Russ

I wouldn’t call it a revolving door. For the vast majority of their time together, it’s been Avery or Chaney. And Stephen Perkins has been their only drummer. There’s been five bass players who’ve performed live with Jane’s - in addition to Avery and Chaney, there was Duff McKagan (who was in the band for six whole months!), Martyn LeNoble (from Porno For Pyros) who finished off the 2010 NIN/JA tour when Avery quit, and Flea (during the 1997 “relapse” tour). Their last album (The Great Escape Artist, 2011) featured Chaney and Dave Sitek on bass. Supposedly Duff wrote some bass parts for it, but never recorded them. Would have been interesting to hear that.

Farrell might not be on junk any more, but he’s a certified p!sshead. I’ve seen Jane’s a bunch of times, and he always comes out with a big bottle of wine, that’s usually all gone by the third or fourth song. You can tell - he’s in key for the first few tunes, then it gets wobblier and wobblier as the night goes on. His excuse of not being able to hear himself is ⚽🔒🔒. He wears IEMs and could have had the person doing the sound turn him up. He’s just frustrated that his vocal chops aren’t nearly what they once were, and was taking it out on Navarro. Apparently they’ve only cancelled one more show in the wake of this - what are they going to do? They have another 14 dates to do. I’m guessing Dave’s going to quit and drop off the tour, they’ll bring in Josh Klinghoffer or Troy Van Leeuwen to finish the tour (they covered for Navarro while he was out with long COVID), then, after the tour, Jane’s will go back on the shelf. Hoping Navarro and Avery get together once the dust has settled and write another Deconstruction album (fantastic but little-known project they did together right after Jane’s split up the first time).

Cheers Chris, thanks for clearing that up. Didn’t know he made his own.

Earthbound AD (my current band - female-fronted, slightly proggy metal) - quite proud of this album, it turned out really well and I got to do some nice bass stuff: Evyltyde - female-fronted “classic” metal. Was in the band for about a year in 2015-2016. I didn’t play on any of this stuff though! 5th Man Down - band I was in about 20-odd years ago. Signed, toured, did Bloodstock, etc. I think the material still stands up!

Got to meet Ian a few months back. He was doing a clinic thingy, mostly concentrating on getting interesting sounds out of his Helix. Genuinely nice guy, proper bass nerd too. I met Scott back in the dim and distant past, well before he was doing SBL, and he was nice enough. Not seen him since though, so I’ve no idea what he’s like now.

Likewise really. The music was pretty good, but I’d had my fill of rap-metal at that point. Once LP cut down on the rapping stuff, they improved massively. I was quite partial to Senser and One Minute Silence back in the day though… they knew how to put on a good show. I was at the infamous One Minute Silence gig at the Garage where they encouraged the audience to trash the place, and trash it they did… 😮 Let’s face it, the Judgment Night soundtrack and Body Count’s first album were the pinnacle of rap-metal. And those came out in the early 90s.

That's not a million miles away from what Alan at ACG did - he offers his own multicoil pickups and filter preamp combo that definitely get you in the Wal ballpark, tone-wise, but his body shapes are more contemporary. Maruszczyk will do you any of their range with the Turner pickups and the Lusithand or Underhill preamp, anything from a traditional P to an exotic-wood single-cutaway beast, and get you most of the way there. Once Turner starts offering 6-string pickups, that's what I'll be doing. I've already got my 6-string Frog specced out! And, of course, those pickups and circuits are available to anyone who wants to order them, so your luthier of choice can build you whatever you want with them, or you could retrofit them into anything you've got. But some people must have the whole package - the electronics, and the look. Wal has that distinctive look that only British luthiers in the '70s and '80s had - think Shergold, Burns, Shaftesbury, even the older Overwater models. Doesn't matter that they weighed a ton, often balanced badly, and any number of other issues that more modern designs have addressed.

In this case, I kinda understand it, since new Wals start at nearly £8,000 and have a six-year waiting list. There's no cheaper import versions, and used ones are rare and just as expensive. If someone is making a bass that gets you 95% of the way there in terms of tone and looks, then I think it's probably a good thing, if you want to get that Justin Chancellor / Mick Karn / Geddy Lee / Nick Beggs / Percy Jones look and tone. Paul Herman isn't hurting for business right now, hence the waiting list. The real Wal guys, who won't accept anything that doesn't have the logo and wasn't made in Weybridge or Cobham, will still spend the big money and wait years. The guy who makes the Octave basses is only doing 4-string Mk2 copies right now anyway. So anyone who wants more strings, or wants a Mk1 or Mk3 shape, are out of luck.

