Russ

They're not big on 5- and 6-strings anymore though - it's the GA24 or nothing if you want a 5, and I'm not sure they even make the Calibas anymore if you want a 6. Maybe they still make then to order? I miss the Celeste basses - they were great, they should start those up again.

Mark King was on BBC South East Today last week, and he had his white Jaydee with him. Guess he's fully back on board with them now!

There's definitely a balance to be struck with the compressor between the input stage and compressor. Then again, I quite like heavy compression and I tend towards that Tony Levin tone, so I have the compressor at about 1 o'clock for both bands. One of the few things I don't like about it is there's no overload light on the input stage. It'd be nice if they could make the ring around the input knob flash red when it's overloading in the next revision. You kinda have to do it by ear. That's something the old Traces got right.

Surprisingly not... happy to be an occasional freight forwarder though. I miss Bass Bashes. Last one I was at was, like, 10 years ago.

Dupe, sorry....

I had a SVT-7 about 10 years ago. Great tone, super-loud, and very, very Ampeg (ie, a little bit crunchy and hairy at all volumes). However, it was massively unreliable. Crapped out during the first song at a gig once (had to play the rest of the show playing through the PA). Got it fixed, sold it, and immediately bought the RM-800. I had a tour coming up and needed something that would go the distance (thankfully, the RM did!). Supposedly Ampeg have now resolved the design defect that made them so unreliable, but once bitten, twice shy. Not sure I'm going to ever trust Ampeg again.

Gear4Music took them over and are keeping the brand alive. The range hasn't changed in years though. It's still just the WT, E and Terra Nova series and their associated cabs. I was hoping when Marshall divested itself from Eden that we might see some new actual Marshall bass gear, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Get the Eden Nemesis. Massively underrated gear. Probably the first attempt at building good, lightweight bass gear, and they did a great job. The amp is 100% Eden, with all the punch you might expect. All it's missing compared to its more expensive gold siblings is the valve preamp. Hartke make decent, workmanlike gear, but their reliability is a bit suspect, and, as far as I know, they currently have no UK service centre if things go wrong. Those aluminium speakers are prone to tearing, especially if you have a cab from the cheaper Transporter range (the XL range are decent though). Eden made a Nemesis 8x10 combo at one point, and it was stupid light. I remember playing through one at Andertons once, but I didn't buy one because I never had a car with a big enough boot to cart it around!

Hi Stuart. The RM-800 sounds like an Ashdown - a little more vintage in character than most Class D amps, slightly darker and rounder. Very loud. Lots of built-in gizmos (compressor, distortion, octaver). One of the best all-rounders I've owned, if I'm honest. Tempted to get another one (the newer Evo II version). The Mesa WD-800 is modelled after the Walkabout head from 10 years ago or so, with the same EQ section. It's got a very nice valve preamp which adds some tasty richness and a little bit of additional harmonic complexity to the tone (although it can add a lot of additional hair if you turn the input gain up high enough). Very versatile EQ with sweepable frequencies, and a great low-pass filter that helps all that power actually make it out of your speakers by rolling off the very lowest frequencies that your speakers might not be able to reproduce. Loud, but the RM-800 seems louder (despite both technically having the same output) - it clips out a little when turned right up. I think there's more usable volume with the Ashdown. I like the Mesa for the tone - very detailed and flexible. I like the Ashdown for the punch (it has lots, especially if you use the compressor). Compared to the new Trace, the Trace is cleaner, louder (1200W) and, well, sounds like a Trace, with that big wide open midrange. It's also got the dual-band compressor, which is great - turn it up high on the lows and down on the highs and you've got that Tony Levin tone right there. Maybe a bit less detailed than the Mesa, with a less versatile EQ, but if you want that Trace tone, it's got it in spades. Going to give the new Gallien-Krueger Fusion 1200S a test drive soon and see how that stacks up against the others.

She uses little teardrop jazz plectrums. She sent me some about 20-odd years back, when she was offering lesson materials by post over TBL (the mailing list). She just palm-mutes a lot. +1 on using thin picks. I'm a big fan of Dava Control picks, they're thick in the centre and thin at the edge, and they're flexible and bend a bit in the middle. You get the pick "click" then it rounds off nicely.

The Special is the current "regular" Stingray, with the new lightweight hardware and updated electronics. Shame they're only offering two finishes right now though. Maybe they're trying to push buyers down to the Sterling range, which offers more colours and finishes, and, thanks to recent updates, actually sound the part now.

Nobody's going to stop you if you are travelling with a guitar or bass. Lots of people do that all the time with no hassle. There might be some questions if you have amps, pedals, merch, etc though.

Wow. Wondering how he does the little tapping part? Let's not forget Bill Clements, who shows us how it's done with only one arm!

