NancyJohnson

10,000 hours, you say?

Personally, I reckon unless we had several fivers in the mix, it would be too much of a giveaway if there was just one...the last shoot out was all four string basses. I was open to anyone submitting whatever bass they wanted. All this is detailed on the blog post below (there's video!) by @Silvia Bluejay: https://bassclef141.wordpress.com/2018/10/26/basschat-south-east-bash-2018/

During the pandemic I spent a bit of time transferring some old cassette recordings to my PC, some of these were from jams in the late 1970s (when I was listening to a lot of Rush, The Police and Rich Kids); reckon I'd been playing 12-18 months at that point; I'd be spending an hour a day playing along to albums in my bedroom and jamming on Saturdays in a local church hall with two other guys (our drummer's mother had spoken to the vicar because we were too loud for a terraced house). The playing on the recordings was surprisingly fast, clear, coherent, concise and in time. The turning point for me was that first live Rush album; I played along with that more times than I'd like to admit and would transfer my findings into early (original) material we'd jam on the weekend. (It was never, 'Oh, shall we play Message In A Bottle?') I was lucky enough to be playing with a drummer and a guitarist who were as equally obsessed with playing as I was and it was a sharp learning curve - occasionally a guitarist or keyboard player would come in to jam for a week or two, then not bother. It was just us three. There was urgency and desire in our playing which translated to achieving a fairly decent standard fairly quickly. Let's assume for a moment that I could plot my progress on a graph, zero being when I first picked up my mates Jedson Telecaster bass and 100 being now; I reckon I hit 85% ability in under two years, possibly less. The remaining 15% has taken 40 years and most of that is about theory and experimentation, more along the lines of what things would sound like if I played some weirdness instead of just sticking to the root. I've had the misfortune of playing with guys that have been playing for decades and who consider themselves 'pretty good'; some/many of these guys can barely muster a few major chords or play drums in 4/4, which leads to the conculsion that you either have an aptitude for the the instrument (same applies sport/ None of us are really masters of our craft and it would be wrong to assume otherwise. What is mastery anyhow?

I'm wondering whether @ceteraand I should do another bass shootout. We'd need ten basses (we probably all suffer short attention spans...ooh look, a cat); I'd just need to know what basses so I can print out a list ahead of time.

The Carpenters - Gold. Karen's voice. It just makes me warm and fuzzy.

Ponky. Heh. It's like where your tone sounds like you have foam mutes, dead strings and you're trying to hit harder to give it more attack but your bass just ponks. Umm. Like the baritone guitar at the start of Wichita Lineman. But for bass. With foam mutes and dead strings. There's a lot of recordings from the 60s/70s where the bass is very ponky!

I've used the dUg for recording and it's a tremendous thing. Because of the pandemic I've only used it a couple of times in a band situation and can wholly understand the reference to it being odd sonically. I did roll off the chunk considerably, which in effect caused the pedal to lose some of the inherent characteristic; I suppose it's all about sitting in the mix and owning your frequency...I have an old band thing that's in the process of resurrecting itself at the moment and while I'd love to use it in that, the guitarist is very heavy and I know the bass would just get lost.

I remember the first time I plugged in the BDDI, it really was an 'Oh, my, freaking, god, there's the tone.' My journey went from that to a racked RPI (I hung onto the BDDI at that point as it was easier to use that for recording). Sold the RPI in the belief that the VTBass rack was going to be better for me than the RPI...I gigged it once and didn't like it one bit, it didn't suit me one bit. Sold that and bought another RPI which I then moved along when the Geddy Lee rack unit came out (this was not a happy time). I bought a VTBass DI to add a bit of colour to a dual channel set up and sold that along before going back to my BDDI. I just carry one of the GED 2112 DI boxes and a dUg now. The Geddy is like the BDDI with squirt of steroids. The dUg is just off the scale...fantastic thing.

I've got loads of connectors at home - at work at the moment, there's loads of them...bendy/straight. Shoot me a PM with your address, I'll let you know what I have and I'll send some over. If you're anywhere near Reading, pop over and take your pick.

It's an odd one...there's this belief that as a chorus pedal modulates, it should modulate after the signal has gone through any kind of distortion or dirtbox. What is odd (well to me at least, 'cos I'm so old school it hurts) is that most guys who plug into an amp would not utilise an effects loop and just go guitar/bass > chorus > amp.

Assuming everything is well with your bass, I'd say it's nigh on impossible to not get a decent tone out of a BDDI; I did have issue with the VTBass DI and the VTBass rack (too ponky). I've been using a variety for Tech21 stomps for years and years and my main bit of advice is actually the opposite of that of the honourable member for Hemel Hempstead; the Tech21 units have enough of a peak output to drive a poweramp, so I've always run these units into the effects return of a head or a poweramp, thus bypassing any pre-staging the amp may have. I've done this on a variety of heads (Trace/Ashdown/Matrix) and am currently doing the same on a Darkglass A/O 900w head. Just let the BDDI shape all your tone. Insofar as best tone? Subjective. My desired sound is a kind of a gnarly Geddy Lee/Jean Jacques Burnel hybrid thing and it'll do that until the cows come home. I'd just let the BDDI control everything; Blend on 100% (so no clean signal in the mix), the Level I'd just rotate to stop clipping on the powerstage of any amp once the other controls were where I wanted them, the bass/treble/presence just do what they do (the presence just adds a subtle mid-style level that helps you cut through the mix - I'm not even certain what frequency this operates at, but it works fine and doesn't make you sound like a transistor radio). If you want a hotter signal using one of the sliders in the Output or XLR will give you a 10db boost.

