Russ

[quote name='geoffbassist' post='349259' date='Dec 9 2008, 01:34 AM'] As i was driving home today my boot came open, the bass fell out the car on the motorway and was runover many times in its case (overwater soft case). I had been driving for over an hour so it was a bit of a shock! luckly no one was hurt, except the bass.... Its a real nightmare, im a freelance bassist and this is my only instrument! I think i know someone who can lend me a bass to help over the christmas period but its a real blow, i really loved that bass, best ive ever owned. I think an email to fbass to find out how much a new neck would be is the best way forward as the rest of the bass is ok.... It was really dangerous though and im lucky i didnt cause an accident...[/quote] Ouch. That is not good. Get that bass up to Jon Shuker (he's in Sheffield) or any other decent nearby luthier. Looks like a fairly clean break, so it should be fixable without too many issues, and it's probably cheaper than a new neck. But drop George Furlanetto a line - maybe if you send him the neck, he can sort it out for you. I gather he's a nice guy and very accommodating. Moral of the story - the bass always rides in the passenger seat from now on.

I guess it depends on which direction you want to go in. Undoubtedly, London is the place to be if you want studio/session work or profitable function band gigs. If you're looking for success in a band environment though, the UK has different hotspots where labels go to seek out talent - ie, Manchester still has a huge indie scene, Yorkshire is a hotspot for rock music, Cardiff/South Wales seems to be an up-and-coming area for many different genres, and Scotland (esp. Edinburgh) is well known for having a good range of singer/songwriter gigs. Although, to be honest, London has all these too. You'll have the widest range of opportunities there, although it's not necessarily the be-all and end-all.

[quote name='silverfoxnik' post='340807' date='Nov 29 2008, 10:48 PM']If you mean the original Wal pick ups & electronics, then the answer's no; they've never been available seperately as I understand it. Only once have I ever seen the Wal electronics on another bass and that was made by a luthier called Jeff Finch, so he must have known the guys at Wal to get that to happen.[/quote] I owned a fretless 5-string Sei with the full Wal electronics setup for a while... however, I believe these were actually cannibalised from a Wal, rather than provided separately. That was a lovely bass - it's living in Japan now.

[quote name='Faithless' post='339459' date='Nov 28 2008, 12:50 PM']Why then? [/quote] I'd say it's because that's "his" bass - he's been using it for over 20 years and it's completely comfortable for him. Plus, it sounds fantastic. He's been through his signature series Ibbys, not to mention various other basses, and keeps coming back to the old Spector. I saw him on the Living Colour Collideoscope tour, around the time he had the Ibby endorsement, and he used the Ibbys for maybe two songs - he used the Spector for all the rest.

[quote name='bremen' post='335711' date='Nov 24 2008, 06:32 PM']Heard his stuff with Tackhead? and Keith LeBlanc's solo stuff? Dirty, dirty bass! It's what made me buy a Thumb :-)[/quote] Shame he used his orange Spector on 90% of the stuff he's recorded. I have seen him with a Thumb 6 though. I love Doug... I find his playing to be supremely inspiring. He can groove like a monster, yet he has these amazing solo chops, not to mention the wild sounds he gets out of his pedals... I went to one of his bass clinics, and it was awesome... from deep groove to Jaco-esque harmonics to Jeff Beck-style soloing over loops in one tune. The Little Axe stuff is fantastic from a bass perspective. Funny guy too, lots of great stories from the road and from the many gigs he's done. He does have some unusual techniques though... the technique you're talking about is almost a reverse slap... he "slaps" the strings with his fingertips, and pops the lower strings with his thumb - he can get this technique going pretty bloody fast too. He also has that very strange technique where he hits the strings with a small jam jar... certainly a unique sound!

The new Marshall stuff is pretty decent (although, IMO, Marshall haven't made a truly great bass amp since the DBS series). I say go for it, but put a bit aside afterwards for an extension cab - adding a 15" or a 4x10" is going to make a huge difference, volume-wise.

A bit like the car industry, there's no British mass-market guitar manufacturers any more, but there are a lot of custom shops. Plenty of TVRs and Nobles, but no British Leyland, if you get my drift. I think all the main culprits have been mentioned - GB, Sei, Shuker, GB, Status, Overwater, ACG, Iceni, Gus, Enfield, Jaydee, RIM, Wal, etc. You'll find plenty of examples of all of these in the Bass Pr0n forum.

OK, here's a few suggestions: Lessons. Good to get an experienced teacher's take on your playing. Open mic nights. Playing with other people makes you a better player and you might just meet suitable people to collaborate with. Playing along with the TV - just play something that feels like it goes with the show you're watching. Internet radio - it's amazing some of the stuff you'll hear that you'll never hear anywhere else. Other instruments - get a guitar, keyboard or something other than the bass and stick with that for a while, then take that new experience back to the bass. Home recording - you have a computer, put it to use and write and record your own stuff.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='319234' date='Oct 31 2008, 05:47 PM']Alembic Epic I believe. Wal on all of BSSM bar StingRay 5 on Funky Monks and the title track. Not sure about Mother's Milk - could be a Ray, could be a Spector. Very few of Flea's studio recordings are on a StingRay! Alex[/quote] Yep. All of One Hot Minute, with the exception of Aeroplane (Stingray) and Pea (acoustic) was the Alembic Epic. And you're correct about BSSM too. It's amazing the amount of Stingrays that album sold, even though its sound is only featured on two tracks!

My old Rumour took 14 months... Then again, it was *very* custom, and Bernie has someone around to kick his arse these days... he made mine back when it was just him in an industrial estate in Croydon. Thinking of going to see Bernie next time I'm back in the UK to discuss a possible Spitfire-related project...

The whole New Romantic movement, apart from the dodgy outfits, was pretty much the last gasp for real creativity and experimentation in pop music. Many of the bands involved are still influential over 20 years later, and for all the right reasons - they could sing, they could play, they could write catchy, quirky and intelligent songs and they looked good. I would have loved to have been in a band back then, especially as a bass player... I could have had a brand new Trace Elliot stack, a Wal and a mullet, and funked things up like crazy! It can't really be denied that Duran Duran were basically a boy band - but a boy band who wrote and performed their own music. Hasn't really happened since. The era where pop music came to be dominated by producers came along shortly afterwards, with the Stock, Aitken and Watermans of this world basically reducing pop music to a formula and milking it for all it's worth. Time for New Romantic to make a comeback, methinks...

[quote name='LukeFRC' post='313457' date='Oct 23 2008, 10:52 PM']and conversely no evidence of God's non existence. If you are presupposed to disbelieve there is a God any 'evidence' found can be explained away somehow. Conversely if you believe in God you will find much evidence of his existence. Logicaly you are unable to disprove the existence of a God, and equally you are unable to prove it. In questioning God's existence to default to Atheism is illogical, really following scientific logic, through objective eyes one would be an agnostic. anyway, anyone for some bass playing, i enjoyed that video of John entwistle, although i think his bass would look daft on a little guy like me.[/quote] In science, the onus is on the scientist to prove a theory, not disprove one. Things are disproved as a result of new evidence. Many of the things and events people used to attribute to divine intervention have since been proved otherwise, so, personally, I think it's only a matter of time. In the classic theological debate, one must follow the scientific method - the onus is on the believer to prove God's existence, and so begins the vicious cycle... proof denies faith, and without faith, religion is meaningless.

[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.