Beer of the Bass

The winter before last was a ridiculously cold one, and I was busking outside regularly with a carved bass. I didn't have a thermometer, but it was a good few degrees below zero most of the time as there was much ice underfoot. I had no problems at all with the bass, but it's really hard to keep your hands working. The left hand is the worst as it's raised up most of the time and doesn't get much blood circulation. I was wearing two pair of socks, army boots, longjohns, several jumpers, a big coat, scarf, hat and fingerless gloves but still couldn't keep my hands warm enough! I was careful about slowing down the changes between warm and cold by leaving the bass in its bag for a while as suggested above. In an ideal world I'd have a second bass for this sort of playing, but I don't have the space to keep one.

Leaving out any copyright concerns, I absolutely won't consider buying something something if I spot that the pictures are not the seller's. This is not so much for intellectual property reasons, but because he's just as likely to be a scammer selling a non-existent item with pictures taken off google images. This tends to be more of an issue on Gumtree than eBay though.

[quote name='the hand of john curley' timestamp='1358622657' post='1942456'] ....ahhhh.....that'll have been this then!!!! [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261083127110"]http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261083127110[/url] [/quote] I do wonder why he bothers. He's paid just short of £140 including delivery and is trying to sell it for £167. Subtract eBay and paypal fees from that and he can't be making much.

I wonder if they're any good? I've been put off tools from Lidl since buying a staple gun which no brand or size of staples I can find works with, though the supplied ones worked fine.

[quote name='oggiesnr' timestamp='1358710844' post='1943874'] In day gone by one of the sights of the folk scene was Martin Carthy obsessively tuning his guitar between songs, sometimes it took longer than the songs! Steve [/quote] I saw him on Thursday and he still does much the same, with nary a tuner in sight. I didn't feel it took anything away from his set, as he's mastered the knack of chatting to the audience while he tunes.

I like the white pickguard best against the orange. It's a great colour - sort of Glasgow Underground orange!

I had a brand-new Korean Squier strat in 1992, and it wasn't very good, to be quite honest. It had a plywood body, unpotted ceramic pickups, nasty tuners and pots that died. A new Classic Vibe would wipe the floor with it! It could probably have been upgraded and set up to play OK, but I wouldn't pay any more for one than you would pay for an Affinity or similar.

[quote name='silddx' timestamp='1358441496' post='1939269'] You have had too much beer my friend [/quote] In an uncharacteristically pedantic moment, I've just looked it up. If Wikipedia is to be believed, in the late 60s there were only large mechanical strobe tuners like the Peterson which were unlikely to be adopted by touring bands. The needle type electronic tuners appeared in the 80s and the clip-on tuners not until the mid 90s. So, "no tuners" was a fair assessment of what was going on here.

Are you sure that's a tuner? I'm only 31, but I've been playing since I was 8 and I can only remember seeing clip-on tuners in the last 10 years or so. When I was a kid, my mum took me to the local music shop to look at tuners, and the only electric tuners were those chunky ones with the needle display and the built-in microphone. Other than that the choice was pitch pipes or a tuning fork, and that was in 1990. I don't think they had clip-on tuners in 1969 - would any veterans care to confirm this? I think it's a flower he tucked under his strings because he liked it!

I find the original recording to be an interesting work as an indicator of what Coltrane was up to at the time, although A Love Supreme does a lot more for me aesthetically. However, I do agree with Bilbo that Giant Steps is mostly played as a tiresome excercise in cleverness nowadays. I've been at at least one jazz jam where the tune has been called by one of the regulars expressly to humiliate less experienced musicians. This is the sort of thing that puts people off getting involved in the Jazz scene!

The accordionist in my old band used to really struggle with feedback, but I suspect his frankly crazy setup was the main contributor. He used a home-made internal mic system, which was mixed together using the inputs of a WEM copicat (also running a slap-back echo). This then went into a 100 watt Laney valve amp feeding a JMI cabinet with a 15" bass driver and a rotating treble horn, Leslie style. This used to be turned up so loud that my bass would be drowned out at some gigs. The resulting sound was halfway inbetween Zydeco accordion and an overdriven Hammond. It was an interesting sound, but we were all pleased when he ditched the huge amp!

I do my own, using a similar process, except my fret levelling beam is a 500mm hardwood turning blank, planed true on one side with 240 grit abrasive stuck to it. After levelling, I do my crowning with a triangular file with the corners ground off (like this one; [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AxeMasters-LARGE-SIZE-FRET-CROWNING-FILE-3-Corner-Luthier-Guitar-/350667278683?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item51a566095b"]http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AxeMasters-LARGE-SIZE-FRET-CROWNING-FILE-3-Corner-Luthier-Guitar-/350667278683?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item51a566095b[/url]) and protect the fingerboard from the file with one of those flexible metal guards. For the crowning, I mark the top of the fret with a permanent marker. then round off each side with the file until I'm left with a very thin line in the centre. I then polish with various grades of abrasive as above. This takes me several hours, but then I haven't done it more than a handful of times as I just do my own instruments. I'm pretty sure it's one of these things that gets quicker with experience!

