Happy Jack

In truth, Kolstein only ever made a single example of this bass and it's been circulating around Basschat for the last 15 years ...

The vast majority of use for this bass will always be rock'n'roll & rockabilly, but the vast majority of my 'slapping' is in fact fake. I do lots of single-slap with exaggerated hand movements to make it look like I'm doing something special, but what the audience is hearing (for percussion) is of course the drumkit. No real bass player is ever going to be fooled by my playing for a second. Additionally, the Schaller pickup takes the sound of my Kolstein well over into Precision territory so no rockabilly purist will ever compliment me on my tone. All of which said, I play a LOT of gigs these days and I like strings that help me to get through two (or even three) 3-set gigs on a weekend. I'm after strings that are kind to my plucking/slapping hand and work with the style of music ... which is primitive, but in a good way. And I'm genuinely impressed at how cheap the Jargars are!

DAT'S da fella! First thing I looked at was the new, upgraded version of the Heritage strings but they're apparently not going to be available until late April.

Do you install & tune 'solo' strings in the same way as any others?

Outstanding, sir! Many thanks.

Looking to replce the strings on the bass I bought last year from @bassace ... they're a bit dead even for my tastes. 😂 The bass has a mag pickup on the end of the fingerboard, and I'm looking at https://www.thestringzone.co.uk/evah-pirazzi-slap-double-bass-strings-set I appreciate that the option to buy gut D & G is not available to me, but would the chrome-wound set be OK with the pickup?

I've never played through one but I'll bet you a grand that comment is utter bollocks. That amp has 4 x EL84 power valves ... I guarantee you that you'll never get the master Volume past 12 o'clock. Put that amp through a 1x8 speaker (like the Crazy Eight I use for low-volume DB gigs) and fair enough, the volume will be limited. But that's because of the speaker, not the amp. Put that amp through a 310 and just hear it take a deep breath, stretch out and fill the room.

And that is EXACTLY how I started playing bass. Seriously. 😎

So by amp you mean just the head, not a combo? 100W of valve amp will be WAY WAY WAY too much for any pub gig. Seriously. I don't want to re-light the whole valve watts -v- solid state watts conflagration, but there's no point at all in trying to translate between the two. My Genz Benz Shuttle is rated for 900 (S/S) watts and it's a fabulous amp, but it can be easily blown out of the water by my Matamp GT100 which is rated for 100 (valve) watts. The difference is that the Shuttle sounds great at sensible volumes, whereas the Matamp needs to be pushed to the break-up point to get the classic valve sound, and at those volumes I could clear the venue in minutes. If you're going through an Ashdown 310 then you may be surprised at just how loud a small head will go, especially in a confined place like a pub. Have a look on eBay for vintage heads by people like WEM, sometimes 'cut down' from what used to be combos. The head from a 1970s WEM Dominator, for instance, will be rated 17W. You will not believe how much that thing will turn out, plus it's a truly great valve-overdrive sound.

If my experience (with my own daughter) is anything to go by, the most important factor is how enthusiastic she is about actually picking up the bass and playing it. Ideally you need a bass that SHE thinks looks cool and sounds great, and that SHE feels comfortable playing. And seeing as there's at least a 50/50 chance that she'll lose interest after a while, you need a bass that won't lose too much value over a few months, so deffo buy pre-owned. 🙄

Autre temps, autres mores. The past is a foreign country; trhey do things differently there.

Dare I ask what happened to the EMG Jazz pickups? They must have been pretty bloody special ...

You know, the money they can't possibly afford to pass on to musicians. Thanks to a FB post by @Wolverinebass I am now aware that they are the new sponsors for Barcelona FC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/60759525 But don't worry, musos, it's a bargain. Spotify are paying LESS than £250,000,000 for the privilege ...

I like the demo players riffage, and I like that just for once we see a demo with what is obviously someone's favorite gigging bass rather than a brand new boutique thingy, but would it not have made more sense to demo this with an actual y'know like P-bass? I'm spared the agony of having to decide whether or not to buy one by the absence of an XLR out. I always go to FoH as well as my rig, so that's a bit of a deal-breaker for me. Yes, I realise that I could use a DI box. No, I don't want to take even more gear to gigs.

