Callumjord

My "Rig" the past two years. Dropped my amp and cab and went IEM. No regrets at all 

Hi there folk's, 

recently I have had a growing gas for a fretless bass. I've never played fretless bass before and I am looking to just dip my toes into the fretless world. 

What would you guys recommend as a good bass to get into the world of bass? I have been looking at a Sire m7 and also a squire P bass fretless. Do any users here have experience with these basses? What other fretless bass would be good for starting out on? 

Thanks :)

Played a small gig on Saturday, crowd was great and bouncing. In all fairness it was my own wedding and the band I had booked gladly allowed me to practise and play a couple of songs with them throughout the night. My newly wife and I are massive Stevie Ray Vaughan fans so the band was happy to learn a couple of hits and let me play with them during the evening. All I can say is that no one was surprised when I got up to play. But, what was surprising was when my band and my dad (who also plays bass) booted the other band off and played some songs them self. Was a great wedding! 

On 04/05/2018 at 22:00, White Cloud said:

Oh yes, just received my Sire V7 today from Thomann - exactly the same as yours!

Mine was perfect straight out of the box ... fit and finish is immaculate in every respect and the set-up was spot on. It even arrived from Germany still in tune! The neck is a gorgeous hard rock maple with hints of flame AND birdseye figuiring. Result! It is incredibly resonant unplugged and on a par with my Shuker.

Overall, my Initial impressions are that I am ASTOUNDED at the quality of this instrument at this price point. I would not only say that it is better than my Mexicano Fender P bass ... but compares very favourably with my 1976 Fender jazz. Even if I had paid £1000 for it I'd still be happy.

Agree about the preamp - I love it.

That's great that yours was perfect out the box, was no problem tbh for me because I would be setting it up to how I like it and I do love cleaning my instruments as well. It is amazing just how well these basses are and how much bass you actually get for the money 

2 hours ago, MoJoKe said:

I really like sires, the preamp is fabulous... A couple of people here have put lighter tuners on, and it makes them balance much better.

I found myself looking online at a V9 5 string fretless this morning.... Hmmm very nice, and I'm sure it'll play well like all Sires, but at £780ish a bit pricey?

The pre amp is excellent, personally I don't have a problem with the tuners, aside from the screws, but some lighter ones wouldn't hurt. I was looking at the v9s but yeah it's a lot of money. As long there was a serious jump in quality between the v7s it could be worth the money 

3 hours ago, Mcgiver69 said:

Dude you can kill small dogs with that rig, nice Sire too..

Thanks, I absolutely love this rig! 

Ok, so it's not really a new bass day since I have had this bass for a couple of months now but I feel like I can now give it a proper review. 

So, I have had my eyes on the sire basses for a while had slowly the GAS grew! Decided in the new year I would order a V7 4 string to complement my Fender 5 string P bass for use with my busy function band. 

Ordered from Andertons there was around a 3 week delay waiting for the bass to come in stock. Once it arrived at Andertons it was dispatched promptly and arrived very quickly! In all honesty the bass didn't arrive perfect, the neck needed intunating, string height adjusting, there was a number of dirty frets and strings were dead. That was no biggy for me as I like to give my own instruments a proper set up. However I did have a big problem with buzz coming from the open E. It took me ages to find out the problem (it was from the bridge of the E string being so far back that the e string when strung through went over at 90 degrees). 

Now that all the problems have been fixed, all I can say about this bass is "WOW! " for the price point this bass really out plays a lot other ones. The neck is excellent and smooth, it took a while to get used to it compared to my 5 string P bass. The fret job is brilliant, no sharp edges at all. The tuners are sturdy enough, annoyingly I broke two of the screws on the E string while trying to find out the problem with the buzzing. However I do plan on upgrading the tuners. The pickup and pre amp is fantastic, clear punchy sound and really cuts through. But tbh I don't really use the pre amp a lot of the time I use it in passive mode. 

I really can't get over how much bass you get for the money, I absolutely love playing this bass and it's been difficult for me to put it down! So much that my Fender professional P bass is getting very jealous about it. 

I'm not really great at doing full gear reviews but if anybody has any questions about it feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them. 

11 hours ago, GisserD said:

I never even considered rd making my board smaller. Never even thaught it was an option.

Kudos to your groundbreaking work sir!!! 

Yeah, for me it has to be practical over everything else. The old pedalboard was taking up too much room on stage and I like to move around. Had to my some sacrifices though, I am now using the in built compressor on my ashdown head than the Boss comp and also using the drive from the head as well. I picked up one of the foot switches for the amp and it sits next to the pedal board. But I still managed to get the main effects on

My 2017 pedal board vs 2018 pedal board. A lot of the venues I played last year turned out to be pretty tight for space and decided that I'd rather have something more compact and light to take around, leaving me more room to dance around, rather than taking a massive pedalboard. 

21 hours ago, Bluewine said:

One of my major complaints. Being separated from the bar. It's always the kiss of death for my band.

Do you guys think it's done on purpose in some instances?

Blue

I'm not sure if it's done on purpose, probably just the fact that some venues aren't designed to have bands play but they want to put them on. The stage itself is big enough just for a dj as well. 

First gig of the wedding season last  night, wedding was originally booked for the Saturday but the venue closed so 3 weeks before the wedding everything was changed. Was a difficult wedding, imo we sounded and played great but due to the layout of the new venue we played inside a small box that was hidden away from the bar and couldn't see or really interact with the audience. Oh well, bring on the next wedding 

I was stuck between this and the ashdown RM500 evo when I was looking to upgrade my eden wtx264... Ended up going with the ashdown. I love the characters series pedal though

My "pedalboard" from my last gig... 