No double basses yet? I feel that a good double bass has a sort of elegance to its lines and proportions that few (if any) bass guitars have achieved.

In my teens I used to take classical guitar lessons with an excellent teacher who could be quite exacting, but I also played bass in bands on the side. The nails were a bit of a struggle TBH, and I don't think my approach to bass at the time was very sensible - I just kept the nails and developed a really inefficient fingerstyle on bass using the pads of my fingers. I think this really hampered my bass playing when I first started out. I don't play classical guitar any more, but I do like to finger pick on steel-string acoustic. For this I keep a little bit of nail, filing them so they're rounded at the edges but short enough not to get in the way for bass.

Relatively few drivers are sold as being bass-guitar specific, and that includes the ones used in many commercial bass cabs. I've got a cab using B&C 12HPL64s, which I believe are intended as a PA midbass driver.

For me that "halfway house" sound from Chromes lasts for about two months, then they get closer to a traditional flatwound sound. Soaking them in alcohol brings the brighter sound back for a while. I don't know if they're like this for everyone, or if it's some quirk of my skin chemistry!

If you look under violin accessories, they've got a "Dick Chinrest" too, for extra comfort presumably! The Dick company have recently changed their name to Dictum to stop English speakers from giggling, but it seems Thomann didn't get the memo...

The back of the body looks it's made of two pieces glued at a crazy angle. Did Fender ever do this? I've not seen this on [i]any[/i] factory made instrument, but I'm not a Fender expert by any means.

That does look good. I take it the Molotow paints are about as nasty as any other nitro and need a proper respirator? I'm sort of tempted to have a go at a telecaster body some time, but the faff of trying to find a suitable space and not make myself or anyone else ill puts me off somewhat!

Rather nice price for a MIJ Ibanez, if anyones in West Lothian or doesn't mind driving a bit. [url="http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/ibanez-roadstar-made-in-japan-bass-guitar/1005891760"]http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/ibanez-roadstar-made-in-japan-bass-guitar/1005891760[/url]

Am I the first to check in post-gig? Ours went OK, a little less packed then we'd hoped for but not bad. I wore my loudest shirt, we had some people dancing and got paid, so I'm happy enough. Happy New Year!

Talking of weird TV miming gigs, here's one some friends of mine got hired for a few months back. Tom, playing bass here, is actually a guitar player who has borrowed the Ric just for the job. The guitarist and keyboard player are old bandmates of mine. I've no idea how they ended up doing this scene, but I'll ask them next time I see them... [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktIMq5iDs8A"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktIMq5iDs8A[/url]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1356956576' post='1915513'] Unless you confine all your playing to the bedroom or the studio, like it or not, image is massively important. Musicians who don't get that are likely to be ditched the moment the serious money comes calling. Of course if you do it just as a hobby with no further ambitions that's fair enough, play what you want - just hope that the rest of your band feels the same way. [/quote] I think much of this is true, as the moment you step on to a stage, in front of a camera etc, your performance is visual as well as sonic. Even those players who give the impression of not being concerned about visuals are making an aesthetic statement, whether intentionally or otherwise. But at the same time, most of my favourite musicians have chosen their instruments based on their own criteria, rather than just following the established conventions for their genre. I'd bet that this is true of the players you admire too. There are situations where I might consider playing a different instrument at the request of a band leader, but I'd really need to be convinced of the vision they had for the band, not just "you need a four string 'cos we're like, rock'n roll an' that". EDIT; your last post appeared while I was writing this, and you've just expressed much the same sentiment as I was trying to get at! I find it hard to make the five string = modern / four string = traditional distinction that a few posters allude to. I play a passive bass with nylon tapewounds and like a fairly retro, valve amp sort of sound, but I also have a B-string. Only a handful of low notes in our set would tell you that I'm not playing a four string Jazz, if you had your eyes closed. There are much more "modern" sounding guys out there on four string Fenders, especially if they've got roundwounds, active circuitry and amps with tweeters.

I'll be at Lebowski's in Edinburgh with Jen and the Gents. Strictly speaking, we're not seeing in the new year as our set finishes around 11. It was packed last time we played there on an ordinary Saturday night, so I think tonight will be interesting, what with the extra thousands of people descending on the city centre for Hogmanay...

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1356785847' post='1913559'] Without referring to the 5-string thing specifically, there is another angle to this. If a guitarist auditioned for a band I was in and they turned up with, for example, I dunno.. one of those flowery Ibanezzzzes with a pointy headstock and a carry-handle, I'd probably pre-judge that person. And I'd probably come to the conclusion that, given the kind of music I'm into, we're probably not going to have a lot of common ground, musically speaking. And the chances are, I'll probably be right. Human nature, innit. [/quote] It's funny though - I jammed with a guitarist in Glasgow for a while, who I knew as an excellent fingerstyle folkie. I went round to his flat one time, to find him playing one of those Steve Vai Ibanezes, though his was the fluoro yellow one with the pink and green pickup covers, rather than the flowery job. Apparently it was a relic from his teenage years, and while he didn't play that style anymore, he'd hung on to it as his only electric guitar as he liked the wide neck and didn't see any compelling reason to change. So they are out there!