sykilz

Lets not mention the 'tache......

You know what, it's very reminiscent of Californication to my ears, but I quite like it, great to see John playing again and he has THAT guitar tone going on still. Nice work by Flea as usual, looks like he's playing the jazz in the video. Much better than I'd feared !!!!

My sympathies, I wrecked my back in my early twenties ( 52 now !!) and had to try various solutions, I found a normal decent but wide strap helped a lot, but also swapped from playing a Washburn 5 string to a shorter scale bass. I was playing metal, so everything was down the far end of the fretboard, and the extreme reaching of my left hand was causing a lot of the fatigue. Might be worth a try, but I'm well aware that everyone has their own private problems with back pain. Good luck!!

1 hour ago, Skybone said:

 

Had an MB-4, lovely to play, but didn't sound that great.

The MB 5 I have has a very scooped active jazz type sound, it's the natural finish one, for the 90's power metal band I was in it was just the ticket, but if you didn't want that sound then it couldn't really do anything else to be fair

Always loved the 90's Washburn headstocks, just pointy enough but with a nod to the classics too. I still have the 5 string version of this.

Watched Sky Arts last night (I assume they repeat these things quite a bit) and they had Ozzy Ozbourne live from Budokan. Ozzy was his 'usual' self, but the band was Zakk Wylde on guitar, Puffy Bordin on drums, and Robert Trujillo on bass. The rhythm section was absolute metal heaven

My favourite album of the year is Tremonti's new one Marching in Time. Honourable mention to Mammoth WVH and Grinder Blues, both great bands with great albums.

5 hours ago, BigRedX said:

It's strange how any discussion of HiFi especially when it comes to playing vinyl descends into some weird "willy-waving" one-upmanship of ever more ridiculous cost and complexity. It is in my nature to be suspicious of anything that requires massive amounts of money spent on it in order to be "properly" enjoyed.

 

Ultimately it is the music and not the delivery medium or playback system that is important.

 

For many years my music listening was done on a Dansette purchased from a junk shop in the mid 70s for £7, and which played one side of the stereo image considerably louder than the other, to the point that when I did finally get a decent hifi system it revealed all sorts of additional instruments I hadn't previously been aware of in the mix, and not always to the improvement of the music IMO, which all goes to show that we end up liking the sounds we are used to, and not necessarily those that are technically the best.

 

These days I own reasonably decent Project turntable that is used for one purpose - to transfer recordings only available on vinyl to my computer. Then I can remove all the pops, clicks and other unwanted artefacts that will detract from my listening enjoyment. However this is not a simple or straight-foward process, and therefore I have found it more effective to buy the CD or digital download copy of anything I have only on vinyl and rip that instead.

Well said, great post. I was a vinyl guy in my teens ( '82-'90 ) but I usually put my albums onto tape because obviously you needed to for the car.

One of the greatest days of my life was when I got an in car CD player ( that didn't jump and skip!!!!!) , people take that for granted but it seemed to take forever for the technology to get that right 😆😆

Ive enjoyed using all the different media over the years, all have pluses and minuses, but boy are we lucky to live at a time when we have such a great choice of format. ENJOY the music, people.

3 hours ago, yorks5stringer said:

I think some are being a wee bit disengenuous here, the article states that Fender have teamed up with Mo-Fi (who?), so really it is a Mo-Fi product with a Fender sticker.

The article claims that the swamp ash is from the Fender factory. Who knows . Smoke and mirrors. Big money too 😬

(I do kind of like the  Marshall fridge though)

Only available in sunburst. Assumedly with a tort tone arm as an add on...??? 😆😆

https://www.whathifi.com/news/mofi-and-fender-have-teamed-up-for-this-gorgeous-limited-edition-turntable

3 hours ago, uk_lefty said:

Me and one of the guitarists are desperate to do "Bad case of loving you" by Robert Palmer. The drummer claims nobody in the world has ever heard of this song, nobody will sing along or dance along.... What the actual!?!?! It's a classic.

