micguy

I use the Dunlop flush mounts. Downside is if I ever forget a strap I'd have to play sitting down. (I keep a spare in my accessories bag, and I've never fogotten the main strap strap anyway). Upside is they're almost not there when you're practicing sitting down, and you don't have to worry about the end pin getting impacted in a gig bag.

I play church gigs, which hare 90+ percent covers (we do some originals here and there). A lot of the tunes we do, the recording has the same part on every verse, and every chorus - there's no build. When you see any of those artists live, tough, they do "build" their tunes. So, what I do is try to play what they'd play if they played a tune live - my part goes with the vibe of the tune, how the place feels, how the singers and worship leaders are emoting, how the drummer is playing - all of that enters into what I play. Often it starts with what's on the record (which is usually pretty simple), and evolves from there. We do a couple rehearsals of the songs in the middle of the week at rehearsal, and again on Sunday morning (you have to know the song structure and chords cold when you come in). During all that I work out most of what I'll do for the services. Often the second service is different than the first,though - my part is still evolving. As I play in different churches with different leaders, singers, drummers, etc., sometimes I play very different parts for the same song. If I did what's on the record every time, most of the time, it wold be wrong on some level. The interesting part of what I do is that bass is the person on stage who has the most freedom musically - worship guitar parts are full of memorable licks that you have to play verbatim, the vocals and drum parts are also often very memorable. So, if you want the song to sound like the song, but feel right for the situation, that's largely my job.

You might still meet him, but it won't be at NAMM. 😉

I play in churches where it's talent that matters. I'm 61 , and sometimes play with a drummer who's...17? (I've been saying 16 for at least a year, so , yeah probably 17). We have a real mix of folks.

I promise not to buy any basses on January 1. As I'm in the USA, that means I have to wait 7 hours longer than some of you,; I expect some extra credit for that. ON Jan 1, I'll be busy assembling a bass - all the parts are here, the finish is done, and should be good and cured by tomorrow.

I build my own - Warmoth wood, Hipshot hardware, etc. My heaviest (a 5 string) is a bit under 8.5 pounds. Heaviest 4 string I have is about 7.8 pounds. Currently, I'm building another 5 string that will come in (I've weighed all the parts) about 7.2 pounds ( a few grams of uncertainty due to the weight of the finish). Lightest I have is 6.6 ( a 4 stringer) - that one I can play for a very long time.

As you've been given freedom from thinking it's a few day off from your birth, I suggest you now assume it was born the same exact day you were. In the evening, or course, as if it was born during your morning, the folks in California at the factory wouldn't have been at work yet

It's not supposed to be super hot - I heard rumors it was designed to emulate a certain vintage P pickup owned by Bobby Vega. So, adjust it like a vintage pickup. Which, of course means nothing - On a two pickup bass, I generally adjust the bridge pickup as high as I can get it without issues of hitting the pole pieces, etc, and then adjust the neck pickup height to match outputs. On a P , I go for something a bit closer to the strings, as I like the way that sounds - there'a s non-linearity in pickups which adds harmonics as you get closer to the strings, I like a bunch of that when can get it. A rule of thumb I've heard is: Hold the strings down at the last fret, and adjust for ... a couple nickels from the strings to the pole pieces. I have no idea what UK currency matches a USA nickel in thickness.

I can positively identify the P bass clone - it's the item in the chair.

Warmoth will do that for you; their necks are very good, and nothing you're asking for is all that far afield.

When you're playing a string, the vibrating part has two ends - one is at the bridge, the other is either the nut or a fret. A fret is a rather small/light piece of metal, anchored on a somewhat flexible piece of wood (the neck). The bridge is a relatively massive piece of metal attached to a much less flexible piece of wood (the body). When you think about this for a bit, you realize that the majority of the losses in the string's energy (when vibration leaves the string and starts vibrating the wood) occur at the fret/neck end of the string, as things are less massive and less stiff there. If you want to improve sustain of a vibrating string, the bridge is the wrong end to work on. A more massive, stiffer neck, with bigger frets will get you more sustain faster than making the bridge heavier. It's like a boat with a pinhole in one end and a hole a foot across at the other end. If you want to stay afloat a long time, you work on patching the big hole first. A lot of people talk about the bridge;s job as being a means to couple vibration into the body. That's wrong - the ideal (infinitely massive) bridge would not put any energy into the body - any energy put into the body or neck has to come from somewhere, and in fact it' is "stolen" from the string and thus reduces sustain. Physics lecture is done for today. Tomorrow I have a quiz for you on the Acoustics of Tort.

The things that wear well when being scraped by metal are...harder metals. Metals aren't.......black, therefore frets aren't available in that color. To the original question, all my bass with frets have stainless frets. Warmoth charges $20 extra for stainless. Given that that option gives you much more fret life (probably lifetime frets, as I'm old and spread my wear across multiple basses)), it seems rather silly to go with nickel frets to me. One a couple of my basses I've gone with smaller frets (but still stainless) to see if it tames the high end zing - it seems to do that, although there are enough variables that I can't say for certain.

