Russ

[quote name='ARGH' post='313148' date='Oct 23 2008, 05:42 PM']WOAH..didnt know THAT one..thought he might not be straight (my Gaydar flickered a few years back..but I put it down to video styling) Didnt he change his name to 'Dug' as well?[/quote] He's been out for years now... late '90s I think. And yep, he calls himself "dUg" these days, for some reason. Tell you what though... did you know he's 58?

[quote name='ARGH' post='312470' date='Oct 22 2008, 08:26 PM']King X,VERY VERY VERY Good Rock Band,kinda the flagship for 12 string Hamer Bass users everywhere....very very musical trio,without walking into the Prog Genre[/quote] Doug Pinnick from King's X has renounced Christianity - apparently his Christian peers were less than understanding when he came out as gay. So I guess that puts paid to that one. The way I see it, as an ex-Catholic (now with beliefs somewhere in-between agnosticism, humanism, Buddhism and pure physics), is, if God is out there somewhere, then apparently he gave us the capacity for creativity, so, on that basis, all music is a celebration of God.

Considering he's got a signature Zon, you never see him use it. 95% of the time you see him with the blue flamed Fernandes. He's also apparently been seen recently with a Yamaha TRB. Maybe he's shopping for a new endorsement deal?

[quote name='BassManKev' post='280088' date='Sep 9 2008, 12:00 AM']its either a stingray 5 or the Wal i think, thats what it was narrowed down to in another thread[/quote] Probably the Wal, as that song was recorded during the BSSM sessions. Sounds like a Wal to me too.

The DBS gear was, and is, awesome stuff. Ridiculously loud, great thick tone and virtually bulletproof. The cabs were utterly back-breaking, though. Even the 2x10" weighed more than most 4x10"s... If Marshall want to come out with something new for bassists out there, a newer, millennial version of the DBS range, with neodymium speakers, etc, would go down awfully well - certainly better than the MB stuff is doing. And, other than the seminal Mr. Kilminster and Chris Wolstenholme, they don't really have any name players using their gear... in fact, I think you'll find that many players out there don't even know that Marshall make bass gear. If they got a few high-profile endorsers, they'd find themselves selling significantly more. Put out a new DBS range, get Chris Wolstenholme to play them and appear in their ads, and watch them fly out the door...

[quote name='drgrew' post='273013' date='Aug 30 2008, 09:26 AM']I started on Dreamweaver on one (hence the inserts) but got fed up too quickly as I have always preferred Frontpage. The second one was a rehash of the first as was www.littletardis.com Thanks for looking though and I'm glad you liked them!! A[/quote] As a web development pro, Frontpage is the tool of the devil. No self-respecting webbie who considers themselves professional in any way will have anything whatsoever to do with it. Not to have a go or anything, but nothing screams "unprofessional" like seeing something that was blatantly done in FP, and you can spot them a mile off. Firstly, FP inserts non-standards-compliant CSS and Javascript into the HTML document, which is also optimised for Internet Explorer, and hence is extremely dodgy from a cross-browser perspective. The extensions are, for the most part, IIS-only (ie, only work properly on Windows-based servers), the feature set is extremely limited, the general support for Web standards is atrocious and the resulting HTML code is extremely hard to read due to over-use of inline styles, bad formatting and no provision for the separation of design and content. Do yourself a favour. Ditch FP. Even Notepad is better. Dreamweaver is in a different league and actually qualifies as "professional" software (although, as a former Homesite user, I use it primarily for the excellent code editor). If you want a piece of M$ software that will do the job far, far better, download [url="http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/"]Visual Web Developer[/url] - it's free too.

There's another piece that plays over the Sky menu that features some quite nice chordal bass playing... at least, that's what it sounds like. Quite like that one.

The Korean-made Jazz Bass 24s are awesome - spent some time playing one at GAK in Brighton the other day and was well impressed. Good B string, decent preamp, Basslines pickups, nice quilt maple top and a great neck... seriously recommended.

[quote name='Ant' post='259552' date='Aug 10 2008, 08:24 PM']i've heard a few pronunciations of this flying about, what is the correct way to say it?[/quote] From the horse's mouth (ie, Patrice Vigier) - "vee-ghee-ay".

Mansons? They're in Exeter and are best known for making basses for John Paul Jones and guitars for Matt Bellamy from Muse... [url="http://www.mansonguitars.co.uk/"]http://www.mansonguitars.co.uk/[/url]

I'm in NJ... what do you need to know?

Personally I hate the profile of Warwick's current necks (the bolt-ons are the worst), but, after flogging an otherwise lovely Streamer Jazzman because of this, I was told by Alex at The Gallery that they could have reprofiled the neck for me... bah. So, if you're not getting on with the neck, take it to a good luthier and ask them to reprofile it for you. Obviously The Gallery guys can do it, but I'd imagine any other decent luthier worth his salt could do it too.

[quote name='thinman' post='197668' date='May 13 2008, 07:54 AM']Yet another John Barrowman! John Barrowman! John Barrowman! vehicle. They've only got to bring him back into Dr Who and he'd be in three programmes in a row. That Jessie seems a lovely girl but born 40 years too late.[/quote] He will be back on DW at the end of the series for the last couple of episodes (bring on Davros!). If I'd Do Anything and that game show he's on with the kids were still on by then, he would be on three shows in a row... luckily, I think both the other shows finish before the DW finale. I like John Barrowman, but that's just over-exposure...

