Doctor J

Thank you very much for listening 🙂

This is some stuff I put out with a mate at the start of the year. It’s slow and heavy but we worked hard to give it a real melodic edge too. https://witheredfist.bandcamp.com/releases

Boardroom shenanigans from suits who know no other way.

Go for four-conductor wiring humbuckers and run each individual pickup in series.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... etc Boardroom new product concepts. Dull. So very dull.

When you positively, absolutely have to shake the whole building from the foundations up.... Not mine, but Aaron Rieseberg from YOB in Wiesbaden tonight.

Currently isling by the river Main. Triumph of Death will play the hits of Hellhammer in a couple of hours. Tomorro, Yob in Mannheim and, Friday, The Obsessed in Wiesbaden, then back to rainy Tipperary. Life ain’t so bad 😁

It only takes one, then everyone else wants one for fear of missing out.

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The first gig I ever went to was Megadeth and Sanctuary in 1988. I wouldn’t be a bassist were it not for his disappearance from the stage for a few minutes which Ellefson filled with the descending bassline for These Boots... He can be a hard man to like but I wish him a full and speedy recovery. Megadeth were a huge part of my teenage years and the first four albums still get regular airings here. He’s incredibly good at what he does when he wants to be.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is clearly 80’s icon Max Headroom who, having finally escaped his digital prison, is enjoying the warm r-r-r-r-r-rays of the sun on his face.

Overdose - AC/DC He just plays one bleedin’ note but it works so well under the guitar chords. It really makes the song.

Learning drums is a great thing, it really focuses your mind on how bass and drums work together. I felt it really helped my bass playing, there was a lot less fluff after a while.

Terrible news. RIP.

DD Verni from Overkill has a very distinctive tone, now that I think of it.

Only mint is real.

Great band with a fine sense of humour, I’m looking forward to the new album.

Only if there’s a portion of time you spend faffing about between other instruments which you then have the discipline to dedicate to practising on your only instrument. I play music in several different tunings. If I had only one bass I’d be losing time to restringing and setting up instead of just playing. I play guitar too. Setting up floating bridges is something you don’t want to do frequently, trust me 😂 His logic could work for a very specific set of criteria but I don’t think it’s really watertight in real world scenarios.

None. I need food, water and air. Everything else is an indulgence. You only need one pair of shoes, one jacket, one knife, one fork, etc. Who lives their life like that, though? Soon, we’ll all be dead so do what makes you happy and don’t worry about what other people think.

Geezer Butler Bernard Edwards

We should just get t-shirts with our own names on them and, when people ask, just say “Oh that guy? He’s a bass player.” You’re only allowed to wear someone else’s name if you happen upon another bass player who replies with the correct answer above and then a shirt exchange takes place right there and then, on the street, like at the end of a football match. Secret handshakes will be devised presently.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Or in Gibson’s case, potentially worse than Henry. Who’d have thought that possible? They release a shambolic threat video, then pull it down when people think it’s creepy and sinister 😂😂😂 An encouragingly comedic start for the soulless suits charged with squeezing profit out of the past. I look forward to what they come up with next. Perhaps I should practice looking surprised for that day in the future when when the troops show up at the front door with a warrant to smash up my lovely Tokai 335? And what is more rock and roll than being called Director Of Brand Experience? You lost, hippies!

Cut the output signal, there will still be a signal (albeit minuscule) if you just cut power to the internal pre in the pickup.

If you can, solder it in such a way that it will run around the socket to the lug it is pointing at, not over the socket where it can be interfered with by the lead being plugged in and out, which could have caused this. Use a cable tie or something similar to get that other lead away from where it will be moved by the lead also.

I spent a lot of money over the years chasing tone in different instruments. I think it’s a fool’s errand, to be honest. These days, if it does’t sound good with everything flat, I move it on. The EQ should be there to enhance an already fundamentally strong tone, not to try to hopefully uncover a silk purse, if you know what I mean. Just a quick observation on your settings as described, you boost the low frequencies on the bass and the amp? Punch comes from mids and boosting lows is, effectively, turning down mids in the way the amp will try to make the sound and how your ear will effectively hear it. Try setting everything flat, everything, and adjust EQ according to the sound you want. I’d wager your Ibanez has a stronger mid presence than the Jazz, especially if you were running both pickups together which is a naturally mid-scooped sound anyway, and that’s why it felt like the Ibanez had more punch.