AKA 3 guys that play bass in trio format loud bands (yes, the Who had a singer, too, but just 3 instruments). Their tone is part of why their bands could make so much noise with just 3 guys.

I have a Wampler Pantheon - with the presence knob off, and the other tone controls at noon, it's flat - doesn't lose bass. Very good at "just a hint of breakup" sounds. If you want something a bit snarly, then a Pike Vulcan is just the ticket - I go back and forth between the two, depending on what vibe I'm chasing for a particular gig.

Godlyke Power grip is what I use - not sure if it's available on your side of the pond (I'm in the colonies), but it uses the same stuff on both sides, and doesn't gather dust too badly - kind of like loops on both surfaces. Holds really well, too.

I’ve been playing for 40 years. I have absolutely huge hands. I have trouble finding glives long enough. My left hand has an inch and a half more span than my right hand. Even with all that, I don’t do one finger per fret very often. I do a lot of double stops - fifths and octaves. I shift - a lot. You can’t play the lines I play with one finger per fret. One finger per fret is great for speed shredder type guitarists. Maybe it works for some bassists, too. If all your lines are one note at a time, maybe it’s OK. For others, like me, not so much.

Pickuos that don’t hum. We’ve known for many decades how to do this, all the basic patents have expired. Why do people still make basses that hum?

So does the introduction of the new (no toneprint) bass amps mean that Tone Prints (and the support for them) are getting phased out?gosh, I hope not.

I've been ampless and in ear for 90 percent of my gigs for the last 5 years. Any pedal that has a decently low impedance can be used to drive a DI (assuming the venue has one), or, like many of us, you can bring your own DI. I currently am using a Tech21 Q strip as my eq and DI at the output end of my pedalboard. The tough thing about going ampless is, if you want to use dirt, you don't have a cabinet to filter out high frequency stuff that the dirt pedal creates. That means you have to figure out how to deal with that on your pedalboard. A low pass filter or cabinet emulator are the usual way, though some overdrives have enough filtering built in that you're OK without additional EQ. The 3kHz low pass on my Q strip is on all the time - just a bit of filtering to dust that tiny bit of fizz or clinkiness of my signal I assess and tweak the tone of my rig though a mixer driving a pair of headphones that I know the sound of really well. So far, FOH guys are able to work with what I'm feeding them without issues - I ask, as I don't ever hear what's coming off the PA mains, and I want to know if there's anything I can do better.

Behringer has been around for quite a while, and it didn't prevent Darkglass from rising up and creating a niche and some great products - yes, there will be low end clones forever, but the real innovators will always have a place as well.

The bridge is the end termination of the string - change it's mechanical impedance, and the string will vibrate a little differently. The Physicist in me knows this. Is it audible? The best demonstration I've done for myself on this was to change 1 bridge saddle - with a set of relatively new strings. I played them for an hour or so, to get used to the sound will all brass saddles, then changed the D string saddle to a titanium one. After the change, whenever I got to the D string, it was indeed a bit zingier than the G and A strings - it "jumped" out a bit. Swapping the saddle back, things became more even across strings again. Will anyone in the audience notice? Probably not, but I do. I adjust bridges and saddles as a fine tweak to a bass's tone, once I get used to the thing and figure out if I want to push things one way or the other.

I find growl, snarl, twang, etc. to be partly in the gauges - I use 35/50/70/95 strings on most of my basses. I could never get the sound I wanted from 40-95's (except for the E string - duh!)

In the early 80's nobody (at least where I live) wanted a Fender from any era - everyone wanted guitars and basses that were pointy, with locking Floyd rose tremolos on the guitars, and Fenders were the same tired old, curvy things - without Floyds. If I had know where things were headed, I could have bought a bunch of old Fenders from the 60's for cheap, and..... alas, not to be. I have no idea if the Fender instruments from that era were great or not. I'd bet as time goes by, since very few were bought in that era, the scarcity thing might make them valuable.

Warmoth wood - especially the necks. I build my own basses using their wood, and it's all superbly made. Last night I swapped a neck on a bass (I had a baked maple fretboard on it, and it was just too bright). I took the old neck off, bolted the new one on, gave the trussrod a half turn past snug (all my necks end up about there w.r.t. trussrod adjustment), strung it up, and played it. The action was dead on from one neck to the next, and I didn't even have to touch the intonation - everything was just...there. They are also always snug in the body pocket - if you wanted to adjust any of my necks to line up the strings by moving the neck....well, there's no play, so it;'s a good thing they're all dead on.

Mighty Mite makes a fretless neck that has an ebonol fingergoard - mwah for days, and it's pretty darn cheap. If you have something with a Fender neck pocket, you can try it as a fretless before you go too deep financially. Whatever you try it on, you want something with a bridge pickup that you can solo - a P isn't really the best bass for mwah, which for many of us, is pretty much the point of fretless. In terms of pickups, not having frets means that what you might consider an agressive pickup won't really sound that way - it'll be "lively". A more polite pickup on a fretless is likely to be just plain dull sounding.