one bass was being refinished from metallic blue to the West Ham colours, he had his 2nd favourite bass how he wanted it. Only real difference that the number 2 bass has from number one is that it's rosewood boarded instead of the usual maple board. Again, my apologies for the mistake.

Here's mine, it's actually something i'm part way through building, had the image in my head then after mapping it out on that builder, could finally see what it's going to look like when it's finished. I can't wait for it to be done! (ps, yes, i did photoshop the reverse P pick up next to the bridge but that's what's going on it and i'm not having a logo on it so i got rid of it on the picture)

As far as i remember, it's a 72/73 P Bass that he got 2nd hand. His first bass was a £40 P Bass copy. No one knows the brand of it though. He used this until around 75/76 when he got the infamous 72/73 P Bass and the rest is as they say, history!

Worst one I've owned was a Gallien Kreuger 700RBII head. Horrible piece of crap! Tried everything I could to get a nice tone out of it but ended up selling it a month later. Wish I had never of parted with my Trace Elliot AH350SMX for it. To be fair, the Hartke LH500 head i'm now using is the best thing ever. Worst one I've played through that wasn't mine was a Fender Rumble or Marshall MB. They were on par with the GK I owned for crappiness.

[quote name='bassman344' timestamp='1395044652' post='2397898'] Makes me wonder why we spend thousands on basses and gear when a bloke like Steve can rule the world with the same P bass for over thirty years. I played my own p bass for the first in a while yesterday after reading the OP a few days ago... Long live King 'arry [/quote] To be fair, he does have thousands of pounds worth of gear in his amp racks though so that probably balances it out haha

I had one that I just sold on here. Really good piece of kit. Only paid and sold it for £20-odd but yeah it's got a good range of distortion/overdrive that works on bass and guitar and the on board effects are pretty sweet too. Really nice for plugging your iPod and headphones in to then jamming away on. Set the volume on your iPod then use the on board volume to control the guitar you've plugged in

[quote name='Si600' timestamp='1395007391' post='2397770'] Was it really that long ago?!?!?!?! [/quote] Yep, 5th of July 2008. I remember it well as I played a gig that same day. Open air gig. Finished my set, threw my bass and my amp in to my guitarists car then hopped on the train with 2 friends down to London to see the mighty Maiden. One of the best days of my life

[quote name='Mr Anthony' timestamp='1394999121' post='2397632'] Thanks for that, really quite interesting. Glad we've cleared it up. I had no idea he's been playing the same bass for all this time. I saw that at Twickenham back in 2008 (I think? Got the programme somewhere) and I think he was on blue sparkle back then. [/quote] I was at the Twickenham show and he only used 1 bass for the whole show, the original WH bass. I was right at the front just in front of his mic for the whole show [quote name='rogerstodge' timestamp='1395000330' post='2397657'] That's a lot of strings, does he throw them away dya reckon? [/quote] Most of the time he throws them away as MK loosens them then cuts them off but I've seen some sets had been taken off properly then given to IMFC members at some of the meet and greet events. [quote name='Mark_88MPH' timestamp='1394990939' post='2397467'] ^^^^ Nice one! That's really good info thanks [/quote] No problem pal Glad i could help

The Ashdown MiBass 2.0 is a wicked little head to check out. Really powerful and will fit in a bass gig bag. You'll easily run a 4x10 off them if ever needed so you can imagine the head room you get from a 1x10/2x10/1x12/2x12. A lot of gain to them and it throws out 640w! Here's a link if you're interested. - £299 from DV247 [url="http://www.dv247.com/guitars/ashdown-mibass-2-0-bass-guitar-amp-head--104679"]http://www.dv247.com...mp-head--104679[/url]

The bass pictured in the OP is THE original bass. The same one you would of seen/heard on every album/live album from 1979 until present day (okay, he used a couple of different basses on a few songs across the years but it's 95% been the original P Bass). It's been white, black, metallic blue, checkerboard and now the West Ham colours. I spoke to Michael Kenney (Steve's bass tech, I met him at a Girlschool gig and we spoke for ages about Maiden) about the bass a long time ago and he told me that where the bass has been restrung every night for 30 years (he restrings this bass after every gig to retain the snappiness in the flat wound strings. He doesn't pay for them so why not eh!) it had worn in to the headstock finish and started picking the logo away. Along with where it gets a polish and where the neck had actually been re-finished a couple of times, it's just left the headstock without a logo and he's not bothered getting a new logo applied. There's actually an outtake from a video shoot the band did in India for Man on the Edge for Top of the Pops where you can see how much the logo had worn off of the headstock. There's literally a couple of letters left on there. If you ever see a "West Ham" painted bass with a logo in pictures from 2010 onwards, it's not the original bass, it's a replica he had the Fender custom shop make him. Whoever painted it messed up the paint job on it by using a dark blue (almost purple) on the bits that were meant to be claret (including on the pin striping and the West Ham badge). You'll also notice the neck on the 2010 replica isn't as heavily tinted as the original one. He's been using it as a back up to the original one and just one to finish off a lot of the sets with. He'll either use the replica, blue lightning crackle one or metallic red one. All of these are basically his Fender Signature model but with different paint jobs and made by the Custom Shop. Hope all this helps and "Irons" out any queries Cheers Your resident Steve Harris geek.

