Russ

There's only two basses I regret selling - firstly, there was my "pseudo-Sei" - this was made by Chris McIntyre back when he worked at The Gallery, from a neck-through body blank from Brandoni. It ended up with a totally reshaped body and neck (my design), a flat transparent black finish, a Bartolini MME pickup and Schack circuit and a Kahler trem. I loved that bass. It felt great and had a very unique sound. It also got me through some very low periods in my life, but I ended up having to sell it to get me through a particularly low period. I wish I could track it down, if it's still out there somewhere. The other one was my custom GB - the tone didn't quite work for me, but I miss it because it was no normal GB - it had a custom body shape (based on the design of the pseudo-Sei), a redesigned headstock (to accommodate two Hipshots) and various other tweaks to the typical Rumour design. I miss it, but apparently Bernie still has the design we came up with, so making another one sometime in the future isn't out of the question. If anyone sees either of these basses for sale, please let me know! The GB: The "pseudo-Sei":

Limp Bizkit... great musicians, awful band. All the instrumentalists are fantastic, but it's ruined with stupid, juvenile vocals and imagery. Props to Sam though, very good player.

[quote name='Captain Bassman' post='548713' date='Jul 23 2009, 10:22 AM']Yep, I went to quite a few of their gigs in the Croydon area. F***king awesome! In fact, I still have a copy of their "7 Song Demo" on cassette tape in the car. It still gets played regularly! Dave Colquhoun was their guitarist. He also worked at RB and has also played in Wakeman's New English Rock Ensemble with Lee. I think Dave won the Guitarist of the Year competition many moons ago too. Very talented guys - glad to see they've managed to get carreers in the biz. For a while back in the early 90's I played bass in a band called Skittle Alley - it was kind of the Rockbottom 'house band'. Lee kindly got me the gig and was the only one in the shop, along with Dave C, who wasn't involved. Luckily for me it wasn't his kind of thing![/quote] Last time I saw Dave (ran into him in Bromley a couple of years back), he was playing guitar in the We Will Rock You house band. He's also married to Jay Aston, formerly of Buck's Fizz! Yep, saw Moondigger at the Cartoon loads of times. I've still got several of their demos, as well as their 423 album - still gets the occasional play, but I actually think the tunes on the old tapes were better! There was a great tune called "Dreams" that had loads of different parts (including a slap solo), and then there was that period where they had a lead singer (some bloke called Huck) - with him, they did a tune called "Family Song" that had an awesome picked bass part that was part of my warm-up routine for many years!

Flea also used an Alembic Epic to record most of "One Hot Minute", although I don't think he ever played it live. The Modulus is a great bass, but the all-time best Flea tone has to go to BSSM - the Wal. The bass tone on that album is amazing.

[quote name='Captain Bassman' post='547494' date='Jul 22 2009, 12:52 PM']Lee Pomeroy, who recently toured with Take That and has played bass for Rick Wakeman for several years now, is another left-handed upside-down genius. I remember many a Saturday afternoon spent in Rockbottom watching him do stuff I could never hope to play right-handed and the right way up! Absolutely awesome...and a thoroughly nice bloke to boot![/quote] I was a Saturday-afternoon Rockbottom dweller for quite a few years, and I must admit that Lee is probably the person who inspired me the most to get better back in my early days. Some of the stuff he used to play was mind-boggling. Did you ever see his band Moondigger, back in the day?

[quote name='dannybuoy' post='541372' date='Jul 15 2009, 02:39 PM']I agree with many of your points - whilst I said image isn't important to me, I know it is to others. Thing is, in the type of venues I'm used to playing in (i.e. London toilet circuit, unpaid gigs and no-one giving a sh*t), I'd much rather please a small amount of audience members who actually got into the music than try to impress the type of people who are more interested in my shoes![/quote] Why not impress all of them? The way you're thinking now, you might be leaving some of your crowd unimpressed! I did the London toilet circuit for years, and you have to use anything at your disposal, in addition to the music, that'll make you stand out from all the other bands doing the same gigs. It's an overcrowded scene, so you do what you can to stand out. Remember, it's all about selling the whole package. The more complete the package, the more chance you'll have of selling it and moving up in the world. It's about the music, for sure. But it's also about the performance and the look. It's only ever just about the music if you're playing to a room full of blind people and guide dogs.

