NancyJohnson

You could take the Presidents of the United States of America route. Chris Ballew converts Epiphone guitars into two string basses ('Bassitar') tuned to C#.

I'm fairly certain that none of Henry's people read these pages, but that bass is pretty horrific (although they're guaranteed a couple of sales in Germany, at least). Just find it a little sad really; Gibson may argue they're being innovative, but no, not really. They either have no ideas or a design team that it constantly told 'no'. If there's one positive, it's actually that the 2017 EB makes the EB from a couple of years back nice looking by comparison.

It's highly unlikely they'll disappear. All things said and done, the issue with all the big name manufacturers is (in no particular order), market saturation, lack of innovation, far-eastern manufacturing plants, lack of quality control and business practice. Gibson and Fender are guilty as feck for their reliance on products, the designs of which are close to 50-60 years old. They're bullish in the way they allow retailers to sell on their gear (was it GAK that quoted the pressure to stock guitars or lose their official dealer status?). Gibson are guilty of inflexibility, putting out stuff people are tired of and holding back of the models people do. Why the hell don't they issue a doublecut Les Paul Junior? Basses in different colours? Because they operate an inferior custom shop model where they can triple the price of street models. Ack. Good riddance.

Travis Bean 2000. I read a review in Beat Instrumental, late 70s which was accompanied by a single black and white photo. I landed one in 1980 for under 400 notes from a dealer in Lewisham #222. I wish I'd left it under the bed!

I played the Cat and Mutton in Hackney one time. It was a gentle Sunday lunchtime covers thing. The whole place was fighting at one point and it all kicked off because of two guys elbowing each other at the bar. Best ever was turning up at a pub (I'm not saying where), carrying the drums in, we kicked open the door into the room where we were playing, only to witness a full on lesbian live sex show happening in front of a handful drunk skinheads! Happy days.

I was looking back through my eBay purchases trying to see which one it was...I honestly don't think I paid more than £20 for the pickup. The one thing I did seem to do correct was ensure I got the right pots and cap. Incidentally, I do have an identical Wilkinson pickup in a Sunn Mustang body (essentially a Fender licensed clone made in India). I just need to procure a loaded neck for it.

I had a Bongo 5HH a few years ago...would take it to rehearsal, start out all nice and flat, then in the proceeding hours, noddle noodle, twiddle twiddle. I never came out of a jam having cut any of the frequencies; the onboard preamp is mental. If I could have converted it to passive somehow, I'd probably still have it now.

[quote name='bluejay' timestamp='1474794392' post='3140476'] [/quote] My wife just said, 'Ooh, he's lovely.' I answered, 'He's American.' 'Doesn't matter,' she answered. 'He's lovely.' Sigh.

Couldn't we do it every six months?

Today was a belter. I never win anything. Ever. Period. I am a very happy bunny right now (I would have been even happier had Chelsea not been thumped 3-0 by Arsenal!). Cheers to Alex for bringing the cabinet in for the raffle...it'll be making its gig debut with me tomorrow night in Basingstoke for the first of the Musicians Against Homelessness/Crisis I'm doing. Weeeeeeee!

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]01. [/font]Drawmer LX20 stereo rack compressor limiter expander - £55 (jhk). [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]02. Trace Elliott AH300 head - £120 o.n.o. (silverfoxnik)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]03.[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]04 [/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]05. Allparts Jazz 70's in off-white with maple board/blocks, Wizard pickups & Gotoh bridge (Cetera)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]06. DeArmond (Guild) Pilot Active Bass (Cetera)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]07. Warwick Corvette, 2004, Active with mojo. £400 (Grangur) [/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]08. [/font][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Harvest Leather Strap (Brown Cow Antique - 118 - 127cm). £20 (Wolverinebass)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]09. [/font][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Line 6 Sonic Port Interface for iPad/iPhone/iPod (obbm)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]10. Knackered blue plastic case containing non-knackered amp leads, guitar leads, a patch lead, and a speakon lead (MacDaddy)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]11. Warwick Rockbass Streamer Standard 5 String[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]12. Fender Jimmie Vaughan Tex Mex Stratocaster, White with Maple neck and Fender gigbag - £550 o.n.o. (noisyjon)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]13. Ibanez SR740 - Upgraded £325, Babicz FCH 4 String Bridge, Chrome (Grangur)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]14. EBS Multicomp, EBS Bass IQ, Ashdown Lomenzo Hyperdrive, Gigrig Generator, Distributor and accessories, Diago Gigman pedalboard (Graham)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]15. MXR Custom Comp CSP202 - £45 (JapanAxe)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]16. Status S1 5 string headed, funny post box colour! Price? Dunno yet![/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]17. Epiphone Dot Studio (w/mods). Discontinued black, with black hardware and cream binding. Very clean. Hardcase, long throw bridge, Sperzel locking machines, Wilkinson zebra humbucker in the bridge position, Dunlop Straploks, strap. £225.00 for the lot. If no interest, I'll take it home.[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]18. Sandberg vm £650 ish or trade for what have you cash either way as appropriate[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]19. BASS BASH SPECIAL PRICE! £275 MTD Kingston Heir 4 string bass. Passive J-H pickups rosewood board maple neck[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]20. Ibanez ARTB100 short scale arch top bass £200 (if Merton makes it!)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]21. Eden metro 2 x 10 combo £375 (jhk)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]22. Eden 2x 10 XLT cab £230 (jhk)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]23. Peavey 112 special combo £69 (jhk)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]24. FENDER JAZZ BASS USA 1998 - Colour: Aqua Marine. Maple neck and board. Fender case and case candy (incl. key, truss rod spanner, etc.). Very small dink on back of the neck, otherwise in exc. cond. (currently on FB for[/font][color=#B22222][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][b]£750 ono[/b][/font][/color][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif] but for Bass Bashers [u][b]£650 ono[/b][/u]) (Stingray5)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]25. TRIBAL PLANET GX40-AA GIGBAG CASE (for ACOUSTIC BASS GUITAR) - Large and seriously well-built gigbag/case. Great for touring. Built-in lean-stand for stage and airport halls. Lighter than full flight cases. As new. £35. (Stingray5)[/font] [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]26. ARIA AMB-50 ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC BASS GUITAR - Fretted. Gig bag. Strap. Trace Elliot Phosphor-Bronze acoustic strings fitted (40-60-80-100) plus new spare set included. Exc. cond. £100 (Stingray5)[/font][/color] [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]27. Hartke HyDrive 2x10. £225.00 (This is also up on the marketplace, if it sells there first etc.)[/font][/color]