Oh man that gold on blue is stunning! I hate gold normally too. Just seems to sit well together on it. Really looking forward to seeing the finished (or should I say refinished) product. It's nice that you haven't scrimped on any parts too. All looks like really decent stuff, especially the Duncans and the Babicz bridge. If I didn't love Badass IIs so much, i'd use one of them on my basses

[quote name='PauBass' timestamp='1394979468' post='2397262'] My Geddy Lee has all hardware in black and black pickguard too...no need to say it looks awesome! (I'll post a pic as soon as I can) [/quote] Please do Paul! I want to see what it's like as well

Hey guys Me and a friend were digging through his garage 2 days ago to go through an old flight case of gear that was in there. We found the following units in there but he wants to shift them on so can any one help me point him in the direction of a value of them please? 1: Korg A1 2: Korg A2 3: Korg A3 They seem to be a multi effects unit but we had no clue on how to use them properly. I've read the Edge from U2 used to use them live to get some of his sounds for things like Mysterious Ways but apart from that, we don't know much else about them so yeah, if anyone could help, he would appreciate it. Cheers

[quote name='tommorichards' timestamp='1394967944' post='2397114'] For straplocks, i use bottletops. Cheap and they work Providing you dont swap straps, its ace. [/quote] I do that too! It's such a handy thing to do plus it gives you an excuse to drink more beer! "Bartender, I need 2 more beers please, i'm drinking for safety!" Apart from that, I swear by the Schaller strap locks. They're about £10-£15 depending on where you get them from but I've never had one break in 6/7 years? Even used to swing my bass around my neck before I got an expensive bass/got too fat to do it. With regards to your problem with the BAII not letting through heavy gauge strings, what gauge are you using? I've got Rotosound Swing Bass 125-60 (5 string set minus the G as i tune it B-E-A-D) on my 4 string Tobias and they went through without any problems. All I can say is to get a black one but drill the holes a little wider if you so need to but they shouldn't be getting caught like that. Your Geddy will look amazing with all black hardware though. I seriously recommend buying a set of Schaller BMFLB tuning pegs to go on it. They're a direct replacement and they're so solid they won't slip out of tune. Again, I use these on my basses (BMFLB is the black set, BMFL is the chrome set)

Really? That much love for the BIAS then? I did hear it's a very good piece of software to be fair.

Hey guys and gals. Recently i've been seriously considering ditching all my gear, keeping the money back and saving up for a Kemper Profiler rack unit as the results I've heard from them are absolutely phenomenal. Main thing that made me aware of them was the band Trivium as all 3 members now use 1 of those each (okay, 2 each, one for Europe and one for USA but are stored separately yadda yadda) on tour purely alongside a wireless system and each control them with a single Behringer FCB1010 midi footswitch (the one with 2 assignable expression pedals) which I think is a pretty cool idea. Literally all Trivium's touring stuff fits in to a 12u flight case. I was reading/watching a couple of interviews with bassist Paolo Gregoletto who said he now uses the Kemper as it's got all the profiles he wants on it and switches instantly with out any delay. Means he can have the tones he needs for the different Trivium albums live and his lead/wah patches all at the press of 1 button. Then reading more in to it, he says that ever since there was a "bass" update, it's not been losing any low end or compromising any of the frequencies he would usually of got out of the amps he was last using (which was a Peavey Tour 600 with matching cab as far as I remember). I;m guessing there would be a bit of live EQing going on on the sound desk to pump up the low end a bit more but all in all, seems pretty solid and very usable. I know it's not the same profiler, but I've seen John Myung of Dream Theater uses a Fractal Axe FX II now instead of head and cab as it does what Paolo mentioned in having all his tones there at the push of a single button (added note: Paolo said in one interview he found there was a bit of a delay on the Axe FX II which caused a bit of a pop changing tones over) so it's not like it's a one off thing to see a bassist using profilers. So yeah, back to my original question, have any of you bassists out there used one at all? If so, how have you found it? Was it what you wanted sound wise or did you find it lacking in any way? I know there's a lot of head and cab/meat and 2 veg purists out there which I kind of am but i'm not going to lie, i'm really being tempted to break tradition after hearing some of the results of these new profiler amps. I'm quite interested to hear some of your opinions on them too. Cheers!

