FDC484950

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I had my eyes opened the first time I saw a good covers bar band in the US. They were good. As in each musician had chops, taste, and feel and were rock solid. Really enjoyable gig, mainly note for note but when they stretched out a bit on outros, my goodness The reason why I don’t gig anymore is that the majority of musicians are simply too lazy to learn the songs properly (or even to learn how to play half-decently). I have no snobbishness about reading vs not reading, so long as a musician knows their part and knows their instrument. In fact it’s a standing joke in jazz circles (other than big bands who play a book of specific charts) that if the musician has a chart/real book in front of them, they probably aren’t up to scratch - a solid repertoire of standards (and the alternative versions) is a must, and as with all music I’d prefer to play with someone who can play and really listens than someone with great reading skills who is oblivious to the rest of the band.

I’m not surprised. I had. Session 77 that had a strange vibration/distortion sound when certain basses were played, even with EQ flat on the appropriate input settings. I sent it to them with an explanation and they could find “nothing wrong”. I did have contact with someone when I rang up, who was polite but wasn’t interested in it. In the end I got rid of it, and every decent amp/combo since has been super clean and quiet. TBH I was not impressed with either the build quality or tone (very studio monitor flat, but to the extent that it sounded lifeless to me, and the shelving EQ didn’t sound particularly musical to my ears) when A/B’ing with another, also relatively inexpensive combo that replaced it, so won’t be looking at PJB products in future.

I still use UPS, despite the shenanigans on their last delivery to me (it did turn up in the end). To date they’ve not let me down on anything I’ve shipped and pricing is reasonable (one high value bass was about £70 including full insurance - DPD quoted £254!)

I’ve long wondered what MM played on this track as it sounds nothing like a bass guitar. At the very least it sounds like a fretless with octaver and other effects given the smooth slides and it goes down to a low C. A masterpiece in how leaving space makes such a great impact.

It’s also worth mentioning that compression can be applied as a control/effect when recording but is also present naturally - so driving a tube amp will result in some compression by design, whether a compressor/limiter is used or not. It’s also why it’s generally better these days, with all the advances in speaker design and power output to ensure the amp is rated above a given cab so the amp has headroom to operate efficiently (yes, some amps may be capable of running continuously on 100% but it’s not normally good news). Bass amps often used to come with a limiter precisely for this reason - to prevent overloading the power amp stage and causing damage.

Sorted.

Sold Andy a set of knobs. Instant payment and smooth transaction. Thanks

This is a very good point. Shipping anything halfway across the world by sea is bad news. Container ships are the biggest transport polluter in the world. They run largely unregulated enormous, archaic engines on cheaper bunker fuel (basically the crap left over when producing oil and it’s derivatives) and a single large container ship going back and forth between the Far East and UK for a year generates the same amount of pollution as 50 million cars! Anything we can do to reduce goods being shipped long distance will really help.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being proud that something is manufactured in the UK. Given the way things are going it looks like we will need to rely a lot more on UK made stuff. And we used to have (and still have) many fine bass guitar builders here

I’ve played many heavy basses that sounded terrible and light ones that sounded great (and vice versa). IMHO weight has no correlation to good tone. Strings, pickup type and placement have far more influence.

If there’s one fact I’ve learned about Fender basses, it’s that they hold their value. Except in extreme cases (i.e. seller is desperate for money right now) if the price looks too good to be true, it is.

Which you can’t do on a Fender 5 bridge because the B string is so tightly fixed in place, due to the aforementioned basic design fault. I’ve had 14 different Fender basses with either the US Standard or the high mass version from the Dimension and they’re all the same. The high mass bridge is even worse - as the baseplate is so thick there’s basically no action adjustment downwards. No problem with, for example, the Music Man bridge as there is enough clearance between backplate and bridge saddle and holes in the back plate are larger in diameter, allowing the B string to move.

Well, in 30+ years of playing and stringing hundreds of basses with a low B I've only had this issue with Fender bridges. So yeah, obviously user error, not a basic design fault 🙄