My old covers band used to open the set with this, it's great fun to play, up tempo but fairly easy, great to 'warm up' yourself,  and usually went down well.

Disclaimer: I did have to put the back seats down,

However, when in my covers band I managed to fit a TC Electronic 4x10, and 2x12 cabs, two basses in their cases, a TC BH500 head in its flight case, a backpack full of cables and stuff..........in an original Ford Ka.

I think this is the tuning that Alice in Chains have used for a lot of their darker work, Them Bones and most of Dirt album, etc, and I've only ever seen (Mike Starr initially) Mike Inez use four string Warwick / Spector type basses tuned down, assumedly with chunky strings. And they've always sounded great 🤘🤘🤘

18 hours ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

 

I think that's the thing, as I said earlier. They've been around for so long, that which ever albums were current when you started listening to them are the sound you associate with them and usually like. For a lot of the (ahem) more mature basschatters, it's the early Paul Di'Anno albums. For me it was Seventh Son. Then I worked backwards from there, next getting into Somewhere in Time and Piece of Mind. They're still my favourite 3 Maiden Albums, even though I then bought and regularly listened to their entire back catalogue. I went to see the Dance of Death tour but couldn't really get into the album. I really really tried to love No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark, and although i liked a lot of the tracks, the album's as a whole never had the same impact as the first three I got into. The Blaze Bailey albums, I didn't listen to at all, they just weren't Maiden to me. Then all the post Brave New World stuff just kind of passed me by entirely. 

Agreed, I was pulled into the Maiden family in '83 so my awakening was Number of the Beast/ Piece of Mind, then Powerslave came out soon after. I quite like the new albums, there are a couple of beauties on each IMO, and Senjutsu, ( after only one full listen TBH) seems to fit this pattern, a couple of tracks left me cold, a couple made me go "oooooooh!!!" , and a couple made me go "yeeeeeeaaaaaah". 
The fact that they're still putting out new music some 40-ish years later is a blessing, who ever would have thought this possible back in the eighties...???

Very late to this thread. I am a now retired metal bassist, played in original metal band for 15 years or so, from '88, we were probably in our 'prime' around '92 !!!!😆😆 We were attempting to be Metallica meets Kings X meets Alice in Chains, and thus managed to get nowhere near any of these.

I exclusively used a Washburn MB5 bass into a Hartke 350 watt head into a Peavey 4x10 ( which weighed more than my car), and it was a great sound!!! When we reformed I used a Warwick Corvette, now stupidly sold. Now I spend my days noodling on blues rock originals at home with the guitarist from the aforementioned band, mostly on a recently acquired Ibanez mezzo bass into a Fender rumble 40,  having done my time in a dad rock covers band.....the soul sapping years.....😆😆

Anyway, photos...., the beast..

and the new guy

Dan Reed posted that when the Network opened for the Stones in 1990, Charlie had his own sewing machine on tour and repaired his own suits on tour. That's pretty classy.

RIP Charle Watts

1 hour ago, Muzz said:

Pimping my 414...

 

OK, after giving up on finding a VW BB3000A for less than a king's ransom anywhere, and realising that the majority of BB necks are a bit too chunky for me (1024, 424, 1100, etc), I've decided to stick with the VW 414 I picked up a while back... It's a specific bass for a specific band, and we've a few reunion-type gigs coming up, so a VW BB is a must.

 

So far, so meh, on to the interesting stuff...I love the pickups; the neck, while not exactly my broom-handle ideal, is close enough, and it plays pretty well. The weight's borderline, but doable. The only things I really considered changing were the tuners and the bridge; tuners for weight, and I play with the heel of my hand on the bridge a lot, so the BBOT is literally a pain, especially if the grub screws are protruding. So I lashed out £30 on a Fender bridge and £17 apiece on Hipshot Ultralites, and the bass feels a lot better. The whole quality of the thing has gone up a notch, and I'm very happy with it.

