iain173

I use an ODB-3 pedal (which I actually don't like very much and am going to change soon). I was looking for some samples of the sound, but couldn't find any on my PC. Am happy to do a quick recording if you like. In the meantime, it's crappy youtube quality, but there's a couple of live vids of us playing where you should be able to hear the ODB-3. The quality (of the audio and the VERY drunken playing) aren't great, but you can maybe get something from it: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ee0OVLRLQ"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ee0OVLRLQ[/url] - The first song uses quite a lot of ODB-3 after the "techno-synth" bit at around 30 secs. A bit tricky to pick out the bass over the distorted guitar. I don't think there's any ODB-3 in the second half of the set (which is also on youtube here: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO6RVNYS-g8&feature=related)"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO6RVNYS-g8...eature=related)[/url], but there may be! Iain

Ah, perhaps not quite as light as I thought...

Hi All, I spotted this while I was browsing Thomann (http://www.thomann.de/gb/gallien_krueger_backline_600_fullstack.htm) earlier: GALLIEN KRUEGER BACKLINE 600 FULLSTACK including: 2 piece(s) THE SSSNAKE PPS1015 1 piece(s) GALLIEN KRUEGER BACKLINE 410BLX-II 1 piece(s) GALLIEN KRUEGER BACKLINE 115BLX II 1 piece(s) GALLIEN KRUEGER BACKLINE 600 3-year Thomann warranty It's £586 including delivery, which seemed really good for a GK set-up. Looking on Musiciansfriend, all of the componenets seem to be highly rated and, overall, it looks quite light. As the lady on Dragons' Den says: "if something looks to good to be true, it probably is". Am I missing something here, or is this a prety decent bundle? Iain

Cheers all, Went to Anderton's today and tried the Mark Bass Little Mark II and one of the 102P cabs. Fantastic piece of kit and the staff at Anderton's were really helpful. Decided to have a think before buying, esp as the two would have come to £1k, but really liked the Mark Bass sound. Cool, will listen to some new Stranglers stuff for the A'down. Do you know if they use that rig live? I saw them a couple of months ago and the bass did actually sound pretty awesome. Iain

Thanks to everyone for posting on this. On the tuner front, picked up an ex-demo Peterson StroboStomp for £50 which I was quite pleased with! With amps/DI, I think I'm going to look at amps and then think about DI boxes later. We can hire/borrow a DI for the studio if necessary! On the amp front, I went to Denmark St but was a bit gutted about the lack of bass amps to try (esp with Sound Control and Turnkey now closed). I'm going to pop to Anderton's in the week and try a few amps, and just wondered if people had any thoughts on the following: [list]Ashdown MAGC410T-300 307 watt 4x10 Bass Combo - [url="http://www.andertons.co.uk/acatalog/info_MAGC410T250.html"]http://www.andertons.co.uk/acatalog/info_MAGC410T250.html[/url] - looks quite heavy, but I drive to most gigs, so should be OK. Ashdown ABMC210T 500 Evo II 575 watt 2x10 Combo - [url="http://www.andertons.co.uk/acatalog/info_ABMC210T500.html"]http://www.andertons.co.uk/acatalog/info_ABMC210T500.html[/url] - bit lighter and probably a more sensible choice! Eden Silver Series N15S 175W 1x15 Bass Combo - [url="http://www.andertons.co.uk/acatalog/info_N15S.html"]http://www.andertons.co.uk/acatalog/info_N15S.html[/url] - a bit less powerful, but quite a bit cheaper. Not sure that it would be powerful enough for gigs. MarkBass MINI CMD121 P Bass Combo - [url="http://www.andertons.co.uk/acatalog/info_MINICMD121P.html"]http://www.andertons.co.uk/acatalog/info_MINICMD121P.html[/url] - quite a bit more expensive (no food for me for a month or so if I get this!), but obviousy very light. Just not sure how it will compete with REALLY loud drumming! [/list] I'm going to give them a try, but any of your wise suggestions would be welcome. If it helps, I'm leaning towards the Ashdown MAGC410T-300 307 watt 4x10 Bass Combo. Ta, Iain