Puzzled ... surely the pickup in a P-style bass IS a humbucker? What am I missing here? And don't call me Shirley.

Sadly @thebrig, this is pretty much standard practice when hooking up with strangers who claim to be musicians. Two weeks ago I was contacted by a guy who had two guitarists and a vocalist but needed a rhythm section for a project. My immediate assumption was that this would crash and burn but I said fine, I'll supply a drummer. The organiser set up a WhatsApp group which went absolutely mental with banter and positive vibes, leaving me dreading what was to follow. A week later one of the guitarists quit, never having actually met any of the other guys. Organiser managed to replace him in double-quick time, which I thought was impressive. We got together in my studio at the weekend. Organiser turned out to be delusional about his own playing abilities. Replacement guitarist was just about OK but had travelled from Bromley in Kent - I'm in Harrow, try using Google Maps to check that journey. Singer (of course) was a no-show. You're dealing, in the main, with flakes and fantasists. @Chris B is bang on the money here ... if you can play only with people who come personally recommended, then you're in a good place.

Have a look at the Powersoft range of top-end power amps, as used by most major venues.

In theory, agreed. In practice, playing a large enclosed stage at a decent Summer festival with an over-exuberant foldback monitor (controlled by the sound guy) pointed at you and your DB? Well, bin there, dun that, bought the earplugs. The word 'outdoors' covers a multitude of sins ...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224590283643?hash=item344a9fc37b:g:F8oAAOSwuklf0Qxa That design really, really reminds me of something, now what was it?

Agreed that you should experiment, but I suspect that you'll find amp placement is easily as important as the settings. On electric bass, most of us put our amp/combo/whatever directly behind us so we can hear it more clearly. On double bass that simply directs the greatest volume at the largest feedback source on stage ... not smart. You need to have your foldback feeding your ears, not the back of the bass or the f-holes.

Get it right with the clip-on mic and it will do a good job for you. Get it wrong, or find yourself with a ham-fisted sound guy, and welcome to feedback central. If in any doubt at all, then you're probably best off fitting a Schaller magnetic pickup or a Realist piezo pickup. If all you need is on-stage monitoring, and you'd prefer to have your own rather than relying on the PA, then at such low volumes your existing rig for electric bass should be fine.

Do you see that little black round thing over there? That's the rabbit hole down which you are about to disappear ...

I've had my share of vintage keyboards and - in general - found them thoroughly unreliable. When they work they're great, but a keyboard has SO many different components that can go wrong or fail completely, and they're a good deal more fragile than, say, an electric bass. They're also frighteningly expensive to service and repair. Tracing an electronic fault in a keyboard can absorb hours of time for a tech guy, and that ain't cheap. IME you'd be far better off buying a new or nearly-new keyboard where you can reliably expect it to do exactly what it's supposed to, and for at least several years. These things are mere consumer electronics these days, and consequently far cheaper than in the days of Rick Wakeman. 😉 If your son is Grade 7 piano then he'll only ever be happy with a proper weighted keyboard, which is a very rare thing in organs and synths, and with the full 88 keys. By far the best value for money that I've found is the Alesis Recital Pro, brand new for less than £400 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/154660692542?hash=item24027ee23e:g:BRwAAOSwO6Fhb90M) or menufacturer refurb'd for less than £300 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175140881036?epid=27005577640&hash=item28c735c28c:g:0u4AAOSwNkBh-9KG). As a piano it's genuinely excellent, especially at that price point. The nine other presets (organ, synth, etc.) are less impressive but will do for a starter instrument. If your son really takes to this whole keyboard-player-in-a-band thing, then when he wants to upgrade to a decent Hammond sound (or whatever) he's far more likely to want a dedicated unit to supply that anyway. Obviously if he wants to play in a band then you'll also need to arrange to have his left hand amputated but I can't offer much advice on that. 😗