Nah there's no light coming from it. He didn't notice any glowing before either. The tweeter has just stopped making a sound. That does look cool in that video though haha.

If i'm only taking my pedal board to a gig then it's: Korg Pitchblack tuner -> Morley Dual Bass Wah -> Boss CEB-3 -> Boss SD-1 -> whatever amps being supplied with all my pedals being powered by a Dunlop DC power brick If i'm taking my whole rig, i can do without the Korg pedal tuner as i have one in my rack

No no, any advise is welcome bud so it's not crap that seems like it's likely what happened as he runs a lot of treble on his amp and never turns off his volume before unplugging his bass. Combined with running high gain that probably did it. I'll see if i can find any tweeter fuses on the net as well if he can't make it to a halfords. Again, thanks for your reply Nugget! If any one else has a inkling as to something else it could be, please advise me on it.

Hey guys A friend of mine needs some help here. He's got an Ampeg USA SVT 410 HE cabinet but recently, his tweeter stopped working. From what we both read on the net, it seems like the Crossover fuse could of been driven a bit too hard and it's blown. He asked me to take a look but I didn't want to until I knew what the problem would be. Can any one advise us on what the most likely reason for this is? Also, if it is a blown fuse/bulb, is this easy to replace and where could I get one for it? Just so you know, i do all the work on his basses and amps which is why i'm asking about it Thanks and any help will be appreciated. Steve

I have a bit of a rule where I'm sticking to Seymour Duncan pick ups in ALL my guitars and basses (2 P's loaded with SPB-1s/4s and a Tobias loaded with STC-2P and SSB-5s) but I'm seriously considering putting a Geezer Butler set in a future bass as they sound mental! The tone he's getting from those is phenomenal. I saw Sabbath on the UK tour they just completed and his tone absolutely blew me away. I'm not surprised he's so pleased with this new set. It's a good year for him, new Lakland signature bass, EMG signaute p-ups and from what i've heard, a signature Hartke 412 cabinet coming out which he's been using prototypes of on the Black Sabbath tour.

[quote name='winterfire666' timestamp='1390287702' post='2343514'] yeah, a bit of a punt on the steve harris one as i have never heard one in real life but i reckon it'll do the job. i have a thrown together frankenbass with a SPB-3 in that exact position and it sounds excellent, it really nails the tone im after but if im not happy its easy enough to swap em out, i did consider the SPB-1 but dont have as much experience with that pickup. ill have loads of tone options there though, especially with thepiezobridge too. [/quote] I've found the SPB-4 to have the output level of the SPB-3 but without the harsh high end that the SPB-3 tends to have. It may sound like i'm being a fanboy or biased because Steve Harris is my favourite bass player but the SPB-4 is genuinely the best pick up (in my opinion) that I've ever heard and used. Really punchy mid range with plenty of lows and highs without being harsh in any register. I'm quite interested to hear how the SPB-3 brings out the harmonic over tone being paired in with the SPB-4 and being closer to the bridge than normal.

Hey guys and gals. I'm going to be finishing off a build project some time soon that i've been meaning to finish for months but not got round to it. So far, i've decided on body shape, hardware, colour, neck profile, tuning pegs, detuner and 2 out of the 3 pick ups (yes, 3 pick ups). It's going to be based around the Yamaha Billy Sheehan attitude but with a few "closer to home" changes to make it like the basses I'm used to. First up, I've decided to have a woofer neck pick up and standard placed P pick up but i'm in 2 minds about the 3rd pick up which is going to be positioned in the "Jazz Bridge" position. Reason for this is i'm used to having a bridge pick up there and resting my thumb on it. Ever since i started with the idea of this project, I wanted to put a reversed P pick up in that position like James LoMenzo has on his Yamaha BB but now i'm considering putting a Musicman pick up there instead (quite a few of my favourite bass tones are music-man pick up style driven). I don't need recommendations on a pick up model as i've decided it'll either be a Seymour Duncan SPB-1 if i go for the reversed P or it'll be a Seymour Duncan SMB-4D if it's the Musicman pick up. Next up, headstock shape. Traditional Fender, 3x1 music-man or 2x2 like my Tobias... I was pretty much set on just getting a Mighty Mite neck and sticking that on it but then I saw a P bass (black) on ebay the other day with a maple neck with 2x2 headstock and I fell in love. Only problem with me wanting this is that I would need to get the neck made for me and it's going to cost a hell of a lot of money, money which i don't think I'll ever have. Opinions? Thanks Steve

I am definitely going to follow this build and i can definitely vouch for how good those Seymour Duncan Steve Harris pick ups sound, I've put them in my Fender SH signature bass. Personally though, I wouldn't put the QP SPB-3 in there, I would put in the SPB-1 as you'll get a tighter sound from it, especially as it's close to the bridge like that. That's the way I'm doing it in my double P build