I think it's Turner multicoil pickups and the Underhill modular preamp. Lusithand have just put out a new version of their filter preamp that has the "pick attack" treble boost, so expect to see more of those around amongst those who are looking for that Wal-esque tone.

Blackstar have done pretty well too, and they're a UK company (mostly ex-Marshall people). Their bass stuff sadly doesn't seem to have taken off though. There's always been a high-end specialist guitar valve amp market - the likes of Soldano, Fortin, Diezel, etc, usually endorsed by some super-shredder. Not to mention the likes of the Dumble - rare as rocking horse s**t and often considered the best amps ever made. They change hands for stupid money since the guy who made them died. I think he only ever made around 300 of them. There's one on Reverb right now for US$50,000. 😮

There's supposedly some new bass cabs coming soon, according to Mark Gooday's Instagram, but no new amps yet. Apparently they're going to make a proper 2x12".

I’d be interested in trying out the U500 combo with the powered extension cabinet - that seems to be the sort of thing Blackstar actually had in mind, in terms of a “modular” rig. I’d personally prefer to have the head put out its full wattage into 4ohms though.

The guy must be worth squillions. But he sold his mansion and lives in a flat, travels on public transport (and, when he flies, usually flies economy), and spends his money on "nice", relatively simple things, like a Ducati motorbike or a Fender Custom Shop bass. He's also taken pay cuts on films so the crew can get paid more. He seems like one of the world's few genuinely nice people, who seems to use his considerable wealth for good.

EBMM are getting in on the super-cheapo market too, with the "intro series" Stingrays. They're going to be US$250. https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2024/08/20/sterling-by-music-man-launches-the-intro-series-stingray-bass/

I briefly owned a U700 head. I put my review of it in the reviews section. So, tl;dr version - it sounds great, it's versatile, but it's not a loud amp, and I worried about its durability and ease of use. The amp emulations sound fantastic - the "vintage" mode sounds full SVT, and the "modern" mode is very SWR/Eden. But the full 700W output is only available at 2ohms, and 350W of Class D power isn't a lot. There's also some odd design choices - the little toggle switches on the front for the effects, etc feel flimsy, and the actual controls for the built-in effects are on the back! I was impressed enough with the tone to buy a U120 combo though - it sounds really good for a practice amp. It doesn't have all the tone shaping, effects, etc of the head, but it sounds good, the amp emulations sound just like the ones on its big brother, and it's more than powerful enough for home use. My only beef with it is the cloth grille - my cats have taken to using it as a scratching post and have absolutely shredded it. I wish every amp manufacturer offered a metal grille option. 😒 I have no idea how successful the Unity Bass range has been for Blackstar, and if they plan to continue with it. I really hope they do. The tone is excellent and they're very versatile, they just need to address the overall power output and the control layout in a "2.0" version. And offer steel grilles! As I was saying above, they also need to get some "name" players involved. I bet there's still a lot of people out there who don't even know that Blackstar make bass gear.

I'm a big OHM fan too. I do enjoy a bit of Navarro, and loved what he brought to it. The man really knows how to make a wall of psychedelic sound with a guitar, a Marshall and a bunch of reverb and delay, and also knows how to write a killer simple riff. It's also Flea being more Flea than on any other album, in my opinion. There's the funky slap stuff, obviously (Aeroplane, Coffee Shop, etc), some great riffing (Warped, Shallow Be Thy Game), and loads of lovely melodic and counterpoint stuff all over the place (Deep Kick, Transcending, etc). The Alembic tone on the record is also pretty great. This was also, in my opinion, the last album where Kiedis actually sincerely emoted. Incidentally, Dave Navarro and Eric Avery from Jane's made a fantastic album after Jane's broke up the first time around called Deconstruction. It's an album all about life in Los Angeles in its many guises, and kinda set the tone for the approach Navarro would take during his time with RHCP, in terms of psychedelic/post-punk influences. If you've never heard it, take a listen. Not many people are aware of it, but everyone who listens to it ends up loving it. It's melancholy, melodic and quite beautiful, in a bleak sort of way.