I've found that the Modulus Flea/FU basses sound a bit cold when played by themselves, but completely come alive in a mix - they sit under a band perfectly, and cut in all the right places when you want to be heard. Having said that, another option would be to get a Stingray and a Status neck - you could have a Flea-beater for under a grand - Sterling Ray34 (every bit as good as the real thing, trust me) - £700-ish, Status neck - £300.

This is something that is an unfortunate fact of the music business - as a live, performing band, you're not just selling music - you're selling a product that, by definition, has a visual element, and therefore an image. A band's image is, in my opinion, just as important as their music. If anyone says, "but (xxx band) doesn't have an image", they're wrong - their image is their apparent lack of image, and it's probably been meticulously decided by image consultants and record industry people that they should look like that. The wrong image can ruin a band, and the right image can take you to another level. Do you think Marilyn Manson would have sold all those records if he looked and dressed like Gordon Brown? Having said that, even though it's important, don't let it overshadow everything - all it really involves is being identifiable and having something that makes you stand out visually from other bands. You don't need a stupid haircut or bondage gear, just something uniquely "you", something that will stick in peoples' memories as a visual to accompany the music. Have some fun with it, and don't worry about stuff like "this isn't me" or other such thing - nobody is the same person on stage as they are at home or at work. Don't be afriad to occasionally become your rock star alter-ego, and to look the part. It's fun!

Got a few friends playing there this year (I played there back in '03). Should be awesome. Is Vince still running things, or do they have someone else now? Best of luck with it - watch out for Inner Eden and Godsized while you're there.

[quote name='EBS_freak' post='509923' date='Jun 10 2009, 08:42 AM']No updates for a while, so I thought I would chuck this one from the archives out in the open. A bit different this one... not prizes as to why. Loads of builds on at the moment so there should be some fresh untapped porn in the forthcoming months...[/quote] I played that one back in around '94 when Bernie was still working in West Croydon, and was still operating under his own name (before he started using the GB name) - he used to sign his headstocks in silver pen instead of putting a logo on. Lovely, lovely bass. The Bartolinis sounded great with his circuit (Bernie and Dick were still working on their own pickups at the time), and that myrtle burl top looks far better in person. Only thing I didn't like about it was the neck - it was wider at the nut than a Precision and a bit too chunky for my taste.

[quote name='barry44' post='509147' date='Jun 9 2009, 03:34 PM']eric avery - janes addiction[/quote] I saw Jane's (with Eric) last Friday night. He's still got it (even if he doesn't rock the blue dreads anymore). He's mostly playing a Jazz these days, but he did break out the old "Brahms" Precision for a couple of tunes. A good night for bass, actually... Nine Inch Nails played too (it was billed as the NIN/JA tour), with the awesome Justin Meldal-Johnsen on bass.

I managed to snag a black J24 5-string before they were discontinued. Great bass, Basslines pickups with big super-J tone and a nice wide, easy-to-play neck. You do see them around second-hand on eBay occasionally in the UK, and there's a bunch of them on the US eBay if you don't mind the cost of importing.

[quote name='Mikey D' post='493473' date='May 20 2009, 05:10 PM']See, I don't mind "hanging out". However I seem to not like the phrases "going for a hang", "it was a great hang man", "Fancy a hang soon?" and other such variants. The "hang" doesn't seem to just be about booze and drugs though. If it was, I would "nail" the first part. But at the end of the day if people like wayne krantz, chris potter and keith carlock wanted a hang, I'd be there.[/quote] I think it's a stupid expression. Even after having been in the US for a year and a half, some Americanisms still confuse me. Not because I don't understand them, more just, "why?". To me, "hanging out" is what happens if I forgot to zip up my fly.

To be honest, every Westfield I've ever tried has been cheap, unplayable and boxy-sounding sh!te. It's always nice to find a diamond in the mud though.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='493361' date='May 20 2009, 02:40 PM']but really, what's shedding and hanging?[/quote] I'm in America at the moment, so I'll have a go at these... Shedding = woodshedding = practice. No idea where that term came from, as it's utterly pointless. Hang - socialising with other musicians before or after the gig. Seems to have connotations towards being able to keep up with other musicians' drink and drug habits too. You just know that anyone who "hung" with Jaco was downing just as much coke and booze as he was.

I met Cass about 6 years back, lovely bloke, and very glad to see Skunk Anansie reforming. I remember reading an interview with him a while back - the subject moved onto his time with TTD. Sounds like he had to put up with a lot of crap - apparently TTD ran his band much the same way James Brown used to, eg, giving the players a £50 fine for playing a wrong note. Apparently he was (and probably still is, in his new incarnation) a total control freak.

