SteveO

Best practice ([url="http://www.xs4all.nl/~mp2004/bp/"]link[/url]) is a good free slower-downer, but as far as I know it's windoze only. There are others, a search on this site will give you more as this topic seems to come up a lot


Edit: Beaten to it

Dont feel you *have to* or *should* like jazz to be a better musician, its just a genre. The people that are really *into* it (myself included) would encourage you to delve deeper, because it can be very rewarding to listen to and play, but then again if you start a discussion showing a vague interest in hyper-speed-death-thrash-black-metal then I'm sure someone will be deeply into it and encourage you to pick out the melodies and harmonies amongst the seemingly random mess of notes (as it appears to this 'outsider')

If you want to give yourself a good chance at *getting into* jazz then give the suggestions on Bloodaxe's list a go. listen to Mils Davis, Cannonball Adderly et at and if you don't like it then move on. There's no shame in not liking it, and at least you'll [i]know[/i] you don't like it, and not be still wondering if there is something you are missing.

[quote name='MB1' post='931928' date='Aug 21 2010, 03:30 PM']MB1.
I know this one!..I know this one!... its Carbon Graphite ![/quote]

"Its a one of...."

One of what exactly?

Can't say I'm that impressed really, It looks like the G tuner on the top neck will get in the way of the E tuner on the bottom neck.

I enjoy playing Mustang sally.
I routinely play the riff to Primal Scream's 'Rocks' during the quiet bits in 'All Right Now' when other bassists would take a break. to try to liven up an otherwise dull song :ph34r:

Was thinking of selling a bass a few years back. Si got in touch as at the time he was looking for a cheap disposable precision for those gigs where you don't want to take your prized bass. After a bit of negotiation he told me that I was asking for about half the market value and he eventually persuaded me to hang on to it. Could have had a real bargain there, silly old bugger.

RIP Si, you'll be sorely missed.


... and I never got around to asking him about those stage sound reflectors of his. Damn.

[quote name='Johnston' post='925202' date='Aug 14 2010, 10:38 PM']you got to admit it's surprising it's took this long for someone to do a Bass in the shape of a Bass!![/quote]
I really like this. Wouldn't buy this one cause of the shoddy workmanship, but a Bass Bass is definitely on the "If I ever get round to making a bass" design shortlist.

[quote name='Clarky' post='906462' date='Jul 27 2010, 12:16 AM']Took brand new TC 450 Classic head to band practice this evening. Big ugly Fender combo in the practice room. Great, I think, I'll disconnect the in-built 15" speaker and feed the TC head into the speaker and - bingo - my own tone. Except ...

I plugged the TC into the speaker socket without realising I had grabbed a pedal-connecting cable not an amp cable (this may or may not be relevant). The red 'on' light came on with the TC ,then after few seconds it faded and died. No noise came out (apart from a faint electrical whistle when I turned it off and on again), no bang, nothing. It is now dead as a dodo, albeit when left for a while there is this slight whistle when I turn it on.

What have I done and is it fixable? Was it the incorrect cable somehow overloading the amp? Is it a faulty amp (although I tried it last weekend through my Barfaced cab and it sounded just fine)? is it a simple fuse issue (not that there's an obvious fuse to change)?

Its a brand new amp (was my birthday pressie last week) and I am horrified ...

All help gratefully received[/quote]

Ahem... A "friend" of mine did something similar with his new head. Unfortunately for him, what he thought was a "speaker in" socket on the combo was in fact a "Satellite Speaker out" connection. It was marked simply "Speaker" and he didn't have a manual. anyway, the new powerful head managed to fry the amp on the combo. he was lucky as the combo was a cheap nasty jobbie. If it had been the other way round I would have been seriously pissed.
the moral of this is be careful when plugging into combos.

Hope its fixable.

Having problems running it on the mac. Would it be too much trouble for someone to embed the java app on your webpage?

