NancyJohnson

I adore UFO's Strangers In The Night (even the super extended version is great). I don't possess a single UFO studio album.  This is all I need from them.

Haven't listened to Cheap Trick At Budokan for a while.

Other notables:

Aerosmith - Live! Bootleg

Sinatra at The Sands

The Heartbreakers - Live at Max's Kansas City

Wings Over America

Rachel Stamp - Stampax

The only other live thing I dip into regularly is the 4CD Transistor Blast by XTC.  There's live at the BBC content on there (from Rock Goes To College and other stuff) and everything has so much speed and energy.  The actual albums this material is sourced from are great, but the live stuff is just great.

5 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

The sorts of gigs that the Foo Fighters do even if they were all on IEMs and had no amplification or foldback speakers on stage it would be far from quiet. There would be enough spillage from the FoH to keep things lively and loud. It's not the Dog and Duck you know.

 

 

 

But it looks wrong without the amps on top of the cabs.

Assuming it's even wired up and moving air, makes you wonder whether Chris Shiflett can actually hear a single note being produced by it.

It's nonsense! Nonsense I tell ya!

In this day and age, isn't it proven that you don't really need a wall of amps/cabinets behind you?  I can't honestly see any merit in it in this case at all, except as mentioned before, it's forming part of the look.  

It's odd, people having a moan about click tracks, backing tracks etc. etc.

If anyone thinks a band like Porcupine Tree don't use MIDI and time codes to ensure everything works together is delusional.  The only thing going this route is it just makes things a tad sterile.

On 01/07/2023 at 21:34, meterman said:

Had a quick recording session last week and the CV Mustang was on the couch. I apologize in advance for the electric sitar and the archtop!

 

I keep thinking I should bin the tort and get white pearloid on there, although that’s possibly my meds working overtime 😂

That Epiphone is lovely.

2 minutes ago, snorkie635 said:

But the 'pot' plant looks spliffing. ✌️😎

It's a poinsettia!  There's a story online of two Americans who tried smoking the dried leaves and ended up with vomiting, headaches and palpitations.  

1 hour ago, eude said:

Ooooooffft, that does look marvelous!

It's spent too long in a case.  Intermittent issue resolved, it sounds thunderous through my gear.  Thunderous...

I'm trying to justify a five string in a punk band.  Tuned down to A, to boot.

Just put the bass down.  Thought it looked splendid.

On 27/08/2023 at 11:19, silverfoxnik said:

That's absolutely amazing @Hamster! 

 

So, so brilliant to have 'Mr Guy Pratt' confirmed as a special guest for this year's South East Bass Bash! 

 

http://www.guypratt.com/

 

Amazing musician, great writer and a fantastic raconteur... 

 

He's worked with some of my favourite artists ever... 

 

This is going to be good! 😎

You lucky, lucky b*starrrrrrds.

I saw him at doing stand-up a Q&A at one of the guitar shows a few years back.  He is a fantastic storyteller and just hilarious with it.  It's kind of amazing; I had a gig with Eddie Roxy that day (which got bumped), which was quickly replaced with dinner and a box at The Albert Hall for Messiah from Scratch.  Sunday is clearly the new Friday, or something.

I've got a Geezer Butler PJ set on one of my Hamers.  I'm kind of ambivalent as to what they offer over any other PJ set TBH.  They work well enough, no complaints, - but here's the caveat - I have a John East Uni-Pre 3 circuit on the bass, so it would - in all likelihood - make the sound I want it to irrespective of pickup choice.

Will be with you in spirit.  I'm at the Albert Hall that day for Messiah!

The more I read through responses and reconsider the OP the more I feel a knot of anxiety in my chest.