11 hours ago, mcnach said:

 

Krakatoa, formerly The Moorings.

I love the place. Cool and helpful sound guy, and my girlfriend was there and she remarked on the good sound he got on the front... if all the venues worked as nicely as this one!

Yeah, that's a great place, had many nights out there. Great atmosphere, I've been trying to get some gigs for my covers band through in Aberdeen but it's proven to be pretty difficult. Either the pubs/bars want acoustic song writers or original acts and competing against the local bigger Aberdeen cover bands is a bit of a nightmare 

3 hours ago, mcnach said:

I had a gig last night at a venue out of town (Aberdeen) where they have decent equipment, so this time I did not bring my own in order to make transport easy (we're an 8-piece). I had played there once before, and I used my own gear that time, as it was a weekend of gigs for which I already had my stuff.

They had a Hiwatt 200 tube head and matching 810 cab onstage.

I like 810s. I like how with relatively low volumes you still 'feel' the air moving. But I struggled to get a sound I liked out of that thing. I had to turn down the bass a lot and boost treble and mids... so I suspect this is much like the Orange Terror heads where flat is mids&treble all the way up and bass all the way down. But even then... it felt far too woofy. I guess if we were a dub band I might have liked it better... 

I missed the sound of my Mesa D800+ and the two Barefaced Two10 stacked vertically. That's what I used last time, and I could still feel the air moving but it sounded great, powerful, defined... well, at least when the trombone player allowed me. He likes my setup a lot and often just stands in front of the mini stack, smiling, playing his trombone while humping an invisible bear   

Where abouts in Aberdeen was you playing? 

On 29/03/2018 at 19:10, pbasspecial said:

Loving your Zilla bass cab too.  Any chance of some more photos?

Here is some more pictures that I could find of the zilla on my phone. I have a lot more on my Instagram page 

Here is a picture of my rig from last night. Putting my new ashdown RM500 evo through its paces 

Played with my function band Diamond Skies last night at a pub called "The Pub in The Square" (aka PITS) in a town called Buckie in North East of Scotland. Was tight for space so was packed in tight. Crowd was up for it and we had a busy dance floor from mid set 1 all the way through to the end. Decided to step out my comfort zone and use my new Sire V7 instead of my 5 string P bass. Was weird playing a 4 string for the whole night and there was a couple of missed notes but overall I felt I did a good performance. We had a lot of interest from other people asking about weddings and birthdays as well. Overall a good night and I can't wait to be back in a couple of months. 

44 minutes ago, pbasspecial said:

Loving your Zilla bass cab too.  Any chance of some more photos?

Yeah of course, I'll upload some more here tomorrow. Its the 2x12 Fatboy with the neo light weight speakers. Sounds absolutely amazing and Phat. 

So long story short, my Eden Wtx264 packed in right before a busy weekend of gigs. Luckily I was looking into upgrading my amp head as I found that the eden just doesn't have the power that I am after now that I am playing bigger venues now. So I decided to finally push the button on one of the new Ashdown RM500 evo amps. 

I haven't spent much time with it yet (I have only played it for just over an hour at bedroom level) but I am already really impressed with it. I have got a couple of gigs this coming month so I am looking forward to putting it through it's paces and maybe doing a full review on the amp. Keep your eyes peeled on this post. 

For me it depends on the stage, venue and location. When I am nervous I get a twitchy leg so to combat it I move around so you don't notice it. Now it is just natural for me to move around and I don't notice my leg twitching. Of course if I am on a small stage and dont have any room to move it becomes a problem. 

3 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Out of interest how much time do you spend, on average, per week on your music in total (including travel)?

Well, I normally get in around 45mins/1hr30 of practice a day, then normally have 1-2 band practise a week which is normally 3hrs long then could possibly have 2 weddings on a weekend which is normally 4hrs of music plus setup time, sound check, strip down. Travel could be anything from 15mins up to 1hr 30/2hr drive. Normally I leave any recording/mixing work for weekends that I don't have any gigs. 

I would probably say that I just verge on the cusp of "Semi Pro". At weekends (and some week days) I am playing with 1 of 2 bands doing weddings/pubs/functions which is all fully paying gigs etc. I also do some amateur recording/mixing/mastering with other bands (again I take a small fee for doing so). But I still work a full 38 Hour week at my full time job. Being able to do flexible/compressed working hours really does help balance my work and music out. 

Played two shows over the weekend, Saturday night was spent in a bar in Nairn, very small stage so had to rip off some "key" pedals off my pedal board. Guitarists were wasting a lot of time between songs which was annoying. Anyway, some new songs we played went down very well and some other songs that normally go down well didnt. anyway, was packed up and home by 2am, of course the clocks went forward so was actually 3am. Had to be up for 7am to get ready and set up for a wedding fayre at 9am. First one out the band there so hauled all of my equipment and PA in. Managed to setup as much as I could before everyone else turned up. Realized I then forgot the stuff we have for show on our table, table cloth's laptop/monitor/speakers showing our video reel. Was packed up and home by 4.30pm. Sat down on the sofa and crashed out. All in all it was a good weekend, however it did highlight some area's I need to focus on. 

Oh, forgot to mention, my main amp broke on friday night so was lucky enough to borrow my dads old Laney RB9 which saw me through the weekend. Was an awesome sounding amp as well.