Michelle Branch. Wonderful.

I posted here a while back that as I have the inability to bite my nails due to a slight bit of tooth chippage.damage/crossover, my luxury item if I was on a desert island would be a decent pair of nail clippers. Who cares about matches and record players? Sensible nails is the way to go. Ditched the oh-look-these-came-free-in-a-christmas-cracker clippers and bought these babies in early 2019: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0762MBQ2G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Initially I hadn't appreciated how bad the old clippers were and I initially cut myself LOTS of times. I suppose the old ones were just very blunt.

XTC this afternoon. Skylarking demos at the moment.

I'm not the type of person that wants to get drawn into whether they pop, ponk or shizzle; pickups for me are just a means to transfer sound from your bass to your amp...I've put all manner of pickups into basses, strat pickups, humbuckers, P90s; none of them really make that much of a difference. For maybe 25 years I've been using outboard processing (generally @Tech21NYCkit - BDDI/VTBass/RPI/dUg/Geddystuff/GT2), this stuff will help you dial in just about anything, irrespective of the pickups you use. Josi's stuff is great value and works. Buy one, if you don't like it, sell it here, spend seven times more on something else and then wonder whether using that money against a used BDDI might have been a better option.

I've used Josi Warman's pickups in several projects, zebra humbuckers, regular humbuckers, P-94s and, most importantly in consideration of the OP, Jazz bass and Precision bass pickups. Absolutely no issues with them and I'd wager (with some certainty) that nobody would be able to tell the difference between these and any other make/specification. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I don't care where they're from or whether they're rebadged far-eastern knockoffs. They're cheap and cheerful and they work. If you don't like the Warman logo on the pickup cover, just buy new blank covers, scuff them up and tell people they're vintage 70s DiMarzios if it'll make you feel happier.. No one will be able to tell the difference.

Considering Gibson are so obsessive about year-specific reissues of Les Pauls etc. it does break my heart that they refrain from re-issuing a 60s spec TBII or TBIV. Not that I'd be in the market for one, that ship sailed a few years back and I have a Euro-X coming.

This is just another case of venue operators/promotors creaming a bit off the top. I have a friend whose daughter's boyfriend has a business doing event catering; he has a 100% rating on Trustpilot during the pandemic he regularly pitched up outside hospitals and fed the staff for free. I was staggered to find out that venues insist their on-site caterers take card payments (no cash) and that you use one of the venue card machines during the event. End of the day the venue takes - are you sitting down here - 25% of all takings put through the card machine. Shocker.

With this thread on 425 pages, I'd err that posts this far down will be skimmed past. Anyhow, here's today's listening. Momma are a three/four piece from Los Angeles, soundwise let's just say they lean heavily on Veruca Salt and there's elements of Smashing Pumpkins and Motion City Soundtrack kicking in too. The new album is superb, 5/5. The studio is certainly their friend, the live stuff I've seen is a bit patchy, but I reckon give them a year or two, they'll be main stage fodder for Reading/Leeds.

Similar in principal, I have an old Ibanez (for sale folks) and just wired the P/J pickups into a pickup selector switch, into a volume pot. then to the output jack. I tend to just leave the selector in the centre position so both pickups are active. No issues. As to why? Much like the OP, I tend to play passive kit with everything open and here I really couldn't be bothered wiring in tone pots.

BBOT bridge aside (promise me you'll put something chunkier on it if you pull the trigger), the lack of pickguard plays tricks with the aesthetics/geometry; that looks a lot nicer than any double-cut Les Paul Junior bass I've ever seen from Gibson. It has a distinct Hamer-esque look.

Just to answer the questions, I've tried ever conceivable powering option; PC and monitors on the same strip, different plugs etc. The Focusrite only has 1/4" jack outputs, the monitors accept 1/4" jacks or XLR. Headphones are fine, so clearly the issue is between the wired connection from the audio interface to the monitors.

I'm just posting in this area for maximum visibility. Has anyone got one of these that I can borrow for a day or two? Crowthorne, Berkshire. I have a high frequency ground loop issue from a PC/Focusrite audio interface/pair of M-Audio BX5 monitors (signal path is PC>USB>Focustrite>1/4" jacks>monitors) - it's irritating me so much I tend not to switch the monitors on. (Apparently) I can use one of these to lift the ground - and thus eliminating the hum - so out of the Focusrite I can go 1/4" jacks>ProD2>XLRs>monitors. I have zero noise to headphones from the Focusrite. I'd prefer to know it works before shelling out. Thanks Paul

Good lord.

I've seen a lot of official footage that sounded quite thin and restrained, if this makes sense, but this was probably one of the best sounding gigs I've ever been to. We were about 15-20 feet from the stage. I appreciate it's simply not possible to have six people onstage and create the vocals, so I'm fairly convinced they're using backing tracks for the BVs, there was one error during Head Over Heels (I think), that they recovered from well enough. Both guitars we're going through Kempers. Curt Smith was playing several lovely Duesenberg basses.