I've been playing 40+ years and not once - until I read the OP - have I ever considered resonance in my chest when I play the bass unplugged.  Sure I pick up all my basses and have a quick strum/noodle without them being plugged in, in fact I did that less than five minutes ago.  Construction materials are broadly traditional (mahogany, alder or maple bodies and maple or maple with rosewood boards for the neck), bolt on and set necks.  Everything else is broadly the same, I don't have a BBoT bridge on anything.  They all sound - unplugged - more or less the same, much the same goes if you plugged them into a desk and recorded them flat, you wouldn't be able to tell which one was which.

Isn't it about what you can make it do/sound like when plugged in that's important?

Formed a band with a mate about 15 years ago, we'd have periods of stability then someone would jack it in and we'd find someone else.  This went on for about ten or eleven years.  Gigging regularly and recording.  It was a little like one if those Pete Frame Family Tree things.

New vocalist came in.  Great pipes, superb lyrics, but clearly saw us as a work in progress.  Guitarist left.  Drummer left.  I found replacements.  Vocalist pretty much took MY band and shaped it to his vision.  Things went political lyrically (sorry, but no.  We weren't The Clash).  Suddenly, all members were expendable and despite having an online calender if any of us were unavailable he'd say it's easy enough to find a dep because booking gigs is hard. Individually, all the band were reasonable blokes - even the singer - but collectively it was always 3 Vs 1 or band comes first, even if gigs were booked on birthdays, anniversaries, funerals.

Final straw was pretty much being read the riot act the day my father-in-law died, when I said I really couldn't play some basement sh*thole that same night.  Amazingly my heartbroken mother-in-law, who'd just lost her husband of 60 years, said I should actually go out and play said gig. 

Post me they carried on with four different bass players and somehow limped through the pandemic before folding about a year ago.  None of the final lineup are doing anything of merit musically (which makes me exceedingly happy as I am).

Afternoon lads.

Thread resurrection, eh.  Despite the age of this thread and the time since my procedures, my hands are issue free and in great shape.  

I'll pass on the same advice.  Always decline the steroid shot and opt/push for the operation in all instances. 

If you know me, you'll know that I've tended to convert my passive basses to active via the addition of John East circuits; I reckon I'll installed maybe ten Uni-Pres in total (not all mine).

About three years ago I put a Uni-Pre 3 in one of my Lulls (the JAX/NRT); the installation wasn't that straightforward to be honest, just problematic.  John and I had a loooong conversation over the phone; he gave me a diagnosis that proved 100% correct (it was unrelated to the Uni-Pre and was actually a ground-wire issue on one of the pickups) and I fired up the soldering iron and repaired it while we were speaking.  

Oddly, the bass itself was generally fine, there was an intermittent issue where if I fiddled with the stacked mid controls too much the bass would make a noise not dissimilar to a theremin until I tapped the mid-pot a few times.  Given the reliability issues, I tended to lean on other basses and left the Lull at home, thinking that at some point I'd just get another Uni-Pre and just swap it out.  I decided to give John a shout.  We exchanged emails, he advised me to take the mid-pot out of the circuit (there's a little jumper that allows this), remove it and send it off to him.  I did this and a couple of days later I got the pot back (with a clean bill of health) and a new wiring loom.  All fitted.  Fantastic.  I'd wager the bass actually sounds a little different too.

I'd just like to convey that John's customer service here is off the chart.  Legendary.  I really have no doubt that had the issue been with one of the bigger manufacturers (ie EMG/Aguilar), I wouldn't even have got a reply from their service teams given the age of the part, but John seems to thrive on this stuff.  He's all over Talkbass threads.

100% legend.  What a bloke.

Went to a barbecue yesterday, guy hosting has a ton of guitars, ranging from his early purchase copies through to the current crop of Gibsons and Fenders.  He's not a brilliant player and plays - by his own admission - in a terrible cover band, but has disposable income and loves guitars.

Interestingly, he needed/wanted an acoustic bass for something and picked up a used G4M acoustic bass locally for £90.00.  He asked me for an opinion.