I'd say, if you can get your head around it, try the left-handed approach. I knew a guy who had lost his little finger in an accident, and, in addition to having lost the finger, the damage and subsequent amputation meant the ligaments and tendons around his ring finger were no longer as flexible as they had been, and the scar tissue on the side of his hand where the finger used to be was tough and limited the mobility of his remaining fingers. If you go the left-handed route, your fretting hand won't have any of those issues, and you'll only be using two fingers on your other hand (or just your index finger and thumb if you play pickstyle).

I'd be very interested in finding out how they behave in different temperatures and humidities compared to regular wood necks and full graphite necks. That's the killer app of a graphite neck for me - that they don't move or warp (or, at least, far less than wooden necks) in different climates. I'm assuming the graphite-wrapped necks might behave somewhere between the two - a bit like having graphite stiffening bars, but on the outside of the neck rather than the inside.

He's still making basses with graphite necks, but in small numbers. Not sure he's geared up for doing aftermarket stuff. He must also be around retirement age too (although that generally means nothing if you're in the US and self-employed).

Moses are no longer in the graphite neck business. They make carbon fibre speaker enclosures and violin fingerboards now. Shame. They had a graphite neck for practically everything.

I always saw Yes as basically complicated folk music, with more in common with Greensleeves and medieval madrigals than with rock, other than the instrumentation. Am I a big fan? No. Casual at best. But am I glad they exist? Definitely. And everyone likes Roundabout and Owner Of A Lonely Heart.

I don't think the graphite neck thing would have been a dealbreaker. Up until very recently, Status made replacement MM necks - the ones on the old 1980s Cutlass basses were made by Modulus, so I'm sure EBMM could have just paid Status to make some if it would have made a graphite Flea Bass possible. And wasn't it Status who made the necks for the NAMM 100 basses? I do remember hearing the stories about him wanting the whole Stingray line renamed to "Flea Basses", but I think even he isn't quite that arrogant! At the time, EBMM didn't do signature basses for anybody and they didn't want to start doing them, even though they'd been doing signature guitars for a while for Steve Lukather, Albert Lee, EVH and so on.

(dupe, sorry)

Most King Crimson fans are older, and still listen to their music on physical media (not to mention that KC only permitted their music to become available on streaming services less than two years ago). Same with Gabriel. Older demographic who still listen to CDs and vinyl, and who probably listen to Radio 4 in the car rather than music. Dream Theater have a rabid fanbase who buy physical media, and lots and lots of merch, whose age ranges from teens to sixty-somethings. Same thing with RATM. Remember when they had the Christmas no.1 a few years back? So I can't really take a statement that a band has had a large number of listens on Spotify as evidence of their "relevance" particularly seriously. Vulfpeck are a fun band. I like their live performances - they have a lot of energy and I like their staging. Joe Dart is a good bass player who deserves a signature instrument. But, if the instrument isn't very good, it makes the people who make it look bad. I don't think it was a good business decision for EBMM to work with him (or, more likely, the band's drummer who is in charge of all their business dealings). Commerford's signature Stingray is a regular Stingray with a built-in retractable ramp. Myung's Bongo is relatively close to the regular 6-string Bongo, but with passive electronics and a narrower neck (borrowed from the 5-string) with a funky dual-wood fretboard. Neither are as much of a departure from their stock instruments as Joe Dart's bass. When you start taking features away, you limit your audience. Instead of going so barebones, they could have just had a regular, natural finish MM Sterling with no scratchplate, but retaining the electronics and maybe adding active/passive switching. I dunno. The whole thing just seems hugely ill-conceived to me.

I think they're right to keep their signature basses to a minimum. Apparently a big part of the reason Flea jumped from MM to Modulus back in the day because EBMM wouldn't make him a signature bass. And he's far, far more visible than Dart, Myung, Commerford, etc. Although, if they're considering it, I'll have a Bongo 6 in red and black.

John Myung - bass player for Dream Theater (Grammy-winning prog metal band) Tim Commerford - bass player for Rage Against The Machine Probably not your genres of choice, but both massive in their fields with millions of record sales between them.

I believe he uses stock Stingrays with no modifications. Although he had that custom 3-string they made for him many moons ago (I think he lost it in a fire).

Joe Dart is a great player, but he's also kinda a "flavour of the month" player. He's to the 2020s what Stuart Zender was to the 90s, without the multi-platinum worldwide fame. His sig bass should really have been a Sterling By Musicman instrument. There are very few MM players who have the profile to do a proper MM signature bass justice. Obviously John Myung has one, Tim Commerford has one, and they should really do one for Tony Levin. Joe Dart isn't a patch on those guys in terms of visibility.