Misdee

John Taylor with a Wal Pro on TOTP:

Although I remember reading that JT  had only borrowed the bass and was not at all keen on it. 

I   distinctly remember seeing Derek Forbes playing his Wal bass with Propaganda live in concert , but what bass he used on the recordings I have no idea.

Anyhow, I think slap bass can sound great. I love a nice bit of slap  and I love to do a bit of slapping myself,  but I am a bit distraught at how much I have let my own slap chops go to seed a bit in recent years . I  have been  trying to practice a bit more  slapping  lately, but quite frankly, it is making me knackered ! I had forgotten ( or never realised) how physically demanding a technique slap can be.  I was never Mark King, but  by the same token , I was never ready for a cup of tea and a lie down after two songs either. I can feel it in my water that a 1980's revival is just around the corner and  if I  am right  then any self-respecting bass player is going to need to be able to pummel and twang those strings or else get left by the wayside. 🙁

There is good slap and bad slap. In the 70's and 80'S  there was a lot of good slap, nowadays less so.  

Maybe the BBC  should  put on an Old Musician Of The Year contest.  The winner  should be some  poor chap in late middle age playing Sultans Of Swing  95% correct on his Fender Strat  via video link from his sheltered accommodation .  Or someone playing a  Jethro Tull  medley on a flute whilst balancing on one leg  like  Ian Anderson  and then having a nasty fall and having to use an inhaler. 

I use the Diamond BC1  and it is a fabulous bit of kit. I use it on the  9v setting  and it  copes  just fine  Makes my bass sound like the ones on my favourite recordings, if that makes sense. I will say that the Diamond is maybe  a fairly subtle compressor more  for overall  tone shaping than aggressive limiting of your signal compared to some other pedals.  It all depends what you are after.

The Cali 76 and EBS Multicomp are also great choices in terms of tone. Can't go too far wrong with any of those.  The opposite end of the spectrum would be  something like the  MXR M87  , a bit sterile for my taste  but lots of control over the  actual compression / limiting. 

On 11/05/2020 at 14:42, Muzz said:

Oooooog...thanks for the info, it's not looking good, though...I don't fancy buying a 2024 and having to fork out again to have the neck reprofiled...I might just get Jon Shuker to make me a neck to my normal profile for the 414...

If it helps, the 5 string version has a profile that is fairly un-chunky for a 5 string , if you see what I mean.

On 09/05/2020 at 18:54, CPCustomdubwise said:

Not to be in any way obstreperous about this, but unless I have missed it, nobody has made mention of the " second iteration " of Wal basses called "Pro", produced in the latter half of the 80s. These were single pickup, passive basses with series/ parallel switches; I have never owned one but have played several, including a fretless which I borrowed for a while which was both a scaled back, effecrively "budget" Wal and EVERY INCH a true Wal bass; having previously owned both active Pro and Cuatom Wals, I can confirm that those basses sound like Wals even without the filter pre.

So the precedent does exist.

 I remember playing  those basses ,  sunburst with one passive pickup towards the bridge and little toggle switch.   More like a simplified Custom than the  original Pro . They were indeed very tasty basses. 

The new Wals are proportionately much more expensive than the earlier incarnation, allowing for inflation ect. However, the basses that Paul Herman is building now are of the the very highest quality. I would put them up against the very best available, Fodera,  F Bass, whoever. By comparison with similar  builders  nowadays  , Wals prices are o.k.

But then again ,  from  another perspective , I remember  back in the late 1980's when a Status Graphite Series 2 was a few hundred  quid more expensive than a MK1 Wal Custom.  The equivalent Status bass is now a few thousand quid cheaper than a MK1 Wal.   Status Graphite are also a small independent UK- only  manufacturer.    What has happened to make Wal  basses so much more expensive to make ? Is it rising costs, or bigger profit margins? Or both.

Either way is alright with me, by the way. Paul, like anybody else, has the perfect right to charge what he feels his work  is worth, the potential customer can decide to pay it or not. The problem for me is that I can't make my mind up what side of the fence I am on  regarding this.   I am reticent  to pay 6 grand for a bass that used to cost the equivalent to £ 2377 in today's money  (  including  the blue "dogbone" case) back  in 1988. But the again I really want one. All the time I keep  prevaricating the prices are going up and the wait time is getting longer  (so obviously  plenty of folks think the price is ok!)