Anyway, I'll have a look on the pc when I get chance.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='903721' date='Jul 24 2010, 03:08 AM']I'd get a meter and figure which pins carry the signal. It might be an XLR fitted just to act as a locking socket, and be wired however the chap felt, and had made a cable to match. The lack of 1/4" supports that.[/quote]

+1 to this. I'm pretty sure these didn't come with xlr as standard. I'd whip off the socket and have a look how its wired. Chances are you could simply replace with a standard jack socket.

Edit: Oh, and I'd check this out before putting phantom power into it. In fact If I were you I'd get absolute concrete definite proof that phantom power is required before trying. Although it worked for Dr Frankenstein, Electrocuting the bass to see if it brings it to life is probably not such a good idea at this point

[quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='902585' date='Jul 23 2010, 12:49 AM']Can you see the word "guitar" uttered in any of these early 50's ads? [/quote]

Watched an ad for an Audi estate last night. Nowhere was the word "Car" mentioned. I wonder how many people are wandering round in a state of bewilderment this morning wondering if it was a car or a van?

double bass = big violin?

yup. are there any differences other than size of instrument and pitch of note that you can think of?

[quote name='Lord Sausage' post='902279' date='Jul 22 2010, 09:03 PM']i think non bassists would know who Paul Mccartney was. Or Sting for that matter![/quote]

But if you asked them who plays bass in the Beatles or who plays the bass in Sting's band, I recon there's a high probability of getting a "dunno" for an answer


Anyway, back on topic.... Its a guitar. Stop being so self righteously pious. Just because we play it using different techniques, and it has a different register, and it doesn't quite sound the same as a "tenor" guitar, it still is a member of the guitar family. It is not a double bass in the same way that a guitar is not a viola or violin. This topic reminds me of a conversation with a bass trombonist who was adamant that his trombone was nothing like my trombone and should be called something entirely different even though the only real difference was about an extra 7 inches of tubes. Ask yourselves what the real difference is? 2 strings less, a bit longer... thicker strings for the lower notes... all these differences are found [i]within[/i] what we collectively call basses anyway and we are all happy to still call them basses aren't we?

Are there any other differences to a guitar other than the role that the instrument plays in a band? if not then I submit that what we call 'Bass' is merely descriptive of the music that is played on the instrument, not of the instrument itself.


So there.

So I managed to break my G last night. Fortunately I still had 3/4 of the set that I bought in '94 when my A shuffled off to bass heaven stuffed in the bottom of my spares bag. Unfortunately it took ages (2 songs) to EQ out all the high frequencies

Today I took it off and soaked it in engine oil. After a refitting and wipe down it sounds just as good as the old one did.

*must remember to get a spare G and A and pre-soak them all before it happens again*

[quote name='thinman' post='898332' date='Jul 18 2010, 08:50 PM']He's not allowed to ship Eminence to the UK as Adam Hall has the distribution rights but he tells me he can do anything else.[/quote]

Hows that work then? I'm in the process of ordering 6 Eminence drivers from Thomann to a UK address (which i'm flying over to collect as its about 80 quid cheaper than mailing to Norway what with the taxes and stuff ) they've accepted the order and there doesn't seem to be a problem, although they haven't been paid for, or arrived yet. Maybe its a Europe thing?

IMO, bass [i]is[/i] easier than guitar. Its a lot harder to play physically, but the 'hard' stuff - strong sense of rhythm, knowledge of theory to make note selection etc. - its stuff that any musician needs to know to become truly proficient at their instrument. The easy stuff - playing Root, 5th, Root, Root is definitely easier than playing easy guitar. For the multi instrumentalists, how long did it take to memorise the different chord shapes? Do you think it will be harder to learn the different note positions on a bass than on a guitar?

I learnt music playing Trumpet. When I fell in love with the bass it took about 3 months before I could hold my own in a band. it took about 5 months before I was at the same standard on rhythm guitar. - I never got round to playing lead


... of course they are different instruments and playing bass like a guitar is just wrong. Go to your guitar emporium and play stairway to heaven on a precision - you'll look just as silly as if you played the groove to mustang sally on a strat.

