Beer of the Bass

A friend showed me a link to these, a miniature bow which can be strapped to the ring finger for quick changes between arco and pizz. Obviously, it's never going to replace a full size bow, but I'm kind of intrigued by the idea. It looks like it would be a fun thing to experiment with, and could lead to some unconventional parts. [url="http://expandinghandsmusic.com/ehm1_005.htm"]http://expandinghandsmusic.com/ehm1_005.htm[/url]

Send them some pictures of the most portly bass player you can find, and tell them the pictures are of you!

It might sound like Mick Karn, if Mick Karn had ever tried to milk a cow on a winter morning with cold hands!

Good, isn't it? I'm never sure whether to laugh, cry, or slip on a pair of crocs, crack open the home brew and sit out in the garden with my bass...

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1432988697' post='2786814'] It seems to be a link of some sort. Seriously... it's a Wishbass. As in 'I wish he hadn't bothered'. They do have some love on this forum. [/quote] What's not to love? It's quite hard to watch this without some sort of smile, even though you may alternate the smiling with grimaces and head-shaking... [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efOgS3eT0HM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efOgS3eT0HM[/url]

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1432736215' post='2784412'] You'll start losing floor coupling at about 2.5 feet off the floor, so don't go higher than that. If it's still hard to hear tilt it back. A keyboard stand is a bit too high. The same applies to the distance to the wall behind the cab. Placing the front of the cab more than 2 feet from the wall will not only reduce boundary reinforcement off the wall, it will cause a response dip. That can be of use on boomy stages. The correct distance from the wall can put the dip at the boom frequency, cancelling out the boom. [/quote] That's interesting, as there's a pub I've played in several times where I'd usually put my cab on top of a chair, but tried a 3 foot tall bar stool for one gig. I did feel like I had trouble dialling in enough bass that time. I've played around with boundary reinforcement when playing unamplified double bass - I've found that standing as far into the corner of the room as possible seems to give me a little extra low end.

Ooh, the four string looks nice. I've always preferred the look of basses with a pickguard, and I didn't realise that ACG did them.

[quote name='fatback' timestamp='1432589409' post='2783129'] I always say this, and I'm sure y'all yawn, but check out Rabbath's method. Intonation becomes a dream because there's so little arm shifting going on. And instead of learning by marking 'frets' you can learn by marking the thumb positions and practice those three (or four) shifts. If it works for me, it'll work for anybody. [/quote] I've not looked into Rabbath much - is that the method where you use all four fingers pivoting around the thumb? I think that the Simandl style 1-2-4 fingerings are so ingrained into my playing that it would almost like re-learning the instrument.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1432582895' post='2783037'] Perhaps, but who would be there to kick you out? Nobody, or it wouldn't be a desert island to start with. I suppose the point is that we can never go to a desert island. Well, we can *go* but we can never set foot on it. This then renders the current thread pointless. [/quote] Doesn't that change the premise of the thread a little? Like, which bass would you banish to an island where no-one ever sets foot? I can think of one or two...

[quote name='warwickhunt' timestamp='1432565631' post='2782713'] Still puzzled as other commercially available horizontal, multi-driver cabs have been singled out as flawed and most have a crossover in them. Not that I am fussed but it seems odd to have had so many years of posts deriding the horizontal alignment of drivers and then along comes a BF cab of the same design. I've no doubt I shall be learning something new re. this matter very shortly. [/quote] I think they're using what's referred to as a .5 alignment, where both drivers handle the lows but only one driver gets the upper mids and highs. So in the frequency range where horizontally arranged drivers would affect the dispersion it behaves as a 1x10" cab.

Thanks for your thoughts, guys. I've been watching a few of Geoff's videos, there are some useful things in there. Surprisingly my intonation seems to be OK (or no worse than usual!), but I feel like I need to work on tone production and general getting around the instrument - perhaps I should dig out some scale and arpeggio exercises.

After a stressful house move and my wife being ill, I've only just got around to sorting out the flat enough that I can get my double bass out from behind the stuff stacked in the spare room and start practicing again. It's been almost two months since I was playing double bass regularly. I've been having a play this morning, and it's coming back slowly, but my hands feel kind of weak and I'm sure my pizz tone is less solid than before. Other than just picking it up and practicing every day, does anyone have any advice on getting going again after a lay-off?

I've got the G2m, and my first impressions are that it's not bad. I certainly wouldn't try playing a whole set on it (I'd use a keyboard for that), but for dropping in the odd synth part here and there I think it'll work well. I find the latency is quite noticeable on the lower notes, but liveable with across most of the range. I'm getting the odd unintentional open string note, so I think I'll experiment with a hair scrunchy next to the nut to mute them. Figuring out how to work it into my setup will be interesting - I think I may try and keep the synth sound separate from my guitar amp, perhaps running the output into a volume pedal then DI'd into the PA, so I can just fade it up when needed. The G2m will live on the floor next to my pedals, with the synth module on top of my amp for easy tweaking.