On 29/04/2020 at 11:19, Muzz said:

I'm still GASing for a white 2024/x, but I'm unsure about the neck profile. As you've played both, is there a difference in neck profile between to 1024 and the 2024? FWIW, I found the 1024 a bit too chunky for me, the 414 I have at the moment is better...

I have never played a 1024x, but I have got a 2024x and it must be said that the neck profile is pretty chunky so the 1024X  you tried may well be very similar in profile  if not the same. I still find it perfectly playable though, and I have got fairly small hands/short fingers. 

I  would be hesitant to spend a lot of money on some new "boutique" pickups for a relatively inexpensive bass, and as others have pointed out, the used market is  full of bargains. And as Hooky-Lowdown wisely states , don't automatically reject the stock pickups. 

If you are going to replace them though,  don't overlook Fender pickups as an option. Despite the burgeoning market in replacement pickups'  implicit suggestion that Fender are somehow inadequate or getting it wrong in some way  , I have always found Fender pickups to be very good indeed. Stating the obvious maybe, but they seem to nail that Fender sound pretty well!

3 hours ago, Piers_Williamson said:

Dusty in Memphis is one of my favourite albums of all time

 

Me too. A timeless classic.

3 hours ago, TrevorR said:

Only 8 or so years to go for the Pro bass’s half century anniversary!

I remember seeing the bass player for The Cure playing a Wal Pro bass , and that must be about 40 years ago! 

12 hours ago, TrevorR said:

It’s not well known, but in the very early 2000s Pete toyed with this very idea - a Far Eastern built budget Wal. He was in deep discussions with a major UK distributor. I never knew who but my (wildly speculative) guess was someone like Frontline who distributed Laney and Ibanez at the time. I guess the idea was basically something like Tanglewood did with Overwater. Save money through overseas labour costs and CNC woodwork.  In the end, just before the deals were signed, Pete pulled out. My guess was always that he was concerned that he’d lose control of the brand and they’d ultimately, over time, try to water down the essence of what a Wal is... can you imagine, a slab bodied bass with Bartolini soap bars, a skunk stripe maple neck and a BBoT bridge... ...but with “Wal” on the headstock?
 

Someone talked about a “simple” Pro bass. In many ways the circuitry in a Pro bass is MORE complicated than a Custom. You go from two small neat removable circuit boards to a circuit board printed onto an extension on the scratch plate. The back of Pro Series scratch plates are a thing of beauty in and of themselves! 
 

 

If a Pro Bass was made in Fetcham, what would you save?  Cost on the exotic body woods, labour in laminating the top and back... that’s about it. You’ve still got a laminated neck, hand carving the neck and body, same hardware. You'd need to tool up for the new electronics and redesign it to fit the changes in internal pickup wiring between the Pro and Custom series, tool up for the scratch plates, more staff and overheads... it’s not coming in shy of £4k...

Frankly I can see why Paul’s not interested.

I take your point entirely.

On reflection, it would be more appropriate for Paul to do a run of Pro basses and charge more than a standard MK1 Custom , rather than less.  I recall that Status Graphite did a run of early -1980's-style basses to mark some anniversary or other a few years ago.  If Wal were to follow suit with some Pro   basses  I bet they would  all be sold on pre-order in no time at all. I see why that is very unlikely to happen, though.

What I find a bit unsettling in all of this is that the 1980's is now a "vintage" era. How is this possible? That decade was supposed to epitomise modernity. I was young and thin . We had video recorders, walkmans, leg warmers, brass bridges, graphite necks  , active electronics. and mass unemployment.  How has it come to this?

Nowadays  I need  something as heavy as a vintage  Wal to flatten my gut enough to stop the bass pivoting on my belly when I play standing up.😄

I love the fact that Wal have never and hopefully will never start manufacturing a budget model overseas.

Lets face it a " budget" UK -made  Wal Pro would be 3-4  thousand quid , in all likelihood. That is o.k by me. 

Didn't Sam Rivers from  Limp Bizkit have a Pro - style Custom built a few years back IIRC? I would dearly love a Pro-style bass for so may reasons, not least of all Alan Spenner and Gary Tibbs with Roxy Music.  Both were so inspiring to me when I first started playing. 

Given the ongoing trend for retro gear, if Wal reissued the Pro Basses they would be fighting customers off with the proverbial  unhygienic stick . I know  Wal are back-ordered for years already, but maybe they could expand their operation if they had consistent demand for a bass that was  slightly simpler to manufacture . I would buy one, that's for sure. 

On 04/05/2020 at 18:14, Happy Jack said:

The early episodes are also fun for seeing Garfield Morgan drifting in and out of the series, before he became the third key member of the cast. 

