Happy Jack

Aaaaaaargh!!!! You've got no shoes on! It's probably just me, of course, but I simply cannot imagine any circumstances under which I'd gig without shoes.

Casper The Friendly Hofner ...

And, of course, when you're 16 you know you're going to live forever.

You'd think that people like Sting and Bobby Vega could afford a decent re-fin, wouldn't you?

If only I had the room for this! Until I was 22 I was never without an upright piano ...

Nah - he bought it relic'd by some guy in Denmark Street to make it look like he knew what he was doing.

You could always try a collaboration with this guy: https://www.joinmyband.co.uk/classifieds/hear-goes-nothing-t1126047.html Now you be sure to keep us all posted, y'hear?

But if you've been doing this for 47 years, why has it only now started to bother you?

Don't be so picky!

One little bass? Well I suppose that's one way of describing a Rob Allen ... Bwahahahahaha!!!

Yup, 'tis an Acus combo and it's fair to say that (on my brief experience with it) I wasn't impressed with it. Way way WAY too many knobs, dials and functions, and really not easy to get a tone I actually liked. We couldn't get any audible effect out of the on-board compressor either. The video that Umut shot with me playing through it (you can see it on his Facebook page) sounded like a tube train passing through a tunnel beneath us. It's one advantage, if that's what it is, is that it's a 3-channel amp which allows for magnetic + piezo + microphone and all passing through the same unit. Review? Well I've already covered most of the descriptive stuff already but ... It's an absolute beast. It looks great, huge and imposing, and it sounds just magnificent. Its bulk will not appeal to many bass players, but after years of playing a Takamine TB10 I find it strangely re-assuring. On a strap (Umut thinks of this as a lap bass, to be played sitting down) it hangs exactly the same way as my TB10, with the whole of the lower bout projecting to my right. This looks a bit odd, but makes the bass really very comfortable to play, and rock steady. The great depth of the body also makes a very comfortable arm rest. The internal bracing is excellent, with two carbon-fibre rods acting as a fixed truss rod and two more carbon fibre supports running under the entire archtop. Although it looks like a set-neck design, it is in fact a disguised bolt-on and the neck is apparently quite easy to remove if I should ever need to do it. The bridge is fully-floating. There's no access panel, so should any electrical work be needed I would have to remove and disconnect the jack socket and then pull the wiring back through the body to the two sound holes. Umut had been experimenting with a clip-in microphone system too and he brought that with him. We tried it together but I wasn't impressed by the small amount of 'atmosphere' that it added, even less by the enormous increase in feedback that came with it. If I'm looking for something to criticise, it would be the weight. The 4-string Iris is ridiculously light, not much more than 2Kg so about the same as a Hofner Violin bass. When I ordered this bass, Umut was sure that the weight would be little more than 3Kg - although I was puzzled by that. In the event, it weighs over 4Kg, which is hardly outrageous but is not particularly light either. I've had the bass for just three days so far, but something that has already become apparent is that this bass has no interest in being pigeon-holed into one sort of music. I've owned (and still own) basses which are perfect for blues or for rock or for country, but the Big Boss seems equally at home in all of them. It looks like the sort of thing you see YouTube clips of with some very talented bass player doing subtle licks involving intricate harmonics, and you think "yeh, but can you play Brown Sugar on it?". Well this bass is equally happy playing country, rock, blues, funk, reggae and rockabilly. I'd have no hesitation taking this along to pretty much any gig I play, and no doubt that I'd be able to get the right sound for that gig. It's a seriously lovely thing.

Or, of course, a uke bass ...

If you'd prefer to describe a single 1/4" output socket as "two channel" then that's fine with me, Mike. Personally I'd find that really misleading!

I'm not familiar with Birdsong. The string arrangement is purely to deal with the very different length of the low B as compared to the main 4-string set. It's weird but cool, and fully functional, and it sits very well with the carefully worked-out tailpiece configuration designed to give a different break angle for each string. When playing the bass I am completely unaware of any difference in feel or compliance across the five strings - this is a very nice piece of work by someone who knows exactly what he's doing.

Don't know about the OP, but I have (what I believe to be) the first and only Greenboy Crazy 88 in the UK and I love it to bits. It's ideal for acoustic applications, DB and large-bodied basses, it's physically quite small (though surprisingly heavy), and its range is genuinely impressive ... it goes remarkably loud but sounds great at low volumes, and a low B doesn't worry it in the slightest.

Yup, but not sure you'd have wanted to be there Si. During the breakdown after the gig there was a genuine, honest-to-God mass brawl on the dance floor. At least three very big guys on each side (it was hard to tell), sundry womenfolk either yelling "he's not worth it" or berating their men for their behaviour, four enormous bouncers trying to break it up, worried drunks getting knocked over in the excitement, and smashed glass all over the floor. Best fight I've seen in years, very entertaining.

That's exactly what I said to Umut, and he replied "Huh?". I had to explain how Rics are wired to him ...

The bass is entirely passive, but the output jack is stereo. Plug in a mono cable and all you get is the magnetic pickup (which sounds absolutely fine on its own). Plug in a stereo cable and you get both pickups; feed that through a splitter cable and you end up with two mono inputs to the amp. I'm using an AI Clarus 2-channel amp and that's just perfect for the job.

More explanations in the text to this video:

God! I remember the good old days, when you could list a tatty Encore P-bass for £500 after breakfast and the courier would arrive to collect it mid-afternoon. £3000 Wals were flying off the shelves and Johnny Foreigner couldn't get enough of the low, low prices thanks to the collapse of the pound. And people said that Brexit had damaged the British economy! Pah! Everybody was buying and selling like there was no tomorrow, and nobody foresaw then the sterile wasteland that the Marketplace would become by 2018. Ah yes, 2016 was indeed the good old days. Or not, as the case may be.

Might be worth investigating a mixer controlled by a tablet, allowing you to do both/either.

Will you have a sound guy out front or operate the mix from on-stage?

Can't imagine what might have given you that idea ... Good luck with your quest.