I'm all for each part of a song having its own identity, ie, if you soloed a single instrument from the band (ie, just the bass, or just the guitar, etc), you'd be able to easily identify the song, because each musical part is an equal contributor to the overall sound. That's just down to good songwriting. I'm a big believer in the notion that a good song, although often sounding better when played by a whole band, can be played solo with just an acoustic guitar or a bass and not lose its identity. A band who do this brilliantly are The Cure - Simon Gallup's bass parts are so well crafted to the song, and the song could happily stand alone with just his bass and Robert Smith singing over it. They're not technically amazing, they're just melodic, they outline the chords well, and are very well written. This is the direction I'm going in... I've done the whole slapped-32nd-notes flashy thing before, so now I'm trying to be a bit more intelligent about it.

[quote name='Muppet' post='197533' date='May 12 2008, 09:32 PM']Kevin Spacey's got a point though! Weeks of licence payers money spent on advertising Lloyd Webber's latest rehash, whilst serious productions get nothing...[/quote] It's not ALW's musical this time - Oliver is Cameron Mackintosh's show. I must admit to being a little disappointed with the choice of Oliver as the musical for this year though, as the role of Nancy isn't hugely demanding from a vocal perspective. It would have been far more interesting to keep the ALW theme and cast a new Christine for Phantom, or Eva Peron for Evita - both far more demanding vocal and acting roles. I take Kevin Spacey's point - it's giving a load of extra free publicity for ALW/Cameron Mackintosh's shows, but, to be fair, having TV auditions for roles in the plays that Spacey puts on wouldn't make for very good telly.

[quote name='The Funk' post='197532' date='May 12 2008, 09:31 PM']Is Jessie the Irish 18-year old one? Do you think Lord Lloyd Webber is hoping she literally would do anything?[/quote] That's her... the redhead with the wonky mouth. Although somehow I don't see her becoming the next Sarah Brightman...

I should hate this stuff on principle, but I've been sucked in. Was the same last year with the Joseph one. Jessie's going to win, that's as obvious as it was that Lee was going to win last year - she's in a different league to all the others. But I like Jodie. Then again, I have a thing for loud Northern lasses!

I like the groove of funk and can turn my hand to it as a playing style, but I do find a lot of the so-called funk classics difficult to listen to (eg, old Stevie, Parliament/Funkadelic, Brothers Johnson, etc) - the production is very, very dated and sounds quite cheesy nowadays. It does sound either like bad porn music or the soundtrack to a blaxploitation film. It just hasn't aged well. Can't fault the playing or musicianship though.

[quote name='EBS_freak' post='194707' date='May 8 2008, 02:36 PM']So why did you choose to have the modifications to the headstock and body? Nice piece of facia wood there...[/quote] I designed the body shape myself, based on a body design that I designed previously for an older custom bass. I worked with Bernie to refine the design a bit, and it ended up working really well - the longer top horn made the bass have better balance, especially considering the very light ash in the body, and the additional weight on the headstock... which brings me to... The headstock is shaped like that to accommodate two (!) Hipshots on the B and E strings - at the time, I was using various different tunings in the band I was in, and I wanted to be able to use one bass for everything. It actually worked too, although the headstock went through a couple of redesigns.

Keeping with the GB porn motif, here's a few pics of my old, much-missed one. I think you'll agree it's pretty different to any other GB out there.... [attachment=8522:bass_front.jpg][attachment=8523:bass_leds.jpg][attachment=8524:bass_headstock.jpg]

[quote name='kevbass' post='191919' date='May 4 2008, 10:14 PM']Yeah he's a nice bloke, he let me try that stingray clone also and I was pretty impressed with it.[/quote] +1 on Jonathan. Great bloke and really knows his sh*t. He is a guitar guy at heart, but he can do some great things with basses too. Ask him to show you pics of the Entwistle-style Alembic Explorer copy he made recently...

I've tried a few... on the plus side, they're light, the necks are great and, if you dial out the piezo (way too thin sounding), they sound surprisingly punchy. Like everyone else has said though, they're not very comfortable instruments - there's very little body contouring, no appreciable forearm chamfer, and yep, the bottom horn digs into your leg. A brave, but flawed exercise in progressive bass design, in my opinion. I loved the old model they made for Steve Swallow when I first saw it in BP years back, and was pretty gutted when it finally came to market, and looked nothing like his model.

I miss my GB. I want it back. It was actually up on eBay last year, but I missed out on it... didn't have the spare cash. On the plus side, Bernie says he still has the plans for my one (it was quite a different shape to a regular Rumour, both the body and the headstock) and he could make me another.

Did a tour a couple of years back around some smaller venues up North. It was going OK, until we got to Hull (no offence to anyone who lives there, but what a god-awful, dull, grey depressing place), where we had a gig at some gothy pub. We got there to unload our stuff at lunchtime, and the place was heaving - a good omen, we thought. So we went off for the afternoon, found a B&B and took a nap. We got back for soundcheck, and there was literally nobody there. So we soundchecked, hoping more people might turn up later, but, nothing. We ended up getting paid for the gig and playing pool all night with the landlord with our CD on the stereo instead of actually playing. He felt guilty, as he hadn't really promoted it. But it wasn't really his fault, it was our manager at the time's fault - she'd not done any promotion up there at all, not contacted any local papers or anything, and it seems this place didn't open regularly on Sundays, and most of this place's regular punters thought the place was closed!