[quote name='BigRedX' post='861939' date='Jun 9 2010, 12:32 PM']The quest of the "uncoloured" sound is a complete waste of time...[/quote]

Didn't mean to open that can of worms again. My reasoning was that to have a piece of kit like the pod emulating loads of lovely cab / amp combinations and then running it though an Ampeg (for example) and everything coming out sounding like an Ampeg kinda defeats the object.

There was a survey done not too long ago where, if my memory is correct, we were asked to tell the difference between modeled and real sounds. I wonder what happened to that and if any results were published...

Personally I cant tell the difference. No, thats not quite right, I could tell there was a difference but couldn't tell you which was the modeled sound. I do remember when digital modeling was fresh that there was a big difference... the amp simulators on the Zoom 506 spring to mind as being only a very vague approximation of the amp it was trying to emulate. As with most things Digital the technology keeps advancing and the perceived difference between the real and digital will get smaller. There will come a time when the convenience outweighs that difference, and I think that that time is approaching fast, just as digital cameras are now becoming the weapon of choice for professional photographers over film cameras. There will always be the purists that prefer the real thing, and of course I can see no real problem in them continuing to do so, but when I cant tell the difference then I'm not going to worry about it. Indeed I've been thinking of a good, 'uncoloured' power amp and a Pod X3 as the next rig of choice.

Edited to say that I think that many peoples experience of cheap / early amp simulation gives them a biased view against using modelling. It will take a while for this perception to die down, just as the perception of Skoda was still bad for a few years after VW bought them up and started making great cars with budget prices.

erm... what does buzzing mean? is it a good thing or a bad thing?

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='845352' date='May 22 2010, 10:05 PM']It's split for hum cancelling.[/quote]
Thanks for that, It prompted me to google for more info and it appears that instead of having 2 pickup coils across all strings wired to cancel noise - which is what I thought was the only design for a humbucker - In his wisdom, Leo decided that it was better to sit the coils side by side on the P bass. Couldn't find a reason for them being staggered though. Maybe the coils were too fat to fit them in a line?

So why is the pup split then?. I'd have thought it'd be easier and cheaper to make using a single pup instead of two smaller ones, so there must be a reason for it. Did Leo think a tighter D&G would be preferable? or was it a mistake caused by changing to a fresh pen half-way through the design?

I've said it before and i'll say it again, I love my 375. The only thing I dislike about it is the 5th string. the 374/375's have to be up there with the Ibanez sr300 in the superb-value-for-money-basses list.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='795043' date='Apr 3 2010, 02:36 PM']With cheap imported stuff, CNC routing etc it is a challenge to find a really bad bass that isn't fairly old. The old Jedsons and such are sometimes properly bad, but essentially a plank with the right dimensions and some mass produced hardware will play fine if it is set up well.[/quote]
Plus its in the nature of advertising to try to sell the product. Its rare to find an ad saying please buy this useless piece of crap (although not unknown)

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='775200' date='Mar 15 2010, 02:30 PM']Not quite. The meter measures resistance. The impedance is affected by frequency, and also by other factors such as capacitance, so the nominal value is a normalised average over a range. You have to put quite a lot of power into it before the heat in the coil shifts it too much, when you are hitting power compression territory.

/bigger nerd[/quote]
Ahhh thats right, its frequency that affects AC impedance. I was thinking of the increased impedance from the effects of the magnetic field generated in a DC coil (which is proportional to power). Obviously thats irrelevant in an AC speaker coil. I will have to stop chipping in with these 20-yr-old-badly-remembered-o-level-physics comments

IIRC its because impedance increases in coils as the power increases, so with the tiny measuring current of your meter you will get a nominal value, but the impedance will increase when it's under normal operation.

/nerd