The grain of the wood goes across the width of the top rather than along the length. What's going on there - have they stripped off the top layer of a laminate?

A quick google of his name reveals all: [quote] It was made in Switzerland by Rolf Svuler and given to me by Forbes Henderson; it’s a nylon string guitar and electric but it’s got an amazing design and tone. The way he combined the acoustic sound, it’s a sold body but the way he put it together it has an acoustic sound. It was given to me in London in 1990 at Ronnie Scott’s by a classical guitarist named Forbes Anderson.[/quote] [url="http://oregonmusicnews.com/2012/11/13/qa-with-steve-winwoods-ace-sf-bay-guitarist-jose-neto/"]http://oregonmusicne...rist-jose-neto/[/url]

[quote name='landwomble' timestamp='1432283751' post='2779936'] My shorty P bass and 5 string acoustic attempted delivery this morning - bloody quick! The van is coming back this afternoon so I have a few hours to think up an explanation for my wife... :-) [/quote] [quote name='Annoying Twit' timestamp='1432285470' post='2779966'] I wrote my own program to do so... [/quote] When I first read that line, I thought for a minute that you'd written a program to come up with explanations for your wife! That would probably be quite popular on here.

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1432291622' post='2780052'] Incidentally, we often see '16th notes', or '8th notes'; should these not be semi-quavers and quavers..? 8ths and 16ths would only be true if referred to 4/4 time; the equivalent for 3/4 would be 12th and 6th notes, no..? Is this just another Americanism taking over..? In French, a quaver is a 'croche', a semiquaver a 'double croche', then follows 'triple croche' and 'quadruple croche' etc, whatever the time signature, none of this Yankee stuff. [/quote] Perhaps, but the sort of line I'm talking about tends to be in 4/4 and often in musical genres which originated in the US, so why not use that language to describe it?

This is a silly one: it took me years to be able to play continual 16th note fingerstyle lines, not because of anything to do with my hands but because I would find myself breathing in a 16th note rhythm and feeling dizzy after a minute or two! I still have to focus quite hard on not doing that.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1432213121' post='2779245'] If you wanted a MK1 version, you could have got one for £20 direct from [url="http://shop.sonuus.com/product_info.php?products_id=47&osCsid=63dc6d68672bedec21a31d09d18537d5"]Sonuus[/url]. [/quote] If I'd known that, I would have done! Too late now. Still, mine was £27 posted, so not a massive difference. I figure that for the synth sounds I want to use, the chromatic mode of the MK2 is not an essential, and as it's a bit of an experiment I thought I'd go for the cheaper option.

[quote name='Count Bassy' timestamp='1432212139' post='2779228'] Slightly off topic, but the Roland Bass cube 100 is like this - a "100 watt" combo that only draws 60VA from the mains. Seems the worlds energy crisis is solved! [/quote] I think the standard labelling for power consumption on ampilfiers is what they consume when operating at a set percentage of output that's supposed to represent normal use. For example, the back of my GK MB200 says "Full power 240w, average power 48.6W" next to the power socket. I'd presume that your Roland quotes the lower figure. Still even considering that, the Behringer's consumption seems small for it's advertised output.

I've got a version 1 G2m on the way from eBay, it was less than £30 so seems worth a shot. It'll be interesting to see whether I can get something useful out of it.

I can recall seeing "Obanez" guitars listed in the old free-ad papers, so I guess people do struggle to read this logo.

[quote name='Subfeeder' timestamp='1431444247' post='2771439'] I'm thinking I should try a smaller, tighter speaker - perhaps an EA Wizzy? However, I'm not sure how that would work with Electric Bass. I can't really justify 2 speakers at the moment. Anyone have any thoughts? [/quote] I haven't used the 12" model, but the Wizzy 10" has a fairly lively, peaky voicing in the mids, so might not be the obvious place to look if that's a concern. It's a good sounding cab and the strong mids can definitely help with audibility in noisy venues, but most people find themselves having to EQ some out. I wonder if trying a different pickup might be a good idea, as whenever I've heard bassists using the Realist, it seems to capture more woody/thumpy body sound than a bridge wing pickup does. It can be a good sound, though perhaps not what you'd choose for every context.

On Gumtree, down in Portobello? I'm fairly sure that's Verden rehearsal studio selling off some old gear, so I've probably played through that particular example. It did fine for rehearsing in a small room, I can't really remember more than that as it was a couple of years ago...

[quote name='stevie' timestamp='1431874926' post='2775763'] I hear Merton gently waking from his snooze......... [/quote] With comments like that it would be hard to argue that you're not just trolling for reactions.