Morgan used to live in Turnham Green (Chiswick) at the other end of my road, I'd see him all the time walking up to Chiswick High Road. 

In a Dennis Waterman twist, Rula Lenska used to live about 100 yards further up ... they must have been bumping into each other all the time.

 

Chiswick has always been choc-a-block with actors and media people in general, still is and probably always will be.  

I am  really into these early '70'S bass tones, and have been using TI flats on a Fender Precision  and 74 Jazz reissue to try and get my own approximation. I  had been  thinking that buying a valve preamp might be the last piece of the jigsaw, but after reading this thread now  I am beginning to wonder if getting a  bronze- coloured  Ford Granada  might be what I need to get  the sound I crave.

All just   goes to show how a "nasty" sound soloed is necessary  to have some cut-through in the final mix.

This isolated bass track sounds  pretty "ponky"  too, to my ears at least. All the more surprising when you consider that it is LA session ace David Hungate in the early 1980's:

Sounds great in the finished  track, though.

Dave Richmond is a brilliant bass player, absolutely fantastic. His work with Serge Gainsbourg is especially good:

Yes, I know that at least three different bass players claim to have played on this album, but as far as I know, Dave Richmond is the most likely candidate.

Definitely less clicky than the first example, but still some pick-like attack, even if it is fingers.   Not dissimilar to Wilton Felder in that respect.

If you listen to the decay of the notes , it sounds like flats to me, especially allowing for the extended frequency range inherent to Alembic basses. Rounds would likely have been much more twangy on that bass. Even allowing for pick/muting technique, it sounds like flats.  This example from the same sessions sounds a bit less ambiguous :

 Alembic were not at all averse to flatwound strings on their basses in this era, and were enthusiastic exponents of Pyramid Gold flats back in their early days . Phil Lesh and also ,I think, Jack Cassidy used flats on their  Alembics.   Maybe John McVie was still old school enough in the mid-70's to be reluctant to move to roundwounds. I know Chuck Rainey and Willie Weeks, for example, didn't switch to rounds until the early 1980s.

100% pick and flats for John McVie, I'm less sure whether Wilton Felder is using a pick .

 Wilton Felder's tone on this track was pretty typical of so many examples from that era , and as others have pointed out, it sounds magnificent in the track. The fact that Wilton is a great player helps a bit , too. I was listening to the isolated bass track of John McVie  ( another great player) on Go Your Own Way from Rumours the other day  and considering he played it on an Alembic, that sounds pretty "ponky" too ( I would say "plunky", but we'll agree to differ😄)

It makes me smile when I think how fashionable these more muted retro tones have become again . What happened the the 1980's when modern was best and flatwounds were practically illegal ? The more" ponky " the better seems to be the zeitgeist of our time when it comes to bass  nowadays. Its interesting to consider that it's twenty years since D'Angelo released Voodoo with Pino Palladino reinventing himself with a P Bass sporting flatwound strings to such great effect, and legions of would-be trendy and hip bass players have subsequently fallen over themselves to copy his  inspired approach. How ironic! I love these  vintage bass tones, and the instruments they were created with, but it would be nice to see a bit more creativity from some contemporary players. Its nice to be inspired and emulate, but I always feel that the players being emulated were more often than not inspiring because they were original and individual in some way, if that makes sense.

Anyhow,  if you can't beat them, join 'em, I'm off to play  my 74 AVRI Jazz with TI flats this afternoon😄. 

On 13/04/2020 at 13:30, Cuzzie said:

@Misdee I get both of your points, the fidelitron is the Fender take on the filtertron so a little different.

The thing about that bass is the neck is so darn good, and I think it looks cool, but that pick up just wasn’t quite there for me as well, close, no cigar. I think now with more experience I could coax more out of it, and strings may also make a huge difference. I play more with a pick now so that could make a huge difference as well.

Its all a delicate soup

On 13/04/2020 at 11:56, ubit said:

I appreciate that mate but I have just found that I don't like it as much as I did when Heard it on YouTube. It doesn't sound dirty to me, it sounds farty and cheap.

Totally get both your points, and the potential replacements all look like mouthwatering prospects. I am interested how this turns out as I am very into idiosyncratic  passive pickups. Keep us posted.

I've got one of these and they are amazing basses.  One of my all-time favourites. Believe the hype, because these basses really are something special and up  there with the best that money can buy.

Some very tasty playing by the owner, too.