I think I must have played it for over an hour.  Genuinely surprised at how wonderful it was.  Only criticisms were that there were some sharp fret ends up the dusty end and the action could have been a mm or two lower, but it was just brilliant.  Played acoustically, tonally it was full and rich, amazingly so.  Zero fret buzz, neck straight, no high frets.  Neck profile was quite shallow.  Very playable.

Do I need an acoustic bass?  Well do I?

Dual truss-rods aren't particularly unusual - certainly I'd expect a wider necked instrument (ie a 6-string+ bass) to have two as a necessity.  Rickenbacker basses have them (which I've always thought was overkill).  The honourable member for Tamworth has answered how they're used quite succinctly.

Tweaking the truss rod(s) is easy enough and if done with a bit of patience and care, it shouldn't be an issue.  Just do little 1/8 or 1/4 turns tops and remember the rule or righty-tighy and lefty-loosey.  Results are generally instantaneous and in all honesty there's no real need to leave the neck overnight; detune the bass, adjust, tune up, repeat.  The woods/glues/construction of modern basses will allow for tweakage.

Remember also that the truss rods are only one element in the chain to achieve buzz free playing - doesn't matter how straight your neck is if you have a high fret.

17 minutes ago, Danny P said:

Weird, in all my years doing functions I've never had a Burn's Night gig. Is your friend based in Scotland? 

 

We get a few Christmas office party gigs each year which helps for December, but November, January, and February are always dead. We're a well-paid and very in-demand and regularly-booked function band for March-October, so if we don't get any gigs in the winter then it leads me to believe that functions in the winter just don't really exist in the numbers necessary to fund a normal life. 

No, not in Scotland.

My parents used to go to Burn's Night dinner dances.  It was a kind of let loose the shackles of the New Year doldrums.  Can't say that this kind of thing (or dinner dances in general) appeals to me in the slightest, but each to their own.

I have a mate who says his NFI for December and New Year gigs (10+) swells his coffers significantly until the next big hit which is Burns Night weekenders.  

What about registering interest with local studios (session rates) or just joining another working band?

Dependent on how you may be from a numeracy basis, you could contact doing office work outside of music three days a week.   

1 hour ago, Combed20 said:

Hi, is the DP-3X still available?

Thanks 

Yep!

I saw a video on this earlier...Peach Guitars.

Either the guy playing it is a giant or it's a tiny instrument.  It looks absolutely diddly.

Last count I'm at is seven.  Two Lulls, two Hamers, a Spector, a '70s Aria Precision and an Ibanez Roadster project thing.

Reckon I've owned pretty much everything I've desired over the last four decades, wouldn't have minded a Stingray 4HH, but probably wouldn't have hung onto it.  No idea why I bought several Fenders as I disliked them all immensely.  Wish I'd hung on to the white Gibson Thunderbird that I sold to @police squad, but I needed the swag for one of the Lulls.  I'd like to get a Lull T4 at some point.

9 minutes ago, Misdee said:

I remember when those Roadster's came out. They sounded superb, with a very gutsy sound. I seem to  remember the neck profile being a shallow D profile similar to a vintage Stingray, very different to the Musician Bass neck shape.

 

As others have mentioned, those Ibanez pickups that were essentially DiMarzio copies were absolutely brutal! 

There was an active circuit too.  Ridiculous value for money at the time, I think I paid about £190 new.

Nothing but happy memories...I ran it through a Carlsboro Stingray combo at the time; I have some desk-audio from a biggish gig I did a few days after that top photo, just a microphone in front of the cab, and it sounds really nice.  Quite full and modern.  (Of course it's the polar opposite to how I tend to sound now.)

I know there's a ton of information out there about wood stains, but my go to for a flat colour would always be Fiebings Leather Dye.

Used it to stain/colour fingerboards and my old Ibanez body.  Apply/rub in with lint-free kitchen towels (Bounty or similar).  Goes on great, very forgiving, gets everywhere.