They're a great band, and always deliver live, even now, in their 60s. They've got more live energy than bands half their age. And Flea remains one of the greats, and seems to be getting more and more musical as he gets older. But I think they've been coasting pretty much since By The Way. The subsequent albums are good, but nothing they haven't done before. I thought Josh brought a bit of a different sound to them - there was a bit more spacey, delay-heavy Navarro-style stuff which I quite liked (I loved One Hot Minute, but, then again, I'm also a massive Jane's fan), but the songs were all still much of a muchness.

Fantastic band. Had lots of good conversations with Karl and Owen over the years. Karl did the whole moving to America thing as well, and we compared notes. Makes me wonder what happened to a load of the other bands who were around at the time.

The whole Yorkshire “behs” schtick got painfully old after about 10 seconds. And I cringe at his YT shorts. But his proper videos have some decent bass content.

Incidentally, regarding the "old way" of recording and promoting music, kids starting out in music back in the day would have killed to have Youtube, TikTok, etc, not to mention powerful recording software that works on a home computer or iPad. I was there, in a band, recording bad-sounding demos on a Tascam Portastudio, then handing out tapes with awful, dot-matrix-printed cassette inlays to anyone who'd have them and hoping they wouldn't end up in the bin. Duplicating tapes was expensive. It was even more expensive when CD-Rs came out. It was sh*t. Getting to record in a proper recording studio was expensive and out of the reach of many young people - maybe one of your band members' dads was a stockbroker and had the money to pay for that sort of thing. The closest thing to social media was the "zine scene", which kinda relied on you knowing people who could write nice things about your band in what was basically a photocopied leaflet handed out at gigs, and which would almost certainly also end up in the bin. Everyone aspired to be signed, but conveniently forgot that meant that, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of non-musicians suddenly had a say over everything you did, and your viability as a "product" was suddenly completely out of your hands. You were completely at the whims of musical fashions and the opinions of the music press. This was also sh*t. I vastly prefer things the way they are now. Music has been democratised. Yes, the pool is far bigger than it once was, but it's also far, far deeper. There's something out there for everyone, and it's ridiculously easy for a musician to become a part of that.

It took Metallica five albums to break through back in the day. Most of their contemporaries never really broke through - Exodus, Anthrax, Megadeth, Over Kill and so on. They had the odd hit, but never really went fully mainstream. These bands still headline festivals worldwide. They're still around and doing OK. Many other, younger bands who have come up in this era of Spotify and Youtube are up there with them on these festival bills, and will also do OK. The model has changed. The music has evolved. The methods of making music are much, much better now. But good songs are still being written, people are listening to them, and people are still making a living from it. Which brings me to Charles Berthoud. The man is an excellent musician, educated at Berklee (which is why he relocated to the US), plays several instruments extremely well (he also plays piano and guitar to almost as high a standard as he plays bass), is an fantastic composer and arranger, and he's found an outlet to make a living from his skills. He knows the game has changed, and he's adapted to this new reality. There's also more than a whiff of gatekeeping bass snobbery here - if you look at guitarists who do the same thing (I'm thinking the likes of Bernth, Ola Englund, Eric Calderone, Sophie Burrell, Alexandr Misko, even well-established guitar legends like Jom Gomm, Andy McKee and Tommy Emmanuel) they don't get half as much grief as Charles, Davie, Danny Sapko and so on. Is it because they're bass players playing non-traditional bass parts and daring to push the boundaries a bit? I wish him all the luck in the world, and I hope to continue to be entertained by him for many more years.

I'd like to see a new Marshall bass head with a Class D power section, at least 800W of grunt, and the hybrid preamp section from the DBS heads (although maybe without the graphic, since they're "out" right now). In black and gold, with matching lightweight cabs with the Marshall logo prominently displayed. Do what Trace did with the TE-1200 - retain the classic tone, but modernise and simplify. They're iconic as a brand. I'd be more than happy to use one, assuming it sounded good and didn't break down like the MB amps used to. Chris Wolstenholme swore by DBS gear for years, and apparently bought up almost every used one he could find. I think he's switched to Markbass now, but those old Muse albums were all Marshall DBS.

They were stunningly good amps for the time. Their successors, the MB series, were pretty good too, but had some serious reliability issues. Plus, the didn't have the classic black 'n' gold livery... Now that Marshall are under new ownership, maybe they could start building bass gear again? After they bought out Eden, they said they didn't need to because they had a sub-brand for bass, but they've long since offloaded them now.

Holy crapulence. $24k for the sixer. 😮 And someone bought it too...

I wonder if any of his custom Spectors are going to be in the sale? I really liked that different body shape, and I've never seen one in person.