Cheers, Yeah, War's good fun to play. There's a really cool live/practice room/animation vid that one of our friends made for War, which you can watch on youtube. Cheers for comment about the clarity of the bass. I quite like the tone, but always think my E tune sounds out of tune on the song! Iain

Thanks! I probably shouldn't upload of photo of my six-string in that case

Hello all, My name's Iain (obviously!) and I play bass in a London-based band called Ubermanoeuvre. I play a beautiful Fender US P Bass in blue agave, called Brenda the Fender (but I'm still working on that). I've had her for about 6 years now. As you'll see from my photo, I got a bit bored one day and created an awesome (IMO) collage on my scratchplate and then covered it with a huge sheet of sticky plastic to preserve it. I'm now using DR Peacock Blue strings (not shown in photo - old strings), which look and sound fantastic. Just bought one of the Peterson StroboStomp tuners which seemed quite decent and now in the process of buying amps, a DI box and various other bits and bobs. Probably going to get one of the EBS MicroBass boxes and a nice Gallien-Krueger combo. [attachment=12529:Bass.jpg] I also play the six-string, the electric violin (fantastic instrument), piano and keyboard (my MicroKorg is one of my favourite toys) and "sing" when I can too. As far as the band's concerned, we're just recording an album at the minute which follows an EP we recorded just over a year ago with the relatively famous Dave Chang, [url="http://www.davechang.co.uk/"]http://www.davechang.co.uk/[/url]. The music's generally punky with other influences, such as ska, metal, dance, funk, rap etc. People often say that we sound like a heavier and happier Rage Against the Machine. If anyone is interested, the songs from the EP are available for download here: [url="http://ubermanoeuvre.wordpress.com/tunes-and-video/"]http://ubermanoeuvre.wordpress.com/tunes-and-video/[/url]. Would be great to hear any feedback! I look forward to checking out the forum over the next few weeks!

I was just looking on the Orange amps website and noticed this article: [url="http://www.orangeamps.com/news.asp?ID=34"]http://www.orangeamps.com/news.asp?ID=34[/url]. "Thieves broke into Orange HQ at Borehamwood on Saturday night (16th August) and stole. 141 Tiny Terror combos with a total retail value of £62,000. . So far, 121 Tiny Terror combos have been legitimately shipped into the UK and . 2 pieces to Hungary, no others have been shipped anywhere in Europe.. . CLICK ON 'MORE...' ABOVE FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF THE SERIAL NUMBERS OF. THE STOLEN ITEMS.. . . If you are offered a Tiny Terror combo or hear of somebody else who is, . please contact [email protected] to help us and the police with investigations.. .. There will be a £3000 reward for information which results in the successful. conviction of the criminals who carried out this theft." Orange have posted a list of serial numbers of the stolen items. Just thought I'd let people know in case they were offered amps at too-good-to-be-true prices. Iain

Wonderful - thanks! I'm going to pop to Denmak Street on Saturday and investigate. It sounds like the EBS would be a good option. Can anyone recommend a decent tuner? I quite like the look of the Boss TU-2 since I use it quite easily in a live setting too. Any thoughts? Thanks for all the help on this by the way guys (= and girls?). I

Cheers Guys, Will look into both of the pre-amps. Not too fussed about cost if it's going to sound awesome and I'll be able to re-use it. I got the impresion (from reading reviews) that the SansAmp is fine if you're going to distort the signal, which I guess I'll be doing in production, but I know the producer likes having the best quality clean signal he can going into the system and then tinkering with software. Would it still be worth getting one of the EBSs for that? Sounds like it'd be really useful live anyway as I could just go through the PA with it...

Guys, Thanks for your really quick replies. It looks like the MarkBass combo that xgsjx mentioned might be a good option. I'll pop to Denmark Street and try and find somewhere that sells them and give them a go. Are there any particularly good shops on Denmark Street that people would recommend? As for recording, I think I see what you mean about going DI. I wasn't aware of the sans-amp unit you mentioned, thepurpleblob. I had a look on their website (I assume this is it: [url="http://www.tech21nyc.com/bassdriver.html)"]http://www.tech21nyc.com/bassdriver.html)[/url] and it looks quite interesting. Is this basically something that connects the bass to the recording system so that you can alter the tone before it gets recorded? Again, forgive me if this is obvious, but could we just go straight into the recording system and chage the tone etc afterwards or is the sans-amp for a different use? Thanks again Iain