I'll also be bringing this along. It's the extremely loud [b]Handbox Red Fighter[/b] head. I got it from Michael/WaterofTyne earlier this week with the view of taking it out on a few dates, but after a five hour session, it's not really my thing; it runs [u]very[/u] clean and I was struggling to get it to overdrive, so I'm back to my Sansamp and poweramp set up for my upcoming dates. Bridged she offers 1000w of output, even just going out parallel I didn't take the master A channel past the 9 o'clock position (7 o'clock is off). The plan was for the maker (a Polish guy called Leszek), to allow the head to circulate amongst (the more well known members of) the group and report back to him with how the amp fared. What I'll do is sit it on top of my racked gear, I guess just take it away and try it with your cabs and let me have it back at the end of the day (unless we can find a suitor to take her away for a dirty weekend). It accepts Speakon/jack connections. Paul

We did actually give some consideration to doing the upcoming gigs with the drum recordings I'd done for home demos, they're certainly sound enough although I don't know how things would actually pan out, especially in the event of one of us making a minor error live. I utilise a mahoosive amount of live drum loops by Beta Monkey for the home recordings...I did argue at one point that I could easily drop the drum tracks for each song into an iPod or a tablet of some kind and just push these into the front of house. Might have been fun. As things stand, the guy we played with earlier in the week is chomping at the bit to come on board full time. He's a very busy player and really wants to get back to working with a loud originals band, which is great. Happy days.

Just a little update here. Two of us in the band (me and the guitarist) had an issue to resolve in bringing the vocalist 100% round to getting shot of the drummer and it eventually came down to tape evidence(!) and finally coercing the singer into playing with another drummer (which we did earlier in the week and to quote a line from Star Trek Generations, 'It was like the joy was tangible.'). We had a very uncomfortable 60 minutes at rehearsal last night and told him he was toast. It was horrible really, but done now. I was a little amazed at the excuses he was giving to cover his decline (too many to go into here), but I suppose his defence mechanism simply kicked in at this stage. We have two gigs upcoming in the next week which he actually asked if he could do, so we agreed to that, afterwhich that's it. Just in closing, after we told him, he actually played a lot better, so it is certainly in him to play well, but he just slipped back into the usual after less than half hour. Anyhow, it's done. The End.

I've got the Red Fighter now (it was delivered about half hour ago) and I will be taking it to the bash along with a pair of Hartke Hydrives (410 & 210), so you can try it then. The sound matrix illustration that Michael provided above explains what the knobbage does; I'll experiment a bit tonight. Paul

Mullet warning. Not withstanding that this was Hall and Oates arguably at the top of their game [i]and [/i]on home turf, the first three tracks (well for me at least), still blow me away after 25+ years. This still makes me feel warm and fuzzy, despite not really being a fan of this musical genre, they just do it so well. It's the classic lineup too, T-Bone on bass and G E Smith on guitar. Daryl Hall's tenor guitar appears at around the seven minute mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRTTES4BZ04

I've had a bit of a soft spot for tenor guitars since I saw Daryl Hall playing a Gibson 335 style version during the Governer's Island show more than 25 years ago. Anyone play one? Got one?

[quote name='Marvin' timestamp='1474368726' post='3137411'] On the Hartke website it says the 115 (and the 112) are ported. Nothing said on the 410 and 210 page so assume they are both sealed [/quote] Well that's news to me...I owned one until around 18 months ago (it never left the house). There didn't appear to be a vent anywhere, although I assume that it's feasible the port could have been a smallish opening (or two) on the facia that wasn't visible behind the grille.

My signal chain is Sansamp RBI > Matrix Amplification poweramp > Hartke cabinets. Something that came to mind since starting this thread is that we did switch guitarists recently; while I know this shouldn't make a difference, the bew guy's tone is of a more clearer distortion rather than the muddy tone of the previous guy. My bass used to cut through a lot more previously; we really didn't own our frequency, so to speak. I guess it's feasible that we also have a reversal in place here and maybe I just need to phatten up a bit.