Doctor J

Oooh a new colour. Great to see the torch of Leo's innovation and creativity being carried with pride by FMIC, on the anniversary of his death. That price is absurd. Still, if you need a brand name that badly, good luck to you.

I much prefer them to Schallers, have never had a problem with the screw coming out and have them on most of my basses for years. I have had that strap nut frequently loosen after time on Schallers, however.

I've got a couple of Streamers with MECs (one set active, one passive) and an Ibanez which I fitted with EMGs (reverse PJ config in all). To be honest, I haven't heard anything in either set of MECs to suggest they're inferior to the EMGs in any form at all. You tend to see quite a few people who swap them out so if you keep your eyes on the classifieds here you shouldn't have to wait long to pick up a set but, to my ears at least, they sound great, I'd definitely consider installing MECs if I was swapping out pickups in another bass - just wouldn't buy them new, they're perjaps priced just a smidge unrealistically

If it's not fun do them and yourself a favour and remove yourself from the situation.

After giving it a little more thought too, you've most likely got Gotoh hardware on there already so leave it alone

That's a keeper Linus has nailed it pretty much, they were made during those years and, in the absense of any records, there's no way of really telling which year exactly. The Tele headed Precision was a genuine model though, there was one on chrisguitars for a while which I had my eye on but stupidly never bought. I don't think anyone out there is really making copies of the 400. Given the prices they sell for it's not really worth the bother, though if you had the big F logo on the headstock I'd say you could triple the asking price and still sell with ease. Please don't change anything, that thing is gorgeous please My ESP is as stock as the day it left the factory and I'm a hoor for modding, but anything I change will not improve the bass, only take away. Give it a bit of time, get to know it, these basses are the real deal, you don't need to soup them up to get a great bass. Some day people will see past the headstock logo and cop on to the quality of these basses and you'll be the guy who gutted a pre-CBS in ESPworld

I had a 200 mile round trip for rehearsals with my last band, which I did without complaint for four years. Things weren't going well though, poor communication and a bit of tension as a result, so we had a meeting after rehearsals one day, got a few things off our chest (surreal comments aired like "I don't really like local Metal bands, I wouldn't go and see any of these bands if I wasn't in this band" - [i]what are you doing in a local Metal band then?[/i]) but I drove away thinking maybe we had a future after all and was looking forward to our gig the next day, which was a festival in Limerick - a 90 minute drive for me and a two hour drive for the rest of the lads. By the time I got home, two hours later, I had received a text message: "I don't fancy doing this gig tomorrow. Too much pain for too little gain" That was the moment I decided to quit.

They should be throwing a few free sessions your way as an apology.

I like everything about that except the price.

I'm very particular about how I setup my basses and, as a result, very rarely go to shop to try them out because I'm more likely to be put off. Like neepheid, selection is thin where I live so I've bought a lot of basses from abroad without having ever played them. I'm generally comfortable with any 34" scale bass provided there's a forearm contour, so I don't worry about not getting on. The first thing I do is strip them down, clean and oil as appropriate, string them with my preferred brand and gauge of string and set them up the way I like. Once that's done, spend some time getting to know it, see what it can do and, after a few months, I know if it's a keeper or not. Within the same style of bass you do find some are better (to me) than others. I've had a few other Jazz basses pass through, like Sadowsky and Fender, but nothing has felt or sounded better than my ESP. When I got my Godlyke it became clear that my Stingray wasn't going to see a lot of playing time any more so I moved it on, despite liking it a lot. Even within bass types you like, there are individual ones which stand out and they're the ones you keep,

Never had a problem with that before. A D'Addario B I once had did the same thing and it was fine, strung up the same way I do for every other string.

Tell them their guitars look to small, like toy guitars and that, as men, they should play bigger, manly guitars - like you.

Go to lots of gigs as an audience member for a while, focus on bands who are playing the style of music you'd like to play and get to know the people involved. Musicians tend to know other musicians. Bands of a particular style tend to be in frequent contact with other bands of similar style. Opportunity will present itself soon enough. I don't think the "I'll play anything" approach is a long lasting key to success. Bands have ups and downs, musically and personally, if you have a passion for the tunes you'll find it easier to stick through the rough times. If you're not arsed about the tunes and the drummer is being a pillock you'll find it easier to find yourself right back where you are now. You're also less of a benefit to any prospective band if you're just there for the sake of being there, rather than being there because you fully believe in the music. Drop the deadline idea too, don't volunteer yourself into a stupid situation just because of where the Earth is around the Sun. Decide what you really want to do and take time in making sure you do what you really want to do, rather than just diving in for the sake of being in any band. Personally, I've never been happier since leaving my last band, just spending time writing and recording music myself. The idea of joining another band seems like a surreal proposition now where once it was everything which drove me forward.

More ABM love here, I've had my ABM300 for almost ten years now, never had a sniff of trouble either live or recording. Never found it lacking in the volume department either.

Beautiful! Any chance you could save that audio as mp3, my computer doesn't know what an ipb file is and I'd love to hear what that thing sounds like.