Think of this as a fairly blank canvas. I need a bass amp and multi-effects pedal for studio recording and live gigs and would really appreciate your learned suggestions. [u][b]Current line-up[/b][/u] [list] [*]Bass - I’m using a Fender US P-bass (pls see image below) that I've had for about 6 years. Although not shown in the photo, I use the peacock blue DR bass strings (which are awesome!). I do not want to, and couldn't, part with her. [attachment=12218:_MG_0174.JPG] [*]Amp - Been borrowing a friend's for the last three years and do not have one of my own. [*]Pedals - Boss ODB-3 (use it a lot), Boss SYB-5 (don't use it very much - actually a little disappointed with it!) and Boss GE-7B equaliser (never used it - bought off ebay in drunken bidding war; who hasn't done that!!). These are shown in images below. I also have some thing by Korg called Pandora, I believe, which I don't use. Happy to get rid of any/all of them. [attachment=12219:_MG_9937.JPG] [/list] [u][b]Playing technique, influences and band sound[/b][/u] [list] [*]Style: I play exclusively using my fingers. Generally quite fast walking bass, some slap and some tapping and also some fast plucking with the overdrive pedal on. I quite like a trebbly sound so that you can pick out the walking bass. [*]Influences: The only 'famous' bassist I would cite would be Mark King. However, I grew up listening to late 90s punk, so I have been inspired by the bassists of [url="http://www.myspace.com/rancid"]Rancid [/url](Matt Freeman, their bassist, is unbelievable - check out the bass solo in Maxwell Murder and Axiom if you haven't heard him), [url="http://www.myspace.com/cigar"]Cigar [/url](skate punk - have a listen to the bass on their myspace songs, they picked great bassline songs!), [url="http://www.myspace.com/reelbigfish"]Reel Big Fish[/url] (ska punk), [url="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=31309018"]Farse [/url](ska punk), [url="http://www.myspace.com/awilhelmscream"]A Wilhelm Scream[/url] (skate punk: the bass on their new album, Career Suicide, is phenomenal), [url="http://www.myspace.com/thegetupkids"]the Get up Kids [/url](rocky punk: On a Wire, in particular), [url="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=7552206"][Spunge][/url] (ska punk) and so may others. [*]Band: I play in a band that mixes punk, metal, ska, dance, funk and lots of other styles, so I really try and vary my playing quite a lot ([url="http://www.myspace.com/ubermanoeuvre"]www.myspace.com/ubermanoeuvre[/url] if interested). We recorded a few songs a while back which sound great, but, to be honest, I wasn't overly happy with the bass tone. [/list] [u][b]What I'm looking for[/b][/u] [list] [*]Amp: I think this is where I'm really struggling. I don't even know if I should be looking at a cab and head or a combo. We're just in the process of recording a studio album and, having (apparently) used some very high-end mics for the drums last week (details at [url="http://www.ubermanoeuvre.co.uk"]www.ubermanoeuvre.co.uk[/url] if anyone is interested), I feel that I should match this on bass. I need something quite loud for gigs (200+ people) so could potentially hire something for the studio and get something else for gigs. Would any wattage suffice for the studio? Orange do a 35W amp for about £130 that might work if I don't need lots of power in the studio, but I can't imagine that would be loud enough for gig situations, although people do seem to mic up bass amps at gigs. I'd REALLY like something light so I feel less bad making my band mates cart around my equipment (). Cost-wise, I guess you get what you pay for, but would ideally like to spend less than £800 if buying new or £600 if second-hand. From reading a lot of posts on this website, the small MarkBass combos sound like they might be a good option. [*]Effects: I'm thinking of getting a Boss ME-50B pedal, especially as it has a decent tuner. I'd like something which has a reasonably decent echo/delay, a reasonable tuner and a decent overdrive/distortion. Is there anything else people would suggest? [/list] I can get to Denmark Street after work, so perhaps I should pop there and have a play. However, any thoughts would be much appreciated, especially in relation to the MarkBass lightweight amps and Boss ME-50B, which seem to be the best options at present!