 

Aaaaand this is nowt without pics, so here they are:

 

 

Yeah, I know it says 'Fender', but I don't care; it's a fantastic bridge for £30, and verrry smooth under the heel of my hand. The whole 'more sustain/more tone' thing is very contentious and very relative, but I do like it. I'd put one on anything for that money...

 

 

And the new tuners; the screws fit into the original holes, and they tighten up nicely from the front. Good solid tuning. I also kinda like the tan lines... 

 

Total screwdriver/fitting time was under half an hour, total cost £98, and for that money, it's a big improvement... 😃

Back in my gigging days ( 5/6 years ago) I had the twin of this bass, I had the small Y hipshot tuners on it and they made a big difference, the bass balanced perfectly and the weight saving was significant. Nice looking bridge too, I swapped out the little height screws with some from another bridge so they didn't rake the flesh from my hands 👍👍👍

Personally I really enjoy Slash's solo stuff with Myles Kennedy singing, sure it's 'mainstream' rock, but for me it's where Slash's strengths lie nowadays. And Myles can belt out the GnR stuff live too.

Didnt much enjoy this new effort from GnR myself.

To be honest I hoped there'd be less long tracks on this album compared to BoS, but Bruce says there's some different styles going on so fingers crossed. Countdown has begun.

1 hour ago, kendall said:

I felt the same excitement at 49 when I logged on to watch the premier of WOTW - its a cool song, nothing amazing, but I enjoyed it and it's Maiden.  I'll always love Maiden.

EXACTLY THIS!!!!! I think a lot of music fans have that one band that transcend 'just' being music, there's a connection because of your age and what you were going through, and that stays with you for life. They're still the one band that I get genuinely excited about a new release from.

4 hours ago, MHMSWC#03 said:

This comment has stayed in my head since I read it earlier. An interesting thing to say. Tell me more. Was it really that different? How?

'83 was just a couple of years shy of my older brother blasting metal vinyl through the wall of his bedroom into mine, and so my fantastic musical taste had not yet been honed ..

P.S. Up the Irons!

To my ( and my friends) ears there was a level of maturity and adventure in Wasted Years that Maiden had only shown glimpses of before, to be fair we were all male, all aged 16/17 when Wasted Years came out, so we were all fairly immature guys who loved their metal, but metal, generally, meant 'anger', power, lyrics about ancient figures, or warriors, or drinking, and riffs generally were hard, fast and powerful. WY came along with its carefully picked  intro, it's'futuristic' guitar sound, melancholy reflective lyrics and to us, a new side of Maiden emerged. I'm sure other people felt quite differently and this is all tosh but it's a time I remember fondly. Loved that album too.

I saw Di'anno play Basildon ( which should tell you a lot) a few years back, and he was randomly offering out people in the crowd, just for being there. Bizarre. And he was terrible. Loved those first two albums though. Not sure how the band would have evolved had they kept him, I think they'd be a very different beast (🤘) today, if they'd survived.

13 hours ago, dudewheresmybass said:

I was not impressed when I listened to the song on YouTube, so I tried it on Spotify ( spit, spit, wash my mouth out!)

the mix is much better there- there is clarity in the bass and the vocals are not as lost. It’s definitely got that ‘modern maiden’ feel to it. 
However I’m still not massively struck with it. 
amazing marketing, average song

I found this too, YouTube mix is horrible, especially the vocals to my ears, on Apple music it sounds very good to me, the guitar mix is very clear you can hear all the different guitar lines.

Maiden fan since '83 here, I mean for years around that time they were pretty much my go to albums on a daily basis. Personally I really like the new single, it's a little more 'proggy' than their early stuff, but as I've aged I prefer that side of the band, I'm about the only person on planet Earth who prefers Final Frontier album to Book of Souls ( which I found to be a real slog). 
This new one reminds me of when Wasted Years was released as first single from Somewhere in Time, ooooh it's different. True, but I'm finding the new one to be a real grower, as was WY. Just my tuppence worth. Up the Irons 🤘🤘👍👍