[quote name='Stockholm Syndrome' timestamp='1330257108' post='1554619'] So yesterday [/quote] Yes? Go on...

Yeah, you've got a lot of low end added there, while the frequencies you'll actually hear in a band setting, your mids and highs, are turned down. Set everything flat, next time you're playing with the band, and tweak as you go on. Don't judge your tone by how it sounds when you play solo, because it's not an accurate reflection of your tone once the bass drum, snare, guitars and vocals start taking frequency space away from you. Your biggest boost, 30hz, is pretty much inaudible in a band context but you're devoting so much energy to it. Can your cab even do 30hz? Get that right out of there, see what a difference it makes. In fact, I'd say reverse every slider on the eq, see how you cut through then.

How much is people's perception of a genuine, live, energetic rock performance coloured by years of media saturation of miming to pre-recorded, studio quality tracks? I don't have too much of a problem with Blur's performance there. They were a great band in their day and I enjoyed every Blur gig I ever went to. They're giving it a bit of energy there, they're putting on a show, it's a bit much to be expecting a studio quality performance, especially vocally when your lungs have to push the words out as well as throw shapes. Perhaps they were overdoing it a little considering they were trying to energise an audience of biz types sitting at their dinner tables? Put that performance into a sweaty club filled to the brim with people who aren't scared to crumple their tuxedos and it might make a little more sense.

How do you set your eq?

It's worth saying that no matter what you do to your bass settings, your band is going to sound poor until the guitar tone is sorted, because those settings will be interfering with everything. If they can subdue the ego for a little while and use their ears to listen to the band as a whole and how the guitar works in the context of your whole band sound. You need to explain this to them if it's something they're not aware of.

[quote name='WalMan' timestamp='1330135525' post='1553331'] We have a Marshall JCM2000 60W TSL602 set as follows:[list] [*]Clean - Gain 10 : Treble 10 : Middle 3 : Bass 10 [*]Crunch - Gain 7 : Volume 7 [*]Lead - Gain 8 : Volume 9 [*]Crunch/Lead controls Treble 8 : Middle 3 : Bass 10 [/list] [/quote] That's classic rock tone? It's the tone of someone not used to playing with other people. By way of contrast, my last gig was on guitar in Metal band with a very heavy sound and I had my Fryette 60W head set like this Gain 7, Treble 6.5, Mid 7.5, Bass 4.5, Volume 3 and it left [url="http://www.justinmaloney.com/anbwt.zip"]plenty of room for bass[/url] while still being nice and heavy. I frequently got compliments on my tone from proper guitarists, most of whom did the whole boosted low end thing themselves. If your guitarists have eq pedals, get them to try boosting their tone around the 1-2k mark and drastically removing the low end. You'll be amazed at how much everything will clear up. They'll be happier, you'll be happier and your punters will be happier

I think it's a good idea. I see it as something akin to a record shop which only allows its customers put up posters for gigs, not just any passing sh*tehawk looking to spam their goods in as many places as google finds for them. To get something back you must give something first. You could also put ebay, gumtree and the likes into the swear filter, meaning any such links offsite in the FS forum don't work and, in doing so, are pointless. You either encourage people to engage with the site and [i]community[/i] most of all or they leave it alone, but at least it doesn't get used as a dump.

The main problem with Floyds is user ignorance, they're incredibly stable [b]once they've been set up correctly[/b] and, by a comfortable margin, the floating bridge which stays in tune the best (although Steinberger have an incredible system too but I trust we're discussing guitars with headstocks?). Every floating bridge will exhibit the same issue if you try alternate tunings on the fly. The bridge is kept in place by the force of the strings pulling it forward vs the force of the springs pulling it back. Funny, I would count a Bigsby as one of the least stable vibratos I've ever encountered and they're affected by string breakages too, they just get a lot of unjustified credit on account of the look. Plus, have you ever tried to get a string on that tiny post with sweaty hands at a gig? A well set up Floyd will only require minimal tuning tweaks, I'm talking about once at the start of each rehearsal or gig after you take it out of the case, throughout the lifespan of the string set. I found a fulcrum style Kahler to be the easiest to switch between standard and dropped tuning, you'll need to tweak all six strings, which is to be expected, but your top five won't stray too far from pitch and it can be done rather quicky. For my last band I had a Floyd in standard and the Kahler in dropped which also acted as backup for the Floyd, I could tune it to standard in about 20 seconds without too much drama. I can't remember the last time I broke a string though, so it was never required.

Just sing along to him with the lyrics "tuning song, tuning song" in as atonal a singing voice as you can muster, while sternly eyeballing the guitarist. If he doesn't get the message and sort his tuning problems out then get someone else. There's no reason to put up with this kind of crap, neither your band or the punters who paid to hear you should have to put up with it. If it's a problem with the guitar, he needs to get it fixed. If it's a problem with how he strings the guitar or if he's doing something stupid like tuning down to the note, he needs to get fixed. Either way, trying to cover it up is the worst solution, it makes your band look amatuerish and not up to the task of playing a set of music in a professional manner.

Hmmmm, Phil Kubicki might be making a call shortly