Very cool. Since it's basically a pitch-to-MIDI converter, there should be no reason why it shouldn't work on bass. The trick, I'm told, is to use the bridge pickup and run it through a compressor pedal first. I'd also keep a capo handy! It'd be a great tool for composition for those of us who are fairly handy on bass but not so good on keyboards - if you're just using it to play stuff into sequencer software, the latency shouldn't be that much of an issue either - you can just quantise afterwards. I doubt I'd want to use it live though.

Well, by definition, punk music requires anger, or at least a hefty dose of pissed-offness. Green Day had that back in the day, then they got rich. Rich > comfort > complacency > lack of pissed-offness. They've got money, big houses and gold discs galore. What do they have to be pissed off about anymore?

It has its place if done with appropriate snotty, gob-in-your-eye, f**k you attitude. But Green Day seem to have lost that somewhere along the line.

Lee's probably got work to do with Take That - I believe they're tracking their new album at the moment, and that is his bread-and-butter gig. Lucky bastard... I knew him when he used to work in Rockbottom in Croydon!

I think a lot of it is the co-ordination of your picking hand with the singing - that's the hardest bit, actually keeping the rhythm. Certainly, for more simple stuff, your fretting hand doesn't have that much to do. Many people seem to think it's a lot easier to sing and play if you play with a pick, as there's less to co-ordinate. Another observation is, if you're like me - a lefty playing righty, it's that much harder, as your dominant hand isn't the one keeping the rhythm. Sometimes I think I should have just bit the bullet back in the day and learned to play bass lefty!

It's a Maison. Basically a low-rent version of a Bass Collection. The headstock on the Maison is a little squarer and pointier than the BC or Tune ones, but the main identifying mark (the logo on the upper bout) appears to be covered over with gaffa tape. I've played a couple. Horrible, horrible things.

The reviews should answer more of the questions that a buyer might have about a piece of gear, based on its attributes and selling points. As I mentioned in the other thread, take the new Line6 combo - its killer app is the ability to emulate other rigs, and not once did it mention how good its impressions of an SVT, B-15 or Eden Traveller were. Also, with the Enfield bass, part of its appeal is the ability of its pickup and electronics to do effective Jazz, Precision and Musicman tones, and, again, no mention of how it sounded in that regard, too much piffling around talking about adjustable pickup height. Basically, reviews need more points of reference to gear that the reader might actually know, certainly in cases like this, to put them in perspective. In these cases, I came away with no idea about how either the Enfield bass or the Line6 combo sounded, other than "versatile" and "usable". Basically, they should tell the reader more about what they might want to know about gear, which requires an editor who knows these things and could ask the writer involved to expand on elements of their review, or remove elements, based on this. BP is very good at this. Other than that, having the weekend warrior stuff back would be good, and I'd like to see more opinions, rather than verbatim press releases. Also, more information on "working" players would be good, for those out there who are interested in going pro - function band players, pit players, etc. Would be interesting to hear about how they got their starts, how they do their networking, and so on.

Dug out that copy of BGM I was talking about... seems all the reviews I have an issue with are down to one particular writer (not naming names). His writing style is OK, but his reviews are devoid of any information that anyone might actually need to know, instead talking about how it's easy to raise and lower the height of the Enfield pickup, or how the Line 6 rig sounds better in the corner of the room. Sounds like padding to me.

I get it when I can, as it's nice to have a British take on all things bass. But, most of the time, the magazine reads like one long press release with a few (mostly lacklustre) interviews and wholly uninformative reviews - take the issue with the Enfield bass on the cover. I'm very curious about the Enfields, but am not in a position to try one out right now (stuck in the wrong country, alas). I read the review wanting to know what it sounded like, how good were its respective J/P/MM tones? Nothing. The tone hardly got any mention, other than it was "versatile". No further details. One of the main features of the Enfield range is its supposed ability to authentically ape J/P/MM tones, so you think it'd deserve a mention. Also, the issue that reviewed the new Line 6 amps (might have been the same issue) - all it said about the tones available is that "they're all usable". Nothing about how well it apes an SVT, a B-15, or anything like that. That's what Line 6 stuff is for! You know, you think they might mention all the stuff people might actually want to know. They have published some good reviews and interviews in their time, but they're few and far between, and I find the content patchy at best. And, I hate to say it, but "Bassist", back in the day, was much better.